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Javier's emotions were all over the place as he stood there on the sidewalk outside the 12th Precinct, looking at his father staring at the pavement. Coward, he thought. He's the same coward that abandoned me 30 years ago. He finds me, and he can't even look me in the eye. What's the use?

Javier spun and started walking away from this stranger quickly. "Javi!" the man called. "Wait, mi hijo! We have much to discuss."

Javier turned around and looked at the stranger with disgust. "First off, I am not your boy, to hell with biology," he all but snarled. "Secondly, I have nothing to say to you. You think you can just show up after 30 years and everything's gonna be cool? That I'll actually be happy to see you? Think again, old man! You left! And that was fine, you had every right. You got divorced. A lot of people move after divorces. But you forgot about me! Not everybody who gets divorced leaves their kid behind when they leave their ex!"

"I never forgot you, Javi," Matias said gravely. He finally looked at Javier again. His little boy was a man fully grown. An understandably angry man, but Matias knew he deserved his son's wrath.

"Do not stand there and lie to me," Javier said in a low, menacing voice through clenched teeth. "You want to try and ease your conscience by pretending that you thought about me every day for the last 30 years, you go ahead and lie to yourself. But you do not lie to me. You chose to forget me. You chose to leave me behind, with nothing but one phone call and a lousy postcard. You think you can come waltzing in here now and I'll welcome you with open arms? That's not going to happen. Now, this conversation is over." He started to turn away.

"I'll give you time and space, but not too much," Matias said. Javier cursed himself for noticing that the old man still had an accent. "We do have much to discuss, Javi."

"You come near me again, I'll get a restraining order against you!" Even as he said it, Javier knew he'd have to produce better grounds than "I don't want to have anything to do with the son of a bitch who abandoned me 30 years ago" in order to get one, but he hoped the threat was enough to drive the man off.

"I found you. I won't lose you again until I have to," Matias said. Javier ignored him and walked quickly down the sidewalk, not wanting to break into a run because he refused to give the deadbeat who dumped him the satisfaction of knowing that he had caused Javi to run away from him.

His mind and heart in complete turmoil, he wandered the city aimlessly for he didn't know how long, until he came back to himself and realized where he needed to be, and whom he needed at this moment.

Which is how he came to be knocking on Beckett and Castle's front door shortly after 10 PM, and then mentally kicking himself for possibly waking Lily. He was fumbling for his phone, which, he saw now, was turned off, which he honest to God didn't even remember doing, so he could call or text Alexis when the door opened to reveal Beckett standing there in one of Castle's robes open over a t-shirt and sleep shorts. "Javi?" she asked, puzzled.

Castle and Alexis were both coming down the stairs. "Lily's still asleep," Castle announced. Following her two-month checkup, which she completely aced—her pediatrician had pronounced her the healthiest baby he'd seen all year—Kate and Rick had transferred Lily to her crib in her own room to sleep, and the transition had been difficult for the first couple of weeks, but they held firm (Rick was more firm than Kate, which surprised both of them until they really thought about it—Rick had been through this before with Alexis, so a few middle-of-the-night wails, after ascertaining nothing else needed to be done, like feeding or changing Lily, was normal to him, while Kate, not an anxious mother by any means, was undergoing a bit of separation anxiety, since she had gotten so used to Lily being asleep in her bassinet by Kate's side of the bed for two months, and she always hated hearing her daughter cry, no matter the reason), and the transition was now pretty much complete, with Lily handling sleeping in her crib in her room just fine. If she was particularly fussy, Kate and/or Rick would stay in the nursery until they were sure she was sound asleep. The rocking chair Jim had refurbished was seeing a lot of use, and Rick had snapped a few surreptitious pictures of Kate and Lily in the chair, rocking, reading a book, or having mother/daughter time.

"Javier?" Alexis asked. "I've been trying to reach you for the past few hours."

