Author's Note: This is something of a transitional chapter and I'm not sure how well it turned out but I will leave that to you to decide.

Nothing Lost

Chapter 44

Leaving Beckett had never been easy but Castle could swear that saying goodbye to her yesterday had been the hardest of all. He'd had to force himself to release her from their hug goodbye next to his car—a hug that had lasted at least a minute as it was—and not even the knowledge that they would still talk every day had helped much. For once, even the thought of seeing Alexis again hadn't been entirely comforting.

As it was, he felt discontented, restless, even now in the loft which had until now always been the place he felt most comfortable. He suddenly understood why the old-fashioned term for caring about someone had been being attached to that person; that was how he felt. As if an invisible cord connected him to Beckett and that cord was stretched taut with the miles between them.

If home was not a place so much as it was about a feeling, then Beckett had become his home. Even more than the loft was, especially now when he and Beckett were so much closer together emotionally, so much more open with each other. It had not been easy to tell her about Meredith and Gina—his marriages were not his favorite subject to say the least—but now that she knew everything, he felt freer somehow. She was the only other person who really knew the story of both his marriages. He had not confided in his mother certainly. As for Gina, she had not expressed any real curiosity about what had happened with Meredith, had apparently been willing to accept with characteristic pragmatism his brief statement that Meredith had left to pursue her career and it was all over between them.

No, it had not been easy but he was glad he'd told Kate. It was precious to know she cared enough to ask and persist and more than that, her understanding, her sympathy, had somehow expunged some of the poison from the memories, made the wounds less raw. His failures in his marriages had always gnawed at him but now, he had a tangible hope that his dream of a lasting relationship, a lasting marriage, might come true and in some way, that too made the memory of his failures easier to contemplate.

It was the difference between why he could keep and even value the first rejection letter he had received; a failure followed by success was a very different thing.

Castle gave up his pitiful attempt to get some actual writing done and wandered into the kitchen on the excuse that it was time for lunch anyway. And wondered if it would be pathetic to call Beckett. Never mind that they'd already spoken this morning when she'd called him, somewhat surprisingly, sounding just tired enough that he'd immediately guessed she must have had an uneasy night disturbed by nightmares. And she had called him. His whole chest filled with emotion at the thought that he was the person she turned to now. She might not have said it in so many words but as usual, with Beckett, her actions had spoken volumes and she had been the one to call him.

And by now, he knew her well enough to guess that she'd wanted to be distracted and cheered up. So he'd slid into blithe patter, relating his mother's latest tales of melodrama and humor at her acting school and then adding more stories of some of his mother's exploits, rattling on until Beckett was laughing and teasingly admonishing him to be nicer to his mother. He'd affected injury at the reproach and it had been such a familiar exchange that he'd been grinning and quite happy by the time she'd ended the call because Jim had breakfast ready.

Of course, it hadn't taken long to start missing her again. Not helped by the fact that both his mother and Alexis were out, his mother he didn't know where and Alexis having made plans with friends, shopping and then lunch. She would probably be home in another hour or so but until then, he was still alone.

As it was, he felt an entirely unprecedented and ludicrous surge of happiness when his phone rang as he was finishing up lunch. It was Ryan. Even better, a real friend, and not someone from Black Pawn or one of his many other acquaintances who generally only called when they wanted something. (Ugh, how could he have become so pathetically bad at being alone? Spending so much time in the close confines of the cabin with both Beckett and Jim for constant companionship had clearly spoiled him.) "Hey, Ryan, what's up?"

"Hey, Castle." Ryan greeted him in a rather subdued fashion, a twinge of something like worry—or was that guilt?—in his voice that effectively punctured Castle's good cheer. "How's Beckett?"

"She's okay, doing better," he answered. "She'll probably be cleared to start physical therapy in the next week or so."

"Oh good, good."

Castle frowned. Ryan sounded distracted, as if he weren't really interested in Beckett's physical recovery but that couldn't be right. Oh god, what was going on now?

"Say, Castle, when will you next be in the city?"

"I'm at the loft as we speak, actually. I'll be going back to Beckett's cabin on Monday. Why? Were you guys hoping for a poker night or something?" he asked, trying to sound teasing.

