December 10 - Calgary

Even though it's Saturday, she can't help waking early - like it's Christmas morning and she's three again - but she makes herself slow down and enjoy every aspect of her morning routine.

And, just like the last nine days, she opens the window with a sense of terrifying joy, as if her life might be delivered some mortal blow by whatever he's hidden in the calendar.

This time there's nothing.

Kate pauses, shocked at the disappointment that pours over her, but her eyes even then manage to sweep the little room inside the wooden replica and discover the small folded note. A note.

Space. If you want it.

It's. . .she. . .space?

He's giving her space, if she wants it.

Kate sinks down into the chair and brushes her fingers over the note, staring at his blocky script. If she's being honest about all of this, she expected some grand gesture for December 10th, some kind of way he could memorialize or celebrate ten days of advent, ten days of whatever this was that keeps pulling her away from the careful and deliberate path and towards this man.

Instead, he's giving her space.

Because he knows her. Because she closes up for the summer. She walls herself in and makes her heart a fortress.

Because she needs time to make peace with herself, with the step she's taken forward.

So she'll take it. Since this time he's offering it; she'll take it.

Space. But she picks up her phone and hovers her thumb over his name.

Space but she abandons texting him in favor of calling him, voice to voice, her thankfulness in the soft tones and his pleasure in the low ones.

"Detective," he murmurs. "It's Saturday. And early."

"I've already opened the next one," she cuts in. "Thank you."

"This doesn't really feel like space, Beckett."

"It will," she laughs. "I'm going to meet my dad halfway. Have brunch with him."

"Oh, that's a good idea," he says. She hears a twinkle in his eye, like Castle himself engineered this plan. "As a father of a daughter, I wholeheartedly approve."

She slides her coat on and gathers her keys, her wrist wallet, checks the gun at her hip. She's not on duty and not on call either, but this isn't the time to start going out unarmed. Not for Beckett. She needs that gun in its holster more than she needs air sometimes.

Someone wants her dead but this is the holidays; it's almost Christmas, and Castle-

"You just now leaving?" he says, starting their conversation back up again.

"Walking out the door. I'll play today's song in the car."

She hears a groan of a mattress (she woke him up; he's in bed), then rustling on his end. "Ah, yes. Uh. Don't try to understand the lyrics, Kate. I'm not sure they're meant to make sense, just to fill in the sound."

She chuckles and locks the door behind her. "Oh? So why in the world did you add it to my Christmas playlist?"

"Not every song is supposed to mean something," he defends.

Oh. "I wish they did." It pops out of her mouth before she can censor herself; she sighs and closes her eyes, pausing in the hallway.

"Don't you cherish me to sleep. Never keep your eyelids clipped."

"What?" she startles, her eyes flying open.

"Yeah, see? Crazy words. Craaaazy words."

She chuffs a laugh and starts walking again, heading for the stairs. She can't help pulling her phone away and putting her hand on her weapon when she sees the missing bulb and the dark steps, but when she checks, it's clear.

"Uh. . .Kate?"

"Sorry," she murmurs, flustered by her paranoia. "Had to move the phone away. What did you say?"

"Nothing important. More crazy lyrics. Never mind, because the song itself is beautiful. And haunting. And you know? Really great for a drive upstate. Roads are bad up-"

"I know, Castle. I checked the weather report online."

"I've got the road closings up-"

"Space, Castle?"

She can hear the long silence on his end, part confusion and part waiting. Then he laughs, loud, a little dryly, and she can hear him gasp in a breath. "Oh my gosh. I didn't hear the comma. And I thought, Space Castle? Really? Wouldn't that be so much fun?"

She rolls her eyes and crosses the lobby, past the mailboxes, to the front door. "What is a space castle even supposed to be?"

"I don't know! But I want one. It. Him. Her?"

"Don't press your luck."

"That was my favorite game show. Retro. You remember?"

"No whammies."

"You *do* know it."

"Um, of course. Big bucks and no whammies."

"I always wanted to be a contestant," he sighs.

"It's no skill whatsoever. All luck."

"Best kind."

"I hate those," she admits. "I need some control over my fate."

