OK so things are getting a bit involved and I might be adding a few more chapters on to this story. Not sure what happened there... Hope you don't mind!

Also a huge thank you to everyone who has read, is following, and commenting on this fic. Its made my day(s). And its better than just about anything for keeping up the writing motivation!

Chapter 2

Kate was lost in thought, wrestling with the shock and the enormity of what the morning had exposed, and waiting by the elevator door near Castle's room, when a hand suddenly grasped her forearm. She almost jumped to the ceiling. Without thinking her hand dropped to her service weapon.

"Oh, I'm sorry Katherine. I didn't mean to scare you." Martha apologised. She released her grip like Kate was on fire, and slid the offending hand out of sight into her coat pocket. Castle's filthy old rain coat: it was huge on his mother. It rucked up over her forearms in billowing folds, ballooning out where it pressed up against the pockets where Martha had both her hands now hidden. It made the other woman look vulnerable and tiny, though she was hardly a head shorter than Kate herself, and the illusion drove home how badly the situation may have turned out. Castle had been so lucky not to have been killed, to have left his mother and daughter mourning and alone in a huge unkind world.

"That's ok Martha." Kate said. Then she glanced back down the hall towards Castle's room, eyes widening, suddenly wondering why the woman had left her son. "Is something wrong with -?"

"What? Oh, no. No. The doctor is seeing to Richard. Seems they need privacy, even from his own mother. Anyway, darling, that's not why I followed you." Kate waited while Martha took a deep breath before plunging on. "Look, I know that Richard has made a terrible mistake in not being completely honest with you or your colleagues about his," She paused to look around the temporarily vacant hallway, then dropped to a whisper for her next word, "hearing. Sorry, old habits. We have had to be careful for so long, to keep it out of the press you see." She paused again. "I also know you have to do what you have to do, but please don't be too hard on him. These last months, working with you, have been the making of him. They really have. Oh don't get me wrong, he's been a wonderful father to Alexis, and though I do tease him, he has been good son. A good man. But, since he has been following you all around he's been, well, a different person. More focussed; more settled; more happy, than I have seen him in a long time."

Kate stared at her for a long moment. She was lost for words. Martha seized her arm again.

"I am not asking you to go against your better judgement Katherine, but please, if -."

"Martha, I can't hide -"

"No, no. I am not asking you to hide this from your colleagues. I know you have do what you have to do. But," and she sighed, this time with a theatrical flourish that was curiously self-depreciating and softened with feeling. "I am his mother and, for whatever that has been worth, I do love him and it is so important to him that this does not become widely known." And that he isn't hurt more than necessary, Kate read the unspoken subtext.

"Whatever happens, no one on my watch will be passing on any details about what has been," she said softly, and checked the corridor," revealed, to anyone. And no one is looking to make things worse than they have to be. Honestly, I don't know what Captain Montgomery is going to decide, but whatever the outcome, you have my word that it will be dealt with in the most discrete manner possible."

"Thank you." Martha smiled and there was kindness in it. And relief. And concern. And not just for Castle. There was more to this woman than met the eye, Kate decided. There was more to this entire story than met the eye too. It was one of the very few things that Kate would admit she shared with Castle, but where there was a mystery her curiosity, like his, was almost overwhelming. Martha suddenly let out an exasperated exhalation. "Oh where is this elevator? Honestly, I am sure we all waste years waiting for elevators. Ah, here it is."

"Where you going?" Kate asked.

"Oh, Richard has quite thoroughly destroyed his," she glanced around the corridor again, out of habit Kate now realised," you-know-whats. I told him I was going to fetch his other pair from the loft. And since I have been ejected from my son's room, now seemed like a good time to go."

"Let me drive you."

"Oh, no, I couldn't impose-"

"It's no imposition. Besides, I have some questions. Things I am going to need to know when I see my Captain."

