a.n. This might be my favorite chapter so far. There's a bunch of stuff that goes on as Alex's time with his mom comes to a close.
Huge thanks to Her Pegship who continues to correct my atrocious attempts at the English language. You should definitely check out her Castle stuff.
Disclaimer: Don't own Castle, of course.
-:::-
July 18 2010
Kate's first thought was that she should really chase after her son and give him a piece of her mind. A part of her felt so violated that she couldn't even put it into words. However, the rest of her realized that she was overreacting and there was something bigger that she should be focusing on.
Alex had seen the murder photos of his grandmother.
That made Kate actually chase after her son, but for a different reason. She couldn't imagine what damage she'd just caused her 10 year old child. No child should ever, ever, have to see an image of their murdered grandmother.
By the time Kate arrived in her living room, Alex was long gone. She started to make her way down the hallway towards his bedroom when she froze. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something that made her entire being shake with absolute fear.
The door to her apartment was wide open.
-:::-
Richard Castle (for that was his persona on this trip) was not having a good time. For one thing, hotel rooms were uncomfortable. Sure, he stayed in some very luxurious places on his trip, but none of them seemed all that comfortable to him. It all screamed 'fake.' Some of the rooms were downright gaudy in their decorations, while others tried much too hard to portray a sense of 'home.'
The trip, for the most part, had gone well enough. He could have done without the many women asking him to sign their chests or the groupies that seemed to follow him everywhere. But it was nice to see that so many people loved his books. He was tired though. A month on the road was not his idea of fun.
He missed Alex so much. He'd had to go on several trips over the years, but he'd never agreed to trips that lasted more than just a few days. So the longest he'd ever been away from his son had been a few days.
It wouldn't have been so bad if Rick didn't think about the fact that he still had ten days still before he could see Alex and his own bed and everything he loved back in New York. But mostly Alex.
Rick liked seeing different parts of the country. It was nice and something that he had never really had the chance to do, but after a while it got old and things started blurring together. It got so bad that he started to create reminders with post-it notes to remind him exactly what city and state he was in, so he didn't make mistakes later in the day.
The repetition was getting to him. Luckily he got to hear his son's voice quite often. While Alex was at camp, he alternated calling Rick and Kate. Once Alex had moved into his "way cool" room (Alex's words) at Kate's apartment, Rick talked to his son every other night.
It was nice, and it was what kept him going. Ten more days and he could see his son again. Rick couldn't wait.
-:::-
The sheer panic that flowed through her would have astonished Kate if she'd had a moment to think about it - which she didn't. She flew out of her apartment, looking toward the rest of the apartments on her floor and then toward the stairwell.
Kate dashed toward the stairwell, hoping that her boy hadn't made it too far. If he'd made his way out of the building, she didn't know what she'd do. What if he was gone? What if someone took him? What if he got hit by a taxi or a bus? Alex was only ten years old, and while he was exceptionally smart and had lived in the city his whole life, he was still just a child. He didn't know or understand all the dangers the big city held for a kid his age.
Despite the fact that she knew she'd disturb her neighbors, Kate couldn't help but call out his name over and over again. It was as she was about to enter the stairwell that she heard it.
The sound was coming from behind a door that Kate knew led to a supply closet her landlord used sparingly. She cautiously approached the door and pulled it open.
"Alex?"
Silence, broken only by sniffling.
"Alex, sweetheart?"
"Go away," he whispered.
"I'm not going to go away, Alex," Kate said as she entered the closet fully (it was a tight fit, but she managed). She sat down beside her son, noticing how dark it was in the closet. She pulled out her phone and enabled the flashlight app, causing a brilliant light to fill the space around them.
Kate winced when she got a close look at her son's face. He had big tears flowing down his cheeks and his eyes were pinched closed as if he were trying to stop the tears from flowing. She had done this to him. The guilt was almost overpowering, but she knew she had to push through it.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn't have snapped at you. It was wrong of me, and I'll try not to ever do it again."
Kate took a deep breath when he didn't reply. "I'm sorry that you had to see those images too. I should have taken those down when you and I started spending more time together."
"W-why are they there?"
Kate pondered her answer for a moment before she responded, "When she was murdered, my mother's killer was never caught. You know I didn't handle that well. I joined the police academy so that I could find her murderer."
"And did you?"
"No," Kate answered as she shook her head. "No, I didn't even come close. But sometimes that's what happens."
There was silence in the closet as Alex got his emotions together and Kate thought about her reaction to what had happened.
"Alex? Have you ever gotten really, really mad at your dad?"
Alex looked at her oddly but nodded his head. "Yeah, once or twice when he wouldn't let me do something I wanted to do."
"Did you ever run out of your loft?"
Alex shook his head.
"You can't, okay. Parents and children get mad at each other. As I said, I shouldn't have responded how I did in there, but running out of my apartment is something you should never do. If you'd gone any farther than this closet and made it out of the building, I don't know what would have happened to you. No matter how hard it gets, no matter what happens, you can't scare me like that, okay kiddo?"
