Betrayal and Resignation

Richard Castle lay in a bed in a private room in Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a cardiac monitor keeping pace with his heartbeat, IV tubes in his arm and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He had been in a coma for three days following their breaking of the "Valkyrie" case. He had been at her side, slowly getting sicker with each passing hour, as the two of them worked hard to solve it. Trying to find the virus strain that had been stolen in the vain hope that there was a cure.

They had successfully built a case against the Secretary of Defense...boxed him into a corner, found and recovered the weaponized toxin, only there was no cure. There had never been one. It was why it had been locked away in such a secure facility...slated not for future study, but for destruction.

Rick had collapsed shortly after Kate had slapped the cuffs on the mastermind of the operation, and McCord had hauled him away. It was the scientist who had created it, wanting hold it for future study. She had called for an airlift to Walter Reed...thinking that surely they could do something for him. It was the only hope Rick had left.

Kate was in hell.

The job she had wanted so badly had swallowed the man she loved whole and spat him out broken. She blamed herself. If only she had been honest with him from the start about this job. If only she had taken him into consideration when she thought she wanted it so badly...if only she had fought harder for their relationship...been more open to him...if only.

But if only was not going to fix this. If only wasn't going to bring Rick back. She hadn't cried this much since the night she showed up at Rick's door in the rain. The night their romantic relationship began. All she could do now was sit and watch as he wasted away, hoping that he would survive the night.

Her phone had rung twice...both times it was the AG's office. The second time had been after she turned it off...they had done a remote reactivation and called her again. So she took the battery out. They could revoke her security clearance...fire her...she didn't care. She wasn't leaving Rick. Not this time.

Never again.

Agent-in-charge Villante had a problem. He had known that the aerosol deployment of the virus story Agent Beckett had been told...then fed her fiance... had been a sham. He had known all along that the patsy had been injected with the toxin and had long since passed the stage where it had been communicable when he had kidnapped him.

That under his orders, Richard Castle had instead been injected with what was supposed to have been a harmless strain of influenza in the antiviral cocktail he had been given after his blood had been drawn. It should have mimicked the known symptoms of the virus with little or no actual harm done to the man.

Only no one had bothered to check whether Richard Castle had ever had the flu. As it turns out...he hadn't, and was also highly allergic to the medium the influenza strain had been cultured in. It was unknown whether he would survive the night.

Agent McCord had informed him that over the last few weeks that Agent Beckett's focus had been off in several key training exercises. That her separation from her fiance had been the primary factor. When this case came up...and her fiance had interfered, not once but twice, he decided to use him to "motivate" her to put her full attention to the case.

It had worked brilliantly. He had found out firsthand not just how brilliant an investigator Beckett was, but what Agent Stack had meant about the bond between her and Richard Castle. Alone, Kate Beckett was intelligent, driven intuitive and insightful, (she had been the one to discover that the toxin had been the real target of the theft) but paired with her fiance, they were unstoppable.

He should have had the AG extend the job offer to Castle as well. Or made one himself had he known. Now, he might just lose them both. She had already refused two priority assignments to sit in Richard Castle's room staring at the monitors. One more and he would have to revoke her security clearance.

If Richard Castle lived, a plausible cover story would have to be concocted for his miraculous immunity to the toxin. If he died, his body would have to be cremated to maintain the deception and Agent Beckett would be granted a reasonable bereavement period...he could spare her for three weeks at most...then put back to work. On the plus side she would have no more distractions to hamper her performance.

Only time will tell.

He had been on the phone with the military doctors assigned to Richard Castle's care. He had given them the identity of the influenza strain he had been dosed with, provided a sample of the same batch and then invoked national security to force them to keep it a secret.

He knew he really didn't have a leg to stand on with this stunt. What he had done was not only a breach of professional ethics, (which was usually the first casualty in the shades of gray world their unit operated in) but was also highly illegal. Given the high profile status of Richard Castle this could easily blow up in his face. He had to keep it compartmentalized.

What he hadn't counted on was that Rachel McCord had overheard his conversation. She was shocked. She knew that Villante could be a cold hearted bastard when it came to the job. His unit had the highest rate of burnout, turnover and employee divorce in the federal system. He had no qualms about revoking time off...even Christmas wasn't sacred. But this? This was crossing the line.

