Close Encounters 14

"You're too quiet," Black remarked.

It took Beckett a moment to withdraw her great concentration on the plan and focus on him again. She hadn't meant the shift of focus to be quite so intimidating, but Black took it as such and his hand found one of the guns left on the table.

They were alone. An hour before the strike team would start raining fire down on this place, and Black had sent his men away. Probably to set up offensive positions, ambushes, to shore up whatever breaches there were in the compound's island defenses.

Either way, they were alone.

And she had an hour with a man who was afraid of her. Maybe not respectful of her, maybe that wasn't it. But he thought he knew what she was capable of and he felt the need for protection from her.

She'd been building her case, piece by piece, laying out the evidence in her head just as she might on a timeline. Just as she might on the floor of her living room, the elements of the case coming together into one dominant story.

This was her story to tell, and this was her interrogation.

She had the power.

"Too quiet? Is there such a thing when it comes to me?" she said in return.

Black's face flinched with with what was either involuntary amusement or horror. No doubt that she knew his mind enough to make such a comment.

"I could talk if you like," she continued. He didn't backpedal physically, but she knew the signs even on a man like Black; she saw the way his eyes shuttered and closed down, the flush of skin in his fight or flight response. He couldn't help it. He was wary of her and he knew she had something cooking.

"Talk or don't talk," he said, shrugging as if it didn't matter to him. "I have what I want."

"Castle? Oh, John. You don't have him," she said, soothingly. A smile on her lips.

And oh, it was true. It was true. Black could never have him. That truth alone was power, knowing that even if Castle did need his father's knowledge of the regimen, Castle didn't need his father. Would never. He was a man beyond Black's reach.

"That is the name you gave yourself, right?" she continued. "John. Blank enough, uncharacteristic of anything. He told me your name - or the name he had for you - that first night I met him."

First night, first case, first week. She'd had him then. She hadn't trusted it because she hadn't done anything to deserve it, but that was really the only thing she could trust. That it had nothing at all to do with her, but with him. Something in Castle longed for her in the same way the dark and twisted places in her clung to him - they were the same in this.

Black remained oblivious - seemingly so. He was standing at the wooden work table and she saw he'd pulled out a tablet, probably something connecting him to the defense system or the mercenaries he'd hired.

Mercenaries. Black hadn't even one loyal man other than Deleware.

And they'd taken that from him as well.

"John," she said quietly. Her voice was strong. She spoke like she was inside the 12th Precinct, sitting at the table in interrogation room 1, all she surveyed under her domain.

His face didn't turn towards her, but she saw the unconscious movement of his fingers going still at her softly-spoken call.

"You might not come when I call, but he does," she said.

Black turned his head on his neck to look at her, like a vulture hunched over roadkill, his eyes dark with death-intentions. "As much as it pains me."

Oh, yes. Yes. He was playing along. She had him.

Kate turned her face to the bed and let her eyes make love to him, Castle, her husband. She breathed him in even from a four foot distance; she adored him. And then she called his name. It was risky to base everything that came on this one demonstration, but Castle had just opened his eyes. He would again. For her.

"Rick," she murmured. The voice he knew, the voice that had woken him at night for a run because she couldn't help needing forward movement, the voice that had greeted him in a cave when she'd thought it was the end, the voice he responded to.

His fingers twitched.

"Rick, sweetheart, open your eyes." The voice she teased with, the voice he followed into the shower in the morning, the voice in his ear when her hands started to roam and he didn't really want to be watching television anyway.

His mouth closed, opened.

"Rick, love, look at me."

And he did.

For one blazing, heart-stopping moment, his blue eyes were perfectly and completely intent on her.

She smiled and let herself fill up with it. She'd done something unforgiveable, but he still came to her. She was still his, and he'd have her.

"I love you. Go back to sleep," she said, throat closing up, and at her command, he was already sinking under.

"I'm crazy about him," she started.

Black did flinch at that, though she knew it was the crazy that did it. She wriggled her fingers under the tape, working it looser. She wasn't going to rely on only her words to get them out of this - Castle was the one with the words - but so far the duct tape held firm.

