#meredith castle

Once he’s finished—nose pressed to the glass wall of his office—making absolutely sure that Meredith actually gets into the cab down on Broome, he has no real reason to head to the precinct. But the precinct is exactly where he heads. He decides to go on foot, figuring the walk in the bright, brisk April sun will give him time to do a draft and polish of the very good reason he definitely has for heading there. 

It’s odd—not that he’s going to to the precinct. That’s not odd in the least. He is in the habit of pushing his luck on that front to such an extent that he’s been googling furiously to determine whether there’s such a thing as a discreet bulletproof vest for the on-the-go writer who is pretty sure boundaries are for other people. The reason—the excuse he’s working on as his feet carry him uptown on autopilot—that’s the odd part. 

He generally sweeps in as though he’s always expected and certainly always welcome. He’ll make the rounds sometimes before he lands in the chair—his chair—beside her desk. He tap tap taps on the wooden frame of the Captain’s door and floats the idea of a Knicks game, a golf outing, the new legal eagles poker group he’s putting together. He glides into the break room to make sure everyone is enjoying their foamy richness or to share his tips and tricks for latte art. But he always lands in the chair, and if he explains himself, it’s purely for the entertainment value of said explanation. 

That’s not what’s happening now, though. He comes up against a stop light and bounces impatiently in place. He rocks from toe to heel and back again. He rolls his shoulders, but he can’t fidget his way out of the knowledge that he is legitimately trying to come up with a reason for his impending darkening of her doorstep. He can’t fidget his way out of the knowledge that he just wants to see her. 

That’s odd, too. Once again, it’s not at all odd that he wants to see her. Oh, he swaggers and postures and makes a great show of broadcasting the impression that he lives solely to annoy her, but he’s not deluded enough to deny in his heart of hearts that he has quite the crush on Detective Beckett. He thoroughly enjoys the ticklish sensation of butterfly wings batting crazily against his ribs when the elevator doors open and he first catches sight of the unflattering fluorescents doing no favors to her adorably unfortunate hair color. He thoroughly enjoys the way those butterflies really ramp up when she cuts him to the quick in one of her regular displays of verbal brilliance. So why is he trying to write his way out of the simple truth that he likes to see her? 

He still has no real idea why when he hits the precinct steps. He has no idea why when he waves to the duty sergeant who reflexively buzzes him through the lobby, when he stabs the elevator button, or when he makes a beeline and drops right into the chair they both know is his. He has arrived, no closer to knowing why than when he left his loft.

She scowls at him without turning toward him in the slightest. It’s another of her many talents. It’s clear she has no intention of acknowledging his presence at all, let alone giving him an opening for one of his patented, highly entertaining explanations. It’s for the best: he still doesn’t have one, entertaining or otherwise. 

“I got rid of Meredith,” he blurts. “I dropped an ungodly amount of money to back some indie film that will keep her tied up for months—years, if I’m lucky and the director has no idea what he’s doing. It’s LA and it’s location shoots and it’s absolutely not New York, and . . .” He runs out of steam as rapidly as he gathered it. “She’s gone. I got rid of her.” 

When the silence has grown to truly monumental proportions, she turns her head at last. She studies him, perplexed. She says nothing, and he wonders if she’s wondering how it is that this is not at all a brag, and it could easily have been. It almost certainly should have been a series of brags about the cash he has on hand, about his puppet master skills. It’s not that, though, and he wonders what she’s wondering. 

“Alexis is relieved.” That’s not a brag, either. It’s defensive. “There was this whole ‘hypothetical’ conversation about how she loves her mom, and I told her that moms always drive their kids crazy, and anyway. She’s relieved.” 

There should be a silent So, THERE, hanging in the air. No. Scratch that. It shouldn’t be silent at all. It should be a full-voice brag. See? Father knows best after all, Detective. It’s not that, though, and with ample data regarding what it isn’t, they seem to be mutually waiting to find out what it is. 

Another towering silence grows. He’s the one to break it. Kind of. 

