Chapter Thirty-One

Conversations with Castle could often lead her to being confused or one of them misinterpreting the other. She had always attributed it to the fact that the man was clearly riddled with ADD. However, never had she been so relieved to hear that she hadn't been following his sometimes twisted logic.

Walking back to the precinct with Alexis' words fresh in her mind, Kate had fallen into the trap of misunderstanding as she tried not to swallow her tongue in surprise at some of the things Rick said before she realized that he was thinking Alexis knew about their case. She supposed it was good that one of them was still able to focus on the case, even if it was the one of them that was clearly an undiagnosed ADD patient.

The morning was slow-going as they poured through the case files. By late afternoon, she had committed the facts to memory, they had run down a few leads without making headway and now she was staring at the murder board, trying to figure out their next move. Castle was perched beside her on the edge of her desk, and she gave him a brief sideways glance and a reassuring smile. He returned the gesture and that little half smile with a serious, concerned looked in his eyes and she was suddenly imagining her life without him in it.

The thought brought her back to her conversation with Alexis a few hours earlier. Despite her normal reaction, her stubborn tendency to do the opposite of what someone told her she needed to do or her raging independence, she found herself considering the girl's words instead of just brushing them off.

Beckett had seen the look on Castle's face as he left the table that morning. She allowed her eyes to follow his departure as she wondered what thought brought on the subtle darkness that hid in his eyes as he passed a believable smile to her and Alexis and excused himself.

Figuring it was something he didn't want to talk about in front of his daughter, she made a mental note to ask him about it later, wondering if perhaps he had a thought about the case. She shifted her focus back to the cheerful teenager she had just been swapping stories with. Kate was slightly confused when she turned back and found that the teen was no longer cheerful. She had a serious expression on her face and was fixing a look on Beckett that she would recognize from a mirror during an interrogation. The sudden shift was startling, but she simply took a sip of her coffee and waited for whatever Alexis was about to ask or say.

"I like you, Kate." The girl said after a long pause.

Beckett watched her swallow and couldn't help that her confusion was growing when Alexis didn't give off any hints of her intentions, "I like you, too, Alexis." She responded cautiously, entirely uneasy with where this might end up going. She knew Castle had some concerns about where his daughter was planning to attend college and if the teen was looking for her advice, it was going to be a difficult conversation. She had already gotten Castle's thoughts on the subject and knew that whatever she said could backfire on him and put that lost look back in his eyes.

She didn't need to worry about that, however, because she had barely gotten the words out before the glare from Alexis had her clamping her mouth shut. This was an entirely new experience for her and she was not excited to find out what was coming.

"I like you, but I love my dad." Alexis finally continued putting emphasis in all the places that made Kate wonder if it would have been safer to have followed Castle's retreat from the table instead of sitting here. Beckett wasn't sure if she was allowed to speak yet, so she refrained and just waited out the teen. After a moment, eyes still locked on hers as if searching for some kind of answers or reaction, Alexis finally continued, "I don't like what you're doing to him."

After another pause, Beckett became aware that she was expected to respond, "I don't know what you're talking about." She hedged.

"Don't." was the girl's quick reply. "I'm not stupid, but even if I were, my dad doesn't do a very good job of keeping things from me."

Kate couldn't integrate this new side of the girl with her impression of the one she had seen on most occasions. It was the same kind of thing Castle pulled on her sometimes. He would normally be so easy going and upbeat, but sometimes he'd break out the big guns and go completely serious on her.

It always shook her when he did it, but if she was honest with herself, when she looked back on those times, he'd always had a point or a purpose. Usually she was better for it in the end. With that thought in mind, she gave a leniency to his daughter wondering if it would have the same results. "Sorry. You're right." Swallowing the feeling that she was about to make a mistake, she continued, "What exactly did your dad tell you?"

"Enough." She responded. The vague nature of the response had Kate cocking an eyebrow at the teen, expecting elaboration before she offered anything up. "He didn't go into details, because, frankly, that's just gross. Actually he didn't even have to tell me, but he confirmed when I asked him." Alexis sighed, "If I really have to explain any more I'm probably going to need therapy, but you're a detective, you can figure it out."

Kate couldn't respond and she watched for several long seconds before Alexis threw her hands up in the air as if she were quitting. That got Beckett back into the conversation, "He shouldn't have told you. For one, it's none of your business, especially considering your age, and for another, what happened between your father and me is a private matter." With a sigh, Kate looked away from the girl, taking an interest in the pedestrians walking by on the sidewalk through a large window at the front of the restaurant. "Whatever it was, it isn't right now."

"If you're trying to tell me you don't have feelings for him, I'm calling bullshit right now. I've seen the way you..."

Kate had been momentarily shocked to hear the abrasive language come from Alexis who was normally more eloquent in her speech. So it took her a moment to finally cut in, "Whoa. Language, Alexis, this is a family place."

"You're not my mother." Alexis responded, and Kate was startled at the depth of emotion in the statement.

"I've never claimed to be." She sighed, seeing the hurt in the teen's eyes, "It's not my place, and no matter what happened in the past or might happen in the future with your dad, I'm not trying to push my way into your life."

Alexis was shaking her head, "That's not what I meant. I meant," Alexis shifted her eyes away when Beckett glanced back at her. "Look, my mom, she's a flake. She's flighty and selfish and doesn't care about anyone as much as she cares about herself. I accept this about her." Alexis waved off Beckett before she could say anything consoling. "I expected more from you. I expected, oh I don't know." She finished with an annoyed sound.

