She couldn't say how it happened, but that’s true for most things. When it happened is far easier; in the dark, under the glow of the bar lights, after closing. Her fingers wrapped around one drink too much and yet one less than enough, at least less than enough to justify the way her breasts brushed over the sticky bar top, the way his hands fisted in her hair, the way their teeth clashed against each other as flesh sought flesh.

By then, it had been a year and eight months. A year and eight months, six days, and 15 hours since she had woken up in her empty bed. They both knew it could happen, and that was probably why they never talked about it. Instead, they danced around the reality of their situation, getting married and buying furniture and eating lunch and making love like this life was normal. Like it was the life they were meant to live. It was a life they enjoyed living, at least, until Kate woke up in an empty bed and a cold pillow where her husband had slept for five years of blissful marriage.

She looked for him, of course. She’d searched the apartment, the Residences, the city. She’s put out a BOLO and spent nine months calling every precinct in New York to see if there was any heads or tails of Castle. But in her heart of hearts, she knew. She knew the moment she had woken up. Castle was gone, by whatever power had brought them there in the first place. And she was so, completely alone.

It took six months for the other precincts to give up. For Kate, it wasn’t long enough, but for them, it was too long to keep a case on the warming plate as it continued to go cold. Even for one of their own, it just wasn’t feasible. So, Kate knew she had to learn to move on, although she wasn’t sure she could, not with a gaping hole where her heart used to be.

Her evenings that had once been filled with laughter on the couch, arms wrapped around her and sweet breath in her ear as she read a book or watched TV were replaced with the bitter bite of booze in a sweating glass. She began to find solace in Mack’s crude humor, and Jessica and Alex’s company. Kate never pushed it too hard; she had seen how the bottle had dismantled her father piece by piece after her mother died. Part of her didn’t care, but part of her knew that wouldn’t be what Castle wanted.

Unfortunately, what Castle wanted didn’t matter anymore.

What happened with Red came organically, in the same way one’s youth slips away. Obliviously, day by day in a seemingly unending progression until one day, you look in the mirror and wonder why you don’t recognize the person staring back anymore. First, he asked her out to dinner. A nice restaurant, a way to keep her mind off things. Eventually, his apartment, where he cooked a meal and watched her eat it, a soft smile pulling at his lips. After a while, he made her laugh. The strange animosity between them hadn’t faded, but it had become something more. If their previous relationship could be described as a gnarled, dark tree, what happened between them might be explained as green leaves somehow sprouting from its crumbling branches.

Mack had gone home early. Kate hadn’t. The bar had emptied out, its regulars stumbling to their apartments. Red was wiping down the bar, and Kate was staring down at her glass, watching the ice cubes melt into translucent shards.

“Do you ever wonder why them? Not us, but them?”

His eyes flashed up to her. “I don’t understand what you mean,” he said, although his eyes said differently.

“Nevermind.”

He stared at her longer than was necessary before he continued to wipe down the bar. Her drink was ruined; it tasted more like water than whatever had been in it before. Which was probably for the best, since the concoction was something Mack created called “Morning Consequences.” Kate’s brain was floating in her head, and she suspected those consequences would have something to do with hugging a toilet in about three hours.

"Drink some water." The glass appeared out of nowhere, and when she looked up, Red was leaning over the bar. She could feel his breath on her mouth. "Give me a few minutes to finish cleaning and I'll walk you back to your apartment."

She didn't let him finish cleaning.

A small part of Kate Beckett's brain knew there was a problem with her letting a man whose face had graced a Most Wanted poster in her old world fuck her against the door of her apartment. It was a part of her brain that she ignored as her hands grasped his shoulders, her legs like a vice around his hips. It was feral and dirty and wrong, and she needed it. Kate hadn't been touched since Castle left, and she wasn't sure if it was Red she wanted or just another warm body in the bed next to her. Something, anything, to warm the cold pillow that she still didn't have the heart to take off of the bed.

