Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again

He was sick to death of rain.

But Beckett was practically glowing. Her whole body vibrated with her joy, and while normally he couldn't resist touching that, the elite commandos on their trail put a damper on things.

Elite commandos. Honestly, he had no idea who had come looking for Black, piggy-backing off the CIA signal. The only way he could figure it - someone in his organization had leaked the information. Because whoever wanted his father couldn't have known that Castle tagged Black and was following him without some help.

He needed to do a clean sweep of his house.

And now he was worried about the beacon. If they used it, the black button would send up a flare on a scrambled channel to Mitchell, who could come extract them. It didn't deliver GPS information, and it didn't broadcast coordinates; it was only a burst of noise. But anyone paying attention would hear that noise and would know how to locate the signal and come for them too.

Shit. He should've killed his miserable, lousy, manipulative father.

How many times would he have that exact thought before he finally ignored Beckett and just did it?

Now that it looked like there was movement against Senator Bracken, that the Joint Task Force with Secret Service actually had solid evidence, then that meant a win for Kate - a win for justice. She was getting what she'd asked of him, what he'd promised that day in the park - he wouldn't assassinate Bracken, he wouldn't take the law into his own hands.

But Castle wasn't a police officer, and Black didn't abide by normal laws. Castle had done some of his best work in the assassination business, upsetting cruel foreign dictators, taking out the head of a drug cartel, rescuing American and British hostages in Ireland by sniper shooting the leader of an extreme faction of the IRA.

He swore he would do the job the next time they met. No matter what Kate said or worried about for the future of the regimen, they had what they needed to reverse engineer this thing. He was going to put a bullet in his father's brain.

Actually, if he could get close enough, he was going to break Black's neck. Be absolutely sure. Be able to feel his heart stop beating.

They'd walked for miles in the middle of the monsoon when she started to speed up; he couldn't understand how she could be going quite that fast. He felt like the ground beneath them was liquifying. The rain beat down so hard that the mud oozed with his every step and dragged at his feet. The forest floor was turning marshy, the usual roots and rocks seemed to give way to plant and animal decay.

The canopy over their heads blocked out most of the sunlight, but the rain slashed straight through the trees and kept them drenched even in this dense portion of the forest. Fungi seemed to grow out of nowhere, or maybe now that everything was so wet, Castle noticed their brilliant colors in stark relief against the dark bark of the trees. Neon colors that pulsed in his eyes.

And Kate went even faster.

Castle picked up his feet and slogged through it, squinted through the rain. It was hot and stuck to his skin, and his shoulder was beginning to beat in time to his own heart.

Oh.

Oh, the gunshot. Shot. That...

Not only did the fungi seem more vibrant, but the shrubs here were thicker, more woody and demanding. Their leaves were hardy, and the flowers were a thin, wispy yellow. Castle reached out with his uninjured arm and touched the asterid with a finger, narrowed his eyes as he recalled a faint memory from his father's damn flash cards.

"Kate," he called. "Hold on."

She stopped ahead of him and he studied the plant, tried to remember if it was leaf or root or flower that was most important.

"Castle." She came back to him and touched his wrist; he realized after a long moment that she was taking his pulse. "We really need to get to the extraction point before you..."

"Yeah, about that."

Panic crested across her face but he shook his head and reached for the leaves of the shrub with his hand.

"I'm okay. It's a clotting agent. Roots, leaves, flowers - I can't remember which - but natives used it for poison arrows."

"Poison arrows," she repeated.

"Make a paste, put it on my shoulder," he explained poorly. "I think..."

"Yeah, okay. I can do that."

"Don't ingest it," he warned. "Don't lick your fingers or..."

"Castle?"

"I think it's worse than I thought," he murmured. His back was on fire now, and the rain stung his neck. "Maybe you should look at it."

Her fingers curled tightly around his forearms and he was inordinately grateful for the sudden support.

"Turn around," she rasped.

