Author's Note: I sat down to finish the final scene for 'The Disciple's Doctrine'. This came out instead.
Jim Beckett is who has the honor of being first to see his daughter in her wedding dress.
He's taken by surprise when Katie calls him right after Christmas, years of reading between the lines that she has so carefully drawn telling him that this phone call is about more than his plans for New Year's Eve and if he wants to attend the party that Castle is throwing at the loft.
He agrees to the party invitation easily enough, a pleased mental image of the unconventional little family they are slowly forging being shoved up against the pomp and circumstance of Rick and Martha's respective social circles.
The rest of the conversation is mundane, she asks about his work, he pointedly doesn't ask about hers (she can't tell him much of anything, and he sleeps better not knowing), and they agree to meet for lunch at their favorite diner the following Wednesday.
"Dad, would you go look at wedding dresses with me?" Kate poses the question just before they hang up, her words expelling in a quiet rush. He can't see her face, but Jim still knows that his daughter is biting her bottom lip and half of her face is hidden by a curtain of curls.
He also expects there's a hint of tears in her eyes, the slight hitch in her voice not going unnoticed. Not when he knows her so well.
"Of course, Katie. You tell me when and I'll be there in a heartbeat," he promises, the pang of his wife's absence from both of their lives curling out of the shadows of his apartment and overwhelming him.
It's not fair that his daughter has to experience this moment without her mother. It's another milestone in a growing list where Katie's life is lived in shadow, where he plays both mother and father to a woman who deserved a very different life.
They go dress shopping in the middle of a blizzard.
It's all very inconvenient, the city's foot and vehicular traffic operating at a crawl while fat, wet flakes fall from the sky and stick to everything in sight. On television, they say that the city will see over a foot of snow in 24 hours. They advise people to stay in their homes, not go out shopping for wedding dresses.
He wonders why the bridal boutique is even open, even his firm has closed business for the day, but when Katie calls to remind him of their appointment Jim doesn't mention the snow because his daughter is excited. Her voice has a lilt to it that reminds him of when she was a little girl, laughing as they bent their heads together over a scorecard at Shea Stadium or when she floated into the apartment fresh from her first high school dance.
She had breathlessly recounted how the boy she'd had a crush on had kissed her. Just a peck, she'd told Johanna, with a bright smile of her face and a sparkle in her eyes that both filled him with joy and dread.
Up until that point, he'd been the only man to make his daughter light up with joy.
That same delight is plastered across Katie's face when he exits from the subway. He immediately spots her, two large coffee cups in her hands while she leans against the hood of her cruiser. Her eyes are closed, the turn of her lips ending in a soft smile as snow floats around her.
He has never seen her this happy since her mother died, and in that moment he is so thankful for Richard Castle and weddings and snow and a million other things that he can't name.
His daughter is happy. And that is all that matters to him.
Jim gets within fifteen steps of her before Katie's eyes open, and she gives him a full smile.
"Hey Dad," she greets him, pressing the coffee into his hand so she can give him a one-armed hug.
He cherishes those hugs, too easily able to recall a time where the only contact he received from his daughter were cold stares as she poured alcohol down the sink drain or shoved him under the icy pellets of a cold shower in order to pull him from his drunken haze.
"Hi, KB," he returns the sentiment, grinning at the quirk of her lips. The nickname is one that he largely stopped using once she became KB within the pages of a book, but in her childhood she'd been KB as often as Katie.
He had never called her Kate. She had been Katie until joining the NYPD. Kate Beckett was a cop, Katie Beckett was his daughter with her bright eyes and ready laugh. Katherine Beckett was a woman who managed to be both and take his breath away with how very proud of her he was.
"You ready to turn into a princess?" he questions his daughter, smiling as she immediately flushes pink, diving behind her curtain of hair with groan. He wonders if Rick knows how often she had wanted to be a princess when she was a child, had insisted she would marry a prince and live in a castle.
She got it half right, he thinks to himself as Katie threads an arm through his and leads him into the warmth of the store.
The first time Kate comes out of the dressing room in a white gown he's sure he stops breathing.
Jim can tell from the look on his daughter's face that she won't be wearing this dress to her wedding, but he can't help himself. She's always been beautiful, but this is something beyond that.
She's glowing with happiness - even in a dress that he knows she hates. A dress that is so fluffy and over the top that he's wondering why she picked it to try on.
He doesn't pretend to know anything about fashion. What he wears is chosen for comfort and practicality outside of the office.
