A Better Fate

He smelled like hers.

But he wasn't.

Kate pulled back, swiping at her eyes, unable to look at him. She saw her counterpart standing stock still just to one side, her eyes murderous and yearning at the same time. Kate reached out and grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her after. . .herself.

Beckett resisted, but Kate was stronger.

Interesting. She was stronger. She could do this.

In Castle's study, Kate spun around and jerked the woman closer to her. "Listen to me. I will do anything, anything, to-" Here she faltered again, because she couldn't - there was so much she couldn't or shouldn't say. "To keep what I have," she said finally.

Beckett was regarding her warily. Herself, her own stupid, closed off self. How had Castle ever gotten through to her? "You mean. . .your future."

"I mean your future. My - my life." Castle. She had to keep Castle alive somehow. But from five years ago? Why not five months, or five days? Why not even five minutes before he was shot right in front of her?

Beckett raised a hand to cover her eyes and then dropped it, swallowing hard. "I still don't - you could be - some of this is just-"

"You think you might, maybe, could love him," Kate whispered, her heart breaking. "I do love him. You won't - God, it takes forever. It takes forever, but it's so worth it. He's worth it."

Beckett backed away from her, shaking her head, but her eyes were on Kate's hand. The ring. She'd seen it too. It'd hit her the same way it had hit Castle. Good.

Kate held up her hand, wriggled her fingers. "See this? He loves you too. He's out there thinking the same thing - that maybe he could love you now. I will do anything to protect that. I won't - I don't want to change the past by saying more than I should, so you have got to let me protect your future."

She watched Beckett stare at the ring, felt the weight of it around her finger, the promises they'd wanted to make to each other, the promises he'd already made her, but which Kate had kept putting off. There was just never enough time to sit down and plan a wedding, and she'd refused to let him hire someone to do it, and then there'd been case after case and-

And, if she was being honest, completely honest, she'd wanted her mother's case done. Over. Closed. She'd wanted to be free to live this life with Castle, free of the past, free even of the present, the future - nothing planned, nothing hanging over her head. She'd been afraid that if she did one little thing wrong, if she stepped out of line or crossed some unknown boundary, she'd wind up on the wrong side of a gun.

And him as well.

She'd been right, but it was her own damn fault. Her worst fear had been realized. It had happened. It would happen.

But not if she could stop it.

They - these two - they could never know.

When they came back into the living-room, Beckett looked - well, not exactly convinced, of course not, but she looked...shaken. Her face was pale and she was chewing on her lower lip something fierce; it made him want to go to her, tell her he felt the same.

Lost and confused and scared out of his mind.

The excitement had left him the moment Kate from the future had lifted her eyes to him, dark despair swirling in their depths; it was bad. Whatever had happened to her, it was bad.

And he would do anything - anything it took - to ensure his Beckett never got that same look on her face.

He lifted himself off the seat he had sunk into, took a few steps towards them, the women who looked like twins, so similar and yet so different. Kate acknowledged him, gave him a small, sad smile, but Beckett seemed lost in her thoughts. She had her arms wrapped around her waist, as if trying to protect herself, and she took a few steps towards the kitchen, her back turned to them.

It made his heart ache.

"So?" he said, wincing when he heard the sharp, rough eagerness in his voice. "What's the plan? How do we get you. . .home?"

Kate turned a surprised look to him as she sat down, resting her neck against the back of the couch, and he was struck all at once by how...exhausted she looked.

He went to her, couldn't help himself. "Hey, you okay?"

She closed her eyes for a second, two, and when she opened them again he was faced with an unending sea of sorrow.

"I'm fine," she breathed, and it was a lie. Her fingers were a fist on her knee.

He hesitated, not sure if he should push, and as he looked up he unexpectedly met Beckett's eyes. She had stepped closer, was staring at them with a painful expression on her face.

Jealousy.

The word was on his mind before he could stop it, and his stomach twisted, his body instinctively moving away from Kate's.

Oh god. God. What was he supposed to do? They were the same person, for god's sake, the same smart, headstrong, gorgeous, frustrating woman that he was absolutely fascinated with, ensnared by, in - oh, what good was denying it now? - halfway in love with.

He couldn't-

"The plan?" Future Kate said slowly, and her voice wound around him, soft, careful, bitter at the edges. She was looking from Beckett to him, seeing too much, knowing too much; he was about to say something, anything to cut through the quickly-rising tension, when a light shifted in her eyes.

Realization.

