This is post-Always...more serious and more in depth than my little smorelet fic. I wonder if they will ever address this little phrase on the show? As per usual I DO NOT own Castle...ABC and AM have the rights to the wonderful show that we all love so much. Please R and R! I will update this at least once a week.

"Everything is dark

It's more than you could take

But you catch a glimpse of sunlight

Shining

Shining down on your face

Your face

On your face

Oh, you're in my veins, and I cannot get you out

Oh, you're all I taste, at night inside of my mouth

Oh, you run away, cause I am not what you found

Oh, you're in my veins, and I cannot get you out." ~Andrew Belle

That moment on the ledge had been a revelation, it had busted her soul wide open so it lay broken open as an egg, all of her truths finally laid bare for her own previously blind eyes to see, to drink in, to comprehend. In the moments that she had thought were her last, every bone, every fiber, every pump of blood in her body had yearned for him, had screamed his name. She urgently needed to let him know how she felt. How stupid she had been, how consumed by her own purpose that she hadn't been able to accept the very thing she needed the most-his love. He was her one and done. Her always. She couldn't let him slip through the cracks in her life that her own rabbit hole had created.

She was calm when they pulled her up from the ledge; outwardly. Inside of her turmoil, confusion, anger and sadness swirled and raged like a violent maelstrom and a sick feeling curled into the top of her chest. She had hurt him and she needed to make it right.

In Gates' office she had stared at her badge lovingly and felt the pull it still had for her and a soft stab of slight panic at the thought of giving it up. But then she had made a decision. That badge was her previous reality. Everything she had ever identified herself with had become wrapped up in that job. Who was she without that piece of brass? She smiled when she put it down, things she had never felt before bubbling and swirling and popping inside of her. She was Kate Beckett-remarkable, maddening, challenging, frustrating. Had he really said that?

"Keep it,. I resign."

She dodged the disbelieving looks of her chief and her friend and packed up her desk, casting one last look at Castle's chair before crashing out into the torrential storm, letting it soak her through, wash away her sins, her past.

The rain spun down like small silver knives and stung when it hit her bare skin, reminding her that she was still alive and whole and...in love.

Oh God, was she in love! Her chest tightened and burned with it and she let herself cry bitter tears in the heavy rain, salt and silt staining her flaming cheeks.

She went to the swing set where she had almost told him that it was him, it was always ALWAYS him, so many months ago. Her eyes drifted over to the empty seat beside her and a chasm of need opened up in her heart and threatened to swallow her whole. She needed him, she missed him, she loved him. She needed to fix what she had broken. She laughed to herself in the rain and ran a hand through her sopping hair, then pressed her slender cold fingers into her cheeks. All of the feelings she had fought so long against surged up in her and spilled out. She pictured him... his boyish smile, his brilliant eyes, his beautiful lips. She thought about what it would like to never see him again, to never hear his glimmering laugh or see the warm glimmer that sparked in his eyes when he looked at her. It was then she made a decision to run into it, confront love head on. She knew it would be messy and frustrating and imperfect, but the things that were worth the most always were. This, this would make up for all the times she had held back, for all the things she had never said, for all the mistakes she had ever made. She got up slowly from the swing and gave his a last push before hitting the pavement in an all out run to his apartment.

She paused in front of his building, gun shy for only a moment. What if he didn't open the door? What if he refused to talk to her? And the last what if was the hardest for her, the one that made the scar over her heart smart and burn...What if he had decided not to love her anymore?

No what ifs, Kate. The time is now.

And it was. She took out her phone and dialed his number to tell him she was coming up. Coming for him.

He didn't answer. Had she really expected him to?

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore except that she got to him. Touched him. Felt him. Showed him.

The doorman let her in without a backwards glance, thank god she had been her so many times before and that Castle had put her on the always admit list or she wouldn't have had a prayer of getting in, especially now that she was gun and badge-less.

Her nerves vibrated with raw electricity as she took the elevator up to his floor, and the wait she endured until the doors clicked open and ejected her into the familiar hallway felt like an eternity.

She knocked on the door desperately, wishing silently that she could tear it down to get to him and lay herself bare.

When he opened the door and she met his familiar, wonderful gaze, all of her slowly rehearsed words died on her lips. There would be no poetic declarations this night, she could barely even breathe. She looked at him and opened her mouth to say

something, but nothing came out and she shook her head against how small and panicked his apparent anger made her feel.

He was stern and cold-detached. But his eyes, his beautiful, soulful eyes were still sad and bewildered, despite their stony set.

"Beckett, what do you want?"

Oh God, he was going to write her off. She couldn't let that happen, so she just told the truth. She was done hiding her feelings from him, from the world. The word popped out before she had even fully made her decision.

"You." And it was the naked, honest truth. The truth of all truths. All she had ever wanted was him.

And then she reached for him, drove him back from the door and kissed him with tentative abandon, an apology and a question on her lips. She clung to him then,...this man was her constant, her anchor in the swirling stormy waters her life had become. He was her beacon in the darkness, everything she needed and she needed him now more than ever.

She felt his shock, and his hesitation, his disbelief. She drew back, her hands still on his face and whispered to him the second truth she had for him, the only thing that made sense.

