The sling his arm is trapped in isn't helping, neither is the new layout of his loft.
Or her loft.
After getting released from the hospital a few days ago, he's finally able to start taking what little of his other life back, making the best of the bad situation this version of himself got him into. The talk he needs to have with his mother about removing that giant abomination of a portrait taking up an entire wall of his... or her... office will probably be the first step he wants to take. Even from the kitchen as he unpacks the paper sack of groceries with his one good arm, he can feel his mother's eyes staring into him.
This must have been what Kate felt about Linus. It's like... she's boring into his soul.
Castle forces his eyes to look away, briefly catching a glimpse of his little girl working tirelessly at his desk. If he loses everything else in his life, which he has, he can at least smile knowing at the end of the day, even this world's him was a good enough father to make Alexis stick by him. He can't be sure if he could handle going through this if not for her willingness to help him. He can see a very obvious twinge of doubt in her eye when he talks to her about all of this, but he knows how all of this sounds.
He unpacks the chicken breasts, the spices, the parmesan, and the salad, laying it all out in the counter before grabbing the paper bag and smashing it against his side in a crumpled up ball that he hooks into the garbage can on the other side of the kitchen like a basketball. The painkillers haven't dulled his mood, thankfully, and he knows the look of a worried family concerned of this world's Castle developing a drug addiction because of prescription painkillers.
The drawers are completely out of order. It's his first discovery he makes while searching for a cookie sheet to start dinner on. "Like my office isn't enough, you have to rearrange my kitchen too?" He murmurs to himself.
The door to the loft opens and he hears the distinct humming of his mother, followed by her loud vocal exercises. "Lay la looo." She says loudly, raising and lowering the pitch of her voice with every sound.
"Where do you keep the cookie sheets, Mother?" He asks her, searching from cupboard to cupboard.
Martha doesn't respond when she sees her son in the kitchen, neatly dressed in a silk white button-up dress shirt and dark black jeans, his arm still wrapped in a dark blue sling. "What are you doing, Richard?" She asks as she paces slowly toward the kitchen, a large purple leather bag hanging from her forearm.
Castle stops and stands up from searching in the lower cupboards, looking over his shoulder at her with a curious brood. "Making dinner, why?"
His mother's brow shoots up in surprise. "You're making dinner?" She asks him, stunned as she points at him.
His eyes move away from her for a second, not knowing what she's talking about. "Don't I always make dinner?"
She lets her bag fall to the floor with a clatter and quickly drifts her way into the kitchen in front of him. Without warning, she lifts her hand, putting the back of her fingers to his forehead for a few seconds. She removes her hand and waves her fingers at him. "Richard, are you feeling alright? I thought the doctor told you to keep the dosage to a minimum."
"I feel fine, Mother." He says with a knit in his brow. "Now, can you please point me in the direction of the baking apparel? Alexis hasn't eaten all day and she's been working really hard."
"Well," she says on a hard chuckle, "Richard, the last time you cooked for the family was... well, was Thanksgiving three years ago and I think we both remember how that little disaster turned out."
"Call it good fortune that I don't. Now, cookie sheet... please?"
She stares at him with a soft, inscrutable gaze before moving her hand over to the cupboard next to her head and opening it for him. "They're in here."
He lets out a relieved breath, hoping the conversation is over as he grabs for a large baking sheet with his one good arm. "Thank you."
"Any time, Darling." She says as she sashays out of the kitchen.
"Dad!" He hears Alexis call from the other side of the loft.
He looks up from the counter and sees his daughter, her hair tied back into a low hanging ponytail, wearing loose, dark-colored clothing while carrying her laptop on her arm. He quickly moves out of the kitchen, around the island and through the living room just as Alexis is folding her legs underneath herself as she sits down onto the couch that faces in the completely wrong direction. "What'd you find, sweetie?" He asks, sitting down on the couch next to her.
Alexis looks over to her father and his concentrated gaze, filled with a brightness and eagerness she hasn't seen in years, and she scoots herself closer to him, turning the laptop screen toward him. "I did some digging on that Incan artifact you pulled up yesterday."
"Any clue on how to use it?" He asks her, looking away from the screen.
"It's all myth and legend as far as I can tell." She dismisses. "But I did find something else that might help. One of the leading experts in ancient civilizations published a paper in 2014 about an Incan ruler who founded the Empire around 1200 CE."
He tries his hardest not to get sucked in by pride and amazement at his daughter, looking at her speak and explain to him her findings with such excitement.
"The legend of the empire's founding as of a staff gifted to their ruler by the sun." She explains, pointing at the screen of the ancient depictions. "The paper claimed that the centerpiece of this staff," she says, pointing at the screen of an ancient hieroglyph of a stone circle, encased around a line of stones and a decorative center, "wasn't the first of its kind to be seen in ancient texts."