She knew what he was. She had investigated him for murder just a few years before, for fuck's sake. He couldn't touch Castle's fresh-faced, arrogant air that somehow grasped for the same justice she did. She and Red were from two completely different worlds, even if they both stood on the same one. He might as well have been an alien, but it didn't matter anymore. When she woke up, he was cooking eggs and bacon in her filthy kitchen, pushing a cup of coffee across the bar top and under her nose when she sat down at the bar stool.

Consequences her ass.

He took her out to dinner again that night. They didn't have to talk about it; Kate knew the ephemeral nature of what happened between them was clear to both of them, but she was willing to ride it out. It would take a little while for the reality of the situation to bear down on her like an anvil on her chest, and until then, she just wanted to not be alone for a little while.

She wore a red dress with a back that dropped down nearly to her hips. His fingertips were soft against her skin when he slid it off her body.

It took Mack all of 2 seconds to figure out what was up. It was a week before she asked, though, while Red was in the back of the bar dealing with a delivery and Mack was wiping out a lipstick stained glass. "So," she had said, elbows pressing against the bar as she stared into Kate's eyes. "What's your intentions with my dad?"

It was a good question that Kate didn't have a good answer for.

"We're just seeing where things go," Kate lied, her voice low under the rumble of voices filling the bar.

Mack had raised her eyebrows. "I get it," she said with a nod, picking up another glass to wipe it out. "I'm lonely, too."

Kate wasn't, though; at least, not right now. Not in the dead of night when she woke up and heard the gentle lull of his breathing next to her. Not in the morning when stirred, pushing her hair out of her eyes as she pressed herself against the curves of his body, leeching all the warmth she could before she had to get up for work. Not when she curved into his body, the light of television reflecting in her eyes, or the way his fingers tangled in her hair as they whispered and laughed like they didn't hurt anymore. Not even when she walked through the door one evening, the apartment empty but for a flower in a glass on the dining room table with a note that said Working late. Don't wait up.

She wondered what he wanted, too, when their bodies were entangled in sheets and each other, his mouth against her ear. Maybe he just wanted to bang the hot cop, sure; a lot of men she met did. Or maybe he was exercising some kind of control over her, like this was some kind of competition and her affection was the prize. Maybe it was just good old-fashioned manipulation, keeping her close enough to him to learn her blind spots and use them to his advantage.

Or maybe he just liked hearing her breathe at night, too.

The bubble popped after two weeks of intimate bliss. Gene Hunt slammed through her office door at 9am on a Tuesday morning. The New York sky was covered in a thick blanket of clouds, swollen with the promise of an impending rainstorm. She had stared outside at it for too long, thinking about rain, and swing sets, and how Castle's body felt, hot and strong, against her wet skin.

"Two nonces done in. Found 'em this morning in one of the warehouses near the river. Shipping crates were empty." Kate stared down at the crime scene photos; two criminals drowning in pools of their own blood. She kept thinking about the red petals in the flower on her dining room table. "Bloody twats all of them, just scum killin' scum in these parts."

"Don't say twat," Kate replied, staring back into the clouds.

Red was in his apartment when she got there, brushing off his suit as she slipped through his front door. He smiled at her like he knew.

"Did you kill those men?" she demanded, no greeting, no warmth to her voice. His smile dropped. "Tell me the truth, Red. Tell me what the hell is going on."

"Going on with your murders or going on with us?" His voice was cool, collected as he straightened his cuffs. She stared at his hands, wondering how the same hands that were so gentle against her trembling body could be the hands that ended someone's life.

She'd killed before too. But it wasn't the same. Was it?

"You know how I'm going to answer that question," she said, her voice raising, and he seemed unfettered by her passion. He just looked at her again, his eyes expressionless.

"And you know how I'm going to answer yours."

