Author's Note:

My darling, darling readers,

I caved and finally decided to write a Castle fan fiction! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it. My plan is to post a couple of times a week, maybe three times on a good week, but I can't promise more than that, chapter-wise.

I'm open to reviews and criticism; I believe that's how you grow as a writer or as any kind of artist, so talk to me, let me know what you think of the chapters, give me ideas, tell me things. I love communicating with my readers and I'll do my best to reply to your reviews!

I have to acknowledge my wonderful beta reader, Caffeine-Faerie. She's been so patient and kind and I couldn't be more grateful. Also, english isn't my first language, so any mistake you see is my fault. My fabulous beta can only do so much and I can be stubborn about my mistakes, sometimes.

Oh, right, the disclaimer. I do not own Castle or any of its characters. They're all property Andrew Marlowe, ABC and whoever has the rights for the show and its franchise. I'm merely enjoying some time with these wonderful characters.

Redemption

I.

The soft ding of the bell above the door filled Kate Beckett's chest with a sense of comfort she very rarely got these days. She opened it firmly, feeling the cold metal of the doorknob against the warmth of her bare hand and allowing it to awaken her further. If that didn't work, the entire book store in front of her would.

This place, this tiny book store had been her place of comfort for the past year or so. It was a little dark place she had found while wandering aimlessly at night, walking off her insomnia, and the picturesque quality of the place had drawn her in immediately. The doors were wooden, as was the inside of the store, all painted in white. The tall shelves were filled to the brim with books without seeming organization or order. For a moment, when she had looked through the glass at the inside of the store for the first time, she had wondered how the owners and employees could ever find anything. However, as she started to visit it regularly, she had come to realize that despite not having a coherent system, it never took the couple that owned it more than a couple of minutes to find a book.

The old store was owned by an elderly Italian couple, Marco and Gia Bellotti, who had quickly become friends with Kate. Their warm manners and sense of protectiveness over that girl that had entered the store in a crying mess, one afternoon, had brought them together; they allowed her to sit on one of the couches in the small living room, and more often than not, Gia would bring her tea and spend a couple of hours talking to the young woman.

Kate stepped inside the store and was greeted by Gia's warm smile from the other side of the counter. She walked swiftly towards the old woman, trying her best to return the smile, but it just didn't come out.

"Hello, bella." Gia greeted, and Kate was finally able to manage a small smile. It wasn't easy to spot, but it was there. "How are you doing today?"

"I'm fine, thanks." she laid her hand on the old wooden counter and traced it with her fingers, feeling the texture underneath her skin. It was rough in some parts and smooth in others, demonstrating the lack of varnish in a couple of areas.

"Ecco." Gia looked at Kate with a stern expression, letting her know with her eyes that she knew she was anything but fine. Instead of insisting, though, the old woman turned around and flipped the switch that turned on the reading room lights, allowing Kate to move there. "There you go. Your place is all lit up."

Kate let go of the wood beneath her hands and nodded, starting to move to the reading area. "Thank you, Gia."

The reading room of the bookstore was what Kate thought to be a small living room that the Bellottis had turned into a public area. It had a couple of couches and arm chairs, all turned towards a fireplace and with their backs turned to the store. It smelled of lavender and had a soft light that didn't make reading easier, but which was very inviting. Kate had a favorite spot near the fireplace, in a two-person couch with a table to the side. She approached it and placed her purse on the couch, taking off her scarf and coat and laying them above the bag. She moved to the bookshelf and took the book she had bought earlier that week and that she had kept there to come back to later. It had one of her favorite bookmarkers on the inside and she smiled as she pulled it softly.

There were very few places in the world where Kate Beckett could feel truly comfortable, and this was one of them. Ever since a year and half ago, when her life had started to slowly but steadily change, she had run out of places where she could shelter herself from the world, without having memories, good and bad, assault her and take over her thoughts.

It had all started with Montgomery's death, and Castle leaving. They had done it - they had been finally together - and not two weeks later, he decided to follow Alexis to Stanford, and move to California. She had been broken, but she hadn't allowed him to see that. Instead, she had retracted so far into herself that even Lanie could barely reach her. And then the unfortunate events had started to pile up; her father's illness, the Salling case and how broken it had left her, her new boss — everything had worked towards putting her to the ground. It had been a tough year and a half, but she was here, she had made it. She still didn't feel like herself, but she was alive and she forced herself to think that it was all that mattered.

