"Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. He took me to his cabin and he told me his secret. 'I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts' he said. 'My name is Ryan; I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from is not the real Dread Pirate Roberts either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired 15 years and living like a king in Patagonia.'"
-Westley, The Princess Bride
After their eventful brunch and Andy's departure, Johanna had asked if they could go see the waterfall, a favorite picnic spot from the Beckett family summers. They had all quite willingly donned coats and boots and hiked through the delightful winter wonderland of the woods. The waterfall was spectacular, frozen in all its glory like the statue of a veil cascading over rock. It was almost a half hour each way thanks to the snow, and on the way the Beckett family spent the time reminiscing. Jim and Johanna took turns telling various embarrassing escapades of young Katie, until Kate began retaliating with humorous tales of Jim's failures on the lake- both fishing and boating related.
A hushed silence descended once they reached the falls. Kate took Castle by the hand, roamed with him to the top, showing him her favorite rock to sit on and read in the summer. On the way home, they walked along the shoreline, and Jim recounted some Native American legends of the beings who supposedly lived in the lake. Johanna leaped in and recounted how Kate had been so terrified of the lake monsters, but had refused to let that stop her from camping out with a friend when they'd come up to the cabin one memorial weekend.
Once they reached home, Jim headed to his room to nap after his early morning. Castle insisted that it was his turn to cook, and was soon cheerfully bustling around the kitchen. Kate curled up in the loveseat, staring into the flames with a book open and untouched on her lap, occasionally responding to a comment from Castle, but mostly just enjoying the quiet.
Johanna had disappeared for a time- Kate had assumed she had gone to the bedroom and was relaxing with Jim- when all of a sudden she materialized in front of her, clutching a large book.
"Katie, do you have a moment?" Johanna's voice was low, hesitant- lacking the bright confidence her mother's voice usually contained. "If I'm disturbing you, I can do this another time," she added almost too quickly to allow Kate a chance to answer.
"Sure," Kate shuffled over to allow her mother room to sit next to her. It was the closest she had allowed her mother to get proximity-wise since her resurrection, and she was momentarily transported back to her childhood as her mother's scent surrounded her.
Johanna was clutching a worn-looking binder to her chest as she settled back into the cushions.
"You ladies mind if I put some music on?" Castle's voice cut between them from the kitchen along with the rattle of a pan. The two women exchanged an amused glance, both secretly thankful for the unintentional tension breaker.
"Go for it, Castle," Kate responded, tone conveying her affectionate eye roll even to the kitchen. Moments later he could be heard crooning along with Michael Bublé as he clattered about, leaving mother and daughter in their own cocoon of privacy.
Johanna took a deep breath, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture eerily similar to one of her daughter's trademark moves.
"There are lots of things you aren't allowed to do in WitSec. Even less when you're meant to be dead and instead you're working on a secret FBI task force," Johanna began.
"I can imagine," Kate murmured, trying to encourage her mother to continue speaking.
"For the longest time I wasn't allowed to find out anything about you. I wasn't allowed so much as a Google search. We had no idea just how far-reaching Bracken's influence reached, and we couldn't afford to make even the smallest slip up. It wasn't until the report on Dick Coonan's shooting crossed Andy's desk that I knew you'd become a police officer," Johanna had still been clutching the binder as if it was a lifeline, but at this point, she took a deep breath and consciously eased it down onto her knees so she could open it. On the first page was pasted a photocopy of IA's official findings, exonerating Detective Kate Beckett from culpability in the matter of Dick Coonan's shooting at the Twelfth.
Kate's eyebrows shot up, and she couldn't help scowling a little at the report. Internal Affairs had dragged the matter out, and the whole proceeding had been nothing short of a bureaucratic nightmare, regardless of both witness statements and the fact that she had operated entirely within the law. Her mother, however, was stroking the page with deep fondness.
"Andy didn't know I took a photocopy of the report," she whispered. "I wasn't meant to. But Katie, you have no idea what seeing your name on the page, with 'Detective' in front of it- what that did to me. It was like my first breath of fresh air in more than 10 years. I knew it was you. It couldn't have been some other Kate Beckett- not connected to Dick Coonan's shooting. It was the first time I was able to find out anything about you- what you were doing, who you'd become. I would take this photocopy out in the privacy of my bedroom and weep because I had proof that my baby girl was doing something worthwhile with her life, and I was so proud."
Her mother's voice had grown husky as she spoke, and Kate found herself looking away, unable to handle her distress. There was a brief lull as Johanna took a moment to regain her composure. When Kate glanced back a moment later she wouldn't have been able to see just what this conversation was costing the older woman, if she didn't know to look.
Surprisingly, it was Johanna who broke the silence, and when she did it was with a very distinct twinkle in her eye. "That report gave me another way to find out about you, too," she said mysteriously.
Kate's eyebrows furrowed. "How?"
