Close Encounters 14

Beckett sat close to him on the narrow ledge that surrounded what was left of the courtyard fountain. The water had been turned off so it wouldn't flood, and the trunk of the orange tree was charred.

"There are still a few branches untouched," he said beside her.

She glanced overhead at the stripped bark and the nasty scars. She saw what he meant; there were a few places where green might come back again. "Yeah. I guess it will survive. I don't know how beautiful it will be like that."

"Surviving can be pretty damn beautiful," he said quietly.

Kate turned her head to him and studied how the light from the laptop painted his face in blues. "It is beautiful. You're right."

He went back to watching the monitor as they tracked his father through the air. She settled closer, their shoulders brushing, and she tried to figure out how to ask for what she needed.

"What comes next?" she said, her eyes on the glowing dot. Still directly over the continent. The dark continent it had been called, named for the wilds and extremes of the landscape. Only the brave, more reckless explorers had wanted to set off through its dense jungles and sub-Saharan region, to trek from Ottoman wealth in the Arab world to the unknown.

Black had been in the air for three hours.

"What comes next," Castle repeated slowly. His hand was curved over the trackpad of the laptop, so large, almost protective. "Well, we've packed the stabilizers to go back with Mitchell. He'll keep half of them at the Office and you and I will take the other half. We might need to consider getting some kind of off-site safe. I don't want this all in one place. Too many precious things in our home."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Yes," she whispered. In case their home was ever blown up like her apartment, was that it? Chilling. She didn't want to think it could happen, but that was always a possibility, no matter how carefully paranoid they were.

"But what comes next..." The call of his voice in the dark night made her eyes open. His fingers flexed on the keyboard and he tapped against the glowing dot. "I guess this is what comes next."

The relief that poured through her was so great, she had to wind her arm through his and hold on. He turned his head and kissed her temple, but whereas his words had put her at ease again, she felt how tense he was in comparison. Rigid. He didn't want to be doing this, but he was going to anyway.

"Soon as he lands, we'll follow," Castle sighed. "Mitch will coordinate with whichever government it is, but we've got to keep it quiet. And not just because I don't want Black to know we're following him. Also because the official story is that one of our own has gone rogue. No government wants to hear that."

"It's going to be an international manhunt?" she murmured.

"Yes."

"Do you think that's wise? Labeling him a rogue agent means extreme force, Castle."

"I know you don't like it," he said quietly. "But this is the compromise, Kate."

"But if some idiot in a brother agency goes for him, they could kill him rather than take him alive."

"I don't have any problem with that."

She growled in frustration and knocked her head into his shoulder. "You should have a problem with it. Not only is he your father, Castle, but he's the only one who knows what he did to you. What the regimen does, what it's effects are, how-"

"Beckett. I've got the best doctors on it and they'll figure it out. It's thirty year old science - it can't possibly be beyond them."

"How long does the regimen last, though? The injections and stabilizers he gave you here - damn it, Castle, I don't even know that he did. How can I prove that the pills he crushed up and put in your mouth were the stabilizers at all?"

"I know," he said calmly. "I could taste it on my tongue when I woke. Can't fake that."

"Oh." She knew it was a weak argument, but she'd always been able to rely on Black to have Castle's interests at heart when it came to that.

"And I feel differently," he sighed. A confession. "I can tell already. You saw my hand."

"Your hand was already healing before your father gave you anything. It could still just be the effects of the serum-"

"No, I know, but look at it now," he said and flipped his palm over.

A scar marred the heartline, and it was fresh and raw, but it wasn't what it should have been. It wasn't the angry weep of blood or the ragged edges of skin that refused to come together. A wound at such a vital place - where movement and repeated use would pull and prevent healing...

"Wow," she breathed.

"Yeah. But it's not uncommon for me. Remember my story about the pirates who tried to cut off my hand?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Of course."

"Right," he said bitterly. "Of course you do. You put it up on that timeline in the closet. All my stories - dissected like evidence."

She took a sharp breath at the tone of his voice, smoothed her fingers at the scar around his wrist. "I was trying to figure it out, find places where you'd been severely injured, hoping your father had stores of the regimen hidden around the world. And maybe I could get it."

