Richard Castle (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} writeswrongs) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} toboldlyrpg,@ 2017-05-15 17:12:00 |
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| Entry tags: | ! enterprise, ^ log, kate beckett | castle, richard castle | castle |
WHO: Kate Beckett and Richard Castle
WHEN: 2246.05.08
WHERE: The Gym
SUMMARY: Castle finds Kate in the gym and then the Red Alert happens. They spend the next few hours stuck in the changing area.
WARNINGS: Mentions of PTSD, attempted murder.
STATUS: Complete
For someone who had gotten as little sleep as she had the past couple of days, running 10 miles on a treadmill in the Enterprise’s gym probably wasn’t a good idea. What Kate knew she should be doing was sleeping, taking advantage of her request for some time off duty to try and recalibrate her bearings, but sleep just lended itself to nightmares and nightmares lended themselves to full blown panic attacks when she reentered the land of the living.
She had woken Castle up twice the night before with her screams, and more than that the previous night, leaving Kate with shadows under her eyes and a paleness to her skin that wasn’t usually there as her mind fixated on the past and her body relived the pain of the various bullets she had taken over the years. She was fortunate that there weren’t two new scars to add to the raised knot of tissue between her breasts or the long, curving line along her left side that marked the surgery that had saved her life. But even if the scars weren’t physically there, Kate was intimately familiar with where the bullets had pierced her skin and embedded themselves between muscle and bone. Even now, as she gritted her teeth and threw all her weight in pounding her body into the remainder of her run, she could feel the muscles bunch and pulse with phantom pain.
She had seen other people talk of gaining new memories of their lives, but had never counted on herself being one of them, yet now she was. A good eight months worth of chasing down the people who had scared her so much that she had broken up her marriage to keep Castle and their family safe. Eight months of question after question and, ultimately, very few answers.
Just a double cross and her husband lying on the floor beside her, blood seeping out of the wound on his shoulder that she had been praying wasn’t going to be the thing that took Castle from her, his daughter and his mother.
Squeezing her eyes at the sudden onslaught of tears, Kate reached out to blindly punch the stop button on the machine, grasping onto the bars to keep herself upright until it rolled to a stop. Taking a seat on the edge wasn’t as graceful as it otherwise would have been with tears blurring her vision, though she did quickly reach up to wipe away the few that had slipped down her cheeks.
Despite her best efforts, she had failed to protect her husband, nearly gotten him killed because she couldn’t look past a vendetta. In the end, her worst nightmare had happened. Even if Castle had insisted he wouldn’t hear of anything but standing beside her, even if he had been willing to put his life on the line to make things safer for all of them, even if her husband had already reassured her of all of that and a million other things since she had woken up with new memories in her head, it didn’t make the sting of it all hurt any less.
Covering her face with her hands, Kate lost track of how long she sat there, willing her emotions to settle, for her mind to somehow ease up and for the control that she prided herself on to come back. In two days, she had lost count of the times her hand had reached for a gun that was no longer holstered at her hip to protect herself at the slightest surprise or even a loud noise.
It was another such noise, this the whooshing of the main door to the gym and the rattling of whatever was happening in the corridor outside, that had Kate leaping to her feet, frayed nerves once again on alert and looking for the latest threat.
But there wasn’t one, just her husband staring at her from the far end of the gym. And that alone was enough to remind Kate that she hadn’t done one very important thing.
“I forgot to leave you a note about where I was going,” she said with a grimace, plopping her exhausted body back onto the machine she had just vacated. “I’m sorry, Castle.”
“It's ok,” he said, brow furrowed. “I figured I'd find you here.”
Ever since Kate had woken up with new memories of things that had apparently happened back home, Castle was just as on edge as she was. He hated seeing her like this, even if what she had seen had been terrifying. It almost made him glad, in a way, that they were here and not there. At least no one was trying to kill them here.
Kate looked terrible and it broke his heart. He tried his best to keep things normal for her. “Did you have a good run?” She looked like she had been crying, though he didn't bring it up. Kate had leapt up like a scared cat as soon as he'd entered the gym, which told him that she still wasn't feeling much better.
