Chapter 17

A/N: at the end

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The espresso machine was grinding its way through the Colombia El Sombrero beans Castle had fallen in love with last week, but he could barely feel the whirr against his fingers as he waited, or smell the faint fruity notes that had drawn him to them in the first place. Instead he was cursing himself. He was messing this up. Royally. Visions of Beckett's pinched, paling face when he had just launched into that ridiculously stumbling confession like a charging bull, kept on floating past his inner eye. Oh god. He could just imagine the horror show she thought she was about to be thrown head first into. Cops were like that: they had the worst places to go to in their minds when prompted, and he had shoved her right into the middle of those places without thinking. He was screwing things up. Scaring his partner. Handling things like an ass. Damn it. But, coffee would sort things out and bring sanity. Coffee was the way.

He reached for the cups. The skim milk. The sugar free vanilla. He tried to focus on creating something like Beckett's beverage of choice. Making coffee, making anything in the kitchen, had always been a source of Zen for him, and so he tried to lose himself in the quiet familiar patterns, smells and feelings. The setting out of the cups, the vibrations of the grinder against the pads of his fingers as he monitored is progress, the soft feeling of the jets of steam through the barrier of the metal cup as he heated the milk and smelled its approaching readiness for the next step, pouring the hot liquid, the familiar sensation of wisps of steam rising to stroke his face. All familiar. All safe and quieting and real.

The coffee was done: steaming and fragrant and ready.

It was time.

He took a deep breath and raised his gaze to the upper floor of the loft where he knew his mother and daughter were. They had granted him a day. Despite their fears, they had steeled themselves and granted him a day to work things out. And he had to do it. For them. It was his job to keep on protecting them, and he had been preparing for this day for over 25 years. He had to pull himself together and do whatever he had to to keep them safe. No matter how hard or how painful. For them, he would do it. And before he or Mer or Gina or anyone else could make things even worse than they were.

Castle strode back to the office and back to his chair. Beckett was looking marginally more composed than when he had left the room and took her cup from him with both hands, pausing the inhale the steam. She blinked up at him, elegantly shaped eyebrows rising in surprise as she evidently caught the familiar vanilla notes rising upwards from the cup. She peered inside and he watched her expression soften with something he wasn't sure he could be reading correctly. He sank into his chair with only a slight grimace as his ribs protested.

"I am sorry about before." He started while she was still peering into the coffee. "I didn't mean to plow in like that."

"Castle," she admonished gently, looking back at him. "It's ok. I have to confess, though, I wasn't entirely taken by surprise. After yesterday, I knew there was something going on, and if I can help-" She left the sentence hanging, expectantly. She was waiting for him. Fierce, determined, loyal, protective, curious Kate Beckett, waiting for him to talk, and then offering him her help. Just like that. Partners. The thought that finally, finally, he could reach out and hang on to someone... He just hoped that she would still feel the same way after he was done talking.

It was time.

"I was eleven years old. It had been about six months since I had been sick, I hadn't yet met Mr Xiao, and uh... I wasn't coping... very well. Mother was supposed to be touring with Pippin, but she had to pull out. Because of me. And, uh." Rick stopped for a moment, exhaling in an edgy huff and drawing another quick breath, feeling the sharp warning pain as his ribs moved. He looked at Beckett, but the curiosity he read there, that she was trying to hold back, was too much to withstand and he dropped his gaze back to his hands. "This is um, harder than I thought it would be," he told her. "You know, I just realized I've never said any of this. To anyone. Out loud, I mean."

"Take your time," Beckett said from her chair from which she had not moved since he started talking. He took a moment to breathe, and nodded. And seeing her sitting there with face and limbs relaxed, continuing to cradle her coffee mug against her chest was like having an anchor, a stable point to hang onto as everything else shimmered and threatened to come unstuck around him. He drew in the sight and held it close with his next breath.

Yeah, he could do this.

"The family of a classmate contacted my mother to ask if I would like to join them in New Hampshire for President's Day weekend. I don't know why. Pity, maybe? Anyway, Mother thought it might help and sent me along with them." He paused to breathe again, gaze flicking towards his still point, then away and back. The cliff's edge was drawing nearer. He swallowed.