She had given up a lot for this job. Given up on having a family, any sort of stable relationship, even casual sex. The only thing she had left was her code of honor. You just didn't do something like this to your own people. She couldn't let Villante do this to Beckett, couldn't let the boss slide on this one. She had to tell Beckett the truth.

"He did what!?" Kate shouted after Agent McCord told her what she had learned. Rachel McCord knew that Kate was not just angry...she was absolutely furious.

"Did you know about this?" she shouted..."Were you in on it? Were you trying to teach me another lesson about believing intel over my gut?"

"I swear...Beckett...I...I didn't know. I only overheard Villante talking to the doctors at Walter Reed this morning." Rachel replied, followed by a long, uncomfortable silence between the two women, punctuated by the door to Rick's private room swinging open.

At absolutely the wrong moment, the lead doctor on Rick's case walked in the door to check his chart. Shaking with rage, Kate swung him around and slammed him into the wall away from Rick's bed, drew her silenced, federal issue Sig Sauer and pressed it directly to the center of his forehead.

"You are going to tell me the truth about my fiance's medical condition...right...fucking...now!"

"Agent Beckett...I...can't ...I'm under orders..." the man stammered, he was a doctor, ill accustomed to such treatment, even in the army.

Kate slowly and deliberately flicked her weapon's safety off. "You have bigger problems."

Shortly after the doctor spilled his guts to her...explaining everything, Agent McCord explained to him that this conversation "had never happened," Kate was already out the door on her way to the task force headquarters.

When she walked into Villante's office like a huntress stalking her prey, her face was a professional mask and her boss had no idea that she knew the truth of what he had done.

"Agent Beckett...good to see you finally came in. I know your fiance is still down but I have a priority assignment that..."

He never got the chance to finish his sentence as he was almost immediately slammed into the wall behind his desk, Beckett glaring into his eyes like she meant to bore a hole through the center of his skull..

"There was never any toxin in that car...was there? You son of a bitch!" Kate shouted, "You did this...you dosed Rick with the flu...never even bothered to see if it was safe. He damn near died because of you.!"

Villante's own blood was up when he spoke next..."I needed you focused on this case. I needed one hundred percent from you, not the half-assed effort you were giving because you were moping for your boyfriend. He wasn't supposed to actually get hurt"

"Wasn't supposed to get hurt?" Kate slapped him in the face, "What you gave him almost killed him!"

Kate drew her federal issue sidearm and Villante backed up reflexively his hand dropping to his own holstered weapon before Kate ejected the magazine onto his desk, safed her weapon before dropping it too onto his desk, followed without any hesitation by her credentials.

"At least in the NYPD I knew where I stood, that I could trust the people I worked with to have my back. I cant' work for an organization if I can't trust the people I work for. Consider this my resignation, effective immediately."

Before Villante could open his mouth to try to change her mind, she wheeled on him, silencing him with her patented "death glare."

"You will see to it that Richard Castle get the best of care...period. If ANYTHING happens to him, I will make it my mission in life to burn this unit to the ground. Open it to full scrutiny in the press. Make sure the world finds out what you did. You don't want that."

With that, Kate Beckett left the employ of the Federal Government. In the weeks and months that followed during Rick's full recovery and her return to duty with the 12th Precinct Homicide squad, she got several phone calls from the Attorney General, and Rachel McCord trying to get her to come back, the AG even offered to give Castle a consulting position and allow him to shadow her like he did at the 12th. Even a personal visit from Agent Stack who tried to convince her that she had made a mistake leaving the job for Rick.

Nothing any of them said, however did anything to change her mind. In the end, it had come down to a choice between the "dream job" and the man she loved and was going to marry. To her mind, there was no other choice, not really.

If there had been, she had made it over a year ago on that rain-soaked night she had arrived on Rick's doorstep to tell him she just wanted him and reaffirmed the day she had been standing on that bomb when she had told him she loved him.

Katherine Houghton Beckett resolved that from here on out she would choose him before all other considerations.

Always.