Richard Castle 14
Uh oh! She needed to think fast and not let this get out of control. "The children are fine. I found them; they're out of their cages and outside," she said in a rush.
"Who was she?" Kate pointed to the pile of ash that used to be Meredith.
"There's an ogre around here somewhere. He'll just..."
She interrupted him. "He's dead. I ...ah, I killed him," she confessed, still not sure she'd done the right thing. Her great fear that killing that thing meant she had started down the path to becoming a black witch. She had never heard of a white witch killing anyone before.
"You killed the ogre?" Castle asked in disbelief. She was a witch. Granted a witch with a wand, but still.
"I didn't mean to, all right? It just sort of happened. He caught me by surprise." Kate was still upset that she had actually killed someone. "I really just wanted him to go away and, ...well, he did. Now he has these broken cage bars sticking out of his chest." She motioned to her chest to demonstrate.
He wasn't sure he believed her, but as far as he knew, she hadn't lied to him yet. "Let's get the children and get out of here." Even if it was dark they really needed to get moving; they had a long way to go to get back to town.
"Cas... Castle!" Suddenly he saw Kate looking much more pale than usual. She appeared to be stunned and very afraid. She was pointing behind him. He turned around to look and what he saw just wasn't possible.
The pile of ash was swirling and it looked like the swirl was filled with bugs. Not that that was even conceivable, ...was it?
They both stood there gaping, their mouths hanging open as the swirling bugs coalesced to show Meredith standing there looking undamaged. She stretched her neck, shook her head, and wiggled her body. Then she leveled a look at Kate. Meredith lowered her voice and sneered at her. "BITCH!" Then she smirked. "I'm a Witch Queen, you stupid little whore. You didn't actually think you could kill me?" she scoffed, questioning the young witch's credulousness. Like Kate ever actually had a chance.
"As for you, Ricky." This time the evil witch sounded a lot more loving. She held out her hand and her wand flew from wherever it had been straight into her grasp. "Thank you for the child, but I don't need you anymore." Meredith pointed the wand at him and a blast of sickly green light launched out of it, striking him squarely in the abdomen. The blast sent him flying backward and crashing to the ground; he didn't move.
"CASTLE!" Kate's ultimate fear had happened right if front of her. She turned her back on Meredith, rushing to his side where she knelt down and tried to inspect his wound. It looked bad.
"Oh, the white witch loves little Ricky," Meredith taunted. "How ...sickening." She'd lowered her voice and growled out the last word.
Kate was beyond furious. That witch had killed the love of her life and ended her future. She had nothing left to lose now. She turned her head and gave Meredith a death glare. Then she squinted her eyes almost closed. Every fiber of her body starting issuing waves of absolute hatred for that "WITCH!"
She set her jaw in determination, lifted up her mother's wand, and wished with all her soul, all her being, that the evil witch would die. Kate wasn't shocked and only became more resolute when she watched a brilliant white, that matched the color of the orchids, ray dance off the end of her wand and strike Meredith.
At first Meredith simply looked amused. Then she started to look worried, until finally the look on her face became one of terror. Her body started to dissipate and swirl back into a cloud of bugs. But Kate was undeterred and just watched as the white light enveloped Meredith.
Kate was steadfast, never wavering as she watched the light envelope the evil queen. For Meredith it seemed to last forever while to Kate it happened so fast.
Meredith felt herself falling apart, one bug at a time. It wasn't possible! She was the Witch Queen. There was no force that could kill her!
The young witch watched closely and what she saw was Meredith start to disappear one bug at a time. It was like they were each being zapped in very quick succession. The swirl was getting smaller and smaller. It wasn't until the very last bug was gone that Kate relaxed and watched the light from her wand abruptly cease. "And stay dead this time," she spat at the empty space.
Suddenly she came back into the here and now. She dropped her wand and turned back to Castle's crumpled body. Her heart was breaking as she started looking him over. She used a quick spell and started cutting away some of his clothing, exposing the damage.
"OH, GODS!" It looked bad. Really bad. She only knew one thing to do even if she hadn't ever tried it before. She had practiced with her mother years ago when she was just a little girl.
Kate dropped to her knees, placed both hands over his wound, and started murmuring. This had to work, it just had to. Her life, her entire future was at stake. She did her best to remember. For the first time in a long time she tried to picture her mother teaching her how to do it.
"You're hurt Mommy!?"The child was ready to start crying. All she saw was blood and it looked like it was everywhere. "You're bleeding." Little Katie's tears were flowing fast.