"It was uh, uncomfortable for everyone. I don't think they had any clue how to deal with my hearing issues. And I couldn't help them: I didn't have any more idea than they did back then. Anyway, their home abutted a few hundred acres of state forest called Hollander's Woods. My classmate and I were told never to go in there alone." He couldn't help but steal another glance at Beckett and saw the upward flicker of her lips as she recognized the challenge they had inadvertently set him with that warning. He knew she would understand.

Partners.

"That afternoon I - I climbed over the fence into the woods. I had never been into a forest before and Hollander's woods was just... magical. The trees were huge and so old, like I always imagined the Ents and the Forest of Fangorn, you know?" Beckett nodded, understanding yet another of his references, which thrilled him despite the current context. "I walked for hours. I was cold, and pretty quickly, I got completely lost, and that's when- when - uh, I saw -" And that was it. The words wouldn't come and he hung there on the edge of the precipice, looking down. Down.

And saw -

- the figure, cloaked in shadows darker than the blackest pockets of the woods and crouched by a fallen tree in a clearing not 30 feet from where he had just tromped to a stop. The ends of its black cape flowed out from its shoulders like Dracula, like Darth Vader; stretching and thinning until they finally melted away into the soft dark soak of approaching dusk.

He was wet through with the chilled damp of a late February afternoon, but he didn't dare move except to breathe that frigid air and shiver. He had been lost for so long and desperate that he would come across someone out walking, someone who could show him the way out of this maze of forest. And finally this was someone (something?). But instead of hope and relief, it filled him with a cold paralyzing dread.

He knew, he just knew, something bad was happening. Something wrong, and terrifying and -

He couldn't move.

"... Castle."

And then that figure was moving. Like liquid darkness. Flowing, melting, shifting, merging into the forest. The way it moved, it wasn't human. Couldn't be. But it was moving away from him, away from the fallen tree. It was leaving. And he was staying, anchored by his soaked sneakers half submerged in a cold wet stinking compost of leaves and rot. When it was gone, his eyes left the thick wall of vegetation it had blended into and drifted back to the fallen tree -

"Castle!"

"Huh?" His hand dropped from his mouth; he blinked and the dark cold forest dissolved into the familiar warmth of his office, and the kind hazel eyes of the woman now crouched in front of him. "Beckett?" he croaked. Oh. That hadn't happened for a long time. Years. He saw the concern in her eyes and shied from it. He swallowed and looked away, down, seeing their hands, fingers, entangled on his lap. Her skin was warm against the forest's chill. He stared, mesmerized by their entwined hands, how they contrasted: her fingers so slender and graceful compared to his. Looking at them now, no one would ever guess who was the stronger...

Then a hand on his cheek, fingers pressing in lightly, insistently, until he raised his eyes to track back to her.

"Do you need to take a break?" she asked in a tone so low and quiet that he had to catch the words from her lips, find their shapes and draw them out. Her lips - He wanted - He stared. "Castle." She said again and he realized he was gaping like an imbecile. Dammit. He gritted his teeth.

"No, uh no. No." He looked away, reluctantly disentangled their hands and raised one of his to slide his fingers through his hair. Distance. He needed a bit of distance. Beckett appeared unoffended by his abrupt withdrawal, rising in one graceful move to return quietly to her chair. She picked up her cup. He exhaled. Distance. Find the words and get them out. He stood abruptly and unclenched his jaw, cleared his throat.

"There was a figure clad in black, kneeling, not thirty feet from me. After a few moments it left and that's when I saw her on the ground."

"Her?" He caught the shape of her question; half-intuited it.

"A woman. A body. The first body I ever saw." His breath suddenly fluttered in his throat, trapped. No. Don't stop. Find the words. Get them out. He touched the skin above his collar. "Her throat had been slit and there were - symbols - carved into her forehead and her cheeks. I - I touched her arm. I remember thinking how cold it was."

A flash of midnight. He was hit in the chest. Hard. A gloved hand twisted into a handful of his t-shirt and jacket. And then he was propelled off his feet so fast, so hard, against the rough bark of a tree. His back slammed against it and all the air was forced from his lungs.

A face.

A mask. Stark white. Dark ink slashed through the eyes, across the bridge of the nose. The same ink dripping tears down its cheeks.

A knife, still sticky-wet with her blood, pressed a hard line into his throat. It dug in and cut, like the razor sharp shards of the glass tumbler he had broken last week. He still had the bandaid on his thumb from a piece he had grabbed from the floor.

