This was based on Fembot77's Prompt: Castle, St. Peter, Choices. Location: Pearly Gates

It was about to expire from its 90-minute time limit on so I did a few fixes that needed doing anyway.

Part 1: Pearly Gates

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would let it go, this desperation, dislocation
Separation, condemnation, revelation
In temptation, isolation, desolation

Let it go and so fade away... I'm wide awake, I'm wide awake
Wide awake, I'm not sleeping...
BAD - U2

"Oh, hell." Rick Castle was wide awake, all right, naked, standing up to his ankles (were those his ankles? He couldn't feel them) in mist. Before him, endlessly high, loomed a wall of cloud, and mounted in that wall of cloud was a pair of gates, made of mother of pearl. Ostensibly. That was a lot of oysters. Or maybe one really big oyster. One really big mutant oyster from space... maybe they just used extruded nacre from a giant, oyster-like wad of flesh, and if that was the case, weren't the Pearly Gates really made by a mutant from some kind of heavenly plastic?

"Ahem."

Rick jumped. "Hi." It had been dead quiet, with no one around, but here stood a little man, no higher than his shoulders. The little man was oddly ageless, also naked, but tanned, hairless, and smooth as an egg all over. He had a big nose, liquid brown eyes, and vaguely resembled Ben Kingsley's version of Gandhi. Except that Rick was pretty sure Kingsley still had his genitalia. At least, he assumed so; he hadn't peeked under the actor's' robe when they ran into one another at the Four Seasons Spa.

Rick nervously checked. He still had his hair, in all the appropriate places, and while he couldn't feel his family jewels, they passed visual. He wondered whether people had sex in heaven. Can there be a heaven without sex? Or pets?

Heaven. "Oh, shit." He looked at the little man. "I, uh, sorry, this … it caught me by surprise."

The little man held his hand out to shake. When he moved, Rick thought he saw something about him; not an aura, not a shadow, just a rippling blur, as if there was a great deal more power in him than could be contained by a semblance of skin.

They clasped hands and shook. The old man said, "Santos Petrus. And you are..." He obviously knew.

The whole truth, Rick. "Richard Alexander Edgar Rogers Castle." He suddenly found himself wondering if Kate had gotten the order quite right, or if he had for that matter.

"Haha. One of the Twice-Named," said Petrus, as if that explained everything. He had a little PDA in his leathery brown palm. "This database..."

Rick came around to stand next to him and peer over his narrow, bony shoulder. "What platform?"

"Let me just say Jobs worked on it." The little man frowned. "It's pretty, but it still needs..." he zoomed in with a nail-less finger. Apparently there is no keratin in heaven. But there are teeth. And pearls.

"Really? Jobs?"

"He could be a putz, but the OS got him special dispensation." Petrus opened up his handspan. The PDA turned into a fluttering, blurry, translucent, dove-like thing. Opening its wings wider, it turned into a sort of screen that hovered in the air before them, wide as Rick's arm-span. It made a sort of friendly, cooing trill, and a brief logo flashed: iSoul.

Rick grinned. "That is SO cool."

"As I was saying..." Petrus tickled the screen gently with his fingers, brushing here, tapping there. Rick's name came up; his date, time, and location of birth; his parents' names on both sides - although there was a blurry gray area on his father's part. His mother's marriages; his marriages to Meredith and Gina; a somewhat blurry family tree; Alexis; countless lovers – including Kate. So many friends, business associates, a few actual enemies... and to Rick's astonishment, his books, which apparently had souls all their own, lives of their own that went beyond him. He'd always sensed that; how he was trying to catch the words as they went by. The books had demanded to be written. That's why writer's block is so scary... what if the words don't love you anymore?

There were gray areas too, and he found them intriguing: A stray kitten that died, a dog he'd loved when he was seven, a girlfriend's surprise pregnancy that ended before he ever knew about it, a possible line of grandchildren leading from Alexis and two as-yet-unknown loves, a possible line of gray, blurry, nameless children and grandchildren and descendents that he and Kate might have had. "Wait," he said. "I want to look at those."

The old man said quickly, "You don't get to see those. They don't matter to you anymore."

"What do you mean they don't matter? Of course they matter!"

"Not to you. Not anymore. They're grayed out."

"Then why are they still there?"

Petrus sighed. "This is in beta. It's a relational database but I guess all the 'if's have not yet been 'then'd. Still a few bugs in the system."

"Sorry, but..." Rick barged across Petrus and tapped a gray rectangle. Petrus tried to protest, but Rick had faced down Katherine Houghton Beckett, and the old man was nothing compared to her. Rick didn't even bother to wonder whether wrestling an angel was considered appropriate. He held the old man by the chest, feeling something stronger than a ten-foot anaconda (or perhaps a wayward steering wheel) twisting under his grasp, but the link came through as he read right over the little man's head. A Huffington Post article. Rick's eyebrows shot up, and he gasped.

So did Petrus, flailing his skinny arms and kicking wildly. Rick was really glad the old man didn't have a package, but felt mildly concerned that his own might still be vulnerable. He wondered if he was quite all the way dead yet.