Silence fell on them like the rain outside. He straightened his suit once again and walked past her to the door, pausing at it for a moment. Then he came back to her, reaching out to cup her face with his hand. She knew she should pull away in anger, scream and storm off, but it wouldn't change anything. The bridge they had forged between them was tenuous at best, and no amount of yelling or pleading was going to change who they were. They were a fish and a bird that brushed the air together, but neither of them could follow the other one home.

Red sighed and leaned in, and Kate's eyes stayed open as his lips brushed hers. She didn't move, hands frozen at her sides and she could feel him breathe against her. It wasn't a comfort anymore. It wasn't eager bodies pulling at clothes and heated panting against skin. It was just her, and him, and his lips a dead weight against her anger. It was a kiss as cold as Castle's pillow on her empty bed.

When she made her way up to her apartment, she flipped on the light and stood in the doorway. The flower Red had given her had wilted, the beautiful petals, once a vibrant red, now a revolting maroon with black, singed edges. Kate sighed and shut the door, pulling the dead flower out of the vase and rolling it between her fingers, the stem sopping wet, rotted away by the very thing that had once given it life.

Kate put it, along with Castle's pillow, into the garbage.

July, 2014

☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate hears a song on the radio.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate suggests a drink.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Katee's memories have been reset.

June, 2014

☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate offers some lessons.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate is not making out with Castle.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate is now a teenager.

May, 2014

☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate is not amused.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate checks on Conan.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate offers to spoil a movie.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate offers to go exploring with Katniss.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate and Castle add a new member to the family.
☕ [LOG] In which Alexis is a mermaid.
☕ [LOG] In which things get real between Kate and Tess.

April, 2014

☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate forgets Castle's birthday.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate is getting a little uncomfortable.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate hangs out at the bar.

March, 2014

☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate does not know how this place is for real.
☕ [JOURNAL/ACTION] In which Kate finds out Castle is knocked out.
☕ [JOURNAL/ACTION] In which Kate learns Alexis is also in the castle.
☕ [ACTION] In which Kate find a girl picking a lock.
☕ [LOG] In which Castle finally wakes up.
☕ [JOURNAL] In which Kate chats with Lee.

PERSONAL
NAME: Bex
PERSONAL JOURNAL: runninginheels
EMAIL: thexwoman at gmail.com
AIM: n/a
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a


CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Katherine Houghton Beckett
SERIES: Castle
CANON POINT: 5x03 "Need to Know", right after she gets fired.
LOSS: Kate will forget having read all of Richard Castle's books and, in extension, forget their significance to her. While this won't necessarily have an effect on her relationship with Castle specifically, Kate was a really big fan of Castle's books before she met him, to the point that his books helped her cope with her mother's murder. Losing that will make her lose the significance that his writing had to her in terms of her mother. The fact that Castle's Nikki Heat novels were basically love letters to Beckett will also be a factor; but since their relationship is mostly independent of his books, it should not heavily affect their romance. There will, however, be a certain dimension to her memories of how they got together that will suffer from this loss, and she will lack feeling that deeper connection she felt to him that existed prior to them working together.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Kate Beckett is a serious and devoted homicide detective, and she's dedicated to her job and her team. She also has a pretty harsh origin story; her freshman year of college her mother was murdered, and the killer wasn't caught. Saddled with grief, Kate put any previous plans on hold and joined the police force right out of college, desperate to find justice for her mother and closure for herself.

After her mother's death, her father's choice addiction became alcohol; Kate's addiction was the case. Kate exhibits an obsessive personality when it comes to her work and specifically her mother’s murder, and it became an all-encompassing drive for her through much her adult life, often causing her to blindly throw herself into any situation where she thought she might solve the case and causing her to endanger her own life on multiple occasions. Although she has managed to move on with her life in recent years, her tenacity continues in her work. She’s still a bull dog in the precinct, taking on the most complicating cases and touting one of the highest closing rates in the NYPD. She has a fierce sense of honor and dedication to her job, and prizes justice over all. While she is able to fiercely bring many killers to justice, it also gets her into trouble on occasion, such as causing her to lose her job in DC at the beginning of season 6. While she appreciates and system and does her best to abide by it, Beckett feels that her loyalty lies with the people she is sworn to protect.