Had it been good? Normally she was say that hitting the ten mile mark was great, but the purpose of running today hadn’t been about getting in a workout. She had just hoped to exhaust herself so that there was a chance of a few hours of sleep without dreams jerking her awake and leaving her panicked and scared.
“I….yeah,” she said after a moment, quickly using the back of her hand to wipe at the moisture still staining her cheeks both a combination of sweat and tears. If it had been anyone else in the room with her, she would have hoped that they wouldn’t be able to tell she had been crying but given that it was Castle, Kate didn’t mind.
And, even if she did mind, she knew he would notice anyway. He always knew.
“Did you go back to sleep?” Kate asked, ignoring that her hands were still shaking slightly as she headed over to the stack of towels and picked up one to wipe off her face. She assumed that he had managed a little more sleep after she had slipped out of the bedroom in their new quarters and eventually headed down to the gym. Unlike her, Castle wasn’t much of a morning person, usually only prompted out of bed by a good murder.
“I did,” he said with a nod.
Ok, this was weird, dancing around it like this. Castle knew that neither of them wanted to dwell on such an upsetting topic, but he couldn't act like nothing was wrong.
“Kate, you didn't have to go. Listen, maybe Bones can give you something that will help you sleep.” She had to sleep. Going on like this wasn't going to help either of them.
“Good.” Kate replied her voice abnormally small and quiet, her mind obviously on something else. At least it was until Castle spoke up again, jerking her from thinking about his face contorted with pain on the floor of the loft, unable to do anything but reach for her hand and hope that help came in time.
She didn’t have to go? For a moment she was thrown, thinking of her decision to leave him and press the pause button on their marriage at home. Kate had already opened her mouth to explain that she had felt she didn’t have a choice in that moment but her mixed up mind finally caught on to what he meant. It wasn’t what had happened at home, but instead what had happened here.
“I….” she started, “I came down here to try and exhaust myself,” she explained with a shrug. “I thought that maybe if I ran for a long time, or did some kickboxing that I’d be so tired that I wouldn’t have any nightmares.”
At home, that technique had worked for a bit. In the early days when she had gone back to work after her shooting, she had been quietly thankful for 16 hour days and grueling investigations because they kept her busy and didn’t let her mind dream up things to trigger her. On the days that she hadn’t had that advantage, Kate had pushed her battered body as much as it would allow her. Sometimes, she had pushed too hard but it had all resulted in the same thing: a night of dreamless sleep.
Sighing softly, Kate tossed the towel towards the hamper near the door to the changing rooms, a throw that she missed significantly and that had the towel falling onto the floor. She didn’t make a move to pick it up, instead choosing to walk the distance between herself and Castle and bury her face into the center of his chest. “I hate being like this,” she whispered once she had wrapped her arms around his waist, silently asking for one of his hugs with the gesture.
Castle wrapped his arms around her and gently rubbed her back. “I hate seeing you like this,” he admitted, “but I love you and we’re here now.” He couldn’t take away what she had seen, and he knew that it had to have been traumatic. He tried to imagine himself in the same position, if the person lying on the floor had been Kate or Alexis, and he knew that image would haunt him. Without diminishing what had happened to her, Castle still wanted to try and make her feel better.
“Nobody’s trying to kill us here. At least not yet. I can’t be responsible for what happens when I unleash the smorelette on the Enterprise.” Hopefully levity might help calm her a bit. What she really needed though was to get some sleep. The longer she stayed awake, the worse she would feel.
It was amazing what could happen to someone when they entered a space where they felt safe.
For Kate, Castle was one of those spaces. It wasn’t just the fact that he was taller and broader than she was, though she did enjoy being with someone that managed to make her long legs seem inexplicably small when measured next to his, it wasn’t even the calmness that he always managed to project when he knew she needed a dose of the serious man that was so often hidden beneath the charming, boyish exterior otherwise known as Rick’s personality.
Above all of that, it was just the way that he loved her, the way that he cared for her and had never once blinked, hesitated, or thought twice when she needed something from him.
