Disclaimer: I am sat in the middle of a heatwave and I don't like it so if I ever owned Castle and had to live in LA I would just sell it and move to somewhere cold. Like Iceland.

So the letters came from an army camp, from California, then Vietnam

And he told her of his heart, it might be love, and all of the things he was so scared of

He said when it's getting kinda rough over here, I think of that day sittin' down by the pier

And I close my eyes, and see your pretty smile

Don't worry but I won't be able to write for a while

The first letter he sends is from California. He doesn't think it's anything special, just telling Kate about the camp, the officers, the guys he's sharing a barrack with. His favourites, or the ones he gets on the most with, are a young Irish man who looks as if he's forged his age to get in, but he provides a certain sense of humour to an otherwise dreary place. A lot of the time, he's the butt of the jokes, but he revels in it. Sometimes does stupid things just to make everyone laugh. And then there's the Latino, the one with the supposed muscle and courage, the one who everyone wants to beat. And when he tries too hard and mucks up and gets frustrated it's all the more entertaining. And he tells her about how the weather is far hotter than it ever was in New York, how it's horrible when they're doing drills and everyone's sweaty and stinky, and he's not entirely sure which is worse, that or the ten's of men butt naked in the showers after.

And then when their training is done, when they've passed and been toughened up and taught how to shoot guns and throw grenades without injuring anyone on their team, when they know how to parachute and crawl and roll and duck, and they can march with the best, they're all piled into the back of a plane with uncomfortable canvas seats and flown across the Pacific. He loses count of how many hours that is, swaying back and forth and side to side, shoulders knocking into his neighbours until he feels like they're made of nothing but bruised tissue. And then, finally, they land and instead of being shipped off to bed, it's straight into action.

Esposito, of course, revels in it. He shoots and kills more people in the first half an hour than any of them do all day. Some would say it's maniacal, the way he can just go from one person to another, pull on the trigger and have his gun aimed at someone else before he can even be sure that the bullet hit. Most of the time he gets it spot on. Ryan surprises them all with the way he controls them. When their seniors are busy elsewhere, he's the one keeping them together, keeping Esposito under control and making sure that everyone knows what they're doing. Rick tries not to let the fear get to him, even though he can feel that anxious feeling twisting in his stomach making him want to throw up and run away and go back to New York with his head down low.

And then, when there is a lull in the fighting and he lays in his bunk trying to sleep, but every time he closes his eyes all he sees is blood and dead men, lying there with blank eyes and open mouths, torn apart by bullets and explosions, and he can't sleep. Everyone around him seems to be coping fine, they have no trouble in resting, but he lays therein the dark listening to the sound of them breathing and wondering how long it's going to be before they're breathing their last.

At times like this, he tries to think, tries to thank back a few months to New York, to the diner, and the pier, to Kate and the cool tingle of the water at his feet. He remembers the sun on her hair, turning it to a rich copper, loose curls framing her face. He remembers her smile, wide and happy. It's a beacon, something that gets him through the night terrors, through the days of combat. And then they're told that they have to pack up and move on, to go to the place where they're needed. Their commanding officer breaks the news that there'll be no postal service. No contact with the outside world.

It breaks his heart to write to Kate to tell her, and it kills him to know that he's not going to get any of her letters back. So he tells her. He shakes as he writes the words, and he doesn't even know how he knows, or whether it's even what he thinks it is.

But he tells her he loves her.

I cried, never gonna hold the hand of another guy

Too young for him they told her, waiting for the love of a travelling soldier,

Our love will never end, waitin' for the soldier to come back again

Never more to be alone, when the letter said

A soldiers coming home

"You're being ridiculous, Kate. He doesn't love you. You don't know him." It's an argument they've had before, and all three of them are sure that it won't be the last. It's Jim, normally, who has the most to say about the issue, who brings it up the most.

"I do know him!" Kate defends, turning a furious gaze on her parents. "And you don't know anything. You don't know!"

"Neither do you! You're only seventeen. You're young, and naïve, and you met this guy in the diner. He's gone off to Vietnam, and Katie, the chances of him coming back are slim. Don't get attached to him. Just let him go."

"I'm not going to just let him go. He – he needs me. He needs someone here to let him know that there is someone rooting for him. That cares! He doesn't have a family. He doesn't have anybody, just me. There's just me!"

