a/n; so forgive me. i'm not a long story fic writer kind of girl. but this is for my friend katie, who convinced me to write this and who got me into castle in the first place. all hail katie, yup. anyway, i thought i might as well give this thing a shot, so – prologue! it's quite short, i'll admit, but i'm hoping for my chapters to be a good deal longer. hope you enjoy!

disclaimer; not mine, never will be. unfortunately.

The death lingers over him. It sits in his mind and clogs up his thoughts and makes writing almost impossible.

The death itself isn't the problem. Sure, he was killing off his main character, hero of his novels, but that was what he wanted. What he didn't want was the countless questions. The writer's block. The complete lack of ideas.

Richard Castle, unable to think of a story. It's horrible. Tragic really. Martha's delighted of course, leaping at any opportunity to stop his ego from swelling up even further. Alexis keeps trying to help, with her little 'Oh!'s and 'Maybe...'s, but both of them know that he's the writer, not her. Sweet Alexis, as brainy as she is, could never get into the head of a murderer like he could.

And so he was at a loss. Nothing. A great big stinking heap of absoloutely nothing.

Surely... surely he could do something with a butler? Put a spin on in. Double murder; the butler and the socialite he worked for. Everybody thought the butler did it and comitted suicide from guilt, but the evidence was inconsistant. Then who was the murderer? Why would they want to kill them - drugs, an affair, secret identities that the murderer had discovered? Who was this murderer? What was their M.O, their history?

More than that, who would the hero be?

Half way through trying to figure out the who, whats, whens, wheres, whys and if it was a blunt object or a rifle, his phone trilled. Gina. Reminding him that he had half an hour to get his ass downtown for a book signing. Most likely he would be asked about his next book. No, most definitely. And somehow he didn't think "Everybody thinks it was the butler" was going to cut it.

Sighing, he picked up his jacket and scribbled a quick note to Alexis for when she returned home from school. By the time he was done signing his name over and over, he doubted he would be able to write anything for a few hours.

Which was just another good way of procrastinating on the butler story.

He left the building muttering to himself in a high pitched tone, imitating the voices and questions he so often heard.

'Why are you killing Derrick? Huh? He's my favourite!'

'What's your next book? When's your next book? Can I come to a signing for that one, too?'

'Hey, Mr. Castle, will you sign my chest... please?'

-

The death lingers over her. It sits in her mind and clogs up her thoughts and makes focusing on the case nearly impossible.

Everybody had been so delicate with her that morning. As if Kate Beckett were suddenly made of glass. As if one piece of new evidence - that her mother's murder was connected to a couple of other murders, suddenly made her fragile, damaged goods. No. Everything they had seen of her - every interrogation, every chase, every single piece of evidence she had worked to click together. And they thought she was suddenly breakable because of one case? No. She wouldn't let it define her and shape her like that. It was what made her strong, and she would not allow it to break down everything she had worked to build. No matter how difficult this got, she would not allow herself to break. She promised herself and her mother that she would solve it. Kate Beckett was not a woman to back down on a promise like that.

Endless cups of coffee. No leads. Papers and papers and phonecalls to Lanie and more coffee and a lead that went nowhere. It was just as stuck as it had been when the case was fresh.

The new evidence changed everything, but it was all still the same, just growing a little colder as the days passed.

Mid afternoon they get a call. Another murder, another body, another grieving family. And it's all up to the 12th Precint's homicide division to go in and give that family the closure they deserve. Sometimes she thinks it's ironic that she spends all her time solving cases and talking to families and giving them closure yet she can't solve the one case that really matters to her. She can't find that closure.

Other times, she realises that it's more like Alanis Morissette's idea of irony and that it isn't ironic at all. Just her life.

Her life that she continues on with; suspect after suspect, paper after paper.

"Go home," Montgomery told her eventually, late in the evening. He spoke softly but firmly, and although he hadn't said it, she could almost hear the "I am your Captain and this is an order" tagged onto the end. He of all people knew how invested she was in her mom's case.

She nodded silently, not wanting to argue.

On the way home she spotted a line, stretching out from a book store. Richard Castle. Oh, how she loved that man's books. If only this case was one of his stories. Something that slotted together with a perfect ending to fit.

As nice as that sounded, back in reality there was a case waiting. Before that, however, a long soak in the tub. She deserved it. Perhaps clearing her head would help her think straight and start piecing together the fragments of information, like she had been piecing her life back together all those years.

Back in reality, her mother's story was lacking its fairytale ending.