"What do you mean?" He asks.
"He claimed that the symbol for this centerpiece was used in civilizations dating all the way back to the Olmec in 1200 BC. He went on to claim that this symbol was also seen in some of the earliest stonework of the Harappan civilization in Indus Valley and that it must have had some significance and that when the Spanish conquered the Incas in 1532, whatever this centerpiece was, it was lost."
"Does it say what this thing does?"
"He says that while all cultures have their own stories and interpretations, the same mythos is pretty much the same in that this centerpiece has the power to grant the wielder their deepest desires."
He ignores the cold bullet going through him. The thought that his deepest desire was that they had never even met because she was better off without him is something he probably still hasn't come to grips with. "So who is this guy?"
Alexis clicks over to another tab in her browser. "Professor Graham Mansfield. He used to teach out of Columbia before he was forced to resign."
"Forced to resign? Why?"
"Because of the claims made," she says, clicking back to her other tab, "in this paper. The archeology community started mocking his findings relentlessly after this paper was published. He's since published independently about," she trails off, clicking through her browser, "the Bimini road, the Antikythera mechanism... Atlantis..."
"So he didn't back down from his findings."
"And according to his website, he still works out of his home office here in New York."
Nervously bouncing her foot up and down with her legs crossed, Kate sits drumming her thumbs together in her lap, her heart tightening anxiously under her straining lungs. She clears her throat in the emptiness of the room as she stares at the empty seat directly across from her.
She hasn't done this in... a decade, at least. But she's out of options. She's starting to lose sleep. A lot of sleep.
It's been nearly five days with this massive headache, and she's yet to find anything that helps. There's something else going on and there's only so much a bottle of Aleve can do. Her detectives are starting to notice her lagging. She can't run a precinct like this. She can barely even function like this. She needs it to stop and she can't drug her way out of this. If she's going insane, she'd rather have it be said by a professional, rather than her WebMD searches.
She nervously adjusts herself in the large armchair and grabs onto her knee with her clasped, sweaty hands when she hears the door open. "Sorry I'm late." The doctor says. She readies herself to stand up to greet him but he stops her as he's making his way through his office. "No, please, Captain." He says, lifting his hand.
Beckett smiles anxiously as she leans back into the armchair and recrosses her legs, twisting the heel of her stiletto into the carpet, watching as the doctor sets his paperwork down on the small table at the other side of the room before making his way over to the chair across from her. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Doctor Burke."
"My pleasure," he says with a casual wave of his hand as he leans back into the chair. "Is this your first time in therapy?"
She shakes her head, avoiding eye contact by looking down to her hands. "No, I've uh... I saw a therapist for a while when I first got out of the academy, so about... sixteen, seventeen years ago."
"Okay," Burke nods slowly. "What's going on that made you want to see me?"
She clears passed the lump in her throat and adjusts herself again, smoothing her hands down her shins over her slacks and curls her toes inside of her heels. "I'm having dreams."
There's a thick pause between her and the therapist. After a few seconds, she looks up to see him staring at her, his face pulled into a quizzical gaze. "Okay," he nods, looking away and playing along. "What are these dreams about?" He asks her on a shrug.
Her heart flickers wildly inside of her chest as her body heats up at the thoughts flashing into her mind. "U-umm..." she stutters, pinching her brow together. "They're usually about uh... well, see, I'm usually not one to dream about things like... it's just that these dreams are..." she keeps trying, still avoiding eye contact at all costs by looking about the room, "... intimate... in nature."
She can see the moment when Burke gets the picture by his eyes glancing away from her and his head giving her a slow nod. "So... they're sex dreams?"
Her skin flushes into a cold, violent sweat at his speaking so bluntly and she presses her palms together in her lap. "You could say that."
Burke adjusts himself and puts his elbows onto the arms of his chair. "For how long?"
"About five days." She answers, feeling the further explanation tug at the back of her throat. "And they're always with the same person."
The doctor gives her another slow nod before prodding further. "And do you know who this person is?"
"Well-" she starts in a tight, nervous voice, "not exactly. I-I mean, I do know who he is but... but not really know-know who is he. I mean, we're not really friends or anything, but not enough to be like-"
"Captain," he stops her, lifting his hand with a smile. "It's okay. So... you have met this person."
She clears her throat and sits up straight in the armchair. "Yes." She states plainly. "I met him last week. His name is Richard Castle."
"And these dreams," he starts, moving himself in his chair, "they're all involving him?" She nods, giving him an affirmative nod. "Are they all sex dreams?"
Her throat closes as she recalls the one that sent her here, the one she had last night. "Yes."
"And what about these dreams is troubling you exactly?"