Rick read the headline aloud, just to be sure. "Heat of Justice: True Story of NYPD Detective's Battle Against Senatorial Corruption Wins Pulitzer for Investigative Journalism."

Petrus scrambled to fold up the wings. "No, no, no, no no. Oh, bloody hell."

Whoomp.

It was the sound of turning on the gas, then forgetting and letting the fumes build up before you light a match and set the kitchen on fire. It was the sound of an exploding Mercedes. It was the sound of Mephistopheles, rising up through the misty floor, oozing sparks out his skin. The living mists of Heaven's front porch fled bleating from around his hooves - or were they black patent-leather stilettos? Red lightning crackled around him. He resembled a hermaphroditic Angelina Jolie, dragged through a lava field with her hair on fire and working it as a beauty treatment. And he wore a codpiece the size of a cod. In fact... it might have actually been a cod. Latched onto the demon's pubic bone with a row of razor-sharp teeth, it was scaly, flapped around, and regarded Rick with implacable, glassy golden eyes. Its gills flapped with a steady rhythm. Rick thought "If I ever get out of here, I'm never eating fish and chips again."

Rick involuntarily stepped back behind Petrus with a little squeal.

Petrus murmured "Relax, Ricky, I got this."

Mephistopholes smiled unpleasantly, "Hey."

Petrus said, "What brings you down here?"

Castle croaked, "Down?"

Petrus waved, dismissing the distinction. "It's all relative."

Mephistopheles said, "You called me?"

Petrus shook his head. "That was a glitch."

The demon's laugh was deep and rich. "And how many times have I heard you say there are no accidents in heaven?"

"Wait," Rick said. "Am I inside the gates or out?"

"Yes and no," said both Petrus and the demon.

"Richard Alexander Rogers," the demon grinned sharply. His tone of voice reminded Rick of Captain Gates: "Mister Castle". A gloating satisfaction in every defect. A probing hope for every flaw. Withering reproach for his very existence. Rick was almost used to it. He shook it off.

"I'm Mephistopheles. You can call me Meph." The demon held out an eager, clawed hand. Apparently Hell has plenty of keratin to go around, but their database was still behind.

Something niggled the back of Rick's brain. Something about The Rules. "You won't mind if I don't shake hands."

Meph guffawed at that. "Oh, you ridiculous little creature. That's just a formality. You're already mine." This time, the hand that reached for Rick was grasping, not friendly, and it seemed to grow larger and larger, lightning threading between the claws like a web, swarming with little red, spidery sparks.

If Rick could have felt his blood drain from his cheeks, he would have felt it then. "Wha- whu." It was like trying to talk after partying all night with those squatters he'd met in Dublin as a teen.

Petrus snapped, "Not so fast," and stepped protectively between Rick and Meph. Rick felt an odd, percussive force pass through him, something like that of a Mercedes being hit by an Escalade. He staggered just slightly. Meph curled back in on himself like a snail retreating to its shell. Except that his horns waggled, instead of eye stalks.

Petrus insisted: "He is twice-named. This is complicated."

Rick had to ask. "What does that even mean to you people?"

Petrus began officiously: "According to Universal Order Structure, article 1479835.1.a:" He cleared his throat. Meph rolled his eyes, and the codfish slapped its tail against his roiling lava thigh, patient as a 15-year-old waiting in line at the DMV for her learner's permit. Not so patient.

Petrus glared at the cod. "Do. You. Mind."

The cod flounced, then calmed down. "Please continue," said Meph.

"Any person who, from their own free choice, renames themselves in an effort to establish a new sense of identity, shall be granted special consideration as their actions are being weighed in the court of Universal Justice. Not only does renaming apply to such steps as legal identity change, this renaming also applies to silently-given self-defining or encouraging nicknames such as 'Champ', 'Honey,' 'Loser', 'Toots', 'The Hammer', and 'Avenger'. Those who choose the second naming of 'Elvis' or 'The King of _ (fill in blank)' will automatically have one point deducted. The rename of 'Dude' and "Jerry" will be taken on a case-by-case basis."

Rick said, "I don't understand."

Meph added, "People who rename themselves after fruit, beverages, or certain substances, such as "Cherry, Brandy, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Peaches, Candy, or Amber, are considered to be operating under a handicap, and are given an additional point in their favor, because they need all the help they can get."

Rick thought of every stripper he'd ever met. "That seems fair."

Petrus continued. "It means you fully acknowledge free will. People who just take whatever their parents give them, without ever questioning their own purpose or motives, tend to continue through life on that same course. Those who redefine themselves..."

Rick finished for him. "We do for three reasons. A) we're trying to become something better B) we're trying to hide from our past C) a combination of the two."

Meph grinned. "I'd say in your case it's B."

Rick shook his head. "Nope. Anyone who cares to dig a little can find my birth name. That's no big deal."

Petrus said, "Why did you change it?"

Rick sighed, and from force of habit ran a hand through hair he could no longer feel. "I started out just... ashamed. Of my background, and my own failures as a person, as a writer."

Meph said, "I once heard you say you were a fan of all seven deadly sins."

"Not in so many words."

"Sure sounded like you."

