Close Encounters 18
Castle tried to hold on to her in the market, but it was just too busy, too crowded for that. They kept getting separated as they wandered, and every time her hand slipped out of his, his heart gave a funny lurch, a hard thump that had his breath catching.
It was an open air market half comprised of stalls and half the open trunks of people's vehicles, selling products and handmade items. The posters tacked up around town had called it a Car Boot Sale, like a flea market; they'd already managed to buy some fresh fruit, sample the hummus, and sip hot drinks as they meandered through wave after wave of crowds. It would be enjoyable but for the way Beckett sometimes darted ahead of him and disappeared, something catching her eye so that she turned and left him there, no word other than, oh, look.
When he finally lost sight of her in a maze of clothing stalls, he had to work hard not to call out her name, not draw attention to themselves. It was really the only thing holding him back from absolutely losing his cool, knowing that they had to be just another touristing couple, that they couldn't leave an impression.
"Oh, love, come look at this," she said suddenly, coming up behind him. Her fingers plucked at his t-shirt and when he turned, her face was radiant. "Come here. It's so - it's perfect."
She was drawing him after her, her eyes both seductive and hopeful, that tentative joy that had been cultivating in them both. She pulled him to a stall comprised of wooden carvings and knitwork, Chilean caps and scarves mixed with hand-painted flowers and - strangely enough - Russian nesting dolls.
"Look," Kate said proudly, scooping up a knitted hat with a connecting scarf, small, a little wolf face patterned into the top - flat square nose, black eyes, and then those pointed, particular ears. "Did you see the baby paw prints?"
She slipped her hand down the scarf and he realized the ends were mittens, little pockets for little hands, and that the gray wool held the telltale brown paw print where the palm would be.
His throat was too closed up to speak.
She nudged his shoulder and leaned in to kiss him like she knew. She had to know.
"Yeah, that's..."
She was smiling now, that beautiful and pressed lip smile, tenderness that radiated out. "We'll get it, hide it away until he comes."
"It's - isn't it big for him?"
She laughed softly. "Yeah, for a toddler. It's the idea of it though, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he admitted. Just the vision of a little face peering out from under the wolf's dark eyes. "Yeah, we should get it."
Kate, so pleased now that she was practically purring with it, turned back to the stall's owner and nodded. Castle let them haggle over a price, but his fingers rubbed over and over those round paw prints, almost able to feel the child's hand inside the mittens, reaching up for his.
And then Kate was drawing it out of his grip, laughing at him a little, cupping the side of his face as she gave it back to the woman to wrap in tissue paper. "You're a little cute," his wife murmured at him. "But snap out of it, love. Long way to go."
They had a little wolf hat tucked into tissue paper and a secret smile shared between them. She sipped her coffee knowing it would be the only one of the day, and she wandered through the closely packed crowd with Castle at her back.
She found fresh dates and plums that she could barely resist eating right there - but now everything had to be washed first. Pesticides and bacteria. She was learning; it was no different than the caution she'd learned in the Police Academy, the awareness instilled in her for work in the CIA. It was just oriented around what went on inside her body rather than what was going on outside it.
She found that funny.
Beckett had never really been any good at knowing when to quit. And now she was supposed to be paying such strict attention to her limitations.
The marketplace was made of mostly mud brick and wooden tables, cardboard boxes stacked high for shelving and then re-used and flattened as public walkways when the paths got too muddy. The jumble and the busy-ness was attractive and even thrilling, buzzing in her blood and making her stomach flutter.
She was going to have to tell him about this; she knew it. This sensation she had almost constantly now, of movement and of going, the feeling that she had all this energy and strength - it was doing wonders to combat her fears. It made her think that not only could she do this, but that she might actually be good at it. She might be exactly what his son needed.
But these pills, the supplements - Castle was always studying her now, looking for it, and she knew he was suspicious that they were more than just extra vitamins. And he wasn't right, but he wasn't wrong either.
"Kate," he called out.
She turned and realized she'd gone at least ten yards ahead of him, so she waited beside a stall that smelled of overripe cherries, dark and bitter, and her mouth was watering for fruit. Instead she sipped slowly at her coffee and stepped beside Castle as he caught up with her.
