Steph yelled at me to write this, even more than when she yelled at me to write Batman!AU. Based on a Tumblr prompt.

AU, Tyson and Nieman have been working for years, Castle is an NYPD detective and is called to investigate the murder of Kate Beckett. Whilst learning everything about her life in order to find her killer, he finds out that he is falling in love with a dead woman, only to find out that the real Kate Beckett is alive and is a hostage.

concordia discors – harmony in discord

His alarm is loud, intrusive, and annoying as hell. Rolling over, he fumbles with his phone, fingers not working with him at this god awful time - man, the sun isn't even up – in the morning.

'Castle." he growls, sitting up, and rubbing his hand across the two day old stubble that has accumulated on his chin he listens to the poor sod at dispatch who reels off an address for him. "Yeah. Got it. Thanks."

He hangs up, throws the phone back on the nightstand where it thuds against the base of his lamp. He doesn't bother turning it on, just throws back the covers and stumbles through the dark, out in to the hallway and in to the bathroom.

Ryan and Esposito are already present by the time he pulls up to the crime scene. Ryan looks considerably paler than usual (and considering his naturally pale complex, that's a feat in itself), and even Esposito looks a little shaken. He flashes his badge at LT, and follows the other two detectives through a maze of yellow tape to a double door.

"What have we got?"

"Female, thirty four. Super found her tied to a chair."

"Cause of death?"

"Gunshot to the head." Espo points him to a gun, just inside the door, a big, threatening black machine that he wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. It sends a shiver down his spine. "The gun was pre-aimed at the victim, rigged to fire whenever someone opened the door. Super nearly had a heart attack, thought he was being shot at until he saw her. That's when he called us."

"How do we know the super didn't do it?"

"The dude damn near crapped himself. Guy who murders someone like this, don't get jumpy when the gun goes off."

"You got photographic evidence of this near crapping, Espo?"

The detective ignores his jibe, and Ryan's slight smirk, and carries on. "ID says she's Katherine Beckett. Address in Manhattan. That, plus her wardrobe, it all says money, but money, cards, jewellery, they're all still here."

Castle shakes his head. "Nah, this was pre-meditated. Job?"

"Woman as good looking as that, I would say lawyer, but there's no job ID."

"Alright. You guys finish up here, I'll go to her apartment, see if I can find anything that'll help."

Katherine Beckett's apartment is everything he didn't expect it to be. For the money she spends on her wardrobe, he was expecting large, open spaces, a modern apartment for a modern woman. But her apartment is small, eclectic, and full of bric-a-brac space tells him more about the victim than a wallet ever good.

"I liked her," her superintendent muses, as she hovers in the door, arms folded, "always paid her rent on time. She'd always invite Mrs. Polovich over for a meal, every Sunday. She didn't have a family, so she made sure she never felt alone."

"Did Katherine have any family? A job?"

"She worked for her parents lawyer firm. Beckett and Beckett, something like that. I think I have their number somewhere, emergency contact she gave. I never expected her to want this apartment, not when she said she was a lawyer."

"Being a lawyer could have given her enemies. She ever mention anything about threatening letters, phone calls?"

"No, nothing to me. If she was going to mention anything to anyone, it would have been her parents. They were here every Sunday too. Nice people. She was a good person."

"Alright. Thank you. I'll be down in a bit, pick up that number."

She nods. "I'll leave the door open."

She lingers in the doorway for a couple of seconds, before turning back towards with the elevator with a resigned sigh.

He tugs his black, leather gloves out of his pocket. They, they being his captain, keep harping on at him to wear the standard issue blue gloves, but he hates them. They leave his hands sweaty, and itchy, and more than one time he's come away with a distinct rash on his skin. The gloves were expensive, but they're worth it. He doesn't know why anybody chooses different. Anyway, he's the best Detective the force has. They let him be lenient. The apartment is immaculate. Everything is in its place. Every single clay, glass, plastic ornament, every picture frame hung and placed perfectly. Pile of mail on the coffee table, nothing interesting, bills, what looks like a birthday card. He thinks back to the ID Espo had shown him, he remembers the name, what her signature looks like, and then her birthday. Seventeenth November. That makes sense. It's in three days. "Well, that sucks." He murmurs to nobody, and drops the mail back where he found it.

The office is much like he expected. He'll make a note to get somebody up here to get all the files, all the cases she was working on, has worked on, and will work on. They're all in physical files, rather than on her computer hard drive, but he'll get Tory to go through that too. Just to make sure. His Phone rings from his pocket and he pulls it out. "Castle."

"It's Ryan. We're all done here. Taking the body back to the morgue."

"Great. Apartment doesn't look like it's been touched. It's immaculate. I was right…"

"Surprise, surprise." Ryan mutters.

"…she is a lawyer. Works for her parents. Can you look up Beckett and Beckett? She has case files here, and a computer. Give Tory something to do. Also, if you phone her parents, just be careful. It's her birthday in three days."

"You sure you don't want to do that? You're usually the best at handling these kinds of things."

"No, it's all yours. I'm gonna stay here and see if I can find anything."

"You think there is anything?"

"Don't know. Call it a hunch. I'll see you back at the precinct when I'm done."

