I wasn't planning on writing a chapter story, but this idea just wouldn't leave me alone, so I just had to write it down. The title and lyrics are from the Green Day song and may make further appearances, they just seemed to fit in nicely with what I was trying to write.

I don't own Castle or the lyrics, I am just borrowing them both.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Chapter One

She stood still outside the marble building, staring inside at the counter, staring at where she once stood for hours on end. Where she stood when her life was simple, her life was her own; her life was familiar.

She shivered as the wind blew across her back, she'd started the night wearing a coat, a coat she'd brought with her from home, but somewhere in the madness of this evening she'd lost it. She knew she'd never see it again, she had to get out of this place, she didn't belong here, and she wanted to go home.

Her hands trembled as she rummaged through her small purse, filled to the top with notepaper and pens, finally her fingers clenched around her phone, slowly she tapped out a message – crossing her fingers as it sent. The phone beeped at her and she took this as a sign that the person she had sent it to would soon be reading what she had written. She dropped the phone back into her bag and wrapped her arms around herself; she whispered a goodbye to the building and headed for her apartment, shivering as she went.

I walk this empty street, on the boulevard of broken dreams,

where the city sleeps, and I'm the only one and I walk alone.

She smiled as she ran along the empty beach, the sand between her toes, the sunshine hitting her bare shoulders, the wind gathering up her hair. She stopped running and began to laugh, once a long time ago, she'd never understood how exactly wind could gather up hair. She guessed it was because she'd never run along this particular beach – a beach where the wind blew over the dunes and hit you right on the shoulders, gathering her brown curls and blowing them across her face. She stared out into the distance as a flashing light distracted her, before a buzzing sound began to accompany the light.

She blinked slowly, her eyes opening. The light was the flash of her phone, the buzzing the sound of the vibrate function. She wasn't on the beach running, she'd been dreaming of the previous weekend, the weekend she'd spent with Castle, Martha and Alexis in the Hamptons. She'd snuck out early on Sunday morning, pulling on clothes in the weak light of morning, before running along the perfect beach. She run for long enough so that the sun rose to meet her, she'd enjoyed the feeling of sunshine, the feeling of being alone with the water and the sand. She sighed as her eyes adjusted to the room in which she was currently in, the light of the clock telling her it was 4:26am, sighing she reached out for the other side of the bed, but it was cold and empty; the phone continued to flash and make its annoying rumbling sound, it wanted attention and slowly she pressed it to her ear, answering as she did so, "Beckett." She managed to mumble, the hand not holding her phone rubbing at her eyes.

"Detective Beckett, they've found a body."

"Sir?" she questioned, it wasn't usual for her Captain to call her about a murder, usually the calls came from Ryan, Esposito or even Lanie.

"I was working budgetary figures and fell asleep at my desk, I woke to the phone. She's in Central Park – West 77th," Captain Roy Montgomery explained, before he continued, "Beckett, it looks like him again."

Kate Beckett immediately felt her heart begin to race, she knew exactly who her Captain meant, there was no need for explanations. She pulled herself up from under the covers, throwing the blankets off before flicking on the lamp.

"I need confirmation before sunrise, if he's back again the press are going to be all over this, I need as much time as possible to head them off."

"I'm on my way." Beckett answered, ending the call and dropping the phone to the bed next to her. Sighing quietly, she stood and stared to the pile of clothes that had begun to mount next to the bed. There were two piles, one neatly folded and one messy, the clothes remaining exactly where they had been dropped. She bent over and selected clothes from the clean pile, changing into them quickly, before remembering to pick up her phone as she ran from the bedroom.

Slowly she tiptoed down the stairs, so as not to wake the other sleeping members of the Castle household, especially Alexis who Beckett knew would be up in a few hours herself, she had a very important essay that was due this morning, it had been worrying her for weeks. She knew that Alexis would read the document at least seven times before breakfast and another three on her way to school.

At the bottom of the stairs she found her shoes and slipped them on, walking on the balls of her feet towards where she knew Castle would be. Sure enough he was in his study, feet balanced on the end of his spacious desk, laptop on his lap, head resting on one of his hands. He was fast asleep, snoring peacefully, for a man who she knew was no angel, he slept with the innocence of a child – always calm, always peaceful. Silently she tiptoed over to him and removed the laptop from his lap, placing it gently on the desk, far enough away so that his feet would not knock it off if he woke suddenly. The screen illuminated as she moved the laptop and she could see what he had been writing, immediately she saw the name Roach and Beckett knew that Castle had as usual had one of his middle of the night 'brainwaves' and had immediately come downstairs to write it down. This trait was one of the many things she'd learnt about her partner in the eighteen months that they had been dating.