God, she felt good. She felt ready to tackle anything. And the funny thing was, the only thing really missing from these pills Boyd had concocted for her? The mood stabilizers that Castle's stabilizers had always had. The one thing she had thought might actually help her, she didn't even need because the rest of it did the trick.
She felt really good; it was ridiculous how strong, how ready she was. Dr Dennison was in touch with Boyd, they'd all talked about it, and the conclusion both of her doctors had come to was that it was a lot of maternal instinct getting a boost from having a well-balanced and well-rounded, healthy, daily regimen.
Just not the regimen. Because being healthy for once in her life was going to make her feel pretty damn good, but it wasn't super.
She didn't think Castle wasn't going to like it, no matter what she called it.
He'd see how it helped though; he'd already commented on her deep sleep, her hair, her - ah, energy. She knew it was going to be an intense conversation so she had put it off, but she figured it was time they started talking.
She stopped at a vendor displaying fruit she didn't recognize, lifting a hand to touch the dark-skinned plum-thing. She could smell it, distinctly, like bitter almonds, and it sent a shiver racing up her back, made her shoulders hunch.
She suddenly didn't want to be here. She glanced around for Castle, but he wasn't close by; she'd lost him again.
"Mia stigmÃ," she murmured, holding up a finger and turning around to search for her husband. The stall immediately to her left was filled with heavy blankets and tapestries displayed floor-to-ceiling and resplendent with color and weight. She ducked around them and glanced through the ever-thickening, teeming crowd, searching for the broadest shoulders and the man standing heads taller than any here.
Her heart was beating a little too fast, like her fight or flight response was amped. She felt the urge to press her hand to her stomach as if to calm the baby, but she ignored it and kept moving, retracing their steps.
She didn't see him at first. She was tall herself, but the market was overstuffed, people and their wares, racks of meat and stands of fabric, moving bodies and darting children, goats and bushels of pistachios.
And then she saw him leaning against the wall of a fruit vendor, back by the vendors' own pathway behind the stalls, his shoulders hunched and his hands on his knees.
She threaded back through the crowd as quickly as she could, going upstream and against the flow, but she wriggled between two stalls and came up behind him.
Castle jerked as if startled, but she gripped his forearm and rested her palm at his back. "Hey, what happened to you?" she said, leaning in to speak directly in his ear so he'd hear her. "Turned around and you had disappeared."
He shook his head and she saw now that his mouth was pursed tightly, lips blanched.
Her heart dropped. "Castle. Castle, can you breathe?"
He sucked in a breath like he'd been holding it, and then his hand came to her shoulder and he made an effort to stand up straighter.
"Castle," she croaked. "Come on, baby, you're scaring me."
"My - my arm is numb," he rasped, leaning back heavily against the wall, his head crashing into the wood. He was panting now, swallowing down air, and Kate felt that seed of panic pushing hard into her heart.
"Your arm is numb," she repeated. "What else? Castle. Look at me. Tell me what's wrong."
He blinked and scraped a hand down his face. "My arm - shooting pain in my arm and now it's numb. I can't - can't breathe right. Feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest."
She reached out and cupped his face in her hands, oriented him towards her. "Still hurts? Castle, does it still hurt?"
"Yeah," he got out. "My chest is tight." He pressed his knuckles against his sternum and hunched over it, like he could crack open his own ribs and get inside, make it right.
"How long have you felt the pain?"
"Just - while we've been walking," he admitted. "I thought I - I don't know. Pinched a nerve. Feels like a damn heart attack."
And Castle with strange, malformed blood.
"Kate, I - I gotta sit down."
She caught him before he could fall, controlling his descent with her arms gripped around his waist until she could get him leaning against the wall. And of course, she didn't have aspirin because she was pregnant and couldn't take it. Damn it. She straightened up, intent on begging aspirin from someone as an emergency measure for a heart attack, but Castle caught a fistful of her shirt and pulled her down.
"Rick. Sweetheart, I need to get you aspirin, call a doctor-"
"Sit. Right here - with me," he said. "It's not - it's already fading."
