"Yo!" Ryan hears his partner call from the other side of the bullpen.

Ryan looks up from his paperwork, a donut sitting on a paper towel acting as a paperweight, and grabs his coffee mug. "Hey." He offers a simple greeting as Esposito struts up in his usual bravado fashion. Ryan drinks some of the luke warm coffee in his mug and Esposito sits down in the chair next to his desk with a sigh.

"You heard yet?" Espo asks and yanks his foot up to cross his legs casually.

"About Beckett's replacement?" He asks, nodding toward the cleared out desk in front of Esposito's. Esposito just nods and raises his brow. "Yeah, heard they went with an outsider."

"Mmhmm," Esposito hums and leans back further in his chair. "Some hot shot from up in Boston. He's supposed to be some kind of all-star."

Ryan shakes his head with a twinge of nervousness in his throat as he sets his mug down and grabs his donut. "Just feels weird, you know?" He asks, shrugging his shoulders and taking a look up to Beckett's desk again. "I mean, Beckett was lead detective when I transferred to homicide. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel taking orders from an outsider."

"Taking orders?" Esposito says, a tone of impatience and surprise seeping into his voice.

Ryan waves his glazed donut in the air in front of him and nods over to the captain's office. "Rumor going around is that Gates is making the new guy lead detective."

"Man!" Espo cries in frustration and pointlessly adjusts himself in the chair. "Just what we need, another hard-liner walking around thinking we wouldn't know how to get dressed in the morning if he doesn't tell us how."

'Yeah," Ryan chuckles as he swallows his breakfast. "So uh... you heard from Beckett?" He asks, nodding at her desk again.

Espo raises his brow, his expression quickly melting out of the scowl, "Lanie went over there the day she walked out, but she hasn't heard anything since."

"Hmm," Ryan hums and looks back down to his paperwork and picks up his mug again. He's always been wary of poking his nose into another person's personal business, especially a woman's personal business. Growing up with four older sisters taught him better. He's tried his best to stay out of the rumor and gossip mill as best he can while still maintaining his part of the pack, but it gets hard and has only gotten harder since Beckett left. "Any idea what got her to quit yet?"

But Espo, having danced around the issue for too long, simply looks over to his partner with an obvious purse of his lips. "Bro," he says, waiting for Ryan to look over to him with his mug raised. "Come on, we all know how they felt about each other."

Ryan looks around the mostly quiet bullpen without moving his head and keeps his mug to his face. "I thought that was a secret." Esposito lets out a hard chuckle through his teeth and shakes his head. "You think she quit because of Castle?"

"Do you see either of them here right now?" Esposito asks, a rhetorical and obvious question. "Word's all over the precinct about how she went off on your boy from narcotics over his chair."

"Yeah, but I got it back." Ryan nods over to the chair sitting next to Beckett's desk where it's supposed to be. "And what about Castle? No one's heard from him since Beckett woke up."

"Lanie thinks it has something to do with the shooting."

"I thought she said she didn't remember anything."

"Ryan, let me ask you something." Esposito starts and nods his head toward his partner. "If you knew Jenny was dying and you knew you could only tell her one thing, what would it be?"

"That I..." he trails off, his words falling as pieces start to click. Ryan looks over to Esposito with his mouth agape. "You think that Castle-"

"That's what Lanie thinks." Esposito says, raising his hands up in defense. "She thinks Castle left because Beckett couldn't remember and he took it as an out to save himself. So when Beckett came back and Castle wasn't here, she couldn't figure out why and she flipped."

Ryan thinks silently before he leans back in his chair and shakes his head to himself. "Man," Ryan says and pulls himself back up to his paperwork, "Castle was like the big brother I never had."

"I feel you, bro."

"Detectives?" Their captain calls from the doorway to her office, and they each look up, Esposito turning around, listening intently to their boss. "A body just dropped in midtown, dispatch is sending you the address now."

Both Ryan and Esposito are up out of their chairs, Ryan grabbing his suit jacket off the back of his chair as he stands. "On it, Sir."

"Also, our newest detective will be meeting you at the crime scene. They were supposed to meet here to get settled in, but Detective Sharpe wants to get right to work and will meet you at the scene instead."

"Right, Sir." Esposito says to his superior and quickly catches up with Ryan, who's looking for the address from dispatch. "I can see our newest addition is already kissing ass."