"I'm crazy about him and I know that you know I'd do anything for him," she said. Black's fingers stopped on the tablet, started again. "I've infected him, haven't I? I've made him just as crazy."

Black turned to look at her, one of those droll flicks of his lips that meant he found nothing at all to disclaim. An obvious conclusion.

She knew how he saw her, he'd told her himself in the court yard:You're going to wreck yourself in a bid for pity or attention so that when my son arrives, he either lashes out at me for your state or he comes crawling straight to you in some misguided messiah complex... Forget the sins of the world, he will crucify himself trying to get to a broken, fallen Kate Beckett.

She'd told Castle that her stunt with the knife at her throat had been a bit of theatre, some blood spilled for drama's sake. Well, now that the stage was set, it was time for the last act.

"When he died," she said. She waited until she thought she had Black's attention. "John, when he died, faked his death, I fell apart. I was more than a mess; I broke. He broke me, doing that to me, faking his death."

"I noticed," Black said dryly. "A couple of drinks and you swallow the bath water."

"And Rick ran straight to my side," she pointed out. She had to tread lightly over her own wounds; she'd thought those places scarred up until today, until she'd faced Castle in their hiding place in the bathroom and found herself yelling at him. She needed absolute mastery here.

Black actually looked at her. "He ruined the whole mission. Though I suppose now it's more in my favor if Bracken is alive, isn't it? I should let the senator take you out and then reclaim my son. Even if he was fighting for his martyred wife, still works for me."

She had to stay in control; she was in charge of this, not him. "I gave you a chance to reclaim him. I had no other choice, but the opportunity was yours. All you had to do was keep him."

"What are you talking about?" he said shortly. She saw he'd asked without thinking.

"Russia. I put him on a helicopter with you and you flew away, never to return."

His jaw tightened. His jaw never tightened. He was the famously remote Agent Black; nothing ever got to him.

But she was. She did. She was getting to him, big time.

"What happened, John? He was supposed to be yours. You had him. How did you let him go? Because the next thing I knew, Rick was crawling into a cave after me, dragging himself across the Russian steppe to save my life, ill-prepared and not even fully recovered and he should never have survived that. But he did. I did. We survived."

Black was being carefully silent, a watchful quiet. He knew now she was working up to something.

"The knife," she said calmly, her eyes on it now for a moment. "Just like that one. I put my own throat to the knife and he-"

"Fucking grabbed it with his own bare hand," Black spit out. His eyes sparked and flamed before her, went out again. He was controlling it, but only barely.

"He would rather it be his own throat," she said quietly. "He's furious with me for it, but you saw how he looks at me, how he comes when I call."

"Damn it."

It was twisting her guts to talk about them like this, ripping out her already mangled heart, but she had to, she had to. This was how Black saw them; this was his vision of their relationship. It wasn't the truth. It wasn't their love.

Black didn't comprehend love.

She kept going. "It doesn't matter what Rick thinks he'll do. It doesn't matter the promises he's made to you, the deal he has to let go of me and stay at your side. Because he might have every intention of following through, of being the son you deserve, but he won't. He won't."

"He will."

"All I have to do is swallow a little bath water," she said, her voice snaking between Black and the tablet in his hands. He turned his head, almost like he couldn't help it, and stared at her. "I've done it before. All I have to do is lunge for a knife."

"You fucking bitch."

"All I have to do is let one mission go sour, get captured by warlords or extremists. All I have to do is go out for a run at three in the morning without even the dog for defense, and Castle comes. Castle always comes running."

"You conniving-"

"You already knew it," she said, shrugging as best she could in the restraints.

Black breathed hard as he stared at her, but he had no words to combat the picture she'd drawn for him - because it was the only thing that made any sense to him, it was already the vision he had for them.

It wasn't true. It's not true. Because they loved each other, they loved, and that had changed their lives.

"I want him, and I'll have him whether or not you condone it, whether or not you hold him hostage with some damn pills, whether or not you even like it. I'll have him. And he will always come running. He's here, isn't he? He'll risk his life to be at my side."

Black's hands curled on the edges of the tablet and he set it down, carefully, specifically, making his movements smaller and smaller. Because he needed control over something, she knew. Because he couldn't stand to hear the truth of it.

