A/N: I'm so, so sorry this took so long to get up! I've been terribly busy with school and I had a really hard time with this chapter. I was starting to feel like the characters were getting too out of character (especially Kate), so I had to struggle to get them back on the right path...

Disclaimer: I can say I own Castle all I want, but that doesn't make it any less of a lie (unfortunately)...

They're sitting on the floor, bent over the coffee table covered with files and containers of lukewarm Chinese takeout, when a piercing scream rings out through the apartment, followed by a thump. Rick is halfway to the stairs by the time the sound stops. He rushes into Alexis' room; she's tangled in a sheet, thrashing on the floor.

He kneels next to her and gently shakes her shoulder, trying to wake her. "Alexis. Alexis, it's just a dream, sweetie."

His daughter eventually stills, blinking quickly through her tears.

"Daddy."

"Hey, Pumpkin. You okay now?" She shakes her head, sniffling. He pulls her into his lap. "Wanna talk about it?"

Alexis shakes her head, burying her face deep into the crook of her neck. When she speaks, the words are muffled and quiet. "Daddy. Kate is okay, right?"

"She's downstairs, we were working. Do you want me to get her?"

"Please."

He walks downstairs, only to find Kate pacing nervously in front of the sofa.

"Can you talk to her?"

She looks up at him with surprise clearly written on her face, but she nods nonetheless. He leads her up the stairs, trying to ignore the silent tension building he can feel building between them. When she sees Kate, Alexis jumps up and wraps her small arms tightly around the older woman. Rick steps out of the room, painfully aware that he is not the one his daughter needs right now, but grateful that Kate is here to help her. From his perch in the hallway, he can hear fragments of their whispered conversation.

"…. and I was so scared and all by myself and I kept waiting for you to come and you never did and Daddy didn't come either but Daddy was out of town because he was working so he wasn't supposed to come, but you were supposed to come and you didn't… And then Daddy finally did come back from his trip early but then he said we had to go to the hospital because you had gotten hurt. It was from an explosion and even though Daddy kept calling it an accident I knew it was really a bomb… And then I woke up and I was still so scared."

It worries him that his daughter had dreamt about Kate being injured, presumably on the job; but more so, he was worries how Kate will react to Alexis' rushed confession that shows a lot more than he knows she'll be comfortable with.

He hears Kate assure Alexis that they're all fine; his heart clenches as she begins to whisper something soft and soothing and foreign to his little girl. He feels a sudden and overwhelming urge to show Kate how grateful he is, but even stronger is his need to make sure his baby won't get hurt by yet another woman.

When he shows up at the precinct the next morning with coffee, her heart starts to flutter- and not in the good way. She smiles softly at him as she reaches for it, trying to mask her inner turmoil, and takes a sip. Grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar free vanilla. She has to force herself to swallow as she fights to suppress the panic that flares up in her chest.

She hasn't even known Rick Castle for three months; he should not be privy to little details such as how she takes her coffee. Will still manages to mess up her order, and they've been dating for nearly a year. It's too much, too close. What worries her most is that she didn't even realize it was happening.

She's a detective, for Christ's sake- how had she not noticed their lives becoming so intertwined? When had she become the kind of person that calmed his daughter down from a nightmare? She isn't whole enough for that; how can she be that kind of person when she can't even calm herself down from her own nightmares?

She desperately wants Castle to tell her that it's not too fast and that she's good for them much in the same way they're good for her. She wants him to set her at ease, like he usually does. Judging by the look on his face, that isn't what's going to happen.

"Alexis has abandonment issues and a fear of rejection. For the life of me, I haven't been able to undo the damage done by my ex wives."

Kate feels her breath catch in her throat; she has an uneasy feeling about where this is going. She opens her mouth to speak, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand. Her heart rate picks up as Castle drags his hand over his face and takes a few deep breaths.

"Meredith was never cut out to be a mother, or a wife, for that matter. The extent of her parenting consisted of flaunting Alexis for attention and/or sympathy. When Alexis was three, I came home from a meeting to my daughter eating straight from a bag of marshmallows watching Friends, and my wife in bed with her director. Meredith left us pretty quickly after that, divorced me and moved to California to pursue her career. Now she shows up whenever it's convenient for her, which isn't often. I think the last time she found the time to come around was one day sometime last year."

He takes a deep breath, and Kate can see him working to keep it off his face.

"Gina was different; she fawned over Alexis, and Alexis ate it up. She loved the shopping trips and the publicity events because they made her feel important, something she had never gotten from her mother. Eventually it stopped being fun, though; Gina became overly critical of everything Alexis did or said. When I realized she was just using my baby girl as a symbol, a way to boost her image, I divorced her almost immediately. Alexis took the divorce hard; she could tell something had changed, but she didn't quite know what. I didn't have the heart to tell her that every special moment she the she had shared with her stepmom had simply been crafted as part of some publicity stunt."

Kate looks down at her hands, her heart aching for the lively, caring little girl that had been hurt so much already. "Why are you telling me this?"

"For the past two years, getting Alexis to willingly interact with almost anyone has been comparable to pulling teeth. She wouldn't make eye contact and rarely spoke, and when she did, it was barely more than a whisper. She had gotten so used to being let down that she finally just stopped asking for things. Until she met you, Kate; you brought out a side in her that I wasn't sure I would ever see again. She asked me this morning if we could invite you to the Hamptons for her birthday."

Her breathing picks up; she can't be having a panic attack, not in the middle of the precinct, not in front of him.

"I told her if she really wants you to come, she should ask. If you can come, that's great, we'd love to have you; if not, give her an honest answer, she'll understand. We all have our problems, Kate; we are all messed up and a little broken, and that's okay. But if you tell her yes, you had damn well better mean it, because if you break my little girl's heart… We're done."