"Be nice, Esposito." Ryan mutters under his breath as they near the elevator. "I don't need you getting both of us off on the wrong foot with the guy, okay?"

Rick feels himself slowly being drawn from his deep sleep, but the satisfaction of sleeping is slow to give itself up and he soon lets the heaviness in his eyes win and adjusts his head on the pillow, tightening his arms around the intensely warm body in his bed, and draws in a long breath through his nostrils. He feels a smile tickle his face as the nostalgic scent of cherries floods his senses as he feels a soft wall of hair brush against his nose. At first, his mind doesn't question anything and just accepts that there's something good about this morning and how he's waking up and he decides to enjoy it.

But when he feels something in front of him expand slightly in his arms, he is startled out of his sleep and jolts up out of bed. There's a brief moment in his mind, before he gets his bearings, when he thinks he went on a drunken slew last night down at the pub he's staying at and met someone willing to spend the night with him. And in that second, feeling the hot body laying in his arms, he hates himself.

It's only when his eyes focus and catch the sight of her beautiful brunette locks tumbling across the pillow and underneath the bedding and he feels the heat from her golden soft skin on his arms that his memory starts to come back to him. When it does, he has to run it over again in his mind. He's not sure it's real. He can't seem to trust it, knowing he's had that dream so many times he can play it back as vividly as if he actually lived it. But here she is, sleeping soundly in his bed. Not only sleeping soundly in his bed, but is dead asleep in his arms, just as he always pictured her.

Using his arm as a support underneath her pillow and the other kept draping over her, tangling her fingers together with his on the arm around her in a loose grip, with the covers pulled up just below her naked shoulder.

She can't be real. Life doesn't smile upon him this much. He can't be this lucky. There's no way last night actually happened and she's not some deluded figment of his runaway imagination.

Against all rational thought in his mind, he decides to test the waters and slowly leans down, giving into the draw her warm skin is radiating with. He lets his eyes drift shut as he lips reach out and feather the lightest kiss down onto her arm, brushing his lips down against her skin as lightly as he can.

His heart locks up when she starts to stir at the feeling, nodding her head to the side against his arm and scooting herself back, further into the cove of his chest and his embrace and relaxes with a long, sleepy sigh, pulling at his other arm as if it's a cover to pull over herself. When it happens, the unbridled joy that explodes through his system at the realization that she's actually here and that it actually happened, finally, is indescribable. He lets her pull him in closer to her and wraps his arm around her tenderly, holding her lovingly to his chest and burying his nose into the tangles of her hair.

He wants to go back to sleep. He wants to remember what it feels like to fall asleep with her in his arms like this. But he's too wide awake now.

The night before still doesn't seem real. Out of all the times he imagined it being with her, he never expected her to be that emotionally driven. There was something about her that was wanting him to be closer to her than he possibly could be, more than he already was. Like they each wanted to get lost in the other. He felt her raw emotion on her lips and sensed it in her features and her raggedly strained breath. It's as if the more he tried to sooth her pain and take it away by a soft caress of her face or a loving kiss on her lips, the more it would cause, and the more it caused, the closer to him she would pull herself.

The night was still long, setting themselves into a long, slow rhythm of going back and forth between unmatched intensity and slow, exploratory, permission-seeking love making.

It's the time in the morning when the sun is shining too brightly through the curtains, and Alexis is sure to be off at school by now. He was hoping to see her off on his first day back. And as the responsibilities of his normal life outside of this bed and the beauty in it with him, his thoughts start to haunt him, just as they stared to before she came into his bedroom the night before.

How much do they really know? Can they just walk away from it all and will they even let them walk away? With her with him now, will they try to rip them apart? Will they try to take her away again? Jack left him with worries that can't be dispelled.

He loves this woman too much to do nothing while the wolves are at the door and the barking is getting louder.

Making the decision, he reaches up and softly brushes her hair back behind her with a light touch, revealing her beautiful sleeping face. With a tenderness, he leans over and presses his lips to her cheek lovingly, letting her know as she sleeps that he loves her with a long-held kiss that he's slow to release. He waits, with his lips just a touch away from her cheek for her to stir, but when she remains still in his arms, he slowly slides his arm out from under her pillow and carefully climbs out of bed.