“Do you think I did the right thing?” 

Her jaw doesn’t drop, though well it might at the question alone. Adding in the sudden smallness of his voice, it’s amazing that it’s not sitting on the scuffed tile beneath her desk. Instead, she looks startled, self-conscious. She turns back to her paperwork. 

“Alexis is relieved, right?” She shrugs with exaggerated lack of interest. “There’s your answer.” 

“Alexis is fifteen.” He flashes a small, bitter smile. “I do actually know that fifteen-year-olds don’t always know what’s best for them.” 

“And virtual strangers do?” She sets down her pen and swivels her chair to face him. She arranges a smirk on her face, but she’s curious. Hell, he’s curious. “Why ask me?” 

“I want to know,” he says, the explanation arriving at last. “I just want to know what you think.” 

A/N: Strange that none of Meredith's million lies ended up being the prompt here.

His feelings about Cosmo—Benny, though he’ll go to his grave swearing that baby does not look like a Benny—are sort of like a multi-level marketing scheme. There’s the surface truth, there’s the truth unearthed by The Long, Dark, Night of the Pukestorm, and there’s the truth he’s still uncovering. Maybe the several truths he is still uncovering. 

The surface truth is that he’s simply smitten by the little guy, as is every reasonable person who is not immediately involved in trying to solve the crime attached to his arrival in this particular time and place. He is smitten. Lanie is smitten. Hell, even Gates and his mother are eventually smitten. It’s the luxury they all have from that first moment. They are not potentially racing against a clock to determine whether the kid’s family might have suffered the same fate as Cameron Ducane. They  can let compassion and the drive to soothe and protect lead. 

Bobbing on the surface of that surface truth is the fact that, as a parent, he’s bound to be a bit more vulnerable to the troubling story as it emerges. It’s no coincidence that he “suddenly” notices that the kid is hungry when child services first comes up and he’s suddenly compelled to conscript a uniform and go on a supply run. It’s no abrupt failure of his vivid imagination that has his jaw dropping when she first gingerly floats the idea that no one is looking for Cosmo, because there’s no one left to look for him. That’s all down to simple repression, because he’s a father. It’s a core part of his being and all the tending to Cosmo’s immediate needs is not even addressing the terrible background truths of it all. 

Where Cosmo will go is a miserably open question. The fact that Child Services is even more overburdened than usual around the holidays—which is exactly the opposite of how anything should work—is as heartbreaking a revelation as any he’s weathered in all the time he’s worked with the twelfth. So there’s some savior complex in his impromptu offer to hang on to the little man over night, and all of that is pretty much the surface truth. 

And then there is the trial by projectile vomit, the product of the second layer of truth. He’s giving her grief. That’s truly what he, in his baby-whispering hubris, believes. He’s engaging in some good-natured shenanigans and a no-fail plan to lead her away from the dark path of being Team Esposito when it comes to all things baby. The karmic retribution is swift and brutal and no more than he deserves. And it’s revelatory. It lays bare the truth he confesses to her, because he is nothing if not romantic, and romance calls for invoking the name his ex-wife while they’re both sleep-deprived and dumpster-side. 

She’s a good sport about it. She’s more than a good sport. She shoulders some portion of the blame for admitting that she’s not a baby person, and she tells him, once more, with feeling, that she will be all over raising their in-the-flesh baby side-by-side when the time comes. 

That’s not quite all the truth there is in this whole thing, though. That second layer isn’t a thing unto itself, and that’s something he doesn’t realize until he does invoke the name of Meredith and something genuinely nasty and unsettling shimmies its way through him. That truth doesn’t reveal itself all at once. 

Cosmo. The name he starts reflexively calling the baby, and everyone follows along. 

It was what he was going to call Alexis if she’d been a boy. He’d answered Ryan’s question truthfully when asked. Truthfully, but not fully, just as he was being truthful, but not entirely so, when he said he’d forgotten the part where babies cry themselves into oblivion and no one sleeps. 