She sniffs a breath in hard and grabs onto her knee again. "They don't feel like normal dreams."
Burke nods again slowly. "How so?"
Her eyes move down to her lap again as an image flashes perfectly clear in her mind, being so real in her imagination that she can feel the heat from the candles, smell the scent from the wax, feel the surface of the hardwood floor on her bare feet, feel the desire and the want course through her as she sees his eyes dance with amazement in the light of the fire from the candles and the fireplace. "Because I can remember them."
"Well," the therapist starts casually, shrugging his shoulders, "it's perfectly normal to recall details of dreams."
"No, you don't understand." She defends herself, finally making eye contact. "These feel different."
"Okay," the therapist tries, looking away and seeming to decide on his approach, "when you say they feel different..."
"I..." she sighs longingly as she looks out the blinds covering the windows. "They just feel... more real somehow."
Burke looks down for a moment before glancing at her for a second. "You said you met this man last week?" He asks her. She answers him with a single nod, not looking in his direction as she plants her elbow on the arm of the chair and leans against her fist. "Well, Kate... what you're describing sounds like fantasy playing itself out in your dreams."
She looks at him in an impatient, deadpan gaze with her fist mashed against her mouth. She pushes herself off the side of the chair as she reaches into the inside pocket of her blazer, pulling out a set of papers folded into fours. "That's what I thought," she starts as she unfolds the evidence she printed out this morning. She knows he wants to ask, but knows that he's staying silent waiting for her to tell him.
As she looks at the picture printed on the gloss paper stapled to the listing, the memory of her dream takes over her senses. "In the dream I had last night, we were in a bedroom that I didn't recognize. I was in this... small lacey nightgown, surrounded by candles with a bed in the center of the room. He was under the covers waiting for me as I went around the room lighting them. We uh... we bantered for a bit about him coming up with a new book idea and I threw out a line as I crawled onto the bed about... getting what she desired most before we..." she trails off, feeling her heart pound.
"And..." Burke continues for her, "what stuck out about this dream?"
Her body feels light, fluttering, almost floating as she feels his arms encase her and the heat from his skin warm her as he gently steamrolled himself onto of her with her lips fighting to keep kissing him over her intense, face-splitting smile. "The bedroom we were in had something that I couldn't get out of my mind."
"Which was?" He asks after a pause.
She clears her throat again as she looks at the photo. "It had an anchor... sitting inside of a fireplace." She says, reaching over and handing him the photo of the room.
Burke takes the photo from her and takes it in for a few seconds before looking over the top of it and back at her. "Is this a mock-up of the room you saw?"
"That is the room I saw." She says as she desperately leans forward. "That's the downstairs master suite of a beachside mansion in the Hamptons." She explains, holding onto the real estate listing between her fingers tightly. "Doctor, I pulled that photo off of a real estate auction site." she continues, handing over the listing to him. "That mansion was put up for auction three years ago by Richard Castle."
Burke looks back at her with a blank expression.
"Doctor Burke, I've never even been to the Hamptons before, but I'm dreaming of making love to him in the downstairs master suite of a beach house he used to own?"
The therapist only answers by looking away and refolding the papers for her, handing them back to her, and leaning back into his armchair. "Kate..." he starts in a questioning tone, "are you in any... serious relationships?"
Taken aback, she answers. "No."
"Have you been? Have you gone through any break-ups recently?"
"No," she answers again.
"Are you seeing anyone?"
"No, what-" she stutters, leaning forward again and planting her heels into the carpet, "what does this have to do with anything?"
"Kate, this isn't that uncommon among career-driven women." He says with a casual shake of his head and a soft smile. "You're in your mid-thirties, you've spent your life dedicated to your career. It's not that uncommon for women, and for men, to play out fantasies through dreams. Often times, people who pursue a career into their thirties often have trouble settling down, raising a family. And for someone in your position, with a stressful and demanding job, it's not surprising that your mind is playing out a fantasy of... maybe of a life you wished you had gone after instead."
She lets out an unsatisfying breath and feels herself lean back into the chair, looking at him with a vacant, wistful gaze. "But Doctor, these dreams aren't normal." She defends herself. "When I'm with him in these dreams, I'm..." she trails off, looking back out the window, "it's not just lust, or... or meaningless sex, or some petty attempt to save a relationship. I-it's... something I've never had before. Every time I have another dream like this one, it's like I'm..."
When she doesn't answer, and when Burke sees her eyes start to brim with emotional tears, he prods gently. "Like you're what?"
She looks at him with emotion glistening from her eyes. "It's like I found the love of my life." She says, her throat closing. "But he's still a stranger to me."
A/N: Sorry for the week-long break. Had some stuff to do. Let me know by keeping the reviews coming! :D