She's 18. She Really Shouldn't Have to be the Adult.

Disclaimer: I lost Castle to AM in a wild game of Crazy 8s.

Summary: Alexis and Kate have a conversation. Near the end of S4.

Alexis leans back from the book she is reading, stretches her back and her mind and tries to let all the tension she is holding just evaporate. She fails.

The book is fascinating, but it's failing to hold her attention today. The reading is an assignment from Dr. Parish as part of her internship. It's deep into the long dreadful middle of June. Graduation is over and Orientation Week at Columbia is still weeks away. She goes to the M.E's office every day, even though it's been a dead month. Or maybe undead would be more appropriate. They haven't had a case that's required any real level of attention in weeks. Lanie has explained that it's always like this - "The warm weather's burned all the winter crazy off, but it ain't hot enough for the summer crazy to start yet" - so Alexis is starved for work, but with nothing else to do, she comes in every day anyway.

Her friends are all off on trips. She wanted to stick around, hang out with her Dad, but... Richard Castle has been acting like the rewarmed leftover of his normal self for the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, he'd headed off to Vegas in an dangerously ebullient explosion of energy, but that had run itself out pretty quickly. Since then, he'd been limping around the house as an uncharacteristically sad sack that makes her want to cry, every time she sees him.

She wishes she really hated Kate Beckett, so that she could kill her without remorse.

Because, rubbing her eyes, she knows it's all Kate's fault. He was like this last summer too, stuck in limbo waiting for the Detective's call that never came. At least in her absence, he was able to lie to himself. This time around, getting up, dragging himself to the precinct in a way that's fooling no one but the man himself, it's worse. He's not talking about it, he's not talking about anything, really, but she's overheard enough conversations between him and Grams, read between enough lines, picked enough details from an inebriated Grandmother to rebuild the whole story.

Boy Loves Girl. Boy Tells Girl. Girl Gives Boy Hope. Girl Proves to be Messing with Boy All Along. Boy Is Shattered Into a Hundred Million Tiny Writerbits. Daughter Must Reassemble Writerbits with Tweezers and Ice Cream. Daughter Goes Crazy and Makes up Children's Books in Her Head That Use the Term Writerbits.

Alexis shakes her head, tries to clear her thoughts of her Dad, tries to go back to the forensics text in front of her, but she can't, because Detective Beckett is standing next to her.

"Hi, Alexis."

"Um, hi, Detective Beckett. Dr. Parish is out, but she should be back in an hour or so." She wants this conversation over quickly.

"Oh, no, that's okay," Detective Beckett replies. "It's just dead upstairs, I thought I'd see what everyone was up to."

"Oh," Alexis says, and can hear the sharpness in her own voice. She knows she's being rude. It's hard, since she still likes Kate. She has too much of the Castle optimism in her, part of her wants to still believe there is just some sort of odd misunderstanding in all of this. But, she is angry, because while she likes Kate, she loves her Dad, and has little patience for someone who would seek to hurt him. She's angry at herself too, because she never would have judged Kate to be one of the ones that would hurt him. Please just leave, she thinks to herself, hoping that some of the sentiment shows on her face.

Detective Beckett must recognize the look, because she steps back. "Oh, okay, well, I'll let you... you're obviously studying. I'll text Dr. Parish later." She turns then, heads back to the stairwell.

"What is my dad to you anyway?" Alexis asks when Kate is almost out of the room. The question throws both women for a loop. Alexis closes her eyes, clamps her jaw shut. She had no intention of speaking, but it's out there now.

"What?"

"I mean... is he just the guy you work with? Is he your friend? Is he the guy that makes you famous? You come over... you're nice to me and Grams and I don't get it."

Kate stands stunned. Alexis's voice is breaking with something she can't contain - anger? resignation? betrayal? Even she can't put a name to her own feelings.

"He'd take a bullet it for you, you know. He'd die for you," she continues. She can't seem to make herself stop.

"I'd die for him too," Kate says. The words are out of her mouth so quickly, Alexis briefly wonders if she even thought before speaking, like it's too true to even need thought. But, Detective Beckett always thinks before speaking.

Alexis laughs, but it's not a happy or funny laugh, "Yeah, but you're a cop. It's your job."