“I know,” she murmured, the words muffled given that they were largely spoken into the fabric of his shirt. “I’m so glad you’re here, if you weren’t I don’t know what I’d do.” And that was as much because of how her dreams had ended as needing Castle to talk her off the ledges and calm her down if it got to be too much. If Kate had thought leaving him was bad and had spent months torturing herself with that regret, she couldn’t imagine living with the knowledge that her vendetta had gotten him shot.
Pushing aside those thoughts, Kate lifted her head enough to wrinkle her nose at the mention of smorelettes. It didn’t matter how many times Castle tried to convince her that they were outstanding, or how many different things he offered to put in them to be more of her taste. Chocolate, eggs and marshmallow just weren’t meant to go together. “Come after you with pitchforks and tar, I imagine,” she replied, giving him a strained smile. “I’ll be safe and sound because I have nothing to do with it.”
They were well-suited for each other, each giving the other what they lacked. For Castle it was that practicality that he needed sometimes. Kate knew how to get him to be serious so that he didn’t use jokes to deflect everything.
“If I wasn’t here, you’d probably pine for me in my absence and never look upon another man again.” Sometimes he couldn’t help himself when it came to jokes. That had been his defense mechanism his entire life. “Listen, some people from other planets might like the smorelettes, ok? Their taste buds may be different.” And also their gag reflexes.
The smirk Kate gave him was automatic, born of years of immediately teasing and/or denying Castle whatever he said that might have a bit of truth to it. While she’d never declare something as dramatic as never looking at another man, she did feel reasonably sure that the idea of ever being with someone else long term would be out of the question if he weren’t there with her.
She had told him once that she was a one and done kind of girl, and she had meant it. Prank wedding that turned out to be a real one aside, Kate Beckett never intended to commit herself to anyone other than Rick Castle.
And still….”Yeah, you’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” she asked, lightly poking his chest for emphasis.
“Babe, I’m not denying that other people might like it,” Kate replied, “I’m just saying that I don’t think most humans will. If they do? That’s wonderful. If they don’t? You are the only one they’re gonna yell at, because I’m not putting my support behind that awful thing.”
Reaching up to brush a stray piece of hair out of her face, she glanced around the gym where a few other people were lost in their own workouts. “Do you want to go grab some breakfast or go back to the room?” The question was left open ended, with Kate content to let Castle decide how they were going to proceed with the day. While she probably should go back to the room and try to sleep, she wasn’t going to be the one to say it or make him escort her to the room and tuck her in like a child at bedtime.
“You would be devastated,” he teased, though it wasn't much of a tease. “I would be too,” he added quietly. Even though Castle had been married before, he felt that he and Kate were in this for the long haul. He gently kissed her temple.
He was mostly teasing about the smorelette too. Castle knew it was awful. He just liked bringing it up to irritate her.
“Breakfast would be good. Even just coffee.” She needed to eat, but he wasn't going to force her. Hopefully he could talk her into a bit of food before they went back to their room.
Castle took Kate’s hand in his and was about to head towards the door when an alarm suddenly started to go off. “Uhhh… what's that?”
While he had meant to tease her, Kate didn’t laugh. She managed another of those strained smiles, rising up on her toes to lightly brush her mouth against his. “I would be,” she agreed, a brevity to her voice that really left no room for argument. Once upon a time, needing someone as much as Kate now knew she needed Castle would have terrified her. Now, it was simply how things were.
And she didn’t want it any other way.
Her thoughts could have easily drifted into deeper, darker waters but the mention of coffee was enough to steer Kate away from such a path. Did she need coffee? Of course not, it would only provide a caffeine kick that would keep her awake for even longer but coffee to her was considered a life source. It was right up there with oxygen, food, and water - though, really, coffee would suffice to replace water in her opinion.
“Yes, please. Let’s find coffee,” she hummed at him, a little bit of light sparking back into her eyes at the thought.
Years of training as a cop had attuned her to the change in atmosphere. Observation and awareness of her surroundings had kept her alive in countless situations, and there was just a split second before the alarm began to sound where Kate’s body registered the oncoming noise before her mind caught up to what was happening.