A silent ten minutes later, he's ran some warm water through his hair, scrubbed his face, brushed his teeth, and is dressed in a pair of darker, more comfortable denim jeans he forgot to pack with him and a light weight pale blue dress shirt. When he comes out of the closet, he decides to leave her a note, not wanting to go through the hell that is sure to be turning his cell phone back on after this long, and writes out a note to her. He comes back into the room and searches for something to prop the note up on, thinking it might stay put sitting against the table lamp on her side.

But as he tip-toes around the room, he spots something and smiles.

He quietly pads over and picks up the stuffed bear he bought her and goes over, sitting the bear on the nightstand and putting the note, reading 'woke up and had to make a quick errand, please stay naked in bed as long as you can', in the bear's lap, and goes out to his office.

It's windy, but ever since he cut his hair, he doesn't worry about it too much.

He doesn't like being back here, but he feels that if Jack had to come at this, this is what he would do. Like father like son.

The orange and yellow leaves of the country side are rustling through the cemetery and covering up the headstones, and the breeze in the air is making it somewhat haunting in the early morning. That funeral was the first time he ever visited a cemetery. He thought the feel of a cemetery was easy to convey when he had to write a scene in one for a book. He's driven passed them, he's watched them in plenty of movies. But to be in one where you actually know a person who's buried there, it's an entirely different, more surreal and haunting feeling.

He knows he's nearing his grave. He's been scared to look up from his shoes, scared to know what it is he's going to feel like seeing his grave again, what memories it will bring back, what the bile at the back of his throat will taste like. But when he passes it coming from the opposite direction, he turns in the grass and sees the grave marker. The leaves blowing in the air have gotten caught by the head stone and are covering a part of his name. He leans down with a knotted heart and burning eyes to brush the leaves away, reading the name aloud in his head.

Rick swallows thickly as the pain of the memory starts to stab him. Roy didn't deserve to die like that. He had a family.

He always wrote in people talking to graves in his books, simply because he thought that's what people did, but never understood it until now. "You told me to look after her." He says the only thing on his mind.

His eyes look away from the headstone and go over to the spot where the podium stood, where she was shot that hot, humid day.

"I know I did my best, but my best didn't seem to be good enough." He says and lets his head hang low as a breeze wafts through the air. "I guess you can thank Him for me for giving her back." He swallows past the ever-growing lump in his throat. "And I won't fail this time. I promise." He says and stands up without another glance at the grave and turns around, making straight for the spot across the path where he saw it.

He goes passed a few more rows of graves, passed the tree and the tomb, and comes to a slow stop where he saw it. The small glimmer of light that heralded the worst moments of his life. Just a small glint that warned him. It was a warning that if he'd just had enough forethought, if he'd been quicker, he would have been able to stop. But he wasn't. He failed.

Kneeling down, he presses his hand to the grass where the sniper should have laid. Looking from where he could have come from and where he could have gone. There's no utility buildings or shacks near by. Just open space. There were grounds keepers at the funeral, there only for digging the actual grave and supervising the burial, but in his three weeks, he remembers questioning every single one of them. They all checked out. Jack was right. Whoever took this shot wasn't doing it to kill her. That was only a side effect.

This shot must have been taken to warn others about what they were capable of. But who?

"Rick?" A familiar voice calls to him from some distance away.

Rick looks up from his place kneeling down to what may well be a random spot in the cemetery to anyone else and sees Jim walking through the cemetery, coming from the opposite direction of Montgomery's grave with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "Jim," he says surprised as he stands. "Hi."

"Hey," Jim greets him with a smile and reaches out to shake Rick's hand. Rick returns a friendly, albeit surprised, smile and shakes the man's hand. "I hadn't heard you were back in town."

He nods and decides what he should tell him. In the chaos of returning home, Beckett must not have called her father to fill him in. "Yeah, I got back in yesterday morning."

Jim nods and stuffs his hand back into the pocket of his jacket. "So... what are you doing here?"

Deciding that Jim is in the right not to make this setting right for small talk, he gets to the point. "I was just trying to look into what happened with fresh eyes, that's all. See if..." Rick trails off, windmilling his hands as he looks in the other direction toward where the podium stood, "anything stands out." He sees Jim nod out of the corner of his eye before he turns back and asks an obvious question of his own. "What about you? I didn't exactly expect to see any visitors."

