A/N: I have a nice long chapter for you this time. :) Hope you like it!

"Are you sure this is okay?" Kate asked for about the tenth time that day.

"It's absolutely fine," Rick assured her as he put on his coat.

"Alexis? Martha? We won't go unless it's okay with all of you. Or I can just go, and you guys can do whatever you'd normally do. I think I know you guys by now. You have traditions for everything. I know you have Christmas Eve traditions, you just won't tell me what they are. But I don't want to keep you from doing what you always do."

"Darling, Christmas should be spent with family," Martha said.

"Right." Castle nodded. "So the only tradition that really matters is spending it together. You've been hanging with our family all this time. The least we can do is hang with you and your dad for one night, especially if he won't come to dinner tomorrow."

"I did ask him, I told you that. He wasn't into it. I think that would be a lot to ask. We've been ignoring Christmas since my mom died. We usually have dinner if I'm not working, but we don't talk about it, we don't exchange gifts… This is just dinner. Just because I'm not going to see him tomorrow. It doesn't have anything to do with it being Christmas Eve. So if you don't want to come, I completely understand."

"Kate, you've already explained all of this." Rick smiled. "He's expecting us, right?"

"Yeah, but it's not a big deal…"

"We're going," he insisted. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"What about you, Alexis?" Kate asked stubbornly before joining Rick by the door. "You've been quiet. Are you sure this is okay? You can say no."

She had been quiet, and not by accident. She wasn't exactly thrilled by the idea of spending Christmas Eve at Kate's father's house when she didn't even know him and Kate was right. She had her own Christmas Eve traditions that were being overlooked. But Martha was right too. Everyone should get to spend Christmas with their family. And if they were really going to welcome Kate into their family for Christmas, they had to welcome her father as well. "It's fine," she said, smiling in a way that she hoped Kate couldn't tell was forced. She joined her father and grandmother by the door.

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." She smiled for real this time, not because she suddenly really wanted to go, but because it was cute how desperately Kate wanted to be sure she didn't mind.

"Okay. Let's go."

Jim Beckett's building wasn't much different from the others that surrounded it. It was a bit more modest than the Castle loft, but it was still very nice. A Christmas tree greeted them in the lobby, its white lights twinkling hello.

Kate led the way, followed closely by Rick, but not quite allowing him to walk beside her. She almost seemed nervous, although Alexis couldn't work out why. If anyone should be nervous it was them, not her. She already knew everyone who was going to be there tonight. There shouldn't have been anything unsettling about going to see her father, and she'd certainly shown that she was comfortable enough around the Castle family over the course of the last week.

They passed the doors to a few other apartments. A lot of them were decorated with wreaths and garlands. One door was even framed in Christmas lights. As they passed it, Castle murmured something to his daughter about how they should try that next year. But the door Kate stopped in front of was undecorated. Remarkably plain.

She knocked, and before long her father came to the door. Alexis had met him before, but only briefly. He was tall, like Kate, and there may have been some vague family resemblance between them, but she didn't really think they looked much alike. However,that didn't really surprise her, because she'd never thought she looked all that much like her father either.

Jim smiled at the group standing in his hallway and ushered them inside. "Good to see you all," he said in his standard soft-spoken manner. "Thanks for coming."

There was a small living area inside the doors. As directed, they sat down on the couch. Kate hung back and hugged her father hello before sitting down next to Castle.

Alexis took the time to glance around the apartment. Kate had said that this wasn't going to be a celebratory evening, but there were no Christmas decorations. None at all. No tree. No wreath. No Santa Claus. No nativity scene. Nothing. The rest of the city, even the rest of the building, had transformed itself into a winter wonderland. Had the man who lived here even noticed?

Yes. From everything Kate had told her and everything she believed, Alexis was absolutely sure that he had noticed. And that seemed even more tragic. His wife had once loved Christmas, as, she could tell, had his daughter. He probably had too, once. But now, with his wife gone, the season had become so painful for him that he just let it pass by without acknowledging it. But he saw. He saw the city lights turn red and green. He saw the tree in the lobby of his own building. And he knew. He knew that is was Christmas time, yet another season that he couldn't spend with the woman he loved. And with that knowledge, he opted not to spend it at all. For him, Christmas was over. It was a quaint memory from the past that he didn't plan to carry with him to the future.

Was this the way Kate's Christmases had been until now? Passed over here, with her father? In an apartment that on any other day would have been very nice, but on this particular evening seemed so empty? It didn't seem right. If Kate's mother had enjoyed this time of year so much, shouldn't her family embrace the fond memories they had of years past rather than ignoring it altogether? But this wasn't Alexis's family, it wasn't her life, and it wasn't her business. It was like Kate had told them. Tonight was simply dinner. It wasn't Christmas Eve dinner. It was technically, but they weren't celebrating. It was just dinner.

The meal went well. Kate's father was nice, and he seemed appreciative that they were there. He'd made a roast chicken, and it was delicious. Neither Alexis's dad nor her grandmother said anything unusually inappropriate. Nothing at all would've been weird if Alexis could do as Kate had suggested and forget that it was Christmas Eve. But she couldn't. And that made what should've been a comfortable dinner feel a little strained.