It wasn't true.

But it was.

"Looks like you're fucked, Agent Black. So a new deal. New terms. Let's talk."

We all get what we want.

He heard it echo in his head, again and again, around and around, we all get what we want, and it was her voice, it was her sounds, it was words on her lips, but it couldn't possibly be her.

That wasn't her; she didn't do that.

What, exactly, he couldn't understand. What she didn't do or what she said she was doing or maybe the tone...

The tone was wrong; that wasn't his wife.

And while the words and the wrongness of it swirled around him, they also dragged him down, deeper down, a sea of blackness that was so heavy he couldn't move. None of it made sense, nothing was right, and while he tried - he was trying to fight against it - it wasn't her.

It wasn't his wife.

He didn't know how long it was black, but suddenly a softness stole over him, inch by inch until he was aware of it, of her, of the press of her lips to his forehead and her hair trailing down over his neck and the way her fingers swirled at his jaw and to his ear.

"Rick."

He stretched to meet her, wanted it, that warmth and the cautious tenderness, the woman who loved him, not the other one.

"Rick, I need you to wake up for me."

He was already awake.

"Hey there, hey, baby, you're awake," she was saying, over and over.

Castle couldn't make the image coalesce. Disjointed and messy, and there was blood.

"Come on, Rick," she said, a touch of her fingers at his cheek. "We don't have much time."

He lifted a heavy hand to her shoulder as she leaned over him and gripped, fisting her shirt. "Kate."

"Yeah, yeah, it's me. Can you sit up? We need to go."

He felt like an elephant had sat on his chest. "Can't move."

"Well, that doesn't help us much here," she said, a trace of irony in her voice that made him open his eyes again. She gave him a raised-eyebrow look that transmitted more than any words, and he struggled to lift himself up against the weight of everything else.

"It's the shot," he said. He rubbed the top of his thigh, his arm tangled around hers, but she didn't shift away from him. "Makes it hard to get... anywhere."

"You've been out of it for almost an hour."

"Huh." Not long at all. She was crowding him, so close that her body filled his vision, and he realized her face was a mess, the black shirt he'd given her had ripped at the neckline, blood dried at her collar. "Kate. You - your - what happened to you?"

"Altercation with his goons," she said shortly. But the incline of her head, that unconscious gesture towards something made him freeze.

And there was his father. Standing at the far side of the room, nonchalantly watching them.

When he'd woken, it was only Kate he'd seen - as usual, his eyes only for her - but now...

"Castle, hold on a second," she said fiercely. "Wait." She pressed her hands at his shoulders to keep him down and it made his head swim, his vision blur, but he couldn't close his eyes. Not when Black was right there. With them - with her.

"What is he doing here? What happened? What's going on?"

"We've made a new deal."

We all get what we want.

"No," he growled, gripping her knee and finding that pressure point immediately, like instinct, going for the nerve. She cringed and he dropped the move, horrified, sick, head swimming. "No. Kate. No, we don't-"

"Trust me. It's-"

"I don't trust you," he hissed. "Not when it comes to this. You just - you're always so damn willing to kill yourself, Kate Beckett, that I don't trust you at all." The shock that crawled over her face was damn well worth it, he told himself, and he turned his deadliest look on his father. "Whatever she told you, whatever she said, it doesn't hold for me."

"Damn it, Castle," she gritted out. "Shut the hell up. Black-"

"My deal is with her. She's the one with the power here."

What the fuck.

Castle stared at his father, then he stared at Kate.

She'd been... an altercation and he had a searing memory of seeing her duct taped to a chair, but now. Now she was sitting on the bed with her back to his father and Black himself was just standing in the corner like an obedient watch dog.

"What the fuck did you do?"

He didn't want his father in here with them; he had things he needed to stay, do, figure out, and that was impossible with this father in the room. Black said nothing, but Kate also said nothing, and that was unacceptable.

"Tell me."

Her eyes were begging him to let it go. To trust her.

How could he? How could he ever trust her with her own life? "You don't seem to understand," he rasped. His fingers were tangled in her hair and he knew he was dragging her down, forcing her to bend over him as he tried to hold himself up. "You don't understand. What you do hurts me."

