A/N: There is an 'interlude' M-rated chapter posted as a separate story so the rating can remain at 'T' for this one. 'Defying Gravity' is what happens between chapters 32 & 33 of this story. Thank you to those of you who have already read and reviewed it.

Chapter Thirty Three: I'll keep you safe and warm you know I'm never gonna stop.

Curled against Castle's left side with her head pillowed on his chest, Kate rests as her breathing slows back down to normal. Beneath her ear the loud rhythmic pounding of her partner's heart soothes her every bit as much as the gentle motion of his fingertips drawing patterns and writing words against the bare skin of her lower back.

She thinks it's just possible that she missed this, the naked cuddling and the comfort of just being wrapped up against his body in a blissful 'post-coital' haze, almost more than anything else. They are completely themselves in these perfect golden moments when they can just 'be' and the outside world fails to intrude.

It's with a sudden tightness in her chest that she breaks it.

Tipping her face up so that she can look at him she studies him silently for a few more seconds, drinks in the solid reality of him until she can no longer contain it because the truth is her detective's mind is flooded with questions.

"Where have you been?" she demands gently, reaching a hand up to trace the stubble that's beginning to darken his jaw, loving the rasp of it against the pads of her fingers.

Castle's blue eyes darken and his mouth thins, and she sees a myriad of emotions race across his handsome face before he eventually replies.

"On the other side of the world," he murmurs softly in the end. "In a prison as beautiful and peaceful as it was inescapable."

Kate frowns.

"Well that's cryptic," she scolds him, shifting against his side until she's covering him more fully, her head propped up on her folded hands. "You know I wondered and I searched for you every day, Rick. And now I need the full story every bit as much as you would," she tells him.

The writer nods, "I know. I'll tell you everything Kate – it's just . . . "

"Just what?"

He huffs out an almost bitter laugh.

"It's kind of fantastical," he replies. "I lived through it all and yet now that I'm home . . ." his eyes drift from hers and she watches as his gaze travels over every part of his bedroom, ". . . it almost doesn't feel real – that time away."

"Tell me," she insists, her fingers tightening on his jaw, eyes burning into his. "Tell me everything. Where you've been, and especially how all of this involves your father, Castle?"

His gaze rests on her face. "He's CIA," he says seriously. "Career CIA, Kate. It's the reason he stepped out of my mother's world as quickly as he entered it. It's the reason he's watched us from afar my entire life. He was trying to protect the both of us by keeping the two people he loved as far removed from him as possible."

Kate's mouth drops open a little, but she's not surprised, not really. Castle's 'Heat Lost' manuscript had already warned her about Valez' deal for CIA protection, but now it seems . . .

"Oh God," she says quietly, understanding suddenly lighting up the green in her eyes. "He was working with Valez wasn't he?"

Castle nods. "His 'official' CIA handler no less, the senior agent in charge of the whole operation when he stumbles over the revenge plot Valez is cooking up for the murder of his wife and children. Slaughter was killed before my father could act to prevent it, but once he uncovered who was next on the hit-list – namely me, in order to punish you, he had to step in."

Beckett nods thoughtfully.

"So you. . . you went with him," she says neutrally.

Castle looks completely horrified.

"Hell no-" he says with anger, his tone appalled. "He kidnapped me Kate - how can you think . . ." He takes a steadying breath. "One moment it's January 9th and I'm on a sidewalk in New York, giving you a little space so you can talk to your father – and the next its three days later, and I'm waking up in a strange room in a villa on a tiny Greek island worlds away. I still can't recall anything in between."

"Greece?" He'd told her it was fantastic and she doesn't want to sound unbelieving but really? Greece?

Her partner nods. "A CIA safe house," he explains. "'Serifopoula', I believe that's what the island is called. Not that he ever told me, but there was a non-English speaking housekeeper 'Dianthe' and though I couldn't understand more than about three words she said – she mentioned it a few times. It's tiny, ten miles from the nearest inhabited island, and fifty from the mainland. A villa and a tiny stone cottage, cliffs and beaches – that's really all that's there. Gabor would miraculously come and go and the rest of the time I was all alone save the housekeeper. Sometimes he'd be gone for weeks Kate, and until the night we had to escape it I never did figure out how he was doing it – I mean I guessed he had a boat or something, but I couldn't find it, and believe me I looked."

Kate immediately latches onto the key phrase. "Escape it?"

Castle surprises her by shrugging.

"Yeah it was actually kind of crazy Kate. Far crazier even than anything I've put Nikki through in my books. The island was ambushed by some sort of 'hit-team' and we had to vacate it fast. We swam off-shore in the dead of night and then made it back onto the island to retrieve my manuscript via a sea-cave entrance. As it turned out there was a series of caves and tunnels beneath the island that you would never have guessed were there. Gabor got the book and we escaped together via speedboat, heading for a seaplane Gabor had anchored a few miles from shore and everything is going well until we hear the whine of another boat engine behind us and we realize that we're being hunted down. Long story short - we make it out, but barely and only after a rather interesting game of three way chicken between the plane and two speedboats, one of which I was driving. Oh and I got shot – just a graze really on my arm, but it was scarily close there in the end."

