Chapter Four
Aftermath

"I can't remember anything,
Can't tell if this is truth or dream,
Deep down inside, I feel the scream,
The terrible silence stops me there."
Metallica: One

After what seemed to be an eternity of darkness, Richard Castle's senses slowly began reporting in. He could hear distant voices beyond the periphery of the hazy shroud where his perception ended.

"…This has to be the strangest blood panel I've ever seen…"

"…don't know how he managed to kill the tiger…"

"…with his injuries he should be dead…"

"…is that organ regeneration?"

"…Dad, please wake up…"

"…Castle…"

The last two voices definitely caught his drug-addled attention. He tried to open his eyes, but they were so… heavy. Kate's voice brought back a single memory. The only thing he could recall. Her eyes locked on his, wide with terror. The image repeated over and over in his mind but before he could process any further sensations, a bright light flashed in one eye, followed by indistinct voices before his senses dimmed and darkness descended upon him once more.

Meanwhile

Sgt. Rivers had been busy during the three days Richard Castle had been kept sedated in observation. Accessing the Castle loft had been absurdly easy, all things considered. Though the doorman, Eduardo, had been resistant at first, the Axxi sign rendered him compliant enough. A cursory search of the loft using his enhanced senses quickly revealed the safe room.

"Not bad," he thought to himself, "he's trying harder to keep the symptoms in check than I anticipated."

It didn't take long for him to discover the unmarked pill container in the medicine cabinet.

"Silver," he thought again, not realizing he was speaking out loud. "Only a couple of missing components and he'd be on the right track."

Upon returning to his own well-appointed Manhattan walk-up he mulled over his options. Wolfsbane, among some of the other components needed for a more comprehensive supplement for the more extreme lycanthropy symptoms would be easy enough to find at any one of several apothecary shops dotted across Manhattan that serviced the vondun community. He would need access to a better setup than the rudimentary alchemy lab in his kitchen to come up with a more permanent cure, however. He knew a few people who owed him some favors and was certain once he had everything he needed, a place to work would be easy enough to come by.

Though the cure for lycanthropy might be difficult to synthesize, especially in the modern age, it was clear from Richard Castle's home that he was a good man with people who loved him. He might be worth the extra effort.

Though he was a talented functioning alchemist in his own right, he was nowhere near as skilled as Yen was, and like every time his mind wandered in this direction in the last century, he wished she was still with him. Since the two of them had retired to their vineyard and disappeared from history, she'd survived three purges by the Catholic Church and another by the Spanish Inquisition only to be killed by a stray artillery shell at the height of the First World War when she'd insisted on going to Paris. For the thousandth time since that day he wished that just once he'd been able to tell her "no" and stood his ground.

He hoped that Detective Beckett understood the sacrifices Richard Castle had made for her safety and that of every human being he encountered. He'd only seen them together for a few moments, but it was clear that there was something there and she was fighting it. He knew all too well what it was like to look back on his life and wonder "if only".

His hand drifted to the silver sword where it hung in the armoire next to its steel companion, fingers brushing along the runes on the blade "Dubhenn haern am gladeal, mor'h am aiesin" which translated loosely to "The flash that cuts through the darkness. The light that breaks the night."

Though his calling had long ago become obsolete, his order all but extinct since the second conjunction of the spheres, he didn't regret his decision to stop taking the mutagens and eventually pass into the beyond, but he figured he had enough in him for one last crusade.

**Author's note** Sorry folks, I meant to get this out on Halloween, but the massive storm that tore through my area that night sending Oneida and Herkimer counties into States of emergency stymied my writing plans.