"Can I come in?" Javier asked. Kate wordlessly stepped aside and let Javi enter the apartment. Seeing Castle similarly attired to Kate—a gray silk robe belted closed over a black t-shirt and probably boxer shorts, since Castle's legs were bare beneath the robe's hem—he said, "I'm sorry to disturb you. I know you go to bed early these days, but I didn't know my phone was off, and I need to see Alexis."

Alexis was still dressed in khaki walking shorts and a peach-colored tank top, her long red hair pulled into a loose ponytail, and she stepped forward. One look at Javier told her something was very, very wrong. His body language screamed tension and sadness at the same time, and he had this faraway look in his eyes, like he wasn't completely present in the moment. Something had obviously happened but Alexis had no idea what. "I'm here," she said, and seeing his eyes fill with relief concerned her more than she already was.

Javier wanted to believe it had been some strange dream, some nightmare, but he knew all too well that his encounter with Matias Esposito was real, and it had left him so unsettled, so emotionally scattered and shocked, that the sight of Alexis catapulted him back into the moment. He surprised Alexis, Beckett and Castle all three when he surged forward and pulled Alexis into his arms, clinging tightly to her, closing his eyes and breathing her in, forcing himself back to the present moment.

As concerned and confused as she was, Alexis could only tighten her hold on Javier. They just stood there holding each other. Kate and Rick exchanged a look of their own, wondering what was going on, what had shaken Esposito up this much.

Javier pulled back, but Alexis maintained her hold on him, rubbing his back with one hand while cupping his cheek in her other hand. "What happened?" she asked anxiously.

Javier swallowed hard. "I saw my father," he said.

Kate and Rick were as shocked by this as Alexis. "Are you sure it was him?" Alexis asked.

Javier laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, I'm sure it was him. He showed me his ID. I didn't even ask. I thought he was some kind of bum trying to panhandle outside the precinct. I got the bum part right."

"Wait, he just walked up to you on the sidewalk and said 'I'm your father'? After..." Kate said.

"Thirty years," Esposito replied. "He said we have much to discuss. What he thinks we have to discuss, I have no idea."

Rick moved to Kate's side and threaded his fingers through hers. "We'll leave you two alone," he said. "And Esposito? You're staying here tonight. You shouldn't be alone at a time like this. Lean on the people you can trust."

"Rick is right," Kate added. "If you need us for anything, just let us know."

Alexis looked over her shoulder at her parents gratefully. "Thank you," she said. "I'll make up the couch."

"I didn't say you had to do that," Rick said, surprising Alexis, Javier and Kate all three. "I just said that Esposito is staying here tonight."

Esposito looked at Castle now. "Castle-" he said.

Rick waved away whatever Espo was about to say, though. "It's a big shock. At least you're not in the middle of a criminal crisis. You can be thankful for that much, anyway."

Esposito wasn't sure exactly what Castle meant by that, but he wasn't curious enough to follow up on it by asking him right this second. "Thanks, Castle. Thanks, Beckett," he said.

"Any time," Kate replied. She looked to Alexis now. "One of us will tend to Lily if she wakes up crying, so don't take that as an interruption if it happens."

"We won't, Mom," Alexis said.

Kate and Rick disappeared into their bedroom then, leaving Alexis and Javi alone in the living room. Once they had shed their robes and tossed them at the foot of the bed, and gotten back into bed, Rick propped up against the headboard with a sigh. Kate lay on her side facing him, her head propped on her bent elbow. "Hey," she said, brushing her fingertips down his jawline, "talk to me, babe."

Rick turned his head to meet her gaze. "No deadbeat father comes back into his grown son's life after 30 years or more without wanting something," he said, and Kate didn't miss the undercurrent of steel in her husband's voice.

"I don't think Javi's father is CIA. I believe that it is possible for lightning to strike twice, but that would just be too much," she said.