"Oh, love, that's not - not good enough. I need to find you a doctor."
"I can breathe now," he murmured. "I'm okay."
She stroked the hair back from his face and studied his eyes, the color in his cheeks. He was tracking her movement just fine; he was supposed to be super. But a heart attack? She had no idea.
"Have you been taking the supplements?" she said quietly.
"I have," he grunted. "I promise, Kate. Eggs, like Dr Boyd said. And the stuff with all the anti-oxidants and even the nasty fish oil. I have. I have-"
"Okay, okay," she murmured. She touched his neck and felt his heart rate a little too fast, but still strong. "Arm still feel funny?"
"No, it's passed," he said. "The moment you got here. Better with you here."
She knelt between his legs and pressed a hand over his heart, as if she could divine what was wrong with him. His chest expanded and she felt his lungs release, like they'd been held too tightly, a vise around him, and then she got it. She understood.
"Oh, baby," she sighed. "You had a panic attack."
"What?"
"A panic attack. Castle. I should have seen - all day you've been doing this, but I didn't catch on. I'm so sorry, love." She wrapped an arm around him and brought him into her side, kissing his forehead. "You freaked out on me when I said I'd gone running, and then that little worry furrow has been in your forehead all day. You kept clutching at my shirt too, hanging on to me. You never do that."
"I don't get panic attacks."
"Well," she said slowly.
"I - a panic attack?" He growled and shook his head, pushed up to stand. "That's not - I don't - no, I'm not-"
"Choose your words carefully," she warned him, standing herself. "Because I get panic attacks."
He closed his mouth and she narrowed her eyes at him.
Castle groaned and closed his eyes, rubbed a hand down his face. She waited until he'd had his moment and then she wrapped an arm around his waist and tucked in close.
"You're right," he sighed. "A panic attack. I did - I had gotten a little nervous about how I couldn't see you in the crowd."
She brushed peanut shells from his back where he'd been sitting against the stall, moved away from him so she could see his eyes. "We should probably be talking about this, Rick."
"Talking about what?"
She snorted and lifted the corner of her lips into a smile. "Really? Isn't denial my m.o.?"
He smiled back, though his looked a little weak. "Okay, so talk."
"Not here," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "We'll go back to the villa - where you feel safe-"
"It's not about me being safe. It's you," he grumbled. And then their eyes met and he gave her a bashful look. "Ah. I see. Okay. Yeah, a panic attack." He winced. "Shit. I think I've had more than a couple the last few days."
She hooked her arm through his and led him back out into the throng of people. They couldn't go back the way they'd come - the crowd wasn't going that direction - but they would step out of one of the many exits and go home.
"Come on, my big bad wolf," she murmured, leaning in to kiss his temple. He growled at her for it, but she liked it. They'd switched from elephants to wolves somehow, and her spy was most definitely a lone beast she'd adopted out of the woods. "We'll go home; we'll talk about everything that's happened. I just wish Dr King could mediate."
Castle didn't voice his agreement, but he did keep a tight grip on her arm, so tight she was surprised he wasn't using both hands to hold on to her.
Yeah, they definitely needed to talk.
He was faintly surprised when she pressed the knitted wolf hat against his chest and told him to do something with it. He'd almost forgotten it in the middle of things. But he dutifully went upstairs and hid the wolf in the lining of his suitcase; it wasn't an ideal hiding spot but it would have to do.
Beckett was there when he turned around; she was watching him.
"I'm okay," he said.
She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment more and then sighed. "I wish we had Dr King here."
"We don't need him," he scoffed. But he thought the same. "All he ever does is sit in his chair and nod."
She smiled a little. "Mm, yes. But it's a relief every time he does nod. Don't you think?"
"Yeah," he laughed, sinking down onto the foot of the bed. "When he nods, it's like he's proud of you."
She came towards him, stepping easily between his knees. Castle framed her hips with his hands and leaned in, lips to the heat of her skin through her shirt. She combed her fingers in his hair and let him stay, and so he pressed his cheek against her stomach and closed his eyes.
"I'm proud of you," she whispered to him.
