Summary: Broken hearts heal. She knows it will hurt for a while but that the pain will lessen with time. What she's not sure of is whether they can repair everything else they used to have together. Alternate ending for 4x22. Spoilers for Undead Again and possibly Always.

Author's Note: It gets happier. I promise.

Disclaimer: I could never really do this to our favorite duo.

Chapter 2

I was in love with you.

Castle fell silent, gaping at her, words stuck in his throat, unable to escape because her last sentence had completely robbed him of his breath.

Kate mistook his silence and his deer-in-the-headlights expression for rejection, slowly turned to leave, his novel still clutched in her hand. Her heart broke a little more with each step she took away from him but at this point she really had no other choice. She had opened up her heart and he had looked the other way. So now it was time for her to move on, no matter how incredibly painful a process it would be.

She may never be the same again, her heart may never truly be whole after this. But she would try, because there was no other option.

Castle stood frozen in place, eyes following her every step, unable to move, to breathe, to speak, to comprehend her words. The ghost of her fingers lingered on his arm, taunting him, reminding him of what he was losing, what he had maybe already lost.

But how could he lose something he had given up long ago?

He cursed his traitorous feelings, tried to brush away the heat of her touch with his fingertips. He watched in anguish as she rounded the corner, disappeared into the crowd. His last glimpse of her was a raise of her arm, a swiping motion of her hand that looked suspiciously like she was wiping the tears from her face.

I was in love with you.

And suddenly, Castle's mind was fully aware of the situation, her words, the fact that she had just tried to give them another chance, one that was now slipping away as quickly as it had appeared. And in that moment, as he stumbled through the crowd after her, there were only two words playing on repeat in his mind: Stop her! Because if she had been in love with him before the summer, then there was a chance that she might still feel that way. And despite the pain and anger, he would never forgive himself if things ended before he had a chance to find the truth.

"Wait!" Castle called out, pushing through the front doors, scanning the sidewalk for any sign of Kate. To the random passerby he probably looked like a raving lunatic but that did not matter right now. All that mattered was finding her. Finding her and never letting her go.

At long last he caught sight of her. She was seated on a bench at the end of the block, head hung forward, dark curls obscuring her eyes, but he could tell by the slight tremor in her shoulders that she was crying. Frozen Heat was pressed to her chest as though she was trying to hold together the pieces of her heart with the final words of her alter ego, the only remaining link to the only man she had ever truly loved.

"Kate." He ran over to her, squatted down in front of her and rested his hands on her knees. A tear dripped onto his finger but he did not move to wipe it away, allowed the liquid to trail across his skin. When she did not move he repeated her name, raised a hand to cup her jaw.

"Kate, please. Look at me."

His thumb traced a soft pattern across her cheek, capturing her tears in the whorled pattern of his fingertips that somehow represented the convoluted vortex of feelings swirling between them. When she still refused to raise her chin Castle's other hand joined in, her face cradled gently in his fingers, coaxing her gaze to his.

Finally she relented, raising her head to reveal red-rimmed teary eyes, black streaks of eyeliner running down her cheeks, making her look pale and empty.

He stared back at her, eyes full of concern and empathy because he may have spent the last five months convincing himself that he was better off without her but seeing her in tears still tugged at his heart, pushed the agony of the summer to the back of his mind.

"You were in love with me?"

She nodded, eyes slipping closed to hide the pain.

"Past tense?"

Kate sniffed, opened her eyes again, wide and hazel and full of more emotion than Castle had ever seen. "Present tense too. I love you, Castle. I never stopped."

"I..." he faltered, at a complete loss for words. After all, what does one say when the woman who broke your heart and you had spent the last five months trying to forget about tells you she loves you?

Instinctively, Castle wanted to hug her, kiss her, take her home and fall into bed with her and not leave his room for the entire weekend. But as much as he wanted to ignore the last few months, this one hurt a little too much for that. This time they had not just had a falling out or poor timing; they had torn each other apart completely, inflicted damage upon each other than nothing and no one else could ever truly heal.

In retrospect Kate wished she had fought harder, had paid more attention to the not-so-subtle hints he had dropped during their last case. But when it came down to it, she honestly had not believed that he would leave. Things had been rough lately but then they seemed to be getting better again. So she let his comments slide.

She also wished that she had confronted him, been strong enough to come clean, to tell him then what she had finally told him today. Because four months ago that might have saved them. Now, she was not sure anything would.

The fight had taken place in the break room, complete with screaming and crying as they tore each other's hearts out, ripped them to shreds and discarded them on the floor. He informed her coldly that this was it for him, that he would be leaving the Twelfth now that they had closed the case. He had everything he needed for research and Nikki Heat was coming to an end anyways. Kate laughed it off until she realized that he was dead serious. His voice was flat, eyes devoid of emotion, posture closed off, indicative of someone attempting to sever all ties. He was really leaving. Her partner was walking away from her.

