Chapter 12

Yesterday- well, no. Not yesterday yesterday, but recently in the not so linear past, Houghton had informed him that time travel was off the table. But light had flashed blue, and then white, and while Castle could have sworn they were in the cabin one minute, the next they were most definitely no longer there.

And, he realized, his eyes widening, he was naked.

What the-

A shrill scream that he recognized as his daughter's. A gasp across the room, then an indignant "what the hell?!" that sounded so very Beckett like, but so very un-Beckett-like, fear biting into the angry words. And an "are we all here?" from Houghton, the unassuming roll call like statement enough to set him in motion.

He stood, snatching a folder from a nearby table to hold in front of himself as Alexis' head popped up from behind a desk, her eyes wild. Opposite, Beckett remained crouched, curled in on herself as her eyes flashed angrily. "Don't look," she snapped, and he shook his head, forcing himself to tear his gaze away, but not before catching a glimpse of the angry welt of scar that ran up her side.

He was going to be sick.

Houghton stood too, no folders to protect her modesty, and he forced his eyes shut even before Beckett bit out, "don't look at her, either."

But when his eyes were shut, everything was pitch black instead of muted gray from the low emergency lighting, and the sick feeling spun harder inside him.

"Where are we?" Alexis' breathless voice gave him new purpose, and he opened his eyes, looking at her face as the rest of her remained hidden behind the desk.

He knew this, and with the knowledge came a sinking feeling in his gut. He gripped the desk closest to himself with the hand that wasn't clutching at the folder. Not only had they time traveled - a day ago the idea had thrilled him, but the reality was proving really damn unsettling - but they'd traveled traveled, too.

They were in the precinct.

"When are we?" he managed, slouching across the desk that he now recognized as Esposito's. Damn. Espo was going to be pissed when he found out that Castle had sat on his desk, buck naked. He chuckled, the sound foreign in the near-dark.

"July," Houghton informed him. "July 2016."

A low moan filled his ears, followed by the unmistakable sound of retching. His own stomach churned as Beckett vomited. So time-travel sickness wasn't peculiar to him.

"We can get clothes upstairs, in the locker room," Houghton said, ignoring the fact that Beckett had just been sick in the bin beside her own dusty desk. Wait. Why was it dusty? For that matter, why was it dark? Why wasn't anyone here? Even in the dead of night there was usually some activity; Castle generally sneaked out before the paperwork needed to be done but he knew Beckett stayed late if and when she needed to, and she and the boys had pulled many an all-nighter. Besides, there were always a handful of uniforms around, and even on the rare occasions that the homicide floor was officially empty, officers and detectives alike from other floors would make their way up here for the coffee.

"I'll, uh- give you three a head start," Castle said, turning his back to the three of them to afford them whatever modesty he could; Alexis and Beckett, in any case. Houghton seemed to have no concerns. He heard them shuffle up the stairs, counting to ten before following them up.

Beckett's head was spinning, and she pinched herself, hard, as she fumbled with her locker; she lacked a key, but the door swung open, clothes tumbling out onto the floor. Only then did she look around. Until now her cop instincts seemed to have been lacking, but as her eyes adjusted, and her stomach settled - her cheeks warmed at the memory of barfing in a waste-paper basket- she started to regain the ability to take stock of the situation.

Maybe she was dead. Maybe she'd been shot at the cabin, and this was a hallucination as she teetered between life and death. Maybe she was-

She swallowed. She didn't feel dead. She felt alive, cold, and like someone who wished she was dreaming but knew she wasn't.

She was naked.

Castle had seen her naked.

He was also naked, and she'd seen him too, before he'd strategically placed a folder in front of his manhood - her cheeks were still warm, and this time it had a lot less to do with the memory of vomiting, and a lot more to do with the sight of her partner in his birthday suit. No, that part of the evening had not sucked.

Evening? She shook her head, dismissing the time of day as unimportant as she tried to get a handle on what else she knew.

She had a twin. She closed her eyes, clenching her teeth. That was something else for the 'figure it out later' category.

Castle had also seen her 'twin' naked - that was not okay - and who the hell was that woman?

And Alexis was here.

Beside her, the young girl cleared her throat. "Detective Beckett?" she asked. "Do you have anything that will fit me?"

Kate nodded, bending down. The scar still pulled like a bitch. Fuck. She sank down onto the floor, unable to support her own weight as she sorted through the clothes that had fallen from her locker. Few pieces she recognized, but there were a couple of pairs of sweats, a pair of jeans, some underwear, two t-shirts, and an NYPD hoodie. She handed Alexis a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.

She pulled her own underwear on, then a pair of jeans. She stood, looking for anything else in her locker. A bra, but its push-up qualities would only push at the scar, so she selected a black t-shirt, pulling it over her head.

What the hell was going on?

"Everyone decent?" Castle knocked at the door before swinging it open, relieved to see Beckett and Alexis were both dressed, sitting beside one another on the floor. Kate's hand wrapped across her stomach and around her waist, and he flinched at the recollection of the scar he'd just seen. Houghton was conspicuously absent.

"I told her to try Karpowski's locker," Kate informed him, jerking a thumb around the corner, and he suppressed a smirk. So Beckett - the one person whose clothes would fit Houghton perfectly - wasn't sharing. Good to know.

"Dad, what's going on?" Alexis asked, and he shook his head. Houghton should explain. But she hadn't returned from the other side of the locker room, and so he sat down next to his daughter, burying his head in his hands as he tried to figure out how to bring them up to speed.

