This was supposed to be the final chapter, but I couldn't fit everything into only one without it getting weird on me, so there will be one more, and then we will only have an epilogue left to go.
Chapter Thirty Five: I could do a lot of things, but I could never be without you.
"But you, you don't know who your father is." Karpowski throws back at him harshly – she clearly intends it to sound mean - derogatory. "Everyone knows that Castle – everyone."
It doesn't faze the writer in the slightest, because it's nothing he hasn't had thrown at him a hundred times before when he was a child. And things are different now – because he finally has the right answer.
"My father is a spy. Spies have to remain unknown," he responds calmly.
The rogue detective scans his face as if she's looking for the lie, the 'tell' – but of course there is nothing but the absolute truth there for her to find.
Castle smirks. Karpowski is clearly going for brash and unconcerned with her word choices, but her pale sweating face and vaguely trembling extremities are a dead give away.
He's got her. Oh, he's got her, and he knows it.
Relief – premature though it may be, washes through him uncontained for just an instant. Gabor is going to recover, he's back home, Valez is going down, and Kate is safe again. All these realizations flow through his mind unbidden and quicken his pulse, and Castle feels so free in this moment that he could truly laugh out loud with it; instead he deliberately paints his most compassionate expression on over the joy he feels - and forces himself to lean forward again in the hard plastic chair.
"Rose, listen to me," he says gently, "I get it." He tilts his head towards the room's mirrored rear wall, "We all get it. You lost someone you loved – and you're angry. You wanted someone to pay-"He pauses, swallows down his natural response to anyone pointing the finger at the woman he loves. "Even Kate understands this," he continues in the same measured tone. "And trust me; no-one is thinking that you don't have a right to that anger."
Reaching across the interrogation room table he hesitates for only the smallest moment before he covers her fisted hands with his, his warm, strong fingers stilling the faint shaking.
"But you're a cop," he states plainly. "And as a cop you know that no-one, no-one has the right to take the law into their own hands. And drug dealers like Valez have no place on our streets. If Cesar Valez wasn't what he is – none of this would have happened to begin with. Because he's the very first domino Karpowski, and as such he bears the full weight of what his choice of life-style brought upon himself and his family. If you need a place to lay the blame – you need to start here."
Karpowski bows her head, but remains silent – so Castle continues.
"My father, the CIA, the NYPD – the full force of them will be brought to bear here. With or without you, this vendetta Valez birthed is finished. So please Karpowski, for yourself – for those that love and care about you - for one last moment stop and be a cop again and do the right thing here. Please give us what we need to end this before the CIA outs Valez to the cartels - so that as much as possible we can protect you."
Her eyes fly to his face as he says this, shock and disbelief, anger, fear, a myriad of emotions run the gamut across her pale face. Her voice is a thin, reedy thing when she goes to reply.
"What? What are you saying?"
Castle looks suitably grim.
"The CIA will not protect him. Or you. But my father will ensure his operatives clean up their mess Rose – you can be assured of that."
Staring at him in horror she swallows hard.
"Your father – he'll . . . "
Castle nods, he can tell she's gone exactly where he wanted to steer her inside her head, so he smiles almost tremulously, his vivid blue eyes full of very convincing apologies – his mother would be so proud. He rubs her cold hands gently, as if he's only trying to be reassuring.
"He will protect me, and by extension Kate at all costs – I promise you that. And if the only way he can remove Valez as a threat to us is by outing him as the snitch to the Mexican cartels . . . "he trails off, leaves the implication hanging in the somewhat claustrophobic air.
Karpowski looks suitably shaken, all hint of fake brash confidence long gone. She's silent for a long time and Castle does nothing to push her, he just keeps his gaze on her face so that every time her dark eyes dart his way she sees him silent, calm and watching.
"Cesar will be killed," she whispers in the end. "Along with anyone associated with him – you must know that. The cartels – they'll show no mercy."
