163. Who do you think you are?

“That all went quite well,” Beckett says as they reach her block. The journey has passed in relative quiet.

“Yeah,” Castle says heavily. “Now we just need to sort my mother. Your dad’s on the right track, and though I guess it’ll be slow going, it feels like you and he are moving in the right direction.”

“I guess. I don’t guess it’s going to be quite like it used to be, though.”

“No, of course not. You’re all grown up, and he needs to adjust to that. But it sounds like you’re both adapting.”

Beckett parks neatly. “You wanna come up for coffee?”

“When do I ever not want to come up for… coffee?” Castle says, in a dirtily seductive tone. Beckett shrugs, mischievously, and doesn’t bother to answer.

Coffee happens. Cuddling happens. Kisses happen, and after that, in the natural order of things, bed happens. They’re just as good together now as they have been at any previous point. In fact, Beckett thinks happily, better. She nestles in to her lovely warm Castle-pillow and is simply and uncomplicatedly content.

Castle does not feel content, however. He is tense, even now.

“What’s up?”

“I just have this awful feeling that Mother’s plotting something, and I can’t seem to stop her.” He pauses, and rolls over, unhappily. “But you might be able to. I didn’t want this to happen, but… if she does get in your face, whether I’m there or not, I promise” – it sounds so very childish, but Beckett appreciates the importance of the point – “that I won’t get mad no matter how you deal with it, as long as you don’t actually shoot her. I just don’t see any other way.” He turns away, and Beckett rolls him back to cuddle him in. “Everything else is fixed, or getting there. It’s just Mother. I don’t get it. She’s always been kind, even when she’s been meddling most, but this time she’s completely lost it.”

“I think,” Beckett says with extreme reluctance, “that Dr Burke might have been right.” She appears thoroughly aggrieved at having to agree with Dr Burke.

“Uh?”

“About her being scared of the future. Of having to move out.”

“But I’ll pay for all of it. I’d never leave her destitute.”

“Sounds like a Victorian workhouse term,” Beckett says sardonically, and hugs him harder when that doesn’t raise a twitch of a smile. “I don’t think it’s about the money, though.”

“No? I don’t get it, then. She’s got all her own friends, she’s got a social life to kill for, and she knocked it out of the park on the last audition. Even if the show only ran for two weeks.”

“When did she last have a hit show?”

“Years ago. She gets the parts. I tease her, but she’s a good actor. It’s just the shows that are…”

“Crap?”

“Yeah.” Castle says bluntly. “Though I wouldn’t say so in front of her. Why she doesn’t turn her talent to auditioning for better shows…?”

“She’s scared,” Beckett says suddenly. “Scared that she’d be turned down.”

“Insecure? My mother? Are you kidding? You’ve met her.”

“Nope. It goes with what Dr Burke said.”

Castle lies back and ponders, Beckett comfortably curled into him with her head on his chest and an arm around him. She doesn’t ask him what he’s thinking about, no doubt lost in her own ponderings.

He doesn’t get how his mother can be insecure or scared. She’s always been confident, swashbuckled through their trials and tribulations of his early life, won her award and won her parts. She’s never been insecure at all. Martha Rodgers, frequently wrong but absolutely never in doubt. She exudes total confidence – about her own life and that of everyone around her. Always sure of what they should do; always ready with helpful (usually helpful. Sometimes helpful.) advice. Good advice. Right up until now. She’s got no reason at all to be insecure. It’s far more likely that she’s just got so used to being able to barge into his rooms and his loft and his mind and emotions that she’s still doing it, only louder. He’s always been open to her: even when her ex cleaned her out and she showed up in pieces on his doorstep he’d never have let her down or sent her elsewhere, even at his expense.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh. The last time she’d been made to leave, she’d been left penniless, and he’d been her best and likely only hope. If he asks her to leave, which he is going to, even if he pays for everything (which he will) and makes her an allowance (which he already does, and wasn’t ever planning to stop) – she’s going to hark back to the last time. Come to think of it, she hasn’t gone for a star show since then either.

“You’re right.”

“Urhh?” Beckett mumbles to his collarbone. “Course I’m right. ‘M always right.”

Castle makes a noise of disagreement. She snickers sleepily. “Gotcha.”

“Right about my mother.”

