Kate was running when the call came. She picked up the phone, bouncing on her feet to keep her rhythm and slightly out of breath, her blood rushing through her ears as the man on the other end of the line told her that they had found her mother's killer. Someone had come forward with information on another case, a similar case, and the suspect had admitted to killing over a dozen women, including her mother.
It had taken only five words for the bouncing to stop, for the movement to leave her limbs and her thoughts. She came to a halt - her whole life came to a grinding halt.
"We found your mother's killer."
The man had told her to be thankful for the witness, that otherwise the case would have never been solved. The kindness of a stranger, he had said. But as Kate clicked the call away, it was anger that pushed her back into motion. Anger at the guy that had killed her mom, but much more anger at the world for not giving her the chance to solve her mother's murder. This should have been her closure and they had taken it away from her.
"Excuse me, Ma'am?"
Someone was running alongside her, but Kate refused to acknowledge his presence. She needed to run. Talking would lead to thinking would lead to pain. Running was the only option.
"I've got your phone, it fell-"
Kate snatched her cell phone out of the hand that held it. Phone still in her hand she accelerated her pace, desperate to get as far away from the guy as she could. She had had quite enough of strangers doing her any favours. She was not grateful.
Kate turned as something hard poked into her hipbone. Her head filled with a pounding pain as she groaned and decided to ignore it. She tried to get comfortable, wincing as her knee hit something in her bed. Logic told her what she felt probably belonged to another person and she sighed.
She refused to open her eyes. Refused to let reality sink in; it was how she had dealt with all the men before, and it would be how she dealt with this one. She would just go back to sleep and when she woke up, he'd be gone. They always were.
As light filtered through her curtains, Kate woke up for the second time that morning. The headache was still happily pounding away behind her eyes, and she reached out an arm to reassure herself that at least her company was gone. Instead of the coolness of sheets that hadn't been touched for a while, her fingers brushed against something warm.
Damn it. Now she needed to start her day kicking some random guy out of her house. That was not the easy morning she had been looking for. As she prepared to wake him up, he sleepily turned and her breath caught.
She hadn't brought some random guy home.
She had brought home Richard freaking Castle.
Panicking, Kate forced her thoughts back to last night, to reconstruct the evening she had been willing to forget. She had still been running when the first drop had touched her hair, and within seconds she had been soaked through. She hadn't wanted to stop, the emotion still burning deep within her, but the rain wasn't letting up. Deciding to duck into a cafe, she had chosen the shelter from the rain over the safety of movement.
She had been nursing her vodka when the writer had come in. The place had been packed; as he searched around him for a place, this forlorn look on his face, his hair wet and dripping, she had pushed the other chair at her table out with her foot. He had taken her up on the invite.
Her tears hadn't been noticeable between all the raindrops on her face, but the emotions still swirling inside of her hadn't been stilled by the rhythm of her feet. His attempts at friendly conversation had hit a wall with her, and an uncomfortable silence had settled at their table. Kate hadn't been able to hide her emotions, but she had needed an outlet for them. So she had taken his hand, pulled him from his chair and taken him home.
They hadn't even exchanged names. It had always been the magic trick before; sex in all anonymity seemed to be synonymous with the guy leaving the next day. But Richard Castle was still here, and she didn't know what she had said to him that would make him think that this was what she wanted.
With the not-entirely-made-up excuse of having to catch up on paperwork, she had Castle out the door 10 minutes later. Even as she closed the door on him, he was still blabbering.
"Aren't you writers supposed to be the silent type?"
She hadn't exactly thought her words through - too early, too broken down - and his squeal hurt her ears.
"You do know who I am! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"
Through the tinted glass in the door she could see his silhouette jumping up and down, fist raised in the air.
"Will you just leave already?"
Exasperation made her snappy, and he stopped dancing. She turned around, intent on getting dressed and finishing her morning ritual, when she heard the clatter of the mailbox. Rolling her eyes, Kate decided to ignore the guy and left the hallway for her bedroom. She couldn't completely curb her curiosity, though. She watched out the window to make sure he was gone before she went back downstairs to check what he had left.
