Author's Note: Tissue warning. Only because ya'll keep telling me I should give them to you. The italicized portion that Castle reads from is also written by me - as a part of his book.
It pains him that his venture into serious literature is born from Kate's death.
He begins writing the story because it's swirling in his mind, a mix of the words and his grief eating him alive and making it painful to continue existing. He spends weeks trying to resist, trying to write a multitude of stories beyond the one that his mind and his heart wants him to tell.
But when he gives in, when he's pounding his mourning and broken heart out on the keyboard of his laptop, Castle finds that he can breath. He can think, he can function, he can live day to day in a world without Kate Beckett.
It takes him two months to finish the entire thing. It's another seven before he can bring himself to read it, much less consider handing it over to another person.
In that seven months he works on another book, his mind latching onto the idea of Bex Tyler in the middle of the night and absolutely refusing to let the precocious kid detective go.
His sassy creation is a hit, with her one-liners and big heart. Thousands of little girls, and even a few boys, writing him to tell him how much they love Bex and her sidekick Roy. They make him smile, they make him enjoy his life again. He goes on a three-month book tour around the United States and Europe, hugging kids, signing books and making himself take the time to enjoy parts of the world that he has, for so long, neglected.
It's when he returns that he finally gives the book to Gina, and she calls him the same night to inform him that she'll publish his book or get fired trying.
They've already hung up when he realizes that she had been crying while they talked.
'The waves roll in steadily with the tide, the foam lapping at my ankles as I watch the sun set in the distance. The peace I find while standing on the shore is no accident. The ocean has always soothed me, the knowledge that it continues to ebb and flow in spite of whatever else might happen in the world. The tide comes in, it rolls away and the water remains even while everything else has gone.
How many years I have remaining on the earth is not something I know. It's not something that I think I should know. I no longer ache for death, to join Elizabeth under the ground to sleep in silence. I am caught in the balance of death and life, my lungs breathing air and my feet making imprints into the sand, but not living. I have accepted that she is gone, that I'll never experience the sparkling of her eyes when she was happy, taste her mouth as she leans in for a kiss except, perhaps, in my dreams. But that acceptance has not brought the desire to live my life with the fullness and richness that I had with her.
That will come in time, though always be dimmed by her absence. I know without any doubt that I'll never marry again, never commit myself to another human being. She is far too embedded into my soul for that. And though I'm sure Elizabeth would disapprove, I also know she would understand.
The chill in the air surprises me as the last rays of the sun sink below the horizon, the water's touch having turned my toes to ice. It's a moment of silence longer, a moment to remember, to honor, and to love before I back away from the waves. I feel connected to her here, in a place where we so often found a hour or two of happiness. Each afternoon when I turn to return home, the goodbye shatters a bit of myself but my inevitable return affords a peace that I know I cannot go without.
The house is warm. Free from the chill of the oncoming autumn air, and I settle inside easily. My routine never varying by much, I eat, I bathe, I read or watch television. I continue to exist, and each day the ache in my heart lessens a little more. Each day is alternately a step closer to being reunited with Elizabeth, while also teaching me to live with the reminder of her brilliance and love with which she infused my life.
Each night, each day, each minute, I remain thankful for her. And that will never alter.'
The last passage in his book is the one that he reads at the only signing he gives. The room is bursting with people as he reads, nothing but the occasional sniff or the clearing of a throat to interrupt the words as they flow from his mouth.
He picked it because it offers such a concise look into the heart of the novel, but also because its a section that he knows he can manage without his voice betraying any emotion. There are other pages that he cannot bear to touch, sentences and words that rub him raw and leave him aching with how much it still hurts. Reminds him of how much he desperately misses Kate.
Those sections are always the 'what ifs', the things that will keep him up a night while he wonders about where they would be now. Would they have children by now? Would he spend his days wrapped in sticky hugs and bright smiles? Only visiting the precinct for a lunch date? He knows they'd be married by now - that Kate never would have settled for an engagement longer than a year.
And he tries not to wonder. He tries to accept the hand that life dealt him. To put his undivided attention on his daughter, his mother, and his friends. He writes more than he ever has, pages of nonsense that will never see the light of day, but that helps him work through his day to day life.
Occasionally he offers help to the boys, though never inside the walls of the Twelfth. They come to him, either visiting the loft or a diner. He babysits the Ryan's two children, teases Alexis about her boyfriend Taylor.
It's a full life. A life that he is proud of managing.
'In Memoriam' dwarfs anything that Derrick Storm, Nikki Heat or Bex Tyler have ever done. He wins multiple awards, he receives piles of mail from readers who detail how the book helped them through a loss. The interview requests and invitations to speak to groups of people come daily. Both Paula and Gina urge him to follow through with some of them.
He never does.
He never even gives an interview about the book - just the one reading and signing. Just a brief talk full of vague references to the event that altered his life and gave him the idea. He never openly acknowledges that the book is about Kate.
But it's all over the book. Her essence and fire is evident in every sentence and paragraph. The deceased wife within the books pages might be named Elizabeth, but she is Katherine Beckett with her no nonsense attitude and bright grins. Her long legs and teasing nature. The quiet way in which she loves the unnamed narrator, the suddenness of her death within the first twenty pages.
It's all very difficult after that - a man who has lost his grip on a world without his life. A man drowning in grief and aching for the life he never had. And he dreams to cope, he creates and modifies and imagines children. A girl with soft brown curls, a boy with big green eyes. A world where she never leaves him, where the exist in safety and happiness and love.
In others he has another daughter, this bright and electric thing which helps him cope. She moves home to attend to her half-siblings. In others, it's his wife's parents whole and united in the loss of their child.
All things that could have been possible if so many other things had been different.
Alexis is twenty-six when she get married. A day shy of twenty-eight when she invites him for dinner and announces that he's going to be a grandfather.
And he's so proud of his kid, of the way she dedicates herself to her job with the District Attorney's office, of her dedication to be a wife to her husband. She's the best thing he's ever done in the world.
When she gives birth to a girl almost eight months later, they all end up crying in the hospital room. It's all six of their family together - his mother and Jim with a few more gray hairs and lines on their faces - each of them with eyes only for the tiny red-headed thing in Alexis arms.
"We had thought we'd name her Anna," his daughter says quietly, hesitant eyes cutting up from her own child to gaze at him and Jim in turn.
And Castle knows what comes next, steels himself for the word before it leaves her mouth, but he still isn't prepared for it.
"Anna Katherine," Alexis whispers, "If that's okay."
He hears Jim agree, of his mother's soft sigh as she pats the older man on the shoulder. But he's moving before he can think, gently wrapping his kid into his arms and kissing her cheek while Taylor Roberts beams at the both of them, "She'd love that. Just like I love you."
He gets to hold her after he's released Alexis, his son-in-law shifting the baby's weight easily into his arms. Anna's eyes are bright blue like the Castle's, not the dark brown of her father, and he grins at that, leaning down brush his mouth against her downy head.
"Hello Anna Kate," he whispers, "Let me tell you a story about your Grandma Katherine…."