Follow the Orange Brick Road

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Even if we were in Kansas, Toto, I still don't own Castle. Rating: The occasional M. Time: Following I, Spy.

Meanwhile, Roy and Declan were in the truck, arguing.

"Oi should be drivin'. Oi'm the oldest."

"Not in dog years. Besides, your feet won't reach the pedals."

"If this bluidy world had magic, Oi wouldn't need to reach 'em."

"So? If the world had magic, we'd just magic the other Rick out and we'd be gone."

"Oi still thinks Oi should drive."

"Okay." Roy moved out of the driver's seat. "You drive."

"How am Oi gonna drive when me feet won't reach yon pedals?"

"Exactly." Roy said with a smile, moving back into the driver's seat.

As the two continued arguing, Katie knocked nervously on Rick's door. As soon as Rick opened the door, she threw her arms around him and kissed him as passionately as she could.

"Rick, I love you. Do you love me?"

"Always." Then Rick caught sight of two other Kates and one of him standing in the doorway. "Katie, who are these people?"

The three came into the loft and closed the door behind them. "You're going to love this story, I guarantee it." Rick said and proceeded to tell his alternate self all about alternate universes and what Katie had been doing both in this universe and in others.

Not surprisingly, Rick accepted Rick's story easily. "Alternate universes? How cool is that? Can I write this down? "

"The problem is, "Kate said, "that we have to get you two out of here and back to our Earth where you'll be safe and then to another Earth where you can live together. Can you leave right now?"

"Absolutely. Give me five minutes to gather up some stuff and we're out of here."

"What about Martha?" Kate asked.

"My mother? She passed away two years ago. Heart attack." Rick headed for his office, grabbed his laptop, opened his safe and began emptying it.

"What about Alexis?" Rick asked.

A look of hurt flashed over the other Castle's face. "I haven't seen Alexis since she was sixteen. She prefers to live in glamourous LA with her movie star mother rather than be with her politically suspect dad."

"Meredith is a movie star? This is an alternate universe. In what universe would Meredith ever be a movie star?"

The other Castle laughed bitterly. "Meredith slept with a director who makes propaganda films for the Department of Information. You can be called politically suspect if you don't go to see her movies. Who wants to be visited by the IS? In fact, Alexis was in her last two movies. She's actually not a bad actor, although I hate to think of her making movies glorifying the IS."

Rick saw the other Castle removing money from the safe. "It's a safe bet your cash won't be any good in our universe. Leave it."

"I do have a little something stashed away in case the IS ever came looking for me or Katie." He took a leather bag from the back of the safe and opened it. "I've got diamonds, emeralds, rubies, some sapphires and a particularly large pearl." The pearl was as big as a pigeon's egg and in a plastic box. "Pearls aren't as hard as other gems, so it needs to be protected. I have a couple of million here. Is that enough?"

"Plenty. Now let's get out of here."

Eduardo looked up when the elevator came down and saw the three Becketts and now two Castles leaving. The rabbit leaned over him. "You rat us out, Eduardo, and they'll find your fancy doorman's uniform wrapped around a fish. That'll mean Eduardo sleeps with the fishes. You ever wake up with a horse's head in your bed? Maybe we'll take you for a ride. Fit you out with a cement overcoat. Yeah." The rabbit laughed maniacally and the three left. A few seconds later he saw a blue flash. Then he went to his office to use the landline to call IS.

Commander Tom Demming of the local constabulary precinct looked at the IS officer who hadn't bothered to introduce himself, then he looked at the written report on his desk. "Three Becketts, two Castles, a bear, a robot woman, and a psycho bunny. What the hell has Eduardo been smoking?"

"This isn't funny, Demming."

Demming sighed. "We checked Castle's loft. His laptop is gone, as are some photos and family papers. He also had a couple of million in gems that are gone as well." The IS agent looked like he was going to say something, so Demming spoke quickly. "We tried to get permission to confiscate the gems but he has friends in the Department of Information. They loved his Derrick Storm novels and the new Nikki Ice series. So what should we do about the doorman?"

The IS agent sighed. His bosses were not going to like this. "Put him back where he was. But since no one else in the building is of any particular interest to us, cut his stipend by ninety percent." He got up and walked out of the precinct without another word.

They left the truck behind on the other Earth, and soon found themselves back in the Castles' home in the Hamptons.

"Hey." Rick said, with his arm around Katie protectively. "You still have the place in the Hamptons?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

"It's just that when I bought the place in Hawaii, I got rid of this place. Do you know it's where they shot Magnum, IS?"

"Was it any good?" Kate asked, somewhat distastefully.

"No. But the guys in IS loved it, so it ran forever."

"Babe," Kate said to her husband, "we have to find these two an Earth to live on. Pronto."

Less than six hours later, the two were back with smiles on their faces.

"Bingo." Announced Rick. "We got lucky on the first place we looked. A planet a lot like ours, but Bracken was a City Councilman after turning in two rogue cops who were kidnapping mobsters. And there's no Rick Castle or Kate Beckett."

"No Caskett?" Simone said. "I always find that sad."

"Then look at this." Kate held out two books. Simone took them and frowned.

"Murder and the Duke and Murder and the Archbishop? So?"

"Look at the authors on the back cover." Rick said with a smile.

Simone turned the book over. "Richard Beckett and Katherine Castle?"

"Right. Johanna and Jim Beckett had a baby boy named Rick and Martha Rodgers, who uses the stage name Castle, had a little girl. According to the Wikipedia article on them, they're married and Mrs. Beckett, in addition to writing, does volunteer work at many hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area, having graduated from Stanford Medical School."

Kate continued. "They write historical murder mysteries. These two are set in Renaissance Italy, another series is set in the early Roman Empire, there's a series set in the Southern back country during the American Revolution and one set in Shakespeare's London. The heroes of the stories are all lady doctors."

Rick took over again. "There's a guy that I knew there and here, although he doesn't know me there, and I got you absolutely perfect documents as Rick and Kate Castle." Rick walked to the kitchen and pulled out a leather case. "And I got you these. They're DVDs of every book several Rick Castles have written. Mostly it's Nikki Heat and Jameson Rook, with some Derrick Storm books, and even some written by an author named Kate Beckett about the detective she's shadowing, one Rick Castle. I know you're a talented author, after all, you're me, but no one is going to want to read a book about a tough, kick ass Internal Security agent. This'll give you a head start."

Rick put his arm around Katie. "I guess we should get going. Ready, Mrs. Castle?"

"Always."

Rick and Katie had been gone for two days. Rick was cooking a going away dinner for Simone who was going back to New Orleans. There was a knock on the door.

"Kate, can you get that? I'm busy."

Kate put down the book she was reading, Murder and the Archbishop, and went to the door.

She opened it and took a quick step backwards. "Oh, no!"

The End…?

Author's note: I'm still working on Captain Kate and the Sorceress. I have about 14,000 words done. However, up next will be three more conventional After….stories: After Flowers for Your Grave; After to Love and Die in LA; and After Always.

UCSBdad