Author's Notes: Title from the Jim Brickman song "Beautiful." This is archived at Archive of Our Own as "Five Times..." by curearainyday - that's me, guys. ;)

EDIT 9/27/10: This fic has been edited to comply with Castle's backstory and the events of "He's Dead, She's Dead" aired 27 September 2010. And I would just like to say re: Castle's middle name, in a moment of absolute five-year-old childish glee: I WAS RIGHT! I TOLD YOU SO! I WAS RIGHT! **cough** Now, back to the story.

1. Martha Rogers

Five-year-old Ricky Rodgers knew he wasn't supposed to ride without his training wheels yet. His mama had told him so, and he always had to listen to his mama. She didn't make him mind whoever was playing his daddy that week, but he always had to mind her, and he had – until now. She's busy with him, Ricky thought indignantly. She should be paying attention to me.

So off the training wheels came. Ricky got about twenty yards into Central Park before he tumbled to the pavement, skinning his knees and an elbow on the way down. His mother came flying into the park behind him, long red hair streaming like a banner and chest heaving from a hundred yards of running.

"Mama!" he cried. His knees were stinging, blood stained his jeans and shirt, and suddenly Ricky just wanted to be home with a soda pop and a magazine.

"Richard Alexander Rodgers!"

Whoops. When Mama used all his names, Ricky knew he was in big trouble.

But she took him home and cleaned his cuts and put Superman bandages on them, and Ricky buried his face in her soft neck and held on tight.

"I love you, Mama."

Martha Rogers just smiled.

2. Morena Serra

She was beautiful, with skin the color of sunrise and hair so dark it seemed to swallow the light.

But it was when she started going on about how writing was a window to a thousand new worlds, not just something distasteful to be put off as long as possible and then hastily scribbled out the night before it was due, that Rick Castle really lost his heart.

She had them reading Shakespeare ("That Claudio's the stupidest person I've ever heard of," said an indignant Bobby Sherman after school one day, "why on earth would Hero take him back? Who even cares about Claudio and Hero when Benedick and Beatrice are right there?") and Edgar Allan Poe ("I woke up in cold sweats for a week every time I heard a thump," said Lucy Valentine after reading The Tell-Tale Heart.)

She had them reading Isaac Asimov ("Is it really The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in space?" That debate took up the rest of lunch) and Tom Clancy (Rick's mother just laughed when he said he wanted to be a submariner and told him he'd have to join the Navy first, and that wasn't happening since he hated track day in gym class worst of all.)

And when she told them they could all do that, too – that they could create an entirely new universe just with a pen and paper and a little imagination – Rick decided he had to try it sometime.

And so the dedication for his first bestseller ended up as this: For Ms. Serra, who discovered multiple universes long before the physicists did.

3. Kyra Blaine

He'd never known, before, what it felt like to stay up all night just talking to someone. Not making out – although there was admittedly some of that; not drinking – although there was occasionally some of that, too; but just talking, about anything and everything.

But here, on the roof, with Kyra, suddenly it seemed like the absolute best use of his time.

They talked about all the millions of stars in the sky, and what might be out there - (and Kyra laughed so hard she cried when she found out he'd watched every episode of Star Trek in syndication and still regularly caught Star Trek: The Next Generation whenever he could – "but only for the hot doctor," he claimed, and she rolled her eyes and said she believed him.) They talked about what they wanted their futures to be – he was going to break the next Watergate in the Washington Post, she was going to bring peace to the Middle East.

And then there was the night A Rose for Everafter made the New York Times Bestseller List, when they celebrated with champagne and strawberries and he whispered in her ear over and over and over, "I love you. I love you so much." And she laughed that brilliant laugh and just said "I love you too," over and over again, and the night seemed to smell like honeysuckle and jasmine.

That was the one night they didn't do all that much talking, after all.

4. Alexis Castle

He took one look into solemn blue eyes and fell harder than he'd ever fallen before. She was perfect.

He thought he couldn't love her more when she came running into his arms after the first day of kindergarten, squealing, "Daddy! I was the only one who could already write my name! Does that make me special?" And as his heart clutched and he looked at his carrot-topped little girl, he could only hold her close and whisper, "You're the most special girl in the universe."

He thought he couldn't love her more when she walked out of the dressing room in that dress, blue fabric spilling to the floor in full skirts under a tight bodice. She'd looked ten years older and inhumanly beautiful.

After the third time – when she kissed him fervently on the cheek and held him tight as she said "I'll always be your baby, Daddy," right before he and Kate and Martha headed for the airport and the flight that would take them back to New York – he realized that he could always love her more, because she was his baby girl and she was just perfect.

And she was.

5. Kate Beckett

"I can't believe she's gone." He sat heavily on the now-plain bed, just white sheets and a brown bedspread. Alexis' favorite green-and-blue sheets had gone with her to Stanford. So had the lava lamp, her posters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the books and manuals that used to be crowded on her bookshelves, and all seven seasons of The West Wing.

Kate Beckett eased herself down beside him, a soothing hand on his back. "She'll be back. And she'll always be her daddy's girl."

He shook his head. "I know, but… Alexis will be gone most of the year. Mother's married now, so she doesn't come home as much as she used to. It feels… I feel… so alone."

Beckett took a deep breath. Was she ready for this?

Oh, hell. She'd been ready for months. Years, if she wanted to be honest with herself.

And so she took his hand.

"Not that alone."

The look he turned on her then almost evaporated her where she sat.

"Kate. Are you…"

"Yes." A deep breath, a moment of disbelief, and then – "Yes! God!" She seemed to be laughing and crying all at once.

Their lips met and clung as his arms came around her, so tight it was almost painful. But she relished the pressure, reveled in knowing that at last it was their time and theirs alone. She simply melted into his embrace, surrendering herself utterly, for the first time, to love.

He couldn't seem to stop kissing her. Which wasn't surprising, since he'd wanted her from the minute she walked through the door. And as the weeks had worn on and he'd come to love her more and more, he'd resigned himself to the likelihood that it would never happen, reasoning that if it hadn't happened already, it wasn't going to.

How wrong he was. How very wrong, because the three years of tension and torment poured themselves now into a passion unfamiliar even to him. He'd loved Kyra, yes, as much as anyone was capable of loving when they were wide-eyed and twenty-three.

But this… this was built on trauma and torment as much as compatibility and friendship, built quite literally in blood, sweat and tears. He'd held her when her mother's killer got away, sheltered her when cruel accident left her homeless. He'd made himself as much a part of her as her badge and gun, and somewhere between death and life, crime and coffee, sarcasm and salvation, he'd found her heart. And she had leaned on him, relied on him, trusted him, and shown him a world he'd never believed he could be a part of.

Rick Castle had never before believed in soulmates, but "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." And so it was that it was impossible they were not made for each other, that Fate had not led him into her life in order to bring them both to this, right here, right now.

And so he just held his impossible dream closer, breathing her in, and saw forever.

He never did notice the tears of joy rolling down his cheeks.