It was a business card, much more professional looking than she had expected. She read the "Call me!" he had written on it. His handwriting, too, was surprisingly graceful. As she turned it around, she bit back a small laugh. "Seriously, call me," it said.
She wasn't planning on calling him, of course, but she kept the card anyway. Maybe she could use it one day in an auction. She picked up the latest Storm novel and put the small rectangle in it. It would work perfectly fine as a bookmark.
It wasn't until much later - when the day had fallen, and the book had been finished, and Kate was standing in the kitchen to make herself some dinner - that she realized that he had worked as a distraction. Not just the sex, but his easy way of rolling with the punches. This was a man who knew who he was.
And Kate had lost her grip on who she was.
She had just made detective. She had just gotten so much closer to getting a chance at figuring out who killed her mother, at getting the guy, at making sure he paid for the life he had taken, the lives he had ruined. But she would never get that chance. Her murderer was caught.
Was Homicide still what she wanted? Did she really want to spend the rest of her life bowed over murder cases, feeling not only the worst that mankind has to offer, but also the hopelessness of not being able to solve every case? Did she want to remind herself every single day that her mother was killed by some guy who hated his own mother so much that he started killing others'?
And who would she be if this wasn't who she was?
Even as she was dialing his number, she knew this was a bad idea. But she needed to talk to someone. Her friends never really understood why she needed to be the one to solve her mother's case and Royce... Well, Royce was out of the picture, wasn't he? And this, this was a guy who understood people's fascination with death, with solving murders. Maybe he could write a better ending to her story.
"This is not a booty call."
She said it almost before Castle picked up the phone, definitely before Castle could say anything, even his name. She heard a surprised chuckle at the other end of the line. Kate didn't give him time to react.
"Why do you write mystery books?"
Phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder, Kate used her right hand to stir the sauce. There was silence on the other end of the line.
"Because romance hurts too much."
She hadn't expected such an honest answer; she allowed her surprise to show in the silence she kept until Castle started talking again.
"Murder is easy. You get someone killed, and you have this awesome main character who solves the case and gives everyone a happy ending. And maybe he gets some along the way, but- Are you sure this is not a booty call? Cause I can hear you slurping and swallowing and it does things to my body."
Kate rolled her eyes, and took the pan off the stove.
"I'm cooking. I had to test the sauce."
"You're calling me while you're making dinner?"
She heard the incredulity in his voice. Ignoring it, she set a plate on the table, next to the pan.
"I had to know. Something wrong with that?"
"No, it's just, homey, that's all. I didn't know we had already arrived at this point in our relationship."
Kate took the phone from between her shoulder and ear for the precise purpose of sticking her tongue out at it. Putting it back, she demanded: "Just tell me."
"I'm sure getting killed hurts, but crime books don't really focus on that, you know? Romance is all about being left behind and stuff like that, while being a detective, or at least, being a detective in one of my books, it's more about helping someone. After the first couple of pages in which the murder happens, no one gets hurt. Well, except for the murderer, but he has it coming."
"Thank you."
Kate didn't add more than that; she clicked the call away and started eating. Detectives are about helping people, he had said. Was that who she was, someone who wanted to help people?
It wasn't until a week later, when she was getting her laundry out of the machine, that Kate realized that she didn't agree. Her phone in hand before she could realize what she was doing, she dialled his number. Taking her basket to the drying rack, she waited until Castle picked up.
"Will this be another philosophical question? Because it is too early for that."
The sleepiness in Castle's voice was evident and, a bit hesitant, Kate looked at the time. She hadn't called him that early, had she?
"It's ten o'clock, Castle," she said, the sigh of relief perfectly masquerading as a sigh of annoyance.
"On a Sunday!" he protested. "And shouldn't you be working? I thought detectives worked all the time."
"They do, but not when you're just starting out. And usually not on a Sunday. Unless there's been a murder."
It was one of those things that had surprised her too, actually.
"It's so cool that you get to work actual murders."
