Sorry this took so long! Luckily, the muse bopped me on the head yesterday.
X
December 23, 2046
Richard Castle tightens his grip on the cane. It's a handsome thing: custom-fitted, with a carved handle and—best of all—a sword concealed inside. He'll have to remember to put the safety on; his youngest grandchild has just gotten into Star Wars, and the last thing they need is Jake running around with a real sword while he pretends to be Luke Skywalker. But the cane is practical too, which is good. The sidewalk is slick with a light snowfall, and the last thing he needs is to slip and go ass-over-teakettle. A busted hip is not what he wants for Christmas this year.
His purchase at the fabric store made, a bag full of yarn in one hand, he pauses. His favorite coffeehouse is right next door. It's got a patio area with a lovely ocean view, and he'll take any excuse to have a hot drink and look out at the wintry sea. A few minutes later, he's out on the patio with his mocha. It's a cold day, but he's warm, shielded from the elements by the Doctor Who scarf Kate knitted for him so long ago and by the infra-heaters overhead.
Before he can take the first sip of his drink, he hears a voice that puts all other thoughts out of his mind. "Son," the voice says.
Anyone else would believe it's impossible for the owner of that voice to be here, now, after all this time. But Castle knows how possible the impossible can be, so long as you have belief and determination enough. So he turns and with little surprise beholds his father standing there.
How long has it been since he saw the man? Thirty years if you were to go by the calendar. Thirty years since they parted outside a natural history museum, since Castle somehow persuaded his father to help him on what seemed like a delusional fantasy that events could be undone. Thirty calendar years, but Castle has spent much more time than that rewriting history.
What's all the more strange is that Jackson Hunt doesn't seem to have aged since Castle last saw him, in his original universe and timeline—or he hasn't aged much, anyway. Which means that Castle's actually older than his father now, a truly bewildering thought. But not so bewildering as all that—he can see the medallion, or that universe's version of it, clenched tightly in the man's hand.
"Son," his father says again, "I don't…I haven't much time. I just had to know, before…I had to know if it worked. What you were trying to do." Hunt swallows hard, and his eyes have a painful glitter to them that might be tears. "I'm guessing that it did?"
Castle nods. His first impulse is to bring his father to the house—it's almost Christmas, and everyone will be there—but there's no way he could explain all of this. "Can you sit down? I'll tell you about it."
"I don't know how much time there is…" Hunt looks down at the artifact in his hand, runs the other hand across his brow. "But yes. Let's sit."
Castle longs to ask: Is his father ill? Injured? But he doubts he'd get an answer. They sit on a bench at the edge of the patio, the slate-blue sea sighing below them.
"It worked," Castle says after a moment. "It took a long time. A lot of tries." Involuntarily he shudders. There are some bad memories from those attempts. "But I did it. Kate never ran the search on Bracken. LokSat never came after anyone. Kate was just the captain. I couldn't work with her every day, but sometimes the precinct would bring me in to consult, and it was all good.
"Alexis worked for me for a while, but the next year, she quit. She'd been doing a case to get evidence of a wife's affair, and when she met the husband at a Starbucks to show him what she'd found, he freaked out, pulled a gun, and took her and everyone else in the place hostage."
Hunt draws in a sharp breath. Castle hastens to reassure him: "It was fine. No injuries. But it was a twelve-hour standoff, and she was pretty shaken up. I think it brought back a lot of memories for her." It certainly had done so for him. "So after that she focused more on school."
"What's she doing now?" Hunt asks.
"Environmental investigator. Works for the EPA. She's married now. Nicholas worked in the lab when she was running a soil contamination case. They have a daughter, Phoebe, who's an English teacher."
"So I'm a great-grandfather?"
Castle smiles. "Twice over. Kate and I had twins a couple years after…after I saw you last. Noah and Belinda. Or as they like to call themselves, En and Bee." Sometimes they use a collective name of Enbee, as in: Enbee thinks we should order pizza tonight. Castle gets out his iScreen, pulls up the holos of the kids and the grandkids. Alexis, flanked by her husband and daughter, receiving an award at a banquet; her vivid red hair has a few gray streaks but unlike her mother and grandmother, she refuses to cover them up. Belinda and her wife Hannah, with Jake in his Superman onesie. Noah in his chef whites; he's got hair so dark brown it's almost black and piercing blue eyes—Martha always said he looked a lot like his grandfather had.
As if reading Castle's thoughts, his father asks, "And your mother?"
Castle shakes his head. "In 2030. It was an aneurysm. On stage at her acting class, no less."
Hunt smiles. "That's how she would have wanted it."
Castle agrees. It was hard to lose his mother—she'd always been so vibrant that the world was a much quieter place without her. And it had been hard to lose Jim Beckett to cancer a few years afterward. And there have been other losses—the third child Castle and Kate tried to have but lost to an early miscarriage, the gradual erosion of their friendship with Esposito, who seemed to drift away after Lanie got married, perhaps feeling like the perpetual fifth wheel. But these losses feel part of the natural order of things, and he's more than willing to bear those rather than the other hand fate had dealt him.
"Do you still write?"
"Still writing, though not as much. One more Nikki Heat book after Kate became captain, and then I tried science fiction." That book had more than a bit of a basis in his own experience with other universes. "Let's just say it's got a very small, deeply devoted following. So then I did a kids' series. Three siblings, two of them twins, solving mysteries and getting into trouble. Kind of a change, but I was ready for it."
"And Kate, is she still captain?"
