Chapter Eleven
Old Flames and Reopened Wounds

Richard Castle's lungs were on fire.

He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. His eyesight was beginning to gray out. He'd found Kate's gun, but couldn't seem to get it out from under the seat. He found a small pocket of air, but that was beginning to run out. He had to get that gun. He had to save Kate. He was not leaving this car without her, if she died, it would be his tomb as well because he wasn't leaving her.

He felt her hand disturbing the water nearby, trying to find him, but he couldn't spare the oxygen to reach for her hand. He wrapped his fingers around the grip of Kate's Glock. Could feel her thrashing in her panic to get free. He had to pull it free from the springs. His vision was starting to darken as he finally yanked it lose. Kate had stopped moving. No, no, no, no, no. he had taken too long. No!

When he returned to the front of the now nearly flooded car he gasped a lungful of air then shot away the fastener to the seat belt holding her in place. She still had a pulse! He thought, there was still time! He emptied the remaining rounds into the back windshield, dropped her gun and dragged her limp, still form from the car.

It seemed to take an eternity to get to the surface but he deeply inhaled a lungful of air. Kate was pale and still, she had a pulse but wasn't breathing. He pinched her nose and forced a breath of air into her lungs. On the third try she began to cough and spat out the cold river water. Her breathing was shallow, and she was beginning to shiver. He held her close making soothing sounds as he backstroked toward shore. He was glad that when she walked back into his life she made him swim laps in that damned pool.

He'd managed to half carry, half drag her shivering body out of the cold water of the East River, but they were slowly freezing out here. She was still coughing but at she was alive. His nightmare (which still plagued him from time to time, but not as much in recent weeks) had been averted, but he knew he'd suffer for it when he went to bed. He would definitely be taking the pill Dr. Burke had prescribed him to put him all the way out tonight. He couldn't risk waking up and drinking himself into a stupor, Alexis was just starting to trust him again.

Thankfully a beat cop had been out on solo patrol and he managed to flag him down. They sat huddled together under a blanket in his squad car with the heat all the way up until the cavalry came.

….

They rode in silence in the back of Sophia Turner's company SUV. The CIA station chief, and Castle's former muse had been absolutely fuming when she arrived on the scene to find that Nelson Blakely was dead. The look she had given Castle had nearly frozen his blood. Kate was still a little upset at him about his previous relationship with Sophia and he had just begun to bridge that issue when they were trapped in her car. They were both still in an emotional turmoil from their experience.

Kate slid her hand across the back of her seat, searching for Rick. They both had the dark hoods on and could see nothing. She felt around the seat till her fingers brushed his and latched onto his hand for support. His skin was still cold from the river and he was shaking, but not entirely from the cold. She could tell he was barely holding it together, not wanting to lose it in front of Sophia and her driver. She gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze, and he flipped his hand and returned it. His larger hand engulfed hers, and he stilled as if drawing strength from the connection.

When they arrived at the CIA field station and the hoods were removed, Sophia was no less livid, and she laid into Rick almost as soon as his hood was off.

"You know I really thought, I really thought you had changed, but you know what?" she raged, "You are the same reckless, immature, self-centered jackass that you always were, and you put this investigation at risk!"

Castle practically wilted under her verbal assault. He lacked the emotional reserves to stand up to her

"Look, I'm sorry..." he began feebly, but Sophia cut him off and continued her relentless verbal attack on him.

"You're sorry? We are on the verge of the next 9/11 or worse!" she seethed, "This isn't one of your damn books, Rick, this is real life, and when things go bad, you can't just rewrite the ending like you did with us!"

Rick blanched as if he had been stabbed in the heart as she dismissed them and turned to Danberg.

"Get them both out of here!"

Cold jealousy flared in Kate's eyes.

As they rode back, to the 12th, she made no attempt to comfort him, or even lean in his direction. When he reached out to touch her hand, she yanked hers away, and Rick was lost, alone in his turmoil. Sophia had cut him to the quick, but Kate's angry rejection was the cruelest cut of all.

