Caleb Brown directs her up the porch steps and into her dad's cabin. He slams the front door closed and brushes the snow from his jacket she stands immobile in front of the kitchen table.
"You're very… tenacious," Caleb comments, the gun lowered but ready at his side. "We were really hoping you'd back off, but we also knew the likelihood was slim."
"Who are you?" Beckett demands through grit teeth.
"Well, we're who you've been looking for all along," Caleb grins, his smile making her stomach churn. "John Raglan, Gary Allister, Dick Coonan, your captain-"
She flinches at that, but Caleb cocks his head at her, as if amused, and taps the gun to his thigh.
"And of course, there's myself, Mason, whom you'll meet later, and William Bracken. Though, you'd better know him as the ominous Dragon."
Kate feels everything go still for a moment, the blood rushing and deafening in her ears.
"Bracken," she echoes numbly. "The politician?"
"The very same," Caleb sighs as if in annoyance. "What did Montgomery like to compare us to… Dante's circles of hell? He must have thought he was noble enough to repent for his sins, make the climb back to limbo. But there's no climbing out of this."
"How many of you are there?" she questions, clearing her throat but feeling the cut of her nails pierce through the skin of her palms. It's taking every ounce of her concentration to fight past the panic attack threatening to overcome her. If she doesn't focus, she'll remember what it feels like, how the bullet pierced her chest, the slam of her back into the hard ground, the hot spill of blood leaking into her clothes - no, no. Not now. "How many corrupt politicians and back alley murderers are roaming the city right now?"
"Haven't you been warned before, Beckett?" he inquires, taking a couple of slow steps toward her. "I swore McAllister once told you that this is all so much bigger than you realize and oh, it was. We've condensed since then, tied up all the loose ends. You're my last one."
"I'm flattered you came out to do the honor yourself, didn't send some faceless assassin this time," she mutters, but Caleb merely rolls his eyes.
"Maddox should have finished the job then and there, Beckett. On the roof, like we told him to. But he got cocky, thought you died falling over the edge." Caleb shakes his head. "Don't worry about him, though. He got what he deserved," he reveals, causing her stomach to clench. She should have known it couldn't be so easy, that they would ever let her live after the fight with Maddox on the roof, that she could outsmart this vast group of people watching her every move. "I can't say the same for you. You don't necessarily deserve this," Caleb muses, coming to a stop in front of her. "The old man, my employer Mason, was going to let it go, just let you scurry back into your little foxhole out here. But Kate, I see what you are, how you're wired. You're like me."
She scowls at him, but he looks almost impressed.
"You know, every morning we wake up and we choose who we want to be. I wake up and I ask myself, why can't Kate Beckett just back the fuck off?, but I used to be a good guy once, I understand the draw of justice and closed cases. It's nice in theory."
"Who exactly is your employer?" she growls. "How is all of this connected to me, my mom?"
"Well, his name is Mason Wood, former CIA. He's been running the organization for a while, though, as you can tell. I initially worked for Senator Bracken and when he partnered with Mason, they inherited me as well. But now, Mason is moving Bracken forward on the chess board, having him run for president in the next year," Caleb explains, grimacing at her as if he disagrees with the decision. "So, naturally, he wants everyone involved in this taken care of. Meaning, those in the organization double-down, and those who cause us trouble, are removed. We took care of Michael Smith earlier this morning."
Kate's throat goes dry.
"Really, you and your writer are all that is left."
Fury fills her chest, melting some of the ice cold panic in her veins. "Stay away from him."
"Ah, but I can't do that."
"You said you were a good guy once, you still can be," she grasps for a new angle. "I can help you."
Caleb chuckles, diverting his gaze to the floor. "Thanks for the offer, Detective. But the best I can hope for now is to finish this and slip quietly into a new identity. I could have offered you the same - a quiet life off the grid, financial stability, no more looking over your shoulder."
"I don't want your blood money or your bullshit. I don't want anything from you or your organization," she spits out.
"That, that right there," he groans, pinning her with a glare. "Is why I have to kill you. You just won't stay down, will you? We shoot you at Roy's funeral, you get back up. Maddox throws you off the damn roof of a building, a fall that should have killed you instantly, you survive. I want to appreciate the sheer luck of it all, but frankly, it's just starting to piss me off."
