Making Amends
A Castle One-Shot
By Laura Picken
Hi everyone! The is a one-shot episode reaction to 5x03, "Secret's Safe With Me". Spoilers for the episode. This is *not* in the universe of my Four Winds Fantasy AU. Those of you wanting more ghosts, wizards, witches and sirens will just have to wait until next Monday. Castle's been a veeeery bad boy and needs to say he's sorry before I'll give him back his wizard powers :D.
DISCLAIMER: Castle, Beckett, et al. are property of Andrew W. Marlowe and ABC. If I owned them I'd hire somebody who had a freakin' clue how to write Captain Gates.
"Mister. Castle."
Castle winced at the sound of the very formal and very derogatory moniker. Somehow the Precinct Commander always seemed to make him feel like a deviant ten year old who had just been caught drilling a peephole into the girls' locker room.
In Catholic school.
A very *strict* Catholic school.
"*Mister* Castle," Gates repeated for emphasis, "Those dolls cost more than you paid for the contents of that storage unit."
Castle's eyebrows shot up, surprised by the captain's declaration of how much those children's toys were worth. "The dolls were worth $3600?"
"Each."
Castle let out a stunned gasp as the realization of what he had done was starting to sink in.
Gates was just warming up. "Did it ever occur to you, Mister Castle, that the doll could have been X-rayed to see if there was anything inside it?"
Castle's face fell. "No, sir."
Gates pressed on, the sounds of ceramic crunching under her feet punctuating her point. "Did the thought ever occur to you that a doll that was *clearly* not custom made to hold these items might have had a way to get the items out of the doll without breaking it? Say, for example, *the way Wendell got the items into the doll in the first place*?!"
Castle's voice was barely audible as he hung his head in shame. "No, sir."
Gates moved in for the kill, invading the writer's personal space of the man in front of her. "Did that ten-year old mind of yours even think to have the basic common courtesy to *ask* if you could examine the doll that was obviously so important to me? The doll, need I remind you, that *you* gave me as a gift?"
Clearly any goodwill the doll had earned Castle died when he broke it. The blush of embarrassment flushed every inch of his face. "Nosir," he finally replied in a quiet mumble.
"I didn't hear you, Mister Castle. What was that?"
"I said no, sir."
"That's right, you didn't. Your mother was quite an actress in her time, but clearly she was lacking in the parenting department if you didn't learn a lesson as basic as *don't touch someone else's *stuff* without asking*. You need to get out of my sight, Mister Castle. *Now.* And if you truly are smarter than a fifth grader, you won't come back into my sight for a long, *long* time."
Castle shuffled out of the office, his partner following behind him. Before Beckett could reach the door, though, Gates addressed her troublesome lead detective. "Beckett."
"Yes, sir?"
"Grab some evidence gloves to pick up the eye and the flash drive. Then call maintenance and have them get someone up here to clean up."
"Sir?"
"You brought this *mess* into the department, you need to clean up after him."
Beckett winced. "Yes, sir."
Martha Rodgers slipped down the stairs as quietly as she dared, hoping not to disturb whatever might be going on between her son and his new girlfriend, Kate Beckett. It warmed her old bones to finally be able to place those three words together in the real world. She knew how much her son loved his muse, and how much it had always seemed like the woman returned those feelings.
But still, she couldn't sleep. Martha knew exactly what the reason was for her insomnia. She missed Alexis desperately. The lack of her granddaughter's presence in the loft was like losing a limb. She knew she would be fine eventually, but just like her first night alone after she sent Richard off to boarding school, tonight was a night where, Martha knew, the only way she was going to get a good night's sleep was with a little 'help'.
Martha's odyssey to the kitchen was interrupted when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her son staring intently, not into the eyes of his lovely girlfriend, but at his laptop screen. The glow of the LEDs, the only light in the living room, gave him a sickly pallor. She approached cautiously, wondering what was keeping her son awake and, presumably, away from the woman he loves. While having a writer for a son meant putting up with inspiration striking him at the oddest of times, Martha also knew that Richard was rarely able to write when he was as depressed as he was earlier.
So what was keeping him up so late?
When Martha finally got close enough to see what was on her son's computer screen, she was...perplexed seemed like the most fitting word for it. "Getting a freshman year present for Alexis, darling?"