"I'm so sorry, Castle. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Her voice was low and ghost-like, filled with heartbreak and raw, sharp edged emotion. His heart seized in his chest and as she leaned into kiss him again he had to take a deep breath before tearing her away. Surely this was a dream, surely...

She gave him a desperate, hurt look when he pushed her back and he couldn't help but notice that the pain in her eyes was tinged with desire and pure, unadulterated need.

She had brought the storm in with her and transferred it into him with one touch of her tingling lips. It raged inside of him, a hodge-podge of emotion. She had just rocked him to his very core, and he had to recover from the shock of seeing her so vulnerable and broken-open before him, begging for him, for his love. It took him a moment to catch his breath and form the words that he so wanted to come.

"What happened?"

She looked down, trying to compose herself in order to find the right thing to say to convey her revelation to him. A tear leaked down her face and she raised her head to meet his eyes again, somehow confident, happy to be sharing her heart with him, her realization. It was something she had needed to get off of her chest for a while and the moment was now. Something in her tingled with white-hot tiny pinpricks. She was acutely aware that they were both dangling over a precipice, about to fall and embark on a new journey. This was to be her reality, their reality.

He was her reality.

"He got away, and I didn't care." She paused for a moment, searching his eyes to see if he fully grasped what she was trying to say. Then she soldiered forward. "I am almost died." Her voice was almost robbed from her here, and he could hear its thinness and feel her fighting with the emotion to wrestle out her words.

"And all I could think about was you." She took in his lips and his face, drinking him in with her hurt-bright eyes.

"I just want you."

The weak wall that he had tried to erect around his heart, the resolution he had made to himself to be rid of her, all of it crumbled and disappeared in that moment and a chasm of need for her opened up wide and gaping inside of him. Every inch of him wanted to show her how he loved her, with his hands, his lips, his eyes his body.

She leaned in to invite him into her and then stopped short of kissing him before raising her eyes to him to see what he would do next. She touched his beautiful lips before she saw a conflagration of desire and love ignite behind his wonderful blue eyes. He tightened his grip upon her waist a drove her backwards into the door, slamming it shut behind them. Her whole body exploded with a flash of heat. She felt a trickle of sweat run in between her breast and pool around the white pit of her scar. His touch upon her face was both gentle and firm and his hands were more sandpapery than expected. She imagined the roughness of them sliding deliciously along a smooth expanse of her smarting skin and her longing grew deeper. His lips connected with hers in a flash of lightening and he tasted sorrow-salt and fire, and the ghost of a smile. She felt him pulling her in and redeeming her and she had a fleeting thought that now she new what it felt like to be saved. He was filling her darkness with his light.

Her hips involuntarily rose to meet his and she felt the effect that it had on him, the tightening of muscles and sinew, the waves of unbearable heat rolling off of him and crashing into her. Their kisses became desperate and deep; a passionate declaration of all the things they'd almost said. They parted briefly and unison, like two swimmers surfacing for a brief snatch of air. Then he leaned down and kissed the smooth, rain-slick column of her throat, then the shadowy divot where her collarbone fused. He moved back up to kiss the corner of her mouth, a place he used to imagine she saved all her sweetest kisses. She threw her hands up around him, drawing him into her; her skin flushed with the heat of anticipation. His mouth was on hers again and again and again, worshipping her with hot and wordless prayers and she felt as if their clothes might turn to ash between them.

Oh. My. God.

He kissed the sensitive expanse behind her ear and then trailed his lips down her breasts to place a gentle, incredulous kiss upon the cavity that housed her wildly beating heart.

He opened her shirt and she caught his hand, guiding it to the hard pebble of her scar so he could feel every beat of the heart that was his.

This is yours. This is yours. This is yours.

She reached up and drew him into a kiss so tender he thought his heart might shatter. He couldn't help but think how perfectly their mouths fit together, how she fit into his arms like she was always meant to be there.

He had just needed to catch his upper lip against hers and he felt her a smile start to curl it's way into her kiss. When they broke apart his heartbeat answered hers.

Always, always, always.

The smile that had began in the kiss grew into a brilliant grin and he watched it break like dawn over her face before she reached down to firmly take his hand.

Everything was changing and he was ready.

He had always been ready.

She looked at him with a question, a coy and alluring glint in the swirling dark waters of her eyes. He felt her expel a quivering breath before she drew her bottom lip in between her perfect teeth and tugged gently on his hand.

Come with me. She asked him again with her eyes. He didn't need to be asked twice.

She gives herself to him with more fervor and wanton than she ever has given herself to anyone before.

He takes her in and explores ever inch of her gorgeous rain-soaked skin with his spry writer's hands.

She has bewitched him body and soul and he love, love, loves her.

He tells her this with silent lips pressed reverently to her coal-hot skin, with his tender caresses, his emotion-pregnant glances.

Her hands rove the expanse of his back, brush against the valleys of his clavicle, work up between the smooth plane between his shoulder blades. She wants her palms to feel him, to memorize every inch of his magnificent body.

They rise and fall like a boat in the tide, the slopes and angles of their body meeting and parting and meeting again.

With every gasping breath she finds that she needs him more. He has dug his way under her skin and crawled through her veins into her heart. Every beat sings his name.

And nothing has ever felt more whole, more perfect, more right.

And for the first time in a long time, Kate Beckett feels like she is home.