He laughs, his voice rich and deep, maybe sleep-ridden. "You would. And of course, I love that kind of game. Anything can happen. The great equalizer."

"I'm at my car, Castle," she sighs, unlocking the door and pressing her ear to her shoulder, the phone trapped between them.

"Okay," he sighs.

The phone trapped between them. They've spent a lot of the last ten days on the phone.

"Hey, when I get back. . ." She swallows down the rest of her words. Stupid. Today was supposed to be about space. Space. Time to slow down. Process.

"When you get back?" His question holds no expectation, not even a hint. He's asking because she started it. She can tell that he thinks it's something mundane and schedule-oriented.

"When I get back, want to get dinner?"

"Are you asking me out on a date, Detective Beckett?"

"Shut up, Castle. I'll take that as a yes."

"So will I, Beckett."

She hangs up on him and slides behind the wheel.

Wait. It *wasn't* her asking him out on a date, was it?

Was it?

Kate hugs her father, arms coming up at his back, squeezing tight.

"Katie, how beautiful you look."

"You're getting maudlin, Dad. And we haven't even started," she teases, but she squeezes him tighter.

When she breaks away to sit across from him, his eyes are grey and deep like winter lakes. She smiles at him just as the waitress brings over two plates of pancakes, blueberries drizzled over hers, strawberries sliced on his.

"Took the liberty," he says, winking at her.

"Perfect. Can I have some milk?" Kate gives the waitress a smile.

"Coming right up. Anything else?"

At their mutual shake of the head, the waitress leaves them to it. Kate breathes in the scent of hot blueberries and pancakes, butter melting between the stacks.

"I got your letter, Katie."

She opens her eyes, breath catching in her chest. "Yeah?"

"I'm so glad you sent it."

She sighs. "My therapist made me."

He laughs. "You know I'm proud of you for that. For getting help when you needed it. I left it until it was nearly too late, for myself. But Kate, I had no idea about half of these things-"

"Dad. I can't - I don't want to talk about it. That's why I wrote it."

"I know. I get it. I could recognize the therapy phrases in what you said. I'm still glad to know this stuff. I want us to have that relationship we used have, too."

She doesn't know what to say. The waitress interrupts with her milk and Kate takes a long gulp of it to erase the fresh swirl of frustration that has been stirred up. She doesn't want to come here and talk about the ages-old issues. They're not really the thing.

"My alcoholism robbed you of your chance to grieve, Katie. And I want you to have that time you need to go through it now. But I want you to talk to me about this stuff. That's the first step to us getting that back."

She nods; she knows this. This is the same stuff the therapist has been pointing her towards for weeks now. "He's making me keep a journal. I spend one night a week doing homework - writing in that stupid thing. I feel like I'm in high school."

"So a letter to me was one of your assignments?"

"Yeah," she laughs and raises her eyes to him. She doesn't want to disappoint him; her father, her dad. She's never wanted it to be like this. "Sorry?"

"No, I think it's funny. It's great. Believe me, I did my share of letter writing in AA."

She nods, grateful for safer ground. His therapy, not hers.

And then, just like her father always does, he brings it right back. Relentless. She forgets sometimes that her father was an attorney too. He knows how to interrogate. "So how's the therapy going, sweetheart? Is it helping?"

She scratches at her forehead, shoves a bite of pancake into her mouth. She's surprised when she can taste the rich batter, the fluffy lightness, the butter and blueberries. She halfway expected it to turn to ash on her tongue, just like most food has tasted after a therapy session.

"Honestly, I hate it. Every time I leave, I spend the rest of the day barely surviving. I'm an emotional wreck after a session. I tell myself I'm not going back again, but then a week later, I'm feeling pretty confident and in control, and something hits me out of the blue and I'm running back."

"Yeah. Katie, that's how it goes."

"I hate it. I just want to be done. Over."

"It takes work."

She sighs and sits back, swallowing another bite. "You know those times we went to Bloomingdale's when I was like five or six and the escalators were always broken?"

Her father tilts his head as he chews. "It only happened twice, but yeah. You kicked up a fuss about it. Totally appalled."

