CHAPTER SEVEN

Both women were stunned by what they saw. There were obvious medical people wandering around, some checking various machines others working on things in other areas of the room that they couldn't quite identify. But after a quick scan their eyes were drawn to the single hospital bed in the center of the room, and its occupant.

"Dad!"

"Richard?"

The two woman rushed over and stood on each side of the bed. A flurry of barely intelligible questions and concerns flew from the mouths' of the red heads.

Alexis gave Kate a hard look. "I want to be angry with you for keeping this to yourself, but I'm too elated that dad is alive to be upset."

Kate came up and stood at the foot of the bed. "I know you both have a million questions, and probably some less than kind words for me for keeping this from you."

Rick reached out a hand to Alexis and to Martha. "Don't blame Kate for keeping you in the dark."

He squeezed both hands in order. "When I finally became conscious she told me what she had done, and I agreed with her. I didn't think anything would be gained by putting you two into a state of anxious worry until we knew for sure I would survive the multiple surgeries. I didn't want you to have to go through my death a second time."

"Well apparently we wouldn't have needed to go through it at all." Martha had trouble containing her disapproval.

"But none of us knew that until I got the call from Jackson." Kate reminded them.

Alexis looked around the room. "If dad's father is responsible for all this? Where is he?"

Kate's hands clenched the footboard of the bed so hard she thought she might snap the flimsy board. She couldn't stop the tears which snuck out of the corners of her eyes.

"You two are going to have to have some patience." Kate directed their attention to her. "It's going to be a long story that we have to tell you. One that will be hard for you to believe. A story that has both a sad ending and a happy ending." Kate rolled her eyes. "Actually it's a barely believable ending."

"I think we've been patience enough." Martha sniped. "Let's hear this story."

Castle took over the narrative. "You see, it was all put into motion on the night of my accident."

Rick and Kate preceded to tag team the story telling. Martha and Alexis just stood there with their mouth hanging open. Kate had to admit that in the telling the story seemed even more outrageous and unbelievable as they told their tale.

When they came to the part of Hunt's sacrifice a teary eyed Martha just nodded and said she always knew he was a good man, even if he had left without a word.

Alexis found herself amazed by the new prosthetics that had been grafted into her dad's body. She found herself running her hands along his legs and asking if he could feel her touch. Rick had to tell her is was hard to describe, but it was more of an awareness than an actually feeling of pressure.

Martha just stood by with a sad smile on her face as her granddaughter fired question after question at Rick and Kate. Her persistent need to know the what and how, had Rick chuckling and Kate rolling her eyes.

Even after the telling, the two women had a hard time accepting all that had happened to Rick. Alexis still wanted to know more, but Martha was just happy to have her son back. And they had both mostly forgiven Kate for holding back the information that she did, knowing that she was just waiting for the time when Rick's condition would allow her to give them good news.

But they hadn't fully forgave her for keeping them in the dark as long as they had been.

It was fairly late when it became obvious that Rick was tiring and needed to sleep. Uninterrupted sleep now would be his best way to speed up the healing he still had to do.

Kate ushered Martha and Alexis out of the warehouse and onto the streets of New York. She flagged down a cab for the two women. Martha understood immediately.

"You go ahead, Katherine." Martha patted her hand. "I know you want to go back in there and just watch him sleep peacefully. Alexis and I can get home just fine. We have our own emotions we need to deal with."

Kate blushed as she smiled at the older woman's understanding. "Thanks, I still have trouble believing he was able to survive all that… and that he's going to be alright."

Before the ladies stepped into the cab, Alexis turned to Kate. "So, do those prosthetics just give dad normal movements and capabilities, or are they stronger… faster than his normal limbs would be?"

Kate dropped her chin to her chest. "Oh no, not another one." Kate lifted her head. "Alexis, your father is not going to become some super hero vigilante even if his abilities might be slightly enhanced by his new limbs."

Alexis had to bite down on her lip. Then she turned to her Grams. "I guess she doesn't know dad quite as well as she thinks."

Martha gave Kate a look of concern. "Poor Kate."

Then the two women got their cab and waved goodbye to Kate, who stood there open mouthed as the cab sped away.

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Rick woke up from his slumber. He noted that the lights had been dimmed and only a minimal staff was on duty. He knew he still had a few weeks of healing. His heart would need to adjust to his new limbs.

