AN: Well, I'm finally tossing this battered hat into the Ficathon ring. This time around proved more difficult than I'd imagined (read: my wastebasket is full), and that was partly to do with the Caskett Easter egg I chose to drop into the piece (If you spot it, kudos to you. If you don't, I'll be sharing it at the end) and the constraints it necessitated-hence only the mini-Ficathon contribution. Face your challenges head-on, folks. You may not come away from them unscathed, but there's always something to be learned from them. Happy 2019 to all of you. May it be filled with words you love.

Chapter 1

Another one. Another one had arrived.

He'd had no time to prepare, no adequate rehearsal for the line he'd just been thrown, yet standing across the counter from his mother, Rick somehow managed to deliver an improvised performance she, an able actress in her own right, surely would've been proud of.

As though nothing was amiss, as though alarm hadn't instantly coursed through him when he'd seen it, he flipped casually through the rest of the day's pile of mail, all the while his heart was galloping like a thoroughbred.

It'd been five months of them, the envelopes wrapped around them having grown unsettlingly familiar, but the one clutched covertly in Rick's hand was different. Unlike the others, letter number thirteen had been sent to his home rather than to Black Pawn's offices, the long-established terminus for his fan mail, and thus its receipt had achieved the very effect he imagined its sender had hoped for: surprise, albeit for the sendee, not the welcome kind.

"Richard?" Martha had said his name more than once, though he only registered the last.

The blood-red paper dug into the curl of his palm with his effort to keep it hidden. Neither she nor Alexis knew anything of the letters' existence, and that was just as he'd wanted it.

"I need to take care of something," he said as he walked off for his office, and while Martha had sensed a definitive shift in his demeanor, she let him go without challenge. She'd done that a lot since Kate had gone off to D.C., granted him space, though not of her own volition. Keeping her nose out of things didn't much speak to Martha Rodgers's nature, but it was what he'd asked of her.

Sitting at his desk, Rick eyed the creases his fist had created, the hammered letters of the typewritten address that always seemed to flush too far to the right to ever be considered proper mail form, and he thought about lighting a match and burning the communication unopened-a powerful rejection of a misplaced infatuation. But that would never happen, and he knew it. He knew he was too damn curious a man for that.

Each of the envelopes had been adorned with one of a different variety, flowers the recurring theme, and, again, there it was, a sticker pressed to the seal at the back, that one a daisy, and with the image she rolled back into him like a wave.

Kate had adored daisies, and he her love for them, their unassuming beauty a mirror of her own, their simplicity a mask only the lucky could see behind. He'd bought them for her often, picked them with his own hand once or twice in some poetic attempt at romance-like that'd mattered in the end. She'd still left.

Rick tore through the flower, pretended there wasn't something deeper behind the deliberateness of the action, and pulled out what was folded inside. It was the same paper it always was, the same mechanical lettering that, at first glance, could be supposed rather impersonal if not for the nature the of words it pressed into the page.

#

Dearest Rick, I've given you chance after chance. I've waited for you as patiently as I can. I know the other one is gone, so there's no reason we shouldn't be together now. That bitch never loved you like I do, and I see the way you look at me. I know you feel it, too. I know it. It's almost Christmas, Rick. Imagine how beautiful it would be to spend it together. You love Christmas and so do I. You're just wasting precious time is what you're doing. You're just playing games, and it's making me angry. I have your present already wrapped, and also one for Alexis. I almost gave it to her early because I was so excited about it. She has a break from school for the holidays soon, right? We can all celebrate. Oh, Rick, let's just hurry up and be a family. I love you so much.

#

He read it four times, and his disgust grew with each pass. The previous twelve were tucked away in his desk and he dug them out. He wasn't entirely sure why he'd held on to them. He'd received his share of fan oddities over the course of his successful writing years, and he'd discarded most of it without a second thought, but there was something about those that'd felt different, and his time with the NYPD-with Kate-had certainly furthered his belief in the benefit of trusted instincts.