"Oh, I..." Jim nods off and points back behind him, "was just coming from a doctor's appointment and..." he's hesitating, Rick can tell, but he patiently waits him out, "someone from group suggested I revisit this place when I had the chance, see if it helps me come to terms with things." Jim looks down to the grass where they're standing, then back up through the cemetery. "Is this where it came from then?" He asks, gaining Rick's attention back with a raised brow. "The shot, I mean."

With a solemn nod, Rick looks down to the grass between the headstones. "Yeah, this is it." He clarifies, his stomach knotting with nauseousness. "This is where I saw the glimmer come from."

He can feel Jim's eyes pear at him intently for a moment before he hears him shuffle in the grass. "Have you heard from her, son?"

Rick can't help but feel a smile at the edge of his lips. Somehow, Jim's earned the right to address him as that. He's lived it, he knows what a father is supposed to do, he knows what a father really is. Rick doesn't have to get used to hearing it from Jim. With Jack, it felt like he was wedging himself into a part of his life he just didn't fit into, as much as even Rick himself wanted him to.

"She found me when I was away, convinced me to come home." He says with a warm smile appearing on his face. "She said that she realized her life was too short to keep denying the truth."

Jim sees the far away look in his eyes. He's seen that far away look in the mirror when he relives a moment from their past. He knows he spends a lot of time in the past. It's all he has left of them. "You know," Jim hesitates to start, shuffling his feet in the grass and looking down.

Rick looks over and sees Jim's eyes turned downward.

"When Katie was growing up, her mother and I always talked about slowing down after she was grown up." Jim says and looks up to Rick with a calm easiness in his eyes. "Johanna was from a small town up north and she always talked about moving back out to the country after Katie had left the house, getting out of the city. We'd agreed that, after our daughter was off at college, we'd... slow down, work on making up for the time we lost together working and raising our daughter. I'm sure you and Alexis' mother had the same talk."

"No," Rick says on a dark chuckle, "she made up for lost time, all right, just not with her husband."

"In any case," Jim continues, "when Katie went off to Stanford, Johanna and I finally had a chance to slow down, but... she'd been partner for only a few years and didn't want to walk away. I wanted to, I mean... we had an agreement." Jim admits with an edge of anger making its way into his voice. "It was just one case after another with her. Katie comes home for a visit and she accepts some pro-bono work. I plan a nice dinner out for the family, a reservation at Katie's favorite restaurant, and I get a call from my wife."

Rick can still put himself back in the precinct that night she first told him. Seeing the first real raw emotion from her, hearing tears in her voice for the first time. Thinking about it too much still makes his heart break.

Jim shakes his head to himself and seems to grit his teeth. "She says that she's still working on her case and that she'll just meet us there."

Rick nods. "Yeah, she told me." He says in a low voice.

He can hear Jim take in a ragged breath. "You want to know the last thing I said to my wife, Rick?" Rick hesitates before he finally gives in and looks over for his answer. "I said... I don't know what it's going to take for you to spend some time with your daughter, but I hope you find out before we're dead."

Rick can feel his heart squeeze intensely, more so when he sees Jim fight tears in his eyes.

"And uh..." Jim continues after a moment taking gathering himself, "I just wish more than anything that I could go back and have a moment to tell her I loved her." He says, looking down to the grass. "I hate thinking she died wondering if her own husband didn't love her."

Rick blinks his eyes slowly and lets out a deep sigh, his shoulders deflating. "I suppose the cat's out of the bag then." Jim chuckles silently to himself. "Have you always known?"

"My wife forbid me from meddling in my daughter's personal life but... you didn't exactly do a very good job at hiding it, son, dedicating two books to her and everything." That earns Jim a soft chuckle. "I'm just surprised that you were willing to let her go."

"I..." he cuts himself off abruptly, not wanting to defend his actions or admit to something he doesn't want to admit to her father yet. "Josh never asked her before they broke up anyway. I guess he listened to me."

Jim nods again and moves to knock Rick in the arm with his elbow. "He never asked me either."

Rick looks over to him, "Were you expecting him to?"

"Well," Jim smiles, "at the end of the day, it's Katie's decision, but that doesn't mean I would have to be happy about it."

Rick's brow pinches, thinking a surgeon who gives most of his time away would have earned a solid acceptance by any parent, if not a loving welcome into any family. "You didn't approve of Josh?"

