145. Every day's another step

Castle arrives home, discovers that Alexis is also home and his mother is (thankfully) not, and repairs to his study to consider what he will say to his mother when she makes an appearance. Now that he is not quite incandescently angry (merely blazing), he can see that he has to say something before the morning. He’d said he could fight his own battles (but he’d been metaphorically open-mouthed at Beckett’s instant defence of him on Friday) and he’d said he’d deal with his mother. So now he has to do it. After some very hard and unpleasant thinking, not a little scenario modelling and a belt of neat whiskey, he decides that the only thing to do is to let his mother know that all of Jim, Beckett, Alexis and he himself are aware of what she has tried to do, and that everyone, Alexis included, is quite deeply disappointed by her actions. In other words, blunt truth.

Ugh.

He has another slug of whiskey. It doesn’t help.

Some time later he hears the front door open and close, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach he emerges from the study.

“Mother.”

“Good evening, Richard,” she carols.

“No, Mother, it is not.”

She looks very confused, and then worried. “Have you had an argument with Katherine? Darling, you really must be more careful with her.”

“Mother, why did you call Beckett’s father to invite him to brunch? Then when he told you he couldn’t because he was already seeing Beckett, why did you grill him about all the details of what was happening on Sunday morning?”

Martha colours unbecomingly. Splotches of scarlet mar her cheeks. “You wouldn’t tell me, and it was clear that you were going along. Your secretiveness is very unattractive.”

“Did it occur to you that I didn’t want you to know?”

“Pish-tush. How anti-social.”

“Stop that. Beckett invited her father and me. Nobody else. I seem to remember you telling me endlessly when I was younger that if I hadn’t been invited I shouldn’t push in. Although that was when you were invited out. Maybe that makes it different?”

His mother opens and shuts her mouth.

“And you lied to Alexis.” Castle’s tone is frigid. “She’s not happy about that. I’m not happy about that. I thought I could trust you with her. Was I wrong?”

“No. It was just a little fib.”

“That’s not how Alexis sees it. I’ll let her tell you how she feels.”

“But Richard…”

“But nothing. I’ve told you several times, stop interfering. You have no idea what is going on. You should be happy that Jim asked me about it, because if you had interrupted tomorrow’s brunch Jim and Beckett wouldn’t have left enough of you to play Yorick’s skull in Hamlet.”

Martha sniffs sadly. Castle is entirely unmoved. His mother is an excellent actress and he is dead certain she is acting now.

“Mother, you have to lay off. You can’t help, and you’re not helping. All you’re doing is causing stress to everyone. If you feel a sudden need to be maternal, take up knitting or bake some cookies.” He stops and thinks about that. “Don’t bake cookies. I don’t want to be poisoned. Just don’t interfere. Beckett doesn’t need or want anyone to be maternal. She doesn’t want a replacement for her own mother, and if you try it, don’t blame me if she takes it badly. I won’t be sympathetic.”

Martha sniffs again. “I’m only trying to help, as any kind-hearted person would do. However, I know when I’m not wanted.”

Castle manages not to say if only that were true to Martha’s offended – but thankfully departing – back. He’s retreating to the comforts of his study and possibly a series of destructively violent computer games – so good for relieving tension, though Beckett would be a far better and much more pleasant solution – when there is a very loud noise from upstairs. It seems that Alexis has noticed Martha coming home.

Castle briefly considers going upstairs to referee. Then he listens to the tone of the discussion. Well. Screaming row, at full teen pitch and volume. It can probably be heard in Connecticut, or maybe Canada. He quietly retreats to his study, closes the door, and puts on some very expensive noise-blocking headphones and a soothing soundtrack.

Some while later he peels one off his ear, notes that there is silence, and in a stunning example of discretion being the better part of valour (or, equally accurately, cowardice being the way to remain living) does not emerge to survey the potential wreckage at all. That can wait until tomorrow. After brunch. If he survives that, and if Beckett survives that, he can worry about his mother. Beckett’s well-being is considerably more important than his mother’s, right now, and if she needs him post-brunch, well, that’s where he’ll be. He has no worries about Alexis, who, from the occasional noises that had made their way through the music, had been in full command of the histrionic high ground.

He puts himself to bed without wishing more than five times that Beckett were there beside him. Eventually he falls asleep, to be woken by the screech of his alarm and the knowledge that he needs to be right up at Kitchenette, far too close to the other end of Manhattan, in fairly short order. Still, he will look smooth, suave and adult. He needn’t be nervous of Jim. He’s met Jim a number of times now, and nervousness is simply silly. His stomach, however, does not agree: it roils and churns all the way uptown.