"Oh," she sighed, and her palms came up to press against her eyelids, shielding her gaze from him, as if she was giving herself time to think. When her hands slowly slid down her face, she seemed like a different person; certainty, confidence in the curl of her mouth.

"This - the last case you worked together," she said, looking at them both. "It was Kyra's bridesmaid's murder, right?"

Castle wasn't sure how that was relevant, but he nodded. "Yeah."

"Nothing since then?" she insisted, her eyes on Beckett now.

"Not together." Beckett shook her head, her lips pressed tightly, as if she wanted to keep her dealings with her future self as minimal as she could.

"Nothing that you should have called him for?"

Castle glanced up at Beckett, faintly hurt by the revelation that there were good cases out there that she apparently didn't call him for.

But she shot him a look, and even though it wasn't exactly friendly, it was reassuring. "No. GSW today. That's all."

Kate didn't seem fazed by the exchange; she had this look on her face, the one she got when she broke a case wide open, when she was in the middle of figuring it out. So beautiful. "Okay," she said slowly to herself. "Okay. So this is why. And maybe this gets me home, too."

"What?" he asked briskly, the need to know clawing sharply at his insides. "What are you talking about?"

She lifted her eyes to him, those gorgeous green eyes that he was so familiar with but had never seen quite so unguarded, and she bit her lower lip, thinking. He could feel Beckett hovering near, somewhere at the edge of his vision, like she couldn't help moving forward, being pulled in.

"I don't think..." Kate paused, obviously trying to calculate, make sense of things. "I don't think I should tell you anything more. I've - I've said too much already. If I'm here to change things, to keep this event from happening, then I will do that, but you - you should get on with your lives and just-"

"Just pretend that you were never here?"

Beckett's voice came out strong and sharp; it made him jump a little, realizing that she was now at his side. Standing together. Like a team. It sparked stupid gratitude in his chest.

The future Kate gritted her teeth, got a stubborn frown on her face that suddenly made them exactly the same. Castle's mind spun at the sight.

"Look, I know how it sounds. But I think it's probably best for you two to ignore whatever I'm doing-"

"No," Beckett opposed firmly. "Whatever you're doing, as you, yourself, said, it's our business. And let's face it: you're going to need help. There's no way you can change the future all by yourself. You don't want to be shot? Well, I don't want to be shot either. We do this together, or not at all."

Oh, that wasn't a clever thing to say - that wasn't a clever thing to say at all - a challenged Beckett was rarely a smart Beckett-

"Oh, yeah?" Kate said, lifting herself off the couch, calm and regal in her defiance. "Watch me."

Beckett stood stunned and furious in Castle's living-room as her future self stalked out of the loft, slammed the door behind her.

That - that wasn't-

"Castle," she found herself hissing, spinning on her heels to meet his eyes. He looked dumbfounded, helpless, his blue eyes so wide, his lips parted. Heat flared in her belly and she angrily smothered it.

"What?" he breathed, as if shaken out of a trance.

"Well - go after her! Don't let her-"

Words failed her; she had no idea what this Kate was up to, but it couldn't be good, it couldn't be good and honestly how could she be stupid enough to believe that without back-up-

"Let her?" Castle seemed much too close to laughing for her taste. She glared at him and his face quickly sobered up. "Kate - ah, Beckett - I'm not sure anybody could ever keep you from doing something you'd set your mind on. Much less me."

"What do you mean, much less you?" she answered impatiently, ignoring the sheepish look in his eyes. Damn, there was no time for this. "Castle - just go after her and tell her-"

"Why me?" he protested, mouth curling into a childish pout. "You go. She's you, after all - you should be able to convince yourself more quickly than I ever-"

Beckett growled, a guttural, threatening sound that had him shutting his mouth and recoiling, looking slightly scared. "Now, Castle."

He didn't argue this time, sprinted to the door instead, yanking it open; she followed after him, her feet moving without her agreement, and the tempo of her heels against his hardwood floor helped her focus, clear her mind.

She ran down the stairs after him, her knees swallowing the five floors without complaint. When they swept past the doorman, the guy gave her a bewildered look, and Castle only slowed long enough to breathlessly offer, by way of explanation, sisters.

Beckett nearly crashed into his back when the writer came to a complete stop on the sidewalk. The sun was still shining outside, and she shielded her eyes with a hand, muttered a curse.