After she finished eating, Alexis excused herself to go to the restroom. She followed Jim's directions around the corner and down a short hallway, and for some reason her attention was drawn to an end table that stood against a wall just beyond the bathroom. It was a pretty piece of old-fashioned furniture, wooden with designs carved into the legs. But what really caught her attention was the single picture frame that stood on it. She went to it and looked closer.

It was a family. Exactly the kind of family she'd often wished for when she was young. In the picture were two adults with their arms around each other, with a little girl between them, probably seven or eight. And the woman… if Alexis had only glanced at the picture, she might've assumed it was Kate. But upon further inspection, her hair was a little darker and a little shorter, her clothes a little out of date, and her face just a little more worn. And if the man in the picture was Jim, which, yes, as she looked she determined that it was a younger version of the man she'd just spent the evening with, the woman in the picture was significantly shorter than Kate. But there was no denying that they looked a lot alike. The little girl in the picture, she realized, was Kate. The woman was her mother. For the first time, she was seeing Johanna Beckett.

Alexis found herself wondering how much would've been different if Kate's mother was still alive. Her first thought was that she wouldn't be here right now. That Kate wouldn't have become a police officer and would never have met her father. But maybe that wasn't it at all. Her dad had always raised her to believe that anything was possible. What if there really was some kind of fate? Some kind of magic about love? Maybe Kate and Alexis's father really were meant to be together. Maybe, if Johanna hadn't been killed, she would still be here this very night with her father and her grandmother, sitting at a table of six with a tree in the background, trying to figure out how to blend the traditions of two complete families.

Briefly, Alexis wondered if that would've made this Christmas any easier. If Kate had been used to celebrating Christmas with her family, if she'd had her own traditions, her own little things that she did every year, and hadn't needed to latch onto and slightly alter the traditions of the Castle family, would Alexis have resented her less at the beginning? No, she realized. It still would have been different. Kate and her father still would have wanted to spend the holiday together, and having another person around automatically changed certain things. And as someone coming home from college for the first time expecting to find everything as she'd left it, any kind of change would have been hard for her. But change didn't have to be a bad thing. That was what she was trying to learn to accept. And she was getting there.

She really did like Kate, and she understood that she was good for her father. And that her father was good for Kate. They worked well together. They made each other happy. And even though it wasn't tradition, it was fun having Kate around. Really, if she thought about it, it wasn't such a huge change after all. It was just a little something different to keep things interesting. And it was nice.

She liked Kate's father as well, and the more she thought about it, the more it made her sad that she'd never get to meet Johanna. She knew very little about her, but for her death to have such a profound effect on her family, she must really have been someone special. Kate lived every minute of her career, and most of her life, trying to avenge her mother's murder and live up to her memory. And then there was Kate's father. He kept this picture in the hallway, in a place where he doubtless saw it often, to remind him of what his life, his family, had once been like. At the same time, he'd stopped celebrating Christmas because the memories it brought him were too painful. To Alexis it seemed a little contradictory, but she obviously didn't feel what he felt, so she chose to withhold judgment.

But on her way back to the living room for dessert, Alexis passed a phone table, on which rested a stationary pad and a pen. Going on a whim, she ripped off a piece of stationary, wrote a short message on it, and left it on the end table with the picture frame.

Then she went back to her family. Her dad and Kate were sitting together on the couch. For a brief moment she pictured herself between them, as Kate had been between her parents in the picture. But she realized that wasn't her place, and sat down beside her grandmother on the loveseat. Jim brought in large slices of chocolate pudding pie for each of them, and sat in the armchair with his own.

She felt a little guilty then for ever feeling alone just because her father had Kate in his life. She couldn't even imagine how Jim must feel. His daughter was the only family he had left, and now she had Rick. Alexis saw the way he looked at the couple and knew that he was happy for his daughter, purely happy that she'd found happiness. It was the definition of maturity. The definition, really, of love.

Alexis thought of the note she'd left on the end table, and didn't feel an ounce of regret that she'd written it. Maybe it wasn't her place, maybe it was none of her business, but then, maybe, in some way, it would help. Everyone, she thought, should be able to spend Christmas with people who cared about them.

On one side of the paper, the side she'd left facing up, she'd written simply:

Merry Christmas, Mr. Beckett.

-The Castle family

Somehow, she knew that he'd see it. If he so chose, he could crumple it up and throw it away, and that would be that. But then maybe he wouldn't. Maybe it would intrigue him, and he'd pick it up for a closer look, and realize that on the back she'd written her address and "Dinner starts at seven."

A/N: I realize that we're getting to the end of the Christmas-ish season here, so I'm really trying to wrap this up. I'm hoping to have it finished by the end of the week. We'll see how that works out. I really don't want to have to leave this for another whole year. That seems like a bad plan.

I have mixed feelings about this chapter. I think there's some good stuff in here, but it's almost all description and internal monologue... which... I wish I would've been able to work in more dialogue. But I do like the content, and hopefully you did too. :) Thanks for reading! And reviews are always nice. :)