"Is that what those top hat and card trick magicians do? Perform at birthday parties?"
Mia knew there were those who performed sleight of hand, but she didn't know where they performed it.
"I've had to pretend to be one of those before. My friend Guppy and I had a good laugh about it afterward. But I'm digressing when I should be explaining. Welcome to Milliways."
The woman, not all that much older than Alexis, stands up from her booth to properly greet herself.
"My name is Mia. Pleased to meet you, and I'm always happy to help newcomers."
"Well, yeah," she replies. "Unless you're talking Siegfried and Roy magicians and they've got better things to be doing than hanging out at children's birthday parties."
There are booths. In her house. Excuse her slight distraction.
Did her Dad hire Extreme Makeover: Home Addition or something?
"Before the whole mauling thing, at least."
She sticks out her hand reflexively. She is nothing if not well-mannered.
"That's pretty much what it's like every day," Chuck says.
He takes a long gulp from his cup of Raktajino and rubs his temples briefly. Yes, he is wearing his sunglasses. The end of the world isn't easy on his eyes, all right?
Her confused perusal of the Bar in general pauses at the sound of her name, and she turns her head - perking up considerably when she realizes who it is that's calling her.
(Someone who will make sense, even.)
"Detective Beckett!"
She makes her way over easily enough - though, really, the flooring is even gone. How the hell did he even manage this?
"Hi!" she drops her bag, sides into a chair. "Do you know what happened to the apartment? I mean, how did Dad even get contractors for this? It's a bit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, don't you think?"
Beckett pauses, then, almost freezing halfway through her sip of coffee. How to explain the situation? Then again, out of all the fifteen-year-olds she's come into contact with (read: not many), Castle's daughter has to be on the more mature side of the spectrum.
"Not exactly," she admits, idly tapping her pen against her notepad.
The pen gets lowered.
"This isn't the apartment. We're, um, sort of in a magical bar... place."
Okay, see, if anyone else on the face of the planet was going to tell her that her front door had sucked her into an alternate dimension it would, more likely than not, be taken for the complete and utter lie that it is.
Or, in her dad's case, a really elaborate prank.
But it's not April (not to imply that this fact precludes elaborate pranks) and Detective Beckett doesn't really seem like the sort of person to lie about something like ... magical bar places?
"Oh," she blinks, takes a second before nodding. "Good, I guess. We kind of don't need our neighbors to hate us for the rest of eternity."
There's a lot of talk about "woman's intuition" and Castle likes to think that he writes it pretty well. But when it comes to his personal experiences with intuition (feminine or otherwise), he generally needs a boost from an outside party. Which is why, when his cell phone chirped through to his daughter's voicemail for the umpteenth time in fifteen minutes, Castle is flipping through the phone book app, trying to find a bloodhound breeder in the greater New York City area.
He finds collies and cocker spaniels, and he even speaks to a woman who's willing to give him a good price on an alpaca ("they have a wonderful sense of smell," she tells him, a key selling point) but no super sniffers. When in doubt? He bumps his elbow against the door to the police precinct -- only to find himself in the middle of Milliways instead.
"Oh, come on," he whines, stamping his foot, "now?"
Alexis is intimately familiar with that whine. Alexis is intimately familiar enough with that whine that she can be relatively (read: completely and with frightening accuracy) certain of the facial expression that is accompanying it.
It's more than enough to distract her from her - completely amazing and magically generated (Magically generated!) - coke float.
"Dad!"
There is running - there might be bouncing and repetition of his name - as she slides into place in front of him, still in uniform and, okay, still a bit shell-shocked, but grinning.
"Why didn't you tell me that Douglas Adams left a magical bar in our apartment?"
Castle's seen some pretty weird stuff in this bar. Alien bounty hunters, the evil dead, space rangers, republicans. The one person he hadn't expected to see was his own daughter. But here she was, screeching to a halt in front of him, her tennis shoes kicking up a cloud of imaginary dust.
"Alexis>" He looks around, to see if that alien bounty hunter (or that republican wing of Congress), was putting him on. "What are you doing here?"
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A beat, considering.
"Though I was kind of five at the time, so I can't be sure if he still has their number."
(Not that she'd be surprised if he did.)
See, it's not so much the people in the house that's at all weird.
It's the fact that the house is wrong.
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Mia knew there were those who performed sleight of hand, but she didn't know where they performed it.
"I've had to pretend to be one of those before. My friend Guppy and I had a good laugh about it afterward. But I'm digressing when I should be explaining. Welcome to Milliways."
The woman, not all that much older than Alexis, stands up from her booth to properly greet herself.
"My name is Mia. Pleased to meet you, and I'm always happy to help newcomers."
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There are booths. In her house. Excuse her slight distraction.
Did her Dad hire Extreme Makeover: Home Addition or something?
"Before the whole mauling thing, at least."
She sticks out her hand reflexively. She is nothing if not well-mannered.
"Alexis. Um, Castle."
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"Welcome to Milliways."
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She blinks.
"Like Adams?"
And blinks again - with a brief detour behind her to verify that that is, in fact, the usual hallway.
"Are we being thematic today?"
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He takes a long gulp from his cup of Raktajino and rubs his temples briefly. Yes, he is wearing his sunglasses. The end of the world isn't easy on his eyes, all right?
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"Thematic?"
She tilts her head, eying him with a bit more attention this time around.
"How often do you visit?"
Gram is really going to have to start explaining what she gets up to when she's in school and Dad is trailing after Detective Beckett.
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Problem is, this is a multidimensional hostage recovery, which isn't exactly something she deals with on a daily basis.
Understandably, there are quite a few empty cups of coffee sitting in front of her, and another one rests in her hand as she peruses over her notes.
She looks up at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Alexis?"
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(Someone who will make sense, even.)
"Detective Beckett!"
She makes her way over easily enough - though, really, the flooring is even gone. How the hell did he even manage this?
"Hi!" she drops her bag, sides into a chair. "Do you know what happened to the apartment? I mean, how did Dad even get contractors for this? It's a bit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, don't you think?"
A pause, slightly concerned.
"Did he kick out our neighbors?"
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"Not exactly," she admits, idly tapping her pen against her notepad.
The pen gets lowered.
"This isn't the apartment. We're, um, sort of in a magical bar... place."
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Or, in her dad's case, a really elaborate prank.
But it's not April (not to imply that this fact precludes elaborate pranks) and Detective Beckett doesn't really seem like the sort of person to lie about something like ... magical bar places?
"Oh," she blinks, takes a second before nodding. "Good, I guess. We kind of don't need our neighbors to hate us for the rest of eternity."
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He finds collies and cocker spaniels, and he even speaks to a woman who's willing to give him a good price on an alpaca ("they have a wonderful sense of smell," she tells him, a key selling point) but no super sniffers. When in doubt? He bumps his elbow against the door to the police precinct -- only to find himself in the middle of Milliways instead.
"Oh, come on," he whines, stamping his foot, "now?"
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It's more than enough to distract her from her - completely amazing and magically generated (Magically generated!) - coke float.
"Dad!"
There is running - there might be bouncing and repetition of his name - as she slides into place in front of him, still in uniform and, okay, still a bit shell-shocked, but grinning.
"Why didn't you tell me that Douglas Adams left a magical bar in our apartment?"
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"Alexis>" He looks around, to see if that alien bounty hunter (or that republican wing of Congress), was putting him on. "What are you doing here?"
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A beat.
"Or, you know, not coming home," her head tilts - back and forth - and her nose wrinkles up briefly. "Obviously."
Her hands wave in some semblance of reassurance.
"But the intention was totally coming home."
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Ginny walks over "You Okay?"
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