A/N I hope you enjoy my second story, I have several chapters already written so I should be able to upload weekly. Please hang in there as the angst does improve.

Disclaimer: Nope checked my mail today, no rights to Castle in the mailbox. Still belongs to AWM and ABC.

Chapter 1

ASHER

She sat curled up in the cramped hiding space, well into the third hour of her concealment, slowly shifting her weight from one foot to the other and trying to ease the searing pain in her calves. Hours spent playing laser tag did not prepare her enough for this moment. She had not felt her toes or fingers for the last 45 minutes and the cold was slowly working its way up her limbs, leaving a numbing emptiness in its path. She couldn't help imaging what would happen when it seeped from her limbs to the rest of her body. Would they find her here in the summer a thawed husk of herself like the Andean mummies or stow away on one of the Boeing aircraft, dropped from the skies.

Maybe... Ok, ok stop now you sound like Dad. Trust the plan, this had to work. For Mom, for Dad, for us, because there was no going back. She had awoken him and it was time to end it. Forever, for always.

She reached down with her numb fingers to rub the tattoo on her inner wrist. Always, their special word that meant more than I love you, more than I will give my life for you and sometimes it felt like more than them. She felt the burn in her finger tips as she rubbed them back and forth over that one word. She remembered the day that she stopped believing in that word. The day that everything changed and their always ended. The day the dragon decided that they would never have their always. Now it had another meaning...vengeance. As she traced those words she could feel the warmth spread from her finger tips up her arms and as it spread she felt her heartbeat pick up, accepting this new warmth. With each beat the blood returned to her cramped limbs and she knew that this time she was ready. In her mind she screamed the words she longed to say out loud. It's over, the world will know who you are and what you have done. The atrocities you have committed to rise to the top will be known and there is nowhere on this earth that you can hide.

Slowly she sucked each cold breath into her lungs, in and out, watching the air steam up with each short exhalation. And with each breath she eased the tension in her muscles preparing herself for what was to come just like Javi had taught her in their training session. Secret sessions that Lanie and especially Alexis would have banned had they known, which is why they'd never told anyone about them. Javi knew the terrors that were out there and how important it was that they be prepared for whatever this devastating, hard life would fling at them.

She looked out from her hiding place across the large cavernous room to the boarded up windows, dust bunnies gently floating in the early morning light streaming through the cracks in the boards, then to the old mattress and debris of someone's life that lay in the corner of this squalid room. But never did her eyes fasten on the one spot that she should be looking at, the one spot where her family's lives had changed forever, the one spot on the concrete floor that still bore testimony to the lives that had been stolen. No she couldn't bring herself to look at the rust coloured stains that with time were being integrated into the myriad of other stains on the floor and remember their last moments. This is one time that she wished she was not her father's daughter, wished she wasn't able to imagine what those last moments might have felt like. She could feel the desperation, the grief, the sorrow and ultimately the horror spreading out from that stain with rust coloured fingers, like the bony hands of the angel of death. Threatening to wrap around her, surrounding and suffocating her in her cramped hiding space. No, today was about remembering the life that they led, the joy that they gave to everyone around them and the person who had taken that away.

Taking a slow steadying breath in, she lifted a hand, threading it through her dark brown hair, fingering the short ends of her new pixie cut, and closed her green chameleon eyes, mentally walking step by step through the plan yet again. He would come. She would not allow doubt to sway her. She had been preparing for this day for months ever since she had learnt the name of the faceless dragon that haunted her dreams. And in this moment she hoped that her parents would be proud of her. She thought that her mom would understand the drive, the need to see justice done, the need to end this now. Today. Today, her 16th birthday would be the end. No one else could understand what drove her like her mom would have. Not her older sister, not her uncles and aunts and not her siblings.

With her eyes closed she could she a younger version of herself, happy and carefree, sitting with her mother, she thinks it might have been at the beach house and she's sitting on the floor in front of the couch. Her mother's sitting behind her and is slowly drawing a brush through the waves of her long brown hair. She could feel the sunlight streaming through the windows, warming her toes in its glow. As she leant back against her mother's knees, the unique scents of cherries and vanilla swept around her, enveloping her like a warm hug. They were discussing some injustice that had occurred at school, she remembers trying to convey in words the tumult of emotions coursing through her at those perceived injustices. As the brush strokes slowed and she was lulled into a warm drowsy world, her words slowed and she heard her mother sigh. Her mother leant forward and wrapped her strong arms around the around her younger self.

"Oh baby sometimes I think you are too much like me, too quick to yell and scream at the injustices of the world and too quick to absorb its pain." Her mother sighed again.

"But Momma who will fight the bad people if we don't." She turned to look up at her mother.

She felt her draw her up onto the couch into her lap, she remembered feeling safe, secure and oh so loved within those strong arms, a feeling that she now knew she would never have again and that she would miss every day.

"Baby girl, its mine and daddy's job to fight the bad people and your job to be our baby girl." Her mother pressed her lips into the girl's forehead. Breathing out a little sigh and then inhaling that sweet smell of her baby.

"Awww but Momma, Daddy and I are gonna be superheroes when I grow up? "The little girl giggles into her mother's neck.

"And there's your daddy in you. Spoken like a true Castle, baby" With a laughing snort that only this extraordinary woman could pull off and still be graceful, she tugged the young girl in closer.

She remembered curling her little legs up, tucking into her mother's side and resting her head on her shoulders. Her daddy might give the biggest bestest bear hugs in the world but her mom knew how to rub her back in soft hypnotic little circles that made all the tensions and worries melt away. And as they lay in the warm summer sunlight they both fell asleep and that's how her father found them, these two extraordinary females in his life thankful on a daily basis for these amazing women that surrounded him.

Softly the sounds of footsteps reached her in her hiding place. Someone was approaching quietly like a snake slithering through grass or in this case a dragon through a lifetime of abandoned garbage. Without even needing to look at the watch on her wrist she knew he was on time and the plan was about to slide into motion. Thirty years of injustice, grief, pain and sacrifice was going to end today and her family would no longer have to hide in fear from this man.

The door squeaked on its rusted hinges as it was pushed inwards. Light from the hallway flooded into the dark room and brought with it the sounds of the New York streets. She could hear the sounds of horns blaring, car doors slamming and children laughing as New York woke up to face another cold winters day. As quickly as the light and sounds entered they were silenced by the door being closed. There was a split second of silence and then she heard shuffling as if someone was searching the room. She sucked in a deep breath and held it. The overhead fluorescent light flickered to life and she was momentarily blinded by its brightness. Slowly her eyes adjusted and she was able to make out the figure of the man standing in the centre of the abandoned room. Standing from her crouched position she felt the blood rush to her abused limbs flooding them with feeling at the same time as her heart started to race. Slowly she flexed each long toned limb, unfolding the tall stature that she had inherited from her mother. Drawing in a centring breath like her uncle had taught her, she captured her emotions and walled them inside her heart where they could not be touched and where they could not interfere with the job that she had to do today.

It ends today, it ends today...she stepped out of the shadows with the mantra singing through her heart and along her veins. No more, it ends today. Six months of sneaking out at night, missing classes to track down leads. Six months of dead ends and silence had finally paid off. Six months of piecing together the burnt papers of a jigsaw that she thought she would never solve. She not only had a name and a face for the man who killed her parents but she had a plan. A plan that would finally finish what her parents had started many years ago.