Disclaimer: ABC still hasn't turned the creative rights of Castle over to me, so I continue to play in their sandbox.

Stand With Me

Chapter Two: Rules of the Game

On a normal day, Alexis Castle had little trouble sorting through complicated details and information. It was one of the reasons she studied as much as she did. It wasn't just the drive or the competition associated in getting the highest grade possible. She loved learning. Her shrewd mind – self-admittedly not as outlandishly creative as that of her father – loved putting together seemingly trivial pieces of facts and data until order ruled over chaos and the universe made sense.

But today was not a normal day. Today, chaos reigned.

She sat numbly on the edge of the waiting room sofa, and as she watched the sliding glass doors open for the departing trio of surgeons – trauma, neuro, and cardiothoracic – Alexis feared that the universe might never make sense again. Quite possibly for the first time in her life, Alexis Castle was unable to effectively categorize and analyze the mass of information she had been given.

Her father would call it "epic good luck" that his heart had been missed completely, but whether due to the hollow point itself or the shrapnel into which it had turned his ribs, the damage to his body was extensive: lacerated spleen and liver, collapsed lung, cardiac arrest due to hypovolemic shock, and a right kidney was so mangled that it had been removed. They had also removed each of the bone and bullet fragments save the one piece of metal that the neurosurgeon deemed too risky to extract, so she had kept it where it was – cozied up right next to her father's spine.

"It didn't sever the spinal cord," Dr. Herod, the neurosurgeon had reassured them, "but the tissue surrounding it has started to swell, and the resulting pressure has caused moderate bruising … " the doctor hesitated and Alexis remembered how the small room seemed to shrink around her when the doctor said, "And though it will hopefully be temporary, Mr. Castle is showing some signs of paralysis below the hips."

Alexis didn't hear the collective gasp of dismay from the others, and she caught only fragments of what else the doctors had to say. The phrases "medically induced coma" and "long recovery period" bounced off the protective shell that had slammed down around her psyche. As though through a haze, she saw the doctors leave. A small part of her felt Gran's comforting arms around her shoulders and knew that along with them came the reassuring words that everything would be okay, but too much was just too much sometimes. All she could think of was her father: how he would swing her high into the air when she came home from school as a little girl, their marathon laser tag games, his annoying habit of lurking, tall and strong, behind the open refrigerator door when she was searching it's frosty depths for the answers to her troubles. The thought that he might not walk again …

Alexis felt light-headed. She could feel herself shutting down emotionally, mentally. It was almost as if she wasn't a part of herself anymore, and quite honestly, she was past caring right now.

"This is my fault."

What? What did she say?

It wasn't so much Detective Beckett's words that evaporated a bit of the fog surrounding Alexis' mind as it was their tone. Deep sadness and … yes, guilt. Her grandmother mumbled some sort of protest, but the guilt-laced words persisted.

"No. All of it. It's my fault! I couldn't see past my own need for answers. For revenge. I had to push, and this is the result."

Days later, when she had an opportunity to reflect on her reaction to those words, Alexis was in more than a little bit of awe at the speed at which she went from clouded confusion to blind rage.

"How dare you!" Alexis growled at Kate. She ignored her grandmother's protest of surprise, sprang up from the sofa, and stalked across the room to where Beckett stood between Ryan and Esposito. Her red-rimmed blue eyes flashed with anger as Lanie and Jim Beckett each grabbed an arm to restrain her. Beckett, however, stood her ground, more than ready to face Alexis' anger.

The way Kate figured it, she had more than earned the young woman's contempt and hatred, and truthfully, nothing Alexis thought or said about her could surpass the things Kate had already thought about herself.

She was wrong.

"How dare you let them get inside your head!" Alexis raged, pulling with surprising strength at the arms that held her. "How dare you let them make you the guilty one! You do that, and everything my dad did today means nothing!"

"Wha … what?" Kate actually retreated a step in the face of those words. Words she had not prepared herself to hear.

"This is no more your fault than it is mine. You didn't pull the trigger!"

"I made myself a target. I made all of us targets," Kate protested.

"They made you a target because they're cowards." Some of the anger went out of Alexis, and she stopped struggling; Lanie and Jim eased their hold on her, hands loosely encircling her forearms.