Seeing as how his new prosthetics weren't actually drawing blood or straining muscles that were no longer there, he figured that they would actually put less strain on his new old heart. He wondered how long it would be until he could leave this Warehouse Medical, as Kate called it, and be able to go home and resume his life. Or maybe a somewhat different life.

He looked down at his extraordinary wife, who was asleep on a chair next to the bed, with her head laying on the edge of his mattress. A small dribble of drool hung from the corner of her mouth. The two of them were going to have to have several conversations before all was said and done.

Rick couldn't help but think that he'd been saved from death for a reason. And it wasn't so he could write murder mysteries to entertain women who found their own lives somewhat lacking. He also knew that, even though Kate had chosen a life of service for the public good, she'd be dead set against just about everything that was whirling around in his brain like a Texas twister on a dusty plain.

Kate must have felt Rick's movements in bed because she lifted her head and with sleep gummed eyes, looked toward his smiling face.

"What time's zit?" She blinked several times.

Castle shook his head. "I have no idea, but they still have it on night mode in here."

Kate looked around a saw that it was true. She glanced at her father's watch which still adorned her left wrist. "It's only a little after four in the morning. You should go back to sleep."

Castle gave her a slight smirk. "Says the lady who should still be sleeping herself. In our comfortable bed, in our comfortable home, instead of poaching on a small section of my mattress here."

She gave him a sleepy glare. "I'm fine. I'm not the one who needs to rest."

"Says who?"

"Shut up. Just go back to sleep. I want you to get better faster."

He grinned, thinking of just some of the reasons why she… and he, would want him to get better faster. "I will if you will. We both need our rest." He fastened his deep blue eyes directly on her.

"We both have a lot to talk about, starting tomorrow morning. It's time to begin preparing for what comes next when I leave here."

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Castle was awake and staring at his wife as she snuffled in her sleep, lying her head at the foot of his bed. The lights had been dialed up to what was considered a daytime level. The medical staff that was still on duty to watch over Rick's recovery from the heart surgery were wandering around.

With a smile on his face, he stretched out one leg and tapped Kate on the head. She sat up quickly, rubbing her forehead.

"Ow, that hurt. Why did you kick me?"

"Sorry." Castle shrugged. "I just meant to tap you with my foot to wake you up. I guess I still don't have my reactions under complete control yet."

Kate sat up rubbing her forehead. "Yeah well, don't go around kicking anything until you do."

"Understood." He smirked at her. "One has to be more aware when they have super powers."

She rolled her eyes. "You do not have super powers. You have some mechanical prosthetics which give you a bit of an advantage when it comes to speed and strength."

Castle nodded. "Like I said, super powers."

Kate glared at him. She knew that this was going to be her primary battle with him going forward. He'd want to do things that would endanger his life because he felt he had been given these special gifts to help others.

"Your extra advantages won't stop a bullet."

He smiled. "I'll have to work on that."

"Don't let that overly imaginative mind of yours go there. I will not go through you getting killed again."

Rick pulled a typical 12 year old pout. "Sometimes you're no fun."

Kate grinned. "And sometimes I can be a lot of fun. But those times are still a ways off yet."

He frowned. "Hey," she said. "Until your heart is well, and you have perfect control of your new parts. I don't want to risk a broken pelvis because you can't control your 'enhancements'."

Rick's expression blanked. He really didn't want to think of something like that possibly happening either. There was a little more to having these new parts than he had considered. This was going to have to be taken into account in anything he planned to do. No matter how ordinary or simple it might be.

He thought it was time to change the subject. "So, I never asked. But how much did you, meaning us, have to pay for all this?"

"I gave Jackson 60 million dollars in cash. I'm not sure if we will owe more or not. He took care of all that. I just got the money from Walter."

He nodded. "Well, if they need more, which they might since I'm not ready to leave here yet. I guess you'll just have to get some more."

"Walter told me you were worth about 200 million, but obviously most of that would be in investments. It won't be easy to get much more very quickly."

Rick shook his head. "No it won't. He'd have to sell off some of our investments to do that. But even with that, it's not like we're in any danger of being tossed out into the street."

Kate walked up to the front of the bed and took his hand in hers. "Rick, why do you keep calling it our money? It's all money that your talent has brought in. That and wise investing, and for all your largess you don't waste money."

He clasped her hand. "I told you before we married. When we married, and even if I hadn't lived. You are Mrs. Katherine Castle now and what's mine is yours and what's yours is also mine."

"Except for the trusts you established for Martha and Alexis."

