Captain Victoria Gates watched as Ryan ushered the Pakistani translator into the box. It was no surprise that they had requested a translator; apparently the girlfriend's father was more than happy to give a full written confession. Apparently, according to the man's daughter, he had even bragged about it, calling the cold blooded torture and murder of Sonam Kundun an *honor killing*, of all things. "Honor killing, right." Gates muttered under her breath, watching the box from her office door. "Someone should make it illegal for those two words to be uttered together within the same breath."

What *was* a surprise to the captain, however, was the fact that this was the first time her team had called for a translator on this case. This had started out as a Chinatown murder; which usually meant the translators were getting paid time and a half for having to run all around town with her detectives. And after looking at their case updates, it was clear to Gates that her team should have needed translators in Tibetan, Urdu and probably Chinese and Hindi at various times during this investigation. Gates had tried to help the victim's mother find homicide the day she came in to give her statement, and it was obvious that the woman barely spoke any English. Yet the statement the woman had given Detective Beckett had been clear, eloquent and powerful.

Gates liked Beckett, and saw a lot of herself in the smart, doggedly determined, woman. But, Gates also understood that Beckett had a wildly renegade streak that could not be tolerated and needed to be put down permanently if the senior detective had any desire to advance beyond her current position. The captain allowed Beckett to keep her playboy writer/'partner' only because it kept them in good standing with the mayor's office. Although, it also didn't hurt that it kept her renegade detective on a short leash: Gates knew that the threat of pulling Castle's ride-along privileges was the one secret weapon she had when it came to keeping Beckett in line.

Yet...something else was going on with her troublesome senior detective and her 'partner'. Something Gates just could not pin down. Not their romantic relationship; everyone knew that Castle and Beckett were involved, maybe had been involved from the very beginning...and certainly they were still together after her reinstatement. Still, if ignoring their office romance was what it took to score brownie points with the higher ups, so be it.

But there was something else, something that smacked of things even more odd than having a playboy crime novelist as your 'partner'. And unless she was totally off base, Ryan and Esposito were in it just as deep as Beckett and her 'partner'. While it was boosting the teams' closing rates to near-perfect levels, there was something about the way the three cops and the writer were handling their cases lately that rubbed her the wrong way. Were they on the take? Of that, Gates wasn't sure. But there was no way in hell that they were doing everything by the book.

This was going to require much deeper investigation.

The spirit of Sonam Kundun watched his beloved Nazia protectively, whispering her words of love and encouragement as she watched her father from the observation room. Adnan Bhutani was hardly holding back, rather he was gloating about how he carefully tortured Sonam for information about his daughter's location, then crushed the back of the boy's skull when Sonam steadfastly refused to yield. Bhutani then went off about the various ways in which his daughter and her friends all deserved to die for defaming his 'honor'.

Ryan and Esposito took the statement in stone-faced silence, partly because Bhutani was doing a perfectly good job of giving them all the evidence they needed without any additional encouragement, and partly because both men knew they couldn't trust anything to come out of their mouths that wouldn't end up damaging the DA's case if this ended up going to trial.

Ryan focused his energies on taking down the statement and pouring as much peace into the room as he could; he could sense that his gift might be the only reason that the translator hadn't had to leave the room more than once to throw up over having to repeat the sick murderer's tirade.

Esposito, for his part, focused on organizing his thoughts from the afternoon's events. He quickly discovered that he could take the memories he didn't want to recall very much and set them deep in the back of his mind...and that he could create a special place of honor for the really good memories. It was in that place of honor that he chose to keep the memory of watching Nazia stare down her evil, twisted excuse for a father. He asked Castle and Beckett, How's she doing, guys?

Better than I would be, Castle replied. He watched the stoic, strong stance of the young woman in front of him and idly wished he had the capability to read her mind. Nazia never moved, and never wavered; she simply stood down her father just as she had on the street outside the abandoned house. Castle reminded her, "You know, you don't have to listen to this."

Nazia shook her head. "From this day on, every time I get tempted to miss my father, I want to remember this day. I want to remember how he sees me."

"And you won't be tempted to take what he's saying personally?" Castle asked.

For the first time since she entered the precinct, Nazia smiled. "Mr. Castle, today Allah proved he loves me so much that he sent real-life Guardian angels to protect me. After that, it's hard to take what the devil says personally."

Castle and Beckett found themselves breaking into smiles that matched Nazia's. Beckett asked, "So what will you do now?"

"I do not know," Nazia replied sadly. "My mother died giving birth to me. As much as my father now hates me, he was all I had."

The smiles on the Guardians' faces grew even wider. "Oh, I don't think he was *all* you had, Nazia," replied Beckett.

The detective opened the door to the observation room, and Castle led the confused girl out into the bullpen. He then stopped her halfway between the bullpen and the break room, hesitating as he tried to find the words to explain his actions. "Nazia, I..."

"Yes, what is it, Mr. Castle?"

"I need to let you know that I, uh, I put a spell on you," replied Castle. "I think it should last about a year and then fade away gradually after that."

"May I ask what the spell is for?"

"It's a translation spell. I'm hoping it will make it easier on you as you get to know the woman you're about to meet."

Now Nazia was even more confused. "And who is that woman, Mr. Castle?"

Castle stepped aside to let Nazia into the break room. Nazia stared, open-mouthed, at the woman she had, to that point, only seen in a crumpled up photograph that Sonam had kept in his wallet.

Choden Donha approached the girl tentatively, unsure of what to say. After a long, tense moment of silence, the older woman found the words she was looking for. "Are you the woman who loved my son?" Nazia nodded. "And the detectives tell me that you are carrying his child?" As Nazia nodded again, Choden took the girl's hands into her own. "Then, Nazia, I would like to be a mother to you as I will be a grandmother to your child...if you'll have me."

Nazia threw her arms around Choden, hugging her fiercely as the tears flowed uncontrollably down the cheeks of both women. Beckett crossed the break room to stand next to Castle at the room's entrance, blinking away her own unshed tears as she watched the two women. She grabbed on to her partner's hand, gaining strength from the closeness and connection. "Do you think this is why the journals call these powers a 'blessing', Castle?"

Castle squeezed his partner's hand as he wiped a few tears away from his own eyes. "Yeah," he replied, "I do."