Kate rolled her eyes at the excitement in his voice.
"Except for the fact that actual people get killed."
"Well, yeah, except for that," he acknowledged.
Silence descended as Kate continued hanging her clothes on the rack. She could hear his breathing on the other side of the line, but was momentarily distracted from what she had been planning to say.
"So is it?" he prodded, when he had obviously had enough of the silence.
"Is it what?"
Kate shook her head, trying to clear away the confusion.
"A philosophical question."
Resisting the urge to just click away the call - maybe it was too early for conversation - Kate got back on her original topic.
"Yes."
Ignoring the sigh on the other end of the line, she added: "You said romance hurts too much. But isn't love supposed to be the thing that makes death easier?"
For a while, Castle kept quiet. She could hear him scuffling around and for a moment she thought she heard another voice. Probably the TV or the radio.
"Real love is, yes. But I don't think romance novels are very realistic. They teach their readers that all the problems are before the relationship starts and once you're together, you'll automatically find your happily ever after. That's not how it works. I don't write romance because real love hurts and literary love is nothing but fake."
"And that's different from murder, how?"
The ticks of the clothespins on the drying rack got louder as Kate tried to battle her urge to scream.
"You think when the murder is solved there is a happy ending? Because that's what you said, isn't it? No one gets hurt and everyone gets a happy ending. That's all there is to your crime books. What about the people who are left behind, huh? What about them?"
Deciding it was too early for this call after all, Kate clicked Castle away, turned her phone off and returned to her laundry. It didn't take very long for Kate to realize that she was a Homicide detective now. Turning off her phone wasn't exactly an option anymore. Even though she wasn't technically working or on call, if they needed her to come in, she should be available.
With a sigh, she turned her phone back on. When no bleep came to indicate that she had missed calls or voice mail messages, she wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or annoyed. Relieved of course, she told herself, even when she kept throwing glances at her phone for the next two hours. She wasn't waiting on him to call. She was... hoping for work. Yes. She needed the distraction. Distraction from... things.
Six days passed in which Kate didn't even have the time to think of Richard Castle. The distraction she had been so desperately hoping for had come in the form of the murder of a sixteen-year old girl. The author who had gotten under her skin took the backburner as she worked day and night to find the man responsible.
It was at the end of this case, when she was finally resting her eyes, that her phone rang. Habit sharpened by the last week of constant twists and turns had her back to lucidity and grabbing her phone in an instant.
"Beckett."
"Guess who?"
Kate rolled her eyes as she let her head fall down on the pillow.
"Seriously, Castle?"
"Right in one! You get a cookie."
"I'd actually prefer some sleep," she said, sleepiness creeping back in now the adrenaline of the call had worn off.
"It's ten o'clock," he replied, smugness heavy in his voice. "Someone once told me that ten o'clock on a Sunday morning is a perfectly fine time to call."
"I slept like ten hours this week," Kate grumbled.
"Oh, was it gruesome?"
"A sixteen-year old girl got raped and left behind on the sidewalk until she bled to death," Kate snapped, too tried and too annoyed by his excitement to sugarcoat what had happened. She heard his sharp intake of breath and his voice wavered in his reply.
"God, that's..."
"Working actual murders means actual people get killed, remember?" she said, torn between wanting to comfort him and needing him to know that this was real life. "I don't live in a one of your stories. I'm real."
"Very real," he said, then added: "Hey, if you're so tired, does that mean you're still in bed?"
"Yes," Kate acknowledged, with an eyeroll. "And I'm naked. Why are you calling?"
"I... You... Naked?"
Kate allowed herself a smile.
"It's warm," she explained.
"I know, but... Naked? And you're calling me?"
"If I remember correctly, you called me."
"Right. Yes. I did."
Castle's stammering was weirdly relaxing, and Kate snuggled further under the covers.
"Why did I call again?"
Kate smiled into her pillow, her eyes drifting closed.
"You're asking me? Call me back when you remember, 'kay?"
