Knowing You

a "The Time Of Our Lives" story

2. Getting To Know You

She continued to visit him.

The woman he didn't know.

For three months, almost everyday—saved the days a challenging or high profile investigation called her away—Captain Kate Beckett would visit with him. He did not know what to make of it. She was like his guardian angel, watching over him, making sure the doctors treated him well. She even arranged for one of the best cardiac specialist in the city to examine him to ensure there were no lingering side effects from his open-heart surgery. It took him some prodding, but she eventually admitted the Dr. Davidson was an ex-boyfriend.

"Why didn't it work out?" Castle asked after the handsome doctor departed, having declared the surgery a success and giving solid advice for his recovery.

Captain Beckett planted herself in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs by his bedside and simply shrugged. "We were both just so busy with work that neither of us were really that invested in the relationship," she sighed, carding her fingers through her gorgeous brown tresses. "In the end, we both realized we were each in it for the wrong reasons. Having a relationship with someone simply to have a relationship wasn't fair… to either of us."

He nodded, adjusting his weight on the hospital bed, and grimacing when the surgical scars on his chest protested to the movement. "I know the feeling," he sympathized. "I've been married twice, yet I still don't believe I've had a real, genuine honest relationship since college."

"Do you think you could?"

"Could what?"

"Have a real, genuine honest relationship?" she elaborated after a lengthy pause and long look.

He tried to read the emotion in her eyes, but he didn't know her well enough to fully judge what he was seeing in those beautiful hazel orbs. "I don't know, maybe," he answered, and then added, shifting his gaze back to hers. "With the right person."

Captain Beckett nodded, ducking her head as she looked down at her hands resting in her lap. Her brow furrowed thoughtfully and when she glanced back up at him, he could have sworn he saw hope swimming in those gorgeous eyes of hers.

"Yeah…," she said. "I feel the same. Anything is possible with the right person."

It had been one conversation amongst many over those three months, but it had been enough to get him thinking. His life had been fundamentally altered the day he woke up in that hospital bed with no memory of how he got there, and it just wasn't the angelic beauty that visited his bedside that marked this change. His relationship with Alexis seemed vastly improved, and even his mother seemed less judgmental of his life choices. And for the first time in what felt like years, she seemed genuinely proud of him. She still scolded him like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar for his reckless behavior, but underneath it all was pride in him and his selfless—dare he say, heroic—actions.

His mother and daughter seemed approving of the police captain, always inviting her to join them for coffee when the nurse came in to tell them visiting hours were over. And Castle found himself pleased with his family's acceptance of the woman he didn't know, yet wanted to know him. He was still completely baffled by Beckett's interest in him, yet he was not going to complain. It had been a while since a woman as extraordinary as Kate Beckett showed sincere and authentic interest in him as a person, not as the once famous author.

They would talk for hours on end, about nothing and everything. One night, she'd come to visit after work with tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. Concerned, Castle shifted in his hospital bed, and offered her a spot next to him. She took it willingly and without fuss, curling into his side, mindful of his injuries, and told him about the case her team had caught that day and how it had hit close to him, reminding her of the death of her mother. And before he knew it, Beckett was telling him her story. It came flooding out of her in great waves of information, and by the end, he felt closer to her than he had to anyone in his life.

"I'm sorry for burdening you with this," she said, gently pushing herself up, brushing her hair back from her face. "You have more than enough to worry about without me adding my own problems to them. I… it's just been a long time since I've ever really let it get to me like this. And… I don't know… I couldn't think of anywhere or anyone else I'd rather be with right now."

The statement had stunned him. Surely a woman like Kate Beckett would have much better offers than a broken, washed up writer. He stared at her for a long moment, before, cupping her jaw in his palm and pulling her back in for a reassuring embrace. She sighed in his arms. It was the first time he could remember where a woman, not related to him, found genuine emotional comfort in his embrace. He had wanted to kiss her, but he had felt it was the wrong moment, and too soon for such things. When he kissed her—and he was positive it would happen eventually—he wanted it to be for the right reasons and at the right time.

That night had been the start of something. He hadn't been able to put a name on it, but it was definitely a turning point in their unorthodox friendship.

The more time he spent with Beckett, the more profoundly his heart beat for her. He worked harder with his physical therapist to get better, wanting his heart to be strong enough for the emotions he felt stirring within. Castle protected and nurtured the growing feelings, afraid that if he revealed them too early they would be squashed. He wasn't used to a woman like Kate Beckett staying around. Part of him had been silently dreading the day she realized he wasn't worth the effort and leave.

But she didn't.

She surprised him.

Unlike the women before her, she stayed. Through the most grueling and trying three months of his life, as he struggled through the painful recovery of taking several bullets to the chest, Kate Beckett stayed by his side, cheering him on and cheering him up. Just her presence in his life encouraged him to be better: A better son, a better father… a better man.

Because of her, he wanted to be more than what he was.

And also because of her, a long dead part inside him of him sparked to life.

"I want to write again," he told Alexis one day after she picked him up from physical therapy sessions. "God, Alexis… I actually want to write."

His daughter had hugged him then, happy tears glistening in her eyes as she squeezed him tightly, tucking her head under his chin like she had when she was a little girl. "Thank God," she declared in a breathless, overjoyed voice. "You're back. My daddy's back."

Captain Beckett came to visit him, almost everyday for three months, and through that time—one of the most difficult periods of his life—he found himself—his true self—once again. He had been lost, yet this woman he hadn't known three months ago, managed to pull him out of the depths of uncertainty and onto solid ground. Through it all, she stayed by his side, never asking more than he was willing to give or share, all the while giving and sharing of herself, putting them on equal footing, making them partners. She stuck it out when things got bad. When others would have left, she stayed. Because of her, Castle was no longer willing to settle for mediocrity. He wanted something more… something better than he'd had for the last six years of his life.

Something extraordinary.

By the end of those three months, she was no longer Captain Beckett to him, but simply Kate.