"No, it's just—we, uh, have something for Beckett and want you to give it to her."

"Oh, you got her a gift?" Giving Beckett something couldn't be bad. It might be a little surprising because cops didn't generally exchange actual gifts and gag gifts didn't count; the usual currency between cops was buying a round of drinks. Sending flowers when Beckett had been in the hospital was probably the closest thing to a gift the boys had ever really given Beckett, at least to his knowledge.

"No, not a gift. It's, um, kind of a long story."

"I've got time. What is it?" Castle prompted, his sense of foreboding growing with the tension in Ryan's voice. Ryan was not nearly as good at concealing his emotions as either Beckett or Espo so his voice, much like his expressions, tended to betray him every time.

"Okay, well, I don't know if you remember that the NYPD has a couple baseball teams in a league along with other teams from the FDNY, transit police, some city employees, you know."

"Yeah, I remember." Castle blinked, confused at his seeming non sequitur. Beckett had never played on one of the teams, although he knew she'd occasionally gone to the games to cheer on the various members of the 12th, including Esposito and Ryan.

"Well, there's a game tomorrow and one of the other players, McFarley, a detective with the 22nd, stopped by the precinct for some trash-talking."

"Okay." He still had no idea what any of this could possibly have to do with Beckett.

"Anyway, he was goading Espo about his throwing arm and since Gates was on her lunch break, they got to tossing a ball around the bullpen. And well, Espo threw the ball and McFarley missed it because he stumbled against Beckett's desk."

"What did he do to her desk?"

"Not her desk, her elephants, you know the ones. He caught himself on the desk but his hand hit the elephants and—"

"He broke Beckett's elephants?!" He hadn't meant to raise his voice but the question exploded out of him, his heart twisting. Oh god, Beckett. Considering everything she'd already endured this summer, he knew some people might think the loss of her elephants was a trivial thing—but they'd belonged to her mother. And he knew how sensitive she was to reminders of her mom, how much all her mom's possessions meant to her. He knew she loved those elephants. He remembered all too clearly that in the early days of their working together, he'd picked them up once out of curiosity as the only personal items she kept on her desk, and she'd snapped at him to put them down with enough of an edge to her voice, the dangerous glint in her eyes, that he'd immediately obeyed and even back then, when he'd still been more irritating than not and rather enjoyed goading her, never again disturbed her elephants. He'd had enough sense to know when she was really serious and enough self-preservation to back off.

He flinched. How much more would she have to bear? He was suddenly, blazingly, irrationally angry at the universe for never giving Beckett a break.

"Um, yes. Well, sort of."

Castle sternly bit back the urge to snap at Ryan; he could hear Ryan's guilt in his voice and it wasn't Ryan's fault. "McFarley did try to catch them and managed to keep the whole thing from smashing. But one end of it, the last elephant, broke off and there are some smaller shards. But that's not all. When the elephants hit the ground, another piece came off but not because it was broken but because it was apparently meant to come off. One of the elephants was hollow inside."

There was a compartment inside one of the elephants? He'd never known that. Not that he had any way of knowing but Beckett had never given any indication of knowing either. Of course, knowing Beckett, that didn't mean much. She didn't talk about the elephants, rarely even touched them herself. He'd only caught her looking at them sometimes when she was troubled.

"Was there something inside?"

"That's the thing, Castle. A miniature cassette tape fell out."

A tape. Inside the elephants that had belonged to Johanna Beckett. Oh. Castle felt some of his worry ease. It was no doubt a recording of some precious family moment involving a young Katie, the audio equivalent of an old home video. He'd naturally kept all the old home videos he'd made of Alexis (somewhat to Alexis's dismay), saved precious keepsakes from her baby and childhood days. He had a box full of them in his office, which he kept hidden because he knew Alexis tended to find some of the items embarrassing. Although what was embarrassing about her childhood scribblings and drawings, he didn't know since as far as he was concerned, they were worth more than the Mona Lisa.

"Wait, have you listened to it?"