But the mask. Right up close. It hissed at him. Low and fierce and tickling along the newly excised edges of his hearing.

"-something- something- anyone-something-kill -ou! Do - something-something?"

He stared.

And the knife pressed harder, so he could barely breathe around it. The hand pulled him back and slammed him against the tree again as if it was trying to loosen his tied tongue. It wanted something. He might have been terrified, but something inside him gave him the ability to still pull thoughts together and he knew that unless he gave this thing what it wanted he was going to die. Like her. His throat cut open from ear to ear. Left to lie on the cold on the forest floor.

So he nodded - as much as he could around the line of cold pain slicing into his neck - hoping that that was what it wanted.

But instead of letting him go, it suddenly yanked him away from the tree and he was falling, falling onto the leaf softened ground. And it had his jacket. It turned it to face him, and he saw what it had seen printed on the inside collar of his coat in his mother's unique swirling handwriting.

Rogers

555-4370

He didn't need to hear what it must be saying as the mask jerked towards him. The knife drew a faint crimson line under the phone number.

"GO!" He didn't need any help to understand that.

He ran.

And ran.

Through the cool dark of the night time forest. Running. Running.

Rick squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, pressed at his eyelids with his fingers, as the memory swelled up inside. An old, old unvoiced panic clawed at his ribs. No! Get a grip. Find the words. Get them out. He took a breath and lowered his hand, looking at his partner once more. She was quiet and still. Waiting for him. He pushed on.

"I thought it had gone, but I was wrong. It caught me, put a knife to my throat and threatened me, I think."

"You think?" Kate asked.

"It was talking, but I couldn't hear it." He swallowed thickly, hating himself for that failure to understand. Hating the next part too - that this thing had robbed him of his quiet nights dreaming of Flash Gordon and the Indestructibles, and in their place added a preoccupying edge to his life that shouldn't have been there - at any age. "I had to assume that's what it was doing. And - it took my jacket." He watched Beckett's eyebrows climb her forehead as she pondered the significance of that. He took a breath. "Mother had written my name and our contact details on the inside collar. In case it ever got lost."

"Oh, Castle." He watched the lines of concentration, of puzzle solving, disappear from her face as she put the pieces together and realized where this story was going to end. He supposed he could even stop there - she could take the mystery home without him speaking another word. And she would grant him that reprieve if he wanted it; needed it. She would not push him a word further, but now he found he had to keep going. Now that he had started the story, he knew that it had to find its way to the end. And he had to be the one to take it there.

"I - I often wondered why it left me alive that day. What's one more body? A kid. So easy to dispose of - believe me I know, I looked into it when I was older. There was no way I could have fought back; no way I could have survived. But instead it let me go, let me run, knowing that it could find me - find my mother - and do - do what it did to that woman - whenever it wanted." His fingers rose to his throat. Floated upwards, to land just above his collar. "No, I think it let me go because it wanted to. Because it was a thrill. It was exciting. Because it wanted something to chase."

"Castle." Beckett breathed the word so quietly, it was only because he was so familiar with how her lips curled around his name that he knew what she was saying; and the horror and quiet compassion in her eyes filled out the rest. He pulled in a breath. He wasn't done yet and it wouldn't do to fall into that well of empathy before she knew all of it. Even though he was feeling antsy with the strong need he had just to touch her, to hold on to her; living, breathing, alive and warm; he had to finish this. But before he could go on she reached out to him, long slim fingers curling around his wrist. His skin tingled with the contact. She had been touching him a lot since finding out he was deaf, he suddenly realized. It was a tactic he'd had to request of the few people he'd told about his hearing, but Beckett was doing it now without having to be asked. Touch extended his damaged senses; it acted as both anchor and rudder, and he valued its calculated use like gold. That Beckett was using it without having to be asked or educated just how, was thrilling and overwhelming. Yeah, he'd made the right choice to confide in her. "And you never told anyone?" she prompted him, and he realized he had been drifting in his thoughts.