He’d intended to call Alexis Cosmo if she’d been a boy, but he can’t remember why. He can’t pull up even the faintest hint of where the name would have come from or what associations he’d had with it. There’s no meaning in it. He can’t remember the sleepless nights walking the floor and that’s quite literal. That is some elite-level repression. 

He thinks of little Benny, who probably looks like a Benny after all, and his own memory full of holes. He swallows hard against the memory of  his desperate panic as he’d held his squalling body up and revealed that he would give into any demand if only the kid would just unambiguously make it. That isn’t a version of himself he recognizes. He has spent nineteen years inhabiting his retconned identity as the baby whisperer. But Benny, Cosmo, all these tentative conversations with Kate about the inevitable next time, the when we . . . that may be fast approaching, they’ve revealed a still-deeper truth. 

He’s traumatized. The first time he lets his mind form the word, it feels ludicrous and melodramatic. It feels like a betrayal of his daughter and every cherished moment of raising her. But it’s no less true for any of that. He’s repressed a lot. He has not allowed himself to think about, let alone voice, so many of the ways in which Meredith wasn’t just an absence, but a havoc-wreaking, damaging presence. 

It’s a hell of a holiday revelation. It would be a hell of a revelation any day of the year, but there are other truths around the Thanksgiving table, too. There is a resilient, healthy relationship with his grown daughter. There is the excited when we . . . light in Kate’s eyes as they one-up each other in telling and re-telling the story of the Pukestorm. 

There are more good yesterdays than there are harrowing ones. There are inarguably wonderful tomorrows ahead. He knows that. He believes it. But he probably needs to spend some time with that next-level truth. He’s traumatized. 

A/N: Repressed traumatic memories all swirled around with good memories, just in time for the holidays—that’s good lack of morphousness goodness

He should be walking on air. His daughter is home. She has knocked on the door and asked—formally asked—if she can come home. He should be smug and over the moon and absolutely insufferable about how he won, how he was right all along, how completely his daughter’s homecoming validates every single thing he’s been saying since the Day of the Sage Bundles, lo! those many months ago. 

Instead, he feels . . . cautious. He is contemplative and more than a little afraid to give in to even that positive a spin on the situation. He suspects he should be more wary than pensive, more relieved than celebratory, and he’s well aware that all of that is pretty off brand for him. 

The return has been quiet, save for that plaintive little knock. He has hugged her hard, and she has allowed it. Kate has hugged her more gently and it’s clear that’s his daughter’s preference right now. She’d like to be treated gently, and he can do that. If he loved either one of them one whit less, he would totally barge right into the center of that careful embrace, loudly declaring that he can totally be gentle. But he loves them both to the moon that he is currently not over, so he hangs back and chides himself for the fraction of a second when he felt a little jealous over how much more willingly his daughter went to Kate’s arms than into his own. 

The quiet is one part of what nudges him toward caution. She herself—the two most important shes in his life—seems to be pleading with him to tread lightly here. But he’s also got a conspiratorial promise hangover. He has the memory of Anita Miller, of Sam Carson, of Dwight Carruthers, CPA, shooting him warning glances. He has to live with the instant—just an instant—where he thought the idea of murdering one’s problems sounded pretty good. And worse than that, he has to live with the possibility that he’s passed his enduring love for wildly over-simplistic solutions down to his otherwise brilliant, capable daughter. 

He has been in the business of simplistic solutions lately. He’s been in the habit of seeing Pi—the viscerally unpleasant Pi that was and the lingeringly worrisome Pi that presumably still is somewhere out there in the expanding universe—as the embodiment of every baffling change Alexis has gone through these last few months. He’s well aware that he’d have done more than taken the brochure if he’d happened to run across Doctor Gustavo Bauer at any point recently. He’s well aware that even now, even tonight, with his exhausted daughter sleeping heavily, if not entirely peacefully, in her own bed, that the idea of altering his mind and shooting a Pi substitute dead has an enduring appeal. 