Lips thin and expression hard Castle replies, "Better him than me, than Kate."
He let's that sink in – before once more offering Karpowski the 'out'.
"If he's safely in jail on murder charges there is no need for it to come to that." The writer takes back his hands, pushing back from the table and getting to his feet he turns his back on Karpowski, giving her the moment some six sense is telling him she needs.
He knows his partners are still observing from the other side of the glass and he's tempted to wink at them but he restrains himself – limits it to a glance at the mirror and the faintest of small smiles.
Pacing the cramped space he continues waiting.
"Castle?"
He returns to his seat when called.
"Yeah-"
Taking a deep breath Karpowski fixes him with a steady gaze that reveals her ultimate decision has been made.
"My sister, Maria – she truly loved Cesar," she begins.
Castle says nothing.
"She was devoted to him, and I know she'd ask me to protect him now. He isn't all bad," she pleads.
"Rose-"
"So I'll give you what you need, Castle. The murder weapon, the burner phone that summoned Slaughter to that storage facility, enough evidence to tie Valez to both – even an eye-witness . . . "
Castle leaps on the last one.
"There's an eye witness? To Slaughter's assassination?" he clarifies.
Karpowski nods, and as her pale cheeks flood hotly with shame it tells him exactly who.
"You were there that day?" he bites out around his absolute overwhelming disgust that one cop could ever willingly watch another one die.
She nods, eyes darting away from his face before she forces herself to look back at him.
"I was. I wanted to see him pay," she admits as defiantly as she still can.
"Did it help?" Castle snarls, unable in the moment to hide his outrage.
Roselyn shakes her head at it, and the pain in her gaze says it all really.
"No,"she replies honestly. "Nothing can ever bring Maria or her children back to us. Nothing makes the pain go away. But maybe by protecting Cesar's life . . . it's all I can still do for Maria," she explains. "So I will do what you ask - only because I must."
"The gun, and the phone – I take it these are in your possession?" he asks.
Again Karpowski nods. "He gave them to me – trophies," she explains blandly with a small shrug of her thin shoulders. "You get me a fair deal, and you take a lethal injection off of the table for Cesar – and you get them both, plus my testimony."
Good guys win.
"Thank you," he says as genuinely as he can.
"I'm not doing this for you," she bites back.
Still.
The writer waits until the distraught detective looks at him for what he suspects is the final time.
"Thank you anyway."
Castle leaves the interrogation room then, pulling the door shut behind him quietly and feeling both triumphant, yet strangely weary as he leans his back on it thinking.
He's not alone long.
Kate, Esposito and Ryan emerge from the observation room with muted smiles on all their faces, and Kate immediately pushes herself into his arms.
"You did it, Rick." She congratulates him.
He plants a gentle kiss in her hair, squeezes her tightly – doesn't say he told her so. Well not until Esposito claps him loudly on the back while Ryan just beams at him quietly. Then he shakes off the strange momentary melancholy – too much empathy for Karpowski maybe – and he grins.
"Yeah I got her," he agrees, and the relief colours his voice as much as it leaks all over his face.
He looks down into Beckett's beautiful eyes.
"It's over baby," he reassures her.
But in reality, that's only partially true.
"Are you sure it's okay for me to do this?"
Alexis looks searchingly at her grandmother's face, noting the dark shadows written by a lack of sleep beneath the actress's bright blue eyes. The night-time vigil has worn the woman out – clearly, and yet despite that those same blue eyes are sparkling and there is a truly bewitching smile dancing on her lips.
Martha nods enthusiastically.
"But of course, darling. He's sleeping again at the moment, and besides I need to go and get some sleep just for a few hours – freshen up," she says, running a thin hand self-consciously through her slightly disheveled hair. "Your father is tied up with Kate at the precinct trying to put this all behind us – and I'd honestly feel better knowing that he isn't going to wake up all alone."
