December 10

"We make it special. Not just for ourselves, but for others."

-Kiersten White

Kate held his hand as they rounded the church doors and started down the basement steps for Group. His fingers laced through hers the moment they passed the threshold, as he tended to do every time, as if seeking that extra layer of reassurance. They were really doing this; she was here.

They wandered towards the card table set up with snacks. Castle didn't seem interested in food these days, but he plucked a Keebler Fudge cookie from the tray and fiddled with it, his eyes scanning the basement room. Cinder block walls with hand-woven tapestries that declared The Reason for the Season or Fruits of the Spirit made of felt and quilting material. She imagined the older ladies of the congregation working on these night after night, thinking what if some lost soul? and well maybe it worked: she'd stared intently at the one over the counselor's left shoulder for five weeks now that repeatedly offered her solace: All Shall Be Well and All Shall Be Well And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. The repetition alone was a kind of mantra, a meditation that sank into her like numbness.

Their Grief Group met every Thursday night at six p.m. and Beckett was often forced to leave much earlier just to unstick her husband from his writer's chair and cajole him into coming. She had committee meetings, public advocacy meetings, council meetings—you name it—which she rescheduled for this. Every Thursday night at six, she was determined.

She knew what this could do to a person. She knew. And while she and her father had remained broken, she wasn't going to let Castle do that to himself. Or her.

They took their seats in the circle, hard plastic chairs that reminded her of school. Castle dropped her hand and rubbed his palms on his thighs, his jeans well worn from that every-Thursday action. He wrapped the uneaten cookie in a napkin and then seemed to not know what to do with it.

Their counselor, Blake, was unwinding his red-and-green striped scarf and dropping it in his own chair, shedding his car coat. He was wearing another paisley dress shirt, this one in pink and green. His black wire rim glasses stood out against the bald shine of his head.

He was the most flamboyant straight man she'd ever met. His wife was an English professor at NYU; Alexis had actually taken two classes with her. He pretended not to know them, made Castle explain or elaborate on whatever partial comment or as you well know that came out of Rick's mouth. Blake was a good guy who just listened. She was grateful.

"Everyone get some snacks?" Blake said. "Oh, hey, I made some wassaill—no alcohol, you know AA meets just across the hall tonight—but plenty of spices. Try some."

Kate glanced to her husband but his eyes were distant. She patted his shoulder, collected the wadded napkin from him, and stood, moving back to the card table to try the wassail. One of the ladies who came straight from work, a red-haired forties-something who'd lost her husband to a heart attack on a bicycle ride, gave her a strained smile and attempted a bit of conversation. Kate could hear the feedback from her hearing aid, like an open mic on a PA. She had come to recognize it as a sign; the woman hadn't had a good day. The higher she turned up the hearing aid, the worse she was doing.

And much like Beckett herself, she couldn't stand to be touched when she was grieving.

Instead, Kate exchanged the pleasantries the woman was capable of, with that sheen of loneliness in her eyes, and she poured the woman a cup of wassail so she could go sit down in the circle.

It wasn't really fair of her, but Kate couldn't help comparing their individual situations. The red-haired woman and the loss of a husband seemed so much more significant than Kate losing a mother-in-law.

"Kate."

She startled, came back to herself at the sound of his voice. She realized she was standing behind their chairs with two mugs of wassail and she'd been just as zoned as him.

No use comparing grief, Blake had often said.

"Yeah, yes, I'm here," she answered to nothing, and handed Castle a mug.

She found him in the office again, slumped in his chair behind the desk, not writing, but not drinking either. (She'd been forced to tell him, It's a trigger for me, seeing you drink through your grief. He hadn't since.) "Hey."

He sat up abruptly, as if startled, swiped his hand at his chin.

"You fall asleep?" she murmured, shedding her briefcase. She was one of ten council members from the district of Manhattan; she'd spent much of the last six months dropping the ball. But not him. (His balls? She wrinkled her nose at the pun, which was said in his voice in her head, with something like his old smirk. It had been that long since she'd gotten anything like immature innuendo from him.)

"Think I did," he said, clearing his throat and dropping his feet to the floor. He slid his arm around her waist as she came to his side, received her cheek-kiss. "How was your day?"

"Busy," she said. "But I came early—"

"Kate, I'm fine, I promise. I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you can't keep leaving council meetings early because your husband—"

"Hush," she said softly. Ran her fingers through his hair until he subsided, his eyelids closing. "I had an idea. And I got excited about it. And so I came home to tell you."

He lifted his face to her, a faint shimmer of anticipation.

She sank down on the desktop, put a foot to the seat of the office chair, between his spread knees. He lifted an eyebrow, closed his fingers around her ankle. "Mm, hose?"

"Tights," she corrected.