"I saw my father exactly twice in my life," Rick continued. "And both times, it wasn't about me. Not really. He's the reason Alexis was kidnapped to Paris. She could have been killed. Then that Gemini mess...you could have been killed, Kate. And I could have been killed. And it was just so...so cold, so methodical, when he put a bullet in Gemini right in front of me. He had already stabbed the guy in the stomach, and then he just pulled out a gun with a silencer and put a bullet in Gemini's head. No big deal, just another day at the office for him. He didn't...couldn't...understand why that bothered me, why it knocked me for a loop. I mean, he gave me a hug so he could plant a freaking GPS tracker on me! That was the reason. Not because he was my father and I was his son, not because he cared about me as a person, cared about me the way a father is supposed to care about, supposed to love his children. It was all about the mission for him. Both times. I'm grateful to him for helping me save Alexis's life, but if not for him, she wouldn't have been in that kind of danger in the first place. And he used us to get Gemini. If anything had happened to you..." He trailed off. He had kept his voice quiet, partly because he only wanted Kate to hear what he had to say, partly out of the acquired habit of speaking quietly since Lily had been born, but it was clear that the issue of Jackson Hunt wasn't completely dead for him, and that Esposito's run-in with his own long-lost deadbeat dad had brought that issue roaring back to the surface for Rick.

"He's not one of my favorite people either," Kate said, "but I can't completely hate him, because if he hadn't spent that night with Martha years ago, you wouldn't be here...and Alexis wouldn't be here, and Lily wouldn't be here either. But there is nothing casual about taking someone's life, even if they're a scumbag criminal."

"Not to you," Rick said. "But to him, it's like a carnival shooting gallery. Some scumbag criminals have to be killed in the moment. I watched Esposito take out Jerry Tyson without an ounce of regret."

"I had to kill Kelly Nieman, because only one of us was going to get out of that room alive, and it was going to be me," Kate said, "but when you found me standing over her with the scalpel in my hand and her lying in a pool of her own blood..." Kate trailed off.

"You were in shock," Rick said. "As evil as she was, even though it came down to you or her, you still had enough of a conscience to feel bad about having to take a human life. He doesn't have that, Kate. I don't know much about the man, but I know that with absolute certainty."

"If I had been able to shoot Kelly Nieman instead of having to stab her, I don't know if it would have been as much of a shock to my system," Kate said. She hadn't even told Rick this in the moment, or when they had finally gotten home and held each other tightly all night long and well into the next day. "But standing over her after stabbing her, I had to fight like hell not to picture my mom bleeding out in that damned alley after she was stabbed." She took one of his hands in both of hers and scooted closer to him. "If you hadn't gotten there when you did, if I hadn't heard your voice, felt your touch, seen you and known that it really was you, and you were all right and you were there with me, I really think I might have gone catatonic. You brought me back to myself, back to us, back to the moment. And that threat was finally gone for good."

Rick looked alarmed now. "He's still out there. Jackson Hunt. What if the people that see him as an enemy know about Lily now?"

"We can't live our lives in fear of something that might never happen," Kate replied, resting her chin on his chest and meeting his gaze squarely. "Detective Beckett may be retired, but if anyone ever tries to come after Lily, I will go full-out Detective Beckett on their ass so fast, they won't know what hit them. But it's been a few years since we heard anything from Hunt. And we're not courting the Tyson and Nieman kind of threats anymore, since I'm not with the Department anymore. We're going to be all right. I waited too long for this life and this family to let anyone or anything even make the slightest hint of a threat to take any part of it away."

"Can I just tell you, I've always loved the badass side of you," Rick said then. "I knew I was making you mad in the interrogation room the night we met, but when you came striding into the library to arrest me the next day and you were so angry, and then you didn't take any guff from me, and you even told the uniforms there was no need to be gentle when they cuffed me, I was in awe. I'm still in awe of you, Kate."

