Notes: This chapter takes place during 2x10 "One Man's Treasure."

Special Disclaimer: All characters and events, including those based upon famous persons and true events, are fictionalized. They are not meant to be libelous and are not being used for financial gain.

Part Six: Listen

It took a while to sink in, but as Castle set about writing his second Nikki Heat novel, he began to understand Beckett's distaste for Danishes.

Operating in Active Story Mode, he was paying that much more attention around the bullpen and in the field—wondering if things had always been this obvious and he'd just been too dense to see it, or if people were just making less of an effort to fly under the radar these days.

She may not have articulated it very well until a few weeks ago, when that metaphorical pastry war came out of left field (and even then, he would use the term "articulate" rather loosely), but still it remained true: Beckett had been able to identify the situation as early as the book launch, and even long before.

Do you have any idea how much grief I've had to put up with over this Nikki Heat thing?

All right, he'd been dense.

He'd refused to acknowledge the gravity of that grief as anything besides the well-deserved attention he thought it to be. In reality, there were snickers and jabs. One witness asked mid-interview, "Are you two together?" albeit to make a point, but then another called her Castle's girlfriend instead of respecting her first as a detective. Colleagues commented about how close she seemed to be to her shadow. And then there were the signs that some of the other cops felt a bit underappreciated. Even when they said nothing, sometimes people looked at Beckett as if to wonder exactly what she did to get a heroic role in a mystery series and a flattering spread in Cosmo.

And since he and Beckett hadn't spent any time together outside of their investigations ever since the awkward concert/movie night/pillow fight fiasco (lately the few times he asked, she said that she was "busy"), he expended that sort of time and energy on his novel-in-progress, typing at his laptop in his empty office, listening to what Nikki Heat had to say.

She certainly wanted to be heard.

"What the hell do I have to do to get through to you?"

He remembered how sharp and angular Beckett's gestures had been when she ranted passionately about Austria and Denmark; how she had pointed at the ground beneath her and then at him; how he'd felt a little wounded by her body language even as he struggled to follow her metaphor and comprehend her frustration. Nikki would be just as passionate, but she wasn't going to pussyfoot around.

She poked her finger in the air, punctuating her words with a stab. "I do not, do not, want to be in your article. I do not want to be named, quoted, pictured, or so much as alluded to in your next or any other article."

When she accused Rook of not hearing her, he immediately set out to prove to her otherwise, told her point-blank what she had been saying and thinking and feeling all along until she affirmed him.

Despite his ability to script it, Castle didn't actually know how to have this conversation. But, God help him, he needed to find some way to tell Beckett how badly he wanted to understand her and everything he put her through. If Heat Wave was a love letter gone awry, its sequel was going to be an apology.

Only one thing could have made the trip from Manhattan to suburban Connecticut any less comfortable: getting stranded on the highway, or abducted and probed by aliens (according to Beckett and Castle, respectively). But it went without saying that they both found the road-trip unworthy of the word "road-trip."

As they traveled, Castle prodded Beckett again about what was making her so "busy" these days, this time disguising the inquiry in a friendly interest about what was going on in her life rather than an invitation to spend time with him or a possible reason that Alexis shouldn't be volunteering at the precinct this week. She disclosed nothing.

"By the way," he said, even though he hadn't mentioned his daughter out loud, "Alexis told me."

Beckett looked subtly, strangely panicked for a moment, and he wondered what exactly he hadn't heard about their private conversation. Just for that, he let the ambiguity hang in the air a moment longer, until Beckett said calmly, "What?"

"About your talk at Sutton's last week," he said, trying another ambiguity to see if he could squeeze anything else from her reactions. If there was something she wasn't telling him, she was doing well at not giving it up.

Of course, he wasn't entirely forthcoming himself. He conveniently left out the part about why it had all driven him so crazy—not just that Alexis was keeping a secret from him, but that Beckett was effectively stealing his daughter and he didn't even get to be a part of it. He didn't tell her how weird it had felt for Alexis to be out with a woman who was not his ex-wife. And he wisely didn't describe the frustration of knowing that offering Beckett sex for intel was not the viable option that it had once been in similar situations with his exes.

"I'm the Cool Dad," he announced instead, confidence fully restored. "Not only did she tell me; she chose me over France. She'd rather spend time with me."

"I know, Castle. That's nice."