"That's true, but it's because that money technically no longer belongs to me. They are completely separate and working independently from my portfolio."

She grinned. "Well you didn't come off very well in this deal. I have a little money put away, mostly money my mother set up for me. But I'm not exactly in the stratosphere as you are."

He chuckled. "Doesn't matter. We still have enough that we'd be hard pressed to spend it all in our lifetimes barring another major rebuild. But on that note. I think you should go and talk to Walter again, and get another ten million for whatever last minute, unforeseen expenses might come up."

Kate nodded. "Okay, I can do that. I should probably talk to him today because it will likely take some time to come up with it. Your mad money account was the first thing I emptied."

"That's fine." He smiled. "I'm going to need my phone too. I'm going to have to make some calls to prepare for my miraculous return. And set up a long term relationship with someone who can fix any of this stuff that has replaced the limbs I lost. I'm sure I'm going to think of other things we'll need, so I best get working on what I'll need the day I walk away from this place."

Kate was a little leery giving Rick access to the outside world. She knew he was smart enough to not risk exposure until they had worked out how they were going to bring him back. But he still had a tendency to get too excited by certain things. And she just wasn't going to be comfortable with some of the things his excitable child might come up with.

She reached into her inside jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. She handed it over to him.

"I kept this in case someone who didn't know tried to call you about something that might be important." She ran her fingers across her head. "Hunt gave it to me when he brought me in. Somehow it hadn't been damaged when you were thrown out of the car."

"Good," Rick smiled. "I can think about what I might need while you go talk to Henry at get us some more cash for… incidentals."

She rolled her eyes as he laughed.

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Once Kate left the warehouse, Rick was running thorough a mental list of guys he knew who could help him with what he envisioned he'd need. Before he could make any calls, he was visited by the doctor in charge.

"Good morning Mr. Castle, how are you feeling this morning?"

"Hungry."

The doctor chuckled. "Well we'll be taking care of that shortly."

The doctor listened to Rick's heart, and checked over all the seams and junctions where his normal skin met the special skin like sheathing that covered his prosthetics and the connections points. He didn't speak much, but he did a lot of head nodding.

"Can I ask you some questions?" Rick caught the doctor's attention.

He straighten up. "Certainly, what do you need to know?"

Rick used his healed up natural right arm and hand to touch the tough polymer that covered his artificial left arm. "How tough is this stuff?"

The doctor gave him a slight shrug. "I can't spout any specifications as to the tensile strength, or tear resistance, but I can safely say that it's tougher than normal skin. It won't scratch or cut easily."

"Would it stop a bullet?"

The doctor seemed surprised by the question. "It wouldn't take as much damage as your real skin because it wouldn't tear and there are no blood vessels in the arm. You'd probably just have a hole in the sheathing. Of course the titanium used to replace the pulverized bones wouldn't be much affected except by very high caliber, or special military rounds. It's possible you could get a dent." The doctor frowned. "Why would you ask that?"

Castle smiled. "Well, you see my wife is a NYPD detective and I often accompany her as her partner on cases."

The doctor shrugged. "You'd be better protected than if your arm or legs were flesh and bone, but you aren't actually bullet proof." The doc grinned. "You could call yourself bullet resistant."

Castle chuckled. "Thanks, doc." The doctor made a move to step away when Castle grabbed his arm. "How much longer do I have to stay here?"

"Well, right now it's no longer about your new parts. It's about your new heart. Things are going very well with your recovery. I believe that by not needing to pump blood to your arm and both your legs have helped in the rate of healing with your heart."

The doctor wrote a few things on his clipboard. "If there are no problems from now till then. I'd say you could go home in two to three weeks. Of course you'd still have to take it easy for a while yet once you leave here. But I have faith that you'll be better than new in less than a month."

Castle nodded. "One more question. I'm guessing you weren't part of the team that gave me my new limbs, but could you tell me at all about how they work?"

The doctor shook his head. "That was all technology that I've never been exposed to before. The best I could gleen from listening to those who were doing the work is that your limbs contain some one hundred thirty seven tiny servo motors, and the battery packs that supply the power should last about a hundred years. So I don't think you have anything to worry about in that respect."

"Thanks doc, it's nice to know some of this stuff. When I was first getting comfortable to using these limbs the guys who were working me out kept talking in techno speak so I barely understood half of what they told me."

The doc put his hand on Rick's shoulder. "You're a lucky man Mr. Castle. You've been given a second chance."