Jim is already at Kitchenette. Beckett is not.

“Hey.”

“Rick, hello. Come and sit down. Coffee? Food?”

“Please.” Castle looks at Jim, who appears far too brightly happy and mischievous for his peace of mind. “I spoke to Mother,” he says grimly. “I don’t think it’s going to have any effect at all. I’ve told her what I think and what I want, but she isn’t listening. She just wants to prove she’s right.”

“Hm. Not really helpful, Rick.” Jim’s happy mischief has dissolved.

“I know that. But if Mother tries it, all that’s going to happen is that Beckett – Kate – will take her apart.”

“Hm,” Jim hums again. “Might be interesting – from a safe distance.” He has the same martial light in his eye as his daughter would. “I can’t say I’d stop her. I don’t think I need to help.”

“Did I say I would stop her?” Castle says, irked. “I just don’t want to pick up the pieces afterwards. Beck-Kate isn’t quite somewhere she wouldn’t be upset by it.”

“Hmmm.” Jim fixes Castle with an extraordinarily Beckett-variety glare. Clearly that was inherited. “You better be taking care of Katie.”

“I can take care of myself, Dad.”

Jim and Castle both jump.

“Katie!”

“Beckett!”

Both of them look small-boy guilty. Beckett sees it with some sardonic amusement.

“Hello,” she says. They both squirm. She smirks, and sits down. A menu appears in front of her. Castle wonders if Jim feels as caught out as he, and decides that from his slightly worried expression, indeed Jim does. Everyone orders, possibly to avoid any embarrassing questions. Beckett takes a little pity on the men, and starts down her plan of nice, ordinary, social conversation.

“We had an interesting twist to a case last week, Dad.”

“Mhm?” Her father sounds intrigued. “All your cases seem to have a twist. What’s this one?”

“It looked pretty basic – a nasty piece of work got dead in an SRO.”

“Doesn’t sound like your sort of case at all.”

“No, but there haven’t been any weird ones for a week or two. So we got this one, and a whole lot of other uninteresting pop-and-drops too.”

“So what happened?”

“It got a bit more interesting when we found a senior cop’s prints all over the room…” Beckett trails the bait under her father’s nose.

“Really?” Jim says, fascinated.

“Mhm. Turns out that they were using this guy as a training exercise – like for community service. I wish they’d done that when I was there. I hated the role-plays.”

“Role-plays?” Jim asks. Castle notices that he is very slightly tense, and wonders.

“One of us, or an instructor, got to be the witness or suspect. The others practised the work.”

“I’d like to hear about it, sometime,” Jim says wistfully. Castle barely breathes. Beckett doesn’t say anything, for a second.

“Well. Yeah. Anyway. Thought you’d be interested in this new community service option.”

“Yes. Pretty creative.” But Castle hears a little dullness in Jim’s voice, and a little constraint in Beckett’s, and wishes she’d said something different: let Jim in just a little. “We don’t do anything that interesting to train our rookies.”

“They made them search the room, and search out the evidence. Teach them to do it properly, so it stands up in court and they don’t contaminate it.”

“Would they let me do it?” Castle asks hopefully.

“No. You’re too old to join the Academy, so you can’t.”

“Might be a fun team bonding exercise,” Jim says. “Like those evening Murder Mystery dinners.”

“I don’t think the instructors would have time to take groups of attorneys round. It’s pretty full on for them too.”

“Is it?” Castle asks, hoping that if he asks Beckett will open up just a little about the Academy and Jim will cheer up.

“Yeah. Barely time to sleep, if you want to fit everything in.” Castle is just hoping his tactic has worked when… “No time to go to the theatre or exhibitions or anything. I went to the Paris/New York design exhibition a few weeks ago. It was good. Did you see it?” It’s awkward, and everyone knows it. There’s an uncomfortable hitch in conversation, only broken when the food starts to arrive.

The technical business of eating and drinking covers the uncomfortable silence. Beckett has retreated into herself. Jim looks like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how. Castle has no idea where to start and is worried that anything that isn’t a platitude will cause some unsuspected mayhem. So far the only good thing about this brunch is that there has been polite social conversation and no fighting. It’s all horrendously brittle.

“Er… Dad?” Beckett says, very uncertainly, having polished off her pancakes.

“Yes?”

“Um… about Castle’s mother?” She swallows, and looks as if she’d rather be anywhere but at the table, saying anything but the words which she has just emitted.

“Yes?” Jim says warily.

“Do-you-think-you-telling-her-some-of-it-would-help?” Beckett blurts out without a breath. “If Dr Burke thought it wouldn’t mess things up?”