“....that’s the warning alarm,” she muttered, the training she had been given both in the NYPD and here on the Enterprise coming back in a flash. Most people would have shoved someone away, eager to free themselves from attachments and be ready to fight. Kate Beckett just held tighter to her husband’s hand, already running towards the far side of the gym where windows looked out onto the view of deep space. Were they under attack? A glance out the window didn’t show another spaceship - just the black of the sky dotted with countless stars. “I don’t know why it would go off unless we ---”
The rest of her statement was lost as the ship suddenly lurched to the left, the sudden change in direction more than enough to throw Kate off balance and send her stumbling sideways. The rumbling of some far away part of the ship could be felt through the floor as her body smacked into it, a distant groan of metal and the crashing of who knew what.
And then, in the blink of an eye, there were more thuds. The whooshing of air as the air locks that operated the doors activated. Halfway on her feet, Kate gave a tug at Castle’s hand, “The doors are going to close!”
Were they close enough to make it into the hallway or into one of the changing rooms? The changing rooms were closer, and another interior space that might help in the event of a crash. Either way, she wasn’t sure, but Kate knew that she had to try.
It was a joke that Castle had made rather carelessly and he regretted it. Of course she would be devastated, for real. He would feel just the same.
Castle followed Kate to the window in order to see what she was looking at before suddenly being thrown into the side of the ship. He reached out and grabbed on to her, trying to steady them both. Knocking into the metal siding took the wind out of him and he gasped for air for a moment. Then Kate was tugging on his hand and they had to move.
He pulled her towards the changing rooms, hoping like her that they would be further insulated in there in the event of a crash. Castle just hoped they’d be able to get out quickly.
Castle wasn’t a cop, he had no real training beyond the rag-tag sort that she, Ryan and Esposito had given him over the years but Kate trusted him implicitly so when her husband tugged her towards the changing rooms she didn’t fight it. They were closer and therefore the best option if the ship crashed. She had seen enough sci-fi movies in her life to know that if they were in a room with windows and the windows cracked that they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Of course, it the ship were to break apart or fall onto their side, the odds weren’t great either, but Kate was willing to take her chances.
Gripping his hand that much tighter, Kate ran full speed toward the door, hoping the whole way that they would manage to make it. Behind her, the doors that opened from the hallway into the expansive gym were already banging closed as the ship gave another shudder that threatened to knock her off her feet again.
“Castle, hurry!” she yelled, hoping that the urgency (and a very real touch of fear) would push her husband that much faster. She definitely didn’t want to be caught near windows or in a room with heavy equipment that could overturn and cause a serious injury or even kill one of them.
Castle was hauling it as fast as he could go. Fortunately, both of them got through the doors that led to the locker rooms before they could slam shut.
He rested against the wall for a minute, trying to catch his breath. After eyeing the door that had just closed behind him, he turned his gaze toward the locker rooms.
“What are the odds that we’re locked in here now?” He gasped.
Whatever was happening in the rest of the ship seemed to have stopped, at least for the moment. Even though the door separating the changing area from the gym remained closed, the ship wasn’t shaking anymore. Frowning slightly, Kate untangled her fingers from Castle’s, walking close enough to the door that the motion sensor should automatically activate and open it.
As she expected, nothing happened. “Pretty good, I’d say,” she replied, pulling her key card from the small pocket sewn into the waistband of her leggings and swiping it through the slot built into the wall.
The door didn’t move and Kate sighed, wiping a stray piece of hair from her forehead as she glanced over at Castle. “That door is made out of steel. I don’t think we’re going to be moving it on our own.”
“Shit… ok. We're probably in some kind of lockdown. I'm sure the captain will make an announcement soon.” At least he hoped so, if he still could. Had they crashed into something? As far as he could tell, they weren't under attack.
They would probably be out of there soon. Castle didn't hope to spend an extended amount of time in the locker rooms.
If they were in a lockdown - and really, there was nothing else to call the situation - Kate was meant to be out there, helping people and doing her job. Instead she was stuck in the changing rooms in the gym, definitely not doing her job.
But, worse than that, there were no windows. No way to see out and observe what was happening. She had nothing but her keycard, her wedding ring, and the clothes she was wearing and no way to communicate with anyone else. She hadn’t even pinned her Starfleet badge on, which at least would have let her tap into the communication system to notify the crew where she was.