They sat in the silence of the teen's confession. It was nothing Kate didn't already know about the girl's mother or her relationship with her, but she'd only ever heard it from Castle's perspective. To have an entirely different, though eerily similar, set of blue eyes shining with pent up emotion on a subject that had obviously been the cause of serious heartache for a long time, made her ache just as deeply as when Castle's blue eyes shifted to a cool grey as sadness swept his features. Beckett tried desperately to think of something, anything, that she could say or do that would help take away some of the pain that this girl was feeling.

Alexis started again before Kate could think of anything that might be remotely helpful, "You use him, too and I'm getting tired of having to clean up the mess."

"I don't use him. I don't care about his money and I'm not looking for him to provide anything for me." after a moment, she caught on to the final statement and stopped herself to ask, "What mess?" It wasn't that she was trying to pump the girl for information, she told herself, it was a simple question for elaboration and nothing more. The excuse rang hollow even in her own mind.

"I don't understand how you could be so smart and so perceptive about everything around you except for him. I can't comprehend how you could not see how much what you're doing is hurting him." Alexis stood from the table, her chair legs scraping across the floor were loud in contrast to the quiet conversations going on around them. "I can't fathom how you can know him so well and not know him at all, or how you can look at my dad the way I've seen you look at him, and even think about marrying some other guy."

Kate let her exasperation with this whole tirade get the better of her. She didn't need to sit here and listen to Alexis tell her things she already knew. She didn't want to admit any of it, especially not right now. The realization that there was something to acknowledge was enough to get her hackles up, even if the reaction was now misdirected at the teen instead of in to herself. "I'm not marrying Josh." She replied in exasperation.

"Not right now or not ever?" Alexis pushed back.

Kate clamped her teeth over her lip hard to keep from admitting anything else that she should be discussing with Castle, not his teenage daughter.

"That's what I thought." Alexis said sarcastically, grabbing her coat and slipping it on before she picked up her backpack out of the vacant fourth seat and glared at Kate. "I won't stand by while you jerk him around like this. Either you're with him or you're with another guy, but don't play with his feelings. There's only so much he can take and I won't always be around to clean up the mess you leave in your wake."

"I'm not, I didn't," Kate was shocked into a lack of coherent speech. "Look, I don't know what to tell you. I didn't mean to hurt him. I didn't mean for any of this to happen, it just did." She was finally able to explain, not feeling very satisfied with her own answers and feeling her ears burn from the place this conversation had gone.

"I'm a little old to fall for the 'oops it was an accident' line, Kate." Alexis finally seemed to settle down as she took in Kate's expression and the detective couldn't help wondering if her discomfort with the current conversation and confusion over the situation with Castle were displayed for the teen to clearly see. "Look, I'm going to go. Tell Dad I went to school and I'll call him later. If he sees me like this," she gestured to herself, "he's going to know something's up."

"Alexis," Kate tried to call her back.

She turned back towards Beckett with familiar sad blue eyes, "I don't want your apology. I want your decision." She didn't stop there, though Kate was sure she had gotten the message. "Either pick him, all of him, or cut him loose. You make the call by next week or I'm going to make it for you. I'll throw an 'I'll miss my dad too much to go off to college' fit befitting of the Castle name, which will have him following me straight out of New York to live in some apartment near my college campus. I'll be damned if I'm going to leave him here with nothing but an empty house to go home to when you break his heart again."

With that, Alexis spun on her heal and headed towards the door. The moment of numbness lasted for far less time than she thought it might, before she was moving to gather her and Castle's things and pay the bill.

It wasn't until much later as she sat in the precinct that she realized the feeling of being numb had not gone away when she thought it had.

Then she saw it. The faintest hint of a trail and all thoughts of Alexis or Castle were swept from her mind as she rounded her desk and dropped in her chair. She dug through the file until she came to the interview notes and barely registered the presence of Castle leaning over her shoulder to read the document she was going through.

She knew, if she looked at him, she'd see the thoughtful expression he got when he was trying to play catch up with her brain, but she wasn't telling him what she'd thought of. It's not that she was trying to keep him out of the case or her thoughts, but she couldn't let the thought side track her as she poured through the pages. She didn't look at him until she'd reached the statement that had been nagging at her subconscious.

"What?" he asked when she turned towards him.

"Something Alexis said." She replied, thinking about the girl's words, 'I won't always be around' and it came back to her as she scanned the documents.

She turned away from Castle. "Ryan." She called out to the detective. "Get me everything you've got on Hank Fletcher."

x.x.x

A/N: Geez, writing an angry Alexis was hard. Not sure if she's actually capable of that level of anger or if she'd be so forward as to talk to Beckett like that, but I've been tinkering with it forever now and I'm not going to get it to feel any more natural, so I hope it came across alright.

On a side note, is it crazy that I'm excited for the season finale so that I know the mental state of the characters for my summer fic? I'm stoked on the crime plot that came to me from a death certificate my friend at work was processing. I work with retirement plans and while there was nothing unusual about this situation of moving money to a person's beneficiary, the death certificate was from a foreign country and the circumstances were just unusual enough to get my brain bubbling.

My desk buddy thinks I'm a little crazy for all the thoughts that pop into my head, but she's always throwing out little ideas just to hear me spin a tale that ties everything together in a dark and interesting way. Not that I'm dark or interesting, that's just what she says. She did make reference to a concern for my genetic make-up, but I assured her that there were only petty criminals, druggies and a couple of murderers in the current living generation of my family tree, so she's probably safe as long as she doesn't steal my post-it pad or move my stapler.

Review that made my day: colando, FanficwriterGHC, Scully223, and Blooky, who unwittingly inspired this entire exchange. I was only going to hint at what was said, but reading the reviews and people's curiosity, when I sat down to write, this is what came of it.

Thanks to everyone for reading.