The house I grew up in was made up of white-washed walls that lacked the usual heaviness of family photos and 'welcome home' signs. Instead thick linoleum floors glass cabinets faced leather sofas, the kind that are more for declaration that comfort, because they squeak every time you move to reach for the remote.

The only time I ever really felt at home was on the days I came home to Kate making coffee from the shiny cappuccino machine, or watching TV on our 40 inch flat screen.

"Hey." This particular day I was lucky enough to find Kate waiting for me.

If you'd reminded me years later that the carefree teenager in front of me was the same Kate who nearly broke my nose after one particularly back handed comment I wouldn't have believed you. But there she was, defying all the laws of the universe with her long limbs stretched out like a cat, toes flexing in their stripy socks and dark hair flowing in waves over one bleach-white cushion.

"Hey." She grinned up at me, "Your mum let me in before she left for her show." I nodded and sat down next to her, lifting her feet and placing them back in my lap with practiced skill. Beckett's eyes were downcast, trailing over the page of whatever book she was engrossed in this time. "She said to give you her love... And to let you know that she took the key to the liquor cabinet with her."

I sighed "of course she did." Beckett smiled but didn't look up.

"What're you reading?"

Kate bit her lip over a smile, her eyes sparkling with something that looked like guilt, "umm..."

It took an moment of examining the tattered binding of the book in her hands before I realised.

"Oh my god, Beckett! Is that..?" I trailed off, grabbing the notebook out of her hands and turning the pages rapidly, "it is!" I cried out in shock. Kate took the notebook out of my hands before I had time to stop her.

"Urgh, I'm sorry... It's just I was waiting for you and it was right there, and now I'm nearly up to the point where they follow Mrs. Runner to a mysterious guy's house and find out that she's having an affair..." She said, flicking the corners of the pages impatiently, concentration lining her forehead.

I sighed and watched her for a moment. "I thought it'd be a good way to record what we find..." I could tell she wasn't listening, her eyes flicking left and right faster than before.

"Reading this... It makes me think that the wife's lover would be a good suspect... I hadn't really considered him before..."

I cringed dramatically "Please don't ever say 'lover' again. Ever..." I paused, "actually you're right... But the husband knew right? And he hadn't filed for divorce and the neighbours didn't mention hearing them fighting... Why?"

"Money? Didn't want to split it?" Beckett offered

"Remember when we 'bumped into' Cleo the other day?" I asked, recalling the day we found her whereabouts via twitter and caught her pondering over the cheap wine or the extra cheap wine, which lead into a lengthy discussion on how every penny counts.

Kate nodded impatiently.

"She said they signed a prenup." I pointed out.

"Well that would certainly give his wife motive..."

"Because she'd inherit more money after his death than she'd get if they divorced." I finished.

Kate mused this over, her lower lip trapped between her teeth and my first novel open in one hands. I shifted in my seat. "you like it then?" I asked, suddenly nervous. This was a big deal for me; the first person to read something I'd written, and even though it wasn't my story it was like for the first time she could see the world through my eyes, and I wanted to know how it looked.

"Shhh." Beckett said, having turned back to finish the last page.

I half-groaned and half-laughed, but Beckett didn't stir.

After a moment she looked up. "not that I think your ego needs stroking..."

I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively, "Oh go on Beckett! I love it when you str-" I was cut off by the heavy thump of the cushion Beckett threw at me.

I patted my hair back into place with a huff and Kate rolled her eyes and carried on, "this is actually really good." She paused, grinned with what I imagined was the feeling of the giver of the perfect gift, and grinned "you're really good."

"Really?" I asked softly.

Kate pressed the notebook roughly into my chest. "Really." She said firmly, paused, suddenly stoney-faced, "however, I do have a bone to pick with you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She crossed her arms, and I knew I was in trouble; tried to record the things I'd done wrong that week-

"What kind of a name is Nikki Heat?" She raised one eyebrow in a look I'd christened 'The Beckett'.

Ah. "It's a cop name."

"It's a stripper name," she bit out.

"Well, she's kind of slutty."

Beckett groaned in distress and pulled her feet out of my lap to faced me more fully, "Change it, Castle."