Under his hood tears slid down his cheeks, pooling where it gathered at his neck. There were three other people in the car, yet since last summer he had never felt so completely alone.

….

When they arrived down at Lanie's morgue after learning the body had never arrived, Kate's seething hatred of Sophia Turner and all things CIA, was in full bloom. Now she had nowhere to start and that bitch held all the cards.

"That's impossible! How could they get a court order that fast?" Rick asked incredulously.

"I don't know. Maybe you should ask your girlfriend." Kate snapped at him, and regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth.

"Girlfriend?" Lanie asked, her eyebrow arching up her forehead. None of them noticing that Alexis had entered the lab.

"Yes! Okay, we slept together! It was a long time ago, what's the big deal?" Rick yelled, having finally had enough of Kate's verbal abuse.

"There is no big deal! Sleep with whoever you want! The more the merrier!" Kate shot back, the stricken look on Castle's face as she said it made Kate's heart clench in her chest. She knew she was wounding him deeply, kicking him when he was at his lowest and most vulnerable, but this jealous bone that had arisen in her was in control.

Alexis cleared her throat behind her, and for the first time Kate regretted helping her get the internship down here.

"I have those uh, toxicology reports you wanted."

Kate turned her head, instantly ashamed and mortified. Oh, shit, now I've done it, way to hit him below the belt, Beckett, she thought to himself, emasculate him right in front of his daughter.

Kate new that taking her frustration out on Rick was unfair. His relationship with Sophia had likely ended before Alexis had finished the first grade. Even before he had married Gina. It wasn't like she had been celibate before him, or even after they'd met.

She saw how badly Sophia's tirade had shaken him. He was pushed to the brink by her blistering attack. Piling her own jealous barbs on him was not helping. But picturing Rick and Sophia together just pushed all of the wrong buttons in her. She didn't know where all of this anger and jealousy was coming from. Was it the muse thing, or was it something deeper, more primal? She didn't know.

She couldn't shake the thought that she may have dug the hole awfully deep this time and then merrily shoved Castle right into it. She hated it when she knew she was wrong. Especially after she'd been such a bitch. Now he was pulling away again and she only had herself to blame.

….

No sooner had Rick and Alexis walked into the loft, she began giving him the third degree.

"Who was Beckett talking about?" she asked

"None of your business." he replied, "Go to bed."

"The woman at the docks." she shot back, almost indignant, "Who is she?"

"Nobody" he said, a dark dangerous tone creeping into his voice.

"I saw the way you looked at her, she's not nobody." she pushed again

"It doesn't matter who she is, because I'm never going to see her again," this time a flash of anger entered his voice, "now go to bed." he said through clenched teeth.

For the first time since that dark night she was trying to forget, she saw, for a split second, that dark angry "not dad" side of her father that frightened her and she hurried up the stairs. She knew then that she had pushed him too far...

….

Things had progressively gone from bad to worse over the course of the next day. They followed the lead that Sophia had gone to the loft to give him. Then tracked down where Blakely lived, caught Gage, and got him into one of the CIA's interrogation rooms, but he wasn't forthcoming with information. When they went back in to try again, he was dead. Martin Danberg had been revealed as the mole, but then he had escaped. So far the only good new was that they had identified the girl in the photograph.

They knew where he was going.

When they arrived on the scene with Sophia they met up with Agent Corrigan and walked through an abandoned parking garage, they stopped when they heard Sophia disengage the safety on her Sig Sauer.

She sent her accomplice on to carry out the mission to kill the girl, and proceeded to flesh out the story for Rick and Kate. Outline the course of her treason. Through all of it, Kate's sympathy for Castle grew as his self esteem waned.