"I'll bet."

She laughed, a weird delight at the faint humor he had managed to dredge up. It matched that sardonic voice in her head. "Listen. I was thinking about what the counselor said."

His eyes flattened.

She nudged his thigh with her foot for his attention. "About Christmas? He said Do it differently this year. I think that's good advice."

"You did it differently when your mom died," he said. "Look how that turned out."

She bit back the sharp retort, but she did kick him a little. "And what did you promise me when we got together?"

He stared up at her, mouth parted, something a little more alive in his face.

"You promised not to ever let me go back there. Down that hole." She pointed her foot so his toes jabbed his inside thigh. "And where are we right now?"

"Kate." His voice was raw.

"That first Christmas after my mother was killed—it was awful," she said. "Because we didn't do what Blake is telling us now to do. We packed it up, we quit. That burden of expectation couldn't be met and every time we tried to try, God, Castle, it was a failure. Because it was never going to be the same. And we couldn't live up to the memory."

"So what are you saying?" he whined.

"Forget the perfect Christmas. If you try for normal happy Christmas, if you try to try, you're only going to disappoint yourself, your family—and you will make it worse. It won't work, the thing won't fly. She's gone. She's not here for Christmas like she was last year, and we can't put that burden on our family. Not on you, to make up the loss somehow, not on me either. Not on Alexis."

Castle scrubbed a hand down his face.

"It's not the same, Rick. It's not ever going to be that way again, because she's gone."

His shoulders rounded. She was done with gentle, with cupping his face and sweet kisses and hoping he'd just cry a little. It wasn't helping. And he hadn't cried since he'd spoken at her funeral.

"So. Yes. This Christmas is going to be different," she said. "And that doesn't have to totally suck."

He glanced up, away, back at her again. "What."

"We're going to do something different—completely different. Forget dinner, catering or no, forget Christmas Eve traditions, forget dressing up, the usual give-away, the publisher's ball. That's getting axed. You, me, Alexis—if she wants to—we're going to throw your mother a Christmas celebration."

"My mother?"

"Something to honor her," she insisted. The bewilderment on his face made her slink down, straddle his lap, her arms hooking behind his neck. She placed a nipping kiss at his jaw. "Remember when you were going on about winning the lottery, what would I do? You figured it out."

"I figured you out," he corrected, a husk in his voice. But rawness was good, rawness was feeling again.

"You did, you knew me, what I needed. You gave me the chance to honor my mom. Do you know that year, the year we had that memorial fundraiser? that was the first year I put up a Christmas tree since she'd died."

"Well, now you're trying to break my heart."

She shook her head, nose bumping his, because it was just too true. "You've won the lottery, Rick Castle. What are you going to do with it?"

He let out a shaky breath, slowly wrapped his arms around her. His embrace was rough, harsh even—he didn't always know his own strength—but she reveled in it.

"I don't know yet," he rasped. His cheek was unshaven and it abraded her skin as he rubbed down her neck and pressed his lips against her pulse. "I don't know but will you help me think of something good?"

"Always," she whispered.

His teeth caught her collarbone. She shuddered. His breath against her skin was slow. "Then come to bed with me. I do my best thinking inside—"

"You do zero thinking like that. All the blood leaves your brain."

He chuckled—it was the first light-hearted sound she'd heard from him in weeks—and he managed to get to his feet still carrying her.

They stood on the Chet Palaburn Stage of the Martha Rodgers School of Acting and took their bows.

There wasn't much of an audience that she could tell, and when she'd been spreading the word through friends and former co-workers, she'd seen a lot of sympathy but not a lot of intention. Perhaps it was too close to Christmas, but the point of the production hadn't been the wide draw.

Martha Rodgers was the point, and Kate was exceptionally lucky to have known her.

She detached from Castle and took a step back, giving him the spotlight, taking the chance to scratch her itchy scalp under the wig. She'd been the Ghost of Christmas Future and also the Cratchit's old vampire granny, while Castle had taken the spotlight as Jacob Marley and Tiny Tim. It wasn't the classic A Christmas Carol, but their souped-up, campy version had been royalty-free, which was really what mattered.

Last year's batch of graduates from the Rodgers School had performed the pivotal roles, and it was Scrooge—a young man in convincing make-up—who gave Castle the microphone now.

Castle was beaming; she was so overwhelmed to see him happy that she didn't even care that the wig and make-up powder were giving her hives.

He held out his hand to Alexis, and the woman, costumed as Christmas Yet to Come, looking like a cross between a mermaid and Bjork, came to his side with a fierce hug. "This is my daughter, Martha's grand-daughter. She hasn't yet caught the acting bug, but she agreed to do this, for us, for Martha."

