There will be 3 updates this week instead of 2 since these next few chapters are short-ish. Thank you all for reading/reviewing/coming along on this adventure with me so far. As I said initially, some parts will be similar to canon but things will begin to diverge more as we make our way through. There will be 35-40 chapters to this fic, so we've got a long ways to go still.


Chapter Six

"You're writing again?"

Castle nodded. "Almost done with chapter eighteen."

Alexis's eyes widened in surprise. Her father hadn't written more than a few pages in nearly three years. Not since Finite Laughter received more than a few handfuls of scathing reviews to accompany its lack of sales. Not since he'd descended into a self-pitying life full of parties and women and a string of irresponsible financial decisions.

"Really?" She crossed around behind his desk, leaned in to read over his shoulder. "Nikki Heat? What kind of a name is that?"

"You sound just like Beckett."

Alexis straightened her spine. "Beckett? Who's Beckett?"

"Oh, just…"

"Wait, that cop? The one you were acting all crazy about a few months ago."

"Well…"

"The one that got you shot?"

"She didn't 'get me shot'…" he quoted.

"Seriously," Alexis interrupted angrily. "You're still in contact with her? After you almost died because of her?"

"Alexis…"

"Wait," she squinted at the page again, skimming the lines of text in which Nikki and some guy named Rook were chasing a rogue suspect down an alley. "Nikki Heat is a cop too. Are you basing a character on her?"

"I…"

"This is ridiculous," Alexis shouted. "This woman almost gets you killed and you decide to write a book about her?" She shook her head, already emphatically striding out of the room. "You're unbelievable."

"Alexis…"

She whirled around, her long dark hair whipping after her. "No. Coming back here was clearly the wrong decision. I thought after almost dying, maybe you'd start making smarter decisions. But no. You're still the same reckless person you've always been. I'm going back to LA."

"Alexis…" He rose, hurried out of his office, but he was too late. She'd already flung the door of the loft shut with a bang.


"Hey, you okay?" Kate asked as Castle stepped up next to her at the murder board. He'd lacked signs of his usual happiness and enthusiasm all day. She hadn't caught him checking her out once (a habit about which he'd never been subtle), he'd been relatively quiet for the last few hours (which was never the case), and the few theories he had offered had been surprisingly lackluster and realistic (seriously, she was starting to get worried).

It was weird.

"Yeah, fine," he deflected.

Kate raised an eyebrow.

Castle deflated, leaned back against the edge of the desk behind them. "Alexis left."

"Your daughter?" Kate had only met the dark-haired young woman once, at the hospital all those months ago. They hadn't spoken beyond introductions, Alexis seeming weary of this strange woman and Kate not knowing what to say to the girl whose father had thrown himself in front of two bullets meant for her.

He nodded sadly. "She lives in LA. Doesn't visit much. We, uh, aren't very close." Castle shook his head, chin and eyes dipping towards the wooden floor. "I keep trying, but..." he trailed off, left the sentence hanging.

"I'm sorry," Kate offered when it became clear he didn't intend to elaborate. She debated saying more but found herself caught off-guard by this side of him. She knew from the media that he was twice-divorced and with quite the reputation, lived with his successful actress mother, and that he had a daughter, but she realized now that she didn't know anything about the girl. She'd also never before witnessed this fatherly side of Castle, and she found that observing his down-to-earth capacity for emotion was oddly refreshing, despite the clear sadness that he was feeling.

Castle shrugged it off, though, turned back to the board. "Any new leads?"

She shook her head, caught off-guard by the change of subject. But he was clearly done discussing the matter so she simply went along with it.

"Not so far. Ryan and Espo are talking to the vic's coworkers again but no one claims to have noticed anything unusual and there's not anything in his phones or financials either."

"Hmmm."

She pushed off the desk with the back of her legs, began making her way to her office. "Yeah."

Castle followed, stopping in the doorway and leaning a shoulder against it while she crossed to her desk chair. His gaze traced her every move, curiosity in his eyes.

"So, what would Nikki Heat do after a long, frustrating day on the case?" he asked after a moment.

"Go home and take a nice warm bath," she answered without hesitation. "Drink some wine, read a good book."

"Ah."

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "What?"

"Just envisioning Nikki in the bath with some wine. Maybe Rook can join her." His eyes lit up in excitement. "Oooh, what kind of wine? Something sweet and fragrant, I'd think. Maybe a…"

"Castle."

"What?" he asked innocently.

Damn him. She couldn't do this. His words had been her lifeline for years, and she'd be forever thankful that he'd unknowingly given her something to hang onto. But having the man himself around, prying into her life…

That was different.

His need to know was unrelenting and she knew it was only a matter of time before things got far too personal for her liking. Actually, things had already crossed that line. She'd already told him about Johanna.

"Look, I'm flattered that you're basing a character on me," she began. "But I'm not a celebrity, and I prefer my private life to be just that. Private."

Castle held up his hands in surrender. "I won't put anything personal in the book."

"You're right," she agreed. "Because I'm not telling you those things."

"Fine then," he relinquished. "Just one question."

Kate sighed, fixed him with a stern gaze. "What?"

He took up residence in his chair, rested both hands in his lap. "Why did you become captain?"

"The previous captain moved up," she answered, gesturing to the wall behind her desk. A row of framed photographs lined the wall, ranging from oldest to newest, the first two on the far left in black and white, the others in color and growing newer as Castle's eyes traveled down the line. The most recent was of a black man with kind eyes and a mustache.

"Roy Montgomery?!" Castle voiced, half question, half exclamation.

"You know him?"

He nodded. "Met him a few times. Poker nights, events. He's good friends with the mayor and a couple local judges."

"Ah," Kate offered with a nod.

"Where'd he move up to?" the author inquired. He hadn't actually seen the man in a couple years.

"Commander at One PP."

"And then they appointed you captain?" Castle asked somewhat rhetorically.

She glanced around her office. "So it would appear."

"You must've been a fantastic detective."

Kate shrugged, not interested in his flattery. "I just did my job."

"Clearly you went above and beyond, or you wouldn't have become captain."

"What do you want from me, Castle?" Kate demanded more harshly than probably necessary, but she was rapidly becoming irritated by his incessant probing.

"I told you, I'm just here for the story," he defended. "I don't see why that's so upsetting."

"And I told you, I'm a private person."

"I've been respecting that."

Kate raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Okay, so maybe he'd been a bit nosy thus far. He couldn't help himself; she was an intriguing woman. But he could make an effort to scale things back a bit.

"I'm just asking you to give me a chance," he requested, eyes serious as they bored into hers. "Please."

"Fine," she relented at last, was finding it difficult not to give in when he looked at her with such tenderness and enthusiasm. "But I swear to God, if anything from my personal life ends up in your books, I will kill you and make it look like an accident."

Castle swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Understood."


Thoughts?