"It mentioned Castle's arrangement with the Twelfth. I had snapped up Heat Wave the moment it came out, of course, and I'd heard rumors that the 'extraordinary KB' was a real, live police Detective whom Richard Castle had been shadowing. When I found out it was you, it gave me a few more avenues to find out about you without investigating directly. I had no idea you were close enough to be together, though. All the articles I could find seemed to stress that your relationship was purely platonic, in spite of page 105- which I haven't been able to read since, incidentally!"
Kate felt her cheeks heat, and she ducked her head, allowing a curtain of hair to cut her off from her mother. "That wasn't- we weren't- I- we've only been together a few months," she stammered, peeking out to find Johanna struggling to contain her mirth. "Shut up," she muttered in the same tone she had used a thousand times as a teenager, and Johanna gave up all pretense, laughing long and loud.
"You really think I'm not perfectly aware of what you and Rick get up to?" Johanna teased.
"Moooooooooom!" Kate moaned, all but doubling over in mortification, before taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, suddenly calm and in control again, looking pointedly at the scrapbook. "What else do you have in there?" she asked. Johanna simply shook her head- somehow this felt just like every conversation about boys she'd ever had with her daughter.
Together, they proceeded to flip through the scrap book. Page after page of pieces of Kate's life, assembled with love and dedication. There was an article about the release of Deadly Heat, in which Castle was quoted talking about his relationship with the Twelfth Precinct. The following pages were filled with Page 6 articles about Castle that mentioned Kate in any capacity, along side photocopies of various reports detailing Kate's work on Bracken's case. Eventually, Castle's fight with Gina outside La Cirque, John Raglan, Gary McCallister, Hal Lockwood- it was dizzying to see just how much her mother had been able to piece together about her life, just based on case files and newspaper articles.
Kate's heart quickened as they drew nearer and nearer to Montgomery's death, but there was surprisingly little there. She found herself breathing a deep sigh of relief- she and her boys had been successful in keeping their late Captain's name clean. Instead, though, she was confronted by several articles about her own shooting. She moved to turn the page quickly, to move past the page that brought back so many dark memories, but Johanna placed her hand firmly on the book to stop her.
"There's something you should know," Johanna said softly. Kate bit her lip. Considering which page they were on, she wasn't sure she wanted to hear what her mother had to say. After taking a deep breath, Johanna admitted "I was there, that day in the cemetery."
"What?!" Kate's eyes flew to her mother's, to find Johanna staring off into the fire, the events of that day clearly playing out in her mind.
"We knew Montgomery died taking down Lockwood and his goons. We had suspected for some time that he knew something about the case that we didn't- that maybe he was sitting on evidence, although we were never able to establish how he came across it or where he fit into the puzzle. When we received intel that Bracken had mobilized Cedric Marks, we were worried for Montgomery's family- we were hoping to have a quiet word with his wife after the funeral to find out if he had given her anything, and potentially take her into WitSec if we needed to," Johanna said sorrowfully.
"I never saw you there. When I was on the podium, I mean," Kate whispered, sweeping her memory of the day that had haunted her nights for months.
"I was in an SUV, over the far side of the cemetery, along with a couple of agents. We were watching between the trees. We never had a chance- we didn't know Marks was going to strike that day," Johanna lifted her eyes to Kate's, moisture pooling in the hazel depths. "Katie, I've never been so scared in my life. Seeing you go down, and not being able to go to you- thinking you'd been killed without me getting to tell you I loved you one last time, or that I was alive, or any of it- I've never regretted anything as much as I regretted that."
Kate swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. "And you didn't stick around to find out?" she asked, trying not to make it sound like an accusation and only succeeding in part. Johanna shook her head.
"I couldn't. As soon as the shot was fired and Rick tackled you, we drove away. It was too risky. The only way our task force was safe was because it was kept secret. We couldn't get involved. I can remember just screaming and screaming at Andy to let me see you, to see if you were ok. He had to order the agent driving to lock the doors to stop me from throwing myself out of the vehicle at a traffic light and coming to find you." Johanna almost smiled, even as she brushed away a lone tear that had spilled over during her recounting.
"You wanted to be there that badly?" Kate asked.
"Oh, Katie-bug, I missed you like that and more, every day I was gone. Not a day went by without me wishing I could come home to you." Hesitantly, Jo reached for her daughter, putting an arm around her and drawing her in for a hug.
Something deep inside of Kate cracked wide open for the first time in 14 years, and with a sob, she curled into her mother and clung tight.
"I missed you, too. So much, Mom," she choked out between tears as her mother rocked her in her arms, just as she'd been longing to do all this time.
A/N: This essentially brings us to the end of our tale, although there will be an epilogue to this story, so I won't be marking it complete just yet. This fic has been an amazing journey for me- my first real multichapter, and it's surreal knowing it's coming to an end. Through the writing of this, and the Castle fanfic community and the magic of Twitter, I have made some amazing, incredible friends during the time I wrote this, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank each of you, my wonderful readers, for coming on this ride with me, and for your overwhelming response that has frequently left me grinning. Truly, it has meant so very much to me.