Author's notes, which are long. This is not the fic you're looking for. This is the fic that I started, apparently, in November of '09, when we were all young with bright eyes and good livers. Not like now. How long ago is that? It was before the kerfuffel about the alleged mosque at Ground Zero. It was before Percy Jackson became a movie, and it was after gay couples were allowed to marry in Ohio and just before they were permitted to marry in New Hampshire. It was before most of the annoying plot developments of subsequent seasons of Castle.
I wanted to write a normal episode with a murder at an archaeological site (because someday I hope Wanyyta ends up in a book of her own) and I ended up deeply respecting real cops and all writers of procedural crime fiction. It was hard, and sometimes I know that shows; this is not the best thing I have ever written, and if you slog all the way through, you have my respect and my apologies.
Unfortunately it turned into canon for my canon, and there are things in it I like, so I offer it here and it's probably better than some stuff you could be reading (is there Castle furry fiction, where Rick is an ocelot or something?).
Addenda - The author owes a HUGE debt of thanks to GhostWriterLost, who did not know she would become a holder of hands, a beta-reader, and a talker of persons off of ledges. If I have learned nothing else, I know now ALWAYS to preview the upload, as strange things that were not my fault (among many that were) happened to the punctuation.
And I should have noted earlier that I don't own the characters who appear on the television show, nor the idea, and that I do not intend to infringe anyone's copyright. The students of Albert Einstein High belong to Meg Cabot, as does the Death Dorm. New York, however, belongs to the people.
Monday, October 18.
"Detective Beckett, I need a favor." It was a rainy late October day, and Castle stood, dripping, next to Kate's desk; not hovering, not in her face. Something he really must want. Kate considered toying with him, but Castle looked marginally more serious than usual. "What is it, Castle? I know better than to give you a blank check. And sit down."
"I can't stay long," he said, sitting down anyway. "My blood-sucking ex-wife/still-publisher and my agent have teamed up against me and I have to go on a book tour."
"Didn't you do that already? I couldn't open a paper or turn on the radio for a month without hearing about Nikki Heat and her hotness. You didn't fool that woman on NPR for one minute, by the way."
"I liked her better than being polite to Good Morning America. Yeah. That was the domestic one. I was able to do the rest of the US in a bunch of overnighters." Kate recalled he had been scarcer than usual for awhile. It had been restful. "They need me to go to Europe for two weeks."
"Am I supposed to offer you condolences?"
"Last time I did twenty interviews in twelve hours, then I went to another city and did it again. A couple of weeks of that gets old real fast. I was so fried I was becoming inappropriately honest. "
"I can't imagine that. Any interviews I'm in are the ones I own. " Except when you get cute.
"Some of the reporters are friends and I'm glad to see them, and some of them I doubt have ever read a book without pictures." He shrugged. "I eat a lot of lunches with my overseas publishers and a lot of dinners with people I don't see very often, which is all right, but it isn't real life. I start craving grapefruit and unfancy restaurants."
"Do you ever get to do tourist things?"
"Not much. But the forced-march publicity tours do give me the ability to go back some other time, on my own. Do you think Nikki Heat would like to go to Venice?"
Kate thought Nikki Heat would really prefer to go to Monaco or the sleazier part of the Riviera, while, she, Beckett, went to someplace in Tuscany where no one had serious domestic disputes. "So how can I help?"
Castle handed her an envelope. "We had tickets for this. Would you mind going with Alexis?"
Kate opened the envelope. The tickets were for a musical that hadn't opened yet. "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief?"
"Young adult fiction. Not entirely unlike Harry Potter. Pretty good books, actually. I hear the previews have been fun."
"Why me? Why not Martha?"
"My mother gets her own tickets and she's too much of a snob to go to anything aimed at kids." He shrugged. "I've seen Beauty and the Beast enough times to understudy for it and I don't think she knows what she's missing. But I was also hoping Alex could spend some time with a sane person. I don't like leaving her for this long. Most times she can stay at a friend's house, but that didn't work out this time."
Kate almost asked about his daughter's mother, but remembered in time that Meredith was on the wrong coast. "Well, yes, of course. Maybe we can have lunch once or twice."
