Chapter Nine
Revelations


Where you gave me the world I was in
And a place I could make a stand
I could never see how you doubted me
When I'd let go of your hand

Yeah, and I was much younger then
And I must have thought that I would know
If things were going to end

And the Heavens were rolling
Like a wheel on a track
And our sky was unfolding
And it'll never fold back
Sky blue and black

And I'd have fought the world for you
If I thought that you wanted me to
Or put aside what was true or untrue
If I'd known that's what you needed
What you needed me to do

Jackson Browne - Sky Blue and Black


Previously

"What the hell are you?"

Kate's voice carried across the short distance separating them, her eyes wide, staring in horror at the exposed metal workings of his artificial hand and the shredded remains of still smoking synthetic skin clinging to it. Before she turned and ran.

"Kate! Wait...please..." Castle called after her, his worst fear realized...that she would see his half-human state... and be repulsed by it. What Rick didn't know, was that her terror had little if anything to do with him. In fact the icy tendrils of the panic attack had gripped her long before she had come this far from the cabin.

She only got a few paces up trail before she ran headlong into Sasquatch, bouncing off him with a loud "oof!" When she looked up at the seven-foot tall fur-covered giant, it was more than her fragile emotional state could handle... she screamed and fainted dead away. With surprising tenderness for a creƤture his size, Sasquatch gently scooped her up into his powerful arms and waited for Rick to come running.

He didn't wait long.


It had begun to rain, and Rick stood by the woodshed behind the cabin, not caring as the rain-soaked through his clothes, his self-esteem at an all time low. Every one of his insecurities about his "prosthetics" raced through his mind.

"I'm a freak...a half human freak...more machine than man. Kate knows...and she's afraid of me."

Rick glared at the skeletal servos and mechanisms of his uncovered bionic hand, the look of terror on Kate's face as she'd stared at it, playing on infinite repeat in his mind. Enraged, he balled it into a fist and thrust it into the nearest stack of firewood. He heard not just the crunch of wood, but the strangely satisfying creaking of metal as well, - though he knew deep inside that his hand and arm had been specifically reinforced to prevent just this sort of damage - He could punch his fist through a reinforced steel door, or kick it out of its frame with either leg without sustaining serious damage. That was the problem.

Richard Castle wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die.

"She's afraid of me."he whispered, not realizing he had spoken out loud.

"Richard, come in out of the rain," Gillian stated gently, "you are still human, and you will do her no good if you make yourself ill standing out here soaking wet all night."

"Obviously, Sasquatch called in reinforcements." Rick thought to himself, unwilling to find the energy to care.

"What difference does it make, Gillian?" Rick whispered mournfully, "You didn't see her face when she saw this," he waved his uncovered hand at her, "didn't see the terror in her eyes," he looked down at the ground and whispered, his voice choked with self-loathing, "she's afraid of me... and she should be... I'm a freak!"

"Richard Rodgers you are not a... "freak", nor will the human designated Katherine Beckett think you are when she wakes. She will understand when she is again in her right mind. You will be able to speak to her and reassure her." She let go of his bionic hand and took his face in both of hers, lifting his chin and making him look her in the eye. "Richard, you are more than the sum of your component parts, my mother saw it, I see it and so will she if you give her the chance." Gillian stated, in a rare show of heartfelt concern for her mother's friend.

"Now come inside the primitive domicile. I have brought what I need with me to repair your hand and forearm so the human authority figure designated Agent Gina Cowell will have less to be angry with you about." Gillian scolded before taking his organic hand in hers, stroking her thumb across his knuckles soothingly.

Rick blindly followed, uncertain where this sea change in Gillian's attitude toward him had come from, balancing it with the possibility that she had either always had these maternal feelings for him, or they had developed after fifteen years of watching and guiding his life from afar. When they got back inside the cabin, Gillian indicated the kitchen table where she unpacked her portable equipment while Rick went into the bathroom to change out of his wet clothes.

He had always thought it was creepy that she had watched over him, at her mother's behest for years, to be sure, but no more creepy than when he'd found out his own father had done it.

He recalled caving in Alexei Volkov's face with this same bionic fist not four years ago when he'd tried to abduct Alexis from a violin recital. Jackson Hunt had come out of the woodwork to warn him that Volkov was trying to lure him out to get his hands on a living bionic test subject. That he'd wanted to use his little girl to keep him compliant while they studied him. The scrapbook his father had kept of him and Alexis had been difficult to process, even after years of soul-searching.


An hour and a half later

"What about the big guy?" Rick asked out of the blue, as he moved his fingers, testing the range of motion and fit of the new synthetic skin covering his bionic hand. In the end she had done the entire arm, not just his hand and wrist, the new covering seemed to allow more natural sensation that the original.

"If you are concerned about Kate Beckett's knowledge of, or reaction to Sasquatch, you need not worry." Gillian replied matter-of-factly, "I removed that particular memory from her cortex shortly after I arrived. That is not her secret to keep. I have selected the most pleasant memory from her childhood that I could find so she will sleep peacefully for the entire night and wake refreshed in the morning."

