Close Encounters 13

Castle had texted her when he'd arrived, but she'd gotten no more details about Mason other than what came through on her phone. The alerts were being kept to a minimum, reduce the chatter just in case, and Kate found herself wandering the house with the dog following her like a ghost.

Though, really, they were both doing the haunting.

Kate crossed her arms over her chest and turned to Sasha in the upstairs hallway. "Okay. We're done. Time to do something. You with me, puppy?"

Sasha wagged her tail slowly, as if cautiously optimistic, and Kate led the way back to the empty bedroom. She opened the closet and gathered all of her materials, the map and her notes, the pen from his desk she'd thrown on a shelf when she'd hurried downstairs. She took everything and laid it out on the floor of the empty bedroom, the pale grey walls like physical reminders of what she was working towards.

And it wasn't that she wanted him to be normal. She liked their life together - loved it. She just wanted him to survive it.

Kate eyed the gaps in her timeline, the blank spaces where he was entirely unaccounted for, and then she stood back and tried to gauge how much more she needed before she could start figuring out a pattern to all of this.

Saber would know some of it. And Dr King as well - he'd debriefed Castle as part of a team. Who else? Mitchell had been there, Carrie's Mark had been there for so much of it and his letters to his wife might have place names. She could ask, but she'd save that for a last resort. She didn't want to ask for the woman's last private moments with her dead husband.

In the meantime, she needed to do some research on what she had here - get the CIA Factbook out and know the lay of the land. Kate headed down the hall towards Castle's office, searched through his drawers until she found the secure laptop hidden in the bottom panel. She tucked it under her arm and then saw the stack of colored index cards in the junk drawer.

She grabbed those too, a sharpie marker, and some tape. Might as well go all out. She had the whole night to research and her only company was the dog.

When she got back to the empty room, Sasha was stepping gingerly around Kate's notes, looking lost.

"Sorry, puppy, I've invaded your space."

Where could she hang this out of the way?

Ah, inside the closet, on the door. Perfect. Kate settled on the floor to start delving into all the many points along her husband's timeline.

When Castle dragged his ass down the last block and found himself in front of his own front stoop, he could barely believe how damn grateful he was to be home.

He used the app on his phone to disengage the alarm, remote unlocked the door even as he climbed the steps. The entry was cool with winter's touch; the heater didn't manage to warm the bare wood floors here. He'd been thinking about redoing the ducts or maybe installing some heated tile, but he hadn't managed to stay at home long enough.

It was three in the morning but Mason was at least in holding with Polish Secret Services. When Mitchell arrived, it would be touch and go as far as official channels, but he couldn't blow any more good covers on Mason's stupid, hot-headed choices.

Castle had just started up the stairs when he saw Kate at the top, a pen and notepad in her hand, her hair scraped back from her face.

"Kate? It's three in the morning."

"Is Mason...?"

"He'll be all right. The idiot. Mitch will be there in three hours, and he'll take care of it on that end."

She nodded.

"Kate, why are you up, love?"

"Mason," she shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. You okay?"

"I'm fine," he waved her off. "Tired. Long day."

"Yeah, you coming to bed?"

"Shower first," he said. He lifted a hand to her notepad and pressed it down from her chest, saw it was the scratchpad they'd used a few days ago to brainstorm new ways to get to Bracken. Of course they'd shredded the pages they'd written on, but he wondered if that was what she'd been doing. "Bracken?"

Her eyes blanked. Eerily and perfectly neutral. "Yes."

He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. "I need a shower before-"

"No, of course. Shower, love. It was only to pass the time."

"You could have gone to bed," he murmured, reaching out to take the pen and notepad from her. He drew her into his body, an embrace that somehow was more comforting for him than maybe it was for her. "I didn't think you'd stay up."

"Mason was in trouble and I don't know - maybe you'd need me. Time got away from me."

He didn't like that, and even more, he didn't like the reservation on her face, like she was carefully avoiding the one subject she knew she was supposed to be careful about - Bracken.

"This thing with Mason will be wrapped within the next few days, Kate. I promise. And even then, we won't divert resources from the leads Viktor Bout has given us-"

"You think that's what I'm worried about?" she said, jerking back a step. "Castle. That man has-" She bit off whatever she was going to say and shook her head. "Mason is family. Mason helped to save both our lives. We're fixing his mistakes and bringing him home."

He nodded, tightening his arm around her to draw her back to him. "Yes. Yeah. Good."

"Go shower, Rick. You smell like the Office."

He smiled into her temple and dragged his lips against her skin, but even though she was putting him off, he knew how to reach her. How to get to her. How to draw her back to him.

"Want to shower with me?" he murmured. He slipped his fingers in the waistband of her jeans and stroked at her hip.

She shivered and pressed closer. "Yeah," she rasped. Her nose nudged his and her breath skirted his cheek. "Kiss me already."

