"They take their shots, but we're bulletproof,
And you know for me, it's always you"
She's immediately shoving the door with her shoulder, trying to keep Bracken and his two lackeys from entering, but she's clearly outnumbered and the three push inside with little trouble, shoving her backwards, almost sending her to her knees with the force.
Kate makes a break for the kitchen, going for the gun taped beneath the sink, but she's caught in a matter of seconds, rough hands closing around her arms, another around her throat, bruising her biceps and shoulders, cutting off her airway.
"Hold her still," she hears Senator Bracken command and the hands around her arms clamp down harder, jerking her arms behind her back and - fuck, the burly man on her right may have just dislocated her shoulder. "Tie her up."
"Sir, we really don't have the time to-"
"I said to tie her up," the senator repeats, cool but firm, and Kate lifts her eyes to see the man watching her intently, a sadistic grin on his face when he catches her gaze. "Detective Beckett and I are going to have a quick chat."
The guy on the right, the one who's put her shoulder in agony, secures his grip on her biceps, holding her steady while his partner retrieves one of the wooden chairs from the dining room area.
She's slammed down into the cherry wood, the movement jarring her body and rattling her bones. Kate flexes her muscles against the duct tape circling her ankles, securing her to the legs of the chair, but there's no way to instill any leverage when her hands are cuffed behind her back with sharp metal handcuffs.
"Thank you, boys," Bracken announces once she's fastened tightly to the chair in the middle of her living room with the man who killed her mother standing before her. "Toss the place now, will you? I want it to look like a violent dispute went down here."
The two men nod, sparing no more than a second glance in Beckett's direction before heading towards the stairs.
She bites the inside of her cheek at the sounds of belongings being thrown across rooms on the second floor, hoping fruitlessly that they avoid the bathroom and the unintentional secret she has hidden inside.
The blow to her face startles her, the closed first of Bracken's hand smashing into her cheek sending white spots exploding through her vision and the taste of blood filling her mouth. More of her own blood trickles from her cheek, lands on the knee of her jeans, and one quick glance at his hand reveals the extravagant ring on his middle finger that must have sliced through her skin.
"That's going to leave a nasty scar, isn't it?" he parrots, words similar to those she spoke to him nearly two years ago returning to haunt her.
Kate gathers enough blood and saliva within her mouth to spit the mixture. She hadn't been aiming for his shoe, but a tiny spark of amusement flares to life in her chest when she hit the mark without even trying.
"Is that all you've got?" she questions, ignoring the fiery throb of her cheek in favor of glaring up at him. He can destroy her face, use her as punching bag for as long as he likes; it buys her more time, consumes a portion of his energy, and as long as he doesn't venture lower… as long as he stays away from her stomach.
"You make the blonde look work," Bracken praises instead, tossing a newspaper article into her lap and Kate feels her heart sink as she flicks her eyes down, feigning disinterest while she scans the headline (Rick Castle finally spotted in France with new muse?), and takes in the photograph of her and Castle in the airport only one short month ago. "And you did a good job at disappearing too, truly impressive, but just short of good enough."
"Go to hell," she mutters, jerking her thigh as hard as her bindings will allow and sending the newspaper flipping to the ground.
"Congratulations by the way," he adds, as if she hasn't spoken, and her blood runs cold, but then Bracken snags the paper from the floor, gesturing to the visible ring on Castle's left hand in the grainy photo. "Seems that I missed the wedding, but you know, Kate, I'm glad you were able to marry him, to have some time to play wife before it all came to an end."
Her heartbeat picks up, pumping rage, the desire to fight fueling the fiery adrenaline already roaring through her veins.
"You'll die today," Bracken tells her with a pleasant smile, as if he's delivering another one of his campaign speeches. "And this time, I'm going to make sure I watch the life bleed out of you before I leave this place. I may even do it myself," he muses, slipping his hand inside his suit jacket and retrieving a switchblade that flips open with the press of his thumb to the ejector button. "I had wanted to use the same model knife Coonan had used to kill your mother. Poetic justice, you know?"
The blood rushing beneath her skin starts to boil and burn.
"But switchblades are so much more convenient," he informs her, admiring the weapon in his hand with a pleased smile.
"Thought you didn't like to get your hands dirty," she gets out, forcing herself to breathe steady and not to wince at the aching strain in her shoulders that seems to intensify with every passing second.
"I don't," Bracken sighs, polishing the blade with a silken, embroidered handkerchief from his front pocket, a tactic to intimate her she knows, but she doesn't blink. "But you're special, Kate. And you just won't quit, you won't die." He shakes his head, frustration simmering along the surface, but remaining carefully hidden beneath the calm and collected mask of a practiced politician. "So I'm going to kill you, let you bleed to death alone, just like she did." He's goading her, trying to get a final rise out of her, but she merely squares her jaw. Hard enough to feel her teeth grind. "And then when the writer comes back, after he finds you bloody and cold on this floor, I'll have one of my friends here kill him too."