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Rick."

"But you are. When you throw your life away, when you give it over to him. You're killing me with this shit, Beckett, and I won't let you do it. You hear that, Black? Whatever deal she offered you - if it risks her life, I'm not doing it. You'll get nothing from me."

"That is - entirely - the point," his father said. "Now. Enough. Kate, please use your considerable influence to achieve the necessary results. I need to gather some things before we leave."

"We?" Castle roared, but his father was already slipping through the door. It locked behind him. He turned furious eyes back to Kate. "What have you done? What did you say to him?"

Kate shook her head, pressed her hand to his cheek. She was crying. Shit, she was crying and he felt messed up, his head killing him and that funny taste in his mouth that he knew was from the pills. He tried to untangle his brutal grip on her hair but he only managed to make it worse, helplessly worse, but now at least she was laughing.

Through tears. She was bringing her hands up to deal with his snared fingers, gently untangling him, her fingers wrapping around his and carrying his palm to the place over her heart. He could feel it beating, a little fast, but steady.

"Please tell me you're not going with him," he whispered.

"No," she murmured. "No, never. I'm not going anywhere with him. And neither are you."

God, the weight. It floated right off him at her words, and he felt his body slump and fall back, his head hitting the mattress, and he had to lay there a second, eyes closed, just breathing. She pressed in closer, her hand at his chest, his still caught to her breast, and he unfurled his fingers against the soft fabric of her shirt, opened his eyes to her.

She was leaning in close over him, and her hand inched up his sternum to tap her fingers against his chin. "I'm sorry, Rick. There's - so much to apologize for and I know it's not even begun, but I understand now. It won't - I'm going to endeavor to be - never mind. Just know that we're both safe. Together. But we're getting him out of here before Mitchell arrives. In about twenty minutes. So, baby, if you get up, that would help us out a lot."

He stared up at her and still couldn't fathom it. "Tell me what's happened."

"We made a deal, him and me. We all get what we want. Everyone lives."

"That's not what I want," he spat out. "I want him dead. I want him dead for this." Castle reached up and fisted his hand in her shirt, hauled himself upright again. Her face was bruised, her cheek looked swollen but that was the previous graze from Deleware; the new blood seemed to be from a gash at her neck - or the knife wound had reopened. It was hard to tell. But for all of that - he laid it at his father's feet. And his father deserved to die.

"Well, then we don't all get what we want," she sighed. Her fingers feathered in his bangs and made his eyes close. He couldn't help tilting his head into her, breathing in the scent of her skin as she hovered close. "You don't get that, Rick, but you do get me. And if this is going to work, I need you get up and move. Come with us back to the plane."

Oh. The plane.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head. She was begging him in every look.

Trust me.

"I get to keep you," he said again, the gruffness in his voice betraying him. He felt the need to clutch at her but he wouldn't do that. He had one thing to give her right now, one thing she wanted from him, and damn it but it was the hardest.

"You get me," she whispered. "For what it's worth."

"Everything," he said back. Immediate, no hesitation, definite. "You are everything. Help me stand up."

I'm trusting you.

Castle swayed beside her and she gripped the back of his pants to hold him up. It'd be funny if it were't so awful, funny if she hadn't been wrangled by four guys in a hallway and dragged in front of his unconscious body while his father did whatever the hell he wanted to his son.

It'd be funny if she hadn't started this whole chain of events, if it wasn't her fault.

"Kate," he said, her named garbled on his tongue. "Kate, can't-"

He pitched forward, his knees like jelly, and she grabbed him again, let out a huffing breath as he knocked her into the wall. The door unlocked - of course his father would choose just that moment to come back - and Black waited on the other side.

"Are you coming?"

Beckett pressed her lips together and lightly patted Castle's cheek to shock him awake. It wasn't that he was asleep; he looked like a child woken too soon from a nap and she bet it was actually quite similar. Deep, restorative sleep had been interrupted and it was going to take him a little while to get fully conscious.

"Castle," she murmured close to his ear. Partly because it grated on Black's nerves, having her so intimate with his son, and partly because she'd been correct: Castle responded to her.

