Chapter 2

Alexis shuffles a little bit in her seat trying to get comfortable, but the chair is old, it's cushioned seat long since compressed into a thin layer that affords no real padding at all. This is the last place that she wants to be but she's endured twenty minutes of it already and she's prepared to wait for as long as it takes.

The teenager can see the officers of the 12th precinct moving around the bullpen from her position in the waiting room but the tall, dark-haired detective that she's here to see is nowhere in sight. In fact she doesn't recognize any of the cops; the guy at the front desk had said that Detective Beckett and her team were out at a crime scene.

"Can I see Detective Beckett please?"

"Do you have an appointment to see her?"

"Umm, no," it hadn't occurred to her to call beforehand, "if you just tell her that Alexis Castle is here to see her then I'm sure that she'll talk to me."

Maybe the guy recognized her from the few times that she's visited her dad at his informal work place or maybe it's just the surname, but he softens slightly.

"Sorry Beckett and her team are out at a scene at the moment. I'm not sure how long she'll be. Do you want to wait for her or leave a message?"

What she needs to say to Beckett isn't really the kind of message that you leave on a Post-it note or a phone call, she wants to do it in person so she opts to wait it out.

Another half an hour passes and the red-head is starting to wonder if Beckett isn't deliberately avoiding her, maybe that other cop had called her and so the detective isn't coming back. Just as that suspicion starts to form Alexis spots a familiar figure exiting from the lift.

Long strides eat up the distance between them as Beckett makes her way over, an anxious expression on her face.

"Alexis, is something wrong? Has something happened to your dad?"

A burst of resentment colors the girl's pale cheeks at that question; the thing that is wrong with her dad is the woman standing in front of her. How can she have the nerve to ask it, as if she thinks that Alexis isn't smart enough to figure out exactly what is going on in her own home. She doesn't say any of that though.

"No, Dad's … the same. Can we talk in private please?" it's hard to be civil when she's so angry but her basic nature is to be polite.

"Sure, come with me," the woman ushers the teenager into an empty room.

"I want you to stay away from my dad. He's not a cop, he's not meant to be facing bullets, or nuclear bombs or the risk of freezing to death."

"I can promise you that he won't be doing any more police work. I've told him that he can't be involved in my cases anymore."

"And what about your night time visits? Are you going to promise to give those up as well?"

"Oh …" a faint tinge of red stains the older woman's cheeks.

"What? Did you think that I didn't know about them? Every time you come around the next morning he looks like he's aged ten years. You don't have to deal with that, you don't have to pick up the pieces afterwards."

It's a direct stab to the chest because Kate knows exactly the girl is going through; after all she did the same thing for her own dad after her mother died. Taking on the parental role and looking after someone who is so broken that they can't look after themselves.

"Alexis, it's complicated." How can she explain to this girl that she's tried, but she succumbs to her weakness each time? Her life is a mess; Montgomery's betrayal and death, her own shooting and the knowledge that the person behind that and her mother's murder is still out there. Kate feels like she's plummeting into the abyss and the only things that bring any light to her life at all are the few moments that she spends with Rick.

"No, it's not complicated," Alexis' tone is finally starting to match the fiery color of her hair. "He can't move on if you keep coming around. You're not good for him and if you cared about him at all then you'll stay away."

The girl walks out leaving Beckett shamefaced. She's a homicide detective who was just lectured to by a seventeen year old and the most embarrassing thing is that she knows that the teenager is right.


It's been twelve days since he last saw Kate, two hundred and eighty-six hours and forty-three minutes. It's the longest that she's stayed away and yet he still waits for her every night. The writer knows that nothing has happened to her; he caved at about day eight and called Ryan. The Irishman has promised to let him know if anything happens to her, anything at all.

Rick's taken to watching the video from his front door security camera as if he can will her to come to him if he just keeps his eyes peeled to the screen. Most nights he falls asleep still watching the empty hallway in front of his loft. There are exactly fifty-six brown ceramic tiles in front of his door, he's counted them so often that he can sure of that. That's his ritual as he waits for her, a little OCD but it gives him something to pass the time away.

"Dad she's not coming," his daughter says from the doorway to his office. "I don't think that she's ever coming back," she leaves out the last part of what she's thinking, and you're better off if she doesn't.