"It's just a cut, honey. There was an accident. Do you remember what I taught you? Place your hands right here." Johanna did her best to demonstrate though the second her own hands touched the wound she hissed in pain which did nothing to help little Katie. All that did was to cause her daughter's tears to flow even faster. "Right here, baby girl." Johanna took her daughter's hands and placed them on her wound, hoping that her daughter wouldn't shy away. She was still so young. "You remember the words, Katie." Johanna encouraged. "Just hold your hands here and say the words I taught you."
Kate didn't notice the tears that were running down her face this time either. At that time she was sure she was going to lose her mother. She had to get it right or she would lose her. Now she had to get it right or she would lose someone else.
She didn't stop because she couldn't look. If she failed she couldn't live. He had to survive.
She just kept murmuring her spell as she held her hands over his wound, never noticing the blood that was now covering her hands. Just like she'd had blood on her hands when she was a little girl.
It was starting to feel like forever and it wasn't until she felt something that she opened her eyes and looked down at her blood-stained hands. What she saw in addition to the blood were Castle's hands covering hers. Her heart was pounding while it also started soaring. "Rick?!" Kate moved her hands off his wound and cupped his face with her bloody hands. She bent down to kiss him soundly. She was still frightened, so very frightened.
Kate rained kisses all over his face after feeling him kiss her back. "I was terrified for you." She kissed him one more time and then shifted her eyes downward and moved her hands back to his wound so she could inspect it and decide if he needed still more help. However, what she saw reminded her of what she'd seen on her mother.
Nothing but smooth skin along with a fair amount of dried blood.
"You did so well, honey, really well. I'm so proud of you. I'll always be proud of you." Johanna kissed her still scared and crying daughter and held her close till she calmed down.
"What happened?" Richard really didn't remember a whole lot. Something had hit him, he knew that much. Then he saw the blood and quickly grabbed Kate's hands. "Are you hurt?" He was immediately concerned that she was the one injured. Never noticing that his walls hadn't just come down – they'd collapsed – as his heart worried that he was losing her.
Kate started laughing while crying at the same time and shook her head. "I'm fine." She leaned down to kiss him and felt her heart fly to the heavens when he wrapped his arms around her and held her down while he kissed her back.
She broke from the kiss and just rested her head on his. "Please don't ever scare me like that again, baby. You scared the life out of me."
Richard overlooked the word BABY since he had questions. "Where's Meredith?" He was worried that they were still in danger.
She kissed him again. "I think I killed her," she told him then lifted her head a little. "Who's Meredith?"
He had a problem. How did he explain to her that Meredith was a witch and the mother of Alexis? A mother who had killed her own daughter. Though as that information started to sink in, he was beginning to get sick. He had made love to a witch. A black witch that had killed their – his – daughter.
"No one, she was no one." He wasn't ready to go into all of it. Certainly not here and not now. "We need to find those children and get out of here." He sat up quickly which caused Kate to scramble back. He all but jumped up and then helped her rise. "Let's get out of here." But he was forced to stop when she wrapped her arms around him, allowing herself a brief moment to thank the gods that she hadn't lost him.
"We need to go Kate." Castle needed her to snap out of it and get moving. She pulled back so she could look at him. Were his walls back in place? Had she saved him only to lose him?
"I love you and I almost lost you," she said tremulously, searching his eyes. Her heart needed the right answer.
"Children first, then we'll talk," he offered instead. What Kate really wanted was for him to tell her that he loved her, too. Maybe his willingness to talk later was a small victory but it felt more like a major defeat.
She didn't let him out of her sight as they started walking to the entrance. However, he took a left turn instead of a right. "The entrance is this way, Castle." The children weren't that way. But he was undeterred and kept walking. His long stride caused Kate to hurry up to catch up to him. She didn't understand. He wanted to find the children who were the other direction.
Castle didn't stop till he was standing in front of the ogre that looked a little bit like a porcupine with all the bars sticking out of his chest. "This is you? ...You did this?" He was amazed actually.
"I didn't mean to." Kate was still worried that having killed someone meant she had started down the wrong path. Her focus on that, she wasn't expecting Castle to suddenly wrap his arms around her and kiss her deeply. By the time he broke from the kiss she was breathless. It almost had her wishing there was another ogre for her to slay. Almost but not really. What he did left her standing there with nothing but love in her eyes.
"Search the area, we need to make sure that we have all the children. No doors, no hidden panels, trap doors. We can't leave so much as one child behind," he said and began a thorough search.
It took a little time but both of them came up empty.
