Kate pulls open the faded green door of McSorley's and the noise of the Irish pub brings her back to her own Academy days, memories of spending the night after their quarterly exams celebrating and drowning their remaining nerves in cheap beer.
She scans the bar for the face of the man she came here to meet until she hears her name being shouted from one of the back tables. The man kicks out one of the chairs at the table so she can sit across from him.
"Hey, Sarge," she greets with a wide smile and receiving a similar one in return. "How's the shoulder doing?"
He shrugs and she doesn't miss the glance of a wince that flashes across his face. "Getting better. Makes it tough to take down those rookies when I can't rotate my arm the whole way." Ortiz takes a sip of his beer, dragging his finger along the condensation along the side of the glass. "No chance you want to come back for a temporary gig teaching the recruits a lesson?"
Kate laughs, shaking her head. "I think I've got my hands full with my full-time job right now, but thanks for the offer."
"How're the double bars treating you?"
She takes a couple of the peanuts from the bowl on his table. "Fine. Stressful but you know… It's good."
Ortiz sits back into the booth, shifting his shoulder against the padded wall behind him. "Never thought you'd want to give up the streets to sit at a desk and play politics, Beckett."
"Well, things changed. Besides," Kate says, "I run my division differently. I still show up at crime scenes and work the board with my people. Not all paperwork and politics, sir."
When the little bell over the door jingles, every cop's head in the joint turns when the group of trainees spills into the pub. The recruits looks familiar as they start to push tables together, tossing textbooks and piles of notes in front of them.
As Company 38 settles in for what appears to be a study session, Kate catches Decker's eye as she sits between Garcia and Wilson. Decker smiles, a tiny quirk of her lips, before turning back to her fellow recruits and their study materials.
"How they doing?" she asks Ortiz, nodding toward the tables full of Academy recruits.
"As good as expected. Strong bunch," he gruffs. "They'll make solid cops."
"Getting soft on me, Sergeant?" Kate teases just as her phone vibrates in her pocket, taking the device out and checking the ID. Work.
Ortiz scoffs, shaking his head. "That'd be the day I turn in my badge. Take your call, Captain, and stay safe out there."
Kate slides out of her chair, swiping her finger across the screen of her phone to accept the call from the precinct.
The next time she sees the recruit is on Rodman's Neck as Decker returns her gun to the range sergeant, the rolled-up targets tucked under her arm.
"How'd you do?" Kate asks, gesturing to the paper targets as she signs into the range, letting the sergeant look over her weapon.
Decker grins, looking baby-faced young in jeans, an NYPD t-shirt, and sneakers, her ponytail messy from the safety goggles as she unrolls the target. "What do you think, Captain?"
Kate glances the generic outline on the target, poking her fingers through the tight cluster of shots on the chest and head of the man. "Not bad, Decker." She rolls the target up again, handing it back over to the recruit. "How the fingers holding up?"
The young woman holds out her hands, the blisters on both palms and fingers obviously painful.
"Yeah. Don't miss that," Kate laughs, taking her gun back from the range sergeant. "Go soak your hands in some cold green tea or some aloe vera gel. Helps."
"Thanks, ma'am. Good shooting out there."
Kate watches the recruit jog to catch up with some of her company members as they pile into a sedan in the parking lot before she turns toward the range, determined to polish up if she and Castle are going to dive into this investigation headfirst.
She isn't required to attend the ceremony but she feels some sort of obligation, a sense of duty toward the company she spent a week with.
(It doesn't hurt that as soon as she steps out of the bedroom in her uniform, her cap hanging from her fingertips, her husband shoved her against the doorframe and kissed her so thoroughly she had to go back and redo her neatly pinned bun.)
So she sits with the other captains from across the city in Madison Square Garden as the latest class from the academy graduates. She can't find the people of Company 38 in the crowd but she knows all fourteen of them are there.
Kate doesn't bother trying to find Decker after the ceremony in the sea of navy uniforms but it's not like she won't be seeing the newly-minted probationary officer soon. She glanced over the roster for her division and saw R. Decker on the list to join her uniforms in the coming week. Instead, she takes the subway back home and tucks in close to Castle on the couch, pizza and wine forgotten in favor of making him gasp and moan under her.
Monday morning, she arrives earlier than usual, unlocking her office and flipping lights on as she sheds her coat and tosses her keys onto the desk blotter. Kate knows she has paperwork to catch up on, her inbox as close to overflowing as she lets it get and the extra time in the quiet of the bullpen before her team shows up will be a welcome change to the controlled chaos that usually reigns outside her door.
She has barely settled into her chair when someone knocks.
"Come in," she says, fishing for a pen in her mug of writing utensils to start signing off on some of her people's requests.
The person who walks through the door doesn't surprise her. Shift doesn't start for another thirty minutes but Rachel Decker stands in front of her desk, hands behind her back and every single button of her uniform polished to a shine.
Kate flips through Vanderhausen's vacation request paperwork, scrawling her signature at the bottom of the pages. "Shift begins at eight o'clock, Officer Decker. Any reason you're here earlier because I really don't have the overtime available right now."
"Captain," the officer starts, drawing Kate's eyes up until the woman fidgets.
(Kate likes to think she's a little less intimidating than Gates was what with the older captain's tendency to stare her officers down from behind her glasses and not let up until the person in front of her cracked.)
"I just wanted to thank you." Decker clears her throat, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "For kicking my ass back into gear three months ago. I couldn't have gotten this far without you."
Kate closes the folder of updates from one of her teams' overnight breakthroughs, dropping her pen. "You're wrong and if you don't see that, you haven't learned much at all. You got yourself here, Rachel, not me. Sure, I put some fire back in you but if you hadn't had the drive to get through the Academy, you'd have quit long before I showed up."
Decker starts to deflate, her shoulders slumping.
"Hey. Not trying to break you. Just…" Kate sighs. "Take credit for yourself. You were good back in the Academy and you'll be great here. But not because of me."
"Ma'am, respectfully, part of it was you," Decker says. "You told me not to let my father decide who I was, that if I stuck with this, I could be someone who defined myself. I may have gotten myself through the training and the tests but, Captain, it was always your voice in the back of my head telling me to ignore my father's words and be my own person."
"And that instinct, the one that makes you stand up for yourself? That's what'll carry you far here." Kate cracks a smile, lacing her fingers over her reports. "Now, you've got fifteen minutes to scope the place out before the rest of your fellow rookies show up. I hope you find a home here at the Twelfth, Decker."
Decker returns the grin, nodding as she turns to retreat back to the bullpen. "Thank you, Captain Beckett."
The new officer steps beyond the doorframe and immediately runs into Castle, the coffee cup in his hand exploding onto both of their shirts. Decker apologizes, babbling as she tries to wipe coffee from Castle's shirt and failing.
Kate laughs, standing up with a handful of napkins from her desk to rescue the two. She hands the newbie some napkins before dragging her husband toward the break room, pausing by her old desk to turn and face Decker.
"And Officer?" Decker glances up from her attempt to dry her shirt. "Welcome to the team."