Notes: This chapter takes place before/during 2x12 "A Rose for Everafter."
Fun fact! The actor who plays Greg's Uncle Teddy in this episode—his last name is Beckel. Still on the lookout for someone surnamed Caskett.
Part Nine: The Dedication
It was the Saturday before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, because Richard Castle was pretending to be strapped to a chair.
Eventually, his daughter found him sitting at the edge of the living room, his eyes squeezed tight, his lips pressed together, his hands and feet straining against imaginary bonds.
He opened his eyes when he heard her footfalls; murmured urgently at her as though his mouth were actually incapacitated with tape.
She paused and assessed his predicament. "Good guy or bad guy?"
He stilled his straining movements and looked at Alexis with a serious expression that told her that it should be obvious from his performance that he was playing the role of a sympathetic hero.
Alexis humored him and pulled off the imaginary tape at her father's mouth. "You were saying?"
Castle gave an exaggerated gasp for air. "Thanks," he said, wiggling a little—just enough to keep his circulation going without breaking the illusion of his captivity. "I think I need your help. This isn't working psychologically."
She smiled and gently sassed: "Psychological help, then?"
"I need you to tape me to the chair."
"Looks like you're doing perfectly fine without the real thing."
"No," he said. "Pretending sort of works well enough to get into Nikki's head about how she feels about being in the situation, but it's not good enough for figuring out how to get her out of it."
"So you need to get real tape?"
"I need you to get real tape." At her hesitation, he insisted: "Mentally, I am strapped to the chair. I don't want to have to start over completely."
She sighed. "Well, no one can say that you aren't dedicated." She patted him on the shoulder on her way out. "I'll go get it. Don't move."
"Ha. I'll try to restrain myself," he teased back.
All of the signs pointed to Kyra.
Not the murdery ones. Well, maybe those, too, but only as far as Beckett was concerned. Rick knew better. He knew Kyra better.
No, all of the signs that mattered pointed to Kyra; all of the kinds of signs that Castle had just recently wished he'd had in his arsenal to woo Beckett.
But it had always been Kyra, hadn't it?
And Kyra believed in signs, too. He knew she understood.
The fateful interruption of her wedding ceremony. Their paths crossing again by no planning or plotting of their own. The look in her eye when they saw each other in the bridal suite of the Beaumont. Her revelation to him in the ballroom that she'd secretly hoped that he would follow her when she escaped to England all that time ago. This entire idea that nobly respecting her wish for space had parted them for so long—star-crossed lovers who couldn't make it work—only for their stars to align once again and reunite them now; wiser, stronger, and nevertheless connected.
She'd said it herself. Some people would think what happened to her on her wedding day was a sign. Really, what were the odds that Rick Castle would show up just then, after all these years apart?
Then there were the tangible signs: the hand-written manuscript that he cherished, the photo of them he'd tucked inside it. Like Chet's old boutonniere and Jeremy's love-smudged painting, each preserved for years with the memory of a man's lost love, Rick had held onto his life with Kyra Blaine.
Coming through the unlocked door to the roof to find Kyra standing there, waiting for him and only him; it was all just one more sign that he longed to heed.
"Some things never change," he told her. And maybe some things that are lost really can be found.
It was strange how easily things could be lost.
How easy, Kate thought as she curled up on her sofa that night, how incredibly easy it is to take something for granted and not even realize it.
After years of providing escapist fantasy to a post-Revolution audience, Alexander Grin fell off literary radar. As Josef Stalin came to power, critics deemed Grin's works "irrelevant" to the Soviet epoch.
Just like that. Irrelevant. Like an old man told to stop telling silly stories about his so-called glory days, or rather like a child told to leave behind ridiculous notions of make-believe.
He'd already penned hundreds of short stories and several novels, but after 1930, Grin was no longer able to publish, and he and Nina struggled to support themselves. The loss of his public voice and their dire financial situation were only the beginning; Grin soon became ill with cancer, a villain he could not write away.
Just a month before his fifty-second birthday, Alexander Grin died at home, his wife at his side.
When his cold body was taken away to be prepared for burial, Nina clung to the things that she had left to honor the life she'd lost. In the midst of carrying out the usual tasks that a widow with few family members must do for the deceased, she held Scarlet Sails close to her heart, and she realized then that eulogies and epigraphs were rather like dedications to the dead.
"You know," Kyra said quietly, still enfolded in Rick's arms and a little breathless from their kiss, "I nearly had heart failure when I saw that dedication."