"Well, it felt like, to me, those things were always broken. We had to climb up the steps, and I felt so small, and they were so steep, I use to imagine I was climbing a mountain, like Maria in 'The Sound of Music.' That when I got to the top, I'd see the Von Trapp house."

Her father grins. "Yeah, okay, I do remember the steps being pretty steep. Didn't know you had that little fantasy going in your head though."

Kate smiles slowly back at him, then shakes her head, picking at a blueberry with her fork. "I feel like that now. Stuck at the bottom of this broken escalator, the stairs too steep for me. I'm doing all this work just to climb one measly step, while everyone else is taking their escalators straight to the top."

She cuts another bite of pancake and pushes it in her mouth, dwelling on that image. Her father's hand sneaks across the table and squeezes hers, releases it.

"Therapy brings it all up again," he says quietly. "And yeah, it's work. It's an effort. But you'll find that the stairs get less steep. Or maybe it's that your muscles grow stronger, your legs longer."

She nods, but chews on her lower lip, glances upward as her eyes burn. This isn't going to be about crying today.

"It's just so frustrating because I want to be up *there*. I want us to get there together. But I'm stuck down here. And every time I glance over, he's just gliding up his escalator, effortless and easy, just that much further ahead of me every time. The gap between us widening."

Kate rubs her hands over her face, speaks with the heels of her hands pressed into her eyes, seeing it all too clearly in her head.

"I'm doing all this work, and it's just so easy for him, and he pulls further and further away from me - and I am so pissed at him for it. I am so pissed off."

She scrubs at her face and drops her hands, surprised to find her father listening with that look on his face.

"What?"

"I haven't heard you talk this much about a guy since senior year of high school-"

She groans in mock horror. "Oh no. Rob. How could I forget? Rob. . .Rob - what was his name?"

"I don't know. But you went on and on to your mother and me about prom, about Rob, about your dress and the limo and your song-"

"Oh no, don't remind me," she moans, but it lifts into mortified laughter.

"How cute he was and how he passed you notes in class like you guys were in middle school; how he drove you home from-"

"Okay, okay, stop. I get it. I need to talk to you more often. Sheesh." She rolls her eyes at her father but can't help the grin stretching her face. It does feel good to talk to him like this again, to be the daughter.

He takes another bite, studying her with that smile in his eyes. "So, Katie-girl, you realize you just told me you and Rick-"

Oh no.

She closes her eyes. "I didn't mean. . .I wasn't. . ."

"You like him," he father says.

Well that's stupid. Of course she likes him.

"Kate. I know you don't remember much. When you were shot, we all. . .there was a lot of confusion and we didn't know right at first. I stood up to go to you and he had tackled you, trying to save you, and I heard him-"

She puts her hand up, her heart pounding. "Dad, please don't."

Her father closes his mouth. He doesn't say anything more, but she reads the analysis in his eyes, how he studies her, how he knows her. And he reads the truth. Of course he does. Kate sees the flicker of disappointment in his eyes; she hates it.

Denial isn't pretty. Not on anyone. And her father doesn't like seeing it on her.

"You're mad at him for being able to do it so easily," he says finally, his voice soft but with steel behind it.

She's already given that much away. "Yes." Her fist clenches around her fork; she pushes another bite into her mouth.

"I don't think it's easy for him, Kate."

Of course it is. He just gets to blurt it out while she's dying then follow her around like a puppy all day at work, making moon eyes at her and saying suggestive things and leaving it all up to *her* when she's in no condition-

"Honey, he's been divorced twice. You think that makes this easy on him? I think it makes it harder. Trust me."

Kate pauses, lifts her eyes to her father. "What?"

"He's got two failed marriages behind him, so he's going to look at you and be afraid to ruin things, to make things sour. He knows how good he is at it. Remember me telling stories about my college girlfriend, Janice?"

Pancakes slide down her throat. "Uh. Yes." Sort of?

"Janice and I were doomed from the beginning. We both had been in serious relationships before that hadn't worked out well. At all. Mine was with my high school sweetheart and I knew - if I couldn't make it work with her, how the hell was *this* going to work? And Janice had her own issues. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure her previous boyfriend had been emotionally abusive with her."