Her question cut like a knife and guilt welled in the slice it made. No, he hadn't told anyone. Ever. That poor, poor woman lying out there, alone in the dark forest. And no one knew she was there, but him. And that thing. He swallowed. It was more than guilt. It was shame. After arriving back in the city, he had stared down at the payphone on the corner of their block and despaired. He watched people, properly intact people, come and go, carelessly jamming that shiny black handset between shoulder and ear while they fumbled for loose change and searched their pockets for mislaid phone numbers scribbled on the backs of torn notepads and envelopes. He imagined their fingers carelessly tapping out numbers on the number pad, waiting to connect and talk to someone on the other end, to listen to their words as they spoke in return. He watched them as they chatted and laughed and yelled and shouted their replies to whomever they were listening to. Like it was nothing of any significance. No big deal. Nothing worthy of any thought. But for him, it was an impossible act, and the utter impossibility of it in the cutting face of his desperation, felt nothing short of torture. Down below their apartment in that little glass box, hanging there forever out of his reach, was the one way he could tell what had happened. No matter how scared he was of catching a glimpse of that pale mask or a whisk of black cloth in the shadowed crevices of the buildings, or blended into the shades of parked cars, he would have given anything to be able to grab that handset and dial 911. To be able to hear when the call was picked up at the other end, to be sure he was talking to someone, to hear their questions and tell. But he couldn't. And so it all froze there, in his mind, unresolved, untold. A great and terrible mystery that could never be put right and fixed.

"No," he admitted, old stale self-reproach making the word stick and jam in his throat until he had to force it out. The shame burnt like acid and it actually hurt to tilt his head to sneak a look at Beckett's face. To gauge her reaction at what he said next: "I couldn't use the damn payphone to make the 911 call. And I was too scared to go down to the local precinct." He saw nothing but compassion and couldn't figure out if he was grateful or not.

"That's not quite what I meant Castle, but ok." Beckett shook her head at him, small tight movements, the slight tug of a sad sort of exasperation flicking at her lips. He frowned, puzzled. She let go of his wrist, still in Detective mode he supposed. "Did you ever find out who the woman was?"

"I checked local papers at my friend's house, and listened to their radio whenever I could, as well. I did the same as soon as I got home, but -" God, what he wouldn't have given for a computer, Google and easy access 24 hour news back then. He cleared his throat. If she could do this, he could. "No one in the area had been reported missing."

"And the man who threatened you?"

"We moved the month after it happened, so-"

"You know that's no real protection Castle."

"I know. I found that out just after we moved and we started getting forwarded mail. At the time, though, I thought that meant it was all going to be ok. I thought we were free. But no, to answer your question: I haven't seen it again.

"But, when I got older I did check with missing persons for that woman, even the FBI database, for anyone matching that her description, or any crimes involving those symbols or that mask, but there was nothing. It's almost like it never happened."

He looked across the space at Beckett and found her lost in thought. It was an expression he recognized very well: she was considering the information that she had just received; working it over in her razor sharp mystery-solving mind. Trying to put the right words to her thoughts. Careful. Cautious.

"And -" She drew in her own breath then, stalling. He could see the hesitation written on her face, in her stiffened posture even as she leaned towards him. He had seen this before: when they were interviewing witnesses on scene. His hackles rose. "And are you sure it did?" she asked, her voice gentle. Too gentle.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"It - It's just- Castle, do you know that this entire time you have been referring to this murderer, this person, you saw in the woods as 'it'. Do you know that?"

He had been calling the attacker it? He searched his memory. He had. Shock quieted him for a long moment. He had a good idea why he had been using an impersonal pronoun to identify it, the man, in the woods. Distancing himself. A way to cope. He had read reams on the psychology of crime from all sides, all the way from psychopathic murderers to the lingering trauma suffered by survivors, but he had somehow missed this huge tell in himself? How the hell had he done that? And, oh, how he must sound to someone with Beckett's background and experience... But that didn't make him a liar or delusional. It did not mean he had imagined the whole thing, or dreamt it up. He had felt that blade cut against his throat, and he had touched that woman's cold skin. He had seen that thing- that man - he had.

Beckett drew his attention back to her with a touch.

"So I have to ask: are you sure what you saw is what you saw? You were just a little boy, a child already grappling with major trauma, lost in a strange place, alone - I have to ask: are you sure that - "

"I'm sure!" he interrupted her, anger making his words sharp. "Beckett, I know what I saw, I know what happened to me; to her. I know." Beckett didn't speak, but sank her teeth into the flesh of her lower lip. Waiting. A pressured silence designed to weigh upon the target, testing to see if the story held up; waiting for a retraction, a correction of the story. That sight, which before this moment he had found so distractingly hot now just sent sparks of fury throughout his body. "Don't do this to me Beckett. Don't look at me like that," he warned her, his voice crackling over the words. "I know what I saw. That day changed everything, and I am who I am because of it. That day... That day, that's why I do what I do. Because I've never been able to solve what happened in those woods. I write - I - " The words were spilling out now, tumbling and rushing out in jagged surging waves, like a river finally set free.