"I wouldn't ... I'd do it because it's him, not because it's my job."

Alexis looks up, her eyes wide. Kate has surprised her. Kate sighs.

Does she really mean that, Alexis wonders to herself. She starts again, quieter this time. "I don't know. I want to believe that. I mean, I thought you were different, but now I don't know."

"Different?"

"Dad..." How does she explain this? "Everyone thinks that because Dad's all happy-go-lucky that he's sort of impervious. But he's ... I mean, he's so good at protecting and taking care of others that no one seems to notice that Dad's not really good at protecting himself."

Kate chuckles. "I know."

Alexis scowls. It isn't funny. "He's forty. He's not going to learn how to protect himself now. He needs people to do it for him."

"I try," Kate says. But she's obviously not getting it.

"I don't mean physically. Meredith... my mother ... she's not really able to see past herself, so I don't think it's ever occurred to her that other people need things ... anyway. Gina... I think Gina thought protecting Dad meant protecting him as a writer, not as a person. And that girl from college, before my mom, I guess she just protected her family. I thought, maybe you'd do better, but ... I guess I'm wrong."

"Oh," Kate seems to say, and it takes Alexis a moment to realize that Kate didn't actually speak. Her face made the motions, but nothing had come out. Alexis just watches her.

"Alexis, I ... it's complicated. I am trying to protect him," she says and stops. She takes a deep breath, seems to come to a decision. "I am trying to protect his heart."

"It doesn't look like it from here," Alexis says, and she doesn't even try to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

"There are things that you don't understand."

"Don't patronize me. I know that telling someone you love them is a brave thing. I know that bravery should be rewarded. How would you like it if someone took your bravest moment and pretended it never happened?"

Kate sobs unexpectedly and abruptly. "He knows?"

"That you know what he said? Yes."

"How?"

"Does it matter? Dad pays attention to everything, even when you don't realize he's doing it. Pays a lot more when it's about someone he cares about. Loves."

Alexis runs out of steam, because really, what good is this doing? Sure, it's easy to share someone else's secrets and blame someone for their mistakes when you don't know or care why they've made them, but her Dad and Detective Beckett are both good people, and it really shouldn't be this hard, and maybe her concern is really all fueled by disappointment, because she feels like she's losing out on something she wasn't even cognizant of wanting herself.

"I'm sorry. It's ... it's not really my business I guess," she gets out, quieter now.

Kate chokes out some strangled sound, the pitiful lovechild of a laugh and a cry. "Alexis, he's your Dad. I can't imagine anyone's who's business it is more."

"Please ... Detective Beckett ... can you please just tell him how you feel, let him move on?"

Kate does start crying then, and Alexis wonders if she isn't dreadfully wrong and dammit, she didn't want Beckett to cry. Alexis can feel a sting in her eyes. She's crying too.

"I can't," Kate says, through the tears.

"Can't tell him how you feel? He already knows. He just needs to hear the words."

"Can't let him move on. I can't be without him."

She wants Kate's words to mean one thing, forces herself to know they means something else. She's seeing now why her Dad is as lost as he is, how easy it is to hang big hopes on little things.

"If he's your friend, if you care about him, then can't you ... he knows you don't love him." Kate flinches as Alexis says that. "He doesn't blame you for that. But he needs to hear the words, needs to stop letting himself believe ... you've got to protect him from his own hope."

"Where is he?"

Oh. That can't be good.

"He's," Alexis says, stalls. "Um, he'll be home tonight. You could come over..."

"No, where is he now? Please, where is he?"

"He's," she says, but there is an intensity now radiating off of Detective Beckett, one that seems to brook no argument. Alexis gives up. "There's a signing at that Barnes and Noble on the Upper West Side. I think he's there for a few more hours..."

"Thanks. Thanks, Alexis," Kate says, standing up. The words are muddled. Alexis can see Kate has already mentally left. "I promise...I'm different. I'll fix this."

Alexis sits, watches the Detective leave in a frantic rush. Should she call her Dad, or just get the hell out of the way? Did she just do a very good thing, or a very bad one?

She's only eighteen. Why does she have to be the adult?