Beckett wakes up in a hurry. Castle can tell this because of the elbow jabbing into his ribs as she sits up and leans over him.

“Huh?”

“She was screwed over by her ex. Evicted her, practically – I don’t quite know how he did it but she got left homeless – and cleaned out her bank accounts.”

Beckett’s eyes glow ferally. “We could do something about that…” she says.

“I did,” Castle says tightly. Beckett doesn’t ask anything more. He’s pretty sure she gets it.

“So, yeah, I bet she doesn’t admit it and she might not even know it but she’s scared and she’s trying to cling to what she’s got where she’s always been safe.”   He relapses back on to the pillows. Beckett relapses back on to him, where she should be. She feels very stable and reassuring, against him. (He wonders briefly if this is how he feels to her, when she’s upset, and hopes so.)

“But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t stop pushing. She doesn’t get a pass just because she’s scared. She doesn’t get to interfere or try and be your mom when you don’t want it. We can talk about it, and deal with it, but I’m not gonna live on eggshells wondering if she’ll just walk in on us any time.”

“Eurgh.”

“Yeah,” he says gloomily. “Definite mood-killer.”

Beckett snuggles back down. This is not a mood-killer. Oh no. Castle becomes happily aware that she is rather more over him than previously and that the pink tips of her breasts are introducing themselves to his pecs. Thinking about his mother can now wait. Doing things with or for or to Beckett cannot. He shifts his hips beneath her so that he’s pressing into her just where he likes it. From the slick rush of heat, she likes it too: stretching and rubbing against him from neck to thighs, a sexy purr spilling from her mouth as she kisses him.

“My Kat’s back,” he murmurs, and then rapidly rolls them so that he’s on top and she’s laughing up at him with a wicked little twist of her lips followed by an equally wicked little twist of her hips, against which Castle will never, ever, ever be proof.

There’s no talking, after that, but there is quite a lot of noise.

Beckett wakes in a nest of Castle-scented pillows and covers which are all that remains of a very satisfying evening. She stretches luxuriously and rises slowly, determining that she’ll go out for a nice long run, and then have lunch. The afternoon can take care of itself, for now. She doesn’t need to go anywhere, and sure, she’s on call this weekend but it’s a lovely morning and she’ll have her phone with her.

Her run leaves her feeling good, the shower after even better, and the silky sensation of moisturiser sinking into smooth skin still better than that. Beckett, in fact, thinks that life is just plain perfect this weekend.

She’s sipping a cup of herbal tea – a new one, that she thought she’d try, called Orange Pekoe: it smells very appealing and she’s had enough coffee for a few hours – when her door sounds, a short while before lunchtime. She’s a little confused. She’s not expecting anyone, though she wouldn’t at all object if it were Castle (oh no) or Lanie, or indeed O’Leary, though that’s unlikely. In fact, it’s pretty unlikely that anyone would turn up without texting or calling first. Momentarily, she goes into flat panic mode. Surely her father hasn’t failed now? She lunges for the door, adrenaline flooding through her, terror twisting her thoughts and gut.

It’s Martha. Beckett is instantly wary, and invites her in with cool, guarded civility. She would infinitely prefer not to, but there doesn’t seem any good option here and the looming discussion had better not take place in the stairwell. The intrusion into her privacy sets her on edge immediately. Her pride stops her from evicting Martha even faster than that. She will not show any hint that she is unable to cope with Martha’s presence in her apartment.

“Hello,” Beckett says coldly, and lets Martha understand that this is Beckett’s space in which she is unwelcome. Martha is clearly expecting Beckett to ask questions. Beckett, however, has no intention of opening any discussion. She waits, allowing an impression of faint indifference to spread as the silence does. She is pretty certain that Castle knows absolutely nothing about this visit.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Martha says, “and since Richard has been preventing us spending any time together – he’s so precious about it, as if he can’t bear to share you with us – I thought that I would just drop in. After all, you’re practically family.” She smiles. Maternally.

Beckett’s hackles rise, but she remains cool and calm. This meeting is about to start going very badly downhill, of that she is perfectly sure. She will not put up with anyone at all trying to take her mother’s place.

“Mm?” she says, neutrally. It’s not precisely inviting.