Kate squares her jaw as Caleb lifts his gun to her chin, skims the muzzle of the silencer along her cheek.
"Ever since Bracken had your damn mother killed, you've been a thorn in our side, splintering deeper and deeper, and I'm just not in the mood to put up with you for another ten years, Detective. And once I'm done with you, I'm going to get on a plane, take care of that little writer of yours-"
She jerks forward, but Caleb touches the muzzle to her temple, the corner of his mouth twitching as he digs the gun into her skull.
"No more loose ends, Kate. He'll hear about your death and become as relentless as you." Caleb clicks the safety off. "And we just can't have that."
"You won't get away with this," Kate growls, even as Caleb lowers the weapon, eases back a step or two. "Someone will always be hunting you."
"Not if I take care of you all one by one," he counters. "You and your writer in these first twenty-four hours, then the daughter will have an accident on campus, the mother will die off from grief-"
"Don't even think-"
"Your friends at the Twelfth will be picked off easily enough. Covering up cop murders is a speciality of mine."
"You can't kill everyone connected to this," she gets out, but her heart is beating rabid and painfully, angry and terrified. "You'll slip up eventually. Your future president's closet won't be able to hold all the skeletons."
"See, this is what Mason fails to get," he sighs, appearing more annoyed than concerned. "You're smarter than you look, so is your Castle. He let this go on for too long and I'm not going to wait around to let him make the same mistake."
Caleb lifts the gun once more. This time with both hands and a steadying stance. Kate instinctively backs up, her hip smacking against the table's edge.
Her fingers curl around the wood and she inhales a breath through her nose. She's not going down without a fight.
"The truth always comes out," she mutters, stalling for time and making her stand simultaneously. If he does succeed in killing her, she wants him to suffer with paranoia for the rest of his days. "You'll think you're safe at first, home free, but it'll come back to drag you under."
"What is that phrase on your mom's gravestone? Truth conquers all?" he smirks, easing his finger onto the trigger. The hand half hidden behind her back slips further under the table, fingertips brushing duct tape. "The only thing the truth conquered in all of this is you, Detective Beckett."
The door swings open and Caleb startles, spinning around with his weapon raised. Kate doesn't think, isn't even able to identify the person in the doorway before her hand is diving beneath the table's edge, ripping the gun she keeps there from its duct tape.
"Get away from her or so help me God I will shoot you."
Caleb laughs before turning the gun on Rick. "Oh look, my job just got easier."
She checks the clip and lifts her own weapon. "Castle-"
"Sorry Rick," Caleb states, finger on the trigger and pressing down. "But I don't believe you've got it in you."
Kate shoots a round into Caleb's back. He staggers upon impact but pivots in surprise, his gun aimed and firing. She feels the pierce of a bullet, a sensation her body knows all too well, hears the shout of her name, but shoots again. Her bullet hits home in the middle of Caleb's chest and she watches him collapse to his knees with wide eyes, falling face forward onto the floor.
"Kate!" Castle is calling for her, but when she looks up, she catches a looming presence behind him. The silhouette of another gun appearing in the doorway.
"Castle, get down!" She aims, fires two shots into the older man behind him. But not before the other man can do the same, one bullet screeching past her. Castle ducks, but the sideways stagger of his body has her fearing the other bullet found him.
She jerks forward, unsteady and off balance, but the other man - Mason, she has to assume - is already down, cradling a bloodied hand to his chest, and lying splayed between the porch and the entryway's floor with a crimson stained thigh.
"Castle," she chokes out, stumbling over Caleb's body to reach him.
Rick clicks the safety back on his weapon, tucks it back into his waistband. One of his arms is a bloodied mess, but he still catches Kate as she crashes into the wall of his chest.
Mason is glaring up at them, blue eyes vivid with rage and the white of his mustache spattered with the blood free flowing from his right hand. He's fighting to remain conscious though, her shot to his thigh likely hitting an artery if the blood flow there was any indication.
Rick uses his good arm to hook around her neck, burying his face in her hair and murmuring her name over and over again.