Now Beckett's mouth truly does drop open, mainly because her partner's voice is so matter of fact and without the glee in it she would have expected.

"But why risk going back for the book?" She asks. "In fact why did you even have to write it in the first place Castle – why couldn't your father just let us know covertly that you were safe?"

Castle sighs.

"He was trying to do his job Kate – complete his designated assignment, but still protect you for me. Valez had made a deal with the Agency. They look the other way on his gang's drug smuggling, and he hands over the names of all the other major Mexican cartel leaders as well as details of their drug shipments. The CIA jumped at the deal because it's literally huge – we're talking millions upon millions of dollars worth of cocaine taken off of the streets. And here is where my father is caught right in the middle. His assignment is to protect and liaise with Valez – but Valez is planning on emotionally destroying you by assassinating me, and how can Gabor allow that? I'm his secret only child. So instead he removes me from harm, stashes me somewhere I can't escape from and convinces Valez that the deed is done – that I'm dead. Then he suggests to him that not knowing what has happened to me will be far harder on you. You'll have lost me – but you'll still have hope. A hope Valez can then relish the thought of destroying at anytime he chooses by simply revealing the 'truth' of my demise. It was a plan patched together on the fly for sure – and while my father struggled to serve two agendas – but it worked Kate. And it bought the both of you time."

The brunette shakes her head.

"I still don't see why your father couldn't have revealed to me that you were safe? Or told Alexis? Or your mother? Castle, for five months we all had to battle the awful 'not-knowing' of what had happened to you every single day!" The recent pain is ragged in her voice as it catches briefly on the last word.

So the writer strokes his hand down the side of her face, his fingers reverent and soothing.

"Valez was watching you," he explains gently. "All of you. The only reason he was delaying your execution Kate was to enjoy watching you suffer daily. If any of you had known I was safe – if you'd slipped up and dropped the facade of grief – even for a moment - it would have meant your life Kate. And there would have been nothing more Gabor could do to protect you."

Beckett swallows as she tries to digest the awful truth of it.

"So he saved you, and he tried to protect me," she says softly.

Castle nods. "And the manuscript became a covert way to warn you, a way for you to take back control of your destiny and remove the threat posed by Valez for yourself. Even the CIA couldn't be trusted Kate, or the NYPD. Too much kept happening with Gabor's assignment, too many things kept going wrong on his end. Together we decided only you; Gates, Ryan and Esposito could be trusted."

Kate frowns. "So whoever came after you both on the island then – you mean to say they were CIA too?"

Castle nods again.

"It's what my father believes, that an enemy in the Agency tried to take him out, perhaps to take over his assignment. A corrupt operative could make fortune getting into bed with Valez."

"And you completely trust him?"

The writer smiles reassuringly, "With both of our lives – yes baby I do."

And it hits her then, how late it is for her to be questioning.

"I'm sorry," she says quickly. "I can't believe I even asked you that. I mean the man almost died yesterday sacrificing himself to save me. And I know he must have had to prove himself to you Rick – I know you wouldn't have come to trust in him easily."

The truth of her statement is written on Castle's face, as is the respect and affection she can see he's developed for the man who fathered him.

"Sleep," she whispers, deciding she's learned enough for now as she snuggles more fully into his arms. "We should try and sleep Castle, and in the morning we can pick this all up again. Figure out how to end it."

The writer hums contentedly.

"Together," he murmurs, pulling her even more tightly against him. "Together."

When he wakes up it's through layers of haze-inducing medication that still somehow can't manage to dull the awful throbbing evident in his midsection, but Richard Gabor smiles with his eyes still closed anyway – he didn't die then, and that's truly something.

Prying open heavy eyelids the CIA operative assesses his surroundings on auto-pilot, the movement of his eyes coming to a screeching halt when they alight on the slender woman with the flame-colored hair who sleeps so awkwardly in a chair across the room from him.

Martha? Martha is that really you?

He wants to sit up; he wants call out to her. But he's suddenly frozen instead. Filled up with so much emotion in the seconds he realizes who is with him - that for the first time in a long time Gabor doesn't know what to do with any of it.

She is the last person he would ever have expected to be here waiting on him.

She is the person in his secret heart he would have wanted most to see.

He keeps blinking almost expecting her to vanish – part of him not daring to believe she is actually real.

Forty years ago he gave up his heart's desire – damn it feels so strange to suddenly be granted it.

Even in her slumber he reads the anxiety evident on her face, knows that her rest isn't untroubled or easy and it truly pains him. He maps her features with greedy eyes, thinking back on the last time he actually – with his own eyes – not through footage, got to simply gaze at her – it must have been Richard's graduation from University.