But it wouldn’t help him any more than it’s helped their three would-be murderers. And it certainly wouldn’t help his daughter, who—he is both reasonably certain and loath to admit—seems to be in need of some help. Because Pi was—and still is, in his lingeringly worrisome Pi way—a magic bullet for her in his own way. He was the key to growing up, getting out, moving on, getting back at . . . Pi was a symbol, a desperate reach for all that she feels like she doesn’t have—that she can’t have because  . . . because he won’t let her? 

That’s not fair. He doesn’t think that’s at all fair. But it’s not all unfair, either. He has coddled and overprotected her, for good reasons and for bad. Because he never had someone to coddle him. Because Meredith couldn’t coddle an egg with a YouTube video, a personal chef, and and crash course at Le Cordon Bleu. Because of Paris and because he’s simply in denial about the passage of time and all that means.  

And he’s done worse than coddle and overprotect. He has . . . avoided, especially when it comes to Kate—his wonderful Kate, who seems to know just how to approach things right now. He has avoided, even before the engagement, clearing the air, speaking to her like the young woman she undeniably is now about his feelings, his intentions, his hopes for the future. He has treated her like a child in the very moment he has needed and wanted her to see the reality of him and Kate as something wholly new and wonderful. And in so doing, he's had a hand in pulling the lever and calling down the lightning that brought Pi so terribly to life. That’s cause for wariness, even though the two of them—she and Kate—seem to have worked things out without him. 

He closes his eyes and calls up the sight of their fingers lightly intertwined as they talked softly at the base of the stairs. He understands suddenly and entirely that he somehow has Kate to thank for this, for his daughter coming home. He’d like to ask her about it. 

She’s sleeping peacefully, at least one deep furrow in her brow smoothed away, at least for tonight, and he’d like to wake her and press for details. He’d really like to get a head start on thanking her for whatever transpersonal psychology trick she’d pulled off. 

But he lets her sleep. He lets them both sleep. He’s cautious, however belatedly. He’s cautious.  

A/N: The lack of morphousness of Pi recedes, at last, into the distance. 

He is sprawled on his back, arms flung wide, smiling pensively up at the darkness. Her head is resting on his shoulder. She is curled into the tight little C shape that means she’s exhausted in a good way and she wants to be close to him. She has her fists balled up and the covers pulled up to her chin in the way that always makes him think she looks as though she might need to pull off a magic trick and make them both disappear in a swirl of comforter. He likes the idea. He’d like to disappear with her. 

That’s not quite true tonight, it surprises him to realize. The train thought is almost rote—she looks like she’s about to pull off a magic trick, he’d like to disappear with her—it almost always goes just like that, but tonight, he realizes, he’s not especially eager for the two of them to disappear. The thought is worth a pensive smile or two. 

Why has he wanted to disappear up to this point? That’s actually easy enough. Life has always gotten in the way for them. The boys have gotten in the way. Murder has gotten in the way. His mother, his daughter,  Meredith, and Pi have gotten in the way. DC and not DC, Bracken and the detente with Bracken. Justice for her mother, close enough that she can taste it, Paris and his erstwhile father, Pi—all these things, all these people and whatever Pi is—have gotten in the way. But tonight, with her curled on her side to keep him close, and a smile on his face that won’t quit, it feels like the way is clear. 

It’s the venue that isn’t to be. That’s part of it. It’s the simple moment they shared over coffee, over a sliding pile of magazines that she hates. That’s a wonderful part of the why, because it really had been nothing big. It had really been, in no way, a dramatic meeting meeting of the minds or a somber deepening of their relationship. It had been a moment of shared delight in a lovely place where they could just, at last, do this thing—and they are mutually ready to do this thing. He is ready to spin her across whatever dance floor they can find and she is ready to be spun. It’s just that simple. 

