Chapter Thirteen
Rising Storm

"You never bend, you never break
You seem to know just what it takes
You're a fighter
It's in the blood, it's in the will
It's in the mighty hands of steel
When you're standin' your ground
And you never get hit when your back's to the wall
Gonna fight to the end and you're takin' it all
You got the touch"

Stan Bush: "The Touch

Previously

Gina made a show of closing the blinds on the office door before walking out and closing it, just as the sound of an empty coffee cup shattering against the wall could be heard inside the office along with a series of muttered curses. Rick will have to step very lightly when he came back, of that she was certain, but he will be going back.

"You may want to give her a few minutes before you go in there." She said sweetly to Officer Velasquez, "I had to give her some bad news, and she isn't taking it well."

Gina stepped onto the elevator and waited until the doors closed in front of her before she smiled with some amount of mirth.

Sometimes Regina Bishop really loved her job.

Richard Castle stepped out of the elevator into the 12th Precinct rounding the corner into the Homicide bullpen. Ryan had called him shortly after "Special Agent Brunhilde the Valkyrie Fed" as he'd taken to calling her had swept in and hoisted Gates up by her own petard in her office without so much as an appointment.

Rick knew at once whom it had been. Gina didn't get to play fed very often, but when the rare opportunity presented itself she seemed to relish getting heavy-handed. From the way Gates had been passive aggressively throwing her weight around "establishing her authority" since then, it was clear that Gina may have gotten over-excited and gone a little too "Men in Black" on her. This hadn't been what he had in mind when he'd asked Gina to help grease the wheels to get him back into the precinct. If he'd wanted to go this route, he would have gotten clearance from Gina and "read her in" himself. He hadn't thought at the time that there was a reason for him to stay, only now there was.

Since the incident with the assassin, and his admission to Kate about his "upgrades" he hadn't stayed at the cabin with Kate the whole two months. She had things to work out quietly alone, just like he had once upon a time and he respected her need for space to do that. He went up to visit on weekends and dinner with Kate and her father on Sundays. Sasquatch kept him up-to-date about security concerns, though he had little to report recently.

Kate had called him in the middle of the night at least once or twice a week when she woke from a nightmare, though only two of those had been bad enough for her to ask him to drive up before his regular weekend visit. The most recent one had been after she'd gone for her psych evaluation to return to work. The therapist had been quite thorough and had pushed all the"right" buttons. Kate had kept her composure through the session by force of will, but the nightmare she'd had when she returned to the cabin had been really bad. Bad enough to ask him to stay for the last two weeks before she returned to the city, not to mention a few nights on the couch in her apartment after that.

Kate would be coming back to work in a few days, mostly desk duty until she re-qualified with her service weapon and jumped through all the departmental regulated hoops for returning from a traumatic injury. He didn't want Gina's poor people skills to be hanging over her head as she would have enough on her plate. He still blamed himself for her being shot, and he would take his own lumps for Gina's lack of tact and respect, Kate shouldn't have to pay the price for it.

Velasquez greeted Castle as warmly as the current climate in the precinct would allow. Nobody who'd watched him beating his brains out working Kate's shooting was happy about the way Gates had casually dismissed him or the defeated look in his eye when she and LT had been ordered to hustle him out like he was a common criminal. He had earned his place among them, and everybody thought he'd deserved better treatment, considering what he'd done for their solve rate the last few years. Gates being former I.A.B. did little to help her case with the rank and file either.

Rick waited patiently in the guest chairs next to the captain's office wearing the visitor's pass he'd been given earlier, looking almost sadly at Kate's desk with its family of elephants, his chair still sitting next to it waiting for him. Ryan and Espo had looked almost affronted on his behalf for not being allowed to sit in his usual spot while he waited. In their eyes he had done nothing wrong and should not have to be treated like he was being called into the principal's office.

What the boys didn't know was that it was he who had asked for this appointment, not Gates. He was here to clear the air and try to make nice, not put on airs. As much as he felt odd for sitting where he was, he would not have felt right sitting in his chair without Kate there. He'd done that for too long after Kate's shooting for his comfort level.

