Hello everyone!

This is just a little one-shot that has been bubbling about at the back of my mind for a while - and I promised myself that I would finally get around to writing it now that January exams are over. I hope you enjoy..

Disclaimer: Everything and everything belongs to their rightful owners, I am simply borrowing them for a little while.

Katie Beckett

Kate's eyes are heavy as the familiar hold of Castle's arms pull her instinctively closer; heart-to-heart as their breathing steadies and the salt that stains their heated skin evaporates into the sultry air that envelops them deep beneath the safety of his cobalt sheets, the beautiful comfort of their limbs tangled lazily together luring her to the land of make believe.

But there is something in the lazy patterns he draws across her back that tells Kate their night is not quite over yet, that the sleep her body craves won't be possible until she soothes the wandering thoughts of Richard Castle, forever at the mercy of his own imagination. She needs to uncover the truth of the anomaly that lies hidden beneath the spiralling words of love that have become her lullaby; a curiosity, or perhaps a fear that has burrowed itself deep within the mind of her beautiful writer, the stuttered path of his fingertips begging for permission to speak their question aloud.

"What's wrong?" she asks, voice soft as her eyes find Castle's amidst the almost darkness of the night.

"I thought you were asleep," he tries, hoping for a distraction.

"Almost," she sighs, stretching out her long limbs as if to express her words, "but your mind is so busy it's keeping us both awake."

When he doesn't reply, Kate moves so that their lips are a breath apart, words a gentle caress to open his heart, "Please, Rick."

His forehead bumps gently against her own, the funny little Eskimo kisses they share an echo of their first night together; a tradition that tells Kate she isn't far from finding her answer to the mystery, that Castle just needs a moment to absorb the strength and the courage of their love.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," she replies, willing herself to not be afraid, to follow the path of Castle's bravery and answer whatever was going to come her way; because gone were her days of masked feelings and false truths, and she had promised herself - promised them both - that she would never go back to hiding behind the suffocating confines of the walls that had once constricted her entire life.

"When did you start calling yourself Kate?" he asks, longing to know all that she feels able to share, the question that had often intrigued his mind during the last four and a half years of their partnership somehow finding its way to surface on a night that could have so easily been left as any other.

His enquiry catches her off guard, as if she could have been given a thousand years to think of what he would ask and yet would never have even ventured close to the idea. But that was all a part of the allure of loving him; his ability to shock her, to thrill her, to keep her on her toes.

For a little while she doesn't speak, doesn't move, concentrates only on the weight of his fingers as they tangle affectionately beneath the ends of her curled hair, an anchor to the real world. His touch delicate, almost shy; a silent apology for asking something that he had known would send her headlong into the sorrows of her past, and a thank you for the trust that had allowed him to do so anyway.

"It was when I joined the academy," she starts, words forcing themselves through the heavy fog of her memories that felt suddenly so real she could close her eyes and picture every intricate detail of the day she so rarely thought of; the violent pounding of her heart as her veins had thrummed with the ever-present echo of her grief, hands shaken as they pushed open the doors to her future and eyes stung red with tears after another night too overwhelmed to sleep, knowing even then the she would risk her entire life for the unanswered questions that haunted the horrific day of January 9th 1999. "I didn't even know what I was doing, just walked in off the streets and told them that I wanted to become a member of the NYPD. They gave me this form to fill out, probably expecting me to go home and forget the whole idea – but instead I borrowed a pen off of the front desk and leant against its marble top until every detail of my life was printed in neat little capital letters that didn't mean a thing anymore. Only, when I handed the form back to the desk clerk she looked me up and down like I was garbage blown in from the streets and scoffed that I needed to fill in my name at the top of the page."

She feels her words catching around the edges, the bitter sting of tears threatening to fall before she is ready; knowing that once they escape she won't be able to control them, burying her cheek a little deeper into the cavern beneath Castle's chin, the hollow between his collar bones heated with the condensation of her whispered confession, his breath beneath her body the silent reassurance that she needs to carry on.

"I just stood there, a deer in the headlights, the simplest question in the entire world and I didn't have a clue how to answer. For my whole life I had been Katie, but everything that I had ever known was gone, and in that moment I knew that Katie Beckett didn't exist anymore; that her life had been stolen by the monsters who took my Mom from us. Every time I heard that name it was my Mother's voice, a melody of love, of a life that felt more like a dream than it did my own past, a constant reminder of what should have been. I couldn't be Katie, to walk into work every morning and hear people calling my name would have destroyed me. I didn't want to be Katherine, it was too formal, a name that only a doctor reading patient notes would call me. So, I became Kate – spoke the name to the desk clerk as if it had always belonged to me, foreign to my lips and filling my heart with the promise of something more, of one day fulfilling my destiny of finding the people responsible for my Mother's murder, a force unlike any they had ever known before. My life belonged to those four letters; I was Kate, and that was all that I had - I was just Kate."

The harrowing sob that spills from her lips seems to reverberate from her very soul, tears choked as they pool against Castle's chest, falling with the sheer relief of finally being able to tell the story of Katie Beckett after thirteen years of keeping her locked away from the world, the secrets of her past finding a home in the heart of the man who loves her more than she had ever thought possible.

"My extraordinary Kate Beckett," whispers Castle, his lips pressed to the top of her head, holding her tight as she cries for the girl she had once been. His arms a saviour to her exhausted body, a fragile being purged of a past life that was no longer her own, safe and free in the cocoon of his love, soothed to sleep by the very hands that had brought about their moonlit conversation, the night ahead of them belonging to tears of loss and dreams of life.

End.

There we have it :)
I know that it was just a bit of silliness, but I would love to know what you thought?

Thank you for reading,
Katie

Twitter: katieupatree