For my dear Polly Lynn, who helped me develop the idea for this fic. One zillion bunneh snuggles to you.

kintsugi

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize
the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that
when something's suffered damage and has a history, it
becomes more beautiful.

Billie Mobayed

The day Kate tells him about her mother, Castle goes home and feels like an ass for every word her said to her when they first met.

He's never met a woman like this. A woman with a backstory so terribly, tragically simple. She's young and gorgeous and intelligent and damaged.

But he likes her. Really likes her, in a way that's starting to look like something serious. At first he just wanted to see her in a skimpy dress. But now that's not it. She wears sensible slacks and buttondowns. She's made it clear she has no time for him. And now the best part of every day is spent pretending to be affronted when she teases him.

It's so new. So different.

It was that softness in her voice, the quiet, so unlike her brisk, efficient persona. It was my mother. Not my father. He just wanted to comfort her, even though he knew she was perfectly capable of doing without him.

Persona. The Latin word for mask.

The day she shoots her mother's killer to save his life, Rick realizes just how raw her wounds are. And just how far they're spread. Not a tidy little scar, but a web of them, laced across her seemingly unflappable exterior.

The shot was perfect. She had one chance, and she hit her mark. She looked so cool, so focused.

And now she's desperately trying to revive this dead man, futilely looking for a sign of life even though she knows exactly where she'd shot him, she knows he's dead.

She cries. Kate Beckett cries over this man who shoved a knife into her mother's abdomen, and Rick's hand is shaking when he tries to help her, some lame attempt to connect to her.

He wants to take her home, hug her, do something to help her. But he doesn't.

He spends that night staring blearily at his computer screen, not seeing anything. He can't do this. He doesn't belong. He's lost in her world. The cracked pieces of her past are too much for him to shoulder, and he doesn't know how to tell her I want to help you, Kate. Let me help you. He doesn't think he can help her.

But when he tells her he thinks he should leave, she surprises him.

She wants him to stay.

When she shows him her home version of her mother's murderboard, he feels like his chest is breaking open.

The thought of Kate sitting here alone in the dark, soaking in that tragedy, is too much. Castle knows he has a tendency to push himself into things; he's nosy, curious by nature, and he has to remind himself that Kate isn't like that. She likes her privacy.

But it can't be right that way, because the look on her face? That tells him she isn't happy. She hasn't been happy. She's tired, because this is sapping her life. Just hers.

And that's it. She's alone. She's carrying this alone.

Rick is overwhelmed with a terrible need to hold her, keep her close, do whatever it takes to protect her. He wonders when she put this together. Why she hasn't showed it to the doctor. How many nights she's spent staring at this, reviewing the details she already knows.

You should have called me. Kate. I wouldn't have left you alone.

He wants to say it. He doesn't know how.

Then one night she pounds on his door, soaked through from a thunderstorm, and whispers I just want you.

When he makes love to her for the first time, he can see tears in her eyes. She clutches at his back and shudders and gasps his name and finally, finally, falls apart.

He falls asleep with Kate in his arms and his heart so full it's overflowing.

The day Kate Beckett walks to meet him in a white lace dress and looks up at him with nothing but love in her eyes, he doesn't forget the mantle of tragedy draped over everything, the tears he's seen in her eyes, the pain and desperation she's gone through.

But if her mother hadn't died, he might never have met Kate, the woman who turned his life upside down and turned him into a better man.

He has so many things to say. He always has things to tell her. So many words to tell her he loves her and adores her and admires her and respects her and considers her the most beautiful, glowing, perfect, broken, imperfect person to ever walk into his life and make it hers.

So many things to say.

And now he finally has the words.

"I do."