He let out a little laughing breath, squeezed her hips in thanks. When he lifted his head, she sank down to his knees, straddling his lap, her concern for him wrapping around him like a blanket. It was just so nice to have the attention; in such a selfish and primal way, he guessed he'd been wanting her to notice him, notice that he was barely holding it together.
She squeezed his shoulders and leaned in to embrace him, her arms tight, her lips brushing his jaw. They weren't supposed to talk when they were this close - one of King's rules - but it was too safe feeling like this to hold it back.
"I'm just afraid all the time," he rasped.
"I didn't know," she murmured, kissing his jaw now. It was a big rule they were breaking, touching each other when they were supposed to be talking. King was so strict about it - opposite chairs and eye contact and validating statements.
But he felt better like this. "He said he was coming after you, and he has. One thing after another and I can't keep you safe."
"I know," she sighed. "But we keep each other safe. We work together."
"Yeah, that's nice and all, good sentiment, but it's just not true. He could have hired a sniper and we're walking around in an outdoor market and just like that, you're gone. You're gone-"
"Your heart's racing," she murmured in his ear. "Slow it down, baby. You're okay."
"I'm not okay," he groaned, arms tightening around her.
"But I'm okay. And that's what you're worried about."
"Worried is such an understatement that it's insulting."
"Okay, okay. You're afraid. I heard you. You're afraid your father's going to kill me."
"Yes," he got out tightly.
She stroked the back of his neck, but she kept close, her cheek to his. "Well. There are ways to fix that."
"How?" he croaked. "I'm lying awake at night trying to figure out how we can possibly-"
"A new deal."
"What?" he growled.
"Listen to me," she said fiercely, pushing back now and gripping him by the nape of his neck. "You said you'd listen to me."
"I'm listening," he ground out.
"You told me - Rick, you said, next time, next time try harder. So I'm talking here, I'm trying, and you need to hear me."
"Okay," he said, but already his heart was thrashing in his chest. A new deal? A new deal with the one man who wanted to kill her?
"You promised," she whispered.
He groaned and dipped his head, crashing into her neck even as he tried to pull it together. "I promised," he confirmed. He had, he had told her there were better ways than throwing herself straight into the maw of the beast, and he had to fucking get it together and prove they could talk about this.
"A new deal, Rick."
"A new deal," he repeated, taking a gulping breath. He lifted his head. "What - what deal?"
"I don't know yet, but things have changed. It's not the same set of circumstances; we have new terms."
His heart stopped. "No."
"Just think about it."
"We are never telling him about James."
Her eyes were shot through with green, an aching, painful green like shards of glass. She was breaking inside; he could see it. She was shattering because he was doing it again - he was completely shutting her down.
"Why?" he croaked, forcing it out of his mouth. "Why would you think that's a good idea?"
"Because he's going to find out anyway," she whispered.
Horror washed through him so keenly that the next thing he knew, Kate was cradling his head and urgently asking him if he needed to lie down.
"Rick? Come on, love. Castle. Castle, can you-"
"I'm - okay. Here. I'm here," he gasped, sucking down a breath that wouldn't come. She'd already pushed him back to lie flat on the mattress, and he found himself staring up at the ceiling and Kate's face hovering over him.
"Panic attack," she said calmly.
"Shit." He pressed a hand to his eyes and groaned. "Shit, this is not good."
"It kind of undermines all of my attempts to be truthful with you," she admitted.
Castle struggled to rise, appalled at how it had swept over him just like that, without warning or explanation, and completely laid him low.
"But you've been trigger happy for weeks now," she murmured, sitting next to him and combing her fingers through his hair.
"Trigger happy?" he grunted.
She was smiling softly at him. "That's what I call it. When I can feel it looming. And you fight it back. Sometimes you just have to let it burst, drain out of you. It'll be better now."
"Hope so," he got out. "But I - don't want to sabotage your attempt to be truthful. Keep - keep talking."
She sighed and her fingers stroked at his nape, the side of his neck, his throat. "Okay."
But she wouldn't; he saw that too. She wouldn't push him. "You want tell him," he prompted. "Tell my father we're pregnant."