Castle smirked. "Well, not exactly given. I paid pretty penny for it, but I'm not complaining."

The doctor smiled. "Just lay back. Your breakfast should be here shortly."

Castle just nodded.

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Kate felt a little uncomfortable coming to see Walter once again. He would probably think that Kate had a gambling problem. She was sitting in a comfy chair in his den which he dedicated as his working space. Since Castle had been his only client, he didn't need it very often.

Of course, since Kate showed up, he'd been forced to do more with Castle's investments than he'd probably had to in years.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Kate. That was an old friend setting up a lunch get together this week." He sat down behind his desk and gave Kate a big smile. "So what can I do for you today?"

Kate was wringing her hands. She knew the Rick kept telling her it was her money too, but she was very much out of her element when it came to this level of wealth.

"You're going to shoot me, but I think I'm going to need more money. I estimate another ten million."

He leaned back in his chair. He gave her a concerned look. "I know I told you it was none of my business, Kate, but I can't help but worry. Are you in some sort of trouble?"

And right then, Kate decided that she couldn't keep Walter in the dark anymore. She knew she could trust him, and it wasn't like Rick wasn't going to have to come up with a miraculous return of some kind soon.

She took a deep breath. "I'm not in any trouble, but I haven't been fully truthful with you." She fisted her hands. "The truth is… Rick is alive."

Walter nearly fell out of his chair. "How? It was my understanding that an eighteen wheeler tipped over and fell on his car."

Kate nodded. "Yes, and no. Rick had a passenger with him in the Ferrari that no one knew about. That was the body that had been smashed into being a part of the car. Rick had been thrown out of the car because he hadn't buckled his seat belt."

"Okay, I guess I can understand something like that happening." Walter didn't sound too sure of that. "But why the secrecy? Why pretend he died?"

Kate ran her hand over her head, which had become an instinctual habit since she couldn't tuck her hair behind her ears. "It's pretty complicated. You are going to have to know the players."

And Kate spent the next half an hour spinning the whole convoluted story to the caring old friend. From the phone call she got that morning from Rick's biological father, who was a spy. To waking up with her head on the mattress of his bed.

Needless to say, Walter was struck speechless. Kate gave him the chance to recover. She still needed the money.

"So, you're saying that he's alive and is going to be alright?"

Kate chuckled. "He's not quite the same man he was physically anymore. All that money you gave me paid for some ethically challenged procedures, but yes, he's going to be alright. The money I need is just in case there are any last minute problems, or unforeseen needs."

"Okay," he nodded. "I check over his portfolio. I think there's something there I can dump to get the cash. I know of one that hasn't been performing well for a while. I would have reinvested it in something else soon anyway. Better to invest it in Richard."

Kate stood up and leaned down hugged the man. It never ceased to amaze her how Castle always seemed to have so many 'real' friends.

He stood and walked her over to the door. "I'll give you a call once I know when I can get the cash for you."

Kate grabbed his hands and placed them against her heart. "We can't thank you enough for all you've done for me… for us during this trying time. Thank you Walter. I'll never forget this."

He gave her a smile as he opened the door for her and watched her head down the hallway.

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Kate walked into Warehouse Medical, and scanned the room. The main supervising doctor was talking with the one nurse that was still part of the team. The single orderly was busy checking equipment and making sure everything was clean and in its proper place.

Castle had his bed propped up and he was busy jotting down something on a pad of paper.

She walked over toward him. He heard her coming and raised his head and gave her a bright smile. She answered it in kind.

"Hey babe, what are you doing? Working up an outline for a new best seller?"

He shook his head. "Nah, that can wait." He tilted his head and put his finger on his chin. "But I am taking some notes on stuff that comes to mind. Once I'm out of here and back home, there is going to be a lot of confusion and explanations we'll need to deal with."

Kate nodded. "Yeah, I can only begin to imagine. While I'm going to be thrilled to have you back, I'm not looking forward to dealing with the reporters and media who will converge on us."

"We'll have to be ready for them. Which means we should start planning how we are going to handle things."

Kate took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Well, I talked to Walter and he's going to get us another ten million. He said he'd let me know when he has it for us." Kate bit her bottom lip. "And I just might have told him that you were alive."

Rick grinned. "That's fine. It's not like it's not going to come out soon. But we'll worry about that later." He pulled her closer to the side of the bed.

He grinned. "It's a good thing I write fiction. Let me show you what I've come up with."

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A/N: Just one chapter left.

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