And it’s not simple at all, either. But that’s also, paradoxically, part of the reason why it feels like the way is clear. When they do this thing, it’s going to be ridiculously complicated. There’s his whole world and the reality that this being his third time around, expectations have been down-regulated. There’s her family and the expectations of a wedding worthy of the wait. There’s her family and all their complicated, conflicting feelings about Katie’s Rich and Famous Man Friend. 

There’s the fact that their looming family dynamics are a potentially volatile mix. His mother adores her to the ends of the earth, and much of the time, the ends of the Earth sounds like the ideal spot for Martha Rodgers to take a well-deserved extended vacation. Her father . . . does not adore him, having filled his quota with slots for people he adores on the day he married Johanna and then day he and Johanna brought little Katie into the world. But her father likes him as much as any man can like the unworthy clod poised to sweep his daughter off her feet, and he—Castle—can respect that I suppose you’ll have to do resignation. There’s the still rocky relationship he has with his daughter, and more troublingly to him, because he would spare each of them anything, her still rocky relationship with his daughter. There’s all of that mismatched energy and impending familial we-are-in-this, and still the way seems clear tonight. 

Her mother would have loved him. That’s what hass really cleared the way. He drums his feet against the mattress with excitement—with joy—and the rolling motion it triggers very nearly lands him a sharp cuff on the chin with one of the tight fists she has balled up around the covers, just south of her nose. He dodges, though. He ducks his head and takes the sharp rap of her knuckles right against his forehead. It smarts. This is Kate Beckett, and even her sleepy little swings of irritation are nothing to sneeze at. It smarts, but he lifts his chin and chases the instrument of destruction with his lips. 

“Why?” he is surprised to hear himself ask the darkness quietly. He asks the very edge of her palm where one crease ducks over the next. “What would she have loved about me?” 

He goes from surprised to utterly appalled with himself. He never meant, in a million years, to ask—to question this wonderful gift she’s given him that has absolutely cleared the way for their lives to get started. He never meant, in a million years, to be so greedy as to ask for more when she has just given him the world in sharing her mother with him—in saying with conviction that she would have loved to be a part of this, and she would have loved him. He hopes against hope that she hasn’t heard. He crosses his fingers, arms still flung wide, and he hopes that he has done his work here tonight, and she is far too exhausted in the good way to have heard his stupid, grasping question. 

But a man can only be so lucky in the space of one single, solitary night. He senses, rather than sees, one adorable eye crack open, and then comes the cluck of her tongue, a deeply annoyed sound that absolutely penetrates the dark. 

“Everything,” she rasps. “So annoying. Woulda been . . .” she frowns hard enough he can see it, even in the dark. “Woulda been charmed.” 

“Charmed,” he repeats, and he doesn’t dodge the balled up fist this time. He lets it land on his jaw and figures he deserves it. 

“Shut up. Smug. Go to sleep.” She swipes awkwardly at the spot where her knuckles have just landed. “Venues tormormoror—” Her tongue won’t release any of the consonants in the world without a fight. She scowls and tries again. “Tomorrow.” 

“Venues.” He presses a kiss to her passing fingers. He dutifully shuts his eyes tight, willing tomorrow to come as soon as it can. There are venues to hunt down. Her mother would have loved him. The way is clear. Tomorrow. 

A/N: Castle asked SO many questions about exactly the things her mother would have loved about him. So many, they almost achieved morphousness outside of this story. 

When she shows up on his doorstep, she’s expecting full-on Richard Castle the Kid, and he does not disappoint. He spends an inordinate amount of time giving her a completely non-euphemistic tour of his train set. Of course she doesn’t know many kids who could also offer an extended digression on the intellectual bankruptcy of the Dickensian Village, given Dickens’ dedication to all things urban, but he definitely does not need the added boost of the cookie sugar rush that’s clearly on its way. 

She’s into it. Now that she’s over herself, she is pretty shamelessly into the way he takes her by the hand and tells her the story of every single ornament and the shy innocence of the kisses he sneaks, even though he’s clearly maneuvering her under the mistletoe at every opportunity. Although the Kate Beckett of four years ago would never have believed it, she finds Richard Castle the Kid utterly charming, and she’s genuinely glad that she didn’t, in the end, cheat herself out of this experience—this opportunity to bask in this unadulterated joy. 