"I-"

"We time traveled," Houghton announced, dressed in jeans and an NYPD hoodie, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He watched as Kate pushed what looked like an identical shirt away from herself.

"Time travel." Alexis' eyes would pop out of her head if they grew any wider, but Beckett barely reacted, the faintest flare of anger recognizable to him only because he'd spent so much time observing her. Staring, she called it, but it was more than that. He sighed. If they ever got through this she would no doubt agree with Iron Gates, and bar him from the precinct. On the other hand, he didn't know how time travel worked. Perhaps this was a parallel universe, but the fact he'd entered the men's locker room and found his locker there in 2016 might bode well?

Or it might be meaningless. They might be changing the fabric of reality, and surviving this could ensure returning to a world that saw him and Beckett separated, permanently. If they returned at all.

"Of course we did." Beckett rolled her eyes, apparently ready to react. "Except time travel isn't real, so we obviously didn't." Her eyes flashed. "So do you wanna tell me what the hell is going on?"

Beside Beckett, Alexis reached out a tentative hand, brushing it across Beckett's knee before withdrawing it, and he smiled wanly at his daughter. He loved that she had such a warm heart. Again, dismay filled him; until - screw it, time was messing with him, but he had to roll with it - a half hour ago, at most, she'd been imprisoned in the trunk of a car. An unintended whimper fell from his lips.

"Are you okay?" he asked her, and she nodded. He turned to Houghton. "What happened to- the other me?" he asked, turning to Houghton.

"III-47RC? I hope he's still there," she said, and he raised his eyebrows.

"You hope?" Another thought occurred to him. "Three-forty-seven RC? That's his name?"

"His model number, and your initials. What would you call him?"

"Robot me?"

She frowned, and he blinked, surprised again at just how human she could be at times.

"So… obviously we know where we are, and when, but I'm still a little fuzzy on the why?"

"Who are you?" Beckett interrupted, and he turned back to her, the younger darker haired version of the two. His Beckett. It was comforting to think of her as such, but if he wanted to live, he'd better keep the thought to himself. But, oh- his jaw dropped, his eyes widening. If he wasn't mistaken, his Beckett wasn't wearing a bra, and-

He swallowed, averting his gaze.

Houghton laughed again, as she offered an explanation that had Beckett pulling herself to her feet. "You could say I'm robot you."

"You're what?" She stalked toward Houghton.

Castle swallowed back another grin; he'd missed this, Beckett in interrogation mode. Houghton didn't stand a chance.

The city had never been this silent, and it wasn't the kind of quiet Beckett had become accustomed to at the cabin either. There, the evenings were filled with the sound of cicadas, and during the day, when the windows were open she could hear the lake lapping at the shore from the kitchen. If she went for a walk the buzz of bees and other insects was a cacophony, and the scampering footfall of rabbits and deer were a constant companion when she ventured into the woods.

This was eerie.

"You're saying there's a curfew?"

Houghton - Kate groaned inwardly. Her robot counterpart had adopted her middle name? - shook her head. "There was a curfew. That was before they took over."

"They. You mean you."

"I was reprogrammed," Houghton insisted, and Castle nodded from beside her. She narrowed her eyes at her partner. He'd spent the last few days - or was it years? - following Houghton around New York State and he was ready to accept every word at face value? What about the fact he'd actually spent four years shadowing her at the Twelfth? Not cool.

"When did the precinct close?"

She squeezed her eyes shut; the idea of her home an empty shell stung. "Just a few months ago. Everyone's rounded up now. Work camps, that kind of thing. Except-"

"Except?" Beckett demanded.

"Except for the resistance. They're… out there. Waiting for us." Her mouth quirked in the hint of a smile. "They're waiting for Castle and me. Not you and Alexis. You're not meant to be here, but when III-47RC-"

"Where is this resistance?"

"I don't know, exactly," Houghton confessed.

"But they reprogrammed you. They didn't trust you with their location?"

"They gave me a mission," Houghton retorted. "I am completing it."

"And your… mission was to save Castle. And you're sure the dragon has nothing to do with this?"

"Please," Houghton scoffed. "He was one of the first to die. When they first rounded the general population up they threw them into existing prisons. Overpopulation meant a lot of fighting. He took a knife to the chest before the first week of occupation."

"He?" Beckett gulped. "You… you know who he is?" Maybe this wasn't a total write-off. She hadn't quite dismissed the idea that she was either hallucinating or that this whole thing was some kind of smoke and mirrors scam, but if Houghton could give her a name…

"You don't need to worry," Houghton said. "You'll figure it out. Later. In your own time. When we get back there."

"So we are going back?" This time it was Alexis who spoke, and Beckett glanced at the girl. For someone who had been tied up in the trunk of a car by her father's look-alike she seemed to be doing awfully well with this whole situation. Then again, she supposed Alexis had years of practice in entertaining her father's harebrained schemes and musings, so perhaps her grip on reality wasn't quite as tight as Kate's.

"We're going back," Houghton said, not meeting Beckett's eyes, or anyone else's as she focused on the wall above Alexis' head. "But we're here for a reason. Rick has the contact we need to complete our task, and once we do that, you can go home."

A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews. I didn't get a chance to reply to most of you, but I appreciate each and every one. x. And I continue to be super grateful to J&K for their sentence fixing and logic-finding help... writing time travel has so very much been on my bucket list, but til this fic roared into my head, I didn't have a clue how to do it!