She gave him this dopey little grin, her cheeks flushing, and she leaned in and knocked her shoulder into his. "We are."
She liked the we? He laughed even though it was hollow, but she was leaning her cheek against his shoulder and twining her arm with his, fingers lacing. She felt good pressed along his side like this, and it was kind of beautiful to see how it took her. Made her happy.
"If we control the information, we have a better chance of controlling the response," she said then.
"I can't imagine what he'd do knowing that I got you pregnant - that it's family time," he said bitterly. It scared the shit out of him.
"Castle, you are the most important thing to him. That has always been true. I can trust it."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"Russia," she said quietly. "You were going to die. Rick, I... you were going to die and he was there."
"But that's-"
"It is the same," she insisted. "Because he could have killed me then and there."
Castle barely managed it, but he kept from breaking apart with it. "Okay."
"He could have but his priority isn't me. You are his priority. So we carried you into the cargo hold of the chopper - it wasn't even supposed to work. It was... he could have shot me after we got you settled. But there wasn't any time. You needed immediate medical attention. How fast would one bullet have been? But he didn't risk it. He absolutely wouldn't put your life in jeopardy a moment more. And that. That I trust."
He felt sick. He wished, again, that he'd killed his father long, long ago.
And yet, if he had, they would have both died in Russia.
"I don't see how that connects to this," he said finally. His father would be so furious when he discovered Kate was pregnant. Hadn't Rick heard his whole life how the life of a spy was meant to transcend family life, be more than the average working slob? You're not built for that, you're built for greatness.
Kate leaned back against the headboard with her hands pushed between her drawn-up knees. She was regarding him thoughtfully; she'd already established the usual parameters for their serious conversations - no touching, sit opposite one another, look each other in the eyes.
It worked. He wished it didn't sometimes, but it fell over him like peace. They'd talk and it would be better and everything was going to be fine - it always hit him like that.
"You ready?" she said quietly.
He nodded.
She pushed her feet down to the bottom of the bed, her toes touching his thigh. A little rebellion against the rules. "You were five. He raised you. However poorly, whatever his terrible methods - he still did the work. I'm not saying I excuse it, or him, or anything he did to you-"
"It's not me I'm worried about. I don't care what he did to me - it's not even - what do I know, Kate? It's what he does to you."
She nodded, and he realized he'd interrupted.
"Sorry, go on. Go. I'm listening, Kate, I swear."
"It is about what he does to me," she said finally. "You're right. Which is why we tell him that I'm carrying your son."
Something about that caught him funny, made his insides shiver and turn inside out.
"Or daughter," she smiled. Her lips were turned up like she was listening to some inner voice. "Oh, but I think we both know it's a boy."
Castle finally broke, able to breathe again, able to smile back. "Yeah. Until it isn't."
She laughed then, a soft one, light, barely there but still happy. It kind of knocked him sideways, realizing he'd made her happy like this. Despite everything.
"He won't touch me while I'm pregnant."
Castle stopped smiling. The awful logic of it hit him cold.
"He wouldn't ruin his legacy," she kept going. "Especially when we tell him I'm - I'm taking the regimen."
He froze, shocked into absolute stillness by that statement.
She immediately came up on her knees beside him, arms around his neck and hanging on tightly. "Not like that. It's just what we tell him, Rick. Okay? Because it's so close to the truth he wouldn't be able to distinguish a difference."
"It is?"
"The vitamins I'm taking from Boyd are - they're not entirely the regimen, Rick, no. But they have so many parts similar to those stabilizers..."
"I thought so," he said, feeling it settle in his chest like a weight.
She sank back against her heels and watched him a moment. "Castle, I promise you - and you know how I feel about promises - I promise that we have looked over every single element and it is safe. Me, Dr Boyd, and Dr Dennison as well. We all agreed. Dr Dennison was even really excited about it and wanted to use something similar for one of her patients."
"Yeah?" he croaked, glancing up at her.
"Yes," she said firmly. "They really are just supplements, like I've been calling them. I was afraid that if you knew how similar the elements were-"
"I'd freak out? Well, I'm already way past freaked out," he said, trying not to let it come out harshly.
