Just a few thoughts on how your name changes with your rather than defines you. It was a prompt that I was given and it stuck.

Castles not mine I'm just borrowing it play from time to time.

Changing Names

Katie. It was what my mom called me when I was little. My dad still does most the time. Katie it was soft and quiet so appropriate for a little girl with pig tails with dreams of growing up to be a princess. Still appropriate in middle school when chiding me to do my chores. "I love you, Katie." I can hear it echoing in my head sometimes when I think of her.

After she was murdered Dad was the only one that used it. And I kept it that way. For a long time it stung to hear him say it. For a long time he was saying in a drunken slur. When he sobered up, i don't know if it was that enough time had passed or that it was such a relief to hear it from his sober mind. But now he's the only one and I like it that way.

Katherine Beckett is my full name and it's always felt a little formal. A little stuffy. And mostly like I was in trouble when I heard it. So I've always just gone by Kate, Kate Beckett. It has a good ring to it. As Castle would say good consonance.

Kate was always such an appropriate name for teenager even when they come up with their own monikers. There's so many Kate's out there that for awhile I was Becks which suited me just fine. A good nickname. Not too silly something coaches and teachers could call me too, and it was from my name so all the better.

I went back to Kate in college. And I stuck with Kate after my mother died. It was a good solid name. It was simple and easy.

Then I enrolled in the academy and it was Officer Beckett. It has a nice ring to it right. Officer Beckett. It has a sense of authority and rolls of the tongue with a sense of urgency when needed. I clung to that title. It was shield while I crawled into my mother's case and hide there. I was just doing my job. I was an officer of the law investigating a case, that's what I was supposed to do.

It was too long before I realized that I was hiding behind it and using it as an excuse to let my mother's case eat me alive. I took waking up in the hospital because I'd collapse from exhaustion and the threat of losing my job that forced me to change. To get help and to put my mothers case in a box and walk away. She gave me the drive to be a cop, the purpose to give people the answers that I never got. And I would have to be content with out those answers if I wanted to do that.

So I gave up and focused on the next name change I wanted so badly, Detective Beckett. I put everything I had into getting the title change. I stayed late, offered to do the grunt work that no one wants to do, shadowed detectives on my days off, studied for the test and spent a lot of hours on the shooting range perfecting my aim.

I was rewarded with the shiny new badge and the important new title and the new name, Detective Kate Beckett, at twenty-four. I was able to establish my self with a new job and a new name separate from the rabbit hole. I closed cases and climbed the ladder. I got my own team. I was Detective Kate Beckett of the NYPD.

Then I got the call on a strange case. The body was covered in rose petals with sunflowers on the eyes, straight out of Flowers for you Grave. And for that I got Nikki Heat, my fictional alter ego created by my favorite author and officially the biggest pain in my ass.

Nikki Heat isn't really so bad, other than her name which was terrible. But she brought into my life this charismatic creative, inventive, silly, caring man into my life. And as much as he grated on my nerves and came up with crazy theories he wormed his way into my life. He became my partner, and eventually I got over the question, "So you're the real life Nikki Heat?"

Some one once told me that your name is just something that grows and changes with you and until today I'd never really stopped and thought about it but now's the first time I'm changing the last part of the name. I'll still be Detective Beckett but after today I'll be Kate Castle.

When he finally asked it was a little silly and goofy just like he is, and it made me smile because I'd known that he was planning some sort of extravagant ridiculous way and instead it just kind of fell out of his mouth. He looked a little stunned that he'd asked and then scared that I would freak out so he just froze looking at me. I couldn't help myself, I laughed.

Fortunately he took it as a good sign because he grinned, "So that's a yes?" I could only nod as he grabbed me and kissed me. "I have a ring. Hold on! I have a ring." He yelled running down the hall to our bedroom. And when came back he got down on one knee and asked, "Will you do me the honor of being my wife and becoming Katherine Castle?"

So as of today I am, Detective Kate Beckett and Katherine Castle, and it's never felt more perfect.

So some of you probably won't agree with her changing her name but as much as I love Kate Beckett there is something lovely about Katherine Castle that could be separate from the Detective side we love.

Thoughts

Babyrose