At that moment the rain ceased entirely, a hush blanketing the forest floor, and the leaves dripped and groaned under the weight of water. Castle took a step and turned so she could see his back, his knees feeling like rubber.

"Oh God," she whispered.

"It's bad?"

"I - shit. Castle. How are you still standing?"

He felt his mouth working but his tongue was curiously dry.

"Okay, okay," she husked. "Baby, sit down."

"Not sure I'll get back up," he admitted.

"I need your shirt off so I can see. We'll use it to bind the wound. This is - oh, shit, Castle."

"Yeah, I got it," he muttered. His skin was hot and his fingertips felt strange; he wondered if it was through and through or if the bullet was getting lodged deeper in his shoulder. "Can you see if it the bullet exited?"

Her fingers were light along his back and then suddenly sharp and he grunted, jerking in reflex.

"Looks like it passed through," she murmured. "You were right. It's a graze - technically, but it tore out a chunk of muscle right here."

"Feels it." He used his other hand to reach for the asterid plant, tried to remember its technical name. "Hispidus. Yeah. Put this on it. Stop the blood. Mash it up with a rock and soak up the juices with the bandage."

"Bandage will have to be your shirt," she muttered. "At least it's stopped raining. Can you take your shirt off or do I need to cut it?"

He experimented with a little movement, but it was okay; he'd be okay. Felt better sitting down. "I got it."

He pulled the material from his back and yanked it over his head, gritting his teeth at the burn across his skin. He held out the soaked garment to her and she wrung it out with a grim look on her face.

"Not going to die, Beckett."

"You better not," she muttered back at him. "Not after all this."

He smiled back at her, kept smiling until her dark concern gave way - a little bit - to some of that rueful love. He must have lost a lot of blood, if she was looking at him like that. "I'm really okay," he promised. "Just wrap the wound and we'll keep going."

When she came into him this time, it wasn't to inspect his shoulder but to give him a kiss, a soft one, a brush of her lips. He treasured it.

His shirt was soaked with blood. It made her nauseous, her hands coming away pink when she'd wrung rainwater out of the material. How could she have missed this?

He'd told her he was fine, she'd felt the heat of blood outside the perimeter walls, so how did she miss all this?

"Stop beating yourself up," he muttered.

She lifted her gaze to the back of his head as if she could see his expression, but she sighed and didn't answer. The leaves and flowers of the plant he'd picked out were pulpy, stringy things, making it difficult to create any kind of paste.

But she dutifully pressed it into the material she'd ripped from his shirt, folded it over to make a kind of compress. She laid it on top of his shoulder where the bullet had marked a gruesome trajectory, and he stumbled a little.

"You okay?"

"Okay," he echoed.

Beckett slowly wound the strips of t-shirt under his armpit and over his shoulder, making it secure. She hadn't pushed him about the wound because Castle was always more forthcoming about his injuries; he was the one who kept reminding her that holding it back only endangered the mission.

If you were on my team, I'd bust you for putting us all at risk. Triage in the field, Beckett.

She pressed the bandage down against his shoulder and felt the answering flinch of his muscles; the blood soaked the top layer but the stupid plant paste seemed to actually be working. No more blood seeped out from under the t-shirt, and what was on his back was just the rain-pinked rivers from earlier.

"Seems to be working," she murmured.

She was trying not to feel guilty, feel responsibly for this one. But her stomach was churning with how damn close they'd gotten, how it could have been so much worse.

"I'm usually the one hiding injuries," she said, knotting the strip of t-shirt she'd used. "Not you."

"I didn't notice it," he said, a little half shrug. The jungle was steaming after the rainfall, and she had to reach up and swipe the hair out of her eyes.

"How's it feel?"

"Better. Not quite so shaky."

Shaky. Shit. She circled around to see his face, but no longer was his skin cast in that pallor. He looked better, actually, and she hoped it was just sleeplessness and poor diet and blood loss and - oh, right - a bullet wound.

A bullet wound.

"Too close," she shook her head. "That was too close."

