Not really sure what this is but it became a thing tonight. Honestly, this is a thing I've been struggling with lately myself so I guess I used Alexis is a piece of therapy. Forgive any mistakes because I'm too lazy to proof read right now. And, uh, here's to finding home - whatever that may be to you.
Dedicated to mama goat and that feeling that comes with Oregon.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not yours. Definitely MilMar's.
Home is wherever I'm with you...
-Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
There's a little truth in every cliché, Alexis Castle supposes. Home really is a person, a place, a feeling. Mostly, over her few years on earth, she's come to realize that home has a different definition to every individual – like a fingerprint, it's not the exact same for any two.
For Meredith, her mother, home comes with things. All the trappings of a beautiful life. Meredith grew up in an unstable environment, an unhealthy one really, and she never had any kind of stability before alimony and a relatively decent career provided it for her. She built her foundation on things. Ownership. Being able to say that she had stuff. It seemed frivolous to most but most had grown up with their share of things. Alexis herself had spent many years trying to understand her mother and how she could shower her with gifts and assume it was parenting but never understand that being there meant more. Because to Meredith having things meant more than any parental involvement ever could. Having something meant having safety, a security net, and that was the love that Meredith could offer. That was the home that she had made for herself, the one where she was comfortable.
Martha makes her home in romance and flamboyance. Her grandmother lives a life that is loud in every sense of the word and Alexis thinks it's a beautiful thing – that may only work for her grandmother. Like an old sailor, there's a caller in every port and she's always got somewhere to hang her hat for a night. It's a stability that works for the actress. She thrives on change and consistency in inconsistency. If the chaos theory is real then Martha Rogers is the butterfly; she flits about happily, stirring up mischief and relishing in the fresh winds of change that come her way. She's settled some in recent years but Alexis is fairly certain that her grandmother will always find safe harbor in the fact that she never has to put her anchor down anywhere for long.
Her father has built a home out of words. Unlike his mother, Richard Castle does not thrive in chaos – no matter how very good he is at creating havoc. He thrives on consistency and patterns, things going according to plan; things that rarely occur in the real world. He builds his own worlds, brilliant and beautiful worlds, where things always go according to plan and parents always tuck their kids into bed every night and never have to worry about having money to keep the lights on.
And Kate Beckett? Kate Beckett builds her home around people. It took Alexis a long time to figure out how the detective operated; it wasn't really until she started seeing her father that the redhead would figure out how the brunette operated. Maybe, she ponders, it's because Kate Beckett didn't really have a home before she joined them. Sure, there was her childhood one built around Jim and Johanna and Maddie and a select few others but that had all fallen apart when Johanna Beckett had been murdered. Now? Now Kate Beckett has a home. Kate Beckett's home is built around her husband, her father, her mother-in-law; around Kevin and Javi and Lanie and Jenny and Sarah Grace... And, maybe, Alexis thinks around her step-daughter too. No, Alexis corrects herself. She knows. She's a part of Kate Beckett's home too and it took a long time for her to accept that which is something her step-mother took with far more grace and dignity than Alexis deserved sometimes.
And at twenty-one, Alexis isn't really sure what home is for her just yet. She figures it's something one acquires with age. But she knows that she feels loved when her mother sends her a little trinket in a window that made her think of the girl and she couldn't walk past without getting it for her. Alexis feels cared for when her grandmother spends the night on the rickety couch in her apartment because "no one else will have me, darling, and you wouldn't make your dear old grandmother spend a night with the newlyweds would you?" And she feels treasured when her the dedication to her father's novel reads "to Alexis, who taught me how to be a man". Home, though... Home might be that feeling when she's sitting on the couch next to her father, head on his shoulder and legs crossed on the coffee table, watching some old Sci-Fi movie and Kate comes in after a long day at work and flops down on the couch next to her. Home might be that feeling when she's all smooshed in the middle between her father and step-mother where she's safe and cared for and loved all at once.