"I know," she said softly. Her hand came again to his thigh, her body shifting closer. "I know and I'm sorry I haven't really explained."
"I'm kinda glad you didn't," he laughed. He felt so tired; he didn't know how she dealt with this all the time. He let himself flop back to the mattress and he dragged her down with him.
She laid against his side, fingers stroking along his sternum.
"Just promise me we won't tell him yet," he said finally. "I can't - it has some logic to it, Kate, that scares the shit out of me. But I can't see clear of how it - he'll never - not yet. Just not yet."
"Okay," she said quickly.
"But you keep talking," he added roughly. "Don't quit trying."
"I won't. We're talking; we'll keep talking."
"Because I just... but it could be - I don't know."
"Can you hear the rest?"
"There's more?" he groaned.
"About your father."
"Okay. Yes. Lay it on me."
She lifted up and kissed his closed eyelids, moved his hand away from his face. He reluctantly opened his eyes and she smiled down at him.
"He's only ever wanted you - his legacy to the world - to be the best, most efficient CIA agent possible. I might make you inefficient, and worse - emotional and compromised, but add in the element of a - a grandson - to his world view, Castle. What do you think he sees?"
A grandson. Just the idea of it, of a claim over his son made him want to throw things. Or throw up. "He sees..."
"He sees his empire," she said softly. "His work to create the perfect machine - if we can talk to him, I really do think he'll compromise. It's not what he wants, but it's better than nothing, better than being constantly thwarted by this force he can't see and doesn't understand."
"Our love," he said thickly. He knew what that force was; they'd affirmed it time and again. "He doesn't comprehend it. He never loved Martha, poor woman, but sometimes I think - if he had just let himself..."
"I think so too," she whispered, kissing his cheek. "How she might have changed him. How he might have given her a little more backbone, a little more confidence."
"Confidence is not exactly what's he interested in. Obedience."
"Well, but with your mother around, how might that have changed? But he had this vision, Castle, for how things could go, and then what happened to make him take a five year old boy and raise him?"
He drew his arm around Kate and dragged her in close. "I don't know."
"Me either," she mused. "And I think that's the part of him that will be willing to broker a new deal - just for the chance to meet his grandson."
"God, it makes me sick."
"I know. I know, but we don't have many options. And keeping it from him might endanger our chances of striking a deal. If we tell him straight, if we - if we come to him and present it like a confession? If we play this right, like we're interested now in what he can do for us, for his grandson-"
"I wish you'd stop saying it like that. He's my son," he growled. "Not his... nothing of his."
"To us, with us - he's ours. To Black, we have to make him want James just as much."
"No," he choked out. "God, no. That scares the shit out of me."
"You think it doesn't scare me? I have all these childhood fairy tales about princes being stolen from their cradles and princesses hiding in the woods from a curse. It scares me too, Rick, to think that he might..."
"I'd just really like to kill him," Castle rushed out. "Can't I just kill him? It solves every problem. It just..."
She was silent for a long moment and he hoped she was still talking, still keeping her promise, but he did want to just get it over with, have it be done. Just wrap his hands around Black's throat and push the life out of him.
And even as he pictured it, he had a worse vision - of trying to explain to his son why his father had to murder his grandfather.
Fuck, she'd already done it. She'd already made their unborn baby - their innocent little wolf - into Black's grandchild.
He couldn't unthink it.
"The deal could work," she said softly. "He doesn't kill me, you don't kill him, and we establish a few rules about what it looks like."
"What's the motivation? On either side, why wouldn't I kill him? Or him, you?"
"Because of James," she answered. Her head lifted from his shoulder and she stroked two fingers along his throat. "Because I have James, and then because he has all the answers about the regimen that you might need. Do need."
"But the regimen is just - that's shit we can handle. I can handle it. I don't need-"
"But what if James does?"
Castle felt struck.
His head dropped back to the mattress and he stared up at the ceiling, the tiny cracks spiderwebbing out, suddenly visible in the fierce afternoon light.
She laid down at his side again, but this time she was curling in tight against him, arm across his ribs and hugging him hard. "It scares me too, Castle. It scares me what we're bringing him into."
He's going to find out anyway.