"She'd like that. And I would really appreciate it, too. Sane people aren't that common in our neck of the woods." For a fraction of a second his insouciance cracked. She glimpsed a worried, bleak parent. "Some of it's New York, rich people who worry about whether their dog goes to the right school. And Gina ... wasn't good at keeping friends."
"She and Alexis didn't, umm, bond?"
"Oh, like napalm to naked flesh. Any doubts I had about my daughter learning to stand up for herself were resolved by the end of the first three months."
"And you?"
"It took me longer. But she used her feminine blandishments to bewitch me."
It hadn't been too hard on him at the time, Beckett thought. "So when are you leaving on this tour?"
"Friday. Can I give Alexis your cell number?"
"Give me hers, too."
Knowing Castle was entirely out of her life was less refreshing than she had expected. Without his anarchic presence their investigations – even the the kinky one – went smoothly enough, but there was no one she needed to squash, discourage, or reprimand. Ryan and Esposito were cops, like her. They behaved sensibly – as they should – in accord with precedent and best practices. Kate had not realized she enjoyed the sparring so much.
Tuesday, October 26
She would have been kind to Alexis anyway. Castle's daughter had a less irritating version of her father's charm, more brains than made any sense if you looked at her gene pool, and a kind of coltish caution that made Beckett want to protect and encourage her. Kate called her Tuesday, the day before the opening night of the musical. "I think we have a date tomorrow?"
"Ooh, Detective Beckett!"
"You may call me Kate. Unless you want me to call you Ms. Castle?"
"Alexis will do, umm, Kate."
" What should I wear tomorrow? It's an opening night."
"Oooh, Kate!" Alexis was briefly a tenth grader and then reined herself in. "Well, you don't have to do the full black tie thing, and my dad won't be there, so with any luck they won't be taking pictures of us, but pretty fancy would be good."
"Probably won't be taking pictures?"
"Gina. She likes my dad to be in the papers."
"Isn't she in Europe too?"
"No. And where she's concerned, think 'tentacles.'"
Where photographers were concerned, Kate thought 'burka,' but she determined to be sane for Alexis's sake. And she loved musicals with a guilty passion.
Kate was poised and calm when they met the next evening under the marquee of the theater. Curtain time on opening nights was earlier than the regular run; it was just before six when she arrived, having added fancy earrings and a dressier jacket to her detective clothes. She did not feel too terribly underdressed. Alexis was in a group of young glitterati, the cream of the junior celebrities and some of their elders, people whose faces were vaguely familiar to Kate from the papers for sale in supermarket checkout lines. She was used to seeing celebrities in New York, but not to being among them. "Is it all right to stare?" she muttered.
"They'd be disappointed if you didn't. Oh, hi, Mia! Come meet Detective Beckett -"
"Nikki Heat is here?"
"Alexis!" But it was too late, and Kate met a horde who reminded her of her own high school friends, but with whiter, straighter teeth. And much more expensive clothes.
"Are you Alex's bodyguard?" one of the boys asked, slipping a flask into his pocket.
"If you ever try to date her, yes," said Kate. "But I'm off-duty." She displayed her badge. The flask-bearing teenager melted farther away. She was relieved not to see anyone she recognized from Redding Prep. Most of them were from Marlowe, like Alexis, or Albert Einstein, like Mia and her friends.
"How much of Heat Wave is true?" one of them asked.
Actually, that was a good question. Kate so – SO - did not want to discuss Chapter 10 with anyone, much less with anyone under 21. No, not with anyone. "Castle writes fiction. It says so on the copyright page, 'None of the characters or events portrayed in this book...' There are some murders that take place sometimes somewhat like Nikki Heat's. There are real police officers and medical examiners. I don't have a martial arts teacher I see recreationally, no."
Everyone looked disappointed. "So you don't hold out for artistic control?" asked the girl.
"If only I could," said Kate.
"Would you appear on my cable access television show?" Mia's friend gave Kate a card. Lily Moscowitz – Producer. Kate looked helplessly at Alexis.
"She's for real," Alexis assured her. "Lily had my dad on last year. Maybe he could come back and you could tell him how real-life detecting was different from Derek Storm."
"I do that all the time, but he won't listen."