"I wouldn't say approve or disapprove, Rick, but..." Jim trails off, shrugging his shoulders. "Let's just say I didn't exactly see him diving in front of any bullets for my daughter any time soon." Rick feels a smile force its way onto his face, lighting up his features as much as he tries to fight it. "And I know I'm not going to be around forever. I'd... kind of like to go knowing my daughter's going to be happy. I'm still a few years away from retirement, but uh..." Jim nods off, shuffling his feet, "Johanna always did have her heart set on having grandchildren to spoil."

Rick loses the fight with his smile and decides to just shake his head and let it overtake him. Looking around him, why he came here in the first place, he's falling victim to the same thing he asked her not to fall victim to. After a moment, he looks back up to Jim. "Thanks, Jim."

An hour later, Rick is pushing the door to the loft open and is hit with the scent of food being cooked again.

But with a cardboard cupholder in his hands, he's startled as he takes a step into the loft and sees his mother at the island, hearing her distinct laughter as Kate stands on the opposite end with steam rising up from the stove in front of her smiling face.

His mother is the first to actually acknowledge his arrival in her usual theatrical manner. "Ah, Richard!" She cries and opens her arms to him as he closes the door behind himself. "Where have you been?"

"Just uh..." he chooses his words, looking at the two coffee cups in the holder in one hand, "had to run a quick errand, that's all."

"Ugh, you and your errands." Martha rolls her eyes and moves behind her son, pushing him toward the kitchen. "The one time you're actually up and about tending to responsibilities and your lovely partner is here making-"

"Martha," Kate says with a smile as they approach. Kate lifts her hand and gives them a dismissive wave. "It's alright. I was hungry and have learned not to wait up for him when it comes to food."

"But," Rick buts in, "not when it comes to coffee." He says and moves out of his mother's invasive shoving and around the island to stand a few feet away from her. Rick then pulls the second cup from the cardboard holder and slowly hands it to her. "I hope this makes up for my absence."

Her system was aswarm with butterflies when she saw the cups when he came in, but they're going crazy now that she's actually reaching over and taking it from him, just as she always would. When she woke up with him gone, she started to panic until she saw his note sitting in Sherlock's lap. She's only been up for a little over an hour and Martha's been keeping her company and luckily, she was already in the kitchen by the time Martha came down stairs.

Kate takes the cup with a smile but doesn't take a drink right away and waits until Castle settles himself into place just a few feet away from her as she turns the burner off. "Thanks."

Rick's eyes crinkle at the sound of her voice and he quickly hears his mother go upstairs, humming an out-of-key tune to herself.

And Kate is quick to pick the ball up. "So, are we going to talk about it?" She asks in a low voice as she lifts her cup to her mouth.

Rick takes a step closer to her. "You think we should talk about it?" He asks in a voice as low as her's.

"I mean, we should talk about it. Unless you want to go the route we usually go."

"Being?"

"We both pretend it never happened and that it meant nothing even though we both know that's bull and that we're just scared to talk about it." She jabs as she takes a sip.

Rick laughs under his breath. "I'll tell you what." He says and takes a step closer to her, now just a foot apart from her, earning her full attention as she looks up at him. "Why don't we talk about it over dinner tonight?"

Kate stares up at him for a long moment before she shakes her head away in a smile. "Are you asking me out on a date?" She asks incredulously, a smile making it hard to get the words out.

"If you say yes, it's a date, but if you say no, I'll come back and say it's just dinner." He charms her with a wag of his brow.

Kate smiles and hides herself behind her coffee cup. "Okay."

"Listen," Rick shifts his tone and shuffles closer to her, "I have to put on my shining armor and do battle with the wicked, fire-breathing dragon of the north today, so-"

"Wait," Kate chuckles, "Wicked, fire-breathing dragon?"

"I have a meeting with Gina I'm two and a half months late for." Kate laughs brightly and doubles over toward him, her head nearly falling into his chest. "But... I have a friend over in Little Italy who owes me a long-standing favor that I've been waiting for just such an occasion to cash in... and we can talk about it then." Rick eyes her with that bright-eyed charm she's seen before, but not in a long while. "And some other things if we have time."

Kate looks down and takes his hand, looking at their enjoined hands for a long moment as she circles his knuckles with her thumb before looking back up at him. "We'll make time."

A/N: Sorry this chapter is so long, but I needed to get these scenes in one chapter before the next one. Hope you enjoyed. Leave a review if you did. :)