She just had time to click away the call before she fell back to sleep. When Castle called again, Kate was just in the middle of wondering what book to read next. She was putting Storm back into the bookcase as she picked up the phone.
"Bec-"
"I remember! I know what I wanted to say before you so cruelly played me."
Kate looked at the books in her closet, stroking their spines as she was looking for an old friend to curl up with.
"I figured distraction would be the best way to get out of a philosophical discussion. Worked like a charm."
She heard him sputtering a bit, but he smartly decided to cede victory to her on this one.
"There is a difference between romance's happy endings and crime's happy endings. With my books, it's not the detective who gets left behind with the tragedy. You can't fault me for not writing the stories of the side characters. That's not how it works."
Kate pondered his words as she decided on Storm Season. It was always her mother's favourite.
"Make it how it works."
Bringing the book back with her to the couch, she added: "You're the writer. You make the rules; you can change them."
For a moment, there was only silence on the line. Then his voice came back, a slight laugh behind his words.
"You really think my job is laughingly easy, don't you?"
She traced her fingers over the lines of her mother's name on the first page of the book as she thought about her words. She actually didn't think that at all. Writing stories, creating worlds, had always been an ability she had respected. There were few things more magical than losing yourself in a book and she had no idea how to create that magic or how to even start.
"Are you backing down from a challenge?"
"I'm saying that you can't just change the process," Castle sputtered. "You can't just say it should be different and that's that. I'm not telling you to suddenly go from... bringing in prostitutes to taking down murderers."
"Actually, that's exactly what I did," Kate said with a smile in her voice. "It's called moving forward. One might say it's growth, even."
She let the silence speak for her for a minute, then added: "But if you think you can't do it..."
"That's not what I said!"
Castle's voice was high, the indignation and hurt pride obvious in the tone.
"Prove it, then. Change the rules. I look forward to reading it."
Kate clicked the call away before the writer could reply. She leaned back into the couch, feeling curiously lighter than she had felt before he had called.
"How do you do it?"
Kate had answered the phone just as she came in the door, the 'Beckett' dying on her lips as Castle asked his question before she could even utter the first sound.
"Do what?" she asked, confused, as she awkwardly took off her coat, switching the phone from her left ear to her right and back again.
"When someone close to you gets murdered, how do you go on? How do you work the case?"
Kate could barely hold her gasp as Castle rattled on.
"Derrick has just found the body of his best friend hanging from a swingset in the park. It looks like a suicide, but of course it isn't. And Derrick is convinced he's murdered. But he's catatonic. How do I get him to work?
The thrill of Richard Castle sharing story ideas with her warred with the tightening in her gut at the context. How did he know about her mother's case?
"How would I know? You're the writer."
It took everything Kate had to suppress the tremble in her voice. She tried to hang her coat, but missed the coat rack two, three times before finally getting the loop on the hook. Her coat swayed softly as she leaned against the apartment walls for support.
"This was your idea!" Castle all but yelled on the other side. "This whole storyline is your fault. Now I'm stuck!"
A relieved breath escaped her as she realized this was not about her mother. Castle knew nothing.
"What you do is... You move on. You convince yourself that finding the answers will lead to peace. That finding the killer will somehow make everything okay again. Solving the case is all you can do, because everything else would mean falling apart."
Castle was quiet. The steady sound of his breathing in her ear calmed a part of Kate's nerves, while it had entirely other nerves racing. She remembered that breath in her ear, the way it quickened when she trailed her nails over his back. She hadn't really thought about their night together, but suddenly the images were back. The way his eyes darkened when she kissed his neck, the way he tasted when she kissed him...
"This is your story."
Castle's whisper rudely interrupted Kate's daydreams.
"I'm not just... You were not just angry about my writing. This is you. It happened. To you. I'm sorry, Kate. I am so, so sorry."
"Just write it," she snapped, angry at him for uncovering her story, angry at herself for letting him close enough to see it, for not paying attention. For slipping up and showing how this affected her. "Let him solve the case."
She sagged to the ground, tears slowly rolling down her face. She kept her voice even, didn't want Castle to hear her tears, too. He had seen her vulnerable enough.