She’s genuinely glad that she didn’t cheat him out of this. He darts from her to Alexis to his mother and back again, unable to settle for long on which of them to annoy, to shower with affection, to embarrass. He does all of these at once to all three of them at once, and she knows how differently things would have played out here if she hadn’t shown up on his doorstep. 

She is, for brief moments here and there, a little resentful about that. She’s surprised when that realization swims up and breaks the surface of her consciousness. She’s dismayed. It seems like proof positive that her mind simply won’t let her have nice things, that it’s determined to hang out with the holiday-hating likes of Esposito and the Grinch, and—heaven forfend—Captain Gates. 

But her instincts are better these days when it comes to knowing herself. They’re not great—hell, they’re probably not even good—but they’re better than they were. So while he’s dancing a remarkably forbearing Alexis around the loft, she lets herself turn the word over in her mind. Resentful. It’s not quite right. What is it that she resents, after all? Her own choice to exchange of a lonely ritual, one that’s rooted in deep sadness, for this—for warmth and light and joy?  

More important, maybe, is the question of who is it that she resents? It’s certainly not Richard Castle the Kid, who is currently march-of-the-wooden-soldier-ing his way to the kitchen for more glögg, the alcohol content of which clearly cannot even begin to subdue him. She breaths a sigh of relief into her own cup as the truth of that washes through her and forces some of the tension from her limbs. In no cell of her body, in no cobwebbed corner of her mind or heart does she resent Richard Castle the Kid. 

She’s not sure what causes the penny to drop. It might be the effort he makes to notch himself down long enough to gather Martha and Alexis to him to apologize, to tell them how grateful he is that the two of them cared enough to keep their tradition, even when he was being rigid and petulant. Or it might be the way he stoically takes the high road and hangs back when Meredith finally calls Alexis, hours later than she’d promised. It might be the way he slows himself down to check on her, to make sure that the Castle family Christmas is not taking too big a toll on her. 

Whether it’s one of these things or all of them together, the penny does drop with such force that it feels like it must have fallen from the top of the Empire State Building. She resents Richard Castle the Grown-Up. She laughs out loud when she realizes it and then has to cope with Richard Castle the Kid trying to shake her down for the joke. But his sugar buzz takes care of that issue in short order. He’s off to harass Alexis again, and she’s left with time and enough glögg to think this thing through. 

Her instincts about herself are better these days. She has, with Burke’s help and work on her own time, come to understand, recognize, and when she’s really lucky, head off at the pass, some of her more self-destructive tendencies. But better, as previously noted, isn’t great. Better, as previously noted, isn’t even good. 

She resents Richard Castle the Grown-Up for asking the hard question—Why not just tell me? She resents him for the simplicity and grace of his response—I didn’t know. He has, in less than ten words, revealed himself to be the man who would never have asked her to give up her tradition, would not have wheedled or cajoled or laid a guilt trip on her until she gave in. Even tonight, if things had played out another way, if she’d kept her watch and he’d kept his tradition, she knows that his joy would certainly have shone a little less brightly, he’d have certainly have played up the drama to let her know that she’d been missed, but he would never have held her choice against her. 

It’s easier for him to say what he wants. That’s true. That’s a matter of character. And it’s equally true that it’s hard for her—it’s hard for her to let herself want anything, and harder still to let that desire be known in a world that feels like it’s been uniformly unkind to her. But she’s safe with him. It’s safe to simply come out and say what she wants, what’s important to her, and tonight she’s in the very strange position of feeling like she’s missed an important memo from Richard Castle the Grown-Up. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” He’s been making a show of sneaking up on her as part of his antic display. She spoils his fun by snatching his hand out of the air just as he’s about to tug on a lock of her hair. He plunks himself down, unperturbed,, but his voice is low. He’s checking on her. 