"I'm gonna tell you something that I've kept secret all these years," Kate said then. "It was at the library that I knew. That morning at the library, the Tisdale case? That's when I knew I wanted you around. That's when I knew that you were unlike anyone I had ever met before, and I knew that you added an element to my life that no one else ever had, or ever could."

"What about your complaints about me being a 9-year-old on a sugar rush? And asking if you had to wait for me to sign the release form before you could shoot me?" Rick asked, surprised.

"I had to save face somehow," Kate retorted. "Everyone at the precinct expected me to play the put-upon, barely-maintaining-her-patience, hardnosed Detective Beckett. And there was no way I was going to just fall at your feet, or into your arms, right away. I was too afraid to do that, for one thing. And when I realized I was falling for you, I had to get myself together enough so that we'd last, because I'd been waiting for you my whole life without realizing I'd been waiting for you until you were there. That's why I was so upset and angry during the times you weren't in my life. I didn't want to need anybody after I lost my mom. And then you came along and made me want to need you."

Rick smiled. "How about that," he mused. "You were into me right from the start, just like I was into you right from the start."

"You wanted to get into my pants right from the start," Kate countered.

"Not by the end of the Tisdale case," Rick insisted. "That first night, at the book party and in the interrogation room, yes. I admit it. But by the end of the case, I knew there were a lot of layers to you, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about every single one of those layers. And then I fell in love with you, and I wanted to be with you every minute. The one advantage I had was the precinct. I kept coming around so I could be with you as much as possible. I figured if I kept coming around long enough, if I kept knocking on the door, you'd let me all the way in eventually."

"And I was the one who came knocking on your door," Kate mused.

"If you hadn't, I would have kept knocking on yours," Rick said. "But I'm glad you did knock on my door that night."

"I am too," Kate said, moving her head up to peck a quick, hard kiss to Rick's lips before returning to her previous position with her chin resting on Rick's chest.

The look on Rick's face shifted. "There's more going on that Esposito doesn't know," Rick said. "Technically I know it's overstepping, but I think we should investigate his father, find out what the old man really came back for."

"Ryan would help us," Kate said. "And Javi is family. He's been blindsided by this, but once he's thinking a little more clearly, he'll want to know what he's dealing with, especially if his father won't go away. Javi can tell him to get lost, to go back to wherever he came from and not bother him anymore, but that doesn't mean he'll listen." She paused. "I'm a little surprised that you basically gave him and Alexis permission to share her bed."

"All they'll be doing tonight is sleeping," Rick said. "That's why I said yes. He needs her right now. He needs her the way I've always needed you. I've been where he is, in a way. I think Jackson Hunt is more cunning and calculating, and more dangerous, than Esposito Senior, but Espo needs to be with the people he knows he can trust, and Alexis is at the top of that list. She'll get him through the night, and we'll get Ryan in on it in the morning."

Meanwhile, in the living room, Javier had poured out the story of his father approaching him on the sidewalk and their conversation to Alexis. He had prowled around the room restlessly, like a caged tiger, as he related the events of just a few hours earlier. Alexis listened with her own torrent of emotions building: anger at Javier's father for dropping into his life unexpected and unaware, not unlike times past that Alexis herself had experienced with Meredith, and the understanding of Javier's conflicted feelings, all negative at this point, about his father's sudden appearance.

"Thirty years and nothing," Javier concluded as he crossed the room and threw himself down on the couch beside Alexis. "And then he just shows up out of nowhere, outside the precinct, spouting off about he's not going to lose me until he has to. He never had me, Alexis! Not since I was five years old, and I'm not five years old anymore!" He gestured helplessly with his hands. "Standing there telling me that he never forgot me. Well, he has a damned strange way of showing it. No contact at all for three decades, and then he comes walking back into my life wanting...wanting acceptance, wanting a big hug from his boy. Well, I'm not his boy! And I told him that! And I'm sorry I'm getting loud. I'm not angry at you, and I don't want to wake Lily, but dammit, I've done all right without him. I've done just fine without him. I don't need him. I never needed him. Okay, when I was a kid, it would have been helpful to have a father around. When I was getting in trouble as a teenager, that's when I needed a father. But I don't need a father now. And he's not gonna leave me alone. I know he's not gonna leave me alone. He said he's not gonna leave me alone. And I just...I don't know what to do." He scrubbed his hands over his face and then finally turned his full attention to Alexis, the bleak, completely uncertain look on his face breaking her heart. "I don't know what to do, Alexis."