"Please, let him solve the case."
She hung up as the sobs overtook her.
"Beckett."
Kate's attention was half on her phone call, half on the images on her screen.
"So, Derrick has called in some assistance..."
"Castle?" Kate interrupted him, confused. "You do realize normal people work at this hour, right?"
"Right. I didn't think. What are you doing? Interrogating a suspect? Getting ready to take down the killer? No, wait. Are you at a crime scene?"
Kate allowed herself a smile, knowing no one would be able to see it.
"Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. I've been looking at video footage for about five hours to see if I can trace our suspect."
"Really? You have to do that?"
"Yep."
Scrawling down a note - 'Suspect not seen on this camera' - Kate started up the feed of another camera in the building.
"You'd think true crime books would talk about things like that, right? I mean, if you're writing true crime, the least you can do is write a true investigation. But somehow these things never make it into books."
"I wonder why," Kate replied. "Call me back later tonight?"
"It's a date!" Castle happily answered, and hung up the phone before Kate could reply. She rolled her eyes and got back to work, the dull investigation lulling her into a trance state that easily got her through the day.
She called him back just after she had hung her coat, settling herself on the couch as she waited for him to pick up. When he finally did, she cut off his greeting.
"You do realize an actual date would imply food of some kind, preferably made by you?"
Kate could hear Castle swallow on the other end of the line. It took him a while to respond.
"I'll remember that," he said, his voice weirdly strained. It didn't take him long to get back on track, though. "So, Derrick realized he could not solve this case alone, so he called in some assistance. This long-legged brunette has gone over the crime scene with him and-"
"Long-legged brunette?"
"That's you!"
"It's me?"
Kate suddenly felt lightheaded. She was still getting used to being some kind of consultant for the mystery writer, and now she was in his books?
"Nikki Heat, officer extraordinaire. She's trying to make detective, but there's no place for her at her own precinct and her boss figured that some extra experience couldn't hurt. People higher-up still don't really believe that Jasper was murdered, so they wouldn't give Derrick actual detectives to help."
"Nikki Heat? Seriously?" Suddenly Kate didn't feel as flattered anymore.
"I'm thinking of maybe giving her a spin-off. Just think of all the titles I could make with a name like Nikki Heat!" Castle's voice was filled with excitement and she could imagine the gesturing that would accompany his words. "Heat wave, In a dead Heat, Frozen Heat, In the Heat of the Moment..."
"A spin-off? How can I even be in your books?"
Kate tried to shake the confusion off as she walked to her bookcase, trying to figure out whether other characters out of Castle's books could have been real too. And had he slept with all of them?
"It's a habit of mine. I like rewarding the people who help me outline the story with a tribute of some sorts. Like the jewel thief in Storm Rising. Or more accurately Clara Strike, who was based on an actual CIA agent I used to work with."
"'Work with'. Uh-huh. Wasn't she a long-legged brunette too?"
"So Derrick Storm has a type. Don't we all?"
Kate laughed and decided to let this part of the conversation lie.
"Nikki Heat, though? Seriously?"
"I love that name! It's dangerous and sexy - it's completely you!"
"I'm... dangerous and sexy?"
"Yes! You catch killers in killer heels!"
A self-conscious glance at her feet proved his point. The heels were part of her armour, though how would Castle know that?
"You've only ever seen me in running shoes," she pointed out to him.
"I... might have waited outside your building to see you leave the morning after," Castle mumbled, the words coming so fast Kate could hardly understand them.
"I should have you brought in for stalking."
"But you won't, because you like me too much. Anyway, Derrick enlists Nikki for help. Jasper was found hanging from a swingset, but no other prints were found at the crime scene. I'm not quite sure what else looking over the crime scene again could do."
Deciding to shake off the weirdness of actually being in Castle's books, Kate decided to focus on the story.
"Sometimes new eyes at a crime scene can find something that the first team didn't. Especially if they didn't really take it seriously, thinking it was a suicide. A part of a key chain could be found, or a button, or something else that could have easily snapped off."