Rick paced around, wondering what was holding him up in the clouds, then remembering Fudd's Law: when suspended in space against the laws of physics, don't look down. "Look. Everyone grows up doing stupid things. I wanted a clean start. I'm still me, but I took the parts I liked – the optimism and faith in people, the willingness to work hard, the curiosity, the part that cares and has fun... I'm a geek, ok? I'm just a geek. I'm also a major fuck-up sometimes, but I stopped not trying. A long time ago."

Petrus just blinked and tapped at the screen, barely seeming to listen, scrolling through a list of some kind.

Meph grinned hungrily. "No. You're more than just a geek, Richard. You're the One Percent. THE One Percent. Tall, handsome, male, white, rich, talented, intelligent, charming, so suave you even won over an Amazon like Katherine Beckett. And you don't deserve any of it."

Rick just stared at him, deflating. "I think of her more as Atalanta, just distracting her enough to let me catch up." But that was stalling. It was, of course, true. He wasn't worthy of any of the gifts bestowed on him, and deep in his heart, he knew it. The gates rippled and shuddered, and the clouds swished a little in the disturbed aether. Petrus looked at him dolefully, shaking his head.

The demon continued. "Life isn't fair, Rick. Babies are stillborn, dogs are put to sleep, mothers starve, fathers commit war crimes, asteroids wipe out dinosaurs, Firefly gets cancelled, there's no foam on your cappuccino, Crash wins an Oscar, nations rise, Alanis Morissette can't define irony, stocks fall, and there are some odd socks that will never, ever match."

Rick's voice was thin and reedy. "I worked for everything I have."

"Really. Luck had nothing to do with it?"

"Well yes, luck had a lot to do with it."

"And where do you suppose that luck came from? Do you think God just wanted you to keep Ferrari in business for another year?"

Rick was starting to feel fuzzy, having trouble thinking straight. He looked at Petrus for help. Petrus just shrugged.

Meph said, "You sold your soul, Rodgers."

"What?"

"You were ten. I was right there, sitting on the lion's back, on the New York library steps."

"I did no such thing."

Meph strolled past him, the impact of his platform shoes shivering the hard stones that appeared under his trampling soles amidst the parting cloudlets. Rick heard a faint wailing noise and saw tiny, rubbery hands scrabbling up from black tar between the cobbles. Thousands of tiny hands, like those little soft-toed newts you might find under a damp stone. The stone wobbled, the fingers, straining to find a way out, endlessly pinched and smashed only to take shape and scrabble again. Petrus stepped aside with an air of gloom, the mist around his bare feet soft, white, and yielding. He had no toenails, no calluses, no protection against anything. He was completely vulnerable, yet while sad, he was unafraid. Watching Rick's soul unraveling.

Meph scraped a claw across the translucent screen, and it screeched softly in protest. The demon snickered and lashed his tail. At least it looked like... Rick couldn't help but stare. The demon had a snake's tail up its ass, the head hovering about its ankles. It looked up at Rick and hissed.

The demon's black claws spread out abruptly (Rick couldn't help thinking: "Jazz hands!") and opened up a view-screen, wide enough to recognize himself as a ten-year-old boy onscreen, remembered the moment, although not the point of view from the top of the marble lion's back, by the library stairs. He wore the Danes Academy navy-blue slacks and hideous sweater vest with the red-and-white chevron V-neck. An itchy white polyester-blend shirt and a clip-on tie. His nose had a red welt across the bridge (broken again) which he'd tried to dress with an x of that library strapping tape with the threads in it. He was trying not to cry, trying to reassemble the pages of a notebook that had been torn and stomped and shredded and spat on.

He already read a lot and had a rather dramatic vocabulary. He gritted, "I'd sell my soul to see you rot in hell, you monstrous spawn of Satan." Who had destroyed his notebook? The other kids called him Jeremy. Both he and Rick had been admitted to the school as hardship cases, himself because Martha knew someone, Jeremy because the school took in a few kids with real intellectual potential. This kid had been just his size, with hard, angry brown eyes and a cold smile. But he could have been any number in a string of grinning, stupid, spoiled... philistines. Scared little boys, big enough or fast enough or just plain mean enough to gang up and make him suffer. Just because they could. This time, Rick had almost deserved it – written a snotty limerick. Rick stared at his young self leaning against the lion in misery, and the hurt and rage rose up in him, fresh and raw. It's a strange thing to feel an emotion but not be able to feel the body that ought to be generating it.

"I was just a kid."

Here Petrus made an interesting point. "You can put real estate up to the market then withdraw it from sale."

Rick was surprised. "What? Oh. Yeah!"

Mephistopheles rolled his bloodshot golden eyes. "All right. That was lame. Age of consent, blah blah blah. You couldn't sell something you didn't properly own yet." He licked a fang with his long tongue. There were some sort of little crustaceans latched to the forked tip, like those creepy fish parasites... Meph leaned his weight on one hip, thinking. Smirked. "How about... THIS!" Jazz hands again.