“Hopefully,” she agreed with a sigh, reaching up to tug her hair from the ponytail she’d thrown in into that morning and snapping the elastic band around her wrist. “Until someone says something, I’m going to be imagining the worst.”
And she hated that, mostly because she didn’t have her gun or any other weapon to defend themselves with.
Turning away from the door, Kate took her time studying the room they were in. She had seen it before of course, but this time it was about more than just using the entrance as a passthrough between the gym and the changing rooms. This time she was looking for a tactical advantage, a way to provide cover if they needed it.
The problem was that there wasn’t any. The hallways both curved away, one side leading to a women’s room and another to a men’s room with nothing inbetween but the sloping, steel gray walls that looked like all the rest on the Enterprise. “We might as well get comfortable,” she said after a moment, choosing a spot on the floor about halfway between the entrance and the women’s changing room and taking a seat with her body facing the one exit they had. “I think we’re going to be here a while.”
Six hours later, Castle had moved from sitting to laying out on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
“Oh my God,” he deadpanned. “I think I'm going to lose my mind.”
He was hungry, bored, and suffering from coffee withdrawal because he hadn't had his usual in the morning. Kirk had told them that the crew was working on the problem, but apparently it was incredibly slow going - and Castle was getting restless.
“Are you sure we can't try to break down that door?”
Kate had managed to doze off around the third hour of waiting, not because she was comfortable but because her body had finally been unable to resist the pull of sleep. It hadn’t lasted long - maybe a little over an hour - and now she was cranky not only from the lack of sleep, but the fact that she couldn’t possibly get comfortable enough for even the hope of some.
And that was without the added bonus of nightmares of dying from a bullet or God knew what else.
“Castle.” She didn’t really snap at him, but there was no denying that Kate had spoken his name with a certain bite in her tone. She loved her husband, she really did, but there was nothing worse than when he was bored and had no way to occupy himself.
She had taken to pacing, walking up and down the curving hallway they had set up camp in and trying to ignore that her stomach was growling and all but demanding that she eat. Going without food was something she had done frequently at home, but it had always been because of a pressing murder case that usually kept her mind too busy to stop and worry about things like food.
And she’d had a never ending supply of coffee to trick her body into thinking it wasn’t hungry.
Here, in this hallway, she had neither.
“It’s reinforced steel. Unless you rubbing elbows with Bruce Banner has turned you into the Hulk, we aren’t getting through it.” Kate sighed, rubbing absently at the space between her eyebrows.
Castle grumbled at that and sat up. “I don’t see why we can’t at least try it. I’m sure there’s a weak spot somewhere.”
In his gut, Castle knew that Kate was right, and that the likelihood of him knocking that door down was zero, but he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t at least try it. He stood in front of it and eyed it, trying to decide where the best place to kick might be. There was no knob on doors like these, but Castle gave a karate kick to where one might be on a regular door.
“Ow! Shit!” Predictably, the door remained unchanged, and Castle had now hurt his foot. He swore again and limped away from the door, awaiting Kate’s inevitable ‘told you so’.
She didn’t say ‘I told you so’, but that was only because she was too busy trying not to laugh. While she did feel sorry for Castle and what was probably considerable pain in his foot, she couldn’t help but be amused and, for just a moment, Kate lifted her hand up to cover the smile that she couldn’t quite hide.
But that smirk aside, she did hurry over to Castle, sliding an arm under his. “I guess that rules out you being the next Hulk….” she told him, her lips twitching slightly with the threat of another grin. “But if you want to break your foot, I’ll let you do it again. Then you can be hungry and in considerable pain.”
Honestly? He deserved it and he knew it, so he wasn’t even mad at her for laughing. Trying to be a badass didn’t usually work out in his favor. “Bruce can still experiment on me and see if he can get anything to work.” Castle held on to Kate for balance and winced as he circled his ankle. “I don’t think it’s broken at least. Probably just a strain.” But now he got to limp around. No one ever said that he always made fantastic life choices.