I jumped off the sofa and took a few steps back, Beckett following in suit, "Wait... Hang on a second. Think of the titles. "Summer Heat", "Heat Wave", "In Heat"" I trailed off. The eager tilt of my voice seemed to make her more annoyed and the strength of her glare thickened from steel to diamond.

"Change the name!"

I ducked behind the kitchen counter, the shiny wood surface a pretty sturdy barrier between us, "No."

"Yes."

"No." I gasped out a laugh when we almost danced around the furniture.

"Change it!" Kate shouted over her own a torn out laugh.

I grabbed the chopping board to shield myself when Beckett started to throw things at me (a dishcloth, a tea towel and thank god the knives are this side of the kitchen), "No."

"Castle?!" She groaned, trying to poke me with a wooden spoon while I dodged her, absently considering taking up fencing because I seemed to have a natural knack for it.

"I'm sorry." I said; really not sorry at all. "I have artistic integrity, Beckett." I added defensively.

""Artistic integrity?"" She barked out a laugh, managed to jab me with the spoon, and I stifled a high pitched scream.

"Change the name, Castle! Today."

That week we'd managed to crack the case wide open. We found various new suspects after asking one of the Runner's nosey neighbours about the family, their Intel lead to one late night stakeout and further questioning of his wife's hairdresser and a casual bumping into Cleo at the worst coffee shop in Manhattan where, I think it's fair to say- the coffee tasted like a monkey peed in battery acid, and then a trip to few pubs which she said her grandad frequents ("he has an unhealthy obsession with gin, and he won't even admit he had a problem- you know that's the first step to recovery? Admitting you have a problem"). We found out from the bartender that he'd been buying the cheap sort recently, which gave us further reason to believe the Runner owed him money, despite the hairdresser's claims that the wife's lover had a dark past, and he was, up until that point at least, our most likely suspect.

That night though, Beckett cancelled our meeting at the caravan, having been out for a girl's night with Maddy the day before. Maddy was great; fun and adventurous and extremely lose. But every time they went out Kate wound up grounded the next night, so this time I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I knocked at Beckett's window at precisely 12 o'clock. I knew I shouldn't, but I paused before knocking. I could just about see inside, it was like looking at a photograph with the edges blurred, the shot centered around the perfect clarity that was Kate. Some kind of haunting music flowed out of the cracks around the window-frame and into the inky blackness around me. It was airy and lifting and kind of breathtaking. Oh. Kate was singing... And playing guitar. She plays guitar?

I was, however, painfully aware of how dead I'd be if Beckett caught me crouched outside her window, not knocking. So I sighed, and regretfully tapped the glass three times.

"Pst. Beckett!" I whispered, waving when she looked up.

"Castle?!" She jumped up from her position on the bed and rushed to open the window, dropping her guitar in shock so that it landed with a loud clang.

"What the hell are you doing here? You scared the crap out of me!"

"Maybe that's what you need Katherine, to be scared onto the right track... I hear you're going off the rails..." I said in my mother's voice.

Kate groaned and took the few long strides back to her bed while I tried to crawl through her window with an amazing lack of grace.

"This is an intervention." I said firmly.

"Castle!" She laughed, rolling her eyes and swinging her legs back into the bed "get in here! And shut the window it's freezing."

I ducked under through her window and grinned, proud of my success in climbing the fire-escape without serious injury (I did scrape my leg a little but I figured it was worth it.) "you don't want to see the banner I made you?"

"Nope." She laughed, "I've heard it all Castle. Had a pretty serious talk with my parents just now that made me want to shut my head in the oven."

"Ouch."

"Yeah." She nodded solemnly.

"So what did you get grounded for, anyway?" I asked, now sitting comfortably opposite her, propped up by one of her fluffy purple pillows.

"I got a tattoo." She said, entirely too casually.

"Seriously?" I gaped at her, looking over the exposed skin of her neck for a snake or her arms for a set of skulls, but I came up empty.

"Mmhmm... Maddy's brother wants to be a tattoo artist and is practicing and I've wanted one for ages... And, I was kind of drunk."

"Katherine Beckett!" I gasped, "What did you get?"

She bit her lip and took a moment to admire the chipping edges of her nails, I sighed and leant closer.

"Beckett." I wined, "What did you get... Or should I be asking where..?" I trailed off scanning from the painted toes of her bare feet to the lose strands that fell from her messy bun half-teasingly.