There was a wild round of applause from the audience, which was bigger than Kate had first glimpsed through the lights. A few piercing whistles which made her jump.

Castle looked to her, beckoning. "And this is Councilwoman Beckett, Kate, come on over here. This is your fault too."

The audience laughed. She shrugged and stepped forward. The cape swirled. Castle handed her the mic and said to her, say something. Her fangs were still bared and she had to push with her tongue to pop them out. "Thank you so much for coming. I know it might not be what you expected. But it's her, it's very much her, and we had a blast doing it."

Castle grinned, applauded softly as the audience politely clapped. Alexis was smiling at her too, for once, and Kate flushed hotly—the lights, glad for the powder that kept her pale—handed the mic back to him for his big end-of-show speech.

He took it, his other arm tightening around Alexis. "We've had a great loss. I'm sure you all have felt it, either because of the disruption to your classes, or because those great stories we can tell about Mother—" He swallowed, paused, glanced at Kate as if for strength. "Well, we won't have any new stories, will we? Or at least, that's what I thought. I thought it all stopped. But here she is, putting on Scrooged for Christmas with my family and her last group of students and… here she is, having Christmas for us on this weird, hilarious, but sad ride."

Kate sucked in a breath, saw him waver.

He smiled. "It's okay. The stories go on. Just as she wanted for us all." He looked like he was going to say something more, but he stopped, shook his head, handed her the mic blindly.

Kate grabbed for it, and his arm, clinging to him, not sure if it was to keep him upright or herself. She saw the stagehands who had begun to mount the steps suddenly freeze, and she motioned them up.

"We have one more thing," she said, to Castle, because he knew nothing of this part.

The stagehands and the director came up with a plaque, and a piece of paper, and flowers. The flowers were presented to Alexis, the plaque to Castle, and the paper to her.

She saw the number and gaped.

"What is it?" Castle murmured. "What's going on?" He looked at her.

She blew out a breath and lifted her eyes to an audience she mostly couldn't see—obviously, by the paper in her hand. "We have the final tally for all the fundraising performances of Scrooged for Christmas over the last two weeks. And the result is… you all are much too generous."

There was laughter, and Castle leaned in.

"We've raised two hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollars for the Martha Rodgers Scholarship Fund at the Martha Rodgers School of Acting." She laughed, overwhelmed again, and glanced to Castle. He was open-mouthed with shock.

The director took the microphone from her and gestured to the plaque. "The Class of 2013, Martha's first graduating class, and every class that has since tread these boards have all pitched in for a very special commemoration." He glanced to the lights and seemed, for a moment, to lose his train of thought. A nervous chuckle. "Wow, these lights are hot. I guess this is why I'm off stage, huh?"

Someone whistled from below. Someone else yelled Get on with it, you wanker, in such a convincing British accent that the rest of the audience began applauding.

Their director quieted everyone with a hand, laughing. "Pipe down, Roger. You're rubbish as Cratchit. Anyway, without further ado: may we, forever Martha Rodgers's students, present to you, on this day, December 22, the Inaugural Run of Scrooged for Christmas, a Play in Two Acts, in Commemoration of Martha Rodgers, Thespian and Director Extraordinaire!" He gave a little bow with the mic against his chest and the audience applauded. "We hereby anoint this production and vow to continue this fundraiser every year."

The lights went down halfway.

Now Kate could see that the balcony was full, every floor seat taken and even crowding the orchestra, that there were people in the aisles, that students and their families and friends had come out in force—and not just those related to the school.

She saw their old gang from the Twelfth, and their families and kids; there was the new Captain there and her old Captain as well, and most of the City Council Members, despite how many meetings she had ducked out of early and how many community events she'd foisted off on them to do this play. She saw her constituents, business owners and property owners, people who came to her office to lodge formal complaints and stayed for coffee; she saw people she'd forgotten about.

And Castle's friends, guys he had known and who had helped them solve cases together once upon a time, guys who had gone to a poker game, guys who had been interviewed and become fast friends, even if for the space of a murder investigation. And then the people he accumulated, fans, associates, friends, who always had found a willing ear in Rick Castle, a helping hand, a way forward.

It wasn't just for Martha.

Castle gave a choked noise and she glanced over, saw he was getting the same picture.

The director handed him back the microphone and Castle, unlike himself, seemed at a loss for words.

She squeezed his arm and his head bobbed, his throat worked.

Finally he said, quoting from the Dickens original, which he had just read to her backstage in a fit of melodrama before the performance, "'I have always thought of Christmas as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave.'" He raised the plaque above his head, turned to the actors arrayed behind him. And he bowed. "Thank you, you wonderful fellow-passengers, for such a good time."

The applause was thunderous. And it was all for Martha, for Christmas, the best gift.

—-