Kate choked back tears and pointed fervently in the general direction of the operating room. "Castle paid the price for my choices." Ryan and Esposito each took a step back from their boss, uncertain about what to do.

"Bullshit!"

"Alexis!" Martha's tone was a mixture of condemnation and pleasure for although the grandmother in her felt that she should at least sound vaguely disappointed in the girl's choice of language, Alexis simply never swore, and Martha couldn't help but feel a little bit proud of her.

"My father makes his own choices, Detective Beckett. Nobody ever chooses for him," Alexis said, her eyes filling with tears. She stepped closer to Kate, reached out, and took her hand. "Today he chose you."

"Alexis is right, my dear," said Martha as she approached the pair. She reached out and brushed away a lock of hair that had escaped from the haphazard ponytail Kate wore. The motherly gesture was one Kate hadn't experienced in far too long, and she felt the tears well again. Martha then rested her palm against Kate's cheek and looked deeply into her sad, green eyes. "For all that Richard is New York's oldest Peter Pan, when you get right down to it, he has always had his priorities straight. No one can cajole or manipulate him into anything he isn't willing to do himself, and he will always protect those he cares about … those he loves."

"I, I …" Kate struggled with the words. "At the cemetery, after he was shot, I told him –"

Martha pressed two fingers lightly to Kate's lips to silence her. "Shhh, darling. I know. I heard, and I have faith that he did, too." Kate chewed at the inside of her lip, somewhat embarrassed at having been overheard expressing feelings she was still trying to adjust to and reconcile within herself. "Have no doubt, there are more dark days ahead for all of us," Martha continued, "but we will be strong for Richard and each other. Otherwise they win."

Alexis sighed and looked up at Kate. "I won't lie. It could be really easy to hate you right now, to blame you, but that's what they would want, isn't it? I'm not going to give them that. Why are you? If there's one thing my dad taught me, it's that if you have to play somebody else's game, make sure you play by your rules."

"How did Castle manage to have a teenager like that?" Ryan whispered in disbelief to Esposito.

"Where did he get a family like that?" Javier corrected. "Cool, but not normal."

"So not normal," Ryan agreed.

"Excuse me." The hospital volunteer in the open doorway turned everyone's attention away from the emotional conflict resolving itself in the center of the room. "Mr. Castle is being moved to the Critical Care Unit. If you'd like, I can escort all of you to a more comfortable waiting area where you can get something to eat and rest a bit until you're able to see him."

"Thank you, my dear," Martha said. She smiled once more at Kate before turning to pick up her bag from the sofa and sweeping her arm about in a grand motion to indicate the room at large. "Everyone get your things. It's time for our little drama to change setting." For the first time Kate noticed the exhaustion in the older woman's eyes. Her face was strained, weary, and she looked much older than her 60-odd years. For all her largess of compassion, it was clear to Beckett that Martha, too, was close to the edge but forcing herself to be stalwart for her granddaughter and for all of them.

As the rest of the group followed Martha and the volunteer out of the waiting room and past the entourage of police guards, Alexis tightened her grip on Kate's hand.

"When it's time, you'll go in with us?" She suddenly sounded very young and afraid; a far cry from the enraged young woman she had been just a few minutes ago. The tone of it unsettled Kate for it reminded her of her own voice on that horrible night long ago when she was told that her mother was never again coming home. The night that had started everything.

Castle had once told Kate how much Alexis looked up to her, and Kate had long since felt that Alexis saw her as something of a surrogate mother. Now the girl was all but alone, and it was clear she was scared, though she said nothing. Kate's own father had been too distraught by the loss of his wife to be of any support to his daughter. Kate vowed to herself and to Castle that she would be there for his daughter, giving Alexis as much care and strength as she had to offer until such time as Castle was able to fill that role again himself.

"Of course I'll go in with you," Kate said softly. She hesitated a moment before continuing. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Being just as annoyingly hard-headed as your father is."

A ghost of a smile curled the corners of the girl's mouth, "I learned it from the best."

Beckett let a wide range of memories that she had been suppressing all day slip back into the forefront of her mind, and she smiled. "Yes. He is."

Thank you all for the reviews on the previous chapter. I was very excited to get them. I hope that you enjoyed this chapter as well. Please let me know.

I will do my best to update at least once a week - twice if I'm able to get all of my grading done.

Thank you for reading!

~ Sarah