Castle sighed. “I’m so hungry…” He leaned his head back against the wall. “Do you think anyone keeps food in the lockers here?”
Worth a shot, right?
“Did you seriously just say that you want to be turned into the Hulk?” Kate asked, narrowing her eyes at her husband. “Castle, if you let Bruce experiment on you, I’m going to kick your ass.”
Her exasperation with him was evident, and largely because she knew that if anyone would willingly go through whatever experiments were needed to become a superhero, Rick Castle would gladly, even gleefully do it.
As was usually the case, her annoyance with him was short lived. It wasn’t fun being locked in here and he wasn’t the only one hungry. Better yet, Castle wasn’t exactly used to forgoing meals or doing without; in their life together he was almost always the one ensuring that she stopped working long enough to eat, always ordering food and having it delivered to the precinct for the rest of the team or insisting that she come home long enough to sit down and have a proper meal.
“I know, babe,” she replied, her stomach using that moment to give a low growl. “Me too.”
She had been leaning against the wall beside Castle, one arm extended towards him in case his ankle decided to buckle but at the mention of the lockers, Kate darted forward and pressed her mouth to his for one of those kisses that was always a bit sloppy thanks to the grin on her face. “You are amazing. Why didn’t I think of checking the lockers?”
“I’d rather be bitten by a radioactive spider if given the option…” As much as he’d love to become a superhero, he probably didn’t want to become a rage monster like the Hulk. “Actually, I’d rather be Batman. I’d say I’m about halfway there already.”
Castle liked to eat, which was probably obvious to most people. Who knew how long they would be stuck in here? If stuff like this was possible, Starfleet needed to keep stashes of snacks hidden in the walls just in case. That was what made him think of the lockers.
Kate’s kiss surprised him at first, but then he grinned. “Because I’m brilliant?”
“Batman, huh?” Kate asked, arching one eyebrow as she pursed her lips. “Is that because you are a multi-millionaire with a secret lair and a hot girl on your arm?”
She didn't mind the comparison. It was one he had used and Kate had heard before. But Bruce Wayne was one of her favorites in the echelon of male superheroes and there was no denying that Castle would look good in the suit.
The chuckle she gave in response to his so-called brilliance was brief, Kate again hopping up onto her toes to touch her lips to his. “Mmm, that's one word for it,” she said, reaching down to grasp his hand in hers. “You think you can walk back there without my help?”
Castle grinned at her. “No secret lair yet, but I can work on it.” If he knew that she was that fond of Batman and the suit, he might be inspired to put something together for next Halloween. Did they have Halloween in space?
“Yeah, I think so,” he replied. He was going to be limping a little, but he was mostly fine. Castle hobbled after Kate towards the women’s locker room - because when else would he ever get to go in there?
He didn't have a secret lair? For a moment Kate was thrown, her mind thinking of the secret room in the PI office that Castle had been so proud of.
But then she remembered that he didn't know about that. It hadn't happened for him yet. “No, you have one,” she said with a grin, already picturing the reaction that he would have to her story. “Remember the private detective’s office that I told you about? The summer after we got married and I decided to take the promotion to Captain,you had it renovated and in that renovation you built a secret room.”
She said the last bit as she walked backwards, smirking at him as they crossed the threshold into the women's changing room. It was a large space, filled with row after row of lockers and long benches placed in front of them just like every other locker room she had ever been in. The difference was really in the finishes, more steel and metal than wood and plastic.
That and the locks being primarily digital, though she knew there were manual backups on all digital locks on the ship for situations just like this where the power or the system controlling the digital locks were down. “I need something to pick the locks, can you look around?”
“Oh yeah?” Castle grinned. “I would totally do that.” Sometimes it was very weird to hear Kate talk about things that had happened in the future. It made him feel like he’d lost time again, like he had after the wedding that wasn’t.
He glanced around the locker room, trying to find something small and sharp that might work to pick a lock. “I guess you can’t just smash it. Not like that worked with the door anyway.” His foot was still a pretty painful reminder of that.
“Mmm, you would,” she agreed with a laugh. “The whole thing was very James Bond. Leather couches, fully stocked far, big screen television with a ton of channels. Bank vault full of random stuff….”
