AN: I normally hate putting author's notes at the beginning, but I just wanted to clear one thing up. For those of you wondering, this isn't going to be Rogan's child. In fact, we're just going to pretend that little part of canon didn't even happen because I don't like it and this is my AU. This fic really has nothing to do with what happened in the finale; I've actually been trying to write it for two years now. A big thank you to everyone who's been supportive so far! It really does mean the world to me.
Everyone's at a loss for what to do next on this case, so Gates sent them home early. She said there was no use in them standing around staring at a board of photos; that they should come back to it tomorrow with fresh eyes. Kate's thankful for the reprieve, mainly because now she has more time to talk to Castle. She's never told him that she had a kid and she's not exactly sure how he's going to handle it.
"Hey, you're home early," Castle says, looking up from his laptop when she walks into his office. "Big break in the case?"
She shakes her head, slumping into the chair in the corner. "We're at a standstill. Gates sent everyone home hoping fresh eyes would find something tomorrow."
"I could come in," he offers, continuing to type away at his keyboard. "I haven't been following any of it. Maybe I'll catch something you missed."
Kate shrugs. "It's worth a shot."
The typing stops again and he looks over at her. He notices that her eyes are fixed onto a spot on the floor, not really looking at anything, but blankly staring. She looks drained, both emotionally and physically. Castle moves to stand behind her, kneading the knots out of her tension-filled shoulders.
She hums, her eyes slipping closed. "Babe, I need to tell you something."
"The case is getting to you, isn't it?"
"No, well yes, but it's not that."
"Then what is it?"
She opens her eyes and grabs his hands at her shoulders. "You might want to sit down."
Castle moves around to the front of the chair and kneels in front of her, placing his hands on her knees. He sees the sheen of tears in her eyes.
"Kate, you're scaring me. What is it?"
"That little girl…the teenager," she starts, avoiding his eyes. "Addison. From this case."
"Yeah, what about her?"
"She's mine."
Kate draws her gaze up to meet his and he meets her with a look of confusion.
"She's your what?" Castle asks.
She inhales a shaky breath. "My daughter."
Castle rocks back onto his heels and Kate wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I was 19 when I got pregnant, 20 when I gave birth. I sort of lost it that year after my mom died; did some things I'm not proud of."
She bites her lower lip, going back to avoiding his eyes.
"I gave her up for adoption when she was born because I was not in the right place in life to raise a kid. I entered the police academy instead. Our victims on this case? They were the couple I chose to raise her. And now they're dead and I'm the only family she has left. I don't even know if she knows that she was adopted."
He reaches for her hands, intertwining her fingers with his. "Why have you never told me about her?"
She can hear the hurt in his voice. Wants to kick herself for being so stupid and not telling him about this sooner.
"I never thought I'd see her again. I just…I don't want to say that I've forgotten about her, because I haven't, but I've really tried to block out that part of my life. I'm so sorry, Castle. I know we've moved passed the secrets, but –"
"You're right, we have moved passed them. You should have told me."
"I'm sorry," she says again.
Castle pulls her into a hug the best he can with her still sitting in the chair and him still kneeling on the floor. She buries her head in the crook of his neck, thankful that he is the man he is.
"How long have you known that she's yours?" he asks, rubbing her back.
"Lanie told me this afternoon. Said her DNA profile was close enough to mine that I could be her mother. God, I knew she looked familiar. She looks just like I did at that age. But she has her father's eyes."
"Who's her father?"
Kate sighs, pressing her forehead against his. "Some idiot I was dating who didn't want anything to do with me after he found out I was pregnant. It didn't matter to him that the baby was his. I have no idea what happened to him, nor do I really care."
"So what do you want to do? About Addison that is."
She sighs again, this time falling back against the chair. "It was a closed adoption. I gave up my rights. But if I…if we, don't take her in she's just going to end up in the system. But am I even capable of taking her in? I mean I have no idea how to be a mother, especially not to a teenager. I don't know if I can do this."
Castle squeezes her hands, still intertwined with his. She keeps rambling.