"But we got what we needed," he said, trying to smile at her. "I'm okay. Don't carry this too, Kate."

Carry it. She carried a lot, didn't she? She didn't know how to drop anything, didn't know where to put it if it wasn't on her shoulders.

Castle reached out with his good arm and wrapped it around her, drew her in against his wet chest. She huffed but laid her cheek to his skin, her palm over his heart.

"Not your responsibility, not your fault. My father started this - decades ago. Whatever decisions we have to make, whatever happens, we do the best we can. We've got the regimen; now we just need to get out of here. So lead the way."

She stepped back from him, saw the strength in his eyes. She didn't have words to answer him because there was still part of her that carried it, but at least she could keep going now. At least it didn't cripple her.

"And Kate? Maybe just a little slower this time."

She kept closer to him, slackened her pace until she was going so slowly that he was growling at her to stop babying him. The terrain was too rough to hold his hand like she really wanted - they'd never keep their balance - but she stuck to his side.

"Are you okay?" she said finally, her thumbs tucked under the straps of the pack to keep from reaching out to him again.

"I promise I'll tell you if I feel dizzy," he grumbled.

"No, I mean... your father."

He didn't answer that one, but she read it as a thinking silence and kept her mouth shut, waiting on him. They'd explored so much of this in therapy after Black had tried to kill her, but this time she'd gone running to the problem.

It had to be part of the reason why he'd ignored his own bullet wound for goodness sake, in order to look at the scrape on her leg. His response was all out of proportion but since he'd just spent the whole jungle trek asking her to stop going it alone and really partner with him on this, she had let him look at her leg.

She'd given in to his emotional need rather than his physical, because she was inept at balancing the two. She understood the physical better; it was always plain to her what came next. She sucked at emotional.

But she was trying. She'd missed the bullet wound because she'd been worried about the emotional, and while her usual reaction would be to obsess over his physical state once more, she wasn't going to do that now.

She wasn't. She could learn - she could figure this out. She was an intelligent thirty-four year old woman who wanted to start a family with her husband; she could put some work into figuring out what was going on in his head and how she could help.

"Castle," she prompted. "I'm sorry your father turned out to be such a bastard."

He barked out a laugh. "Ah."

She hated it when he responded with ah, like he found her entire attempt at communication amusing. "Ah? That's all?"

"Sorry, I mean - yes. He really did turn out to be a bastard."

"I - that sounds harsh-"

"No, no. Beckett. That was perfect. A bastard and so much more."

She reached out and gripped his forearm, smoothing her thumb over his bones, needing connection. "I don't know how it happened - not with having him for a father, but Rick - you're such a good man."

He shot her a look both indulgent and pleased at the same time. He probably saw what she was doing - it wasn't hard to see - but he liked it anyway. She was so bad at speaking to his needs like this; she spoke better with touch. But she was going to put the words out there and see if it worked.

"You have honor and integrity in your work - you won't leave people behind. You're always open-minded to see the good in people-"

"That's you," he gruffed, shrugging his shoulders. "You're the one who did that."

"No, love. I couldn't make you do anything you didn't think was right. You always had it in you, even if maybe it got suppressed. You were already a good man when I met you, struggling to make your stand. I just came along and stood with you."

Castle flipped his hand and curled his fingers up to touch hers; she took his hand for a tight squeeze despite the awkwardness of the movement as they walked.

And that seemed to do it. The key to unlocking him was - after all - just her touch. He started quietly, his voice so low she almost didn't hear the words.

"He has always put the program first," Castle said. "And I never cared until I met you. It was just how it was. And then you gave me life, showed me what passion and dedication and pride looked like. In comparison, Black's twisted versions of those things were shadow imitations. Hollow."

She couldn't help leaning closer, brushing her body along his, shoulders bumping to hear his words, to give him what he needed with her lack of space. She didn't have words to prompt him but he kept going anyway.