Silence met her, and Kate hesitated.
"Surely these are techniques you've used before? I'm not sure what I can actually provide here."
"Just talking it over with a professional helps," Castle assured her. "Gotta go now."
Time passed, but Kate wasn't keeping track. She was submerged in work, and still found herself thinking of Castle at some point in every day. It was the little things, really. It was not like she missed him or anything. She worked in the environment he wrote about, it would have been weirder if she wasn't reminded of him from time to time.
Though that didn't necessarily explain the way her heart jumped when her phone rang at an unexpected moment. Or the way she had almost - almost - looked up his fansites, to see whether any spoilers about his new book had leaked. Her cursor was currently hovering over the link to his website and she was convincing herself not to continue with this insanity.
Her ringtone interrupted her dilemma and gratefully she picked it up. She hadn't even started with her name yet, when Castle began talking.
"This is a booty call."
"You wish," she answered, forcing the trembling away from her voice and into her fingers. She tried to click her browser away and missed a couple of times.
"That sounded almost breathy, detective Beckett," he teased. "Obviously, I was kidding. Though I have something to celebrate, so I wouldn't say no if you were up for it."
She detected a hint of longing in his words, no matter how much he tried to make it sound like an afterthought.
"Celebrate?" she asked, ignoring the traitorous desire that rose in her body.
"Nikki Heat has caught the killer!" he announced, pride evident in his voice.
"Wasn't it Derrick's friend who got killed?"
"Sure, but Nikki was so clever and-"
"No, no, no. Castle. No. You can't do that to him. Please, please, don't do that to him. Not when he's so close. Don't let someone else take this away from him. I don't think he'd ever forgive you."
She could hear the desperation in her own voice, the way her tears threatened to choke her. She had thought she'd gotten better at handling what happened, that she'd gotten a grip on the idea that the world had betrayed her. Apparently, all she'd succeeded at was pushing the pain deeper down.
"What does it matter?" He sounded honestly confused, and for a moment she hated him for his ignorance. "If the killer is caught, if justice is served, what does it matter who uncovered the truth?"
"Everything."
She clicked the call away, and ignored her phone when it rang again and again. Her feet propped up on her chair, her arms around her knees, she hugged herself until the tears stopped falling.
For days after, weeks even, Kate checked her caller ID before picking up the phone. Castle had seen enough of her pain and if she gave him any more access, she would lose herself. She needed to protect herself, so that's what she did. She built walls upon walls around her.
She didn't pick up when he called. She ignored every text message he sent and deleted them without reading.
She ignored the twinge of guilt that stirred in her every time she did one of those things. After all, Castle himself had said that there had been others like her. There'd be others again, and before long, he'd have forgotten all about her.
It was a sunny Monday morning when an unknown number called her and years of police conditioning had Kate pick up the phone without thinking.
"Beckett," she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
"Please don't hang up."
She could hear Castle holding his breath and in the silence that followed, her thumb hovered over the 'End Call' button.
"Please, Kate," he whispered.
"Still here," she mumbled back, cursing herself for giving in, but unable to actively deny herself the feelings that shot through her at hearing his voice. She hadn't realized how much she had missed him, but now that she had him back, it seemed impossible to make him back off.
"I've rewritten my ending," he said. "I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't mean to upset you. Quite the opposite, actually. I was trying to give you a case you could solve. I know it's ridiculous, you're a cop, you probably solve cases all the time and it doesn't change anything, but when I heard this had happened to you... I wanted to give you a good ending, at least on paper if not in real life. I'm sorry, it was stupid."
Before Kate had wrapped her head around what he was trying to tell her, he'd already continued his rambling.
"Anyway, I've rewritten it. Nikki is nothing but a sidekick now, though a really cool and sexy one. Derrick has solved the case, found the guy and gotten the recognition for seeing a homicide where everyone saw a suicide. He did write her a stellar recommendation, though. I hope that's okay. I need her to be a detective when I start to write that spin-off."