She jerks against the restraints of the handcuffs digging into her wrists at that, unable to control the reaction, the anger that pours like gasoline upon wildfire through her blood.
The metal cuts into her skin, holding her to the chair and rubbing her flesh raw, scraping over the delicate bones of her wrists.
"Think of it this way," Bracken continues on with a grin, bending forward to meet her eyes. "If there is such a thing as an afterlife, you'll have both your mommy and your husband at your side."
The chair moves with her when she tries to lunge and Bracken slaps her for it, hard enough to have brutal heat and more flaring, unbearable agony spreading along her cheek.
"But the saddest part, in my humble opinion, is that we could have avoided all of this." Bracken tilts his head to one side, feigning a look of true disappointment. "If you would have just let this go, I would have let you live. I would have spared you."
Bracken lifts the knife, skimming the tip of the blade along her jaw.
"We could have even come to a peaceful agreement, a more permanent version of our last little deal."
"I would rather die," she growls, feeling the cool steel of the knife break the skin near her jugular.
"It's your lucky day then."
Bracken draws the knife back and her stomach clenches at the streak of crimson along the edge of the blade, trickling forward to drip onto the fabric of her jeans, creating a growing stain upon the denim.
"Are you afraid yet, Detective Beckett?"
Kate looks him straight in the eye, dull blue irises alive with subdued hatred for her, and she feels the corner of her mouth twitch upwards.
"No."
A mirthless laugh leaves the senator's lips just as he leans in closer.
"Defiant little bitch," he sighs, tracing the blade down lower along her side, but just as she starts to internally panic-
"The only person who should be afraid is you, Bracken."
Kate jerks at the sound of his voice, her gaze darting over the Bracken's shoulder to see her husband behind him, her backup piece in his hand.
"Castle!"
His name breaches her lips as the knife digs into her side, twists, and she gasps, can't find the breath to cry out from the ripples of pain that swell sharp and quick, threatening to consume and drag her under.
This time when he takes another man's life, there is no hesitation. No sorrow, no guilt, no grief. Only his wife.
The echo of gunfire fills their once peaceful home the second the knife pierces her skin. Bracken crumples in front of her, falling to bleed out at her feet, the irony satisfying and sickening all at once. Castle strides forward, jerking the senator's body away, realizing the man is still alive.
"Can't win-" he chokes, his eyes wide and staring up at him, blood gurgling in his throat. "She can't win. Can't-"
Castle shoots him again, ends the man's life and ends all the suffering he's caused. The dragon finally slain.
Footsteps clomp down the stairs seconds later and it's de ja vu all over again when Rick aims the gun, relying on nothing more than the pure instinct of survival as he puts two rounds in each man's chest just as they breach the living room entryway.
Bracken's assistants drop to the floor, staining the clean hardwood with pools of crimson.
It's a little scary how good of a shot he's become.
But Castle wastes no time in mulling over what he's done or how vastly their time on the run has changed him, he can only think of Kate. Kate whose eyes are going dark as the blood continues to spill from her body. He rushes back to her, digging his phone from his pocket while he presses a palm over the blood seeping from below her ribcage, the same place her mother had been stabbed – the sadistic bastard – wincing at the tortured moan she releases at the pressure.
"Hold on, Kate, please, please just hold on for me."
A hot, slick layer of her blood is coating his hand in mere seconds, his palm doing far too little to staunch the bleeding, just like that fateful day in May nearly four years ago, and Castle quickly shrugs his button down from his shoulders, bundles up the fabric and replaces his palm with the blue material.
The police on the other line of the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder are barking out words in Russian that he doesn't understand, so he drops his phone, focuses all of his attention on her and tries to blink away the tears blurring his vision. He had called the cops the moment he had pulled into the driveway and recognized the unmarked sedan, kept them on the line throughout every second that followed, but they aren't here yet and she doesn't have time.
"Castle," she breathes and he brushes a hand over her cheek, watching her eyes grow even hazier, fading out, and feeling the panic overtake him, finally swallowing him whole after all this time.
"Kate, don't leave me, don't-"
"Baby," she whispers, curling forward, the arms behind her back keeping her upright but causing her to release a tormented groan. "Don't - don't let our baby die, Castle."
He freezes, the fingers at her face tripping downwards, grazing over her flat stomach.
"Baby," he echoes in horror, and it's too similar, the way her lips offer him the slightest hint of a smile before her eyes fall shut.