Jim chokes and splutters and requires napkins and pats on the back. This all makes it slightly difficult for Castle to simultaneously stop Beckett disappearing out the door and not stopping accelerating till she reaches San Francisco. He manages to grab her wrist before she rises. She looks unhappily at him.

“It’ll be okay,” Castle murmurs. “Don’t go yet. Give him a moment. Please?” The pulling away stops. Castle puts his arm round her comfortingly, which also means that Beckett can’t escape. Since she hasn’t noticed that yet, he certainly won’t tell her.

“Are you asking me for help?” Jim eventually squeaks out, through a gurgle of choking coughing.

“Yes,” Castle answers extremely quickly, before Beckett gets her mouth open. “We are. It was Be-Kate’s idea, too.”

“It was?”

Castle nods. Beckett is stock still and, he thinks, hiding absolute terror under a completely frozen face. “We thought” – he hesitates, but Beckett’s still absolutely silent – “that since absolutely nothing else including an interview with” –

“The Vampire,” Beckett suddenly interjects –

“Dr Burke,” Castle says, and doesn’t manage to suppress the snigger which interrupts it, “would work, the last resort was for you to tell my interfering mother a little – no more than you wanted to or nothing at all if you don’t want to – about it so she just backs the fuck off.”

Oh. He didn’t mean to lose his temper like that. Jim is regarding him very strangely, as is Beckett. This stereo stare of twin Becketts is really very disconcerting. He’d thought that Beckett was very like her mother, but the more he sees her with her father, the more alike they seem to be, right down to the glares and the eye-rolls.

“Sorry,” he says, more calmly. Beckett and Jim exchange glances. When Beckett looks away from her father, Jim favours Castle with a rakingly interrogative stare which pays particular attention to the way in which his arm is still around Beckett. Castle returns it very coolly and ignores the re-acquired roilings in his stomach. Beckett is all grown up (oh, so finely grown up) and has chosen to be with him, so it’s utterly ridiculous and unnecessary for Jim to give him the father-to-boyfriend hard look. He keeps his arm precisely where it is.

“So, Katie, you thought I might talk to Rick’s mother. Why do you think she would listen to me if she isn’t going to listen to Dr Burke?”

“I don’t.”

Jim crumples.

“I don’t think she’ll listen to anyone at all, but you’re the only one who can tell her the hard truth. If she doesn’t listen, it’s on her.”

Jim uncrumples somewhat. “You’re asking me to help?”

“Yes,” Beckett says. She doesn’t sound convinced that she’s doing the right thing at all. “If Dr Burke thinks it might help.

“And if he does?”

“Will you… do the same as you did to Julia Berowitz?” It’s forced out in a rush. “But I won’t be there. I don’t want to hear it all again.”

Castle hears I can’t hear it all again, rather than I don’t want to, and wishes fruitlessly that Beckett had said that. Jim looks hurt, and grey, and crumpled. Beckett, unfortunately, is only looking down at her empty plate.

“You wouldn’t be there?” Jim asks. There is a very uncomfortable, protracted silence.

“No.”

Castle winces. He knows that Beckett’s tense and on the edge; he knows why Beckett ran out of the Julia meeting; he knows that Beckett can’t stand to hear it again – but Jim doesn’t know any of that and Jim is looking very hurt and not a little angry.

“Beckett,” Castle lies, “you’ve got a smudge on your nose.”

“What?”

“Yep. Have you been sweeping chimneys?”

“Don’t be dumb. Of course not.”

“Looks like you have.”

Beckett does exactly what Castle had hoped, and decamps forthwith for the restroom to check.

“What smudge?” Jim says.

“No smudge. I wanted her out the way. You were about to say I won’t talk to Martha if you won’t come, and that’ll all go horribly wrong. She doesn’t mean don’t want. After Julia, she actually can’t sit through it again. Not without another meltdown, anyway. So don’t put an ultimatum in front of her because she’ll take it.” Jim stares at him. “Look, we don’t have time for the explanation. Maybe we can deal with it later or Friday or get Dr Burke to walk you through it. Just for God’s sake don’t make a fight out of this now.”

“There was no smudge, Castle!” Beckett growls very crossly, returning far too soon. “Haven’t you grown out of dumb games and pranks?”

He smiles seraphically. “If I’d actually thought you’d fall for it rather than look for a mirror in your purse…”

“I’m not some bimbo who keeps a mirror in her purse.”

“Reflection in your shield? Or your Glock?”

“If I had my gun with me I’d shoot you with it right now.” She sits down in a hail of harrumphs.