Beginning with the first, the one that'd come nearly six months before, he read them all again. Some were long, others but a few words, but none of the others had ever made mention of Alexis, and more than concerned or any of the other emotions the collection elicited, it enraged him to see her name there, to say nothing of the context.

His daughter was the most important thing in his life, the thing he cherished most, and one of the few things that'd brought him joy over the past twelve weeks and five days, and there was no way in hell some delusional lunatic with a sick fantasy was ever going to get anywhere near her. No. That was the breaking point.

xxxx

Rick rolled out of bed late the next morning, having logged little in the way of actual sleep, but with a decision made about what it was he wanted to do. In some respects it'd been an easy one. After all, where else would he turn first but to those he knew, to the 12th? They'd always had his back, and despite the fact that his circumstance existed outside their professional purview, Javi and Kevin were, beyond all else, his friends.

Time had passed, though, and a lot of it. Once Kate was gone, so, too, was his reason for being at the precinct, and he hadn't been back since. He'd had intentions of keeping in touch, of course. They'd all had intentions, but intentions were just that, and now days had become weeks had become months. Maybe it'd been too long for him to just stroll into the place and ask for help like nothing had changed. Either way, he was about to find out.

"I'd ask you how you slept, but those bags under your eyes are the size of my Vuittons," Martha remarked upon his approach. "Shall I brew another pot or would you rather just drink the grounds straight out of the bag?"

On a normal morning, Rick probably would've chuckled, if only sarcastically, but it wasn't and he didn't.

"I have to go out. I'll stop on the way." He plucked his keys from the counter, slid on his sunglasses. The weather didn't call for them, but the swell of his eyes definitely did. "I don't know how long I'll be. Alexis is supposed to stop by after her morning classes. Tell her to call me when she gets here."

"I will do that, darling. Button up, all right? They said on the news the wind is whipping out there."

"Mother," he replied, firmer with the perceived flippancy of her response. "Make sure Alexis calls me."

In that moment, he suddenly felt beyond the often aloof son she'd come to encounter with Kate's absence, and Martha had no idea why or what'd happened, but if it had anything at all to do with Alexis, it would certainly be worrisome for them both. At present, she was his beacon in the fog.

xxxx

Rick liked to joke about his fame as a writer, puff it up for a laugh now and then-a practice that usually earned him a roll of the eyes or an exasperated sigh-but his face did grace the jackets of some very successful books that sat on shelves all over the world, and had for a lot of years, and people did recognize and approach him because of it.

Even as someone in the public eye, though, whatever his true level of exposure was, he'd never experienced attention quite as personal and, therefore, as disconcerting as he was now. He just couldn't get it out of his head, seeing Alexis's name on that piece of paper. Even all those hours later, as he climbed in the elevator toward the floor that was now his past, it had his stomach in knots, the cup of coffee he'd detoured for virtually untouched.

The desk sergeant had sent him up to Homicide without need of announcement, and with both surprise and relief, he found both of his old teammates at work in the bullpen, though something in their arrangement had changed. Javi was sitting at Kate's desk, his personal items noticeably lined up along its edge, his jacket hung from the back of her chair, and a pang of envy hit with a jolt, like someone had a piece of her that he didn't. But what a foolish thought that was. He didn't have any of her, anymore.

"Shit, Castle, you scared me, bro," Javi said with a handshake and that half-hug men did. "Long time no see."

Kevin had heard the commotion and made his way over, jumped in with a grander gesture and an excitement he wore all over his face.

"It's good to see you guys, too," Rick huffed out as he attempted to free himself from Kevin's squeeze with his near-full coffee intact.

"Ryan," Javi hissed before punching his partner on the arm. "You are a married man and this is a place of business. Control yourself." He looked back at Rick. "And I didn't say it was good to see you. I said it's been a long time." He always enjoyed giving him shit. "Where the hell have you been hiding?"