That's nice? That's nice is what people say when they aren't really listening to you and they want a fifty-fifty shot at saying the right thing during the conversational gaps. All hail the Queen of Ambiguity!

The allure of a Beckett Mystery got the better of him again and he couldn't hold back. "Just tell me this," he said, attempting to sound just ambivalent enough that it wouldn't come off as desperate begging, "is it busy-business or busy-pleasure?"

The facial expression she gave in response was decidedly not one that would answer that question. He pressed his lips together and let his eyes wander back to the windshield.

After she shut him down, they exhausted their dead-guy-in-the-trash case-talk. Castle's particular attention to the victim's double life coming on the heels of their Beckett-centric conversation was not lost on her, and this time, instead of playing to his theorizing, she reminded him very practically that they needed evidence and a chance to look Helen in the eye as they questioned her again.

Then they lived inside their own heads—the rest of the way there and much of the way back.

Beckett had finally started reading Grin, the book by Vince Minaret that she'd picked up on a whim—not entirely unlike the author himself. For once she sort of wished that Castle was driving the car so she could be using these long hours on the road to read.

When she tired of reconsidering their case from every conceivable angle (Castle didn't need to know that she still theorized alone in her head), she thought about what she'd been reading lately.

The title character was a roguish Russian guy living at the turn of the twentieth century. He loved reading as much as he loved writing. His favorites were Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne, and he even carried a picture of Edgar Allan Poe with him wherever he went.

He'd gotten into a lot of trouble as a kid, a trend that didn't end with his schooling. At 12, he was kicked out of class for writing a satirical poem about teachers. By the time the Revolution rolled in, the rebel was a 37-year-old with a novella-length rap sheet and a decade of published work under his belt. He'd graduated from rude poetry to controversial pieces that the government confiscated. He'd escaped from drafted service in the army, nearly escaped from prison with the help of his revolutionary-friend Katherine Bibergal, and had been exiled twice—and yes, escaped that, too. After his divorce, he joked that he had even escaped his marriage to his ex-wife Vera Abramova.

Sometimes he sounded like an adventurous hero, and sometimes he sounded like a fantastic jackass.

Beckett didn't know yet whether she liked him, but she did find him interesting.

"Castle," she said, during their evening excursion back to Connecticut, courtesy of a fiancée/wife catfight that only one of them was eager to witness for himself. "We need to talk."

His eyes widened, but he kept his voice cool, chancing only a brief glance in her direction. "It is well recorded in the annals of history that no good has ever come to a man when a woman said, 'We need to talk.' But," he added, suddenly entertaining the idea of a number of honest declarations he wouldn't mind hearing from her, "do feel free to change the course of history."

"The good in your case is that you'll live," said Beckett. "I mean we need to talk this time. It's getting late and this is getting to be a lot of driving for one day."

"We can switch places," he offered eagerly. "You can rest while I drive." Castle would seize any excuse to get into the driver's seat. Having Beckett trust him enough not only to give him the wheel but to fall asleep in the passenger seat beside him would only be an added bonus.

"In your dreams," she said.

"No, see, I would be awake."

"Just make yourself useful and keep me awake."

He couldn't tell if she had any idea of the potency of what she'd just said. He couldn't tell because he was temporarily stunned into oblivion, into a fantastic world where he could do exactly as she asked, exactly as he wished. He imagined leaning over and running his hand along the inseam from her knee to her thigh, kissing her shoulder and forging a path to her neck. Oh, she would be stoic at first, but eventually she wouldn't be able to take it anymore and they'd pull over somewhere and—

"Castle," she warned, as though she knew.

"Did you finish Heat Wave?" he asked, groping for something. She hesitated and he grinned. "Twice? More?"

"It was short," she murmured.

He was nonetheless delighted. "So that would be busy-pleasure, then."

"And fast," she said, another misguided attempt at spite.

He ignored her witchy baiting in favor of a new tactic: "Want to know what happens next?"

She had to admit that she sort of liked getting the exclusive on the next novel. She wouldn't admit it to him, but he could probably tell anyway.

Castle caught on very quickly that the best way to capture Beckett's interest was to talk about the twists in the case that Nikki was investigating and not about her complicated relationship with Rook. Not that she wasn't curious about that, too.

But the invention of an entire case was so thoroughly beyond her. After all, she didn't start a given investigation with a blank slate. She couldn't help becoming invested in the details that Castle had worked out so far and theorizing how it might all come together.