Castle jumped at the sound of his mother's voice, nearly knocking the laptop off the couch in the process. "Mother!" he exclaimed,"what in the world are you doing up?"
"I couldn't sleep," Martha replied with a sigh. She circled the couch, finally sinking down wearily into the cushions opposite her son. "I miss our girl..."
"Me too," Castle replied sympathetically, patting his mother on the arm.
"I was just about to fix myself some warm milk and brandy. Would you like one?"
Castle went back to his search the second his mother got up from the couch. "No," he said, clearly only giving her half his attention, "thank you, mother."
"So is that what the eBay search is for, darling?" Martha called out from the kitchen. "Are you trying to find something for Alexis?"
"Huh?" Castle replied, his mind having to shake off his temptation to be re-absorbed in the task right in front of him. "No, this isn't for Alexis."
Martha closed the door to the refrigerator after putting the milk back, surprised by her son's answer. "Is it for Kate, then? I didn't know that she..."
Castle cut off his mother's response. "It's not for Kate, mother, although it might help her in a way..."
Martha knew the guilty tone pervading her son's voice. She put her mug of milk in the microwave and started it, letting the appliance do the work while she attended to her child. "Uh oh," Martha commented as she returned to the living room. "Whad'ya do, kiddo?"
"You remember Captain Gates?" asked Castle. "Kate's boss? The one I've been telling you about?"
Martha nodded. "One of the 'few women who's immune to your charms', I believe is how you described her?"
"I finally figured out the way to soften that iron exterior..."
Martha knew that if this were a good thing, they wouldn't be having this conversation at 3am. "What does that have to do with looking for collectible dolls on eBay?"
"Uh..." Castle began guiltily, "when I realized that one of the victims in our case his some crucial evidence in the doll that was in his storage locker..."
Martha rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off a headache. She had a feeling she knew where this was headed. "Richard...you broke that doll, didn't you?"
"After having given it to the Captain as a gift," Castle replied. "And broke another one of her dolls in the process."
Martha let out a weary sigh. "And did you get the Captain's *permission* before smashing her dolls to bits?" She rolled her eyes as she saw the expected shake of her son's head. Martha started to say something more, but stopped herself. It was obvious that her son was feeling terrible about what he had done and was already trying to make amends. She patted her son on the shoulder before returning to the kitchen, hoping that, for once, maybe a sleepless, guilt-ridden night would help him get over some of his issues with impulse control. "Good luck, kiddo."
The next morning, Victoria Gates closed the door to her office with her own weary sigh. It had been only twenty-four hours ago that she had felt on top of the world, finally discovering the sister doll to one of the most treasured dolls in the collection it had taken her twenty-five years to accumulate.
But now? Now both dolls were gone.
At the murderous hands of Richard Castle.
She glared at the man who had the nerve to be sitting in his chair next to Detective Beckett like nothing had gone wrong the day before. Only the threat of making an enemy of the mayor was keeping Gates from kicking the man out of her precinct altogether.
Gates turned her focus away from her most troublesome top team, more determined than ever to make sure that something good came out of her day. It was then that she saw it. She sat down at her desk, opening the envelope addressed to her in what she now recognized to be Castle's handwriting. She gasped in shock at the reveal of the envelope's contents.
There were two pieces of paper. The first was a receipt for a purchase on eBay of a dozen Gemini dolls. The winning bid was whited out, but Gates knew with a practiced collector's eye that a collection like that would have had to cost a small fortune. And the shipping address on the receipt was made out to *her* attention at the 12th precinct.
The second piece of paper was a note from her 'enemy':
Captain,
I know that this doesn't make up for what I did yesterday, but I hope it's a start.
-RC
Gates leaned back in her chair, trying to wrap her mind around the extravagant make-up gift from the man who, to this point, had seemed determined to make her life miserable. It wasn't going to erase *every* one of his transgressions from her mind, of that much Gates was sure.
But it was a start.
As a doll collector myself, my heart broke for Gates when I saw Castle smash those dolls, even though the moment had been foreshadowed pretty much from the minute Castle gave her the doll in the first place. And while the writers seemed to pretty much make Gates look like a lunatic during the episode, I felt that Castle's issues with impulse control and his inability to keep his hands off other people's stuff needed to be addressed so I could get on with my other writing. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, but either way, please make sure and leave comments!