" This is your chance to get a wider audience-you could be such a good role model!" In the end Kate promised to discuss the matter with her boss. The NYPD had done stranger things for good publicity (a photo shoot for Cosmo came to mind).
Despite their friendliness, Kate started to feel old by the time they went into their seats, old and poor. She shook her head slightly, reminding herself that she was a successful grownup and that they were puppies, despite the diamond collars. "A little much?" asked Alexis.
"It's weird how both you and your father read minds."
"Well, I know how you feel. My father actually makes a living, instead of getting it all from a foundation, or being a diplomat. A lot of these kids know they don't know what real life is like."
"I suppose not, if they go to first nights on Broadway very often…"
"I was thinking I ought to go to college somewhere outside of New York, with normal people."
"You'd define that how?"A topic which tided them over till the music started.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief wasn't going to run as long as Cats, but Kate waded through the crowd with a song in her heart, and Alexis took a couple of steps and a twirl onto the sidewalk. "I never knew you danced," Kate said.
"I don't really, I'm too tall and I like doing other things too much. But I still take class twice a week. Did you like it?" Alexis asked.
"Yes, I did. The music was catchy and the plot was fun. Did you like it?"
"The dancing was supposed to be more interesting, from what Dad had heard, but apart from that I liked it pretty well. I liked the book."
"How are you supposed to get home?"
"I was going to take a cab."
"Not by yourself, you won't." Kate signalled for a cab and followed Alexis into it. "I'm seeing you home," she explained. "I know you're street-smart and very competent but I don't want to have to explain that to your father."
"He told me you would."
"Sometimes I hate him."
"He said I should offer you a drink and see if you would stay till midnight."
"Why? So I can turn into a pumpkin?"
"No, he Skypes me around then."
It wasn't Kate's first trip to the Castle home, but it was strange to be there without him. Martha wasn't there. Percy Jackson had not been on her list, so they had not seen her at the theater. "We definitely would have," said Alexis "She loves first nights. Probably because she was in so many."
"I didn't know she was that successful an actress."
"Large numbers of 'first nights' don't imply success the way 'hundredth performance' or 'Five-year anniversaries' do, you know."
"Or even 'second nights?'"
"Exactly."
Alexis's room was neither overwhelmingly pink nor infested with vampires (nor unicorns). She seemed to have more shelf-feet of books than most of the adults Kate knew, but that wasn't surprising. Kate prowled the titles while her hostess pulled her a decaf latte (skinny, hazelnut shot), and they settled down to exchange favorite writers (Donna Andrews, for cheerful murder mysteries) and YouTube sites (Maru, for being a cat). Alexis wasn't much of a fan of her father's writing; at her age, Kate hadn't been, either. It was only a little after eleven when Castle's image buffered onto the monitor. He looked rumpled.
"Hey, babe."
"Hi, Daddy. Where are you?"
"Vienna, right this minute. I gave your regards to Mozart."
"Did you buy me chocolate?"
"I bought all of us chocolate. How was the show?"
"Pretty good. You would have liked the special effects. And there was trapeze."
"Did they ruin the book?"
"Less than I expected. We have a guest."
"Detective! I can see you in the background," Rick said. "Thank you for taking care of my little girl."
"She's a very good hostess, makes a mean latte. Why are you awake?"
"We fly to Dusseldorf in half an hour. See, I'm awake and being productive while all of you are in slothful slumber."
"New York is the city that never sleeps, Castle. Are you having a good time?"
"I can't say I'm hating it here. The pastry is excellent. People talk in funny accents, there are some really nice buildings; I see them from cabs. Am I missing any good crimes?"
"Not really. An object lesson about the dangers of illegal betting. No, I will not go into the details standing here in Alexis's bedroom."
"Thank you, Kate," said Alexis.
"I should get home, myself. You both take care -, no, I'll let myself out. See you next week, Alexis?" They had a lunch date the day before Rick was due home.
Rick's daughter refused to hear of sending her off so coldly and walked her to the door, leaving her father to wait across the ocean with a croissant and coffee. "Thanks for coming with me, and for seeing me home."
"Entirely my pleasure," Kate said. "Get back to your dad. But if you need anything before he gets home, let me know."