Chapter Thirty One: We can breathe in together as one.
"Hey baby," he answers softly. "It's me."
Kate stares up into his beautiful perfect face, smiling down at her like an angel from the gantry thirty feet over her head, and the sound of his voice sends a fresh wave of liquid emotion cascading down her pale cheeks, it also galvanizes her like absolutely nothing else possibly could.
Strength flows suddenly into all her limbs and her heart pounds loud and true again within her chest. Air once more floods her lungs because he's here and he's alive and she wants him – she wants him, and she needs to hold him and feel his arms around her – right now. Needs the scent of him in her lungs and his mouth against hers, and the want is intensely desperate, because she's just been starved of him for so very long. Her body is thrumming with it, so she pushes against the arms holding her up, her legs firm and sturdy once again beneath her.
She doesn't want to tear her eyes from his but she's just got to get up there, got to throw herself completely against the solid warm reality of him. Kate's face breaks into a smile, lips turning up in a remembered way, eyes crinkling as her joy sweeps across all the angles and planes – telling Castle silently everything that she's feeling. Then Kate spins, she turns to find the stairs that will reunite them and finds herself – to her horror - on the business end of a gun barrel once again. Her eyes widen, her jaw tenses in disbelief and the sting of betrayal hurtles through her.
No way, just no way. What the hell is going on here?
"Nobody move." Detective Roselyn Karpowski's finger twitches against the trigger of her sig, and the barrel moves subtly backwards and forwards between Beckett, the masked man standing behind her and Detectives Ryan and Esposito. Her conviction is plain in the defiant expression on her face and the stone-cold light in her usually dark and expressive eyes.
She repeats her request with emphasis, because she knows exactly who and what she's up against here – and what they'll feel about the allegiance she has just displayed.
"Nobody fucking move – you understand me? And that means you too-"she yells up towards the gantry, flicking her eyes up and meeting those of the author who is now looking down at her in horror.
"Unless of course you want me to shoot her that is?" she says icily, nodding her head towards Kate.
Castle shakes his head, wishing he had his gun in his hand but its behind him somewhere on the floor of the walkway – beside the prone unmoving form of Cesar Valez. Frustrated, the prior horror in his face gives way suddenly, his eyes coming alive with an absolute deadly fury instead.
"I will end you, if you do that," he promises his voice low and lethal. "Backstabbing mole that you apparently are – Karpowski, how could you?"
It's the question on all of her colleagues' lips Karpowski can see that, and for an instant - deep inside her, there is regret. Regret for the camaraderie lost and the shared goals long gone. Regret for the friendships she once treasured - that for her at least, died on the day so many months ago now when her course was reset and her vendetta born and she knew none of them could ever understand.
"My sister died because of her," she spits into the air, the venom in her voice dripping all over and flowing towards Kate, her eyes firing daggers now Beckett's way.
"My sister was tortured, beaten and raped before she was murdered. And all because of her, because of Slaughter and his big mouth," she turns to look up at the gantry again, "because of you too," she hisses at Castle. "And your stupid idea to get yourself involved with that animal."
"What-" Kate's voice is broken and bleeding and a single word is all she can manage as her mind spirals.
Espo, on the other hand is not so afflicted.
"Karpowski you don't even have a sister." Javi is glowering, bristling all over, so Ryan reaches out and steadies his partner with a hand. Esposito is especially testy about crooked cops – disloyalty, and Ryan doesn't want him to do anything stupid here.
Tears fill the female detectives' eyes then, and the slender hands cupped around the butt of her gun begin trembling.
"I did," she retorts. "Look at me Esposito – do I really look like I should have a polish surname to you? I was adopted, that's how I came to this country – but Maria stayed with our mother. I'd only just found her right before she died."
Beckett's eyes flare with understanding.
"Your sister was Valez' wife," she says quietly, knowing she's correct from the immediate flare of the other woman's nostrils. "God, Rose. I'm so very sorry for what happened to her."
Empathy leaks from Kate's emerald gaze, obvious, genuine pain for the loss her fellow detective has suffered and for a moment the force of it causes Karpowski's hands to begin shaking. An unreadable expression passes across her face and the barrel of her gun slowly lowers a fraction, but then the shaking stops entirely and its apparent to everyone that Kate's obvious compassion, has only served to make the other woman angrier.
"They killed her in the worst way because of you," she screams at Beckett, the pain in her voice raw, ragged. "Then they killed my nieces and my nephew too. Cesar was going to make you pay for that – take away what you love - he promised me. So if he can't finish this, then I will Beckett. Cesar took care of Slaughter for me, now its only right that I take care of you for him. And maybe then my sister will finally rest in peace."
Kate swallows convulsively, "Rose I-"
"Kate isn't at fault here. She didn't do anything," Castle yells from above. "You want to blame someone for this Karpowski – then you should blame me."
Kate shakes her head, looks back and up at him, her eyes pleading with him to stay quiet.
"Castle, no-"
The writer silences her with a sharp look.
"Kate, we both know it's true. I got us into bed with Ethan Slaughter – so this entire situation is because of me."
On the ground floor of the storage warehouse however, Karpowski shakes her head furiously – refusing it seems to be swayed. She ignores the writer's words completely and focuses her sights entirely on Beckett. The author has a split second to make a decision now, try again to get the rogue detective to engage with him, or take advantage of her lack of focus on him right now and start for the stairs. He throws an apologetic glance at his mother and grabs up his fallen gun, before he madly dashes for the stairwell.
In his head he's pleading with the universe for the time it'll take him to reach them, coming up with and discarding methods of removing the threat most effectively. Richard Gabor has trained him well.