She raised an eyebrow and sighed. "See for yourself." She said eventually, shifting, her hand moved to lift the edge of her shirt just slightly so that it revealed her hip.

"Is that..?" I trailed off, couldn't find the worse to say what I saw.

My coffee order; crawled in delicate italic print on the pale, creamy skin just above her hipbone.

"Yeah." She cleared her throat in the too-quiet room, "My parents think I was so drunk that I got my shopping list tattooed on my hip." She half-joked.

I nodded numbly, and forced myself to clench my fists to stop from reaching out and touching her soft inked skin.

"What Castle?" She snapped.

I dragged my eyes away, meeting her blazing eyes; the fire not going out even as tears threatened to spill over, "No it's just..."

"It's not like it means anything." She said quickly, "I wanted a tattoo and my drunk rambling produced your coffee order. It doesn't mean anything Castle." She repeated firmly.

"Of course it does," I said at last, catching her arm and dragging her back around to face me.

Kate looked away again. And her cheeks were a pink like the skin around the tattoo.

"Hey, Beckett..." My voice softened but her eyes were trained firmly into her lap.

Even then Kate had walls built thick with fear; even before she had any reason to be scared, it was like somehow she knew more about the world than someone who was seventeen should, and she was wary of a world she didn't understand yet.

I grabbed the permanent marker she always kept on her bedside table and rolled up my right sleeve, uncapping it with my teeth. I could feel her gaze burning into my arm when I carefully wrote "Grande skim latte, two pumps sugar free vanilla" onto my skin.

"There." I said, "Now we match." I smiled and looked up from the drying ink. Kate's eyes glistened under the fairy lights.

"I know it doesn't mean anything but..." I joked.

She slapped my arm playfully and I laughed, faking a groan, "urgh, god Beckett! I just got a tattoo right there!"

Kate rolled her eyes and looked down at my arm, the lithe fingers of one hand trailing over the ink and her lips splitting into a grin.

"I know it's not permanent, but-..." I said quickly.

"No Castle, it-It's perfect." She assured me.

I smiled softly and nodded. "Caravan?" I asked after a while.

"Caravan." Beckett agreed.

She was opening the window and climbing onto the roof before I even had time to even stand up, and by the time I had landed next to the flowerpot outside her house she was already halfway down the street, strolling confidently in the half-darkness. She came back into focus under one particularly bright streetlight when she called, "you coming, Castle?"

Half an hour later we were stood outside the ageing caravan, but before we had even opened the make-shift door we'd spend weeks forming out of mangled branches we knew something wasn't quite right. There was a stale heaviness to the usually crisp night air and the leaves under our feet seemed to have shifted, crushed in a way that was unfamiliar and forceful. Beckett looked to me before touching the door softly so that it swung open.

I knew she was scarred, I could see the fear reflected in the shadows of her eyes, and she was blinking, blinking, but she wouldn't look at me.

"Kate." I said.

I couldn't say anything else, it was like my voice had been sucked away with a whoosh. In that moment I was oddly aware of the earth's turning, and the tree's leaves falling, and the wave's crashing on shores miles from the forest; it was like everything around us was alive and moving, and we were frozen; breathless in the trashed caravan.

Kate looked away from the wreckage, eyes glimmering with scared tears, that she wouldn't let fall.

Because it felt like they took a part of us when they broke the glass cabinets and cast the rickety plastic chairs on their side. That day they disrupted more than the fragile balance of glass cobwebs and velvet moss; they took our innocence and the hope that the world would be the way we imagined it, and they made us different.

"Beckett." I said.

Kate cleared her throat, and the haze around us seemed to clear a little. "I'm fine."

"No you're not... I'm not. It's okay to be scared."

She didn't say anything, but she melted into me when I wound my arms around her and nuzzled her nose into the warm skin in between my neck and shoulder. I pressed my lips into her tousled hair and held her tighter, clinging to this fragile thing we had: the only thing we had left, and I promised I wouldn't let them take it, I promised I'd hold on to us.

"Bastards." Kate muttered, pulling away to pick up one of the chairs and set it upright. And I knew we'd be okay.

I laughed, "I'm ruling out aliens as possible suspects."

"Why?" Beckett asked warily, half-turning from the photo-frame she was putting back of the shelf.