“You,” she says, taking a leap. She hesitates. Her breath feels like champagne bubbles in her chest as she takes another one. She knows she’ll never hear the end of this, but she pulls him close anyway. “I was thinking I want to be you when I grow up.” 

A/N: Richard Castle the Adult—THIS IS PEAK LACK OF MORPHOUSNESS

There is no point in asking himself why he defends Meredith. He is a belligerent fool on the wrong side of the interrogation table when it comes to this question. He’s a liar who vastly overestimates his ability to outwit the interrogator, even though the interrogator is a fatalistic idiot who thinks there’s no point at all in pursuing this line of questioning. 

It’s a reflex. That’s why number one, and it’s hung around so long that it’s not even a lie anymore. Back in the day, he told himself it was a reflex. Back in the day he told himself it was necessary, because Meredith was a simpering, sashaying disaster, but that simpering, sashaying disaster was his daughter’s mother. So it was his job to defend, to mitigate, to triage, not for Meredith, but for Alexis. 

But there was nothing reflexive about it back then. It was an effort—a constant, draining effort to beat back his own anger, his own unlimited capacity for disbelief at just how badly she would behave at any given moment. For years, defending her was not at all his instinct. It was something he trained himself to do, something he had to work at every single day. 

But the tendency has hung around. It has far outlasted his fury, his ability to be surprised. It has outlasted every feeling he has for or about his ex-wife beyond a kind of wary, weary fondness, because she has defeated him. That’s why number two.  She has long since worn down the part of him that has the energy to protest or chide or even comment on whatever it is she’s up to on any given day. So it is a reflex now. It’s . . . vestigial. 

And therein lies the problem. Therein lies one of the reasons it’s not quite accurate to say that there’s no point in wondering why he defends her. It’s far closer to the truth to say he doesn’t want to wonder, he’s afraid to wonder, because wondering keeps landing him smack dab in the middle of vestigial land. 

Defending her was useful once upon a time. It’s not useful now. It’s not necessary, because Alexis will feel how she is going to feel about her mother. She will navigate the lottery system that seems to govern when Meredith is present, absent, or something painfully, awkwardly in between. She’ll respond to the low-key hostility between her mother and grandmother in her own level-headed, loving way. 

That’s painful in the same way that everything about her growing up, growing away, growing into her own person is painful. It’s also wonderful in exactly those same ways. It is proof positive that he has—miraculously—done well in raising this highly functional person. Or he has at least stayed out of the way and managed to steer clear of most major, lasting, and irreversible screw-ups. 

And it’s a relief. It could be a relief that she no longer needs him to defend Meredith or run interference or manage every damned thing on the rare occasions when she visits her chaotic presence upon them. It could be a relief if he were able to let it be. 

It appears that he is unable to let it be, and this is the truly unpleasant part of the interrogation to which there is no point. He keeps on defending Meredith, but why? Avoiding that question is no longer an option, because he has screwed up here. He has screwed up large. 

It was insane to say yes to Meredith staying at the loft. It would have been insane even if Kate were not staying there, too. But the fact that Kate is staying at the loft drives the whole situation well past the point of insanity and into self-destruction, and stupid things keep falling out of his mouth—vestigial defenses of Meredith—and he’s hurt her. He keeps on hurting her, because he’s stuck in the past. He’s stuck in this pointless, damaging patten of behavior that no one needs anymore. 

He wishes she weren’t so mad at him. He quite devoutly wishes that she weren’t so damned right, so damned reasonable in her anger. He wishes that they could kiss and make up, that they could skip ahead to the part where they’re through this mess and stronger for it. He wishes he could throw himself on the harsh mercies of Kate Beckett, Master Interrogator. 

Because she’s his best friend. She’s his best hope. She’s the one who has the best shot in the known universe of dragging an answer out of him to a question that isn’t pointless at all, a question that he really needs to find the answer to, sooner rather than later: Why the hell does he defend Meredith? 

A/N: The lack morphousness of Meredith rivals the lack of morphousness of this story.