Once he made nice with Captain Gates, he wasn't planning on staying much longer than it would take to invite Ryan and Esposito out for drinks at The Old Haunt. If things worked out, maybe he would be able to extend that invitation to include Victoria Gates someday. But not today.

"Mr. Castle?" Gates stated, her voice a mix of irritation and curiosity. "Come inside and close the door."

The boys gave him a long look, as if measuring him for a coffin, then hunkered down trying to look busy before Gates could see them. By the time Rick had pulled the door closed behind him, Captain Gates was already seated behind her desk.

"Your service record made for some interesting reading, Major, what little of it wasn't redacted." Gates said without preamble. "Top of your class in flight school, flew F-15's for two years, three confirmed air to air kills in Desert Storm. Test pilot with NASA after the war and on the short list to pilot a Space Shuttle mission, but your official life disappeared into black ink after May of 1992, care to illuminate any of that for me?"

Victoria Gates was not a stupid woman and was certain her fishing expedition would get her nowhere. She had, however expected some form of childish remark, given what she's heard about the man, but was rather surprised at the serious look he leveled at her.

"Captain," Rick began, doing his best to not come off as condescending, "for your sake, I'm gonna forget you asked me that question. I could give you the old stand-by 'I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you,' joke, but that would be in poor taste, given we're in a homicide squad room. I'm pretty sure you know what a redacted file means. You aren't cleared to know, I'm not cleared to be honest, you likely wouldn't believe half of it anyway. Hell, some of it I still find hard to swallow looking back and I was the one who lived it."

Rick relaxed for a moment and leaned back into his chair while he gave the new Captain the space to digest what he'd said. All told she was taking it quite well. He could tell she wasn't happy he was stonewalling her, but from the look in her eyes and the set of her jaw she respected the position he was in. He knew it was time to get down to business and get out of her hair.

"Captain, I came to apologize for Gina's behavior, from what I heard, she came down on you like a ton of bricks when all I asked her to do was clear the way for me to come back. If you want to take that out on me, feel free, but all I ask in return is that you don't let Regina Bishop's lack of people skills blow back onto Detective Beckett. Kate deserves better."

Gates may have been outmaneuvered and left with little choice but to take him back, but he knew it was going to be his responsibility to be the velvet glove to soften the blow of Gina's iron fist. "An interesting analogy given the reality of the situation," he thought to himself.

"Don't get me wrong," Rick continued, "I love my writing, but for the first time since Desert Storm, aside from raising my daughter, I have the opportunity to do something important. To be part of something I don't have to hide from Alexis that I can feel proud of. I'd forgotten what that felt like until now."

Gates' eyes seemed to soften a fraction at the mention of his daughter. It had been what had softened Beckett to him once upon a time, he'd bonded over fatherhood with Montgomery as well. As it had turned out the man had known what it felt like to carry a deep dark secret around. He hoped someday the shared experience of parenthood could be the opening to a similar relationship with Gates.

"Thank you for coming down, Mr. Castle. Gates replied, "I appreciate you respecting my authority enough to come in yourself to clear the air. Now get out of my precinct, I don't want to see you around here again until Detective Beckett reports for desk duty."

Gates wanted to be angry at Richard Castle after his publicist, Paula Haas (whom it would seem really was a literary publicist) called and made this appointment, she really did. But to his credit he had obeyed her and left without incident when she'd kicked him out seven weeks ago, even though she had been less than kind – hell, she'd been a bitch and she knew it – even though it hadn't escaped her notice that he'd been grieving and guilt-ridden at the time. Given his military background (what little of it she now knew about) she felt better about letting him hit the streets with one of her detectives.

She had spent the last couple days looking over the case files from the last three years and the solve rate had been ten percent higher since he'd begun shadowing Beckett, (who had an impressively high solve rate to begin with) which was likely how Roy Montgomery had been able to justify his continued presence after that first year. A solve rate which had dropped dramatically with both of them gone.

If that state of affairs was allowed to continue for too long after Beckett returned to active duty, One Police Plaza would not be looking at Richard Castle, they would be looking at her and her leadership. Agent Bishop notwithstanding, her job wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel after that. Comp/Stat was everything to the upper echelon brass.