"No!" Ryan sounded almost offended. "We wouldn't do that. It's Beckett's. We just figured if you're going to visit her anyway, you could take the cassette to her so she can have it back."

"Oh, yes, of course. And bring Beckett's elephants too. I probably know a guy who might be able to fix them, at least mostly."

"Right, that's what I kind of figured. We saved all the shards we could, some of them probably too small to really do much with but we figured it couldn't hurt."

"Good thinking."

"Yeah, well, least we could do." Ryan hesitated. "Tell Beckett we're sorry about the elephants. That's on us. McFarley can be something of an ass but Espo knew that, shouldn't have let himself be goaded."

"Is that why you're calling, not Espo? He's feeling too guilty?" Castle asked rather wryly. He knew how loyal to Beckett Espo was. In some ways, Beckett and Espo were very alike and it showed in the bond between them that Castle occasionally thought was stronger even than the bond of loyalty between the boys. If it ever came down to it, Castle was pretty sure Espo would side with Beckett over Ryan. Not that Castle could really imagine any scenario in which Ryan would go against Beckett to make such a choice necessary since Ryan had just as rock-solid a sense of loyalty.

"Espo's busy reaming McFarley out. I don't think McFarley's going to be quite so willing to come back to the 12th to trash-talk in the future."

From the sound of it, Castle doubted it would be much of a loss. Ryan's tone didn't indicate much liking for McFarley.

"Okay, well, bring all the pieces over. Hopefully my guy will be able to do something to put it back together."

"Right, will do. Thanks, Castle. Gates is back so I gotta go but we'll drop by after our shift ends tonight."

"I'll be here. See you later."

Castle ended the call, his mind already busily casting around for who among his connections would be best to call for something like fixing Beckett's elephants. Fixing Beckett's dad's watch a year ago had been a more straightforward task for his jeweler but something like Beckett's elephants, ceramic…

Luke, he thought, settling on an artist he knew who dabbled in different mediums but preferred to carve small figurines out of wood, little keepsakes, jewelry boxes or other small, decorative containers, as well as some pottery and glass work. Castle had bought one of his jewelry boxes for his mother and a couple of his other pieces for Alexis over the years. Yes, Luke should be able to handle the task; he had such dexterous fingers that Castle remembered thinking the man could probably re-attach the antennae on a butterfly.

It occurred to Castle that he should probably wait until seeing the state of Beckett's elephants before calling Luke. In the meantime, he would go find a miniature cassette player; he knew they had to have one somewhere. Or Alexis might have one for a school project of some kind; if he couldn't find one, he'd have to ask Alexis.

Being able to actively do something to help Beckett made him feel better, made him miss her less.

He sighed. He would have to tell Beckett about her elephants being damaged. He would tell her about the elephants when he was back at the cabin, first to give Luke time to evaluate the elephants and give his opinion as to how well they could be fixed, but most importantly because when Castle told her something he knew would hurt her like this, he wanted to be able to hold her. Yes, he would wait until they were together again and hope that his presence made it easier for her.

Castle returned to the cabin—to Beckett—on Monday, his happiness in seeing her again only slightly tempered with the knowledge of what he had to tell her about her elephants. She greeted him with a smile that made his heart leap and he thought he would never, ever get tired of seeing her smile at the sight of him (not that there was anything about her that he would ever get tired of.) Oh, her smile—he really really loved her smile, all of her smiles, but especially this one, the warm, softer smile he'd only started to see this summer in the cabin. A Kate smile that had little resemblance to the all-too rare-smiles he'd seen before in her Detective Beckett persona. A smile that was reserved for people she really cared about—her dad and now, amazingly, Castle.

Partly because of the effect of her smile and partly out of a wish to keep the knowledge of what had happened away from Jim, Castle waited before talking to Beckett about her elephants. Castle found he had rather absorbed at least some of Beckett's sense of protectiveness over Jim. As much as he respected the man and believed Jim might actually be stronger than Beckett perhaps gave her dad credit for being, Castle was not about to overstep, not now, and he knew that Beckett worried over Jim—and his continued sobriety, although she would never have said so aloud—so where Jim was concerned, he would let Beckett decide how much to tell him.