CastleCastleCastleCastle

The drive to back to the Castle's loft was filled with slow moving traffic, but for once Kate was not particularly wanting to hurry. Beside her, Martha had shed Castle's coat and it was folded over in her lap.

"So, um, if you don't mind me asking, when did Cas- Rick lose his hearing? He wasn't born with it was he."

"You are right he wasn't. But oh, it was a long time ago now. He was ten." Martha's expression shadowed suddenly with memory. "It was terrible. Just terrible. It was a bad winter and Richard and two of his classmates contracted meningitis. Oh he was so ill Katherine. For a while the doctors-" She broke off suddenly. Covered for her slip with a small cough, and then ploughed on. "Well. It was a long time ago. But, it left him, us, with a lasting gift."

"I am so sorry Martha. I had no idea. How- how bad is it?" She asked. "Honestly, I had no idea. He doesn't seem to miss a moment of what is going on."

"I know. But that's Richard for you." She smiled, then sobered. "The doctors told us it was relatively mild and mostly to the higher frequencies, but it was within the range for needing some assistance. Ala: the hearing aids. Oh he's spent a small fortune on finding the smallest, least obtrusive kind , those ones that sit right inside the ear, but to be honest with you I am very surprised he was wearing them at all."

"Why wouldn't he be wearing them?"

"Oh, Katherine. Oh my dear. That first year after he was ill, he wouldn't wear them. The poor boy. He was so depressed. He just wouldn't wear them. He wouldn't co-operate with the doctors. And after a while he just started to withdraw. He wouldn't go to school. I didn't know what to do. We even tried seeing a psychologist, but that went nowhere." That didn't sound like her partner at all. Trying to relate what she was hearing with the happy, extroverted, fun-loving, ever curious Rick Castle was just impossible. That this had ever happened to him, that he ever became such an unhappy suffering child, even temporarily, made her feel ill. And she hadn't picked up any hint of it at all. Not one. Everything she thought she knew about that man was being turned on its head.

"But, something changed? What happened?" She prompted.

"To be honest I don't know what happened." Martha went on. "I was just so - I don't know. I was grasping at straws and one of Richard's school friends over in New Hampshire asked if he could come and stay for a few days. I sent him even though he didn't want to go and when he came back he was, he was different."

"Different how?"

"Well, after that long weekend he started wearing his hearing aids, he started co-operating with the doctors, the therapists. He started writing. He started reading Sherlock Holmes and drove me crazy trying to, what's that word, deduce what I had been doing all day just by observing me as I came in the door. He would try to fool me into thinking that his hearing had returned sometimes and I can tell you, after a few months of all this deducing, it was hard to believe it hadn't. He certainly fooled most people we met. And then he stopped wearing his aids again." He was still doing that too: observing, deducing, fooling the world. Only now he was making money out of it. And making the world think he was what he wasn't. That he was whole and hearty and a force to be reckoned with.

"He never told you want happened that weekend?"

"Oh, I asked, but he would just smile like he still does and change the subject. I guess running about in the woods really is as good a therapy as they say it is." She smiled and Kate returned it. "He's going to miss this you know."

"What?"

"This. Riding around in police cars. Solving crimes. You."

"Oh, I- Martha, it's not necessarily going to come to that, -" Beckett stumbled over her words, thrown. A blush was creeping up her throat, colouring her cheeks.

"But it will." Martha went on. "I know that Richard has his connections, but even the Mayor can't smooth over some things. Richard should have told you, but he's just so stubborn."

"He is that." Beckett murmured. For the rest of the short distance to the Castle home her mind was in a whirl. The anger, the sense of betrayal, that he had hidden something like this from her; something that had put himself in danger and had, by potential association, put her team at risk, had faded into the background. There was going to be fall out. Montgomery and her team had to know. To provide anything less than full disclosure to her team would be its own sort of betrayal. But now, hearing from Martha just what Castle had gone through, how hard he had tried to overcome what had happened to him, the pathway forward had just gotten a lot less clear. To be honest, the last thing she wanted to do was add to his burden. An image of him just now at the hospital miserable, hurting and jammed into that too small hospital gurney, holding the tattered remains of his dignity in the palm of one hand, came to her in a sudden charged rush. And the sudden urge to protect him that followed was equally unexpected and shocking.