Rick's life did the thing everyone talks about, and which he'd sort of been waiting for:

RICK CASTLE: His Life, Flashing Before His Eyes:

• Being a tiny ball of new cells. Floating in the dark and red, thoughtlessly thinking, "Here. This one." and then, 34-ish weeks later, "Oh, hello."

• His birth, at a clinic in Hell's Kitchen, born too soon (and now he might be dying too soon as well), already in a hurry, the nurse running to get a doctor and coming back to find Martha with him in her arms... then crying in an incubator while they did mysterious things to his mother. And crying, missing the one who'd lived there inside her with him, but wasn't there anymore.

• Six months old, wailing hungrily at an audition, his mother wheeling him out of the theater in humiliation and sitting down in tears on the front steps of the theater to nurse him...

• A toddler, walking in on a drunken nanny who'd set the couch on fire with her cigarette, pouring 'water' on her, a whoosh of blue, almost invisible flame, being thrown across the room to bang his forehead on the TV...

• A preschooler, already knowing his ABCs, fighting with a boy named Michael over the shoelace practice toy... Michael sliding the knotted string around the neck of a kitten and stringing it up on the jungle gym, laughing...

• His fourth birthday party, Michael screaming at him over cupcakes, and a short, blurry time later, waking up from a nap to find something wrapped around his neck...

• A kindergartener, struggling to write his thoughts down with a stupid fat red-barreled pencil that only made his fingers plod, circle time stealing the story away...

• A first grader, his first crush, a sweet little red-haired girl who thought he was cute and gave him a Valentine...

• His sixth summer, at sleep-away camp on a lake, going fishing and watching helplessly as the trout gasped and died in a bucket of warm water on the dock. The counselor screaming in his face: "MAN UP. They're fish. They can't feel anything."

• His seventh autumn, missing six weeks of school with one illness after another, reading voraciously. Martha stuck at home with him, unable to find work or a sitter. The power being turned off, Halloween by candlelight, all the neighborhood kids sitting there in the dark living room with them, Martha telling ghost stories because she had no candy to give out...

• His seventh winter: Going back to school to find that he was ahead instead of behind, and all the kids either calling him weird or asking him to help with spelling...

• His seventh spring, getting into a fistfight at PS 47 with a round-headed boy named Jeremy who was plucking the feathers off a live pigeon he'd snared under the bleachers. Knocking Jeremy into a wall, both of them being expelled. Jeremy oddly familiar, smirking as he was led away from the principal's office by his foster mom... Martha picking him up from school, furiously proud...

• His eighth Christmas, him at boarding school, eating cafeteria Christmas dinner with the four other kids who couldn't go home either, reading "A Christmas Carol," and wishing a ghost would fly in and carry him out the window. His mother instead, bustling in through the door with a new husband in tow, laughing and warm and smelling of hot buttered rum, taking him home for a whole week of ice skating and new books and a trip to the magic shop...

• His ninth July Fourth, Martha and new, second husband getting into a roaring fight about nothing while the fireworks went off overhead, and him with his hands over his ears even though he loved explosions...

• His fifth grade teacher, the delectable Mrs. Watson, who loved Sherlock Holmes (yes, really!). She insisted on the onerous rainy day Social Dance classes that taught him to conquer the sweat and terror that is the Foxtrot... as danced with Noelle, the chubby girl with freckles who not-so-secretly adored him. (He gave her a rock. She still has it. She now writes steamy fan-fiction, but thank God it's about sparkly vampires instead of him.)

• His eleventh summer: reading Casino Royale in the library, looking across the room at the librarian and wondering if she might actually be a secret agent, as a tall, graying janitor sweeps past him, barely noticed, with a wink and a grin...

• His eleventh Autumn: lighting a bonfire in front of the school office because it was the Fifth of November, and getting expelled because "What do you think this is? ENGLAND?"

• His seventeenth July Fourth, on location with his mother on a movie shoot. It was a sword-and-sorcery epic; she was playing the duplicitous queen (better that than the fawning nanny) and he'd gotten work as an extra, since he was a fencer and fit the "Second Teen In Muddy Rags, With Sword" requirement. He'd made friends with "First Teen in Muddy Rags, with Spear", a friendly, dreadlocked-and-bearded, brown-eyed kid named Declan Connor who coached him on his Irish accent. Connor's American accents – New York, Georgia, Texas, California Valley Girl – were all perfect, and he mimicked Rick's voice with amazing accuracy. Martha stayed on at the shoot site for her own scenes. Connor took the bus back to town and begged Rick to meet up for a visit, promising him good times, 'brilliant craic' and pretty girls. Rick bought a used bike and rolled around the countryside solo for a week. July 4 found him alone and homesick, lighting illegal fireworks in a grassy Irish field full of gassy Irish cows and being collared by the farmer: "What the feck do ya t'ink this is? Feckin' AMERICA?" Rick put on his best North Dublin accent, introducing himself as one Paul Hewson. Sang "Bad" from U2's Unforgettable Fire a capella (perfectly, out of sheer terror) and to this day, your man's down at the pub, his watery old eyes swimming behind bottle-thick glasses, telling his tale about "The Time I Caught Bono Settin' Off Fireworks in My Bull Paddock Like a Feckin' Eejit."