"No. When she was expecting the twins, she had to go on bed rest. To keep from going crazy, she took up knitting"—Castle holds up the bag full of yarn—"and she went through cold cases. Solved three of them before the twins arrived. She went back to being captain after maternity leave ended, but after about six months she decided she'd rather spend more time with the kids, and she got more fulfillment out of the cold cases than she did out of politics and paperwork."
"I can see that." Hunt starts to smile, but his expression turns into an odd, faraway look. Before Castle's eyes, his father seems to shimmer and fade for a moment. "It's almost…I haven't much time."
"What's happening?"
Hunt shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I…I know I haven't been a good father. Barely been a father at all. I just wanted to find out if it worked for you. Changing your ending." His father's eyes are full of sorrow. It's a look Castle recognizes, having seen it in a mirror, thirty years ago when he decided to take fate into his own hands.
"What happened?" He doesn't like to think what could have pushed his ruthless, coldly practical father to place faith in a key to other universes. "In your world, I mean? After…"
A wave of cold runs over Castle, a goose-walked-over-my-grave feeling. His eyes close involuntarily, just for a second, and when he opens them again, his father is gone.
Castle looks around. There's no sign of Hunt anywhere. There are wet footprints on the patio, but only leading to where he sits—none leading away. He's about to tell himself he imagined the whole thing when one of the baristas asks, "Did your friend want anything?"
He wanted redemption, Castle thinks. Wanted to know he'd been able to help even when all hope was gone. He looks over the holos of his family once more, then stows the iScreen away.
It's time to go home.
X
He's almost at the door of the Hamptons house when it opens. Noah's standing there, apron dusted with what looks like either flour or powdered sugar, a dish towel over one shoulder, a spatula in one hand. "Need a hand?" he asks.
"No, it's just yarn," Castle says.
They make their way into the kitchen, which is warm and full of the scent of delicious things. Castle and Kate offered to do the cooking—they were sure that Noah's job as a sous chef would have him wanting a break from things culinary—but he's been in the kitchen since he arrived, making cookies and candy and other treats. And he's got a big dinner planned for tomorrow night, when his girlfriend Mackenzie will be arriving, and an even bigger dinner in the works for Boxing Day, when the Ryans come to visit. "Where's everyone?" asks Castle.
Noah plucks a saucepan from the stovetop and starts whisking something. "Mom and Bee are in the great room. Hannah and Jake are off somewhere watching The Year Without a Santa Claus for the fiftieth time."
Castle grins, remembering last night and Jake's a capella rendition of the Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs. That Christmas special had always been the twins' favorite as well, so Jake came by it honestly.
His son gestures toward the great room. "Go on, take Mom her yarn. I'll bring you all a snack soon."
Castle steps into the great room, where Kate and Belinda are laughing about something. Girl talk. He smiles, holds the bag out to his wife. "Your yarn."
She takes it from him and peers inside. "Perfect. Thank you, babe." She smiles, and as always, her smile seems to light up the room. He'd say it makes her look young again, and it does, but sometimes he thinks he loves her more with gray hair and feet that no longer can wear high heels and wrinkles: those are all signs that they made it.
"I'm so sorry about the scarf," Belinda says. "Jake found out that the Hufflepuff common room is by the kitchens, 'Where Unca En works,' so he had to have a Hufflepuff scarf."
"It's no trouble," Kate says. "I can do Hogwarts scarves in my sleep by now. Were the roads bad?" she asks Castle. "You were gone a while."
"Stopped at Java Man for a mocha." It's the truth, after all. "Any word from Alexis and Nicholas?"
"They called a while back," says Belinda. "They should be here any minute." She gets up from the sofa. "I'll go get Jake cleaned up for company. Unca En made smorelettes—"
"His father's son," murmurs Kate.
"—and he's probably all covered with chocolate."
While his son bustles in the kitchen and his wife takes up her knitting needles and his daughter goes to get his grandson cleaned up, Castle goes to his bedroom. For a few moments he sits, pondering the visitation from his father. His heart goes out to the man, but he has no urge to try to rewrite Hunt's ending. He's not family, you are, he told Kate once. That's still true, but he does hope that the glimpse Hunt got of his son's life brought him some peace.
Castle opens the drawer of his night table. There's a hidden compartment at the back, and in it is the artifact. It's been tucked away for ages. He stopped carrying it with him a few years after Bracken died in 2019, supposedly of a heart attack. When it appeared that no ghosts were going to rise from the past to plague him and his family, he stashed the artifact away. It's served its purpose. It let him rewrite their ending. And as difficult as that had been, it was worth it. He's alive, in this place, with the people he loves. More than worth it.
The doorbell jingles and he hears the unmistakable sound of Jake tearing through the house—"Auntie Lex is here!"—and Hannah calling out, "Slow down, young man!"
Castle hears voices now, those of his eldest daughter and his son-in-law and his first grandchild. He smiles, closes the drawer, and goes to welcome the rest of his family home for Christmas.
The whole "keeping Castle out of the loop will protect him" thing has never made an iota of sense to me. It's far likelier that LokSat would kill Castle and probably Alexis too, seeing as she's so involved in the PI business these days. The boys would probably be safe, as would Martha, but I am a big meanie and I wanted to give Castle no reason to hold back from trying to change fate.
The idea of the resistance of history to change came from Stephen King's novel 11/22/63. I loved the chance to play with the alternate universes and to find the exact time and method that Castle could use to rewrite his and Beckett's ending and give them a happily-ever-after.