"You remember the last time you did this with a victim, Castle?"

"Yes, Ryan. Vividly."

"Alright, fine. Just don't mess it up this time."

"Detective Kevin Ryan, this is my partner Detective Javier Esposito. Is it possible to talk to Jim and Johanna Beckett?"

The receptionist, a grey haired male looks down at his computer. "I'm afraid they're in a meeting at the minute, can I ask what it's about?"

"I need to talk to them about their daughter, Katherine Beckett?"

"Kate? Is she okay? She called in sick today, I figured it was just the flu that's going around."

"You know her?"

"Yeah, since she was a little girl. She'd always be running around, getting around everybody's little fingers. Everybody loves her. Then she grew up, went to Stanford, became a lawyer and worked here. Everyone says she's a better lawyer than her mother, and that's saying a lot."

"Competitive atmosphere?"

"I told you, everybody loves her. She gets on with everybody."

"Alright. Thanks. Can you pull them out of their meeting, or tell me where they are?"

"It's okay, Chris. Meeting's done." Ryan and Espo turn towards the glass door. "Johanna Beckett, this is my husband Jim. What can I help you gentlemen with?"

Johanna paces. Up and down the conference room she led them in to. Jim is staring at his shoes, hasn't looked up at either of the two detectives since they broke the news.

"Is there anyone you can think of who would want to harm your daughter?"

"No, she was – Katie loved everybody, and everybody loved her. There are rivalries within the company, sure, but it was all good-natured. Everyone accepted that Katie was a competent lawyer in her own right. It had nothing to do with us. She could hold her own in a courtroom better than anyone I've seen. People accepted that."

"What about clients? Cases she lost, people hold grudges."

"She didn't mention anything to us if there was. And she would have done, if there was someone giving her a hard time, she would have let us know."

"Did she have a boyfriend, or girlfriend?"

"No, no, Katie was too busy for that. She went out every now and then, but if she ever met up with anybody then I don't know. Her best friend, um, Madison Queller, she's the one who would be able to tell you if there was anyone. They were inseparable in high school, and they're just as bad now."

"Do you know where I can find Madison?"

"She owns a restaurant. Q3. Will you need to take her computer? She has an office here, and at home, but I don't know what she had where."

"We'll take it. She may have had e-mails on there that weren't on her home computer."

"What… what will happen to her apartment?"

"One of our other detectives is there now. We'll take her files, computer, anything that we need to aid our investigation. It's best to leave it as it is for now, just in case we miss something and we need to come back and find it, but once the investigation is over you can sort through her apartment and decide what's best."

"And… and what about Katie?" Jim Beckett speaks up for the first time, but he's still staring solidly at the ground. "What about our daughter?"

"Our medical examiner will perform an autopsy, toxicology reports. It's standard procedure-"

"You mean they'll cut her up?"

"I – yes. I know it sounds harsh, and obtrusive, but if we're going to find whomever did this to your daughter then we need all the information we can get."

"What information can you get from slicing my daughter open?!"

"Well, we can work out what she ate in the past few hours, and then we can narrow it down to where, if she ate with anybody, were there any substances-"

"Katie did not do drugs."

"No, I mean, something somebody may have planted in your daughter's food. It makes it easier for somebody to be taken if they aren't thinking straight, or unconscious."

"And then what? When can we bury our daughter?"

"Normally when the investigation is over." Ryan pulls a card from his wallet, slides it over the table towards Johanna. "If you can think of anything else, you can contact me here."

Jim eyes the card as if it is that that has caused him offence, but after a brief moment, Johanna takes the card and turns it over in her hands. "Of course. I can have Chris take you to her office to get whatever you need."

She was beautiful, looking at the photo frames, and even the ones in the five or so albums in the albums, he could tell that she'd be a woman every guy would be after. Before a bullet had put a hole the size of a grapefruit in the side of her head, of course. Her apartment screams taste. Expensive coffee maker, expensive coffee grounds. He'd expect nothing else for a no-nonsense lawyer. Her wardrobe alone is probably worth more than his apartment. The collection of ornaments she has littered around make no sense. There's no overlying theme to her decorative choices. To him it feels like if she liked it, she picked it up. Little mementos from holidays, keepsakes from those tiny stores you find in the back streets. Usually the kind of decoration you find in a home that's barely ever lived second toothbrush in the bathroom, no clothes that seem to belong to anybody else. If she had anybody, it wasn't serious. Probably spends most of her time at the office, or with clients, coming back here only to drink coffee, and sleep. Photos adorn the chests, people he assumes are her parents, friends. Her shampoo smells of cherries. Her body wash says it's some foreign sounding thing that probably costs over ten dollars. It reminds him of his late Grandma.

From the bathroom, he hears the phone ring. Rule is, he doesn't answer it, lets it go to voicemail. One time he didn't answer it and the murderer phoned up and left a message, bragging about all the things he did. Moron. So, he leaves it.

"Katie?" The voice is female, quiet and restrained. "Katie, they told me you were dead. They told me that… they said someone shot you. They said … Katie, sweetheart, please answer the phone. Please answer the phone and tell me that they were wrong and that it wasn't you." She breathes in, and there's silence. "I love you, Katie."

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Twitter: ktkatics