When Rick got to Dublin two days later, he met up with Connor. Connor had a girlfriend, Rosie, who was a bit older, had exquisite legs, and was struggling through pre-med. She'd acted as an extra in the movie with them, and since it was non-union, assisted with makeup as well. Rick hung out with them all day, pub-crawling along the Bloom's Day trail. After a fish-and-chips dinner, they met up with four buskers on Grafton Street. From there, they all went to a squat house, played some music, drank too much, and one of them suggested he try a little snort of H. Connor said, "Yeh know, it's legal here. Perfectly safe."

Already drunk, Rick still had the presence of mind to say "No. I don't wanna mix it with booze." Connor and the tambourine player held him down, and Connor's girlfriend, Rosie, stuffed some in his nose and made him breathe it in. He struggled, but there it was, bliss blossoming through his sinuses and into his brain. It was the first, and only, night of his life that he just did not give a damn about anything. It was heavenly wonderment. In hazy, comfortable peace, he never consciously knew that his heart stopped beating for about 30 seconds before it lazily resumed out of habit. (At this point, Rick, watching himself, said, "Whoa," and Petrus said, "I know. You were stupid.")

Passed out, Connor and Rosie beat him just for fun. The buskers freaked out and tried to stop them, but Connor had turned into something savage and terrifying, and they all scattered like rabbits. Rosie slashed Rick's arm with a razor blade (missing an artery), and together with Connor, robbed him blind. There was no reason he should have survived, except that his heart rate was so low his body didn't bother to bleed out. When he came to, he stumbled out the window they'd clambered in, and he walked for a while, eventually collapsing next to the bronze statue of Molly Malone. A Gardai found him and got him to the hospital. He had to reach the movie production company to contact Martha. She left early, picked him up, cleaned up the mess with the lost passport, and got him home to New York. She didn't speak to him for a week, was replaced by Jean Marsh on the production, and her scenery-chewing brilliance wound up on the cutting room floor. His first novel, In A Hail of Bullets, was about a heroin smuggler who tries to go straight and winds up on everyone's bad side. It hit the best seller list, and out of the 23 people who quit doing or dealing because of his blistering attack on the drug trade, 5 wrote thank you letters. One, in an unmarked envelope from Ireland, contained his stolen passport.

The images came faster and faster, not necessarily in experiential order or order of importance, but a sort of progressive logic, vaguely held together in themes: every girl he kissed just because he could; the one and only time he cheated in school; his first sex, with Jocelyn, whom he thought he loved even though she just thought he was cute and really didn't understand his jokes and only read Sweet Valley High; the time he went to a party with one girl and left with another; the time he didn't have enough money for lunch or the subway, did a dine-and-dash, punched the busboy who chased him down, and jumped the turnstile; the time his friend Alan's girlfriend came on to him and he let her; the time he came on to Jim's girlfriend and she let him; the girl he kept seeing because he was horny and she liked to put out, even though he loved someone else; the "borrowed" motorcycle and the "misplaced" incredibly ugly sweater his great-aunt sent him and the "lost" virginity and the "found" money that occasionally showed up when he least expected it...

The sheer mundanity of his life was exhausting, just like anybody's. Sacred and profane, a mix of food binges, hot showers, cold showers, awkward medical moments, reading the entire World Book Encyclopedia through the 1986 yearbook in one endlessly rainy month, physics tests, birthday parties, fencing matches, first dates, last calls and bathroom breaks when he never bothered to go back to class, coffees drunk, graduations, jobs applied for, skinny dipping, laughing too hard, and people who just thought he was too weird. Vowing over and over that he'd never let anyone see him cry, breaking that vow once in a while. Yearbook inscriptions: "Keep writing, Rick." "You have a great smile. Don't ever change!" "Call me over the summer!" The first time he skydived, target practice, landing his first good punch, orgasms fired (some solo, some with company), watching Rocky Horror for the first time and wondering how it felt to wear stockings, food poisoning from the time he dumpster dived with an idiot urban forager, blaming hangovers on the flu, and showing up to work with the flu because "Rent is DUE, Ricky." Dances and kisses and and his first love (though of course not his first heartbreak). Every single time he got fired from a job he hated anyway. His first real love, Kyra, two years together, gone in a flash. Suddenly he's 22, just getting his BA in political science (because that's what he likes researching at the time), Meredith's pregnant and it's publish-or-perish because if he can't find a publisher, the baby goes.

Holding Alexis, still trying to talk Meredith into nursing because he'd read so much... her folding her arms over beautiful, round, milk-swollen breasts and shaking her head painfully: "I've done my part, Ricky. Now it's your turn."

Holding Alexis, her wide blue eyes fixing on his face with that strange, wise recognition and trust. His mother's voice over his shoulder, quiet and thrumming with pride: "She's an old soul."

"I hope she'll teach me something new," Rick had replied.