She kicks the gun away from Mason, hearing it skitter across the foyer toward the kitchen, and finally exhales a deep breath against Rick's shoulder. Even as the rest of her body trembles and fights to stay upright.
"The cops are on the way," he promises her. "The boys are-"
"What about you?" she's gasping, jerking back to touch his face, his chest, searching.
"I'm okay, I'm okay, Kate-" He hisses when she finds the shot in his arm. The smaller of the two holes, a likely entry wound, paints his shoulder scarlet from its passage through his tricep, connecting with the jagged mess of an exit wound lower near his bicep, likely gained as he tried to dodge Mason's shot. "It's going to be okay, not bad. I promise."
The relief is enough to send her to her knees. Castle is quick to catch her, holding her up with his good arm.
"Shit, your shoulder." He cradles the bloodied curve of her left shoulder, earning a whimper of pain from low in her throat.
"Barely feel it," she rasps, checking over her injured shoulder for a brief study of Caleb's lifeless frame, his unseeing eyes. "They were t-terrible shots."
The flood of red and blue fills her driveway, the squawk of sirens, and Castle whispers a prayer of gratitude as she slumps further into him.
"Rick," she breathes, her forehead crashing into his cheek. Mason is unconscious on the ground a few feet away, his blood tainting the pristine white of the snow on her porch. "How did you know?"
"I - I didn't want Christmas without you, so I came to visit you and your dad before dinner," he confesses. "I saw the tire tracks, the footprints in the snow. I called your dad, he wasn't even out of the city yet."
"Thank god," she exhales, the idea of her father showing up amidst all of this sending another flood of leftover adrenaline coursing through her blood.
"I trained regularly at a shooting range while you were gone. I keep a Glock in my car at all times," he tells her, earning a weak quirk of her eyebrows. Her eyes are closed, but she can feel his head jerking, can hear the familiar voices of the boys.
"Holy shit, get paramedics en route now!" Ryan is ordering. "We've got two of our own covered in blood."
"Intruder is down," Esposito is adding. "Looks like we've got another inside the premises."
She winces as the last of the norepinephrine seems to leave her system, allowing room for the pain to rush in.
"Thank you," she mumbles, resting her cheek to his collarbone, feeling the vibrations of his fiercely alive heartbeat. "Having my back."
"Always," he murmurs, dropping his hand to her lower back, slipping his leg between both of hers to hold her upright. "I've got you. Help's here, you're okay."
"But I'm sorry," she slurs, beginning to lose some of the feeling in her limbs, a pleasant weightlessness leaking through her bones. "Ruined Christmas."
Castle turns his head, the heat of his breath coating her temple as a broken piece of laughter falls into her hair. "Baby, you are a Christmas miracle."
Kate gasps awake on Christmas morning, causing him to jerk awake in the uncomfortable chair at her bedside. They both groan in tandem, wincing at the same offending injuries on opposite arms.
"Castle?" she rasps, her eyes searching.
He rises from the chair and moves to sit on the edge of her bed. Early morning winter light is bleeding through the blinds of her hospital room, kissing the pale skin of her cheekbones and painting the starch sheets of her bed a bright white.
"Morning," he gets out, smiling softly at her. "How are you feeling?"
"Sore, drugged," she yawns, flexing her right hand and finding his left, twining their fingers. Her eyes roam his face, his body, lingering on the snowy white bandages circling his right arm. "You?"
"The same, maybe a little less so. I'll have an easier time healing," he murmurs, glancing to the heavily bandaged area of her left shoulder. "Yours was through and through like mine, just cut through some more tissue and muscles than my bullet did."
"What happened?" she whispers, squeezing his fingers. "After I passed out, I mean."
"Well, Mason was treated for his injuries, but arrested, Caleb is dead, and I think the FBI showed up sometime in the middle of the night to take Mason into custody. Espo told me the senator, William Bracken, was also taken into custody early this morning," Castle lists, counting the events off on his fingers. "Neither of them are talking, but I've heard from the boys that they'll break and turn on each other sooner or later."