So it wasn't until after lunch when he and Beckett were outside for their customary afternoon walk that he finally broached the subject.

She was telling him about a family vacation she and her parents had gone up to Cape Cod in Massachusetts and were walking along the beach when her mom had been distracted pointing something out to the young Kate and been surprised by a wave that had knocked her off balance, resulting in Johanna falling back onto the wet sand with a soggy splash which had devolved into a family water fight. Today, Beckett was able to smile and laugh without the tinge of grief that usually clouded her memories.

It was so precious to him, not only that she was trusting him with such a story, but to see the unclouded brightness of her eyes. Having to disturb her hard-won peace of mind was a hard thing but he knew Beckett too well to think that she would thank him for putting off telling her about something that involved her so personally. As always, he could not protect her from hurt; all he could do was stand beside her and be there for her.

"Castle, you're being surprisingly quiet. Do you need to go write or something?"

"No, that's not it," he answered automatically and then took a breath, trying to steel himself as he met her eyes. "I have to tell you something."

Her quizzical smile faded at his tone. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"I saw the boys over the weekend."

"Oh." She stopped walking, one hand blindly reaching out to find his—and he felt marginally better at this sign that she was turning to him. "Is it about—"

"It's not your mom's case," he hurriedly assured her. He should have known that would be where her mind first went. "It's about your elephants."

"My elephants," she repeated.

"The ones on your desk at the precinct," he supplied unnecessarily.

"What happened?" Her gaze and her voice sharpened. "Did the boys break my elephants?"

He inwardly winced. "Yes, but it wasn't the boys, not really," he rushed on. Her eyes ordered him to explain and he did, telling her about McFarley's mishap with her elephants concisely, for once not trying to embellish or dramatize it. This wasn't the time for his storytelling panache.

She didn't cry or make any sound of grief or pain—no, Beckett wouldn't, would she—the only indication she gave for how much the elephants meant to her, how much it hurt to think of them being broken, was in the faint lines around her mouth, the set of her lips and her jaw. Very subtle signs but he caught them, partly because he was looking so carefully but also because his eyes had been made sharper by worry and love.

He described her elephants as they were now, broken into two big pieces, the main one and the last elephant at the end who'd been broken off from the rest, along with the multiple small shards. "I took pictures too." He'd felt he had to, so Beckett would be able to see for herself, evidence as it were.

He took out his phone and quickly pulled up the first picture, one of all the pieces in the box the boys had brought them over in, and then scrolled to the next and the next, showing the individual larger pieces.

It was on the last picture, the one of the elephant that had broken off, that she finally reacted, just a small indrawn breath that might in anyone else have been the precursor to a whimper. The single now-solitary elephant, with half its trunk broken off and the other end with more small shards missing, the raw, jagged edges looking almost obscene, stark white against the darker color of the ceramic of the elephant itself.

"They were my mother's." It was the first thing she'd said, her voice very quiet but there was enough desolation in it that he reacted almost without thinking, wrapping his arms around her.

"I know," he murmured. "I'm sorry."

She stood stiffly in his arms for a second and then she softened, her head resting on his shoulder, and he felt her release a shuddering breath as she curved into him. And as much as he hated—hated—the idea of her ever suffering any kind of pain or sorrow, it was so indescribably precious to him to know she was seeking and accepting comfort from him, in his arms.

"She used to say they were a family, like us—my mom, my dad, me."

A family that had been broken—also like the Beckett family had been left broken when Johanna had died. He flinched a little.

"I'm going to try to get the elephants fixed." It wasn't enough. He knew it wasn't nearly enough, could not fully make up for the damage that had already been done, but it was all he could do, all he could tell her.

She sniffed a little. "Let me guess," she managed, not quite steadily, her voice somewhat muffled against his shoulder, "you know a guy who fixes ceramic figurines?"

"Close enough. He mostly makes his own figurines and other little things, jewelry boxes, things like that, but anyway, I took all the pieces the boys saved over to him, asked him to see what he could do."

"Can he do it?"