Kate blinked furiously, telling herself it was the sun that was overwhelming her senses, not her emotions. She glared at the ray of sunlight that was sneaking through between her curtains, blaming it for everything.
"That's... Wait, you're still doing that?"
"If you're willing to talk to me every once in a while."
His voice sounded soft, almost hesitant. After his long speech about the ending the shyness in his voice seemed out of place somehow.
"I'm not even sure I want to anymore," she mumbled, closing her eyes and laying her head back on the pillow.
"Talk to me?"
"No!" she said hastily. "No, I meant being a detective."
Maybe it was the exhaustion finally getting to her. Or the weeks that had gone by since she had talked to him last. Maybe she just needed someone to talk to right now. Before she knew it, she was telling him the truth.
"It was my mom," she began, and she heard Castle unsuccessfully trying to stifle a gasp on the other side of the line. He stayed silent, though, and she continued. "I had just started studying law, I was going to be a lawyer, just like her. But then, one day, we were going to have dinner, her, my dad and I, and she just didn't show. She had been murdered, stabbed in an alley somewhere and left there. I switched to the police academy and vowed to find the one responsible. On the day you and I met..."
Kate took a deep breath, grateful for the warm presence of the bed underneath her.
"On the day we met, I had just been notified that her killer had been found. He had been caught while claiming another victim, and had confessed to murdering over a dozen women. One of them was my mom."
"I'm so sorry."
"I did all of this - the police academy, the struggle to become a detective as fast as I could, all of it - to find the one responsible for her death. I'm not sure I can keep it up."
Castle didn't say anything for a while and Kate struggled against the need to lighten the mood. She wanted to ask him what he was wearing, or what he was doing tonight, or confess she had been looking at his fansites, anything to keep him from acknowledging that she had just bared her life's story.
"Close your eyes for me, Kate."
"They're already closed, Castle," she replied, puzzled.
"Good. Picture yourself five years from now. No, no, don't fight it, just... it's a Monday morning. You've just gotten up, ran your morning run, had your breakfast. Your morning routine done, you step out the door, close it behind you. The years have taken the sharpest edge of the pain, and while it's still there, it doesn't influence your every move anymore. You get in the subway, losing yourself in the usual morning hum. You get off and go to work. Look up at the building you're about to enter. Where are you?"
She had tried, she really had. But the murmur of his soft voice in her ear, the exhaustion of telling him everything, the warm comfort of her bed... She had fallen asleep before having a chance to answer him.
Kate woke up again an hour later, feeling more rejuvenated by that one hour than the rest of her night's sleep. She got up to make some coffee and then immediately dialled Castle's number, feeling foolish for leaving him hanging like that.
"Richard Castle speaking."
There was a flourish in his voice that made her smile.
"I fell asleep," she admitted.
"I know," Castle gleefully replied. "I was tempted to just listen to you breathe for a while. Very homey. But I figured that'd be weird. Would it have been?"
"Definitely," Kate laughed. "What were you saying when I so rudely fell asleep?"
"I was trying to give you an exercise to figure out what you wanted in life, but no way am I going to tell you to close your eyes again. It was 'picture yourself in five years', only with a bit more style. I think deep down you know what you want to do, you have just lost your way a bit. It will come back to you."
"Did you always want to be a writer?" she asked curiously.
"When I was 5, I wanted to be an actor, just like my mom. When I was 8, I figured I'd do something manly, like football. That didn't last long. I think I pretty much knew by the age of 10. It still could have gone differently. My back-up plan was teaching. I think that would be something I'd like. I could probably have done a thousand other things. But the first time I wrote a story, I knew who I was. Writing is a part of me. Like my little toe."
Kate laughed and almost choked on her coffee.
"Your little toe?" she asked incredulously.
"Your little toe is responsible for your balance," he explained. "You can do without, but you will have to relearn everything you know about keeping your balance. That is writing for me. If need be, I could let it go. But I would need to readjust, get a new grip on life, find a new outlook on who I am and where I belong in this world."
Kate blew on her coffee and took another sip. She mulled it over in her head.
