Kairos – Chapter 8
DISCLAIMER: Most of these characters are not mine at all, but they are memorable. Thank you, Mr. Marlowe. The others? Yeah, they're mine
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Saturday Evening – April 27, 2013, 8:52 p.m., Richard Castle's Loft
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Richard Castle exits the cab warily, and approaches his building with caution, glancing here and there. He can't stifle the fear of dread that has been building solidly, over the past fifteen or so minutes. With every street he has passed, every block – the fear becomes more and more tangible.
"Okay, this is stupid," he tells himself, shaking his head. "Why wouldn't I still live here," he says softly to himself, but out loud. After all, it's her reality that has changed. It's her reality that is different now, not his.
Right?
Despite his earlier bravado, he has not googled himself. Shaking fingers just wouldn't work. And call it superstition or whatever, but he has decided to just walk in like nothing has changed. Which he hopes is the case.
He walks through the front door with slightly renewed confidence, into the building lobby, and is relieved to see a friendly and smiling face recognize him.
"Mr. Castle," Mike Monroe offers from his sitting perch behind the security desk. "What brings you back home so early?" The man's voice is tinged with disappointment, which Castle quickly notes and files away. Perhaps things aren't quite the same here either.
"Ah, nothing going on tonight, Mike," Castle lies to the man who obviously still knows him fairly well.
"Yeah, but you just left less than an hour ago," the security man tells him, glancing at his watch. "And you get out so rarely . . . I was just kind of hoping you'd find a good time with someone out there tonight."
Castle stares at the man, trying to formulate a sentence, but even his writer's mind has hit a brick wall on this one. Evidently – in this new timeline – Richard Castle is something of a recluse, rarely getting out. Perhaps he should have googled himself after all.
"Go on, go on, have a good night upstairs," Mike tells him, his words showing the compassion of a real friend. "If you can't sleep, come back down. I've left our game from Tuesday as we left it," Mike says, pointing to the chess set that sits behind him.
"I might take you up on that, my friend," Castle offers warmly, and shoves what he hopes the security man doesn't notice are rapidly shaking hands into his pants pocket and heads to the elevator. He punches the button for his floor and fidgets the entire ride up. Exiting the elevator car, he walks slowly to his front door, almost frightened now at what lies behind the door.
With silent trepidation, he places the key into the slot with nervous and shaking fingers. The key works, thank God. The door swings open, and the change is immediate and startling.
The front entry area is darker, more foreboding. Far less inviting than his home should be. There is almost a brooding atmosphere hanging over the living area as he enters. He can almost feel the oppression. Footsteps draw his gaze toward the left, where his heart leaps at the sight of his mother.
"Richard, darling," she greets him, smiling.
"Well, so far so good," he thinks to himself. "If Mother is here haunting the house, then things are normal." He manages a calming chuckle.
It is horribly premature.
"Hello, Mother," Castle asks. "Where's Alexis?"
"Who?" Martha replies with a raised and highly confused eyebrow. "Is that a joke, Richard?"
"That's not funny, Mother," he deadpans. "Not today. My daughter. Where is she?
"You're right," Martha replies testily, her tone matching the seriousness of her face. "That's not very funny at all. Alexis has been gone for a long time now, Richard. Almost fourteen years. I must say, your sense of humor has reached a new low. Even for you."
He is about to reply when he notices a large picture of . . . Meredith? And Alexis?
It's on – or rather, above – the mantle. It's in an expensive frame. His eyes are drawn to the inscription on the plaque at the bottom of the frame.
Never Forgotten
His eyes grow larger, as he moves to stand next to the large picture, which is some five feet by just over three and a half feet, hanging above the mantle. He blinks a few times, shaking his head, his mind now rattling off the possibilities – none of them good – as to why a memorial picture of his first wife and daughter would be in his loft, hanging in the most prominent position.
Martha moves up behind him, silently, and unknowingly begins to answer his questions. She places her hands on his shoulders, softly holding on to him.