"That's why?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry - I know it must look... impersonal. All your details out there, cold black and white. That's not what it meant to me; I was only trying to know. It's - it is so personal to me, Castle. Your life is my life."

"It looked like your mom's case," he said quietly. The fingers of his formerly wounded hand curled up around hers. "That scared me. How far you fell into that one and now this... this takes its place?"

She couldn't find words to argue against that, but the two were so unalike. "That was death. This is your life," she said finally.

"I don't want my eventual death to be what we dwell on here, Kate. I don't want my imagined fate to be the thing you can't see past, so that it crowds up our life until we don't even have a future any more."

She laid her cheek against his shoulder again, not even caring that it made her jaw ache and transmit that pain to the grazed side of her face. She wanted the warmth of him against her, wanted the seal of their skin. "Right now... I'm thinking about you. And how I want the father of my children to be there to see their first smiles and first days of school. How I want to ensure your health - and our control of the regimen - because our future is integral on you being there."

He sighed and lifted their joined hands, kissed the back of her knuckles. "I can agree on that if you acknowledge the same is true for you. Our future is integral on you being there. You are my future, Kate."

She flushed, hot and aroused for no reason she could imagine, struck deep by his words and his capitulation that was also a command. How could she ever explain how this was for them, between them? Deleware had seen their fight in Castle's apartment and how he'd chained her to the bed, but he'd had no idea. Demand laced in submission, topping from the bottom, that was how they worked - and it worked so well.

"I can agree on that," she echoed. "You were telling me a story?"

"Right, about my hand nearly getting chopped off. Well he lifted the machete and hacked at me, but I flipped my hand around and caught the edge of the blade and his wrist, escaped with only a wound, much like this one. I'm used to it - knowing my limits - and when I grabbed for the knife... you know, that same knife you were trying to slit that gorgeous throat with?"

"You think you're so funny."

"I don't think it's funny at all," he said darkly. "When I grabbed for the knife, it wasn't anything I hadn't already lived through before."

She digested that slowly, the edges of his split-second reasoning and the sheer infinite limits of his abilities.

"You see, Kate? When I do it, I know I'll survive. I know the wound will heal quickly enough for me to use my hand in a few hours' time. I'll admit - I think the tendon is a little stiff, or maybe it's scar tissue. But this wasn't anything I haven't handled before."

"Unlike me," she said, spitting the words out.

"Unlike you. Your throat won't heal so pretty."

She lifted her hand to her neck and felt the edge of the bandage. "The knife barely got me. It will heal."

"The bullet graze?"

"Probably leave a mark," she admitted. "But it's worth it."

"I don't want to hear you say that again."

She closed her mouth, anger leaking back through the cracks in all their walls. She sucked in a deeper breath and tried to keep from saying something stupid and ruining whatever progress they had made.

He sighed like it was an apology. "But you asked what comes next. We go after Black together - because at least then I can grab the knife before you get to it."

"I won't - that won't happen," she said. "It wasn't... it was for show, to make him think I'd do it and then he'd have nothing to hold over your head, no leverage."

"It was too good a show, Beckett. You managed to convince me as well."

And the truth was, maybe she would in the future, maybe she had because that was how it always was going to be for her. Willing to gamble big. But she won big, didn't she? Here they were.

"So we have a stockpile of the pills. And we need serum for the injections," he said, ticking them off on his fingers like bullet points. "Wherever Black is going isn't a guarantee that the regimen will be there, but-"

"But his desperation to get inside that weapons room makes me think it will."

"Exactly," he sighed. "And to be honest, since we're doing that now - the honesty thing-"

"I know you can't be looking at me when you say that," she said, narrowing her eyes.

His smile flashed tightly across his face, fingers squeezing hers. "To be honest, I don't want to ever see him again. I don't want you to ever see him again, and I don't want him to even look at you again. I hope he lands wherever it is, we go after him, and we miss him, but maybe we find something else worth taking. Maybe we follow him around the globe as he rebuilds and we get the chance to knock it down before he can put the pieces all together again. I don't mind stealing from him and destroying his damn plans. But I wish I could take you home first, hide away with you until neither of us have scars."

She wondered if that would be how it happened next, if they'd fly into some remote location only to be too late, wind up with nothing. Would they be following his father around the world forever? She actually didn't want that.