Writing, and reading. Book after book after book after book after book. Sitting under a redwood tree in California. Alexis is five years old, with a bandage on her skinny knee, playing cat's cradle. He's picking her up on her last day of Vacation Bible Camp. It was literally his last resort. He had a series of Northern California and Oregon book signings, Meredith was busy on location (and screwing her director), Martha was working in Europe, and it seemed every option had just fallen through. So at the last minute he had basically entrusted Alexis to a bunch of holy rollers who, he later came to realize, actually spoke in tongues. At least they didn't mess around with rattlers. "This is Jacob's Ladder," Alexis says, holding it up. "Jacob wrestled with an angel."

"Did he hit him with a ladder, too?"

Alexis sticks out her tongue at him, and they laugh together. They fly home, she falls asleep on the plane, he carries her out to the taxi.

Alexis dances on the lid of the grand piano in a purple tutu as Martha plays and sings, "Tea for Two". Alexis blows up her science fair volcano with a little too much baking soda. Alexis beats him at Laser Tag. Alexis in a cage, in Paris, climbing out, terrified, clinging to him, both of them shaking, as his father covers their escape with gunfire. Alexis sound asleep, half-naked on the couch, wedged under her boyfriend Pi (who, Rick could see, knew too much about smuggling exotic 'fruit' out of Costa Rica, and who didn't have the grace or sense to cover her up with a throw as she slept trusting in his arms).

Alexis. He would never see her come into her career, maybe marry, maybe have children, buy a house, rescue her from doing something incredibly stupid, blossom into maturity, save the world. All the things he knew she could do, greyed out in a dwindling rectangle.

He stared at the murder board. His murder board.

He said, "There's something missing. Someone..."

Beckett.

The first time he saw her was at his first book signing. He was, on his publicist Paula's insistence, wearing tight jeans, a T, leather jacket, aviator shades. He was opening for Patterson, who had very kindly grandfathered him in (privately, in payment for that bet about stealing the police horse). Rick was 20. Little Katie Beckett was twelve, scrawny and shy in braces, her never-dyed hair hanging in waves of chocolate brown down her back. Johanna was a pretty brunette in her late 30s, come straight from work, in a soft grey tweed wool suit. Katie was over in the YA section, absorbed in a Nancy Drew, chewing on a wisp of her hair. She was only a peripheral blur, just a little girl that his conscious mind didn't even register.

Paula introduced Rick as a "bright new star on the crime fiction horizon." He was given polite applause, stood up, pretended to be even more nervous than he was, got a sympathetic laugh. Waved over at Patterson. "I'd like to thank my friend Pat Jameson, I mean Patter- James Patterson, for this opp- chance to, uh, ok, I'll just start then. This is, uh, the first page of of "In a Hail of Bullets."

"Michael's heart stopped beating maybe eight minutes after he snorted the heroin. It was his very first time. He was already drunk; Declan pulled out a vial of powder, laid a line on a little mirror, snorted it through a straw. Did it again, offered to Michael. Michael had already tried coke, liked it all right, wanted to be sociable. He took a deep snort, and what came back through his sinuses was not familiar, but blew coke right out of the race for Favorite Thing Ever. There was no buzz down the back of his sinuses, but a bitter yet less astringent taste. The feel? Just rolling fog, coming in slowly. He smiled. "What is this stuff?"

Kelly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, her shaggy hair nearly hiding her green eyes. "It's H, Michael."

Being American, he didn't quite understand her. "Haitch?"

"Heroin, ya dumb fuck," grinned Declan. "Afghanistan's finest." He sat back in the recliner and sighed.

"Your accent's so cute, Kelly," Michael grinned. "New Yorkers talk through our noses too much. New Yorkers, we're not usually so friendly as me. I. Am."

Michael was already feeling sleepy. His head sort of wanted to be on his own shoulder for a while. He leaned back in Kelly's skinny, needle-tracked arms, fading in and out, smiling faintly. A bliss rolled over him, comforted him, pillowed him, buoyed him. Nothing hurt. No fear. No shame. The loneliness and longing and hollow ache... for the first time in his memory... gone. Kelly extricated herself and sat back to watch the fun, taking a sip out of the vodka bottle. After a while, Michael forgot all about the job of breathing, and being at an odd angle, he rolled off the filthy couch. His chest and jaw hit the coffee table on the way down, and he landed hard on the floor, stone dead. The other squatters laughed. They were all high, too, and didn't notice the blue-gray tinge of apoxia around his slack mouth, under his fingernails.

It must have been the shock of the fall that restarted his heart. Somewhere underneath it all a little rush of adrenaline pulled him through, made him aware when they beat him, stole his wallet and passport and even his jacket. Although it didn't actually hurt until he woke up a second time, sometime around four a.m., lying alone in a boarded up house, soaked in a pool of his own urine.

He sat up, dazed, and made it as far as all fours. He hurled, got up, and went for the sink. Of course the water had been turned off for months, maybe years. He found the boarded window through which he'd clambered with his new-found friends the night before. In the predawn light, North Dublin's streets were empty save for a few delivery trucks.

"Cockles and mussels, my ass."

He started down the street in search of a phone booth. He was gonna have to call the consulate. Worse, he was gonna have to call his mother.