“If you two squabbling children have finished,” Jim says, which earns him twin scowls, “then if Carter” – scowls change to confusion – “Dr Burke – says it’s a good idea then I’ll talk to Martha.” Beckett misses the profoundly thankful glance that Castle throws at Jim. That had been near-disastrous. He, Castle, needs a word or several with Dr Burke, though. He – Dr Burke – needs to know that Jim wants to know about his daughter’s achievements while he was sodden drunk, and further needs to know that Beckett doesn’t like talking about any of that time. He downs a substantial gulp of coffee. Keeping all the plates spinning is increasingly troublesome. He consoles himself with the old adage about mysteries: that when everything is at its most complex, least understandable and most frustrating worst, it’s on the cusp of resolution.

“Thanks, Dad.” Beckett sounds very relieved. Jim casts her a look of some concern, and is clearly adding up the last few moments with the awkward shift in topic when he’d asked about the Academy. He’s not liking the conclusion he’s coming to, either, that’s for sure. Castle just hopes that Jim will have the sense not to open his mouth on the subject. “I’ll talk to Dr Burke on Tuesday and let you know.”

“Okay.” Jim hesitates. Castle acquires a feeling of well-justified dread. “Um, would you like to come for dinner – both of you – some time?” Stop pushing, Jim. Please, for God’s sake stop while you’re ahead. Or at least not behind.

There is another brittle, uncomfortable silence.

“Sometime,” Beckett says, with a crystalline edge, and breathes in. “Sometime.”

“Okay.” But Jim sounds dulled, again.

“What did you think of the relaxation of the Cuban restrictions?” Beckett asks, in another forced and awkward conversational swerve. This time her father plays along, and conversation stays firmly on current affairs through another round of coffees and Beckett winning out over both her father and Castle to settle the check. This does not make her universally popular, and in fact both men unite in disgust. Beckett smirks and radiates smug satisfaction.

It lasts until she’s said goodbye to her father, failed to hug him, and stood awkwardly (there has been an awful lot of awkward this morning) as they both didn’t manage to negotiate the tricky business of bidding farewell.

“I’m glad that’s over,” she says, coming close to Castle. “It was much worse than I thought it would be.”

They turn for home. Castle flags a cab. He doesn’t think the coming discussion will be improved by the subway, and in a cab he can cuddle her close if – when – required.

“We just couldn’t connect,” she says, after a silence. “He kept hitting the sore points. Why’s he want to know about the Academy now? I don’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t interested then, and I don’t wanna remember now.”

They’re almost at Beckett’s, so Castle can delay answering that until he’s paid the cab and they’re inside again.

“He doesn’t need to know. It’s done. It doesn’t matter any more. The Academy’s not relevant once you’re on the beat.”

“I think…” Castle stops.

“What?”

“I think he wants to catch up.”

“Catch up?”

“On what he missed.”

“It’s past. He missed it. There aren’t any do-overs.”

“He’s trying to connect. He doesn’t know that you don’t want to remember it.”   Castle bites his tongue on why don’t you want to remember? He knows why. Pushing it won’t help. Nor will saying I looked at the trophy cabinet. You won everything. And you hide it because all it does is remind you of that time rather than how amazing you are. “He wants to be fatherly. He knows he missed it. He’s trying to fix it.”

“He can’t fix it. It’s past. He wasn’t there.”

Castle hears the rising note in her voice and wraps her in. She’s kicked her shoes off, and sunk. “C’mere. Leave the past alone. You can’t change the past, nor can your dad.” He pauses. “You can change how you react to it, though.”

“Can I?” she says bitterly. “I’m not doing so well so far, am I?”

“Yes. Compared to a month ago? You’re doing great. But remember what you said the other day? You’re not looking at it as an alcoholic. You’re looking at it as an alcoholic’s daughter.”

“Uh?”

“He’s realising how much he missed, and he wants to know what he missed. You’re thinking how much it hurt that he missed it, and you don’t want anything to re-open that.”

Beckett doesn’t say anything. Castle tucks her in a little more securely, and progresses them towards the kitchen. He considers that coffee is indicated. More coffee. Coffee and cosseting and comfort and then, just maybe, conclusions. It’s very clear to him that Jim wants to discover – and quite possibly celebrate – all the successes that he missed; that Jim wants to fill in the parental gap that he caused. Saying this will provoke mayhem.

“You know, you say it wasn’t good, but that’s the first time you and your dad have been together without Dr Burke and nothing dreadful happened at all.” He reaches round her and flicks the kettle on.

“It was horrible. I couldn’t talk to him, he couldn’t talk to me.”

“But you did it. You sat there and tried. He tried, too. It’s a start.”