Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot

Chapter 4 – Heart and Darkness

Martha refilled her glass of wine, took a couple of long sips and topped it off again before abandoning the kitchen with both her glass and Kate Beckett's untouched one for the comfort of her son's home office. She sat one down on the edge of Castle's desk and soothed herself with the contents of the other as she gazed out the window, "You can come out now, Richard. She's gone."

Castle stepped from the deepest hued corner of the room moving as a shadow does looking very much unlike himself. He was dressed in ink black from head to toe in shirt and trousers that fit as though they were second skin. The only thing that broke the monochromatic image was the charcoal glint of steel jammed in the outline of a shoulder holster.

"I brought you her wine. Seemed a pity to waste it." Instinctively she stayed where she was doing what she was. Should someone be on the street watching, waiting, hunting; they would not find him because of her.

"You knew I was here." His voice was deep and barely above a whisper, but she could still hear admiration in it.

"Yes, but not until the end," she sounded pained and it made him want to go to her, but he stayed where he was cloaked in the darkness. "I didn't say to her what I did because you were listening, I said it in spite of it."

He felt compelled to tell her that it meant something to him that she had taken his side, expressed her disapproval, and dismissed his wife from the family as long as she was unwilling to justify herself. He didn't – couldn't. Though he felt the longing, it was as though it were off in the distance identifiable to him only as an echo and easily ignored as it faded away. The Richard Castle who would have done so without a second thought was not in that room. He wasn't anywhere. Not now, and quite possibly, not ever.

"I don't know how I would have made it through this again if I didn't hear from you that this is what you want." Her glass had run dry and since he obviously wasn't going to drink the other, it gave her a legitimate reason to ease away from the window and out of the line of sight from the street.

"I know, Mother," and for just a moment he sounded like her little boy or at least he did in her mind's eye.

Now able to look at him, she did. He stood in front of her a ringer for any one of the many heroes he had written into existence merely to unravel mysteries and bring the dangerous to justice. His eyes glowed their bluest sapphire, but what was behind them was strange and unfamiliar to her, "You are your father's son after all."

He laughed softly, "Oh, I think there is far more Martha Rogers in me than you think."

Deflection had always been her son's tell, "So he is a part of this."

"He's a part of me if that's what you mean," Castle's expression was too deeply shadowed to read.

Frustration coiled with fear leaked into her voice, "Richard, don't try and handle me. I know there is something you're not saying."

His silence was the only validation she was going to get from him on the topic, "I have to go."

Placing the glass on the corner of the desk closest to him, she abandoned all decorum and hugged him close while whispering urgently in his ear, "You go, Richard, and do whatever it is that needs to be done and then you come home."

He gave her what she needed. A returned embrace and assurances they both knew were valuable only in the moment they were spoken, "You and Alexis take care of one another. I'll be back before you know it."

Seconds later, Martha Rogers was back in the office window, glass of wine in hand wondering if she had just spoken with her only child for the very last time. She didn't know if she felt better or worse harboring the knowledge that Jackson Hunt was a part of the reason her son was going dark. The one comfort she did take from it was that whatever he was doing, his motivation had something to do with family and she knew better than anyone that there was nothing Castle would not do for family and that included coming home to them.

When barely a minute had passed, a lone indistinct figure slipped from the building into the alley where an equally aphotic van waited. Castle pulled open the back door and as he hoisted himself inside it began to pull away.

"This was an unnecessary risk, Rick," Henry Jenkins was both annoyed and relieved that the detour his asset had demanded before agreeing to return to the operation hadn't gotten both of them killed.

His jawline was set and not much in the mood for being chastised, "Not for me it wasn't."

"You clean?" Jenkins turned to the bank of computers along the driver's side of the van and typed in an encrypted message.

He nodded, "I left everything behind."

Henry slid his gaze from the computer screen where he waited for confirmation that his message had been received to the man who sat leaning against the opposite panel van wall staring hard at nothing, "You wouldn't be here right now if she hadn't left you." The observation was one he would store away for later use.

"I'm here because you convinced me that my help is crucial to the completion of this operation though I'm not quite sure how that's possible. I'm a writer and part-time gumshoe whose daughter has solved more cases than he has." He wasn't being self-deprecating as was his usual proclivity, just honest.

"Rick, listen to me. You are so much more than that. There are things you are going to have to know again to be a part of this. Things the agency is going to have to bring back." Jenkins seemed to really want to help him finish the transition from there to here.

"Things I asked to forget?"

He nodded, "You came back the last time for her. You couldn't do to her what your father did to your mother."

Jenkins had just handed him a piece of the puzzle that would help him understand why he had his memory erased in the first place, and he wanted more, "The memories – they would have gotten in the way of my being happy with Beckett?"

"You thought so," his attention went back to the computer screen.

Castle studied the man's profile, "Were we friends? You and me?"

Henry glanced back his way, "We trust each other, Rick."

"We must if I told you about Hollander's Woods."

Jenkins' face sobered, "Rendezvous point in eight clicks. What do you say we finish this thing?"

The same specter that Martha glimpsed behind her son's eyes when they said goodbye was back. This time it was an unmistakable part of his expression. Henry Jenkins had seen it before – knew it well. It was why he had come for him.