"It's over," she breathes, casting her gaze to the tangle of their hands atop her thigh. "Caleb told me everything before you showed up. If not all of it, definitely enough. Bracken killed my mom, Castle."
His entire chest aches for her, for all she's had to endure to get here, but when she looks up again, her eyes are shimmering with tears and her lips are curved with a gentle smile.
"It's finally over."
Castle scoots closer to her on the bed, close enough to lean in, press a kiss to her forehead.
"She's so proud of you," he tells her, listening to her exhale a trembling breath. "Wherever she is, your mother is so proud of you, Kate."
"Thank you," she breathes, lifting her head to smile up at him. "I couldn't have done any of it without you."
"Kate-"
"No, I mean it," she insists, tilting forward to kiss him. It's chaste and a little breathless, ending with a wince across her features, but the stretch of her lips lingers. He slips his hand from hers to wipe at the tear tracks on her cheeks, to feather his thumb to the upturned corner of her mouth. "You're an amazing man, an extraordinary partner, and the best thing that ever happened to me."
His heart does a little somersault in his chest, he isn't sure that will ever stop, and all he can do is smile back at her.
"Stop it, Beckett. The drugs are making you spill all your private thoughts about me," he teases, but she leans her cheek heavier into the cup of his palm.
"No, I just - I love you," she whispers, curling her fingers at one of his knees. Her lashes flutter, brushing along his cheek, her eyes shy and tender as she meets his. "I think it's always scared me, how much I need you, Rick. I don't think I even realize how much until we spent over a year apart. And these last few months, god the last twenty-four hours," she chuckles, watery and wry. "Proved just how much I never want to be without you again."
Castle closes his eyes, takes a deep breath of the air between them.
"It's over," he echoes, opening his eyes to find her watching him, hopeful and exhausted and yeah, a little drugged but definitely in love with him. "And need you too. I love you too."
Her smile is wide, showing all of her teeth and creating creases in the corners of her eyes. He leans in to kiss her again, but her eyes widen.
"Oh my god, Castle," she whispers, glancing toward the sunlight pouring through the window, to the naked place on her wrist where her watch is supposed to be. "It's Christmas."
His brow hitches.
"Yes, Merry Christmas," he grins, but she's shaking her head.
"No, no, Rick, your traditions-"
"Aren't permanent," he quiets her, but she only frowns in response.
"Alexis and Martha-"
"Were here last night, along with your dad. They're safe and sound at our rental cabin now, probably sleeping in," he assures her, his hand drifting to skate along her cheek, slide into her hair. She leans instinctively into the touch, causes something akin to butterflies to swirl in his stomach, skirt along his ribcage. "Kate, the greatest gift any of us could ask for is that we're all okay. We're alive and I'd say we're even pretty happy. You're getting justice for your mom for Christmas and-"
"You," she interrupts, biting her bottom lip for a long second.
"Me?"
"For Christmas," she clarifies, her eyes sparkling a brilliant hazel, the rare flecks of gold around her pupils emerging in the morning light. "That first day in the car, when we ran into each other. I just… I knew that if things worked out, we might spend the holidays together. It felt crazy to hope for then, but for Christmas..." She sucks in a quiet breath, a hopeful one. "You're all I hoped for, Castle."
He blinks, shock and awe sluicing through his system, stinging in his eyes.
"I wish I could kiss you, properly," he gets out, earning a breathless laugh.
"Yeah, me too," she confesses, gingerly turning her head to stain her lips to the thin skin stretched over his wrist. "But I don't want to aggravate our injuries, get us stuck here."
"No, I want to take you home. Sleep in half the day, maybe until New Year's actually."
Kate grins and eases back against the pillow, shifting sideways and tilting her head toward the empty bed space. He sighs, but saves his voice, his arguments, and gently climbs into bed beside her. His uninjured arm encircles her, her massacred shoulder finds rest against the pillow, and she leans her head against his chest in a careful arrangement that only mildly hurts them both. He doesn't mind, burying his face in the waves of her hair, letting the scent of her shampoo and the rise and fall of her chest ease him into sleep.
The last thing he hears is the soft murmur of her voice, the touch of her lips to his jaw in a whisper of a kiss.
"Merry Christmas, Castle."