"And I don't want to put this all on you, hand you another teenage girl when you've just barely gotten your own out of the house. And we've been so busy trying to plan this wedding..."
He places a kiss to her knuckles, trying to calm her down. "Kate, if you want to take her in, I will support you. Or if you decide you just want to get to know her first before taking a step that big, I will support you in that too. Don't make this decision based off of me. Listen to your gut, your heart."
"We're a package deal now you know. If I get her, so do you."
He nods. "I'm well aware."
She bites her lower lip, shaking her head. "I can't ask you to –"
"Kate, in a couple of months, I'm going to be your husband. You can ask me to do this. She's your daughter and she needs some people who are going to care about her right now. And if she's anything like her mother, I'm going to love her."
She squeezes his hands again and leans forward to kiss him. "Thank you."
He cups her face, holding her there. "We'll figure this out, all right? Everything's going to be fine."
She nods, her arms snaking around him in another awkward hug. "What do you think I should do?"
"It sounds to me like your want her, but you're afraid."
"I was horrible to my mother as a teenager. And I'd known her my whole life. She didn't just up and abandon me only to walk back into my life 14 years later."
Castle runs a hand down her back. "Okay first of all, you didn't abandon her. You were trying to give Addison her best chance. You gave her to a family who loved her. I don't think she'll resent you for that."
"Not all teenage girls are as perfect as Alexis."
He smiles. "She just hit her rebellious peak late. You do recall her current choice of boyfriend, don't you?"
She sighs. "Pi certainly is something."
Castle laughs, pushing back from their hug so he can look at her. "I think you're going to make an amazing mom. I've seen you with my kid, you're good with her."
Kate nods, chewing on her lower lip. Maybe she can do this after all.
"Where's she going to sleep?"
"The guest bedroom upstairs. It's kind of small, but no one ever uses it."
"I guess that means I have to officially move in with you," she says, toying with the tuft of hair at the nape of this neck.
"You practically live here already," he says, smiling.
"This is crazy, isn't it? What we're about to do?"
"Such is life," Castle shrugs. He stands up, groaning when his knees pop in the process. "Guess I've been kneeling for too long."
She throws him a small smile, pushing herself up as well. "Come on old man, I'll make you dinner."
"Anything?" Kate asks, walking into the precinct the next morning with Castle by her side.
Ryan shakes his head. "I swear this guy is a ghost. There's just, there's nothing here. And the only DNA CSU has been able to recover belongs to the victims. Whoever our killer is, he completely covered his tracks. He knew what he was doing."
Castle moves over to the murder board, his eyes tracing over the arrows and pictures. "All these suspects, they've checked out?"
"They all have alibis," Kate explains.
"Good ones?"
"Unfortunately."
"I'm telling you it was a random killing," Esposito says. "Our killer didn't target these people out of vengeance. They were just the unlucky couple he followed home."
"What did they do for a living?" Castle asks. "If their daughter found them after school, I find it a bit odd that they were home in the middle of the day."
"The husband runs an internet startup company, works from home. The wife owned a bakery," Kate tells him.
"Is the bakery only open for breakfast?"
She shakes her head. "But since she owns it, she had staff covering for her that day. No one knew why she couldn't come in; just that she didn't and asked them to cover."
"Well that's suspicious," Castle mumbles, tapping his fingers along the edge of Kate's desk.
"We've looked into it," Ryan tells him. "It's just another dead end."
"How much longer until it's considered a cold case?" Castle asks.
"When the investigation is done, it's done," Esposito starts. "If we can't find anything else to go off of, this all gets boxed up and we move on to another case."
Castle glances over at Kate. She's standing with her eyes closed, her thumb and index finger pinching the bridge of her nose. Sighing, her eyes open and her hand rakes through her hair.
"I'm out of ideas," she says softly. "I guess I'll go call CPS."
"And do what?" Ryan asks. "Tell that girl we can't solve her parents murder?"
She exchanges a glance with Castle. "No. I am going to see what it takes to get my parental rights back."
Ryan looks over at Esposito in confusion. He shrugs. "I'm sorry, what do you mean get them back?"
