738. Chapter 738

After The Time of Our Lives

Episode 7.06

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I might own Castle in another universe, but probably not. Rating: K. Time: See above.

For the first time in years Rick Castle was surfing the internet for more than porn. He had found the report on the ancient Incan artifact, but he needed more.

The first murder was easy. The Ledger's headline took up half of the front page: Senator Bracken Assassinated. Castle read the reports for the following days and then looked for the second murder. It was less prominent, but he found it. Dick Coonan, a local philanthropist who built schools in Afghanistan had been found dead in the trunk of a car in long term parking at the Newark airport. He continued reading until it was certain that neither case had been solved.

Castle closed the laptop. I never met Beckett, so I never had Dr. Murray look at her mom's autopsy reports and find evidence of three other murders committed the same way. So, when Jack Coonan died, no one thought to connect his murder to Johanna Beckett's. And by the time the police became suspicious of Dick Coonan, the Westies had figured out who he was and what he'd done and had taken care of him the old fashioned way. No doubt about it, Finn Rourke was old school. Beckett never shot Coonan and Bracken never had any reason to believe that she had any idea who he was. So, he never tried to kill Beckett. But, Beckett, a Captain by then, had no reason to be suspicious of Bracken and once Robert McManus had been arrested, everyone thought the case was closed. Until Bracken had been blown to bits by a car bomb. No one thought to look for his driver, Noah Charles, until many hours later. Charles was eventually found in an abandoned building in the South Bronx with two bullets in the back of his head. And so both cases ran into dead ends.

"So, there's no need to tell Beckett about this, because she's in no danger from Bracken. All I have to do is get my hands on the Incan artifact and I'm home free."

He did get his hands on the artifact, but with two bullets in his chest, he was hardly home free.

"Mrs. Rodgers, I'm Captain Kate…"

"Beckett. Of course, you're the police officer that Richard was working with." Martha pulled Kate into a hug that felt somehow very familiar to Kate. "I'm so glad you dropped by."

Kate blushed at the effusive welcome. "I talked to Mr. Castle a couple of times at the hospital, but he was so heavily sedated, I doubt if he remembers."

"Of course he does. He's been talking nonstop about the angel that came to see him in the hospital. Do you want to see him?"

"Is he okay?"

"He's on pretty heavy pain meds now, but he's rational. At least as rational as he ever is."

Kate went upstairs to Rick's room and knocked. "Mr. Castle? It's me, Captain Beckett. Can I come in?"

"Please."

Kate walked in to see Rick in bed, but with a laptop sitting on his lap.

He smiled at her. "You're real. You're actually real and you're here."

"Did you think I wasn't real?" She asked.

He shook his head. "The last couple of days before I got shot, were the craziest days of my life. It was like there was another me inside me, and he was running things, and he had the craziest memories. Memories where we…."He stopped and shook his head. "You'll think I'm crazy."

"Mr. Castle, you took a bullet for me. Two bullets for me. And you knew things, things, well, about me, that….Please, tell me everything."

So Rick sat and told Kate about his life with another Kate Beckett, how he came into another universe to find a very different Kate Beckett, and how he found himself suddenly back in his own body all by himself, bleeding out while Kate worked to keep him alive.

"So you wrote a series of best selling books about a detective called Nikki Heat who was based on me, or rather, the detective me in the other universe?"

Castle nodded. "Yeah. It's odd. I have the plots, the characters, dialogue, everything in my head. I feel like I could start writing now."

"Then you should. I want to read about Nikki Heat."

"I haven't written anything in years. I don't know if I can anymore."

"What you need is a muse, and I'm available. When you're feeling better, I want you to come to the precinct and work with me. We seem to work well together."

"I'd like that. I'd really like that."

"One thing, Mr. Castle. Do you remember what you said to me just after you were shot?"

He nodded.

"Will you tell me what you said?"

He grinned. "It's silly. I told you that I love you. But we hardly know each other."

"Do you feel some kind of a connection with me? Because I've felt one for you since you walked into the precinct. Do you think we could love each other?"

"I think we could, and I'd love to find out if we do."

Kate leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. "Me too."

Meanwhile, in a more familiar universe.

"I don't sound like I was very happy in that universe." Kate said with a grin. "The universe that you created in your head after you went down."

"You weren't. When we first met, in this universe, when I told you about yourself that day when we were reading through my fan mail on the Tisdale case, just for a second, I saw how sad you were and I just wanted to put my arms around you and tell you that I'd do anything I could to make you happy again. I felt the same way with the other Kate. I hope I didn't die or something, and that I have the brains to go after her."

"Or maybe it's just your way of making yourself feel better? If we had never met and I was miserable, you decided to make it all better by making me Mrs. Castle?"

"I needed you as badly as I needed you. I killed off Derek Storm and never found Nikki Heat, so I wrote a crap novel and then couldn't write. Alexis moved to LA to be with her mom, of all horrible things, and Martha went back on stage and was a huge success. I was living off of her. If you think I was a playboy when you first met me, I was a hundred times worse. I was a total loser without you."

"So, the moral of this story is that we're better off together?"

"Always."