The audience smiled or nodded in all the right places. They cringed in all the right places. At the end, they applauded, and the applause wasn't just polite. In the corner of her Johanna Beckett's eye, the tween girl reading the Nancy Drew book glanced up, annoyed, and went back to it. Katie wouldn't read "In a Hail of Bullets" for a two years yet, and it was that gritty, ugly, angry, life-affirming, and oddly fun book Johanna handed to her when it was time to have The Talk About The War On Drugs.

Patterson sold ten cases of books that night. Rick sold a shocking, gratifying, exhilarating thirty copies of his very first book. Martha had bought the first two. Meredith had given one to her folks. Patterson bought the fourth, but Rick dismissed that as good manners since he'd already read the second draft. The next was bought by a tall old man with a long white beard, in a fedora and tinted glasses that hid most of his face. The old man had shaken Rick's hand with a surprisingly firm grip and grunted, "Good job." Johanna Beckett bought the sixth copy he sold. Of this, his first book.

When Black Pawn published his second book nine months later, Johanna bought the twenty-seventh copy. She bought the thirty-fourth copy of his third book, then skipped a few signings. She came back with her punky, purple-haired, 17-year-old, suddenly-much-taller daughter for the tenth copy of the seventh book: "Who shall I make this out to?"

"Katie. No, Kate. Make it Kate."

He teased the girl gently, as he would his own daughter. "Make it Kate. Sincerely, Richard Castle."

And then Johanna didn't come anymore.

Kate.

He saw her standing in line, just a glance. Twenty years old, thin as rail and white as a sheet, dyed black hair pulled back in a severe bun, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses, wearing black and charcoal gray, holding a coffee cup and a pre-purchased copy of that year's newest book, "Hell Hath No Fury". Walking with Gina, he'd hurried past Kate on their way into the bookstore. Kate had barely caught his eye, and he knew he was seeing a reconstructed memory, the kind a witness thinks they see when all they know is a description of what happened. Only Kate had never told him... this. How she'd waited in line for over an hour, how he'd arrived in a flurry of stupid... stupidity, how she'd left at the last minute before even approaching him, thrown her coffee cup in the trash, stood there looking like she was going to throw the book in too. How she'd stared at him, her lips a thin, white line, and he'd paused a moment signing someone else's chest, somehow feeling her eyes boring into him. How she'd turned and walked away, disgusted, and he saw a sick defeat in the line of her bony shoulders. How she'd gone home and read the book in spite of herself, trying to kill the thoughts racing in her head, better than any drug could, even though the book itself kind of sucked. How she'd read about a group of silly, pretty girls dancing naked and riding horses bareback in the moonlight, inventing magical rituals to make their lives feel like they had meaning. How she'd cried with frustrated incomprehension that someone who understood her so well on paper could be so boorish and shallow in person.

Kate. He looked up at his murder board. How many murders had he helped her solve? He stood there, rearranging them by type: accidental death, premeditated, gang-related, revenge. Motive. Method. Opportunity.

"Who's trying to kill me?" He glanced over at Petrus and Meph. They were sitting at a little table, playing Scrabble. Petrus looked over at him and shrugged.

Meph snorted. "Who isn't?" He was laying out tiles, delicately, with the tips of his claws.

Petrus said, "Genqux isn't a word."

"It is now. Triple word score, played on the x... that's... 79 points. Your turn."

Castle looked again at his timeline.

"Kate," he whispered, as if she was standing right beside him. "The timeline's wrong. The story..."

He heard her voice in his mind. "NO. This is NOT how it ends. This... RICK? THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS." She was standing on an embankment in her wedding dress, staring at him through the flames of a burning car. His burning car.

What would Beckett do? Do that. He did it. He charged over to the table and rammed it up sideways. It slammed against the pearly gates, they groaned and crackled, the Scrabble tiles flying and, for some reason, safety glass too. Heaven has a windshield? Petrus and Meph stood aghast.

Meph said, "What the fuck."

Petrus ran a hand across his bald pate. "What, are you trying to kill me?"

Kate's angry voice echoed in Rick's mind, a voice that could make a demon turn tail and run. And Rick cried it out loud. "This is my life. MY LIFE." He turned back to the murder board. Story of his life. Storyboard. Whatever.

He frantically rearranged tiles of information like the index cards he still occasionally used to organize his thoughts, had used years before outlining software made his writing so much easier. He banged on the gray areas until they they gave up links, pictures, words. The screen/wings vibrated like a hummingbird's. Meph came close and tried to stop him, Rick pulled a lightsaber out of nowhere and slashed off one of Meph's horns, which fell away in a smoking hiss. Meph went after it and put it back on, welding it into place with a red crackle of lightning. "That was uncalled for."

Rick said, "I officially change this ending from murder mystery to science fiction." He raised the light saber again.

Meph said, "Where did you get that? You're not even wearing any pants."

Rick grinned. "I dunno. Where'd you get your snake?"

Mephistopheles tried to look backwards down his own ass. "Nobody said anything about no mistakes in hell."

