After nearly every single review asked for more of this universe, I decided that I had to continue it. Please forgive any mistakes, I'm currently battling a raging case of bronchitis but I wanted to get this out there while there was an interest. Candle (Sick and Tired) by The White Tie Affair would not be the worst song ever to listen to while reading this chapter as it inspired a lot of what I wrote.

Not everyone is lucky enough to receive a mark; in fact they're rare enough that some people don't believe they exist at all, an old wives tale passed down as caution in love from a long gone generation. Jim and Johanna Beckett both had the marks and little Katie had envied them from a very early age, well aware that there was no guarantee that one would ever show up on her person. There was little rhyme and reason to the arrival of the marks; some people got them as early as thirteen, with a pimply faced crush on the girl three seats on the bus, and sometimes they didn't show up until a person was pushing senior citizenship. Her mother had always told her it was fate when the marks arrived, they lead you to the right person at the right time.

As a child Kate Beckett was wildly infatuated by the idea that somewhere out there was your perfect other, someone out there looking forward to meeting you too. Then her mother had died and her entire reality came crashing down like a tower of cards. Watching what losing her mother did to her father, she had steadfastly decided that the mark didn't matter, she didn't want love if it ended like that. She didn't want to love someone when they could be taken from you in the blink of an eye.

Then Richard Castle waltzed into her life like it was his own personal playground.

"Can I shoot him now or do I have to wait until he's done with the paperwork?" The look the lawyer shot her was silencing and she shrugged as she sunk against the wall with arms crossed over her chest.

The writer looked positively giddy and she wanted to smack his scruffy face; he was her friggin' fated one and maybe she could wrap her mind around that if he wasn't forcing his way into her life, into her job, where he could very likely find a fate similar to her mother's. Her phone ringing pulled her from her sulking as she got the address and basic information on a murder in midtown; Castle looked up at her like a kid in a candy store as he made for the door. "We have a case?"

"I have case," she told him with a smirk. "You have paperwork."

He looks like she kicked his puppy and she's not above the power trip it gives her when she struts her way out of the precinct to make her way to the crime scene. The boys are waiting for her when she arrives at the scene and she can't bite back a few quips when they set her up for them as they run through the scene; she's in a good mood in spite of her gruesome job and she knew she bit their heads off earlier that morning so she makes up for it with sarcasm and small grins before slipping away to talk with the employers of their victim.

But then he's waiting when she gets off the elevator and really it might be worth the paperwork to just go ahead and shoot him – not fatally, he's got a kid after all, but enough to make him think twice about waltzing back into her life.

"Don't look so bitter," he told her with a grin on his face. "Grump all you want but I know you're happy to see me."

"About as happy as I get over a flat tire when I'm running late."

He sighed. "C'mon Beckett. We're fated ones and you can be pissy all you want but you can't ignore that. We're meant for each other."

"Look," she growled as she stepped into his personal space. "I don't give a damn what we are – this is my job and it's not your personal playground. You want to write a book based off me? Fine. But you step into my crime scene then you take it seriously. Understand."

"Perfectly." He doesn't back down, doesn't cower under a glare that can make even Javier Esposito run for cover. She turns on her heel to stalk off toward the crime scene but he caught her wrist and pulled her back. "Detective? Your crime scene's that way."

She doesn't grant him a reply as she strutted past him and knocked on the door, banging her frustration on the wood. "Detective Beckett, NYPD, I need to speak with you about your nanny."

"Richard Castle, just NY," she heard him tell the woman once she stepped into the apartment.

Later that night she sat at her desk and ran a basic background search on her shadow; he had left hours ago, something about tucking his daughter into bed and it's sweet, endearing in a way she doesn't want to think about. Right leg tucked under her left thigh, she hunched over her desk as she poured over all of Richard Castle's dirtiest secrets: stealing a police horse while nude, public intoxication, and a few other misdemeanors that he'd gotten little more than a slap on a wrist for. What caught her attention was the information on his marital status, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of the finalization date of his first divorce. Richard Castle officially ended his marriage to his first wife, Meredith, on November 17th, 1997 on Kate Beckett's eighteenth birthday.

"She cheated on me with her director," he whispered in her ear and she whipped around to find him standing in the dimly lit bullpen with two cups of coffee in hand. He extended one of the drinks to her. "Ryan mentioned that sometimes you stay late to go over the evidence so I checked on Alexis, ate some dinner, and came back."

"Thanks," she whispered as he dropped into the chair next to her desk.

"Any reason you're going over my background check," he asked as he took a sip from his own cup.

She took a pull off her own and furrowed her brow – less than a day and he already has her coffee order down perfectly. "Just curious. She cheated on you?"

"Yeah."

She sighed. "Castle... When did your mark show up?"

"That day, when I was officially free of Meredith," he explained. "Why?"

Her fingers subconsciously found her mark and she rubbed the skin through the thin covering of her shirt. "Mine too."

"Oh."

"It was my eighteenth birthday," she explained quietly. "I was... I was so excited. It woke me out of a dead sleep and I went running through the house to my parents room and woke my mom up to show her."

"You actually looked forward to it then," he gathered. "What happened?"

"Not yet," she told him quietly. "I can't... Not yet."

"Okay," he relented and it was then that she noticed his hand on her arm, hating herself when she pulled away. "Want to run the case again?"

"Yeah," she breathed, grateful for the reprieve.

He was annoying, a nine year old on a sugar rush, but he was also a man who brought her coffee in the middle of the night and understood when she was physically incapable of talking about her past. He was a pain in the ass but, dammit, he was growing on Kate Beckett like a fungus and she wasn't sure she wanted to be rid of him anytime soon.