Chapter Twenty Four
Epilogue

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

The Doors: The End

Seven Days Later

The drums beat a martial rhythm as the members of the NYPD's 12th Precinct marched into Forest Hills Cemetery to lay to rest one of their own, fallen in the line of duty. At the head of the procession behind the hearse marched Captain Kate Beckett and Detective Alexis Castle in their crisp dress uniforms, their hats on their heads.

Behind them walked Richard Castle, solemn and resolute in his best black Armani suit. His eyes clouded over with the anti anxiety meds in his system mixed with sadness for his baby girl. The man she loved was dead, and he felt it was only right and proper that he be here, but his mind could not help but go back to the last time he had been to a police funeral. The last time he saw Kate in this place in her dress uniform, lying in his arms bleeding in the grass after a sniper had shot her in the chest. He was glad Kate had made him take the drugs this time.

Following in lockstep behind them came Captain Javier Esposito and Lieutenant Kevin Ryan in their dress blues Followed by Lanie Parrish, Jeremy's boss, dressed smartly in a black formal dress complete with veil. The two of them and four other NYPD officers, would act as pallbearers for the young man none of them had gotten to know very well, but all of whom owed a great debt.

Javier had insisted on the full honors funeral for Jeremy. Moved heaven and earth to make it happen. He had an unexpected ally in his quest. Chief of Detectives Victoria Gates, and The New York City Police commissioner.

The handwritten letter in the envelope that Jeremy had placed in her hands before confronting Tyson had been a personal one, written before he had known that it had been her grams that he had killed in that alley all of those years ago.

Dearest Alexis,

If you are reading this letter, it means that I am dead. I am very sorry, I have done some terrible things in my life, trying to rid the world of Jerry Tyson. The only good thing that has ever come my way in my association with him was you.

My mother came to know him while he was still in prison, before anyone knew he was 3XK. He came to live with us when I was eight years old, and from the first day he had sought to establish dominance. He locked my mother in a room in the basement the day he moved into the house and for two whole days all I heard from my bedroom was her screaming. A sound I will never get out of my head...my mothers screams that night. From that day forward he took over as my primary caregiver. He wanted me to be just like him. Used my mother to abuse me at every opportunity.

The things he had my mother do to me I will not put into words. I can't. They are too terrible to speak of. He had her take me with him to visit my grandparents in the hospital and I watched as she injected a lethal overdose of their pain medication into their IV's after disconnecting the alarms. Watched her kill them for him without a second thought or any remorse.

He was different when he came back from New York City in the wheelchair in 2012. Before, he took little notice of me, other than to teach me not to care for other people. He had been a controlled coiled snake then, but he was worse after. Like he had gone completely insane. He wanted nothing but vengeance.

He wanted to use me as the instrument of that vengeance. Years later, after I met you, I realized what he wanted me to do was wrong, I wanted out, but it was too late. He still had my mother, she was likely beyond saving, but she was still my mom. I had no choice but to do what he said, if I wanted to save her, but I knew I could not let him have you, let him do what he planned.

If you are reading this letter, then I have succeeded in my mission but did not live to tell you myself or to beg for your forgiveness. I am so very sorry for any pain I have caused you. I hope someday you can forgive me.

I love you.

Jeremy.

She had burned the letter after reading it. A micro SD card had been included in the envelope. In it was an address for a farmhouse in Albany where his mother was being held. She sent the information to the New York State Trooper Albany Barracks who hit the place and found Caroline Christian still in the basement, weak from malnutrition, but still alive. The report she had been given was that she tried to attack the trooper who came in the door to save her and had to be restrained. Not once did she ask about her son, screaming, crying out for Jerry to come save her.

Upon being told that he was dead, killed by her son, she said something that chilled her to the bone when she was told of it.

"He is no son of mine, let him rot, he murdered the love of my life."

She would spend the rest of her life in an asylum for the criminally insane, for the murders of her parents. The case had been circumstantial until she blurted out in court that she had done it...gladly..because Jerry had asked her to, and she loved him. Her lawyer pleaded diminished capacity, and the judge agreed.

Alexis had decided in her own mind, that it had, in fact, been Jerry Tyson who killed her grams, not Jeremy. That the video he had played for her had been faked. Tyson had done it. She repeated it to herself over and over in her head every night before she went to sleep for the past week since the two of them died until she believed it.

It was the only way she could rationalize in her mind that she still loved him, just as madly and deeply as she did before she found out what he had done. What Jerry had done. Her mind corrected. The twin babies growing in her womb (an ultrasound had determined that it was two fetal hearts beating that night not one) would want to know about their father, and she wanted them to love their dad as much as she did.

Jerry Tyson was dead and in no position to complain or deny it. What was one more body added to his name?

As the funeral proceeded to it's destination, the drums stopped. The hearse was opened and Jeremy's flag draped coffin was removed by the pallbearers, led by Ryan and Esposito and delivered with solemn reverence to his final resting place. There had been very little left of him but charred bones after the warehouse fire burned itself out, requiring a closed casket funeral, but at least she had a body to bury. Jerry's had been closest to the incendiary grenade when it went off and had been mostly ashes, the explosion having blown Jeremy's body clear.

The flag was folded into into a triangle, and a police sergeant she didn't know knelt in front of her to present it.

"By the authority of the Mayor and the Police commissioner of New York, I present you with this flag, for his sacrifice, on behalf of a grateful city."