"I want an end to this," she offered. "I want to not be doing this in six months. Just like you, I want more for us than that."

"Can we agree on that, then?" he gruffed. He sounded rough around the edges, like a man who craved sleep but knew he wouldn't get it. "Can we agree that after this stop, we'll just go home? I really just want to go home, Kate."

"Yes," she said, the relief and grief of that tangling up in her. The way he sounded, the abandoned and mistreated little boy of him, the one left out in the cold. "Whatever happens next, after that we go home."

"Together," he added. "No use planning a future without you, without either of us."

"Together," she promised. "We'll go home together."

She crossed her fingers that when they chased after Black, there would be something - anything - of the regimen there for them, for him, because she really wanted - it was imperative - that she keep this promise.

Rick Castle sank back against the crumbling stone and rubbed a hand down his face. Beckett had gone to pack their supplies since Mitch had acquired a plane for them, a loan from the CIA station chief in Tunis. That must have been quite the conversation judging from the way Mitchell was swearing as he came into the courtyard.

Castle cleared the spot next to him of rubble and patted it, giving his friend a sardonic look. Mitchell shifted on his feet, glared down at him, but then claimed the seat.

"He's fucking pissed," Mitch growled. "He had no idea that this island station was out here."

"I don't know what to tell you, Mitch. Honestly. I didn't know that it was some kind of secret."

"Not only did he not know about it - he didn't know Reynolds was out here with some top secret prisoner."

"I swear," Castle said again. "I swear I had no idea."

"Then how did you even know about it?"

"Did you ask Reynolds how he got the job?"

"Black, of course. Did you not know that either?"

"No," Castle sighed, scrubbing at his jaw as he put the pieces together. "But I guess - I don't know if it was just a lucky coincidence for Black or if he somehow... he couldn't possibly have suggested it to me. Hey, son, lock me up in this place I know. Right?"

"I don't see how. Unless those freaky pills hypnotize you or something."

Castle felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and he hunched his shoulders. "No. That's - no. If it did, do you think I'd be here? You think Kate would be here?"

"Right."

"What'd you end up telling the station chief in Tunis?"

"That the place was his to control now. That we're undergoing some change in power structure at the home office and somehow this got overlooked."

"He bought that?"

"No. But he's sending a team over to 'help' and he'll take control of maintenance and rebuilding. He'll probably ditch it when he sees how wrecked it is, but anyway - Reynolds is coming home with us."

"You treat him-"

"I know. I won't let him hang."

Castle nodded, dropping his hands to the closed laptop. Black had been flying for nearly four hours. Soon Castle and Beckett would take to the skies as well, tracing the signal, and wait for his father to stop. He hoped Black had moved on before they arrived, but if there was a confrontation, this time he didn't plan on being nice.

He'd shoot his father and ask questions later.

"What's your best guess about this place?" he said finally.

"My best guess?" Mitchell answered, looking like he'd cooled off somewhat. "Huh. Best guess is that Pops has stashes of your pills and shit all over the world and this just happened to be one of those places. I bet it was on your mind as a safe location to squirrel away dear old Dad because he'd used it himself to squirrel his stuff away."

"I thought of it because Reynolds had been on our team from the beginning, because he'd seen Beckett then and knew her now, and I knew whoever was in charge of Black's detention would need to go into this with his eyes open."

"But he didn't have all the information, Castle. You never told anyone outside our circle that Black tried to assassinate her. Come on - seriously - did you think Reynolds wouldn't ask Black himself?"

"I thought he'd be more loyal to me than my father."

"Loyalty - especially loyalty to you - doesn't include being dumb. Or not being curious. Shit, man, you encourage us to second guess you. Beckett herself comes up with alternate ideas and tries them out while you look on. So of course poor Reynolds is gonna ask some fucking questions."

"I know it's my fault," he snapped. A growl rumbled in his chest but he rubbed his hands over his eyes again and took a breath. "It's my fault. I set him up for this, all of us up for this. I should have dealt with Black myself."

"Killed him, you mean."

Castle couldn't quite bring himself to say it out loud. Not because he didn't want to, but because the thought of Beckett's disappointment was nearly crushing.