"Katie, sweetheart," her mother interrupts, placing a calming hand on her husband's shoulder, "we just don't want to see you hurt. Just look at your cousin. She's heart-broken just having her husband over there. I don't want you to turn into her. Not crying yourself to sleep every night."

"I don't cry myself to sleep!" Kate argues back, "And I'm not married to him, nor am I my cousin."

"Katie, don't…"

"Don't what? I'm not scared! He'll come back, just you wait and see."

It's a month later, and both Johanna and Jim Beckett have given up on trying to talk their daughter out of the state she's in. It's not an easy task to do, especially in someone so stubborn, and it's even more difficult to do so when her cousins' husband returns. He's bruised and battered and haunted with nightmares, but he's home, and he's alive, and that's given Kate all the hope she needs. She has an irrefutable hope that her soldier, the man to whom she has given her heart and her soul, will return safe and sound. They're a lot more pessimistic, especially when it comes to the reports coming back from Vietnam, the images of burnt buildings and screaming people an all too real reality. There's been no letters, from California or Vietnam, which Kate is taking as good news. No news is good news, as they say.

Except then, one deceptively sunny day where the wind is bitter cold, there's a knock at the door. It's Jim who answers it, is greeted by a gruff looking man in an army suit. He sets Jim's nerve off from the first word, and he doesn't relax until the man has gone. And he's left behind a simple envelope. Plain and unassuming, addressed to Kate. Jim leaves it on the coffee table, propped up and waiting for Kate to come home from school. Both he and Johanna share uneasy looks until Kate arrives home, three hours later. She's bundled up against the weather, and it's not until she has stripped off the coat and the hat and the scarf and the gloves, does she notice it. She blindly ignores her parents cautious looks and rips it open, her eyes tearing through the words almost feverishly. And then she's silent, staring at the paper with the slightest tremor in her hands.

"Katie, sweetheart?"

"He's coming home." She whispers in the quiet of the room, all three of them barely daring to breathe. "He's coming home."

One Friday night at a football game, the lords prayer said and the anthem sang

A man said folks would you bow your head for a list of the local Vietnam dead

Crying all alone, under the stands was a piccolo player in the marching band

And one name read and nobody really cared

Except a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair

The ground is damp underneath her fingers, but she doesn't notice. It's cold, and there's the hint of snow in the air, but she doesn't feel it. She doesn't know how she feels. Numb, maybe. She feels like she should be out there, celebrating her schools utter dominance on the field, but she can't bring herself to move. Not when she'll have to go home and face her parents, face the letter that's been centre stage on her desk ever since it arrived. That's what she doesn't get. She doesn't understand. They said he was coming home. They said that… and now he's dead. And she only knows, she only find out at a stupid school football game. A list of names. That's it.

She had been standing next to Maddie, piccolo in hand after having finished the half time parade, had uttered the lords prayer, and sang the national anthem along with the rest of them. And the next thing she knew the principal, a person who wouldn't even hurt a fly, is delivering the most devastating blow. And the thing is, he probably doesn't know. She's shaking, her body wracked with sobs, and the wind is picking up, whistling through the bleachers, an ever increasing noise that drowns out the sounds of the spectators above her. She'd forgotten that the game was still going on. She should move, get up and make her way home. She's not needed anymore. Not by the marching band, not by Maddie

"She should be home by now," Jim frets, peering out from behind the curtains, "I've seen them all coming back."

"She's probably with Maddie. Stop worrying yourself." Johanna replies, pulling the curtain out of his hands and twitching it back into place. "She'll be home soon."

"I might go looking for her…" he muses, turning around and reaching for his jacket and his keys. "Maddie's a decent girl, but…"

"They're teenage girls. They've gone for a drink at the diner, or just celebrating winning. You're too over protective."

"No, I'm just concerned about teenage boys."

"Katie's heart is somewhere else. And she's not the type to stray from how she really feels. Teenage boys won't have a chance. And she can handle herself." Johanna insists, making a stand in front of the door. "And anyway, I thought you wanted her to give up on Rick."

"I did. When I thought she was going to get her heart broken. But he's coming back, and if he says he loves her… I've got to trust in that. Katie's not one to give her heart to anyone, so there's got to be something to him. We can learn to like him, right?"

"We can learn to like him. But in the mean time, let Katie have her fun. Sit down, and enjoy your evening."