"Maybe," is his only reply, Rick doesn't want to get into another argument with her about this. As a teenager Alexis has such a black and white view of the world, being around Kate puts him into some dangerous situations therefore the logical thing to do is to avoid Kate. The problem is that the world is all these shades of gray and it takes experience to recognize that, it's not something that he can explain to her.

Alexis offers him the mug of warm milk that she's holding, "I thought that this might help you get to sleep."

"Thank you pumpkin, but I might just wait a little bit longer," it's a role reversal; he used to do the same thing for her when she was little and couldn't sleep.

He looks so broken that she gives him a hug, wishing that he could just be happy with what he has, instead of grieving for what he doesn't have. Alexis bites her bottom lip, debating whether or not to tell him about her conversation with the detective. It's been ten days since she'd ventured into the police station and it looks like Beckett has taken her words to heart. The problem is that her dad looks even worse now than he did when he was still getting his nocturnal visits.

The teenager still feels like it was the right thing to do, warning off the older woman. At least now her dad is safe, even if he isn't exactly happy about it. Surely safe but miserable is better than being happy and then hurt. The only problem is that her dad isn't the same man any more, the thing that has always defined him is that spark, the joie de vie. It's missing now and she can only hope that with time it will come back again.

"Ok Dad, I'm off to sleep. Don't stay up too late," she admonishes him, its advice that she knows he'll ignore.

It is two-thirty am before he finally gives up, Kate isn't going to come around tonight and maybe she might not come around ever again. As a novelist he can come up with a hundred different excuses for why he hasn't seen her; there's been a murder every night and she's been called out, she's out of town, she's forgotten where he lives. They all sound pretty flimsy and he knows that if she wanted to then nothing would stop her from being here. Maybe she really means it this time.

Rick looks at the phone sitting on his desk, it exerts an almost gravitational pull that he can't resist. It's too late to phone her, she's probably screening out his calls anyway if she isn't already asleep. What could he say to Kate that would change her mind? The brunette is obstinate, closed-off, hardheaded, and doesn't listen to other people's advice, none of that changes the fact that he loves her.

The text that he sends in the end is short, it simply says I miss us. Defeat weighs down his shoulders as he finally heads for the dubious comfort of his bed, without someone to share it with it might as well be a bed of stones.


In her lonely apartment Kate sits in the dark, there are no lights on because it's easier to hide from everything in the dark, including hiding from yourself. The soft ping of her phone alerts her to the incoming text, there's only one person who would be texting her at this time of the night. The dim, luminous light from the phone screen bathes her face in a pale blue color, it accentuates the dark circles that seem to be multiplying under her eyes.

The last two weeks have been pure hell, if this is Dante's inferno then Kate's not sure which of the nine circles she is in and what she's done wrong to deserve this. She was a victim in her mother's death and surely it's not wrong to want to get justice for that.

The green light on the phone seems to mock the detective with it's pulsing, incoming text, incoming text it screams. Her finger hovers briefly over the delete button, she's tempted to not even open it because she's sure that it's only going her to hurt to read the message.

I miss us.

Pain explodes behinds her eyes as tears gather and then trickle down her face unheeded. There's no satisfaction in finding out that she was right. What pains her the most is knowing that he is hurting too. The phone drops to the floor, her hands clench into fists and she sits on them, taking away the temptation to just grab her keys and break about a hundred traffic laws in order to get to him as quickly as possible.

The saying goes no pain, no gain. So this is her, Kate Beckett, sucking up the pain and hoping that the reward at the end makes it all worthwhile. And what was that reward again? Oh yeah that right, she gets to see Rick Castle, the man that she loves, move on with his life without her. That's not how it ends in the fairytales but it's the best that she can hope for. Maybe he won't be in her life anymore but at least the world will seem a bit brighter as long as he's out there somewhere.

And with someone else, a nasty, little voice in her head mocks her. She silences it brutally. If she was a better person then she'd hope that he would find someone else to love, it would mean that he wouldn't be hurting for as long. That's what you want, isn't it, for the people that you love; that they're not hurting? But Kate's not that much of a martyr, she'd rather picture him pining for her forever.

This is as much as she can do. She'll stay strong and avoid him for his own good, no matter how much the both of them are suffering. It's not perfect but it's all that she can manage.