Castle was twisting around, unable to stay in place as he searched. "I don't see her. Beckett, I don't see her-"

She gripped his elbow, made him stop, and surveyed their surroundings. The street was busy; it would have been easy for the - the woman - to disappear into the crowd. But really, they hadn't hesitated more than a minute upstairs - how was it possible-

Castle was whining something about her not knowing her strength; she released him, turned slowly to inspect the other side of the street.

Well, her future self might be stubborn and stupid, but she was also pretty damn fast. Beckett curled her lower lip between her teeth, frustration bubbling inside her.

"Beckett..."

Did this Kate even have any money, ID, anything? How was she hoping to-

"Beckett."

"What?" she snapped, her head swiveling to her shadow. The affronted look in his eyes told her she'd gone too far; she sighed inwardly and resigned herself to listening.

"Don't look at me like it's my fault," he huffed. "We both let her go."

She kept silent.

"Look, Beckett-" he hesitated; she wasn't going to like whatever was coming. "Maybe we shouldn't try to chase her. Maybe she's right."

"What?"

She couldn't believe him. Castle - Castle, of all people, Castle who had opened up her mother's case without even asking her - was willing to let this go? No way. No freaking way.

"I'm just saying. It can't be good for us to know too much about the future, right? And whatever Kate was sent back here to do - maybe she's supposed to do it on her own. We don't know, Beckett. We don't know anything."

Kate. He was calling that woman Kate.

Beckett wanted to punch something.

"So?" she said sharply, putting a firm lid on her stupid emotions. "Don't tell me you don't want to find out, Castle. Cause I don't believe you."

He pressed his lips together, looked away. When had he become the cautious one? Beckett shook her head, incomprehension and anger both.

"Fine," she hissed. "I'll find her on my own, then. I have to say, I'm surprised you're not more eager to repeat the kissing experience."

It was unfair - she knew it was - but she was mad and confused and hurt, and it was the only way she knew how to deal. She saw a flash of indignation in his blue eyes, saw his lips part on some kind of answer, but she was already turning away.

Don't look back, Beckett.

She ignored him and strode off towards her car.

Castle glared after her on the sidewalk, and that familiar surge of exasperation rose up in him again. She was so damn frustrating, so stubborn-

Well, he'd prove-

Something. He'd prove himself and he'd find Kate first.

Ha. So there.

He spun around to head back inside and then stopped, his heart pounding.

Kate Beckett was on the loose in her own past. In a past she knew, she remembered, and could easily alter.

She knew about the case with Kyra, whatever that had been, and she'd obviously told Beckett some kind of secret in his study, the two of them. She had knowledge of where they would be in five years, but more importantly, she had knowledge of where they would be tomorrow.

And she could do whatever she wanted about that, start now at changing things, saving things, or-

What if she didn't want to be married to him?

Or worse, what if she looked back on the last five years and thought it would be better if he stopped being her partner?

Oh damn, he needed to find her.

Castle hurried through pedestrians, muttering apologies under his breath as he worked his way down the block. He had an idea, and it was faint and really pretty terrible, but he had an idea of where she might have gone.

He'd stood outside his building for a good five minutes, trying to imagine the trajectory of her life - Kate seemed to still be a detective, seemed he was still her partner, seemed to have a good instinct for them in a way that Beckett and he only now had achieved. Or were working towards.

So if he assumed they would grow ever closer, that with each passing year he and Beckett became more familiar to each other, then the things that now seemed small and one-off, seemed random and without meaning-

Well, then those things might actually come to have meaning.

And he was, if not the best ride-along/partner she'd ever had, then at least he was still a writer. Nikki Heat's writer. Beckett's writer (even if she didn't want him to be, but maybe, later, she did want him to be, since it looked like-)

Yes. And that's when he'd figured it out.

She was Beckett, still, even if she wore an engagement/wedding ring, even if she looked at him with such tender regard, even if she straddled his lap and kissed him like she knew every single touch and movement that turned him on-

well, because she did, didn't she?

But he knew her too. She was still Beckett. Equally maddening, equally beautiful, equally a creature of habit.

So when he yanked open the door of his regular place, the distinctive aroma of the freshly brewed and entirely organic coffee hit him with all the sense of a welcoming and alert good morning.

Even though it was nearly lunch time. It still did that for him, focused his crazy energy into a pinpoint clarity.

"Damn."

He startled and turned immediately to his left; she was sitting in front of the broad windows, her table empty, her hands pressed flat to the wood as she looked up at him. Rueful. As if she should have known better.

He slid across from her. "Figured you'd need a place to start."

She regarded him for a moment. "Coffee is always the place to start, yeah." She sighed like she was giving in to him.