"But why didn't you talk to anyone about this Castle?" And oh, he understood now what she had been asking him before. Why hadn't he confided, asked for help?

"Who could I tell? My friend? His parents? By the time I found my way back to his house it was dark, and they were out of their minds . I looked like hell: all scratched up and muddy. And they had been responsible for looking after me that weekend: some crippled up kid they had taken pity on and - and how would they live it down that they hadn't? How could they cope with other parents knowing that they weren't up to handling it. They were heading up just about every committee at that damn school and this was charity work. No, no, I just got cleaned up and we all pretended like nothing happened."

"Castle-" Beckett said. Then stopped. "But not even your mother?"

"There was no proof, Beckett. Nothing." How could he make her understand? "The police found nothing. No body. No blood. My friend's family had already decided it didn't happen. I was a kid, some messed-up deaf kid, what could I have said that would have made anyone believe me?"

"But ... your mother! Castle, I don't know her like you do, but I can see clearly that she loves you. She knew something happened that weekend." Rick stared at her, eyes widening. "She told me when you were in the hospital. She knew, Castle, and she wanted to know more." He stared at her, reeling. What? No. No. He shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. I couldn't."

"But why?"

"Because I couldn't hear it - him!" he snapped in a sudden agony of frustration. There was a pressure building inside him suddenly, and his words came out in a strangled, raised pitch that he couldn't control. "I couldn't fucking hear him. He was threatening me, and I couldn't hear what he said. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what he was going to do! It - he - had our name, our phone number. It - He could find us, Mother, whenever he wanted - it was up to me, I had to do something. I had to protect us!"

"Castle- Ok, ok." Beckett spoke again, her expression an off mixture of frustration and something close to horrified. She rose from her seat, quickly setting the mug down on his desk. Her hands moved out in front of her. "Rick-" She grabbed his wrist as she neared him and he suddenly realized he had been jabbing himself in chest in emphasis as he spoke. They looked at one another.

"You don't believe me." He forced himself to lower his voice, to calm himself.

"Castle, that's not - " She let go of him, or he pulled away, he wasn't sure which.

"You don't."

" I believe that you- "

" - believe it?" Oh god. Don't let this have been a mistake.

"No!" she retorted, making him blink. "No. I was going to say that I believe you that you witnessed something terrible in those woods. I believe you." He stared at her, his gaze raking over her face, tearing into her expression and body language, putting together what he saw with unconcealed desperation to believe her. He frowned.

"But-" he prompted.

"No buts, Castle." And yeah, she was telling the truth, he could see it now. He felt like crying.

"So, so you understand then? Why I couldn't tell anyone," he pushed her.

"I understand why you made the decision not to," she said, and he had to grant her that very diplomatic comment. Clearly, she did not agree with his decision to conceal all this from his friends and family or the authorities, cop that she was, but she did understand the reason for it. That was more than he could really have hoped for right now. He let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding in.

"Thank you." He nodded, accepting her qualified support. "But now," he went on, cautiously, "I think it's time to tell. I have to. It has to stop. For Alexis, for mother. It all has to stop. And I need your help. I have to solve this, I have to know what happened, and I have to fix it. But I can't do it without you."

"Without us, Castle," Beckett replied. "You can't do it without us: me, yes, but Espo, Ryan, your friends at the 12th, and - your mother and Alexis."

"No. Beckett, not - "

"Castle, they already know."

"What?" Aghast, confused.

"Not the details, but they know. Your mother, Alexis. They might not know the details, but after the leak to the press about your hearing, after yesterday, they know something is very wrong and it's eating them up. They are scared to death for you. You have to tell them, they can handle it, and it's better that you do it rather than leaving them to think the worst." She looked at him, reached out to take his hands in hers. "Castle, you have to tell them."

End chapter 17

Hope you liked it! Shoot me a review to let me know.

A/N: The next chapter is underway, but there will be a small delay because of treatment for my neck injury. I am hoping it will be only week or two before the next chapter appears.