The bank vault and the discovery of it was a long story, but one that she was sure she'd get around to telling him.
“If I had my gun I could shoot the lock,” Kate sighed. It was the easy answer but definitely can ineffective one since she didn't have enough bullets to make a dent in the number of lockers in the room. “But smashing it isn't a bad idea if we can find something heavy enough.”
Walking along the row of lockers, Kate spotted one door that wasn't closed fully and popped it open. There wasn't any food she could see on the first glance, but there was a stylus type pen that she could possibly take apart and use.
That sounded badass. He was glad that future him was still doing awesome stuff like that.
Castle stood next to her and eyed the stylus. “That could work,” he said. “There should be some metal part in there.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, passing the stylus to him and continuing to dig around in the locker. “But we need something smaller to act as the pick. You think they have bobby pins in the twenty-third century?”
They likely did, at least in some form, but not the type that were perfect for the job she needed them to do. At this point Kate would even take a safety pin or something similar. It just needed to be small enough to slip into the lock and rotate to flip it from locked to unlocked.
She found it at the back of the locker, removing a pair of running shoes from the floor. It the corner was a Starfleet badge, one that was cracked and scuffed up. Whoever it belonged to had obviously traded it in for a new one and likely forgotten this one was hanging out in the bottom of a gym locker but the straight pin on the back was perfect for Kate’s needs. “Ta-da,” she half sang as she lifted it out of the locker, holding it up for Castle to see. “If there’s a small piece of metal in that stylus, we’re in business.”
Meanwhile, Castle had already taken apart the stylus and pulled a thin metal rod out of it. He nodded his approval at Kate. “That’ll work. Let’s MacGuyver these lockers open and hope we find some food. Or at least some alcohol.” That might be the best thing, actually. Maybe he could pass out until this whole thing was over.
“Do you want me to do it?” He asked, holding out his hand. Of course he knew how to pick locks. He had learned for a book he was writing. That was the story he was sticking to at least.
“You do know that it will take you weeks to die without food, right?” Kate asked as she passed the badge to Castle and stepped out of the way. Technically that wasn’t true because, husband or not, she was sure patience with a starving Rick Castle would wane after maybe the first week and she would probably murder him. But, even so, it had been hours, not days. Hunger at this point was more of an inconvenience rather than a pressing issue.
But Kate was trying to think about the future. They didn’t know how long they would be stuck here and finding food wasn’t a bad idea. “I’m letting you do it,” she replied in answer to his question, “Because you’ll be disappointed if I don’t.”
Picking locks wasn’t exactly part of the education at the New York Police Academy but it was one of those things that you generally learned, if only to get yourself out of a bind.
“That’s why we need to find alcohol too,” he said. Joking aside, he knew they could survive without food, though it would be miserable after about a day or so. Thank goodness there was a water fountain in the hallway so they’d have that to drink at least if they didn’t find anything else.
Castle cocked an eyebrow at her for “letting” him do it, but didn’t say anything more. Of course he wanted to be the one to pick the locks, even if she knew how. He took the battered Starfleet badge from her and went to work on the locker nearest to him. After a little bit of wiggling, he was able to figure out how the lock worked and he jimmied it open. Inside was nothing but a pair of socks that looked used. Castle wrinkled his nose and moved on to the next locker.
After getting one locker open, picking the locks got easier for him now that he knew how to do it. The second one popped much more quickly. “Booyah,” Castle said as he pulled out 5 protein bars and handed them to Kate.
“Oh, you just want to find alcohol to get me drunk,” Kate replied, shooting a smirk at him from over her shoulder. That wasn’t entirely true, if anything it was more of a benefit to the situation than anything, but if they were going to joke about it then that was the best she had at the moment.
Taking the bars from him, she gestured towards the next locker. “Keep going, maybe we will find some more stuff.”
The next several lockers yielded some crackers, a chocolate bar, two apples and (jackpot!) a bottle of whiskey. Kate was pretty sure it belonged to Lucifer. Hopefully it would get them through the time they were stuck in here. They decided to ration the food as best they could. Then it was back to waiting. Nothing more they could do than that.