"It's a princess dress," she explains to his unspoken question, and then Katie does a little twirl in front him that has them both laughing, "I thought I'd at least live out the fantasy for a moment,' she adds, stepping down off the pedestal to follow the sales consultant back to the dressing room.
It takes five other dresses, all of them varying styles and shapes before anything changes. The others are all fine, either the top is great but the bottom is horrible. On one of them she loves the cut but hates the fabric.
Katie vetoes a third because, while pretty, its a dress that is more appropriate for a beach wedding instead of a July affair at the Public Library.
But when she floats into the room in dress number six, the whole place stops.
It's not that its crowded, there is only one other bride on the floor, but there are consultants lingering around in various degrees of working. A few are styling a family of mannequins, some others are securing dresses to hangers, placing them on racks, but they all stop as Katie steps onto the pedestal.
The dress is lace, the sort that clings to her upper body and falls gracefully to the floor starting somewhere between her waist and her hips. He can see the slight twinkle of beads as Katie shifts in place, her hands smoothing across the delicate belt that rings her torso.
She's eyeing herself critically in the mirror, searching for any flaw that would eliminate the dress as the one she'll wear to her wedding. But he can see the excuses and protest coming up short as her mind works.
He can also see that tears are gathering in her eyes, which is what brings him to his feat to stand beside her.
"I think this is it, Katie-Bug," he murmurs, his heart clenching as his daughter's eyes close and the tears slide down her cheeks.
Jim knows that its the dress, just as much as Katie does, and he also understands. He understands that she isn't only crying because she's wearing her wedding dress, that she's overwhelmed with excitement and happiness. She's crying because he called her Katie-Bug, that he's filling the void with her mother's special nickname for her, that he's holding her hand and keeping her anchored to the moment while they both fight with their grief over the gaping hole left not only in the Beckett family but in the one that they both will join in six short months.
"Daddy, I miss her," she whispers as he draws her in for a hug, Kate's quiet sob muffled even more into his shirt.
"Me too, Katie. Me too," Jim echoes, giving the sales consultant an apologetic glance as he gently guides his daughter to sit on the pedestal. He has to sidestep the smooth pile of creamy material that flares around her to sit next to her, but he manages.
And they sit there for a while, heads resting together and hands clasped while Katie twirls her mother's necklace and her own engagement ring back and forth on the chain hanging around her neck.
They linger together over a long lunch, trekking through the snow to a cafe across the street for soup and sandwiches.
She still has a tinge of puffiness around her eyes, a bit of red around her nose that has nothing to do with the cold, but Jim sees the clouds clearing in the green and gold flecks of her eyes.
It hurt, that moment, he still feels the sting himself, but he knows that it made them stronger. That some portion of their relationship has been forged together in the fire of sharing their emotion and heartbreak.
"You know, your mother actually kept some mementos from our wedding," he says tentatively, worried that speaking too soon might break the fragile pieces of composure that Kate has pressed back into place after their moment on the sales floor.
He has a few vague memories of the box tucked in the back of the closet. Of rainy afternoons where Johanna placed her veil on Katie's head and she danced around the apartment wearing it. He remembers the stories that she told their daughter, of the magic of their first dance, of how her aunt Margaret had run out of the reception and spent over a hundred dollars on snack food at the bodega down the street from the hall when the caterer had ran out of hors d'oeurves.
Also of the story of how he hadn't wanted hors d'oerves at all, had insisted on a simple buffet and been overruled by Johanna, her mother, and her four aunts.
Katie considers his words for a minute, her eyebrows drawn together as she stirs her potato soup, "I had sort of thought I'd wear the veil," she says after a beat, her eyes holding the unspoken question of if he would mind.
"Of course," Jim replies, reaching over to clink his spoon against hers, "I'll bring the box to dinner next week. Maybe that photo of you wearing it, your mothers heels, and your Care Bear underwear."
He's pleased when Katie laughs, her head falling back against the booth and filling the space with her happiness, "I had forgotten about doing that."
And just like that the tension breaks, the lingering shadows of Johanna's death evaporating. Jim knows its only temporary, that there will be many more moments in the next six months, on the wedding day itself, and through the rest of Katie's life where it hurts. Where she needs someone to hold her while she cries.
He doesn't even mind that it won't always be him, he realizes once they've paid for their meal and she is settling in her car to drive back to the precinct. Its so different when you know that your daughter is going happily into a life with a man who makes her happy, someone who respects and loves her so completely.
There's no vice around his heart today, none of that dread and fear that accompanied him in the moments after Katie's first kiss.
Instead, he heads down to the subway with a smile on his face because his daughter is happy.
And that's all he's ever wanted.