"And now, he doesn't matter. What he did to me, what he's done and is doing - none of that matters at all because I have you. Because you're here. I get to have all those things I never had and - and more. This life is... all because of you."

Kate turned her mouth to his bare shoulder, kissed his skin. He tasted faintly of iron and mud, the blood and the earth, but it was intoxicating because he was alive.

"If he - took you from me - if you died because of him, I don't know that I could... all of it would be gone, just like that. What would be the point of passion or pride or determination if you were... I just want a chance at keeping you alive. Give me a shot. I can do a lot of impossible things, Kate, love. I can do anything with you. Just give me the chance."

She swallowed the rough corners of the words he'd released and laid her cheek to his good shoulder, abandoning any attempt to keep up their pace. Maybe it was true that he needed to get to a hospital, but it was equally true that he needed to say these things to her and she needed to make him some promises in return.

"I can't tell you that I wouldn't want the regimen for you. I can't promise that I won't obsess over keeping you with me and alive and-" Kate choked off that line and cleared her throat. "But I can promise that I do it with you next time - every time. Even if it feels like I have no other options, I'll come to you first anyway."

"Together, right?" he rasped. "I just want us together."

"Of course," she said quickly. "From now on. Together. That's how we do this."

His grip on her hand loosened and only then did she realize how he'd been clinging for dear life, as if she might leave, as if it might be too late.

"I used to idolize him," Castle said. "At first. At the beginning. And then I merely feared and respected him. Somewhere along the way it turned into a rebellion against that attitude of superiority and self-righteousness, but you know what was always there? I loved him. I wanted him to love me."

She closed her eyes for a moment, the grief of a little boy heavy over her, but Castle kept going, his feet picking up and going a little faster as if he could outrun the truth.

"I wanted him to just... but that's dead. It's dead. What remains is hatred. I hate him. For what he's done to you, to me. But I'm afraid that might be worse. I'm afraid of what I'll do to him the next time."

The beacon worked without a hitch.

They stood in the trees with the clearing spread out before them, listening to the helicopter coming in low. It wasn't exactly silent, but it was fast, and Castle was hustling her out from under the canopy before the runners even touched the earth.

The last time she'd been running towards a helicopter, Castle had been bleeding out, near death, and she'd been shoving him onto a craft not made for cargo, praying he'd survive. With his father her only help.

This time she ran with her husband towards their transportation, the wind whipping around their faces and his hand around her arm to keep them together. Without the steam and sauna of the rainforest, her sweat and the rain were sticking to her, drying itchy on her skin.

Last time on the Russian steppe, she didn't know if Castle would survive, and she'd been left alone to face the wolves, telling herself over and over that with Black piloting him out of there, Castle would make it. And when Castle made it, he'd come back for her.

Now they couldn't be separated. Now they were leaving the Congo together, sweat-stained and ragged and bleeding, but alive. Alive. And the she had cases of serum carefully contained in the pack on her back - and with it a hope for their future.

When they got to the chopper, the pilot was Mitchell himself, giving them a relieved thumbs up and reaching over his head to flip a switch. Beckett crawled into the beast first, Castle's hand at her ass to give her a 'boost' she didn't need. She turned around on the open metal decking and shot him a look, but he was grinning.

Castle came in behind her and took her hand, slapped it over a metal handle, wrapped her fingers around it. "Hold on!" he shouted in her ear.

She nodded and saw Castle doing the same, and then he leaned forward and thumped twice on the back of Mitch's seat. The bird began to rise with a bump of its nose, the metal decking cold under her ass. The rainforest was waving in the whirl of air made by the helicopter, and she scanned the forest floor, searching for signs they'd been followed.

There was nothing.

Beckett pressed her body close to Castle's in the belly of the chopper, the bite of wind making her shiver. He turned to look at her, but whatever he said was lost in the roar of the rotor blades, snatched away by the wind.