The first night it had happened they'd been at her apartment, she'd woken up at 3am and had thought he'd gone home, instead she'd found him sitting in her kitchen, hunched over his iPhone - typing madly. She'd also found he'd ransacked her living room; he'd been in search of her laptop. He hadn't found it, mainly because he'd not bothered to look underneath the couch. She smiled remembering the back and forth conversation that they had entered into, him lamenting her hiding her laptop under the couch and her lamenting that he was the one awake at 3am wanting to write. He'd called it his writing prerogative and that he couldn't help the fact that he became particularly verbose in the middle of the night. Once he'd managed to write his particular scene the two of them had laughed the night away, neither of them falling asleep until the sun had begun to peek underneath the drapes.

As tempted, as she was to read what he had been writing tonight– she desperately wanted to know what he was planning for the latest Nikki Heat novel – she didn't. Castle was stubbornly refusing to tell her what he had written and what he was planning to write and although she would never admit it, this was intriguing her. She smiled and instead softly kissed him on the forehead and crept from the room, under normal circumstances she would have woken him and asked him to come with her.

However tonight she'd decided was not a normal circumstance; she knew that if Michael Bancroft were behind this murder then Castle would feel guilty. Michael Bancroft was the second case that she and Castle had dealt with after their relationship had gone public, both she and Castle believed that he had been responsible for the murder of his wife, Paulette. Paulette was six years younger than Michael and just prior to her death had worked as a customer care representative at one of the city's finest jewellers - she'd been found in the park by an early morning jogger, who had tripped over her purse and received the shock of his life. From the beginning Castle had had his suspicions about Michael and they seemed to be confirmed when one of Paulette's co-workers had mentioned that she was planning to leave her husband, but from there the case had fallen apart.

Bancroft had family money and had managed to hook himself the best possible lawyer, who'd poked holes in all of the leads that both she and Castle could find. The press had also been constantly following the two of them at the time and had been exceptionally scathing in their reports of Bancroft's dealings with the police, this press interest had only intensified when they'd had to release him – this was the reason for Montgomery's worry, recently things had been good between the press and the NYPD, they didn't need another scandal - which is exactly what Bancroft would be.

Bancroft had typically been thrilled with his outcome and he'd made sure to thank the two of them immensely, for what he had called a 'failure to merge a romantic and work relationship correctly.' He'd even suggested that Castle should have stuck to writing fiction – he was only after all playing with 'fake lives' when writing. For weeks after Castle had blamed himself and had even contemplated giving up his shadowing, Beckett had even accidentally found a very detailed passage of writing involving Jameson Rook striking a murder suspect in an interrogation room when Nikki was making coffee. Neither of them had mentioned Bancroft since and two days after reading the interrogation room scene, she'd found it in the trash. She sighed as she headed for the door, she wouldn't tell Castle until she was sure, until she had evidence.

Quietly she unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall, stepping over the paper that had been delivered just prior to her wake up call. In the days before her and Castle and cases like Bancroft - she would take the paper with her each morning and read it from cover to cover, sometimes in avoidance of completing paperwork. Now she knew better. Each morning Castle would get the paper first and he would remove the 'entertainment' section, or as Beckett had come to call it, the section where people write fiction and try to pass it off as news.

As she headed for the elevator she smiled at the stories that had been written about her and Castle, they'd been engaged four times, married twice, including one lavish ceremony in Paris that had reportedly cost over two million dollars, Beckett's dress had been made by Vera Wang and had apparently cost $50,000 and finally she had been the subject of pregnancy rumours six times, once after she'd eaten a five course meal at Le Cirque – so of course she had been 'unusually rounded.' Occasionally she'd hear him giggle as he read the entertainment section, but he never told her what exactly he was giggling at – this was better for the both of them. It kept her sane and him entertained, both of which each of them needed.

The elevator arrived and she stepped inside, pressing the button for the parking garage, soon enough she was driving down the quiet streets, headed for the park, not knowing what she was going to find.

So that was chapter one, if you liked it please let me know.