Due to the pain of her mother’s death, Beckett learned to cope with her pain by compartmentalizing the different facets in her life. For a long time, she kept her personal life staunchly separated from her professional life, to the point that not many of the people she worked with knew much about who she really was. Because of the trauma associated with her mother’s death, Beckett made the conscious decision to change her personality; she put up a barrier against forming any serious relationships out of fear of getting hurt, and hid away the parts of herself that had once been fun loving and happy. It isn’t until Castle is introduced into her life that those walls begin to fall, and Beckett begins to realize she’s been missing out on a lot of enjoyment of life by being so closed off.

Unfortunately, due to her ability to so seamlessly compartmentalize, Beckett is also fairly good at lying. For the most part she keeps her lies simple, or confined to investigations, but there have been times when she’s lied – particularly to Castle – about more important things, such as the job she was offered in DC at the end of season 4. That seemed to have been a breaking point for them, however, when Castle resolved the issue by proposing to her and illustrating to her that she could have a life and be the person she wanted to be and he would still fully accept and support her.

When she is shot at the end of season 3, it becomes a serious turning point for Beckett. She suffers from PTSD and while she is aware her shooting makes it manifest, she is of the understanding that her mother’s death truly triggered the sadness, fear and disappointment that has ruled her life. Although she almost once again allows herself to fall back into that pit of despair, Castle’s support and staunch loyalty helps sway her, and Beckett once again makes a conscious decision to change herself – but instead of closing down, she opens herself up to him and the new life that she can pursue with him.

While Beckett is often characterized as an ice queen and fairly distant, this is shown over the course of the show to be the personality she created for herself to cope with the loss of her mother. As the show progresses and Beckett begins to open up to Castle, her personality softens over the years. She is deeply sympathetic, and often exhibits her own feelings and thoughts about things by projecting onto others. For example, cases where children lose their mothers prove to be particularly difficult for her, and she tends to relate strongly to the families of all of the victims of her cases. It is clear that because she was unable to solve her mother’s case, finding that closure for other victims helps make her own pain easier to bear.

For all her dedicated professionalism and often prickly personality, Beckett also has a fun side; she is playful with Castle, especially when they are alone, and enjoys verbally sparring with him as well as the people she works with. Although she is very put together and proper in her work sphere, she has a number of hobbies, and we learn she enjoys cooking, motorcycles, reading, and even used to cosplay at science fiction conventions in college. Beckett has a sweet tooth and is totally addicted to coffee. She also tends to be sentimental, particularly about objects she owns that remind of her of her mother, and admits to having boxes and boxes of items that she’s never let go of.

For as closed off as Beckett has been most of her adult life, she has managed to form some deep and meaningful friendships. Her teammates, Ryan and Esposito, are two men she deeply respects and always trusts to have her back. Her relationship with them is almost of that of siblings, and she teases them but also tries to be there when they need her, as they are for her. Castle is her partner, both in the work and personal spheres, and the first person she seems to have allowed to cross between her staunch compartmentalizing. She trusts him implicitly. Although they started out on rocky ground when he decided - against her will - to shadow her, she grew to respect him as an investigator and as they grew closer, fell in love with him. Castle’s daughter, Alexis, was someone that Beckett essentially watched grow up; on occasion, Alexis would come to her for advice, and although they drifted apart for a while, they were able to reconnect and Kate is learning to find a new place in Alexis’ life now that she is going to marry her father. Castle’s mother, Martha, is someone that both amuses and surprises Beckett, and they have developed a unique and affectionate bond over the years. Finally, there is Beckett’s father. After her mother’s death, Beckett helped him overcome his alcoholism, and it seems to have brought them closer. Jim was one of the first people to realize how Beckett felt about Castle, and he often challenges her to truly think about the choices in her life and make sure she is not making decisions based on the fear surrounding her mother’s death.