"I don't buy it," Castle said, still unable to grasp the enormity of what he was hearing. His ability to deal with the scope of his former muse's betrayal hanging by a thread. "The Sophie I know would never sell out her country, not for money, not for anything."

Sophia laughed in his face.

"Well that's one thing you got wrong Rick." she replied tauntingly,

"Eto ne moja strana nikoda ne byla"

The realization of just how wrong he was about her hit him like a runaway train, as the smoothly unaccented Russian spilled from her mouth.

"On your knees, right now, both of you!" She commanded as she kicked Kate's knees out from under her dropping her to a kneeling position. Rick dropped to his knees beside her.

"You're not going to get away with this." Beckett said, not quite believing it herself.

"Of course I will." Sophia shot back, "I'll just tell them how we all tried to stop it and couldn't, and the two of you were killed in the progress. By Danberg, of course."

"Don't worry, I'll make it sound heroic, your father will be very proud."

Beckett turned and stared at Rick, her eyes overflowing with concern, this was the last thing he needed dangled in font of him in his tormented, vulnerable state.

"My father?" he choked out.

"Well you don't think you gained special access to the CIA back then because of your charm."

The shock began to slowly overwhelm him, and his eyes migrated from Sophia to Beckett to the floor. His ability to process what he was hearing was beginning to slip away.

"You really don't know, do you?" She said, noting the confusion spreading over his face, and smiled, knowing that she was twisting the knife just that little bit deeper as she pressed her gun to the back of his head. Castle's worse fear was coming true. She was going to kill him and make Kate watch, he would die knowing that Kate would be next...

"I guess you never will"

"NO!" Beckett screamed as a shot rang out, and Sophia dropped dead to the floor. Castle's eyes went wide, rooted to her body, her eyes wide open, a pool of blood beginning to radiate from her. He had nothing left as Danberg ran up to them. Ricks eyes were open, but unfocused.

"Come on, it's just us, and we're out of time." Danberg shouted, already on his way out of the room.

Kate looked down at Castle for a moment. He hadn't moved, his eyes were glazed over as he stared down at a woman he had once cared deeply for, lying dead in a pool of her own blood. The pistol she was going to kill him with still clutched in her lifeless hand. He was rooted to the spot, his entire world had come crashing down. She had taunted him with knowledge of a father he had never known, and now would never know.

He had suffered too many shocks to his system, and Beckett knew that she had administered some of them herself today. She followed Danberg out to save the girl, but her heart ached for the man she left kneeling there, lost in his own confusion and pain. Memories of his own shooting playing over and over again intermingled with his own dark imaginings of the alternate scenario.

….

"Eto ne moja strana nikoda ne byla"

Rick was on his knees, a gun pressed into the back of his head. Alexis lay face down in front of him in a rapidly growing pool of her own blood, alongside the body of his mother. They had made him watch as his absolute failure to protect the ones he loved was shown to be complete. Sophia Turner's disembodied voice rose up as if from nowhere.

"Don't worry, Rick, I'll make it sound heroic. Your father will be very proud."

Followed by a loud noise and a bright flash and then...nothing.

Rick Castle woke up screaming.

"Mother! Alexis! No!"

He was drenched in sweat from head to toe, and shaking uncontrollably as Kate burst into his bedroom. She sat at the head of his bed and pulled his head to her chest, running her fingers through his hair.

"Shhh, it's all right, Rick, you're safe now. Everything will be all right." Kate whispered, along with soft soothing noises.

"Mother, and Alexis..." he began,

"They're safe, Castle," Kate said soothingly, "asleep in their rooms."

"The dream felt so real." he mumbled, then told her haltingly about it, what he could articulate into words anyway. He was still so very tired...

"I know, Rick," she whispered, "try to back to sleep."

Kate eased his head back onto the pillow, not knowing that one detail of his dream, the one he had been careful not to tell her, was still troubling him greatly.

The woman holding the gun to his head, the one who executed him was not Sophia Turner.

It was Kate Beckett.