She was twenty years younger then, and though of course he's seen how gracefully she's aged through surveillance footage, the truth is he avoided actually being close enough to see her with own eyes after that day, because he was deathly afraid of his ability to remain away from her.

He'd been so proud of both of them that sunny summer afternoon, both his intelligent and handsome grown son, and his beautiful long-lost love. He vividly recalls how deeply he'd longed to hold her again then, to thank her for raising their child all alone but so seemingly successfully. Sure Richard had proven to be a handful, and he'd been trouble going through school, but in the end here he was not only getting his degree but already a published author of a best-selling book.

It had taken everything within Gabor to just witness the event from the fringes that day, and then turn around and go before there was any chance he might be seen by her.

And God, how he's hated with desperate passion the men that she's married, even as he prayed that they'd be able to make her happy.

He admits he's selfishly rejoiced his was the only child she ever carried.

She stirs in her sleep, suddenly waking, before she pushes herself upright as she remembers where she is, and he feels giddy when her sleepy gorgeous eyes connect with him. Then he ruefully remembers she's an actress as Martha schools her features trying to remain inscrutable to him, but he smiles inwardly and isn't fooled by it, because her fingers where they twist in her lap are softly trembling.

She is still every bit as beautiful to him as she was the day he first saw her, even the darkening bruise that mars her face can't detract from it.

"Martha," he says gently, unable to contain the easy smile of pure joy that transforms his rugged face.

It seems to reassure her, to settle something within her about her presence here, and so the actress pushes to her feet and crosses the short distance to the operative's hospital bed.

He can't stop the hand he opens in invitation, but she doesn't take it. Instead she stops close enough that he can stare up mesmerized into her face, but he cannot reach to touch her.

"Richard?" She asks, and he understands from her inflection that this is a question, that she doesn't quite trust that this is what she should actually call him.

He nods. He's gone by other names, and legally 'Richard' is his middle one, but it's the name he gave her, the name she gave their son – and that makes it who he is.

"How . . . how are you feeling?" She asks.

He smiles, lopsidedly and knows her small intact of air is because he's reminding her of her son.

"Surprised to be alive," he replies, reaching out his hand again. "And more than surprised to see you," he adds.

This time she takes it, and though it costs him what little strength he has he tugs her a little towards him, until Martha takes the hint and seats herself awkwardly on the very edge of his bed, her troubled eyes dropping from his face and staring benignly at the dull beige blanket that is covering him instead.

"But I'm incredibly happy that you're here," he murmurs, his fingers tightening on her slender digits.

Her eyes dart to his at this.

"You are?"

He nods. "Most definitely."

"Oh."

They fall silent just staring at each other, until a small smile crinkles the corners of Martha's mouth and Gabor senses something like relief sweep through her.

"Richard must have told you I would be," he says, inclining an eyebrow.

Martha blushes as she nods.

"He did seem very certain you would like me to be here if you woke up," she answers honestly.

Gabor smiles wider.

"Our son is well aware of how I feel about you, about the memory of you. I think our talks about it helped him Martha. That perhaps they healed something – answered something deep within him. He's a remarkable person I've found, talented and driven, charming, intelligent - a credit to you," he offers her earnestly, knowing that he's saying nothing she doesn't already understand, but wanting to show her that he sees it just the same.

"He's a lot like you, I've always sensed it," she replies. "He looks like you, he smiles like you, laughs like you – and that fierce mind of his – that I think is all you, Richard. The charm and ease and wit – well those I'll continue to claim he got from me."

They both laugh, although the movement causes Gabor instant regret as pain lances though his mid-section like a red-hot poker and he pales terribly, sweat beading instantly at his temples.

It scares her.

"You're in pain, let me call someone. I'm sorry I was supposed to let them know the instant you were awake," she apologizes. She goes to let go of the operative's hand but with a strength that surprises him considering his condition, Gabor holds on.

"A moment more," he pleads, and Martha is astounded by the fear on his still handsome face – fear that she's about to leave him alone, and that now he's awake she might not come back again.

"I wasn't going to go," she explains softly. "Just get someone to take a look at you, make sure you aren't in any needless pain. Take it easy please – you almost died yesterday."

"Still," he says quietly, "Just a moment, please-"

"Okay," she agrees, relenting.

Martha sits back down and as his frantic grip lets up she lets her fingers just toy with his.

"Thank you," she whispers after a long moment.

Gabor looks at her confused.

"For saving him," she clarifies.

Oh.

"He's my son," he replies. "I had to protect him."

"Thank you," she says again.

Gabor manages to pull her fingers to his lips; and he brushes his mouth over them reverently. There is so much still to say between them, so may explanations he may never fully be able to make, but he can't contain these words – he simply has to grab this chance to say them.

"No thanks ever needed. I love him," he tells her, before he takes as deep a breath as he can manage and just blurts it out. " Just as I still love you."