Once they made it to the entrance they found twelve children all huddled together, frightened out of their wits. "It's just us. You're safe now." Kate didn't notice but she had gone straight into mama mode. She looked over each and every child and even fixed a few scratches by pretending to use an ointment that Castle handed her from his backpack. The children were all good to go.
"I know it's dark but we need to leave now. Each of you take someone else's hand and follow me." He took the hand of one of the girls as Kate took it upon herself to bring up the rear.
Once they were outside Castle had to decide what to do. Staying there was obviously out. But what if one or more of the witches were simply late to the gathering? All of his weapons were gone save for the one still in his backpack. But for the most part it was a single shot meant to shoot at a long distance. Not for close-in fighting with a witch. All he really had left was the knife on his leg.
He could only think of one place to go and stay till the sun came up. Glancing behind him, he looked over all of the children till he saw Kate who was looking right at him, a very different wand clutched in her hand than he remembered her having before. He didn't understand why but seeing her smile at him made him feel better.
He turned and started walking hoping she could pick up any stragglers that got separated from them.
"We'll stop here. I need everyone to stop and..." It had been a while since he had had to do or say this. "Boys over there with me, girls over there with Kate. Once everyone is done we meet back here." He hoped that Kate caught on.
Somehow telling the boys to drop their pants and pee was so much easier than trying to teach Alexis how to do it since she was built differently. The first few times had not gone well, for either of them. Fortunately, just a number of minutes later they were all back at the entrance to the place they had set up camp just a number of hours earlier. Castle hurried the children inside the tent. It was really close quarters for twelve children but it was comfortable inside and they just didn't have the clothing to be outside in the cool air.
"Now what?" Kate questioned. "We really don't have enough food or water for this many of us. They'll slow us down on the trip back so it's going to take even longer to get back then it did to get here."
"Then it takes us longer." He couldn't reduce their travel time or make time stop. He thought for a moment, trying to come up with a plan to provide for them all. "I can go hunting if you watch the children. I still have one weapon and ammunition for it."
"Our next stop should be our little oasis, maybe. I doubt these children have bathed in days if not weeks. I'm not even sure what they've been feeding them, if anything at all," she remarked.
"We may have to stay there for a couple of days, just to determine how all of them are. Any wounds, how malnourished they actually are. Get them and their clothes clean. Help them feel better and perhaps feel safe, finally," Castle agreed. "It means we'll be sleeping outside," he warned. She simply smiled and raised up on tippy-toe to give him a quick kiss.
"I've got you to keep me warm." Kate smiled wide. But she didn't like the look she got from him. Had she lost all that she had gained over these days? "Castle? ...Richard?"
He jumped in before she could continue. "We need to talk, but for now we have to focus on the children."
She turned her head to look at the tent that was full to overflowing with children and sighed. He had a point and it pained her. It would allow him time to rebuild his walls and shut her out. To come up with reasons to dump her and leave her behind.
"Promise me we'll talk?" She fervently wanted her chance to show him that she was worth loving. That they could be something together. "After we get the children home?" she asked.
Castle wasn't looking forward to this talk. All of this meant he had to do and think about things he had left behind. Having Kate around was reminding him of a life that was lost to him.
"When we get the children home," he agreed. He watched her soften after he agreed. She had told him countless times that she loved him. He just didn't understand how. There wasn't much of his heart left to love.
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The sun wasn't even up yet, but Castle and Kate were getting the children up and out of the tent. He'd been around Alexis all of her life but these children were nothing like her. They were silent: no talking, no laughter, nothing. He chalked it up to them not believing that their nightmare was over. That they weren't truly safe yet.
"You take the girls and I'll take the boys and we meet back her and get going," he said. And once again they retreated to where they could take care of business and get cleaned up after.
He had the hand of one of the girls while Kate had that of another girl and was at the back keeping everyone in front of her in her sight. They were silent for a long time until Castle felt the girl he was holding onto tug his pants. He looked down at her while she was looking up. She wasn't Alexis, actually far from it. But the look on her face melted his heart just a little. "Do you need something?" he asked gently; she shook her head. "You have a question then?" She bobbed her head hesitantly.
"Who are you?" she inquired with some trepidation. She was actually fearing the answer based by the look on her face.
"My name is Richard Castle." He was pretty certain that didn't tell her anything. However he saw her face light up. "You've heard of me?" he asked in surprise.
She nodded. "Father talked about you. He told us not to go out into the woods at night. That if we did and a witch found us, a witch hunter would come to save us," she told him softly. Suddenly her demeanor toward him was different. She seemed to have less fear on her face and more spring in her step.
Apparently he had done something without really meaning to. He lifted his head to look behind him. What he saw was Kate beaming at him.