"Morning, Captain. Feeling better?" Ryan greets, his grin smug, but his eyes still carry leftover worry from last night, when he found her disorientated and in pain on the couch in her office.
She plays it off with a roll of her eyes, bumping his shoulder with her hip as she passes his and Esposito's desk. "Yeah, Ryan. Thanks."
"Oh yeah, Ryan told me about your sweet dreams last night, Beckett," Esposito chimes in, the curve of his lips echoing his partner's. A quip about Lanie bubbles on the tip of her tongue, but... she really doesn't know anything about this Ryan and Esposito, if Lanie and Jenny are in the picture at all. Judging by Ryan's work schedule, she has a feeling she already knows the answer.
He never stayed late when he didn't have to, not when he had Jenny waiting at home for him.
Her chest shudders with another threat to collapse, but she musters a smirk for the boys, continues on her way to her office.
"Better than either of your realities, I'm sure," she tosses over her shoulder, earning their disgruntled protests following her until she eases the door to her office shut.
She doesn't have time for jokes or teasing today. She came here with a mission, a list of names to search the archives for, to see just how far into her mother's case this Kate managed to get.
Beckett descends into her office chair, wiggles the desktop computer to life with her mouse, and types in Dick Coonan's name. Castle wanted to come along, pleading like a little boy until she reminded him of the girl sleeping upstairs with a heart full of hopes for revived Christmas traditions. He didn't argue so much after that.
It's good, good for her. She needs time away from Castle's lookalike, the man who shares his face, probably shares his noble heart and mind as well, but is still so clearly not hers. She sighs while the system loads, casting her gaze across the familiar assortment of knick-knacks and and framed photos, mementos from her mother.
Her index finger trails the parade of elephants, over their trunks and the colorful decorative blankets painted on their backs. Castle used to tease her about them, making note of how they stood out amidst the heavy loads of professionalism always scattered across her desk.
"I like them," he mused, toying with the baby elephant in his hands, tapping the top of his trunk with his thumb. Only a few days after the case with Coonan that nearly got him killed. "They give your desk some character."
"They were my mom's," she murmured, not trying to kill the amused smile on his lips, but it definitely evacuated at the mention of her mother. She didn't want it to be something sad, though, not the sweet little parade of elephants that always made her smile, made her mom feel closer. "Before they were on my desk, she used to keep them on hers. She always said they were like us, me, my mom, my dad. Like a family."
He showed up the next week with a ceramic elephant the half size of his palm.
"He can't join in on the parade," he quipped, placing the elephant on the desk in front of her. "But maybe he can be part of the extended family?"
It wasn't the first time her heart swelled for him, hope and curiosity fluttering tenuously in her chest, because maybe they really could have something.
"He can be part of the family," she smiled, nudging the elephant closer to the rest.
That elephant doesn't exist in this universe and her heart cracks all over again. She grits her teeth as her eyes sting, reaching for the elephants that persistently remain no matter what world she's in.
Kate sits back in her chair, angling away from the slit blinds of her office windows, and cradling the parade of them to her chest. If she has to be stuck in an alternative universe, she wishes her mom was alive in this one. Even in an impossible situation such as this, she'd like to believe her mom would know what to do.
Her thumb nail traces the edge of the largest elephant's blanket, over and over, until it grows loose.
She glances down to the unhinged back of the statue, prepared to pop it back into place, but the hollow space inside the elephant isn't empty like she always thought it was. Her heart begins to pick up speed, but it's probably nothing, can't be...
Kate flips the elephants over, catches the object that falls out of their leader in her palm. She swallows hard as she places the elephants back to her desk, studies the cassette tape in her palm. A tape that apparently belonged to her mother.
Her mind flashes back to the notebooks she's been over a million times, the coded messages Johanna developed in law school that only she could understand. No one was ever able to decipher those notes in her appointment book, but the one about family always stuck with her, nagged at her like a sore spot. The words ring like a riot in her head now.
They were like a family.
Kate closes her fist around the tape and stumbles out of her chair. There's a tape player downstairs in storage that they've used for evidence before.
Skim latte, two pumps of sugar-free vanilla. He has it memorized from the moment she says it and places her order with relish at the coffee shop on his way to the Twelfth precinct. He's never been to this station before, only the 54th, where he shadowed a robbery detective for a couple of weeks, and the 8th during that brief period where he was intrigued by narcotics for an angle in his Derrick Storm novels. But never the homicide division.
Castle walks up to the building's entrance just as Kate Beckett is striding out.
"Whoa," he breathes, nearly getting plowed into.
Kate catches him by the shoulders, her cheeks pink and her eyes red. He almost drops the coffees in his haste to touch her, his instinct to comfort her somehow, but she's already pulling back.