She needed to talk it out with someone. Someone not yet involved in this morning's raid, someone who would be discreet and listen for friend in need. Someone who would understand, but tell it to her straight. After letting Martha out of the car, and finding a place to wait for her, Beckett pulled out her cell and thumbed in a number.

"Hey Lanie. I have to drop Castle's Mom into the hospital and go by the 12th to check in with Ryan and Espo on the Baxter case, but... after that... Are you free for lunch?"

CastleCastleCastleCastle

"Yo Beckett. How's Castle?" Esposito called out to Kate strode into the Bullpen and headed for her desk. The detective was standing with his partner near her murder board. Both men had files in their hands. "Dude took a pounding this morning."

"He's a bit banged up, but he'll be fine." She said. She poked at the inbox on her desk as cover to steal a glance at Montgomery's office. It was still empty. The relief that he hadn't returned from his meeting with the Mayor unexpectedly early, that she would not have to speak to him just yet, was almost physical. She felt instantly lighter, instantly more in the moment. "The doctors say they will release him tomorrow."

"Good to hear." Ryan nodded, looking genuinely happy to hear the news, but Kate didn't miss the pointed glance Ryan sent to Javi, nor Javi's emphatic head jerk back to get on with what was coming next. Kate felt her heart begin to drop. Ryan clutched at his folder. "Um, yeah, about that..."

"So how are we on the murder weapon?" She cut in, looking at the board, the array of photographs, scrawled hand writing and sticky notes were suddenly fascinating. She had hoped that neither of her colleagues had realised what had happened with Castle this morning, but there had been too many opportunities for them, between her partner's failure to react to their calls for him to watch out and then the medic finding that hearing aid, that it was not surprising that they had overheard or even seen too much not to know what was going on. Oh god, she did not want to have this conversation before seeing Montgomery. The chances were good that the Captain was going to pull the plug on Castle's attachment to the 12th, to them, to her, and if he did then the only action left was to request that the real reason for his severance was kept from public knowledge. Though Ryan and Javi were hardly 'public', she knew that Castle would rather they thought he had left of his own accord.

"Boss." Ryan would not be diverted. "About the bust. Castle -"

"What about him? He's going to be fine. He's loving that he took down a perp during a police raid and is probably going to be living off that story for the next year-"

"I don't think so." Javi put in, clearly agitated at Ryan's indirect approach. He shot a reproachful glare at his partner. Kate bristled, but Javi barrelled right on. "Look, what my partner is trying to say is that if Castle's gonna keep on riding with us, if he's gonna keep on stepping up like he did today, then he's got to get some training." Kate stared, stunned. Javi took a deep breath, and took on a faintly embarrassed look. He stepped closer. Glanced quickly around the bullpen and got conspiratorial. "OK, so, I'm only going to say this once and I will deny it if questioned in the future, but writer boy really stepped up today. He had your back. And, and ok, he's got some power there and good hands. But if he's gonna be part of the team, and not get himself killed, he has to get some training. You know, some hand to hand. Heart's only going to get him so far. And, so," Javi stepped back and thumbed his chest and Ryan's, "we figure that with a few mornings a week in the squad gym we can get him sorted out."

"We promise not to start on him until he's given the all clear by the docs." Ryan chipped in when Kate didn't respond. Clearly he had misinterpreted her silence as disapproval. She scrambled inside to get herself back together, blinked, and nodded. Somehow, seeing how they considered Castle such a part of their team, was making things so much worse.

"All right." Javi nodded, grinning. "We'll go easy on him until the doc says he's ok. But after that," Javi brought his fist and open hand together, his grin all teeth, "he's all ours."

She had to see Lanie. Now.

End Chapter 2