"Yeah, Castle," Kevin chimed in, tending to the site of his future bruise. "What are you doing here? Murder someone and turning yourself in?" There was a hint of a laugh at his own attempt at a joke, but Javi abruptly stifled it with an eye.

Rick raised a hand when a familiar face passed by, and an ember flared up inside him. Being there again felt almost surreal, like he was in the midst of a dream he'd lived before, but without Kate it was more akin to a nightmare, like those months after she was shot and then disappeared because she couldn't be near him. He hated those fucking months. He hated that place without her.

"There's a lot of stuff to catch up on, I know, but there's actually something I wanted to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes or…I can come back if now isn't good. I probably should've called first."

Javi heard the weight in Rick's voice, and thinking it might be easier, steered a one-on-one. "Ryan's working on a thing. Right, Ryan?" There really wasn't a question in the question, and his partner got that, gave a nod and went back to his desk. "I'm cool, though, bro. We can talk."

They closed themselves in one of the work rooms, one they'd been in together it seemed like hundreds of times before, and like the whisper of ghosts, Rick could hear old case chatter in his head-the guy with amnesia, the psychic, the vampire-he still carried them all. They were with him like the characters in his novels, and he strangely hadn't realized how prevalent a place in his memory they'd occupied until that moment.

"Yo, Castle." Javi managed to rouse him from his contemplation, but not without effort. "Where are you at?"

Rick slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the letters. "Sorry, it's just, um, it feels a little bit weird being back here, I guess." Javi imagined he knew why, but didn't press. "Espo, I know you guys don't normally deal with this kind of stuff, but I know you've seen it and I trust your judgment. I just need an outside take." Rather than handing them all over, he slid only the most recent down the table. "That's the thirteenth," he said as Javi began to read.

"What the…? This is some sick shit, bro. There are a dozen more of these?" Rick flashed the stack. "How long has this been going on?"

"Almost six months. All of them came through Black Pawn with the rest of my mail except the one in your hand. It showed up at the loft yesterday, and I won't pretend that doesn't freak me out a little bit in itself, but I'm more pissed off because she talks about Alexis. That's why I'm here. That's the only reason I'm here. I don't care about me, but bringing her into it is just too far-I can't…"

"No, Castle, I get it," Javi assured him with a peek at his watch. "Look, Ryan and I have an interview coming in. Leave them with me. Let me take a look when I can get a good eye on them and then we can talk more." Rick dropped the pile on the chair between them. "And it doesn't matter what kind of stuff we usually deal with, okay? You're family. That's it."

Rick sat with the sentiment, recalled how Kate had referred to the four of them in the same way after they'd lost Montgomery in the hangar that night. Not a day went by that he wasn't reminded of her, even in his fight to avoid it, and there, within those walls, his mind was positively flooded.

"Have you talked to her?" He couldn't help himself. He couldn't stop himself. He sounded almost guilty asking.

"Sometimes, but it's been a while. Fed jobs come with some perks, but free time isn't one of them. I guess I don't have to ask." Javi got up, grabbed the letters. "I gotta say it's some pretty easy math on this one, Castle. Beckett was still around when this shit started. You never told her?" Rick's silence was enough of an answer. "You know, I always wondered what would've happened if you two had actually talked to each other all those times you should've," he said and moved for the door. "I'll call you."

There were a lot of things they should've done, and he didn't need Javi to tell him that. How many times he'd played over in his mind that day-the way it'd felt to hear her answer. He'd lost women, but he'd never lost a love like that, and it was a wound that seemed only to open, never to close.

His phone chirped, and he saw Alexis's name attached to the incoming text message and smiled. She confirmed her plan to meet him at the loft after her early classes, told him she hoped he was having a good morning and added a heart symbol. He typed his reply and closed the box, an old conversation between him and Kate still saved above.

I wish you'd just talk to me was all that was visible without opening it, but that didn't matter. He remembered every word.