"What happened?" he murmurs, offering her the coffee anyway.
She glances down, bewildered, but accepts the to go cup with fingers that shake. "I found the tape."
"A tape?" he repeats, his brow succumbing to the inevitable furrow of confusion. "What tape?"
Kate takes a long swig of the coffee, something like affection sweeping over her face, before her eyes flicker back to him.
"Rick, it's Christmas Eve," she states, as if he isn't already aware. "You're supposed to be decorating with-"
"Alexis is at the loft, finishing up her breakfast," he nods, cupping both hands around his coffee to refrain from reaching out to drape a hand at her waist. "I have to go pick up the stuff from storage, but I let her know that I was going to drop by to see you. In the meantime, she's going to attempt to start removing some of my mother's decor."
Kate huffs a quiet laugh and starts forward, checking over her shoulder, as if expecting him to follow. He falls into step beside her, not sure of the destination, but willing to follow for as long as she'll allow.
"The tape?" he prompts, witnessing a hard flash of grief clap like lightning over her face. "Kate?"
"Of Bracken," she whispers, her eyes unseeing. He takes her elbow, solely to ensure she doesn't lose her way. "Before he was a senator, back when he was assistant DA, admitting to blackmailing, framing Armen's murder on Pulgatti, proof of what he did to my mother."
He doesn't know who Armen is, Pulgatti - Kate shared a summary of her mother's murder with him, the case that consumes her life, but kept it surface, holding back the details he assumes are too painful to talk about. Especially with a stranger. But they're obviously important to the story, to Bracken's downfall, and his heart races with hope for her.
"You have proof," he murmurs, earning the snap of her gaze back to him. "You can stop him."
"In this world anyway," she nods, but Castle squeezes her arm.
"There's movies like this, you know, stories where the antagonist ends up in another dimension and doesn't get to go home until their good deed is complete and the moral of the story is made apparent?" She arches her brow at him, but there's a point to his ramblings, one he thinks she'll appreciate. "So maybe this is your moment, Kate. You expose Bracken with the evidence you've been looking for all along, stop him before he can get to you here like he did in your world, before he can hurt anyone else. Maybe that's what sends you home."
"Bracken is the connection," she murmurs thoughtfully, biting her bottom lip. "He was the reason I ended up here."
"And he could be the reason you go back," he finishes for her, slowing to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk next to her.
Kate Beckett looks up at him with so much hope burning amidst the grief in her gaze, that he can't help but share it, hope the same for her. No matter how badly he wants her to stay.
"I need to expose Bracken," she says, her jaw squaring with determination.
"He's attending a Christmas Eve event in Chelsea." Her brow hitches, but he merely shrugs. "I told you I was good at research."
"I'll go," she murmurs, taking another long sip of her coffee before pushing it back into his hand. "You get back to the loft, to Alexis-"
"Kate," he breathes, dropping the coffee to catch her arm. She pauses, staring up at him with a flare of concern. "If - if it works... you said you were shot and then just simultaneously woke up here. What if you leave the same way, just in a flash? I won't get to - I want to be there."
She chews on her bottom lip, torturing him without even knowing. How the hell did he work with this woman for - how long did she say? Over a year? And resist her for so long? How was he able to function?
"Castle," she sighs, shaking her head and lifting her empty hands to his chest. "Alexis. That relationship with your daughter, it means everything to you. It did in my universe and it does here, I know it does."
"You're right," he murmurs, covering the palm at his sternum, sealed over his heart. "Like I told my daughter, I screwed up over these last few years, spent too much time sulking and feeling sorry for myself. I drove her away to LA with her mother who's not much better than me but is apparently more bearable," he grumbles, sighing when Kate presses her thumb to his clavicle. "But I'm going to fix it, like I should have a long time ago. But Kate, I - meeting you last night was like waking up. Everything feels clearer now and I don't want that to go away. I don't want you to go away."
"Rick," she whispers, one of her hands ascending to cradle his cheek. He turns his head, kisses her palm.
"But I know this isn't where you belong and I would never ask you to stay," he breathes, closing his eyes, letting the warmth of her palm soak into his skin. "I want to be able to say goodbye, though. I need to be there if something happens to you."
Her eyes harden, the hand still at his chest curling over his heart.
"I'm not letting anything happen to you in this world either, Castle," she says sternly, but he doesn't cower under her gaze, straightening his shoulders instead.
"Same goes for you, Beckett. You die here, you may die in both worlds, and I'm not losing you." He squeezes her hand and lets it go, the fingers at his cheek falling away. "Now, let's do this so I can go pick up a Christmas tree for my daughter."