He should move. They were sitting upright in bed, tangled in each other after that last round, both of them a little breathless. He should really move so that her legs didn't cramp, hooked around his waist like this. But her head nestled into the curve of his neck, skins sealed with love, and he didn't want to move.

Her arms threaded around his waist, palms pressing low at his back, and her sigh stretched out across his chest, soft and sated.

"Am I hurting you?" he murmured.

"Not right now," she mumbled. Though her body was nestled against his, he couldn't help hearing the meaning laced under the words.

He wasn't hurting her now. But he had, he would - he hurt her when he left her in the dark. He hadn't meant to, he never meant to, but he saw he would. He was setting her up for it.

Castle brushed his lips along her temple and reached back to unhook her ankles. She made a noise of complaint, but he shifted her knees to his hips and lowered them both to the mattress again.

Kate sighed and laid over him, her heart only now beginning to slow. Castle scraped his fingers through the knot of her hair, massaging her scalp and arranging the long locks to one side.

"Feels good," she sighed.

"Want you to always feel good," he murmured.

"You do an excellent job of that," she chuckled. Her lips turned to his chest and kissed, fingers stroking along his skin, ripples of pleasure. "My super spy."

"Speaking of, I have that appointment with Boyd this coming Friday. Threkeld is flying in to see me. We'll know more then, right?"

Her fingers stopped moving.

"Right, Kate? They're looking into it. I'll get a clean bill of health and they'll keep studying that last vial of the regimen and we'll figure it out."

He felt the way her body contracted, her arms tucking in close, the stutter of her breath.

"Love," he whispered. "It'll be fine. I'm fine."

"But you... you're... one day..."

"What do you need from me to be okay?" he whispered, stroking her hair. He cupped his hand to her ear and kissed her forehead. "Anything, Kate, love. Anything."

"You'll tell me if you're feeling - if there are symptoms?"

"Symptoms?"

"I don't know," she mumbled. She unfurled her fingers at his pec and he kissed her again, stroking her hair down her back. "Like - you're never cold. You're a space heater, all the time. Right now, don't even have covers but I'm plenty warm lying over you."

"Why is that sexy?" he growled.

She caught a breath of laughter and he smiled, glad to hear it. Or feel it, rather, the sensation of her mirth at his chest.

"But needing a coat. That's a sign, huh?" he murmured.

She nodded against him, and he felt the seriousness of it.

"Okay," he promised. "The moment I realize I need a coat, I'll tell you." She was already going to worry about him; she thought she'd missed something when he'd gotten sick, she'd told him as much, and she was always going to feel like she should have done more. If he started feeling the winter wind, then fine. He could tell her.

"And."

"And? What else, Kate?"

"The other thing I noticed... I'd see it again. Your sleep."

"My sleep?" he murmured. His fingers caught in a tangle of her hair and he worked slowly through it, separating the strands until she spoke again.

"You're usually on alert all the time. It's part of you - part of your superness, I guess. Because I think when you're rundown, you sleep harder."

"I sleep harder." He had no idea what that meant; he got plenty sleep. She was the one with the bouts of insomnia, the one who only needed four or five hours.

"Remember at my father's cabin after I got you - after you were stabbed? I thought I'd go crazy trying to keep still. Every time I so much as turned over, you woke up."

"Oh," he murmured. "The last few years though..." Castle stared up at the ceiling, wondered if it was true. He hadn't been woken up by her in at least four years. "No, wait. In Rome. After everything in Russia, I didn't sleep hard. I-"

"Black also had you, administered and overlooked your medical care," she murmured. "Mitchell told me that it was the regimen he dosed you with. For your leg."

"Shit," he grunted. "Why the hell didn't I think of that?"

"The knife wound," she whispered. Her fingers slipped along the edge of his scar, pushed into the space where his back met the mattress. "Don't you remember how I kept pushing you to take it easy? To slow down? And then one day you're at the physical therapist and the stitches are gone and everything's fine."

"Oh," he murmured. How had he not seen it before? "That was - fast, I guess? Abnormal healing. And the leg. Probably every time I've been injured, it's been augmented by the regimen."

"I think so. The capacity of your blood cells to carry extra oxygen might be only one aspect of their... heightened nature."

"You've been thinking about this a lot," he sighed. He stopped trying to untangle her hair, laid his palm at the back of her neck. "Too much, love."

"How could it be too much?"

"You're stressed. And sad," he whispered. And not pregnant yet even though there'd been plenty of opportunities, even though she'd been given a clean bill of health after those iron infusions.

Of course, that could be his fault. The regimen, who knew what else it was doing to him. Shit. He needed to have Boyd check him out when he went up there on Friday.

"I'm not sad," she said quietly.

"Tonight?"

"It wasn't really about that," she gave. Her body shifted over his and away, his skin felt suddenly cool in the lack of her. She touched his thigh with her fingers. "You have goose bumps."

"I'm not cold," he assured her. "It's you. Moving against me."

She gave a bright laugh, lifted her eyes to his. A little of that sorrow still lurked, but it wasn't as strong as it had been at the bar. She seemed to have found steady ground.