Jim lets out a defeated sigh and sags into his favourite armchair. Kate likes it too, curls up in it with her head in a book and her long legs dangling in the air over the side. The number of arguments they've had over who gets to sit in it are too many to count. But right now, Jim would gladly give up the chair if it meant his daughter would sit in it. He doesn't know what it is that's making him so agitated, a fathers instinct that something's wrong, but he can't stay still. He jiggles his foot when he's trying to read, taps his pen when he tries his hand at the crossword. But nothing works. Nothing distracts his mind from the notion that there is something terribly wrong. And it's only confirmed when there's a knock on the door. He scrambles to open it, and Johanna, who pretends that she's not worried at all, is only moments behind him.

"Mr. Beckett," Maddie pants, and she looks like she's been running, "you've got to – it's Kbex – Katie, she's – "

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"It's Rick. I think – they were doing a list of everyone who's died, and Mr. Beckett – he's dead. They read his name out and Kate she'd run off before I even noticed. I don't know where she is. Everyone's looking for her, but we can't find her. "

Jim is reaching for his coat before she's even finished talking, and Johanna is already pushing him out of the door. "I'll stay, just in case she comes back."

Jim turns to his wife, tries to swallow the panic that is rising in his throat. "Jo…"

"We'll get through it. She'll… just… just go get her. Bring her home safe."

Kate can hear people calling for her. Maddie first, louder than everybody else, she can be heard from the other side of the stadium and then there's Kevin Ryan, the halfback, with his blue eyes and Irish charm he's the one most of the girls lust after, and then he's gone, replaced by Javier Esposito, the smooth talking Latino, and then Roy Montgomery, the guy who dresses up as a beaver every game and never fails to keep the crowds entertained. And then he's gone too, faded into silence. The game has long finished and she still hasn't moved. She can't feel her feet, the thin canvas shoes she's wearing not doing much at all to protect her from the cold. There's a longer period of silence, half an hour at best, and she thinks everyone's given up and gone home, but then it starts up again. Call after call, shout after shout, and then there's a recognisable voice among them. She tries to shout out, tries to get their attention but she can't make any noise. Her throat is clogged with thick, cloying emotion, the knowledge that he's dead, that he's not coming back, pressing down on her like a thick blanket of suffocating air. She can't move, can't talk, all she can do is try and breathe.

She closes her eyes, just for a second, and when she opens them the voices are closer. So much closer. Had she drifted off? She does feel… tired. She could just curl up and go to sleep and wake up and maybe all of this is just a bad dream. Maybe. She closes her eyes again, jerks them open when there's someone close. So close.

"Katie!"

There's only two people in the world who call her Katie, only two people who she could possibly want to see right now. That's her father, her dad, the one man she can always depend on, and he's right there. Metres away, but she can't draw attention to herself. There's no way she can call out. But there is one way. One sure fire way to get his attention. So she takes the deepest breath she can, gathers her strength, and screams.

"Katie. Katie, sweetheart." Jim pushes his way through the undergrowth that's crowding the underneath of the stadium until he finds the huddled, shivering shape of his daughter. "Oh, Katie. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She looks up at him in the darkness, and even in this dim light, he can see just how this has affected her. And suddenly, he hates it. He hates the army and the war, he hates this country, he hates Vietnam, he hates all of the people who made this possible, because they don't see it. They don't see the effect it has on everyone, they can't see his daughter right now. His daughter, who was normally so happy and cheerful, so full of energy and wit and humour, now looks like she's had her heart ripped out of her chest and stamped on and ripped apart by an unknown force.

"Dad…" she chokes out, and he sinks to his knees, pulling her towards him. "Dad, he's dead."

She's freezing and he takes no time in stripping off his jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders. There's noise behind him, Maddie and Ryan he thinks, quiet and waiting, and then there's a hand on his shoulder. Firm, and reassuring, he turns and finds the dark eyes of Javier gazing back at him, already pulling his football shirt off. Kate looks up at him with dull, lifeless eyes as her friend tugs it down over her head. She doesn't even attempt to get her hands in the sleeves.

"I'll carry her." He offers, looking at Jim with kind eyes. "Where's your car?"

"By the front entrance." Katie's arms are tight around his neck when he tries to move away so Javier can get his arms under, but she seems to have lost all strength in her arms and it doesn't take much to pry her away.

Javier has no trouble in hoisting her up into his arms, she seems so thin and frail in them, dwarfed by his shirt, and Jim can do nothing but follow after.