“I know that you’ve got your father – such a lovely man, but I don’t think that Richard should have made him expose his past like that. It was quite unnecessary. Why, lots of my friends have been in rehab. Anyway, Katherine, no matter how close one is to one’s male relatives sometimes you just need an older woman to confide in.   To give you some advice.”

Beckett regards Martha with a still-calm exterior covering raging fury from which, were it to be unleashed, Beelzebub, or any other Prince of Hell, would have run screaming.

“So I wanted to do that for you.   I really do feel that you should come to the loft, darling. It would make Richard so much happier to know that you’d got over this worry. I can assure you we don’t bite,” Martha says with a stage laugh. “It would reassure Alexis, too. The poor girl looks up to you already and she’d be so disappointed if she had the idea that you don’t like her.”

Beckett’s face locks down, icy fury crystallising around her. The implicit lies and attempted manipulation are too much.

“So Castle doesn’t know you’re here,” she bites out. “I didn’t think he did.” She breathes very slowly: in, out; in, out. Intimidating, appalling silence stretches almost to breaking point.

“I will do anything to make my son happy. Anything.   He and Alexis are my family. He really wants you to be able to come to the loft, and I’m quite sure that if we just talk about it we can find a way to make it all come out right. I’m sure that I can give you good advice, just like your mother would have if she was here.”

“If my mother were here,” Beckett says frigidly, “there would be nothing to talk about. Since she isn’t, however, let’s talk, then. You can start by explaining to me precisely the psychiatric qualifications which you have which will explain why you think you can help me.”

“Pish. I am eminently qualified to help. Formal qualifications aren’t necessary. My life coaching has been very successful for many people.”

“I see. So you are completely unqualified in psychiatry.” Beckett’s cool, decisive tones belong in the interrogation room. “Still, perhaps one of your parents was an alcoholic, so you have relevant and helpful experience.” She’s maintaining an enquiring, interested demeanour. It’s an alternative to drawing her weapon.

“Experience isn’t relevant, as long as one has sufficient empathy.”

“I see,” Beckett says again. “So you haven’t experienced an alcoholic parent, either.” Her dead level voice doesn’t vary in tone or tempo. “Perhaps you’ve volunteered at an ACoA assistance program?” Martha looks blank. “So not that either.”

“No,” Martha says. “But, Katherine darling, you do need some friendly advice.”

“Do I? Maybe. But to sum up your position, you have no qualifications in psychiatry, you have no personal experience of parental alcoholism and you have no direct experience of working with the victims of alcoholism. I fail to see in what possible way I would benefit from receiving any advice from you.”

Martha’s over-confidence is starting to leak.

“So tell me,” Beckett enquires bitingly, “exactly what you do have that entitles you to try and advise me.”

“I’m a mother, darling.”

“That qualifies you for precisely nothing in this situation.”

“I can” – and Beckett loses it before that sentence, undoubtedly containing like your mother would, can be completed.

“No, you cannot. You are not my mother. You have no right to try to usurp her place. You barely know me. You are certainly not my family. That’s my dad. Only my dad. You’re so completely out of line I don’t even know where to start.” She hasn’t raised her voice, but every word slashes through the air; whiplashes against Martha’s paling face. “Your meddling is not required. Your uninvited presence in my home is not required.” Beckett checks her watch. “I will give you thirty minutes to contact Castle and inform him – truthfully – of this conversation. In thirty minutes I will call him myself. You will leave. Now.”

Martha’s remaining colour has drained, leaving her grey faced; two lines of bright scarlet limning her cheekbones with a flush of anger.

“I wanted to help you, and this is all the thanks I get?”

“You don’t want to help,” Beckett states judicially, glacially. “If you did, you’d have listened to Castle, or Alexis, or my dad. You’ve ignored all of it. You have lied about how Castle and Alexis feel.   Listen to me now, very carefully.” Martha flinches. “I have been seeing a fully qualified psychiatrist. The best anywhere. You have no competence in this area. I don’t know or care why you think you do. I will credit you with good intentions.   That is the only reason I did not throw you out immediately. Leave now, while you might still preserve your dignity. In thirty minutes I will call Castle.”

Beckett opens the front door, to which she had been moving as she spoke. “Good bye.”

Martha leaves, precipitately, stumbling as she hits the elevator.