She remembered what her Uncle Jacob, who'd been in the CIA since his OSS days in WWII, had said when he'd gotten her the redacted version of Richard Castle's file. Something he'd warned her had been far too easy to for him to get his hands on, all things considered.

"Vicki, darlin', I don't know what Rodgers was involved in with 'the Company', but it had to be some pretty next level shit. His unredacted file is so far over my security clearance level it should be marked 'burn before reading'. Do not cross this guy if you can help it. Some really bad shit happened to the last idiot who screwed with him or his kid. Something of "the body parts have never been found" variety. He's got somebody huge protecting him... a goddamn NSA ghost."

Her uncle hadn't been able to get her anything more concrete than the file and that warning, but ten years in Internal Affairs and her own suspicious nature lead her to believe he had been allowed to access only what they wanted to reach her eyes and ears.

Uncle Jacob's security clearance had been pulled shortly after that and he'd been retired with"the thanks of a grateful nation." They'd even given him a commendation for his OSS work which had been overlooked at the end of WWII and a generous pension, but she knew that there was more to it than that... a warning shot across her bow, of that she was more than certain. A subtle reminder from Regina Bishop about which one of them held the cards.

She didn't appreciate Regina Bishop's strong-arm tactics, but in truth her job had brought her into contact with more than one Federal Agent. The alphabet soup agencies out of Washington DC seemed to breed that attitude. She almost felt sorry for Richard Castle for having to put up with her regularly. "God, what a bitch." she thought to herself.

Victoria Gates disconnected the smoke detector in her office and burned Castle's file in her metal trash can. As long as Richard Castle's secrets didn't effect the way her precinct ran, she had little choice but to go along. His most redeeming quality in her eyes was that he did seem to care about taking killers off the street. If he can keep that up, she could eventually learn to overlook the rest of it.

Especially if he was as good for Detective Beckett as she had overheard people saying.

An hour later

Richard Castle walked through the forms of Krav Maga he had learned as part of his physical therapy.

His trainer had been read in back then and had helped him modify Krav Maga to suit his needs. The adaptive nature of that martial art allowed him to maximize the attack and blocking potential of his bionic limbs while protecting his organic arm from critical injury but still utilize it in a fight. Other than his left arm, his limbs did not need the practice, they responded to his commands with the immediate speed and power they always had.

He hadn't seriously worked out other than to keep his organic left arm in shape in a long time, but his fight with the assassin at the Beckett cabin had been a wake up call he could not ignore. The strength and speed of his bionics had almost not been enough that night. He'd underestimated the man and had nearly paid for it with his life. He'd trade his life for Kate in a heartbeat, but he knew he couldn't keep her safe if he continued to fight stupid and got himself killed. Back in the city he couldn't count on Sasquatch as heavily to back him up like he could in the woods. He was her only backup in a city of eight million people any one of which might be carrying a bullet with her name on it.

As anticipated, the muscle memory of his left arm was the weak link, so he worked it mercilessly, all the while allowing him to work off the energy rippling in the interfaces with his bionic limbs. He needed to work off his anger too, his rage at the forces arrayed against Kate. He was on a mission, one that had to succeed.

Kate wanted it to be done legally, get the justice her mother had been denied for so long, and he wanted that for her too. But if the worst occurred, and anything happened to Kate, he was prepared to go dark, find out who was behind all of this and sanction them with extreme prejudice. As long as Alexis was safe, he wouldn't much care what happened to Richard Castle after that.

He finished with the heavy bag an actual target for his blows. Before long it was nearly destroyed, the tatters of it barely hanging from the chain. He took it down, cleaned up the mess, hung another and started again.

Kate needed him to be more. She needed him to be the man she knew, the man his mother had raised him to be. The good man he knew deep down he could be. She trusted that he was more than the sum of his inorganic parts, just as Gillian had been trying to tell him.

So he would be the man she needed him to be. The man she fell in love with. Even if he wasn't sure he was good enough, he loved her enough to try.

Kate Beckett was worth it.