Alexis took it in her numb hands, her mind a thousand miles away, until the rifles fired their three volleys which brought her back to the moment. Her father made a small squeak each time the rifles fired, his eyes drawn to Kate. In his head she knew he was being drawn back to another sunny day much like this one in May of 2011. Alexis took her father's hand and squeezed it without looking back at him. Helping to ground him. She knew that Kate would take care of the rest.

She sat in silence during the wake for Jeremy in "The Old Haunt." She sipped from her glass of apple juice at the appropriate times as the others in attendance drank to Jeremy's memory, her hand unconsciously drawn to her abdomen, where his babies were growing. By the time they were old enough to tell them about their daddy, all memory of his sins would be gone.

Only their love would remain.

Always.

Nine Months Later

At nine o'clock AM, Alexis Castle gave birth to her fraternal twins. The first was a boy, whom she named Jeremy Alexander Castle, after his father and her dad's original middle name. Two minutes later, a little girl burst into the world screaming, whom she named Johanna Elaine Castle. After Kate's mother and her mentor, Lanie Parrish. Lanie had nearly fainted when she found out later.

Her father and mother had both been present at the birth.

Rick had been steadily improving since the death of Jerry Tyson. It had taken a month of silence and separate rooms before he had been willing to forgive Kate for hiding the truth about Tyson from him. His therapist finally helping him to see that his wife and his daughter had not been trying to hide this from him to hurt him, but had instead had meant the opposite.

Alexis' steadily advancing pregnancy had been the final catalyst to make them finally see past the lingering guilt and anger so they could reconcile. An angry rant from her after a particularly bad bout of morning sickness and pregnancy hormones had sealed the deal. She had been so angry and upset with the two of them after an argument that she had nearly collapsed and had come close to a miscarriage. It was a wake-up call for the both of them that life was simply too short to linger over past mistakes.

Ekaterina had glared at the two of them, muttering angry curse words under her breath in Russian in their direction that even Kate didn't understand for days afterward.

It had taken another month of unofficial sessions with Dr. Burke, who had elected to keep seeing her after his retirement, for her to forgive herself, though to some degree, even through the drugs he was on, Rick could tell she had never fully done so, and likely never will.

They gained ground steadily after that.

By the time Alexis' due date had drawn near, Rick's doctors had taken him off of the regular dosages of anti-anxiety drugs and back on the regimen he had been on before this whole ordeal began. He was finding his equilibrium again as he helped his daughter navigate her pregnancy. She had been placed on bed rest following the near miscarriage, so he took it upon himself to keep her entertained.

He dusted off the old X-box and they played Halo, and Guitar Hero. Read books back and forth with each other and reconnected as father and daughter in a way they hadn't since his mother had died. Since he had lost himself, and she had fled to avoid seeing it. Because seeing it would have made it real for her. For the first time since it overtook her father's life, she was coming to terms with his illness. Life was getting better.

Richard Castle was battling back, this time in a more healthy way than he had when he had helped Kate through her father's death. He was getting better, slowly becoming whole again. Though this disorder would likely haunt him for the rest of his life, he was finally coming to terms with it.

Finally coming to terms with the murder of his mother.

Richard Castle looked down at the tiny newborn baby girl and boy sleeping peacefully side by side in the cradle in the hospital nursery. They were both seven pounds, nine ounces, and 60 centimeters long. Little Johanna had her mother's eyes and fiery red hair. Little Jeremy had his father's (god rest his soul) chocolate brown eyes and his own brown hair They were perfect and beautiful and had the best mother they could possibly ever have.

He knew Alexis would have a busy work schedule when she came off maternity leave. Though he knew that she loved these two little bundles of joy more than anything in this world, he also knew that these baby's mommy was also dedicated to her job.

Dedicated to helping taking murderers off the streets, to make her part of the city she loved safer for her babies to grow up in. She was tireless in seeking justice, so he knew he would be spending a lot of time with these two little ones in the loft.

It had been a very long time since it had rung with the laughter of children playing within its walls. He hadn't realized until just this moment how much he truly missed it. Wished he had been able to give Kate children of their own, but the both of them would relish this time, just like he had when Alexis was growing up. There would be games and fun and laughter. There would be movies, and lightsaber duels and EPIC Laser Tag battles. He would tell them stories and love them as if they were his.

He was completely unprepared for this experience, after ten years trapped in his own head, a prisoner of his illness and trauma. He was amazed at how much these two tiny lives in front of him simply swelled his heart with more love than he thought any one human could ever possess. He was totally smitten, from the first moment he'd laid eyes on them.

Everything was going to change. Everything had already changed. His entire world was already spinning off into a completely different dimension and though it scared the hell out of him at times, had him reaching for the pills the doctors had given him to take when he needed to take the edge off of his fear, secretly he was loving every minute of it. So was Kate, who had fallen in love with these two babies as swiftly and as surely as he did. Their lives were full and rich, even if he went broke tomorrow.

Of all of the changes that had taken place in his life to bring him to this time and this place and presented him with these two little babies, the one change that he had thought up until now that he would never be ready for, even before his mother was killed and he spun off into madness, was the one that now lay before him. The role he now knew he had been born to play.

The role of...Grandfather.

He knew in his heart, that the extended Castle family would somehow find their way.

The End.

**Author's note. Some of you might recognize the end of this from my short story "This Tiny Little Life." No your eyes do not deceive you, I stole from myself. It seemed appropriate and only needed minor tweaking for details.

Thank you everyone for reading, I will likely go back to "A Castle in Fortress Europe for the time being, and maybe tweak "Putting In The Work" and finish it after I see more of season 6.

Thanks for reading.