Shalon had told him from her sick-bed years ago that they had met before she got sick, but she had removed the memory from his mind so completely that he still had no direct knowledge of it. He could attest to the veracity of whatever technique they used to wipe very specific sections of memory from the human mind. Kate would never be troubled in any way by an errant memory of Sasquatch, direct, fleeting or otherwise. As much as he loved the big guy like a brother, he was relieved, Kate had enough things in her life to have nightmares about. "like me, I guess." he thought bitterly.

"Gillian, did you..." Rick began, but trailed off.

"No, Richard, I did not remove all of last night's events from her memory," Gillian replied tersely, "only those which duty to my people required of me. We are here to observe, not to interfere, Sasquatch's overprotective intentions to the contrary."

Though Gillian was trying to sound like she was scolding a family pet for misbehavior, (knowing they were well within the bionic giant's range of hearing) Rick could sense from the inflection of her voice, the genuine affection she had for Sasquatch. She wasn't really upset at the lengths the big guy had gone to in the pursuit of her orders to keep watch over Kate for him, but was genuinely concerned for his welfare after they went home.

For the first time in fifteen years, he realized that Gillian completely understood that Sasquatch wasn't some simple-minded beast, but because her superiors likely felt that way, she played that card for the giant's benefit, so she could keep him from being put down when they went back to whatever planet they hailed from. That she apparently had the same affection for him and didn't want to see him hurt either sent a shiver down his spine.

In that moment she was more of a parent to him than his own father (good intentions aside) had ever been.


The next morning

Kate woke slowly curled up in her own bed in the family cabin feeling drugged...like she had for most mornings since her shooting, though this time from the oddly pleasant dream she'd had. The most pleasant dream she'd experienced for a very long time. (Unless she counted the sex dreams featuring Castle...which she had always tried very hard not to examine too closely over the past few years, especially when she,was still dating Josh) A dream she had not been quite ready to wake from.

It was more a happy memory than a dream...the summer before she'd turned twelve, when she hadn't yet discovered boys or become "Rebel Becks." The year her dad had first inherited the place from an old fishing buddy with no family of his own. Dad had been considering selling the place until she and mom had fallen in love with it. That summer had been magical for all of them, but especially for her. One of the last truly harmonious summers their family ever had.

She had no idea where such a pleasant dream had come from considering the disjointed, terrifying images that flooded back into her brain from the night before. Many of which she was certain must have been hallucinations caused by the nightmare she'd awakened from in a panic to find Castle gone, but his car still in the driveway, only to find him at the boat dock standing over a dead man, with something metallic protruding from the right sleeve of his jacket...a cattle prod maybe? It couldn't have been his hand...he'd just electrocuted a man with it.

Everything had gone dark after that.

"Must have been hyperventilating and lost consciousness, or blocked the rest out." She thought to herself. Her pride refused to allow her to even accept the possibility that she had simply fainted. "Castle must have carried me here."

She was unsurprised yet irrationally strangely disappointed that aside from her shoes and jacket she was still fully clothed in the sweatshirt and yoga pants she'd changed into after dinner. Though she would have been absolutely mortified had he done more than that before putting her to bed.

When she finally dragged herself out of bed and slowly opened her door, she found Richard Castle sitting on the floor his back to the wall next to the doorway, knees drawn up, his head pillowed in his crossed arms. "Two arms that both ended in very human looking hands," her brain supplied, for reasons she was not very clear on.

Her heart melted at the sight of him, unable to leave her, even to go to bed. "Last night must have been a really bad episode." she thought to herself. She wanted so badly to believe everything she'd seen last night was just a panic attack...a nightmare fueled hallucination. The last time she had seen him standing over a body, (could it really be less than a year ago?) she had accused him of murder...unfairly as it turned out. She wanted desperately to be wrong now, too.

Contrary to what she'd told him in the hospital she'd heard every word he'd said after she'd been shot, "Does he really love me so much that he would kill for me?" she asked down, she knew the answer to that question, and as a homicide cop that frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

Though he'd been careful to keep it out of his statement from that night in the warehouse, Ryan swore to her on his grandmother's grave that he'd seen Castle pick Hal Lockwood up by the throat with just his right hand shake him like a like a rag doll till he dropped his sniper rifle then thrown him ten feet into the nearest wall before he started hitting him and would have killed Lockwood with his bare hands

He'd held Lockwood down with his right hand and beaten the assassin's face bloody with his left, only stopping because she had stopped him. For a split second before his eyes softened, she'd seen the fire there, the cold, barely controlled fury. Kate had a hard time reconciling that with the loving son and doting single father she saw whenever he discussed his family. The agony she'd seen crease his brow when he'd told her about the day he'd lost Alexis in a mall in White Plains when she was four.

Yes, Richard Castle would kill to protect her, without a moment's hesitation, like he would for his mother and his daughter. The reason that warmed her heart, terrified her and filled her with a crushing sense of guilt in equal measure. The reason he was camped out on the hard wooden floor next to her bedroom door.

Because he was in love with her.

**A/N** You want angst? Ok, I've got your angst..