Beckett still struggles with being closed off, although she is reaching a point in her life where she is learning to not let her fear determine her choices. She still harbors anger for her mother's death and a desire to solve it, but she now values her own life over her mother's death and has become more cautious in her actions concerning that investigation. She is finally allowing herself to think about the future, rather than being locked into the past, and with that has come the opportunity for her to truly develop as a person independently of her devastating loss. While she still struggles on occasion with being honest and open with Castle, she’s learning to trust, and in turn, be more honest with herself and what she wants out of her life. Although she is still developing after many years of being trapped in her own pain, she has found a loving family who continue to challenge her and help her move past her previous misfortune and towards a future where she can finally embrace the person she truly is.

ABILITIES: Beckett is a homicide detective through and through. Tenacious, intelligent, stubborn, and with an obsessive attention to detail, she's a staple in the force, having even gone as far to be the youngest woman in the NYPD to make detective, because she's awesome like that. And she's way more awesome than Castle. She can also shoot guns better than Castle, beat up suspects better than Castle, get confessions better than Castle, and she looks better in a dress than Castle. Did I mention she's better than Castle? At everything? Well, everything except making up insane stories about murders based on no evidence, but that's why she's the cop and he's the writer.

Also, she's really good at running in heels.

THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

Castle's apartment was eerily silent once McCord left. Beckett had managed to keep her composure, but once she was shut safely back into the confines of the familiar loft, she wasn't sure what to do next.

"Beckett..." She could tell he was ready to say something, probably to try to be comforting or encouraging but she didn't want to hear it.

"Excuse me."

Beckett moved quickly towards his office, slipping through the bedroom and straight into the bathroom. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she secured the door shut, turning to lean against it before she buried her head in her hands.

She knew she'd done the right thing. She saved someone's life, essentially, but at a cost. Her job, her new life in DC with Castle. The life she'd nearly lost him for and now she had nothing to show for it. Nothing.

Raking her fingers through her hair, Beckett stared up at the ceiling and tried to slow down her mind. Her thoughts were racing as fast as her heart and she had to calm down, think it through step by step. So, she didn't have a job anymore. That was... fixable. Castle would be supportive - he wasn't thrilled about moving to DC and, anyway, when wasn't he supportive? Her hand moved to her chest, fishing out the chain that held her engagement ring and she wrapped it in her palm, holding it so tight that the diamond dug into her hand. The chain held her mother's ring too; a constant remind of her past, and her future. Who she was and who she was ready to become.

And she knew she had two choices. She could do what was easy for her, natural; be angry, be obsessed, find a way to fix it, beg for her job back, fight for what she had lost. Or she could do the one thing she had never been any good at.

She could move on.

Dropping the rings back down her shirt, Beckett jumped when she heard a knock on the bathroom door. "Kate? You okay?"

Beckett opened her mouth to respond, but paused for a moment instead, staring down at her feet. Her past had made her who she was, for better or worse. It had brought her here, to this moment, and she didn't regret it. But the past was also gone. She couldn't mend it, couldn't change it, it was out of her control. But the future, well, that was a different story.

"Yeah," she finally replied. "Yeah, Castle, I'll be fine." And for the first time in a long time, she knew she would.

FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE: A sample thread from a current game.

INTENT: I've been playing Beckett for a number of years, and I really enjoy her complexity as a character; she is both vulnerable and kick-ass, and her changes over the years in the show are very dramatic and serve to make her incredibly deep. I really like discovering more about her through the canon as well as RP, and she serves to be a surprising character and a lot of fun to play with in pan-fandom RPs. I'm interested in playing her at Paradisa specifically because I like the idea of losses, especially for a character like Kate who is very defined by her memories, experiences and abilities. I feel that having the opportunity to deny her those factors, even for a short period of time, will be a good opportunity to delve more deeply into aspects of her character that I don't always get the chance to explore in other games.