A/N: If you recognize it, it isn't mine.

"Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. " –Orson Scott Card

His storytelling had captivated her from the beginning. When he had been nothing more than a name on the cover of a book, his words had been her guiding light. When she had read every word that he had ever written for the public eye, it wasn't enough. So she stood in line for an hour, just to hear a few of his words from his own lips, to have a few words written by him for her. It was nothing much, but it was something. Then he'd walked into her life, spinning stories from the first moment. And as much as he annoyed her, she lived for those moments when the child-man vanished and in his place stood the storyteller, weaving his web of words so vibrant she could almost touch them.

Kate Beckett had always been a reader. From the moment she could sound out letters, she was reading. When her classmates were struggling with phonics she was reading small chapter books. When her classmates were reading small chapter books she was reading classics. She carried books to school, in the car, and outside. She could walk anywhere in the house with her nose stuck in a book. She could do her entire bedtime routine without ever looking up from her novels. If her father hadn't banned them from the dinner table she would have carried them there too. Her parents quickly learned that grounding was a useless punishment—there were few places she'd rather be than in her room reading.

She'd always loved fiction of any kind, but mysteries she'd discovered with her mother's old Nancy Drew collection, and she'd been mesmerized almost instantly. Murder and crime had inhabited her mind long before any hint of real tragedy had tainted her soul. Richard Castle's In a Hail of Bullets had been her mother's last birthday gift to her, along with a Sara Paretsky mystery novel and a compilation of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. The latter novel she read first—she'd been waiting for it for months. The compilation was next, since The Tell-Tale Heart was assigned in English anyway. The Castle novel sat on her desk, untouched, until the day her mother died.

She'd walked into her room that horrific evening, drained of all tears and emotion, yet knowing sleep was impossible. She'd sat on her bed, listlessly, looking at nothing, waiting, longing for her soul to go numb from pain. She'd picked up the book, opened the cover, read the first line, and burst into tears. She flung the book away from her, hitting the wall with a satisfying crack. Satisfying, but not nearly satisfying enough. She'd run to her bookshelf and pulled each book off, one by one, and flung them with all her might against the wall, crying with rage and frustration and profound, utter, soul-rending loss. The paperbacks crumpled and tore, the hardbacks cracked their spines and bent their pages. Like her soul. Bending, cracking, tearing under the darkness of her pain. She'd collapsed on her bed, sobbing herself not to sleep, but some state of in-between, dreams lurking in foggy corners to which she refused to give herself over.

It was a full month before Kate touched a single book. They'd stayed, scattered on the floor, pages crushed beneath them, a reminder of the disaster that her life had become in a single evening. Then, one day, without really even thinking about it, she began to refill her shelf. Quickly, at first, like ripping off a scab. Then more and more slowly, as she began trying to repair the damage, straightening out pages and taping up tears, even rereading some of her favorite passages. She still cried, especially when she found the copy of The Hobbit her mother had read to her with half the front cover torn off. But it was a first, very small step towards surviving. Towards healing.

The Castle book had been shoved underneath her bed. The paper cover had torn and one corner of the hardcover was bent back. The pages were nearly all crumpled from when the book had landed tent-style on the floor and then shoved out of sight. The paper cover, irreparable, went in the trash. She opened the book, smoothed out the pages, turned to the front, and began to read.

The words on the page immediately engulfed her. Her ache drained away and she entered another world. She could see, she could taste the scenes painted before her. She knew by the second chapter who the killer was, but that in no way lessened her ability to appreciate the masterful storytelling. The world of the novel, for those few hours, was the only real world, the only one that mattered. The characters were real, breathing people, with real pain and real needs. And in the end, they found real comfort and real healing.

It was nearly five in the morning by the time she reached the last page and closed the cover, emerging from the cocoon of words around her. It wasn't that the book had made her forget—nearly the opposite in fact. Somewhere, buried in the pages where its characters lived, Kate had found not forgetfulness, but a place to live beyond the despair of the present. And if she could pretend, even if only for a few hours, that she didn't still cry every time there was the least reminder of her mother, if she could pretend that the night was past and the day had come, maybe someday it would. Maybe someday she would find the strength to get up, to walk, to make a new path. Maybe something of Kate Beckett would make it through this fire. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or even next year, but someday, maybe she would stand up and be free.

Maybe someday she would find a different kind of truth.