Rick laughed, gesturing wildly at the board, which nimbly dodged the "whooomm" of the light saber. "This... You said it yourself. Time doesn't matter here. And I'm seeing these threads... They're not threads, they're strings. I only have a poor layman's understanding of string theory but it's enough to weave a ladder out of, between the fingers of heaven and earth. Jacob's ladder. The moment between a pulse and a wave. The obfuscation of a name, an identity you can't keep straight. This is a storyboard. And I'm a writer. This is my story. And I'm telling you both. It doesn't end here." He pointed to the frame with the car, burning merrily away, the lovely bride weeping at the top of the embankment. "Too. Soon."

He couldn't feel his fingers, and the line was nebulous, but he dragged at it anyway, and it extended, uncoiling like DNA, all the way to the end of the board. "Not till here. I am NOT leaving Kate. It's her story, it's my story, it's our story, and it cannot end with me burning to death in a car."

Mephistopheles growled, "That's not how it works around here."

"Well guess what, Meph? 'Here' isn't real. You're not real. You're a construct. You're straight out of a Heironymous Bosch painting, you're second fiddle to a self-absorbed, buzzkill evil overlord, and my girlfriend wears higher heels than yours on her fucking day off."

Mephistopheles' mouth opened wide in shock. Inside his mouth, the parasites on his tongue also dropped their jaws. And inside that... yeah, it just kept on going, smaller and smaller suckers in smaller and smaller mouths. For a hypnotic moment, Rick thought he was going to fall in, and Meph saw his chance, raised his red, webbed claws, ready to finish things. Or start them. But it was Rick's story now, and he was stickin' to it.

Rick said mildly, "Go home, Mephistopheles. You're done here."

And with a shrug and a little poof of sulphur, Meph was gone.

Petrus looked up at Rick, rather anxiously. "I don't know about mistakes, per se." He gestured at the murder board. The story board. The hovering dove of memory. He continued, "but that thing's gonna blow up in your face in, uh, no time."

"Right."

Rick was looking at the little movie, himself in the Mercedes, eating up the miles between the City and the Hamptons. Driving through bucolic land, much of it old farms and estates. He loved back roads and obscure local stories, enjoyed history and folklore and tidbits of gossip. So he had a good sense of the area around him. He'd noticed the Escalade fifteen miles back; sometimes closer and sometimes more distant. Once he stopped, it passed him, and then it pulled out behind him again, having been concealed amongst other cars at a seasonal cherry stand. He should have told Beckett he was being followed. He did the next best thing, because just for once he wanted her to have a good day. He didn't want to worry her. He speed-dialed 911: better safe than sorry on this of all days.

"My name is Richard Castle. I'm at risk for abduction and am being followed by a black Escalade. The license plate is Virginian. The numbers have probably been altered, but..." he struggled to keep them straight, reading them backwards and at a distance in the rear view mirror. "My location is approximately..." He went on, giving the details. Boy, were Ryan and Espo gonna be pissed that he called the locals. The dispatcher said, "Stay calm, sir, and I suggest you continue to a location in public. There's a country store half a mile ahead of you. Stay with your car if at all possible, and lock your doors."

Then he called Kate. He watched himself calling her, telling her he loved her. She said "I love you." He smiled, and watched himself smile.

The traces of an overgrown, ancient house foundation caught the corner of his eye, three hundred feet off, in the woods, draped with creepers. He'd noticed and daydreamed about it many a time on the road back and forth. Even done some research, used it as a setting for one of his Claire Sainte Victoire romance novels. He smiled. A romance novel. Time to write another one.

The Cadillac was back on his tail again. Back in his tale. Growing closer.

"Well," Rick said. "Time to wrestle the angel again."

He looked over from the murder board to find Petrus, only Petrus didn't look like Petrus anymore. She looked like a real angel, like his Kate, glowing in tank top, yoga pants and sneakers, hair in a messy ponytail. There was a pulse of power around her, better than a halo, better than wings.

"You're gonna have to fight this, Castle," she grinned, and raised her hands in a Krav Maga attack stance. "Ready?"

Rick grinned. "Always."

He closed his eyes, and his opponent was on him.

POW. The airbag inflated and smacked Rick, hard, in the nose. Broken again. His face exploded in pain. The car flew end-over-end off the embankment, hovered almost comically if you were in a Dukes of Hazard episode, then dropped like a cartoon piano. The windshield hit a tree branch that punched a hole right through, deflating the bag and barely missing Rick's right eye. To his shock, the car landed on its passenger side, rocked a tad, then fell back down onto its wheels. He was gonna feel that one in his back, and his left ankle was twisted fiercely by the car's crumpling frame as it hit rock underneath. Dazed, peering through blood, Rick glanced up at the roadside, twenty feet above him. He saw the Cadillac backing up to stop at the gravel curb, a tall man and a stacked woman hesitating, looking down at him. He popped the trunk of the Mercedes, unbuckled his seat belt, and scrambled out on the passenger side, limping toward the trunk on a probably-broken ankle.

Who brings a gun to a wedding?

Someone with enemies. Someone smart and obsessive with details. Someone who likes to plan things. Someone who thinks about contingencies. Someone with resources. Someone who knows people who can get things done.

You thought I was going to say Richard Castle, didn't you?

Haha. Who's writing this thing, anyway?

***
End of Chapter 1.