a.n. Prompt from CastleFanFicPrompts on Tumbler and LordofKavaka:

AU: He was arrested for her mother's murder. She sat in the courtroom and watched as the jury convicted him of the crime. She visits him, without fail, once a month-for years, simply asking "Why?" but each time, he insists he's innocent. Then one day, Kate Beckett finally makes detective, and while putting her mom's "Parade of Elephants" on her desk, she accidentally drops it. It breaks, and a tape falls out. She's been wrong all this time. Richard Castle was framed.

xxxx

She can't believe her favorite author had her mother killed. She had her doubts right up until the jury came back with a guilty verdict. Surely if the jury thought he was guilty it had to be true, right?

But why? Why did he do this? How did he even know her mother? How could someone like that do something so terrible? He had ruined her life. He had cost her not one, but both of her parents. She needed to know why.

So she asked him.

A month after his conviction, she met him in jail for the first time. She said nothing for the first five minutes. All she did was sit there and stare at the man who had taken her mom's life away. She needed to know.

"Why?" She said it in such a small voice she didn't know if he had even heard her.

"I didn't do this. I didn't do what they said I did," He responded, his eyes pleading with her to believe him. She didn't. The jury wouldn't lie.

Figuring she wouldn't get an answer out of him, she decided that she'd let him rot in prison for a while and see if he would give her the answers after that.

xxxx

One Month Later…

Two months after his conviction, and a month after the judge had sentenced him to the death penalty, she visited him again. She had just gotten off a long shift as a uniform cop, but she needed to know. She needed to know why.

So she asked him. "Why?"

Again his response was the same. "I didn't do this. I didn't do what they said I did. Please, you have to believe me."

Between the exhaustion and the grief that was ever present in her life these days, she shouted, "I don't have to do anything! I need to know why you did this! Why did you take her away from me? Why?!"

He looked at her with tears in his eyes, and simply whispered, "I didn't do this. I didn't do what they said I did."

xxxx

She visited him in prison every month for the next eight years. Being a wealthy author he could afford to appeal the verdict, to delay his execution. Every visit went the same. She'd ask him why. He'd say he didn't do it.

The day she made detective, she went to see him again. Again it went the same. She had changed her entire life because of this man. She was going to be a lawyer. Maybe make it all the way to Chief Justice. Now she was a cop. She wanted to be the one who got the answers for other people, even if she never got hers.

She still needed to know why, and she would continue to ask right up until the moment Richard Castle, the bastard, took his last breath.

xxxx

The next day she got her assignment. She made her way through the bullpen of the 12th precinct and sat the box of her things on her new desk. She took off her jacket and looked around. There weren't many people in the precinct yet, so she had the place to herself for the most part. Deciding that she wanted to get situated before her new partners arrived, she pulled out the framed picture of her mom and dad and put it on the right corner of her desk.

Then she picked up the elephants which had sat on her mother's desk. She was about to put them in their proper place when she heard, "Yo! Beckett! You're here too?"

Startled by the sudden outburst of sound, she dropped the elephants on the floor. They shattered. In a single moment, one of the most precious things she had left from her mother was lying broken on the floor.

She couldn't handle this. It was too much. Bending down, she fondly started picking up the pieces while tears flowed down her cheeks.

She paused when her fingers stumbled over something that didn't belong. A tape.

xxxx

She didn't do anything with the tape until she got back to her apartment that day. Her first day as a real detective had been terrible. It had started out with the broken elephants and hadn't gotten better. She was paired with two young rookie detectives like herself, both of whom she knew, and an older detective who was seriously past his prime.

He had the unfortunate habit of looking her up and down every time he spoke to her, and it made her feel dirty. It made the whole day uncomfortable.

When she finally arrived at her apartment, she decided she needed a glass of wine. She normally stayed away from alcohol because of her father, but today she needed something to make it all go away. It wasn't until she was half way through the first glass that she remembered the tape in her pocket.

She knew that it had to have been put in the elephants by her mother or someone close to her mother. She knew that it had to be important if her mother had taken the time to hide it away where no one would ever think of looking for it.

She got up off the couch and went to her closet where she kept an old style tape player from her college days. She'd had a recorder which had taken these small cassette tapes, so she had needed to be able to play them back. Luckily for her, she never threw anything out.

xxxx

After listening to the tape one time, the only sound in her apartment was the shattering of the wine glass as it hit the floor. She couldn't believe it. Richard Castle had been telling the truth for eight years. He hadn't had her mother killed. He had been framed.

Her first thought was that it couldn't be right. She knew one of the voices on the tape. It was Roy Montgomery, her captain. The man who had been there for her after catching her in the records room during her first week as a uniform. How could he be involved in this, he was a cop. But the tape didn't lie. His voice was there. Richard Castle's wasn't.

Her next thought was one of immense shame. An innocent man had sat on death row for eight years, and she had rubbed it in his face once a month. The man had a daughter. He had been taken away from his daughter almost like her mother had been taken away from her. How could the system do this to an innocent man? Why?

She had to know why. She had to make this right.

xxxx

a.n. Probably a three parter. Let me know if you want me to continue.