"But you'd tell me," she said then.

"Yes," he promised. "And you'd tell me, Kate. Right? If you thought - anything." He didn't want to bring Bracken's name into this, but she'd dwelled so long on his getting stabbed. He knew she carried guilt for it - she'd almost said when I got you stabbed despite years of therapy. He knew Bracken had to be on her mind. She'd said her being said wasn't really about him, Castle.

It was about her mother's case. He knew that. He just wanted her to tell him.

"I'd tell you," she promised. "The moment... anything. If anything happens."

"Or even if you're just... overwhelmed by it. Okay?" He didn't want them to ever go back to how it'd been that first year, her desperation to solve her mother's case, the way she'd disappeared right in front of his eyes.

"I will. I promise," she insisted. "Of course. It's just as much you as it is me."

He wrapped his arms around her and took a deep breath, hoped that had done it. Moved them forward instead of back.

At least they could talk about it. At least they were communicating.

She had believed him when he'd said it was the dog's fault, believed that one of Sasha's ill-timed bursts of energetic roughhousing had caused the destruction on the back patio. The shattered pots and the mess of containers and dirt had been easy enough to clean up, no problem to later replace, and the poor puppy had been hard to soothe anyway.

But Kate couldn't help watching him that week, her eye on him, tallying the days in her head since he'd received the last infusion of whatever serum had been in those injections.

Boyd called while Castle was out of the Office running down some bank personnel records from 1998, correlating the time of her mother's shooting in January of '99 to a 150,000 dollar transaction they'd pinpointed with the unwilling help of Viktor Bout. Beckett picked up the extension because she recognized the number and she greeted Dr Boyd's quiet confusion with certainty.

"Were you calling about the tests coming up?" she prompted.

"Ah, yes. Threkeld will be coming in through Stone Farm, so we agreed that Agent Castle should just head up here that day."

"Instead of here in New York? Of course," she answered immediately. "Can you tell me what you've found?"

"Agent Beckett, it's all a lot of speculation. We don't even have a clear picture of the overall purpose - the intended targets of such medication. It's fascinating, isn't it?"

Not really.

"Yes, fascinating. Have you talked with Agent Castle about any... side effects?" she murmured. Kate glanced around the command center but no one was that close. "Have you found anything that might do more harm than good?"

"All of it might do more harm than good. Neither of us wanted to use this unknown substance - seemed a crap shoot - but you were right. We all know it saved his life."

"But I mean, long-term. He's been on this since he was five."

"We can't know," Boyd said carefully. "But we have anecdotal evidence and some short-term indicators. We have theories."

"His blood carries more oxygen," she said, wishing the man would just come out and say it - whatever it was. "And so his endurance is greater, impervious to temperature extremes... why does he lose it?"

"Obviously the regimen was more than just these injections. He's told us about copious other elements - the periodic stress tests indicate some monitoring of the heart and its condition under the regimen. We're breaking down the last vial of serum into its components, but some of those components aren't things we recognize."

"But you can't pinpoint why it doesn't last? He was fine for years..."

"But was he?" Boyd queried, eager, analytical. "You say that, yet I've heard stories from you both that indicate it's been a long, slow decline since he stopped the injections. Now, whatever other pills or vitamins or supplements came with it - those I'd love to get my hands on."

Kate swallowed hard and tried not to jump to her feet and pace the floor. "There are others- right. More than just the injections. I should have realized."

"Well, yes. There was space in those silver cases for a pill canister. Agent Castle told us he kept taking those because they didn't make him washed out like the injections. So perhaps the effect of those pills combined with the injections? Perhaps the high doses of vitamins, oils, herbal supplements... the list is endless, Agent Beckett. We have literally the whole world to choose from, and no idea what Agent Black might have been dabbling with. The combination of drugs is what created your super spy. A combination we don't have."

"Oh."

"Look, we're hoping that with another round of blood tests, an MRI, we might get a better picture. Threkeld had an idea that it has changed the shape of his brain, so we're going to look into that."

Kate pressed her hand against her eyes and swallowed. She wanted to ask if it affected his genetics, his chromosomes, if they had to worry about sterility, or blindness from too much oxygen, or his body just shutting down; she wanted to know if he would be tied to the regimen for life, if he needed those supplements, if this was going to kill them.

But none of that would come out of her mouth. She might fall apart if it did.

"I can't answer your questions without more information," Boyd sighed. "I'm sorry. You'll let him know about the tests? Fasting for twelve hours beforehand, Kate."

The call of her name nudged her out of the dark swirl of her thoughts. She lifted her head and kept her eyes grimly on her computer monitor. "All right. Fasting for twelve hours. I understand."

Boyd hung up and Kate dropped the receiver into the cradle, her heart weak in her chest.

More information.

Supplements.

Saber would know, surely. He'd wanted to play these manipulative mind games, struggling for power, and Beckett had nothing at all to lose.

She'd go to Saber.