"It's been over thirteen years now, Richard," Martha begins, compassion in her voice, and he senses this is not the first time he and his mother have had this conversation in this obviously very different timeline.
"Thirteen years of no writing," she continues. "Thirteen years of mourning. You've gone from being a promising, best-selling author to being the librarian at the city library – and that only a pity offering from a grateful fan in the mayor."
She pauses, waiting for the usual caustic retort from her son, and is surprised when he does not provide her with one. She raises a suspecting eyebrow before continuing, now with a softer tone and a hand on his shoulder.
"I am just saying, Richard . . . again, I know . . . but you have to re-enter this thing called life," she tells him, her voice breaking. Her heart has broken – irreparably – long ago over her son.
Suddenly, Mike Monroe's words – his exact words – now come back to Castle's consciousness.
"I was just kind of hoping you'd find a good time with someone out there tonight."
The key word, of course, being 'someone'. Yeah, 'recluse' it seems to be.
"You aren't living," Martha continues. "I know Meredith was the love of your life. I know how much she meant to you. I know how much you loved Alexis. I did, too, Richard. But they are gone, Richard. For over thirteen years now. And Meredith wouldn't want –"
She sees the emotion in his eyes, and mistakes the shock she sees in his face for the complete and utter sadness that she has come to know and see all too often. She increases the pressure with her hands on his shoulders, turning him to face her.
"She wouldn't want you to just drift aimlessly like this. Yes, she loved you. But she loved your works as well. She loved your mind, your imagination, and how you could put those wonderful thoughts onto paper. She loved your stories, Richard. And she would want you to write a new story for yourself. And for her memory."
It's too much now for Richard Castle, who is now beginning to piece together what Mike Monroe was insinuating downstairs with what he is learning up here.
"And the memory of Alexis, Richard," she concludes, but he is already in full retreat.
"I . . . I will be back, Mother," he stammers, offering her a kiss on the cheek quickly – another action that surprises her. Before she can respond, he is rushing out the front door.
"Richard!" she shouts after him. "You just got here!"
He doesn't hear her words. He is gone, and more than just physically. No thoughts are in his head as the realization of Martha's words knock him backward. He's heading downstairs now, and he doesn't even bother with the elevator. Instead he opts for the stairwell down the corridor, and taking them two and a time for the first flight, stinging tears burning his eyes.
He stops after the first flight, almost tripping as he grabs a hold of the old, rusty railing in the stairwell, now lightheaded and sweating profusely, finally letting out a loud, frightening sob, a wail that echoes in the stairwell.
Alexis isn't here. She no longer exists in this timeline.
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Minutes ago, Saturday Evening – April 27, 2013, 8:47 p.m., Outside a Manhattan High-Rise Apartment
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Kate Beckett stands outside the mammoth structure, gazing upward at the modern, forty-story building. She closes her eyes for a brief instant, opening them again just to make sure she is seeing correctly.
"I live here?" she says aloud, questioning the search results that gave the address of one Kate Beckett, attorney-at-law.
No, that's not accurate. That's not accurate in the least.
Make that Kate Beckett, Assistant District Attorney for New York.
Her heart sank some ten minutes ago as she had searched the internet – looking for herself – while the cab driver whisked her along the still-bustling streets of New York. Her new reality has knocked her breath out, and for a few minutes, her cabbie wondered if he'd have to take the hyperventilating woman to the nearest hospital. Like her companion miles away, the realization of her new reality are almost too much for her.
She never became a cop.
It makes sense. Her mother never died, so Kate never left Stanford. Instead, she continued on with her education on the west coast, going to - and finishing - law school out there, and ultimately becoming an attorney.
Like her mother.
She had shuddered with the ramifications. She's an attorney. The assistant district attorney. And her world has changed.
She's not a cop. Which means no 12th Precinct.
No Javier Esposito.
No Kevin Ryan.
No Lanie.
No Victoria Gates.
She's not the youngest female ever to make detective in New York City. She's not the highly-respected homicide detective upon whom she has built her value, her identity upon over the past decade.