She takes a deep breath. "Addison is my biological daughter."
The boys stare at her, eyes wide.
"It's a long story that I really don't feel like getting into right now," she tells them. "Castle can fill you in if you want."
They nod, watching her grab her cell phone and shut herself into the break room. The boys turn their stares to Castle.
"Did you know about this?" Esposito asks.
"She told me yesterday after Lanie got the DNA results from Addison back. I'll admit it was a bit of a shock, all right a big shock, huge even. But this kid has nowhere else to go and she's Kate's. It'll be an adjustment, but we'll make it through."
"Is Beckett going to be okay?" Ryan asks. "She seems a little…"
"She's just nervous," Castle tells him. "She's worried about the whole process of reclaiming custody. And I think there's still a part of her that worries that Addison isn't going to like her."
"But she's sure about this? Taking in a teenager?" Ryan asks, glancing over at the break room.
Castle nods. "We talked about it all of last night. She went back and forth about the decision for a while, but ultimately she decided that this is what she wants to do. She wants to know her daughter and doing this gives Addison somewhere to go, a safe home."
"And you're on board, man?" Esposito asks.
"I love her. I told her I'd support her no matter what she decided to do."
Esposito whistles. "You're one hell of a man, Castle. I couldn't do it."
Castle gives him a small smile, looking over toward the break room. Kate is pacing back and forth, her free hand scrubbing through her hair. He has the urge to go to her, to help her, but he doesn't know what he could do while she's just talking on the phone. He just wants her to know that he's here for her, and that he's not going anywhere.
She reappears out of the break room a little while later looking even more flustered than when she went in. Castle looks at her, his gaze expectant.
"We have a court date scheduled for next week," she tells him, slumping down in her desk chair.
"Do you get to see Addison before then? Explain what's going on?" Castle asks.
Kate nods. "I'm meeting with her tomorrow."
"Seems easy enough."
She almost laughs. Almost. "The lady from CPS just couldn't get over how odd these circumstances were. Her words. You know I tried telling her that I'm almost 34 and that I'm not the same person I was when I gave her up and she starts asking me all of these questions about my drug addiction –"
"Beckett, is there something else you're not telling me?"
She notices a shift in his tone, the normal playful air of it missing. "No. I have never been addicted to any drug of any kind. She just didn't understand what I meant when I told her that I've changed."
"Well most of her cases probably deal with addicts," he tells her. "I wouldn't take it personally."
Kate sighs. "I'm not."
They fall into silence and Castle starts fidgeting with a pen on the edge of her desk. He mindlessly clicks it open and closed, staring at it intently.
"It's okay to be mad," she says softly, reaching out to stop him from clicking the pen anymore.
"What do you mean?"
"You have been so supportive in all of this, amazingly so actually. But I can tell that you're mad and you have every right to be. If you're not actually okay with doing this –"
Castle scrubs a hand over his face. "Of course I'm mad, Kate. You can't just continue keeping things like this from me. You lied to me about what you remembered from your shooting, you didn't tell me about the job in D.C., and now this? We're getting married. You're supposed to trust me."
"I do trust you."
"But I can tell how important this is to you. I could tell yesterday, how terrible you felt for not having told me about her sooner. So I tried my best to be understanding and forgiving last night. But the anger hasn't fully dissipated yet. And while I may not understand why you were keeping something so huge from me…" he trails off shaking his head.
"I could bring her back to my apartment, if that's easier. Let her adjust there for a while."
"No. No, we're in this together, remember? Package deal. But I need to know, is there anything else you've been keeping from me?"
She shakes her head. "You know everything there is to know about me. I promise."
Castle nods, leaning back in his chair. "So, did CPS make it sound like it was going to be easy to get her back?"
"I suppose. Still feels like we have to jump through a lot of hoops though. Which I get, I mean…" she trails off, shaking her head.
"We'll get there," Castle tells her, reaching out to rub her arm. "Maybe things will feel better once you've had a chance to talk to her tomorrow."
She pats his hand on her arm. "I hope so, Castle. I really do."