Alex nodded and Kate put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. She kissed him on the top of his head and breathed in deeply. She'd never been so worried in her entire life. To think that she might have caused her kid to run away from home was just so terrible she couldn't even really wrap her mind around it.
"I'm sorry for snooping, mom," Alex said a few moments later.
"Ah, honey, you can snoop anywhere in that apartment you want. It's my fault for not taking those pictures down. I'm just sad you had to see your grandmother like that. You should never have had to see those."
Alex nodded and buried his face into her shoulder. "I wish I could have met her," he whispered, causing Kate's heart to break once more.
"Oh, she would have loved you to pieces, sweetheart. And I know that wherever she is now, she's so proud of the young man you've become."
-:::-
Things were not good over the course of the next two days. Alex was quite upset about what he had seen, and spent most of his time in his room, drawing. Kate tried to draw him out, but she knew that he needed time to get past what had happened. She made sure she was always around so that he could talk, and he did come to her the next night and let her tell some stories about his grandmother and show him some pictures of Johanna when she'd been alive. Kate thought that those stories and pictures helped Alex at least a little, for which she was grateful.
It took some time, but eventually she was able to draw him back out and they spent some time together having fun. She was never going to be good at video games, that was something she could state with absolute certainty. She could put 9 out of 10 bullets in the center of a target on a good day, but she just could not get the hang of shooting a gun with a joystick. Nor was she much into zombies, which Alex seemed to love quite a lot.
She was fairly good at racing games, though, but she still didn't hold a candle to her son who seemed to be really good no matter the genre of the video game.
"You're really good at all of these, Alex," Kate said near the end of nearly two hours of getting her ass handed to her by a ten year old.
"I like playing. Dad is pretty good too, so we play a lot. We even entered a father-son tournament last year to play Madden. That was a lot of fun even if we didn't win."
"Madden?"
Kate was slightly unnerved by the mischievous glint that appeared in her son's eyes when he said, "Yeah. Madden. Want to play?"
Kate groaned, but nodded. After all, how bad could she be?
-:::-
July 21 2010
Alex was being sneaky. There was no way his mom was going to get him this time, she was so going down. She'd taught him how to hide and how to use the terrain to his advantage, and now he was going to use her lessons against her.
He kept his laser gun at the ready as he traversed around the corner of the sofa, hunched over so that he couldn't be seen from the rest of the room. Just as he was ready to pounce, his vest gave a beep, signaling a hit.
Alex sighed and looked over to where his mom was standing smirking, near the kitchen island where she had apparently been hiding.
"Mom! How can you be so silent?"
"All part of the job, sweetheart. Now, are you ready to go again? Maybe I'll go easier on you this time."
Alex groaned. "No way. You promised you wouldn't let me win so I can get better. I'm so going to be able to beat dad when he gets home."
"All right," Kate said laughing, "let's reset and then we'll go again."
Alex nodded. His mom might not be any good at video games, but he didn't care. In the real world, she was a ninja and she had awesome skills when it came to laser tag. That was way cooler.
-:::-
July 24 2010
Their time together was quickly coming to a close, and Kate dreaded the day that her son was no longer staying with her. She had discovered that she very much wanted to keep him close to her and never let him go.
They'd gotten very close since November, when she had come back into his life. But two weeks of constantly being in each other's presence had changed Kate immeasurably.
She didn't want him to leave. Intellectually, she knew that Alex would have to go back to his own home with his father, and she wouldn't begrudge that out loud, but inside she was screaming in despair.
Instead of focusing too much on Alex's imminent departure from her daily life, Kate decided she would make the final few days of his stay truly special. So she'd helped him pack an overnight bag with clothes for three days, and had prodded him into her car without telling him where they were going, dodging all of his questions.
She had thought about taking Alex up to her dad's cabin, but in the end she'd decided against it. Alex had just spent almost a month in the great outdoors, so he might not enjoy another three days cut off from civilization. Instead she'd decided that she would take him on an experience that she'd enjoyed many times in her life: a baseball weekend.
When Kate was a little girl, her dad had taken her on what he'd call Baseball Weekends. These usually happened on weekends when her mom was out of town on business or staying with friends. Jim Beckett would take his little girl to a Saturday Yankee game, and then a Sunday Yankee game. They'd always stay at a nice hotel somewhere near the stadium and fill their days outside of baseball with trips to the baseball museum and other fun little places. Kate could remember those weekends being some of the most fun times she'd ever spent with her father.
Having learned from Rick (who had never liked baseball at all) that Alex was a bit interested in learning the sport, Kate had decided that at some point during their stay that she and her son would make the trip out to Yankee Stadium and see a game. In the end she'd decided to see if she could replicate her own Baseball Weekends.
"So, where are we going, Mom?" Alex said as Kate pulled her car out into traffic.
"Well, your dad said that you wanted to learn about baseball."
Alex's eyes widened. "Really?"
"Yeah, so we're going to go to two games this weekend. The Red Sox are in town so it should be a good time. We'll stay at a hotel near the stadium tonight. There are several attractions in that area of the city, so we have a full schedule for both today and tomorrow."
"That's cool, Mom. Dad doesn't know the first thing about baseball. He tried to look it up when I asked about it a couple years ago, but he just got lost in all the numbers."