"You don't have to know what to do, Javier," Alexis said, putting her arms around his neck, "at least not tonight, not right this second. And you don't have to figure it out alone. I'm here...and my parents, and Kevin, and we will help you get through this."

Javier sighed, letting his chin drop to his chest. "I feel drained all of a sudden," he said. "Just completely exhausted."

"Well, it is almost midnight," Alexis said. She stood up and took his hand then, gently tugging on it. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

She led him upstairs to her bedroom, quietly closing the door behind them. This was the first time Javier had been in Alexis's bedroom, but all he wanted to do right now was collapse. He sat down on the edge of her bed with another heavy sigh. Alexis quickly changed into her pajamas and then sat down beside Javier. "You'd be more comfortable if you got undressed," she said.

"Not tonight, honey, my life blew up a few hours ago," he replied deadpan. "Besides, I couldn't possibly...you know...knowing that your dad and Beckett are right downstairs and Lily's just down the hall."

"I wasn't referring to 'you know,'" Alexis said, amused despite herself. "It's late, you're exhausted, and you'll be more comfortable if you don't sleep in your shirt and pants and shoes."

Javier kicked off his shoes, and removed his socks, pants, and shirt, folding them carefully over the chair in the corner. In his t-shirt and boxers, he turned around to find that Alexis was already in bed, with the covers pulled back in invitation. He climbed into the narrow bed beside her, and once he was next to her, Alexis turned out her bedside light and lay down.

Javier moved closer, resting his head on Alexis's shoulder. He felt her kiss the top of his head. "Whatever happens, we've got this," she said softly. "I love you."

"I love you too," Javier replied sleepily. Alexis tightened her arms around him, and she rubbed his back in a slow, up-and-down motion, and he felt himself start to relax finally, the tension inside him unwinding like a spool of thread. He didn't know what the answer was...yet. But whatever that answer turned out to be, he knew that Alexis was right and that he wouldn't be finding it alone. After several minutes, his breathing slowed and evened out, and he was asleep, his head on Alexis's shoulder, his arms around her torso, clinging to her in sleep as though she was were the only thing anchoring him to the present.

As Javier slept in her arms, Alexis's mind was whirling. She knew all too well what it was like to be abandoned by a parent. Meredith had only been a part of Alexis's life when it was convenient for Meredith. Since their last showdown over a year ago, when Meredith had had the audacity to try to make the worst day of Alexis's life about her, Meredith hadn't contacted her in any way.

And Alexis was luckier than most, she knew, because Kate more than made up for Meredith's self-involvement and the years of neglect Meredith had visited on Alexis because of that self-involvement. Kate was deserving of the title of 'Mom,' which was one reason Alexis had finally sought the permission she had wanted for a while now and asked if she could call Kate 'Mom.' Kate was more of a mother to her than Meredith would ever be.

It was one thing when she was going through it; Alexis was used to the disappointment, and the uncertainty, and the questions. And even without Meredith, and before Kate, she had always had her dad and Gram to count on. She never had to question or wonder if they would love her or be there for her. She knew they always would be. And they were.

But now Javier was going through it, and that was not acceptable to Alexis at all. She couldn't spare him all of the pain and anger and confusion he was feeling, and that she herself had felt in the past because of her experiences with Meredith, but she would be there to help him get through it, as her father and grandmother and Kate had helped her.

And if she could get five minutes alone with Javier's so-called father, she'd also give him a piece of her mind, which was her last thought before falling asleep herself.