Kate took off her shoes and tucked her feet under her, almost kneeling against the arm of the couch, and opened her book. The pages were still new, the middle hadn't been cracked. She marveled for a moment at the sense of promise that came from a book that was still barely touched, and she managed to find comfort in that. She was alive, and she could read a book. She would have to turn it into all that she needed.

She read for a while, not noticing the time until she felt a soft hand on her shoulder, and looked up to see a mug of hot chocolate in front of her. She smiled and took it, thanking the man who sat beside her with a mug of his own cradled between his large hands. Marco Bellotti had probably been quite the heartbreaker in his time, but now, at almost eighty years old, he was the image of a kind, compassionate grandfather. His blue eyes were now hidden behind the glasses that he liked to keep on the tip of his nose, which prompted Gia to move over to him occasionally and tenderly push them up to his eyes. The checkered shirt he was wearing smelled of mint and tobacco and it was the closest Kate could be to a comforting sense of family, sometimes. Right now, with a soft smile on his face and a playful expression in his eyes, he warmed her heart.

"So, Caterina. What puts you in a funk today?" he asked, and she laughed softly at his use of slang. He used to say he liked to keep up with the common vocabulary, having been a linguistics professor in a college, earlier in his life.

Kate sighed and smelled the chocolate before opening her mouth to speak. It often took her a minute or two to come down from the place books put her in. And that Patterson novel surely put her in a far off place. A place where he was still in her life.

"I'm fine, Marco. It's just life."

"Bullshit." He loved to curse. It was something she loved about him, how bold he was at that age. The stereotype she'd grown up with made her expect an Italian Octogenarian to be prudish, not a potty mouth.

"What can I say?" she sighed into her hot chocolate. "Some days are better, others are worse."

"How's your father doing?" he asked, his eyes going from concerned to calm when Kate finally smiled widely.

"He's better. A couple more tests and we'll be sure he's in remission." a shred of happiness finally reached her chest, but it was quickly muffled by the recurrent fear and the pessimism she had become used to.

"That's wonderful news! I need to go visit him one of these days." Marco sipped his chocolate and smiled goofily at Kate, his mouth covered by the thick mix. "There's still something wrong."

"It's just..." she stopped talking and used the mug to warm her hands for a second. "I should be happy. I should be able to feel this overwhelming happiness because of my father's news, and it's like..."

"It's like the cloud is constantly hovering. Right?"

Kate smiled and took a sip of her chocolate "Exactly."

Marco leaned towards the table and placed his empty mug on it, sitting back on the couch, close to Beckett.

"You know why that is, right?" She shrugged. "It is, my darling, because you have a broken heart. And the broken parts let all the happiness slip."

"It's that simple, huh?" her sarcastic smile seemed to make Marco even more certain of what he was saying.

"Of course it isn't simple. It's very complicated. And hard to heal." He placed a hand over hers in a paternal fashion. "If I knew the man who broke you, I'd kick his ass. But you're all secretive and won't let me know!"

She laughed, now. Marco usually had that power over her, to make her laugh when everything was dark around her, and he was doing it now. She knew as well as he did that he couldn't take a younger man in a fight, but the fact that he wanted to do it was enough for her to feel a sense of warmth take over her chest.

"I'm sure you would. But it would be kind of hard, you know? He lives across the country now."

"That bastard." he muttered, and she nodded.

"You can say that again." she replied, wanting to feel that way more than she actually was. It was easier to hate him, to demean him in her mind, but she knew that what he had done was noble. Alexis was having trouble adapting, so he had followed her to school to help her out. And she knew she could never compete with his daughter, nor should she. But the way he had made his decision without consulting her, knowing how hard it had been for her to open up to him, had broken her heart. And to be honest, it had broken her ability to trust anyone in that sense.

Marco got up from the couch and placed a soft kiss on Kate's head.

"Keep reading, bella. I'm needed at the counter." and with those words, he left.