Rick held her more tightly, resting his chin on top of her head. "What do you mean?"
She took a moment, as though she might not answer at all. "In Heat Wave. I saw 'KB,' and I thought—" Kyra paused, tried again. "It was silly. You never even called me that. And I actually had seen something in a magazine about Detective Beckett and Nikki Heat. Later when I got the book, I just didn't put it together. I guess I just—"
"You thought it was you," he said gently, not realizing that, even though Kyra had already known that it wasn't her, his words made this real for her.
"That maybe you were still thinking of me," she said, fending off emotion. "That it was some kind of sign—I know it's silly."
He opened his embrace just enough to be able to see her looking up at him with tired eyes and a weak smile. "I have been thinking of you," he told her. "How could I possibly forget you?"
During the summer between their sophomore and junior years of college, their first summer as a couple, they met often in their special place—their secret roof. While Kyra was taking a couple of courses to beef up her résumé, Rick was working hard on a novel.
That is, when they weren't making out.
One day, she broke a particularly thorough kiss, still cradling his jaw in her delicate hands, and met his eyes. "Can I tell you something?"
"If you come up for air long enough," Rick teased.
She bit her lip, slid her hands down to touch the collar of his T-shirt as she gathered herself. Then she went for it: "I'm glad your book didn't get published right away. It gave me a chance to get to know you just a little before the bestseller."
It surprised him, honestly. They'd met early in their sophomore year and started dating that winter, not very long after Black Pawn finally published the oft-rejected In a Hail of Bullets. Scoring a bestseller in college had gotten Rick a fair amount of attention, and even though he'd already been friendly with Kyra and knew her not to be shallow, part of him believed that much of his appeal hinged on the fame and money.
He'd blown through everything he earned in six months, some of it on wild attempts to impress Kyra, which she kept insisting that he didn't need to do. She stuck around, faithful as before, when the money was gone and the fame was what it ever was for a one-hit wonder. Kyra encouraged him to keep writing, not for the sake of a paycheck or his reputation, but because she knew how much he loved words and stories and people.
And yet her confession still surprised him.
Not knowing quite what to say, he said, "I didn't know those few weeks meant that for you."
She looked bashful for a moment, demure and tender. "They did. But we met once in freshman year, too."
That was news to him. "Get out. I would have remembered you."
"The formal," she said slyly, watching her boyfriend's reaction as she recounted the story. "I'd found out just that night that my grandfather died. Even my mother said I should stay and enjoy the dance with my friends, but I couldn't do it. You saw that I was upset and asked my friend and me if we were okay. They were selling flowers for a fundraiser, and just before I left—"
"—I gave you a rose." The memory brought a sad, gentle smile to his face.
She nodded. "Even as a stranger, you did something sweet for me without expecting anything in return. I liked you already. When I saw you again this year, I had to get to know you. But you have always been that same sweet guy to me." She rested her palms on his chest, traced his collar bone. "I like this accomplished author, but I liked my mysterious rose man first."
Rick cleared his throat. "I, uh, I have a confession, too." They were words that he did not utter frequently or easily, but his girlfriend's own openness compelled him. "I'm sorry that you never got to fulfill your dream. That you didn't get into Oxford. And I feel even worse because I'm glad you didn't," he said quickly, the syllables tumbling out now. "Because if they'd accepted you, you would have gone there instead, and then I never would have met—"
She cut him off with another kiss, reassurance and understanding and forgiveness wrapped into one gesture; a mutual celebration of the twists of fate that gave them one another. When they parted, she glanced at the notebook he'd brought with him. "What are you working on?"
He smiled; she must have been using the term loosely, because he'd written all of ten words in the time that they'd been up there. "It's called Flowers for Your Grave. I've been working on it a while now, but I don't know. Somehow the second book seems harder than the first."
"Mm," she hummed. She patted his arm and made her way back to her own books to study some more. "Guess I should stop distracting you, then."
He didn't finish the book that summer, of course. In fact, he'd been derailed enough that he had to put it aside and start a different one; a practice he did not feel good about indulging, even with only one bestseller under his belt. But at least he was still writing.
They spent that Thanksgiving with Kyra's family. They'd been together for just under a year, which was already longer than any of Castle's previous relationships, and he was feeling the pressure. It was the first time that he was meeting the Blaines, and he wanted to make a—well, he didn't want to fuck it up.