He regaled her as though he had already finished the story, letting it unfold as cinematically as his words and gesticulations would allow. He watched to gauge her reactions and listened to her guesses. Of course, he managed to leave off at a cliffhanger by the time they got to Helen Parker's yard.

On the way home again that night, they easily slipped back into the roles of the storyteller and the active listener, until Castle became preoccupied with a few gaps in his plot and some ideas that he hadn't sorted out how to include. Then he acted as though they were co-conspirators. Since she had no means of escape for at least another twenty miles, she went along on his digression.

"Something else I left out: I really like the body-snatching," he continued. "You know, book-wise. Not body-wise. That was unfortunate. But it's so gritty, and now that I know that it's possible? Gold."

"Just try not to make the OCME look bad," said Beckett, managing a smile.

"I know," he said, upon an epiphany worth the appearance of his notebook. "I'll put Ochoa in the van with Lauren. He can be a badass with the body-snatchers."

"Good," she agreed. "More dramatic that way. Better than Rook just sitting there." It was the first time in a while that either of them had mentioned Jameson Rook, and she almost bit her tongue because of that alone.

Castle narrowed his eyes at her, and she knew without having to turn her head. She smiled.

"Now," he said, "about the Ludlows. How obvious do you think it will be that they're pseudo-Wellesleys? I mean, how recognizable can any given scandalous politician really be?"

She looked at him looking at her, silent and still. In hindsight, she could have said nothing and waited to see how long he would have lasted. But she said: "I'm sorry. Did you want a serious answer?"

It wasn't until after the case that Kate had enough time to read for leisure. When she finally picked up where she left off with Grin, she found him walking down the street toward home, admiring the St. Isaac Cathedral and the Mariinsky Theater in a way that he never had. He had seen the architecture thousands of times before, but it was as though he saw them now for the first time.

He was irrevocably in love with his new wife, Nina. She distracted him—no, she inspired him. He saw everything anew.

Kate sank down onto the bed, pulling up the blanket and resting the heavy red book on her lap.

Nina sat comfortably, reading the last novel her husband had published.

"How many times have you read this?" he teased. "Surely you know by now how it ends."

Nina tore her eyes from the page to greet her husband with a kiss. "I do know," she told him. "And I still love finding out all over again." She turned to the first page and traced her slender fingers over the words there: Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna Grin. She closed the book, took his hand in hers, and rose to walk with him, playfully nudging him with her shoulder. "I love that you make the impossible happen. Prophecies. Ships with scarlet sails. . . ."

Kate paused with a flash of insight, a memory. She scrambled out of the sheet, set the open book down on the night table to hold her place, and quickly crossed her apartment.

She went to her collection of books in the front entrance, thumbed through the bindings until she found it: Scarlet Sails. And there it was, as plain as anything, the dedication inside: Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna by the Author. November 23, 1922. Petrograd.

She remembered traces of the story from when she had read it years ago. Not a lot of it stood out to her now, and she realized that was probably because she'd had such an emotional reaction to the first part.

It began with Longren. Longren was a sailor, already quite withdrawn from society, simply by nature. He returned from months at sea to discover that his wife had died; came home to an infant he'd never known, a little girl left temporarily in another woman's care after his dear wife's death. Longren lovingly raised his daughter, Assol, but as grief overtook their home and gossip overtook their town, they became all the more isolated.

Kate vividly remembered this part of the story because it was soon after Johanna Beckett's death that she had read it. At the time, her father was more immersed in alcohol than in his daughter's young adulthood. While anyone else who read the story would become enamored with Assol's adventures—the impossibility of a real ship with scarlet sails becoming a reality that swept her away—Kate was forever lost in Chapter One. As a reader, she ached for Longren. As a daughter who felt as though she'd just been orphaned twice, she coveted his steadfast love for Assol.

But that was a decade ago, and they say that you can hear something new every time you listen to the same song; that you can see new things in old stories when you read them again—especially when you wait so many years in between.

So, for the first time, Kate read Scarlet Sails not as a tale of a motherless child but as a story about hope and miracles, about trusting and waiting. It was a story of the romance between adult Assol and the clever Arthur Gray, who knew how people ridiculed Assol's childish belief and took it upon himself to make the fantastic scarlet sails a realized dream.

It was a love letter from Alexander Grin to Nina Nikolayevna, published for anyone to see, dedicated especially to her.