"He said he should be able to. Attaching the one elephant to the main piece of it would be easy enough, he said, and he'll do his best with the smaller shards. You'll still have your mom's elephants, damaged, but not irreparably so. It won't be perfect; there'll be scars, little nicks here and there, but it'll be something."

She released a breath. "It'll be something, better than not having it anymore. Thank you."

"You shouldn't thank me until we see the final result but Luke sounded pretty confident. It'll be imperfect but still, somehow, whole, precious. An even more appropriate mascot for you, Beckett, like a piece of kintsugi."

"Like what?" She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes clearer, more focused with at least some of her usual intelligence and curiosity.

"Kintsugi," he repeated. Luke had mentioned the term and it occurred to Castle, it really might be one of the best similes to describe Beckett. "It's the name of an art form the Japanese have in mending broken pieces of pottery. They remake broken pieces of pottery into something new but in doing so, they use gold to fill in the cracks, not trying to hide the damage but emphasizing it. They believe there's an added value in something that has a history, has suffered damage."

"Damaged. That's the word for it. I'm damaged and now my mom's elephants are too."

He inwardly winced. He should have realized that Beckett, perfectionist that she was, would focus on that aspect. "That's not the point, Beckett, weren't you listening? The point of kintsugi is to find beauty in the imperfections. And that's what you are, beautiful in every sense, not in spite of everything you've been through but because of it."

She was silent for a long minute and he could not read her expression. It wasn't rejection of his words but it wasn't exactly acceptance either.

"I have scars," she blurted out, her voice low and a little shaky.

"Scars," he repeated rather bemusedly, thrown by this seeming change of subject.

Her breathing was a little ragged. "Yeah. One, here," she raised a hand to briefly touch her chest, "from the—the bullet—" an expression like a momentary tremor flashed across her face, too fast for him to read it, "and another here," her hand lightly touched her side, "from the surgery."

He'd flinched a little in spite of himself at the mention of the bullet and the surgery—it had been so close, he had almost lost her—and he pushed aside the still-too-vivid memories of blood and screams and sirens and so much terror. She was here now, she had survived, was getting stronger, better, every day. "Kate…" he sighed, unsure what to say, how to react.

"They're… not pretty."

He blinked, surprised. "Are you bothered by the scars?"

"Of course I am!" she flared. "You haven't seen them; you don't know how ugly they are."

He felt a flicker of anger, whether in response to her tone or her assumption he didn't know. "I don't need to see them to know I don't care. Do you honestly think I would?" he demanded. "Do you think I'm that shallow?" He could be frivolous and shallow at times, yes, but not like this, not about anything concerning Beckett.

For possibly the first time in his memory, Beckett backed down. "No, I don't," she conceded. "It's not about you; it's me. I don't—I can hardly even look at the scars."

She sounded almost… defeated and it was so wrong, seemed like something that went against nature.

"Do you have any idea how many times I've fantasized about you?" he asked, his tone deliberately provocative.

She blinked and then narrowed her eyes at him. There, she was starting to be herself again.

Feeling more confident in his strategy, he went on, his tone shifting towards sincerity. "I've been attracted to you, wanted you, since the day we met so it's been two years of thinking about you, imagining what it would be like to be with you, to be able to kiss you, touch you, hold you. And you know what a vivid imagination I have." He paused and met her eyes. "Believe me when I tell you that you, the reality of you, have always been better than any fantasy. Scars or not, there is absolutely no way that you could ever be anything less than the sexiest woman I've ever seen. A fantasy come to life."

She blinked rapidly, for one of the few times in his memory seeming at a loss for how to react, but a flush stained her cheeks and really, making his self-possessed Beckett blush might be one of his favorite things. She bit her lip before managing a pale imitation of one of her usual smirks. "Just don't call me Galatea."

He gave a crack of delighted laughter, one not of amusement but of something like amazement and awe at her. "See, that, right there, is why you are the hottest woman ever."

And with that, he caught her in his arms and kissed her, proceeding to demonstrate the truth of his words with all the passion he felt, would always feel, for her. Kissed her until he was quite sure that her lingering insecurities about her scars—silly Beckett—had been forgotten.

~To be continued…~

A/N 2: As always, thank you to all readers and reviewers.