The amount of feeling in her grandmother's voice momentarily steals away anything Alexis can find to say. All the young woman knows for sure is that suddenly her request to visit her 'grandfather' carries a lot more importance. Martha is speaking about what she wants for him, and Alexis is old enough and wise enough to know this says an awful lot.
She knows her Dad has formed a close attachment to the man also.
And that thought settles it – settles her. She's the only free member of the family at this moment – she has a duty then to stay, surely. To be here for him - both if needs be and on principal, seeing as it's apparent he's finally managed to be there for all of them.
Martha sees her through the security checkpoint at the start of the hallway to ICU. Captain Gates has arranged for two burly uniforms belonging to the 12th Precinct 'just in case', they give her the once over before ushering her through and once she's said her goodbye's to Martha, Alexis wanders the sterile expanse of corridor until she reaches his room.
Richard Gabor. The grandfather she's never met.
Taking a deep breath to steady the sudden eruption of butterflies in her stomach, Alexis straightens her spine and then quietly pushes open the door, slipping inside like a thief.
Sunshine streams brightly through the window on the far side of the private room, immediately getting in her eyes and causing her to sneeze - even though she tries in vain to stifle it. Dammit, not the introduction she needs, and then she waits on tender-hooks to see if the occupant of the bed has been disturbed.
Thankfully there is nothing. No movement, no voice, Richard Gabor sleeps peacefully on.
Alexis heaves a small sigh of relief, and forces herself to approach the bed – the simple posy of flowers she's been clutching for ages now suddenly feeling slightly ridiculous in her slender fingers.
Studying the sleeping man's slack face the young woman can't help but look for signs of her father's relationship to him, and it doesn't take her all that long to find them. The strong jaw line, the shape of Gabor's nose – the elements that went into forming Richard Castle are all so blatantly there. Alexis smiles, unable to help it – the fact that she can so plainly 'see' her father in the older man lying so quietly before her, well it makes what she already knows is true – infinitely more real.
This really is her Dad's father. Her Gram's lost love. The missing puzzle piece of her own history who she's wondered about since she was old enough to understand he was a mystery.
Alexis takes another step closer, feels a part of her instinctively wanting to hold the slumbering spy's hand, seeking a connection. But then her gaze drifts again to the wilting posy of violets caught within her fingers and she realizes she actually wants to have them to give him.
Suddenly the symbolism of them is all too important.
As silly and childish as maybe they are – they're her gift to this mysterious man to tell him 'thank-you for giving me my father back', and she needs to find some water and a vase or something quick so that she can save them.
Scanning the hospital room with a critical eye the young red-head can't see anything that could possibly be used to hold them, but she does spy the door to an en-suite bathroom in the farthest corner of the space. Maybe the posy's salvation lies in there?
Stepping lightly, Alexis keeps her footfalls as quiet as she can as she makes her way across the squeaky, highly polished linoleum floor. Ducking into the bathroom she pushes the door almost completely closed behind her as she prepares to ransack the room if necessary, but only seconds later as she's peering into a cupboard that looks promising - she hears the main door to Gabor's room swing open once more. Pushing herself up from a crouch, Alexis is about to exit the bathroom and announce her presence to whichever ICU nurse or doctor who's come to check-in on Gabor's progress, when she pauses with her fingers on the doorknob instead, suddenly and for no reason that's immediately apparent to her strangely afraid.
Fear trickles through her - fills her up, sweat beads and rolls down her spine. Some weird innate sense of impending danger that she's never felt the like of before and could not begin to describe keeps Alexis for the moment motionless - her ears straining to pick up any auditory clues from beyond the partially open bathroom door.
Alexis hears a man's voice, a rustling sound as if Gabor's being shaken awake - and then . . .
"Hello boss." The voice is generic, soft and unremarkable.
Gabor's voice is distinctive - like her father's, as he growls out a weak reply.
"You! Of course it had to be."
Then her grandfather chuckles hoarsely, but it's an unhappy awful sound - full of irony, before he says, "I should have known."