Kate laughed. "I could never get your dad to come to a game with me when we were younger. He'd do almost anything with me, but not that. He said he found the game extremely boring."
She and Alex started to talk about their experiences with the game. Alex had watched games on the television, but he hadn't been able to talk his dad into taking him to a game yet.
The weekend was the most fun she'd had in a long time. She spent the first game explaining the game to her son, while also trying to simplify some of the statistics that were important. She taught him how they kept score and some of the things that they kept track of, like errors and ERA. Alex soaked everything up like a sponge. He often tried to compare it with soccer, but she told him there weren't many things the two sports had in common.
They spent most of Saturday visiting the different attractions and stores around the stadium. There was even a camp put on by several Yankee players that they got to observe (though sadly they weren't signed up for Alex to take part). Alex did manage to get Derek Jeter's autograph, which had been pretty exciting for both of them.
The hotel turned out to be well appointed and hideously expensive (even by New York standards), but they'd had a good time. Alex had spent the evening teaching her how to play Zelda on his handheld Nintendo console. Their laughter rang through the hotel room as they played and talked into the night.
Sunday, their time before the game was spent in their hotel room because it was raining. Kate feared that the game would be rained out or at least severely delayed, but about an hour before the first pitch, the sun came out and they exited their hotel room to make their way to the stadium.
The Yankees lost, but the two had fun, and that was all that counted. Kate could only grin stupidly at the wide smile on her son's face as they made their way back to the hotel. She was supremely happy with the way the weekend had turned out. She knew that it would be something that she would do again with her son if he wanted to.
Her happiness lasted right up until the moment they entered their hotel room to pack their bags.
"You know, Mom, I think I might be a Red Sox fan."
-:::-
July 28 2010
Richard Rodgers stepped out of the back seat of the hired car and stretched. After a long flight and a long car ride into the city, he was seriously ready to be home.
But first he had to see the most important person in his life. He walked into the apartment building and took the elevator up to Kate's floor. He knew that his mother had left town the day before for several performances in Pennsylvania and Connecticut, so there was no reason to go up to her floor. He still found it odd that his mother and his ex-girlfriend lived in the same apartment building.
Rick knocked loudly on Kate's door and waited impatiently. He smiled when he heard small feet running towards the door.
"Dad!" Alex said as he flung the door open and flew into his father's arms.
"Bud! Man, am I glad to see you," Rick said happily as he wrapped his son in his arms. "Did you have a good time with Kate? How did the baseball weekend go?"
"It was fun! I freaked Mom out by proclaiming my undying loyalty to the Boston Red Sox. It was hilarious."
Rick threw his head back and laughed. He stood up from where he'd knelt down to hug his son and looked into Kate's apartment. He smirked when he saw the disgruntled look on his friend's face. He knew she hated the Sox with a passion. He couldn't think of a better prank to play on her, really.
"Hi, Kate."
"Hey, Rick. How was your flight?" Kate asked, shaking her head to get rid of the memory of her son's prank.
"Long," Rick answered. He looked down at Alex. "I'm starving; have you had lunch yet?"
"Nope," Alex said.
"Well, why don't you grab your things and we'll go get some burgers."
Alex nodded and raced back into Kate's apartment and towards his bedroom.
Rick looked at Kate. "So, how did it go? I know we talked a couple times."
"It was awesome, Rick. I..." Kate looked away. "I love him so much. It's going to be tough not having him here all the time."
"He's pretty great," Rick said with a smile. "You know you're always welcome to come see him. If you have days off, come stay at the loft. We have spare rooms. If you let me know in advance, he can come stay with you for a weekend once or twice a month. And we'll still see you at least once a week."
Before they could say anything else, Alex came down the stairs. Rick smiled down at his son. "Are you ready to go, bud?"
"Yeah, Dad," Alex turned to his mom. "Thanks for being with me these last two weeks, mom."
"Oh, sweetie," Kate said, kneeling down and giving her son a big hug."You don't have to thank me. I had a good time. I will see you on Wednesday. Maybe the three of us could do something," Kate said with a look up at Rick. He nodded and she went on, "Then that's the plan. Remember to show your dad the baseball, and I want to see that drawing when you're done with it."
Alex nodded and hugged his mom again. Rick smiled down at the scene before him. The two really had come a long way. He had forgiven Kate for what she'd done. For the first time since she'd reentered their lives in November, Rick felt that they had settled into their new normal and that everything was right in the world. That thought just made him smile more. It was good to be home.
-:::-
a.n.2. So there's that one. A bit of angst, some fluff. Let me know in reviews if you liked it.
Coming up next we have some time spent between Kate and Rick that brings their friendship a bit closer. We have a revelation from Rick that will shock Kate to her core, and we have the end of Part two in two chapters that ends on a shocking cliff hanger that will shock pretty much everyone. {Cackles madly with glee}
* I do not know anything about the Yankees, or the stadium or the venues surrounding it (or baseball, really). And I didn't look to see if the things I talked about it the Baseball Weekend section actually exist. For the sake of this story, just assume they do.