Chapter 5
Rick gently extricates himself from his daughters arms, and moves over to his mother, and helps her up. He then hold a hand down to offer aid if it is needed for the detective.
"Kate, I have been doing some things since the day after the incident. Some things I believe are going to, well, frankly they are going to make you doubt me, maybe even hate me a little bit more than you already do." Rick says with a look that Beckett has never seen before.
"Castle, I do not hate you, I could never hate you, shoot you yes. But hate, never." Kate replies taking his hand and standing, with slightly wobbly legs after her mini meltdown.
"Mother, you need to sit down for this, Kate you had best as well. He intones, with seriousness that Kate has only seen once before, when he said to her, "It is about your mother." Kate sits in the spot Castle vacated to help her and Martha stand, and Alexis quickly snuggles in close to her, eyes bright despite the seriousness of the discussions.
Kate muses to herself, shouldn't this be awkward, this shouldn't feel so natural to have Alexis this close. As Castle begins to speak, "I have not been completely honest with you, Kate, about me I guess you could say. You have gotten to know me pretty well over the years, but there are things I keep close to the vest. Things I have never told anyone."
"Castle. What are you trying to say? You have not killed anyone have you." The lovely brunette asks, her sharp eyes already searching through his body language, her mind already analyzing once again everything that is happening around her.
"No Kate, that is actually almost where the secrets start though, my failure to kill someone." Rick, presses on through that inflammatory statement, pushes through the responses and continues.
"Mother some 22 years ago, the summer after high school do you remember me taking a job down in Virginia?" "Yes, Richard, you were doing some training for some sort of agency or some such thing." Martha replies as Kate's eyes start to get a little wider.
"Correct, however Mother I never gave you the full details, if you remember I came back once the semesters started, and stayed on campus for my college years. You were married to Gregor back then." Kate watches Martha nod, and her agile mind already knows where this is headed.
"Well, I was training to be an agent in the Central Intelligence Agency." Rick states flatly, waiting for the explosions to occur.
Alexis speaks first, eyes wide and a smile on her face that is dwindling as it starts to sink in. "Really, Dad, come on. You can't even throw a baseball!"
Martha is fast on Alexis' verbal heels, with a "Richard, really darling, of all the stories…"
Kate interrupts Martha with a soft question, " Is that why you can shoot so well?"
Both of the other ladies look towards the detective, shocked that she is going along with the story. As Kate watches Rick settle himself into a face she rarely ever sees, 100% serious.
"Yes Kate, that and practice with Alexis and the laser tag system. She is really hard to hit you know." He replies.
"Dad, so you are saying you're a spy or something?" Alexis asks, clutching to Kate a bit tighter.
"No pumpkin, I failed the training, the final field tests, and the psyche exams made me unsuitable for what the CIA wanted. They wanted a wet works operative and that was how my training progressed, but certain issues kept coming up. I couldn't take things seriously enough; I couldn't follow certain guidelines, because I wouldn't kill when pointed at someone. I couldn't pull the trigger when they needed me too. So I was deemed unreliable for field work and kept on as a consultant basis through college."
As he finished up his statement, Kate could see the shame and pain as he said he had failed, but she could also see a hint of her Castle as he described his nature. She decided to go with levity and said to him, "Castle, you really couldn't follow orders even back then, I am shocked."
"Well Kate, you should at least not feel so bad, I had the best trainers in the world whip me into physical shape and hone me into a pretty effective fighting machine, but they all broke against my complete disregard for authority. Of course, none of them were as extraordinary as you."
"Kate, over the last couple months I have been working on a way to cover our asses. There are going to be a lot of inquiries, and second-guessing about our partnership. I am now as of tonight, officially in the employ of the Department of Homeland Security. I have been on loan to the 12th for the last three years and will have no other assignment. Noone will be able to take me away from you. Noone can order me to stop following you, except for you."
"Castle, why." she asks, with wonder in her voice, why would you do this, how much did all this cost."
"It just cost a few favors, some blood sweat and tears, and a lifetime of looking…"
"So help me god Castle, if you say for me, I will shoot you." Kate interrupts, with a smile on her face.
"Well that isn't good then, because I was going to say "for me", not as in for you, for me. But as in for me , umm.. for me. For myself."
"Kate, Mother, Alexis, as pathetic as it sounds I have never grown up. I know, big shock; but it is true. But now finally after tonight I know what I am, I know what I want to be."