As it turned out, he'd done that long before he got to the front door.
Sheila Blaine had his number. Relentlessly she grilled Rick over dinner: most memorably their nontraditional entrée of grilled Red Snapper, which Rick decided was all too aptly named for the occasion.
Whenever the going got really tough, he longed to bury himself in his dish, seeking refuge from one Red Snapper with another. But he stayed strong; back straight, best behavior. Small enough bites to seem civilized, but not so small as to offend the hosts.
Sheila had heard about his one publishing accomplishment and wanted to know if he intended to continue writing "low-brow literature" in the future, and whether he intended it as a career or as a hobby while holding down a Real Job—especially if he was going to continue to "spend his money as fast as he made it."
He rather meekly responded that, wherever his career path led, he believed his writing quality would improve over time, like a fine wine. The metaphor did nothing to appease Sheila Blaine, who had already decided that his writing niche was not a fine enough wine to begin with.
Then she wanted to know why he hadn't managed to publish anything in the year since In a Hail of Bullets hit the shelves. "Kyra tells us you're always writing. All this writing and nothing to show for it?"
"I've got a good portion of another novel completed," he assured her, carefully neglecting to elaborate that Flowers for Your Grave had bit the dust. "And I've just started a new one, which I'm really excited about, called A Rose for Tonight."
Kyra offered him a bright smile from across the table; he'd mentioned that she had somehow inspired his newest novel, but this was the first time that she was hearing anything about the title.
Sheila Blaine scoffed. "Sounds like something Danielle Steel turned down."
Rick opted not to ask whether that was an insult because Sheila approved of Danielle Steel or because she condemned her. It was pretty clear that it was an insult either way. He smiled back at Kyra and attended to his Red Snapper, the one that was on his side.
It was a very long Thanksgiving dinner, and when it was finally over, Rick had never been more thankful in his young life.
Kyra said he deserved a medal for it all, but Rick declared that dating Kyra was its own reward. That made her smile. He remembered that.
Then, a year later, he published what had become A Rose for Everafter and dedicated it to Kyra Blaine.
It was just in time for their second anniversary, and for a moment there he didn't know which surprised him more: that they were together that long or that he'd turned into the kind of guy who remembers an anniversary with a girlfriend. When had that happened, anyway? He guessed it was probably when he'd finally dated one for more than a year.
And he really liked this one.
He traced the words of that dedication now, revisiting the old manuscript once again after his rooftop rendezvous with Kyra tonight. Dedications were the sorts of things that Castle usually added late in the process, but he'd gone back and included this one in his handwritten manuscript.
For Kyra Blaine, you make the stars shine.
He smiled and tucked the book away, but before heading to bed, he stopped at his desk and rebooted his computer.
It was far too late to get any serious writing done, especially if he wanted to be conscious when he got to the precinct tomorrow, but there was one thing he needed to do.
This sequel of his would eventually need both a title and a dedication. The former was still his own personal mystery, but he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight until he had something for the latter.
He considered including everyone again—all his friends at the Twelfth—but by now, all the people there that he really cared about had assured Castle in some way or another that they bore no hard feelings about Heat Wave or its upcoming sequels.
No, this particular novel was an apology to the one and only Kate Beckett.
As such, he considered using her real name, and ultimately decided against it. But he did want it to be clear which KB was getting this book.
To the real Nikki Heat, he typed out.
He could always change it later.
She gave them space. She figured they needed that.
But she was damned curious about how all this was going to go. After everything that had happened, what would Richard Castle and Kyra Blaine's lives look like now? Was this goodbye, this tender kiss to his cheek? What did all of this mean to them?
Never mind what it meant to her. It didn't mean anything to Kate Beckett—it didn't. It had nothing to do with—
Kyra strode to the door of the conference room, and Beckett guiltily swiveled back into place to pretend to do some paperwork at her desk. But Kyra stood patiently, her coat folded over her arm, smiling at the detective who had helped to save her future marriage. Having proven Greg Murphy's innocence and trustworthiness, Detective Beckett and her team had given Kyra great closure about her decision to stand by a good man.
The least Kyra could do was return the favor.
When the detective looked up, Kyra had only one thing she needed her to know: "He's all yours."
And with that, Kyra may as well have handed over the Book of Richard Castle with an inscription made out to Kate Beckett. Whether or not she was ever going to accept it was another matter, but Kyra decided that that was something for the extraordinary KB to figure out on her own.