"So, the question is," he added. "Is being a cop like your little toe, or like long hair? Something you enjoy having, but can just as easily chop off and still look great?"
"I don't have long hair," she replied, buying herself some time to think on it.
"So not the point," Castle scoffed. "Besides, you'd look great with long hair."
"How can it be part of me if it was something I was pushed into? I wanted to become a lawyer. I was studying to become a lawyer and then suddenly everything changed. What if that was the biggest mistake of my life?"
She warmed her right hand on the coffee, her left hand holding her phone so tight it almost hurt. Her throat closed up as she forced herself to formulate her thoughts.
"You could always go back to law," Castle suggested. "But I don't think it was just your mom that pushed you into this direction. I think it was something inside of you. You've risen through the ranks so fast! Your supervisors have obviously seen something in you, something that made them believe you were born to do this. Circumstances always shape our life, Kate, but that doesn't mean the life we're living is any less ours. Sometimes we make the best choices when we feel we've got nowhere left to turn."
Kate closed her eyes against the tears that were threatening to fall. She hadn't realized how much she needed someone to talk to in her life, until she found that someone.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Always."
A new case had kept Kate busy for the better part of three weeks. Searching through every tiny clue of evidence, she tried to find who had killed the prostitute who had been found hanging from a tree, upside down. Most of it was repetitive work, looking at traffic cams, or searching the streets for someone who had known her or had seen her that night. Her mind had a habit of wandering during those moments, and they always returned to what Castle had said.
Was this a part of who she was now? Was being a detective something she could give up? She asked herself the question as she waited for the elevator in the bullpen, as she sat in the car on her way to the crime scene, as she saw the family of the victim coming in, their heads bowed and the grief written on their faces.
But the answer came when they had found the murderer, had brought him in and had gotten a confession out of him. As she watched her supervisor tell the family that it was over, that the man would be sent to jail, she knew. She couldn't give this up. She couldn't let her frustration, her disappointment, her anger at not being the one to find her mother's killer lead the way she lived her life. Her mother's murder might have shaped her, but it appeared it had just brought her to the path that she should have been on all along.
On her way home, she dialed Castle's number.
"Castle."
He sounded distracted and Kate hesitated.
"This is Kate. Is this a bad time?"
"Kate! Hi!"
There was a weird kind of jumpiness to the way he said her name and Kate wondered what was going on.
"Are you... Are you home yet?"
She could swear he sounded nervous, which was weird. His self-confidence had always seemed to border on being cocky, and Kate wasn't sure how to handle this side of him.
"I'm on my way right now. Are you sure this is not a bad time?"
"No, no, it's okay," he reassured her. "Just let me know when you get home, so I can make sure I don't overstay my welcome on the phone."
"I think I found my little toe," she said, ignoring the weird looks the people around here were giving her.
"Really? That's great!"
Kate got off the metro and started the walk to her apartment.
"Yes, I think you were right. This is part of who I am now. I just... Part of me thinks it's wrong to enjoy this job so much when it's my mom's murder that had me even consider it."
"I know. But you don't know how things would have gone had she still been alive. Maybe after a few years of studying law, you had had a different encounter with the police force. Or someone would have come to your school and spoken about it. Maybe you'd have met a friend who had a friend who was a detective and that's how you discovered this path. If it's a part of who you are, if it's in your blood, you would have gotten there eventually."
Kate had arrived at her house, and found a brown package in her letterbox. As Castle was talking, she was unwrapping it before she had even closed the door behind her.
"I guess you're right," she answered, having completely forgotten his request to let him know when she came home. As she had unwrapped the package, she found the latest Storm novel. There was a bookmark sticking out of it and Kate opened the book to find it resting on the dedication.
"To KB, who has convinced me that sometimes, your perspective needs to change."
She took out the bookmark and smiled when she found words in his curly handwriting on the other side:
"Have dinner with me? Tonight. A proper date. I'll cook and everything."
"Kate? Are you still there?"
Her heart did a little jump as she brought her attention back to the phone call.
"Yes, Castle. My answer is yes."