Beckett shuts the door with dreadful gentleness behind her, collapses on to her couch, and sits frozenly, tears spilling down her face, unwiped. She hopes with all her heart that Castle had really meant what he said about backing her if she reduced his mother to a small pile of dust. She continues to sit, and watches the clock.

Precisely thirty minutes later she taps out Castle’s number. She has to restart her dialling twice before her fingers will obey.

“Beckett!” Castle says. He doesn’t sound angry.

“Castle?” she manages, before her stress and adrenaline crash take over.   “Please would you come over?”

“Sure,” he rumbles. “There shortly.”

Castle hears the loft door open and a whirlwind of tempestuous, furious, shamed misery entire. He wanders out of his office to discover the reason for this entirely unexpected storm.

It turns out to be his mother, high-coloured and in the grip of an emotional maelstrom.

“Mother, what’s wrong?” he asks, a deep feeling of dread sinking into his stomach. Surely she hasn’t…? She can’t possibly – can she?

“Your Detective Beckett,” she begins, and the yawning pit gapes in front of him.

“You went to see Beckett?” Oh God. Oh God. She really has been that stupid. “Why?” Why, oh why?

“She won’t come here. It’s upsetting Alexis and whatever you say, it can’t be making you happy either. She needs to know that.”

“What did you say to Beckett?” Castle asks very slowly and calmly, in order to avoid screaming in rage and then throttling his mother.

“Just that. And I offered her some advice.” Oh god oh god oh god. Oh, fuck. “And then she had the insolence” – his mother’s voice rises – “ to tell me that I was completely unqualified and the only reason she was allowing” – her voice hits a pitch suitable for smashing glass – “me to leave with dignity was that she credited me with good intentions.”

“I see,” Castle says heavily. His lack of fulsome, or indeed any, support dawns on Martha.

“Don’t you care that she’s insulted me?”

“I care that you’ve done exactly what you were asked not to do. I care that you’ve lied to Beckett about how Alexis feels and how I feel to try and manipulate her into coming here before she’s ready.” He looks closely at his mother, who is an unpleasant shade of shamed red. “She called you on it, didn’t she?”

“I’m your mother” –

“You’re my mother. Not Beckett’s.”

“If you got married…”

“You still won’t be her mother. Every time you suggest that you’re dishonouring her own mother’s memory.”

At which exceedingly unhelpful point Alexis walks in. “What have you done, Grams?” she screeches.

“More to the point, Mother, why are you admitting to it?”

“Because she” – the tone indicates a much less pleasant word than she – “said that I had thirty minutes to tell you about it because she was going to call you then.”

Wow. Beckett must have been at full Force Twelve intimidation to achieve that and make it stick. That’s his badass Beckett.

“You went to see Detective Beckett?” Alexis yells, still at full teen screech-and-shriek mode. “You were told not to. Now she’ll never come here and it’ll all be your fault that I don’t have a role model.”

“But sweetie, I was trying to persuade her to come here. And she just wouldn’t listen to my advice.”

Alexis is listening with dropped jaw. “You’ve just ruined everything. You’ve ruined my life. How’m I going to find out what a real professional woman’s like when she’ll never come here ever because you can’t leave her alone? We were doing just fine without you. She even had dinner with us and now you’ve totally screwed up my life” –

“Alexis…” – Castle attempts.

“She has. And you’ve screwed up Dad’s life too all because you couldn’t just butt out. I hope you’re really happy, Grams. We’re not. I’m so totally never bringing any friends or boyfriends home ever again.”

“Enough, Alexis,” Castle says very firmly. “Quiet.”

“I won’t,” Alexis yells in total teen tantrum mode, which is another order of decibelic magnitude louder than screech-and-shriek. “You won’t tell her so I will. I thought she loved us but if she did she totally wouldn’t meddle and spoil everything.”

“Alexis,” Castle says, in a tone that would have stopped even Beckett in full kick-ass flow. “Go to your room and calm down, please. I’ll deal with this.” He flicks a glance at his watch. “Mother, either do the same or go out. This evening, we are going to discuss where you’re going to live from now on.”

Martha’s raging colour drains in one instant. “But…”

“I’m not discussing this now. I need time to think. Alone. Both of you, go.”

They don’t look at each other as they trail up the stairs. Castle makes for the safety of his office, and shuts the door firmly.

Not five seconds after he’s sat down, his phone rings and Beckett’s face comes up on the screen.