"Aliens don't need to scare us, that could just erase our memory if they wanted us to stop investigating."

"Right... This means we're close though: that something we've found points to the killer. They must be desperate if they'd risk leaving evidence just to send us a message. You think they spoke to someone we met with?"

I nodded, "yeah. Found out what we knew by asking around, decided it'd gone too far already; that they needed to make their move."

Kate nodded thoughtfully. She stood tall in ripped jeans, the murder ripped board an odd green-screen behind her. Strong and unwavering and enough.

"What do you want to do, Beckett?

She sighed, searched the glass-littered floor for the answers with her eyes, "I want to finish our nebula 9 marathon, and drink coffee with you all night, and then tomorrow I want to come back here and prove that sometimes the meddling kids win."

I grinned, "That sounds perfect."

Every time Kate refuses to back down; when she fights for the truth no matter what the cost, I feel an odd sense of pride for the girl I knew, who was scared and made the first difficult decision that night, but she chose to carry on fighting; the same way she did every time since.

"We can't go to the police." Kate said after a moment, "this goes too deep, it's clear whoever killed the runner has connections. So you can't tell anyone about this, okay?"

"Ooh so this is like a secret?" I asked excitedly.

Kate sighed, "wow you're a child."

"This is so going in the book: "detective heat and the ruggedly handsome journalist had a secret: one that could make them... or break them."

Beckett scoffed, "break them?"

"Mmhm," I grinned at her, "so you better take this seriously! We're officially partners in crime... Ooh I like that- partners."

"Yeah," Kate said, and I think she liked that too, "Partners."

In that moment it felt like everything would be okay. Everything we'd ever known was falling apart around us but we were still fighting, in a crazy world filled with monsters like the wicked witches and dragons of our childhood we still had hope, and it felt like that was enough for now.

We walked back to Kate's house in almost-silence, the occasional crackling of leaves disconnecting the rhythm of our foot-fall.

I waited outside while she climbed back through the window, balancing and swivelling and prancing with ease. And then the window shut and I was alone, staring up at the towering red bricks and flowerpots with something like envy.

"Good morning Rick." I looked up in surprise, half-expecting to see Kate hanging out of her window, but instead was met with her smile and someone else's eyes.

"Mrs. Beckett... I was just..." I trailed of at the knowing glint in the eye, Johanna Beckett gave me the look I could never forget, the glint in her eye that she gave to Kate; that I hope I find in our children's eyes too some day. She looked across at me with her head two feet lower than mine, mouth teasing a grin at a joke that hadn't been told yet.

"I know exactly what you were doing, Rick dear. Do you think I was born yesterday?" she raised an eyebrow and the corner her lip expectantly, an expression that was so much Kate that lost my balance on the evenly-cut grass.

"um, no ma'am?"

"Call me Johanna, please, ma'am is my mother." She sighed learning into the doorframe, and I found myself wondering how someone could look so threatening in a flowery dressing-gown and slippers.

"Um right, okay, Johanna..."

She folded her arms and watched me for moment before she spoke in a calm voice that seemed to smooth over the hushed silence of the night, "I know you care about Katie, and I know it can be hard to tell, but you mean a lot to her too...

"I'm not sure what you mean..." I squinted, trying to understand why she was trying to give me dating advice at three thirty in the morning.

Johanna grinned, nodded at something I didn't understand yet, "okay Rick. But when you do understand I'll be right here waiting to tell you I told you so. If that's not something to look forward to then..." She trailed off and I swayed on my feet. "Anyway," she went on, "you should probably get going... You have school in a few hours."

She waved me off and I took a few stumbling steps away from the house, but before I was halfway down the drive she called me back, "just remember, Rick; sometimes it's worth the risk." and the last thought I can remember before the next memory begins is thinking that Kate's mother was as dramatic as mine.

A/N: Hi, I'm sorry it took so long to update this, I had a nasty case of writers block and so this chapter was pretty hard to write. Luckily for you guys Christmas for me is pretty much eating and sitting around the house in embarrassing knitted jumpers, so I managed to finish this chapter today; kind of a filler but it's getting good soon. But before the action will be a delayed Christmas chapter, and it's looking pretty fluffy! Thank you for your ongoing support and happy holidays!