"You couldn't have killed him - not back then. Too many still following his orders. Fuck, Deleware dead out here - not three feet from where we're sitting - and who knows how many else? Bryce is still missing. There was that station chief in Singapore - and we don't even know why he followed Black into the darkness."

"I'd forgotten them," Castle said. Shit, he'd dropped the ball on so many things when he'd gotten sick. He'd pushed it all off on Mitch and Beckett, and so of course Kate was going to do something like this - fly halfway around the world because she was taking up all his damn slack anyway.

Because he'd been forgetting things, because he'd been clumsier lately and not as steady and not super, she hadn't been able to count on him.

Well, that would change - that had changed. He'd had the injection and the stabilizers; its worth had already been proven by the healed scar on his hand. He knew now that he needed the regimen to deliver on all of the promises he'd made to Kate.

"You'll take care of the pills for us?" he said quietly. "I promised Jim he'd have some too, even though Kate... but he gets a case of them for back-up. And then divvy up the rest."

"Of course," Mitch answered. "Fuck, after all this, I'm sure as hell not losing them."

Castle let out a grunt in answer, his body suddenly heavy. But not with anything physical - not with pneumonia or blood loss; no physical toll had been taken, not when he had the regimen. It was in his spirit, a heaviness in his soul. Because this was their life - his and Kate's life together - and he had trouble seeing an end to all of this.

"I got it, man," Mitchell said, knocking a fist into his shoulder. "Stop your heavy sighing. Besides, you didn't see yourself when we took you out of the hospital and you couldn't even fucking breathe. Beckett - shit. I don't blame her for this. She has the ability to move heaven and earth for you, so of course she's gonna do it. She's fucking bad-ass, man. I sure as hell don't have the balls to go up against your pops."

Castle couldn't help feeling proud of her, like he'd done that, like her ability to just survive had anything at all to do with him. Maybe it did, actually - that seemed to be what she was trying to get through his thick skull. He wanted to go home; of course he did. He wanted to pretend like he would be fine and she would be fine as well, but the truth was - he wouldn't. Some day he was going to need another infusion, another shot, and if he wasn't fine, then neither was Beckett.

The green baize door swung open at that moment, charred and warped though it was, and out stepped Kate. She was wearing new clothes, which meant the guys from the mainland had gotten here with their supplies. Which meant the plane was ready. Which meant Beckett wanted to go.

She scraped her hand through her hair and held it on top of her head for a moment, the picture she made both svelte and stunning despite the blood staining her bandage and the bruises and scrapes flaring brightly along her cheek. She spotted them sitting on the fountain and she came towards them, a hesitant smile on her face.

He hated that she was uncertain about him, but he wasn't sure he could do anything to change that. She'd hurt him in a deep place, wounded something vulnerable in him that he knew King would probably suggest was leftover from his parents' abandonment, but he couldn't turn that off. It was part of why he loved her so much - because he loved her with all of himself, all those dark and unseen places - he loved her with the need and damage of a man who wasn't and never would be normal. But she'd shredded those places raw by leaving for Black.

Kate looked hesitant, but she didn't hesitate. She dropped down beside him and pressed in close, her arm threaded through his as if she needed to claim him.

Her kiss was soft and sweet at the corner of his mouth, like an apology, and when she pulled back Castle realized she probably was apologizing.

"Ready to go?" she murmured. "His plane is descending, losing altitude, so it's likely he's landing soon."

Castle closed his eyes for a moment, blocking out the charred rubble of the courtyard, the blackened orange tree, and he called up in his mind the image of his son from his dreams.

The boy. He couldn't see things like hair color and eyes, couldn't actually hear the tone of the boy's voice, but he felt him like an impression, felt him like an idea about to be made reality.

Still there. Still vibrant and living in Castle's head. He hadn't gone anywhere; he was still possible.

He opened his eyes and saw Kate's anxious ones. He brought his hand up to her cheek and stroked his thumb across the bruise, so lightly, paying his respects to everything she'd done for him. He leaned in and kissed his wife softly on that bruised, scraped cheek.

"Where are we going?" he asked finally.

"Looks like Eastern Gabon."

"Oh good," Mitchell said nastily. "Into the heart of darkness you go."

The horror, the horror.

Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill

Stay tuned for Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again

She stayed well behind him, watching the bunch and play of muscle under his shirt as he hacked at the terrain with the machete. He was probably taking out on the underbrush what he wanted to take out on her, but she couldn't help her fascination with the way his body moved through the dense African jungle.