To say that she was furious would have been an understatement. Her response was immediate, lashing out at him, and he retaliated just as strongly. She accused him of being distant, of behaving like a different person recently. She was pretty sure that in the heat of the moment, her word choice had actually been 'jackass.' He accused her of dragging him along, making him believe he had a chance when she never wanted him anyways. She called him shallow and assuming and arrogant. He called her a cold-hearted bitch.

Then, in some kind of bittersweet torture, Castle stepped forward with teary eyes, placed a gentle kiss on her lips, and walked away without saying goodbye, the door closing behind him with a bang of finality.

And as she stood rooted to the spot watching him walk away, she could hear his words from the cemetery, the ones that had given her a reason to fight through her recovery, fading away with him. 'Kate, I love you. I love you, Kate.'

The kiss had haunted her every day since his departure and though he had meant it to hurt her, serve as a reminder of what she was throwing away, he was equally tortured by that final moment of contact. He could still feel her lips on his, had never forgotten the moan she released into his mouth in that night in the dark alley. Anyone else he had kissed since then had not taken his mind off of Kate but rather served as a reminder that no one would ever measure up to her.

Their months apart had passed in a haze of day-to-day life, dull, emotionless. The memories of them, once so clear, began to cloud over as Castle pushed them from his mind and Kate locked them away in the box that contained the deepest recesses of her heart.

The summer was hot and humid but neither noticed, too swallowed up by their own grief and pain. It Castle had not written a word aside from the dedication, hardly left his loft. Kate's eyes were hollow, voice empty and completely lacking passion, because every day at the precinct reminded her that she had lost the best part of her life, had somehow pushed him away without realizing it. And it was clear that she had not been sleeping but despite her exhaustion, she could hardly close her eyes because whenever she did she woke with the ghost of his lips on hers.

With every day that passed the pain gradually lessened, though it had been so strong to begin with that the daily improvements had been essentially imperceptible.

As the summer faded away and the stifling days melded into chilly nights, Kate wanted nothing more than to curl up in Castle's arms, tell him that she loved him and that she was sorry for whatever she had done. She longed for the warmth of his loft, his arms, his smile, his love.

But he was gone.

He was here now, though, and despite the fact that everything was still a mess, if they could keep talking maybe they could work things out. They may never be the same again but if they could at least salvage their friendship, well, that was better than nothing. At least he would still be a part of her life. And maybe someday they could try a relationship again without ripping each other to pieces.

"Say it again," he pleaded, rescuing her from of the pain of her memories.

"I love you," Kate whispered through her tears.

A drop of rain fell, then another, as a full blown storm split open the skies, unleashed its moisture in torrents. Metaphoric, Kate thought. The rain soaked her hair, her jeans, slicking off of her jacket at first but even that quickly reached its waterproof limit.

Castle was equally drenched by the time they gathered their wits enough to move beneath an awning, out of the downpour. Water dripped from the ends of Kate's hair, falling on the toes of Castle's shoes, and she reached out with her free hand, thumbed the water from his cheeks. Liquid drops from the sky or his eyes, she was not sure.

There was still so much to be said, so much to be healed and recovered and rebuilt. The repercussions of her lie and their fight and the dedication and their angry words still hung over them. The path forward was not going to be smooth, would be rocky and untraveled. It would most certainly take two people to navigate through to their final destination.

But as Kate leaned in, pressed her lips to his in a kiss filled with rain and tears and love and 'I'm so sorry,' Castle found that his faith in them and their ability to weather the storm, to come out of it alive and in one piece, was beginning to be renewed.

They separated far too soon for either of their liking but they were in public, and it was still stormy and cold, and Castle was supposed to be inside signing autographs, not outside ruining his suit and kissing Kate. Their eyes held for a moment before Kate's flicked away, over his shoulder, down to her feet, to her left at the little boy dancing in the rain as his mother tried to pull him back under her umbrella.

A shiver wracked her body as a gust of wind swirled through the air, wrapping around them and almost guiding them into each other's warmth. Castle's arms automatically came up to fold around her, pull her into his chest. Kate leaned her head on his shoulder, breathed him in. She had missed his scent. And she felt silly for even thinking such a thing.

She clung to him with one hand, the other trapped between them still clutching Frozen Heat. The cover was smudged with water spots now, the edges of the pages curling and crinkling, damaged but not destroyed. Salvageable.

Oblivious to her scattered thoughts, Castle slowly guided Kate inside, stopping in the entryway of the bookstore to allow them both a moment to pull themselves together. His eyes were trained on her cheeks, rosy from the cold and her tears, her furrowed brow, indicating that something was troubling her. He opened his mouth to ask but then noticed her focus, understood her worries. His book.

Castle gently pried her fingers open, removed the soggy novel, was met with her curious gaze as she turned hazel eyes to his blue ones.

"I'll get you another one," he said softly, leaning in to brush his lips against her forehead. "But not until I rewrite the dedication."

To Kate - Always

The end? This kinda feels like the end.