Okay, okay, so what? Kate wants to hurry this up, make her father get to the point faster. There is so much similarity between her father and Castle - this spinning a tale, setting things up. Being the softie. That's her dad. Her mother was the one to enforce bedtime and tell her she couldn't watch that show.

"When I started dating your mother, I took a lot of that attitude into it with me. Your mom thought I was nuts, but I made her slow things down, keep it really low pressure for a long time. Kate, we were just good friends for three years. Absurd. It was absurd. I wish I had that time back, do it whole-heartedly."

Kate chokes down her pancake, blinking at her plate. Three years of good friends. Absurdly good friends.

"But all I could think was that I'd had these two great and perfect relationships that turned out to be so flawed and awful for both of us. And I wanted to be sure with your mom, wanted to be clear. But I was the one to tell her first - to start things. Because it had to be done; it was ridiculous to be as close and familiar as we were and *not* be together. And if you don't think that stepping up like that takes work-"

Her father shrugs at her, giving her that twist of his mouth that says he knows all too well.

Of course relationships take work. She's. . .but there isn't a relationship between them, so it's not about that. Is it? It's not. He's her partner. They should be doing this together.

"I don't want to. . .be outpaced by him. What happens when he gets to the top alone? He hangs out there, waiting on me? For who knows how long? Probably. . .most likely. . .he leaves. Starts walking where he wants to go, until he's entirely out of view."

Kate takes another bite of pancakes, finds it hard to swallow down. She sips at her milk to ease its passage, but the tightness in her throat doesn't leave her.

"Katie. I don't think he's that far ahead of you. That's what I'm saying here. You might look up and see how far you have to go, but I think you're not spending enough time looking back at how far you've come."

Kate glances behind her involuntarily, as if she could actually see it, the vision of her progress laid out before her.

"And haven't you done all that together? The two of you. I don't think you get to the top and go on about your business, holding hands and skipping off down the hall. I think life, and love, I think it's about that climbing upward. The climb, Kate, that's where you want to be."

Her fork clatters to her plate; she scrambles to grab it back up, blushing, furious with herself and stubborn enough to still be trying to find ways to deny everything that's come out of her father's mouth, all the implications for herself, for Castle-

"If you're still angry. Maybe you should write him a letter too."

Oh no. No, no no. She presses her mouth into a line to hold back the please don't make me, Daddy that wants to come out, lifts her eyes to her father.

"You don't have to mail it, sweetheart. But it's good to get it out, isn't it? Didn't it help just writing your letter to me?"

"Yes."

"So give yourself permission to be angry at him for the space of a letter. Then see what comes to take its place."

He's right. She wrote that letter to her father, the final draft carefully edited to preserve at least some of her father's dignity and feelings, but the first one - the original - it was like a breath of fresh air had entered her stale lungs.

What has come to take its place, lately, is this desire to tell her father everything. Just like she has today. To be the daughter again, to listen to her father's voice and gain his insight. For it to be like it was. Before his alcoholism, his grief, made him into a stranger.

She likes what's come to take the place of her anger at him, her feeling of betrayal. Those things were deep, were tied to her mother's death and her drive for rightness, for a way to make the people responsible pay for what they did. Rightness. Because so much in her life isn't right.

But Castle.

He is.

Right. Right for her.

"All right, sweetheart. Let's avoid the landmines for the rest of our brunch together. Okay? How about your friend Lanie?"

Kate lifts her eyes back to her father, gives him a pressed-lip smile. His answering grin is like a pressure valve releasing the build-up in her chest. She puts her right hand to the spot at her chest, massaging it absent-mindedly, and shakes her head at her father.

"She and Esposito broke up."

"Crying shame. I bet it was Lanie, wasn't it? That girl is just like you."

Kate rolls her eyes at her father. Apparently, avoiding landmines isn't truly on his agenda.

"Dad."

He grins. "What? You want it to be like it was? I'm not censoring myself anymore. I'm telling you straight. Like I always did."

She sighs.

Great.

But she's smiling.