Kindred Souls

Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and I am back to being a poor student with bills, so I'm even less worth suing.

For tumblr user i-don't-look-i-hunt who sent me the gorgeous visual prompt


Castle watches as his littlest girl carefully wedges herself in the space between the legs of the stuffed elephant that is, basically, as big as she is. Her little head settles, pillowed on the soft, grey body. She's surrounded by the thing, he thinks with a soft chuckle.

Mackenzie likes to be close to things, Castle has learned. His daughter is a snuggler. It shouldn't surprise him. Not really. She gets that from both her parents. But really, if he thinks about it mostly Kate.

There was a time that idea might have surprised him. The Kate Beckett he had first met, the one from whom there daughter had inherited her full cap of dark, thick hair, was as far from someone he would have considered a snuggler.

In fact, on the surface, that woman is so far from his wife as he knows her, he wonders if he should have been more startled by her in those early days of their relationship. But, on some level, he thinks he's always understood that it would be this way, the sharp contrasts of Beckett and Kate. He can be like that too.

For him, it's personas, projections of the way he wants people to see him, Richard Castle - Author, Playboy, Millionaire. So different from Father, Son, Husband, Partner. For Kate, well, she'd said it herself. She'd had walls. And the thing about walls or even false fronts? They don't just keep pain out. They keep you in.

Insecurity, vulnerability, softness, silliness, warmth. Things that can put you at risk. But they also make you whole, real, true. Two people who had gotten so good at protecting themselves, they forgot to really live.

He doesn't want that for his little girl, hopes that she'll always feel safe being as close as she can get to the things that she loves. That her heart will stay so open. Because sometimes he's amazed at how far both her parents have come.

Kate saved him from himself first. He wonders if she knows that. He reaches out and brushes a finger over his daughter's cheek. He'd had Alexis, sure. But she'd grown up on him, like her little sister would, too. And he'd started going through the motions, all of it shallow and emotionless.

But then there had been Kate, and passion - for her, her work, and his own - and silliness, which, he knows she had loved, even when she hated it, too. When he met her, he'd met himself again. And he'd wanted so desperately for Kate Beckett to know that feeling too.

So, he'd scratched and he'd clawed and he'd dug. He'd peeled back her defenses slowly. Unearthed the warm, funny, silly, awkward, loving woman he'd married. The one who had seemed such a stark contrast to him on the surface. But she was his kindred soul, deep in that place they had both been hiding away.

So, that first time she'd come in close, settled in like it was the most natural thing in world, it had been. Because stripped of defenses, they had turned to one another so feel secure in the wider world. A simple thing, for a little one like Mackenzie, natural and instinctive, to seek and give comfort without limits.

He sighs.

"Castle, stop thinking so loudly over there," Kate's voice is a soft mumble from the other side of the bed. "Come 'ere," she brushes the spaces beside her that he knows she wants him to fold himself into.

He smiles, settling a few pillows around their little girl, in case she tries to roll. So she won't tumble of the bed and get hurt. But he knows she won't need it. Her Elephant has her, curled up, soft and safe.

Kate's watching him watch the baby, though her eyes are drowsy with sleep. He turns the soft smile on his wife, then moves over to settle behind her on the bed. She curls into him immediately, molding herself to his body.

Like mother like daughter.