A couple of hours later, Kate was done with the novel and in need of a new one. It was still the middle of the afternoon, and she had been forced to take a day off — something Montgomery would never have made her do — and she didn't want to spend it alone, at home. She got up from the couch, putting her shoes back on, and moved toward the shelves that were lined up with books coming out of every nook and cranny, almost as if they were too full. Well, they were.

It was a quiet place. The store had little but constant movement, so it was never hectic and she could find her tiny bit of peace simply by wandering through the book-covered corridors. She walked for a couple of seconds until she her eyes fell on an old, rugged copy of Mrs. Dalloway, one of her favorite books. She couldn't help herself as she took it out of its place and opened it up, smelling the antiqueness of the edition, together with the less than obvious humidity of the store, and she closed her eyes for a second.

"Oh."

Kate thought she was dreaming. She thought that by closing her eyes she had accidentally fallen asleep and been dragged to one of those tortuous dreams where waking up was worse than staying asleep. Where he was still there and she could still hear his voice. But then she felt the pain of a papercut when the book dropped from her hands, and she opened her eyes, only to stare at his figure at the end of the corridor.

"Kate, I didn't..."

She couldn't speak. She was too stunned, too surprised, to even form a coherent phrase. How many times had she dreamt about this moment, playing it time and time again in her mind, in the first few months after he left? Now he was too late. It didn't fit her mind, it didn't fit because she wasn't wearing a tight dress and it didn't fit because she wasn't at a bar, being ogled by every man in the house. She was in a bookstore, her hair pulled up in a bun and wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt. It didn't fit.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you came here, I was just looking for a book and I..."

"Castle."

It was all she was able to say. His name, not even his first name, because she had done her best to forget she had ever been that close to him.

He took a step closer to her, walking towards the back end of the corridor, where she could hear Marco talking to another client. She didn't move, her limbs seemingly numb as he approached her and stopped about an arm away.

He looked different. He wasn't as tan as she had expected, but he was thinner. He looked more fit, but there was something missing from his eyes, from his expression. It was like the innocence, that child-like joy had been drained from him. At the same time, he had a few grey hairs in the front of his head, making him look more worldly. It seemed like he had finally grown up, and without knowing why, that stung Kate.

She looked different in his eyes too. She was thinner, if it was possible; her dark jeans and green shirt made her look younger, but at the same time the dark circles under her eyes told him that she wasn't alright.

"You look good." Castle whispered, and she felt the heat of his stare on her body. She hated how he still had the power to do that to her.

"Thank you." It was all she was able to say.

Kate Beckett didn't move, and neither did Richard Castle. They stood there, taking each other in, until Marco came by and stared at them for a moment, stepping innocently between the two.

"May I help you with something?"

That seemed to pull them both out of their stupor. Castle looked at the man quickly and seemed to regain his composure, smiling charmingly.

"Yes, sir, I was looking for an antique edition of Mrs. Dalloway. I was told by a collector that I could find it here."

Kate reached the ground slowly, picking up the book she had let slip from her hands at the sight of him, she kept quiet as the two men talked.

"Oh, yes, I have it around here somewhere. It's a very special book."

"Yes, it's a gift for someone."

The words remained in the air long after he said them, and Kate looked away, silently trying to find an escape route. He was buying Mrs. Dalloway for someone, her favorite book. You didn't offer someone an antique book unless that person was very important to you, right? Her mind conjured up a thousand scenarios, of him being with women from here and there, of him finally being truly commited to one of them. In the way he hadn't been able to commit to her.

At last, Kate turned to face him, handing him the book. He seemed surprised that she was able to find it, and she refrained from telling him she had been the one holding it.

"Here." she said, turning around.

"Thank you." he said, earnestly. His suddenly regained composure had brought on a sense of unfamiliarity. It was like they had never seen each other before, and it tore Kate's heart apart. "It was good to see you."

She didn't respond, just looked away as Castle walked through the corridor and looked back briefly. Their eyes met again for a second, and she saw the shadow of a smile, of that boyish grin that he saved only for her. He turned around and walked to the counter, where Gia greeted him warmly, but Marco stayed by her side, his hand sitting firmly on her shoulder.

When Castle made his way out the door, without another look, she released the breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

"Who was that?" Marco asked, his eyes still trained on the door.

"That was the guy who broke my heart."

Let me know what you think about this chapter! The more I know about what you guys like, the more I can work toward it.