Kate wanted him in a really desperate but inappropriate way.

She knew it was a product of anguish, that she made herself feel better by having him, but she also knew that he was going to explode if she didn't do something to help him. He was deeply angry with her - for reasons she had to admit she didn't quite comprehend - and he was refusing to acknowledge it existed.

Maybe taking a machete to the rainforest would help, but not for long.

He was the kind of man who had been trained to suppress all of it - let it roll right off of him - and she appreciated that. She knew she had enough issues to keep them both occupied, but it meant they tended to forget his.

He was seriously pissed.

But he wanted her too, and that made him angrier, and that was a problem.

If he'd just let her-

Castle whacked at a tree and got the machete stuck in the trunk; he cursed and she sighed, pausing in the trail of carnage he'd left behind. Decapitated birds-of-paradise flowers, decimated vines, orchids shredded, mangrove roots butchered. Philodendrons with thorny protrusions were in pieces, weeping chlorophyll and thready bark.

The rest she had no names for. Sucker roots, tendrils of green, waxy leaves that still held rainwater - not just a few mouthfuls but gallons - an entire ecosystem in miniature, with tadpoles swimming in the deepest pool, a scorpion crawling through a clump of twigs, and a cluster of flies, all within the bowl of a leaf. She saw moss and ferns, air plants with no discernible means of support, mushrooms sprouting over a thick film of decomposing vegetation. And that was just the growth at hip level.

It was a riot of life, and most of it deadly.

Kate hurriedly came to his side and touched his hip as he grunted at the tree. "Here," she murmured. "Step back."

Castle glared at her, but let go of the machete's handle. She used her boot to kick at the blade where it was lodged in the side of the tree. After four good blows, it popped out, tumbling to the forest floor.

"Careful," she warned as he bent to pick it up. "I saw a scorpion back there."

"And snakes, I'm sure. Poisonous tree frogs. Man-eating venus flytraps."

Kate glanced to where he was pointing now with the machete and saw he was right. What she'd call a venus flytrap looked to be the size of a cow, the open maw dripping with paralyzing venom.

"Holy shit," she gasped.

"Yeah, exactly. Nice little trip to the woods you've planned for us, Beckett."

Some of the bitterness was gone from his voice this time, the sarcasm not quite so heavily laced with anger. She looked at him and he held out his free hand to her.

"Come here," he muttered. His eyes flickered over her, a sudden reluctant concern.

She stepped closer and he grabbed her arm, drew her against him. When she came at his side, he reached up, covered her shoulder with his cupped palm and seemed to scrape. In a moment he was throwing something deep into the underbrush.

"What was that?" she whispered.

"Spider." He gave her a crooked, pained smile. "Pretty - uh - big. Not sure how'd you react to that."

"I'd be okay," she said slowly. "Rats don't bother me, spiders. How big?"

"Hairy tarantula big," he admitted. "And it filled my whole hand."

She blinked. "Shit."

"Yeah. This is going to be interesting."

Suddenly Beckett's senses were opened and she realized the whole rainforest was alive with sound and movement. Beasts deep in the jungle were out there, just beyond their vision, and a million different insects lurked. It wasn't just the blow flies or the spiders - it was everything. The whole rainforest was aware.

"This is... how are we going to sleep out here?"

"One eye open," he joked. His smile fell flat though and he grimaced at her. "We have a pup tent. We'll have to be very careful to seal it tight."

She nodded and gripped the straps of her backpack, her eyes scanning the jungle ahead. "And Black... he's out here somewhere in all this."

"He must have a station, a depot or a facility. My father's not the type who roughs it, you know."

"Good point," she said, letting out a breath. "All right. Lead on, Castle. Standing still will only let this place grow up around us."

She saw goose bumps flare across his forearms, but other than that, he seemed completely impassive. Castle turned and hefted the machete once more, his phone and the map-tracking system in his other hand, and he started clearing their path through the growth.

But he moved a little more carefully, taking time to pause and inspect his way before carving out their route. And Beckett kept a little closer, her ears filled with the noise of a predatory rainforest.

Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again

(no, seriously, I am running out of James Bond movie titles)