He came when she called.

"Castle." She tugged on his ear, pinched his earlobe. "Castle. Wake up. Time to go."

He grunted and pushed off the wall, eyes fuzzy and mouth turning down at the corners. "Why him?"

"Castle, we're getting him out of here before the strike team lands."

"Ah, strike... team. Right." Castle shook himself like a bear, shivering and drawing up to his full height, suddenly looking so dominant and fierce. "To the plane. Black, after you."

Beckett was impressed. Until Black turned around and headed down the hallway, and Castle slumped against the door, grabbing the frame with a white-knuckled grip. She came up at his side and wrapped her arm at his waist, thinking to help him, but he shook her off.

He was trusting her, but he didn't look happy about it. He was attempting a show of force.

Beckett moved away, unable to help looking back at him, but he was doggedly determined to go it alone. She tried not to hover, moving through the halls after his father's lead, her gun in one hand and the knife in its sheath again. She'd holstered Castle's gun in his shoulder strap as well, but he didn't seem to know it was there.

"Rick?"

"Let me concentrate. I just gotta... concentrate."

"Okay," she murmured, shutting her mouth. The deal wasn't complicated, and she had thought to explain, but every time she looked at him and tried to speak, it wouldn't come.

Castle suddenly grunted and she jerked back to his side. He waved her off, a hand to the wall for balance, and then he put two fingers into his cargo pants pocket, pulled out his phone.

She realized she and Black both were waiting on a wire's edge.

"Castle?"

He squinted and then sighed, handing over his phone. He said nothing, just waited until she'd taken it, and then he rubbed his hand over his eyes briskly, like he was trying to rub out the mist in his vision.

Kate unlocked the phone and read the message, her heart sinking. "They're early. They're going to breach-"

Suddenly the ground shook beneath their feet and plaster rained down over their heads. Black made a snarling comment but Kate reached for Castle, gripped his bicep.

"We have to go," he said.

"We have to go," she nodded. "Castle. The plane. We have to get Black out of here for this to work."

"Still haven't said what," he muttered. Another shockwave rippled around them and Castle grunted, tilting his head back, blinking past dust. "I don't want to do this. I don't want to just let him go after everything."

"Castle," she urged, glancing once to Black to make sure he wasn't too close. She leaned in to her husband and pressed her hand to his shoulder, mouth to his ear. "You injected the tracer, remember? Mitchell can find us again."

He lowered his head and stared at her, his eyes swimming behind that cloud that kept him away from her, kept him dragged down. "Find us again. Again?"

"Shh," she hushed. "Quiet, baby. Just help me get us all out of here first."

"And then?"

"And then we see where it takes us."

"The regimen," he sighed, looking so bitterly disappointed that Kate's heart twisted.

At the edge of her vision, she saw Black nosing too close, too attentive. She stepped back and drew Castle after her with a tug on his thermal shirt. "The regimen, yes. The deal is that we have to go to Black for the regimen."

"I hate him," he said, strangely dispassionately. "I hate him. You're safe, right? I don't think you're safe with him."

She gave Black an arch look - she couldn't help needing to confirm her power - and then she nodded to her husband, pulling him after her down the hall. "Yes. Safe, both of us. So, please, just come with us to the plane and we'll all get out of here alive."

"This is ridiculous," Black said. He looked put out with them both. "This incessant need for affirmation. You've got to be kidding me. I didn't know it was this bad, Richard. No wonder you-"

Castle growled and stepped forward, going up against his father and slamming him back into the wall. Beckett winced when Black's head hit the stone, but the man looked like he'd planned it all along, like he'd been fishing for it.

She moved to intercept, hating that she was in the first place, but Black sneered and shoved his son off of him. "I just wanted to see."

Kate paused, realized it had been some kind of test. Probably of how strong Castle was, how much he was with it. What did that mean? What was Black planning?

They were all supposed to get in that plane and fly somewhere south - that was as much as he'd told her - where they'd get a supply of the regimen.

She saw now that Black had something else in mind, a plan was forming behind those icy eyes, but she didn't know what.

And she'd told Castle, so naively, trust me.