He reaches the ground floor and carefully edges up to the doorway that will lead him into the storage facilities main room but the gunshot sounds loudly before he can get there. The writer's blood runs ice cold.
Oh please God - no. Not now, not ever again – if some thing has happened to her – he won't survive it.
Gabor reads the decision on Karpowski's face the instant she makes it. Instincts honed over forty years telegraph to the CIA operative, the twitch of a pinky finger, the tightening of a frown line, the tiny readjustment of the sig sauer in the detective's hand. Karpowski narrows her eyes as she looks at Beckett and Gabor knows the trigger pull is imminent, and in that split second he has to change Kate's fate he chooses consciously - makes the only choice he can live with, and he does it for Rick.
There isn't time to disarm her, but there is just enough for him to get in the way, and if he can direct her aim just a fraction lower – he might even survive it.
For Kate the events are a blur. One moment Castle is trying to distract and engage Karpowski – get her to focus her anger and revenge at him and for a long drawn out moment it seems Roselyn hesitates, the next a dark blur obstructs her vision and a there's a gunshot. She flinches automatically but the burning pain she's expecting never happens, instead the dark blur finishes disarming the rogue detective and her partners rush past her, knocking Karpowski to the ground and immobilizing her with her own police cuffs.
She realizes in a sudden rush of awareness that the dark blur is just the masked man wearing all black who took out four of Valez' men single-handedly before Karpowski joined the party – Kate turns to thank him, just as Gabor crashes to his knees and keels over on the ground, blood pooling in an ever increasing swirl of dark liquid beneath his prone form. Understanding hits her sharply. Castle's masked accomplice has purposely incurred harm to himself in order to save her life. How can this be? She doesn't even know 'who' her saviour is?
Castle makes it to Kate's side just as Beckett drops to her knees beside the crumpled form in black who lies motionless on the cold dirty concrete floor.
Gabor.
The writer's stomach turns over and the sheer panic that hits him is unexpected. Gabor has only been a part of Castle's life for five months, and the circumstances have been trying to say the least. Yet the writer has grown attached to the man who sired him, and the concept of losing his father already is just . . .
Castle crouches next to Kate, his focus splintering and torn in two. He wants absolutely nothing more than to hold the woman he loves and never let her go, and yet his father is lying in an ever growing puddle of blood and Kate's pale slender fingers are pushing down hard on the wound low on the CIA operatives abdomen- applying pressure as she tries desperately to impede the flow.
He settles for placing his larger, stronger hands over hers and as she turns into him he blindly finds her lips with his, kissing her hard, the movement of their mouths frenzied and beautiful – and so not enough. So not even close to enough and painfully brief, they nevertheless pull back weirdly in sync, their eyes locking on each other as each of them steals just a few precious seconds in order to drink the other one in.
"Castle. Oh God, Castle." Beckett exhales the words across his mouth and he hears every second of their five month separation in the break of her voice, the way she caresses the consonants of his name.
"I love you," he says, responding to the need in her eyes. "I love you. Kate, I heard the shot and I thought, I thought . . ." He can't finish the words because although she's intact and completely, perfectly, gorgeously whole beside him - that shot will echo in his heart forever now, and his father is bleeding. His father is bleeding out beneath their joined hands here.
Castle's attention turns to the CIA operative and the writer finds his father watching he and Kate intently – fully conscious although his breathing already seems to be growing shallow, and his limbs are faintly trembling. The writer shakily risks moving a single bloody hand as he pulls the balaclava free of the spy's head, grasping his father's shoulder tightly as he leans closer in.
"Help is coming," he says, realizing as soon as the words leave his mouth that it's not a lie because on the periphery of his hearing Castle's already registered Esposito is calling their location in.
Gabor manages a tight smile through the pain, "Valez?" he questions.
Castle shakes his head. "Either unconscious or dead maybe – I didn't check. Neutralized, at least for now," he reports.
Gabor coughs. "Tell me your mother is okay?" he begs.
The writer nods. "She's okay – I promise."
The operative smiles again, but more weakly. "Nail him, Richard. Promise me that you'll nail him properly now. You throw everything you can make stick at him - if he lives. Make it politically impossible for the Agency to steal him away – it's the only way to ensure your safety now. Both of you," he adds, his eyes flicking from Rick to Kate.
Castle nods, grips his father tighter.
"You'll be here to help me," he says with determination.
Gabor grins, raises a shaking arm so his hand can cup the side of Castle's face.
"I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you before this," he say gently, his pain filled bright blue eyes full with forty years worth of apologies.
The author frowns. "Don't be, just be here now," he pleads.
The spy's eyes drift out of focus and slowly close, and Castle panics instantly, he shakes his father almost violently, words he never thought in his wildest dreams he'd ever utter spilling freely from his lips, a huge swell of emotion behind them.
"Dad! Gabor, don't you dare. Dad please - don't leave me."
Gabor's eyes remain closed as Kate gasps loudly in shock beside him as as it registers with her exactly who her rescuer is. Castle turns his head instinctively into the shelter of his partner's body, his eyes squeezing shut as pain flares hotly in his chest robbing him of the ability to draw breath, and Kate curves herself over him awkwardly, her hands still busy - occupied trying to staunch the slick, hot, sticky flow of Richard Gabor's blood.
But her soft words reach him.
"He's still breathing, Castle he's still breathing I promise you. Help is on the way." Kate whispers to him.
And Castle's lungs fill again with air.
A/N: I feel bad doing this to Karpowski's character now that she saved our Caskett Christmas - but since I planned this six months ago I just couldn't change it now. Don't be too mad at me!