He studied her, the glints of sun in her hair that made a nimbus of color in the usually dark strands, the lines around her eyes that spoke of happiness and smiling, the throb of a tendon or maybe a vein in her forehead that he'd never seen in Beckett.

"I have to figure out the timeline," she said with a sigh, scraping a hand through her hair.

The timeline. She was older, five years older, but clearly she was still herself. He glanced down and noticed her coffee-less state, held up a hand to stall her explanation. "Wait. Clearly we both need it. Stay right here."

He got back in line and ordered quickly, racking his brain on what to get-

Oh. Well. She was still Beckett, right? He'd found her at the one place he stopped by to get them coffee, when he did actually get them coffee (which wasn't as often as he should, now that he thought about it, but he could do that more - that could be their thing, or well, it would be their thing, wouldn't it?).

He ordered two bear claws, smiling to himself as he remembered a particular instance last year with the bear claws, and then he waited near the other end of the counter for their coffees. He pulled out his phone and texted Beckett the location of where he'd found her alternate self, amused at his own message, and then grabbed the coffees from the barista and threaded his way back towards Kate.

She was rubbing two fingers against the wood veneer of the table, but she looked up at him with a shimmer of emotion in her eyes that caught his breath.

He handed her the coffee, then sat down across from her, accidentally rocking the table. She reached out and took the bag from him, opened it up and fished out a pastry without comment. He watched her tear apart the bear claw, feed it past her lips slowly, with relish, and the similarities between the two women overwhelmed him.

This was Beckett. This was his Beckett. Just - a little further down the line.

"Do you love me?" he blurted out.

She lifted her eyes, but said nothing. Still. He knew Beckett well enough by now to see the difference swirling there. If he hadn't asked, and she'd looked at him like this, he would still know it for what it was.

She was completely and unflinchingly in love with him.

"Give it a few years," she said finally, and he realized her hand had come over his on the table, her fingers were squeezing his.

"A few years?" he whined. Mostly to break the awkward intimacy. Awkward only because there was, strangely, a third person at the table with them who would be upset, jealous even, and it was only her own self. "Because, let's be real, Beckett is already halfway into me right now, and there's no one else on the horizon, so why not now. . ."

"Mm, can't exactly tell you why not," she murmured, and her eyes roamed his face as if she knew him so very well, as if her fingers could skim the lines of his nose, his cheeks, so familiarly.

"Sure you can. Come on."

"I love what we have," she said suddenly. "I wouldn't change it for the world."

He sat back at the ferocity in her voice, the protective instinct that had come to life in her.

She was in love with him. Beckett - in five years - she would look at him like this and she would kiss him like that and she would wear his ring.

Wait.

His ring? He'd sworn off marriage. After the first two plummeted so quickly, he'd promised himself that he wouldn't do that again. He wasn't the marrying type, really; he'd told himself it was better to have fun, keep it separate from his real life - from his daughter and their own little world.

"Does my daughter approve?" he asked suddenly, his hand coming out to snag hers. He felt her fingers flex.

"I can't tell you-"

"Right. Sorry. Yeah." He held on to her hand though, couldn't quite give it up yet. She wasn't pulling away either. He pushed the ring back to the base of her finger with his thumb, studied it. "You picked this out."

He heard her startled intake of breath, felt her hand quiver once in his.

"Yeah, see, this isn't - I would've gone for a lot flashier and-"

"No," she said suddenly and jerked her hand away from him. "He picked it out."

He.

Ah, so that's how it was now? She'd separated them in her head. Them? There was no them. There was himself, and her, and somehow they'd been given the chance to rectify a future that he was only getting scary glimpses of, but which still intrigued him.

Attracted him.

He would - yes, actually - he found himself willing to fight for it, for a future in which she loved him, and he was willing to - could actually see himself - marry her.

"He picked it out," she said again. "For me. Because he knows me."

And you don't.

"I found you here, didn't I?" he said to that, his heart clenching. He wanted her. He didn't know when it had happened, but he wanted her. And it hurt when she looked at him like that, like he didn't measure up. He wanted to measure up; he wanted to deserve that look in her eyes and that degree of loyalty. He wanted it for himself.

He saw the struggle in her, the fight to maintain her distance, but she gave it up in a heartbeat. Her hands flipped his around and she brought his palm to her mouth, kissed him, her eyes closing.

His fingers curled around that kiss and that was how she found them.

Beckett. When she walked in the door.

That was how she found them.