The circle of friends – small as it may be – that have consumed her life for the past decade are no longer a part of her life. For all she knows, none of them even know her. Oh, they may know of her. As the city's assistant DA. But not as Kate Beckett.
Not as their friend.
But she has her mother back. And a baby sister.
Now, here she stands, outside the building where she apparently lives – and lives well at that. In a moment of huge irony, the tears fall freely down her face. Her very different life is – apparently – also without a certain novelist. Online, there was no mention of her in a relationship with Richard Castle. Further, in a realization that had her clutching her chest in horror, there was also no mention of Nikki Heat, no mention of Richard Castle at all. She had to do a separate search on Castle to discover that now, he is nothing more than as a non-descript author, who once was – decades ago – a promising best-selling writer. And apparently, now he is a widower. A man seldom seen or heard from. The full ramifications of that knowledge have yet to descend upon her.
The article also mentioned that she lives in Manhattan – not in a loft on Broome Street – and a further search has brought her here. To this building.
Home.
She enters the expansive lobby cautiously, and is greeted with a cold but cordial greeting from the two security guards who are on duty behind the large, circular desk. Video monitors adorn a half circle of their seating area, giving them unobstructed views throughout various areas of the high rise.
"I can afford this?" she wonders, "On a city salary?"
"Hey guys," she offers weakly. "I seemed to have lost my key. Can one of you help me?"
"It will take a while to make you another one," Stanley tells her. That's the name on his badge at least. "I'll take you up to your apartment in the meantime."
"Thank you, Stanley," she replies. "I really appreciate this." She notices the surprise on the man's face. It makes her wonder what kind of relationship she has with the people here. The fact that she doesn't see her parents all that often is still in the back of her mind. Is she really that different in this timeline?
But this is still her timeline.
Isn't it?
She enters the elevator car in front of Stanley, and steps back, allowing him to enter, her mind still reeling from the knowledge she picked up from online searches.
Kate Beckett, in this reality, is a fast-rising star in the legal world, having been plucked away from the west coast by an ex-district attorney who has become her mentor. An ex-district attorney who parlayed his local success with that position into a much more lucrative – and powerful – career in politics.
She had been shaken to her core to learn that one United States Senator William Bracken had taken her under his wing, becoming her mentor. Most rumors consider it likely that the young woman is headed for much bigger things in the nation's capital. Apparently, Bracken, a former Assistant DA himself, took a liking to the young protégé from Stanford, and is grooming her for something much larger.
The elevator ascent upward takes more than a few seconds, and with each passing floor, Kate's heartbeat jumps. She has no idea what is waiting for her upstairs. They pass the tenth floor. Then the twentieth. Then the thirtieth floor.
"So this is what it feels like to be Alice," she thinks to herself as the elevator continues its smooth march upward.
Finally slowing, the elevator stops at floor thirty-seven, and the door opens. She steps off the elevator, and then waits for Stanley to exit.
"I'm following you," she offers with a smile, trying to give the man some pleasantries that she suspects that this timeline's Kate does not usually provide. He nods his head with a slightly confused smile, and takes her down the hallway to a door with the number 3704.
He places the key in the slot, and then opens the door for her.
"Here you go, Miss Beckett," he remarks, not bothering to enter the dwelling. "You have a wonderful night."
"Thank you, Stanley," she replies, reaching into her purse and offering the man a twenty-dollar bill. She notes the stunned look he gives her, glancing back and forth between her and the bill.
"Please," she tells him softly. "Take it. You've been a great help to me tonight."
"Okay, Miss Beckett," he replies with a subtle shake of his head. She would have missed it if she weren't so on-guard right now. He walks away, offering her one final look back. She waves at him and closes the door.
And her world collapses.
"Hello, Darling," he greets her, wearing a bathrobe that hangs open – just barely - as her eyes widen in horrific realization.
"Elizabeth is on the west coast this evening – she doesn't return until tomorrow night," Senator Bracken tells her. "I thought I'd surprise you. I have to fly back to D.C. in the morning, but we have all night until then."
She faints dead away, falling backward into the now closed door before darkness descends upon her.