Instead of trying to talk, she tightened her grip on the safety bar set into the side of the helicopter and reached out her free hand to his neck, tugged him into her. They kissed hard at first, a little desperate and maybe still angry, frustrated that it'd gone this way and hurt by the whole ordeal.

And then it burned away. His lips touched hers lightly, came back again for more of a give and take, the heat of him replacing the chill of their ride. She slipped her tongue along his, stroking, trying to soften.

It was an I love you he didn't have to hear in her voice to feel.

It was one of the few perfect things she could give him.

Castle walked into the CIA station in Libreville under his own power. Shirtless, but he wasn't about to let them stretcher him into the basement infirmary. His shoulder burned but it wasn't anything he hadn't suffered before.

The station chief was grumbling under his breath about unauthorized movements in his territory, but Castle figured he was just blowing smoke. The guy had the whole island off the coast to contend with, and he wouldn't care about a couple of rogue agents scooped out of the Gabonese Congo.

Mitchell had stayed with the Chinook chopper on the roof's helipad - none of them trusted anyone and it was a loan from the Army Rangers anyway - but Castle had known it wasn't even something to bring up to Beckett. She wouldn't be staying behind on that chopper.

Beckett didn't make a sound; she followed him into the secure elevator and then down into the bowels of the station. She was carrying the backpack down at her side, her hand in a fist around the straps, definitely not willing to leave it behind either. Everything precious stayed together, right?

Castle was learning not only not to ask, but he was learning not even to think it. Hadn't occurred to him to leave her well-protected in the Chinook with Mitchell while he sank deeper into a CIA station that might have been taken over by Black's dark legion long ago. Maybe that was progress or maybe it was just stupidity.

Either way, her fingers skimming his waist as they stepped off the elevator were cool and lovely, made him both more alert and less surly. Station Chief Sanderson led them through a secure hallway guarded by two MPs and into a brightly-lit infirmary.

The CIA's on-call medic was already readying a tray with sutures and instruments, washing his hands over the sink. "Sit down," he said noncommittally.

Sanderson gave a half-salute that the doc grunted to, and then Sanderson left them alone in the infirmary. Beckett was nudging him towards the elevated dentist's chair, but Castle was glad to sit; he straddled it with a sigh and patted the plastic in front of him.

She shook her head, grabbed a rolling stool from the corner even as the medic took his own seat. No introductions, no greeting, the man simply pushed Castle to lean forward and started dabbing at the gunshot wound with iodine.

Kate took his free hand between her own and sat hunched over on the stool at his side, her smile sweet and deep. Filled with relief. She studied the medic's movements as he injected a local into Castle's shoulder, but Castle studied her.

She looked good actually. Healthy, strong, a little damp but he liked her wet. (Yeah, like that too.) Her hair had started to dry in tangled waves around her head, making her look like a college student fresh from a sorority rush rather than a CIA agent recalled home after a grueling mission.

Her fingers stroked his hand, down and round, along his digits, circling his knuckles, settling into the lifelines in his palm. Her gaze shifted from the medic's work to Castle's face and their eyes met in an electric and instant connection, her lips softening into a smile.

"Hey, there," she murmured. Her mouth widened, a gleam of teeth. "Just a scratch, Castle. No need for that."

He huffed a surprised laugh and nodded to the backpack she'd left at her feet. "So, it's done."

She glanced down as well, but neither of them named the thing they'd acquired. "It's done."

There were a hundred other things he wanted to say to her, but he wouldn't in front of an unknown medic. They'd take the serum and the stabilizers to Logan at Stone Farm, let him and Boyd and Threkeld have their way with the regimen, hopefully find out how to reproduce it. Even if that never happened, it was still enough to last him for a lifetime - if they were conservative.

She didn't have to worry about him. He wasn't going to be taken down by some damn flu again. But all he said was, "How's the leg?"

"Stings," she said, still smiling.

The medic glances up and leaned forward over Castle. "I'll get to you next."

"Of course," she murmured, but her indulgent smile was for Castle.

He wasn't angry with her any more; that had evaporated in the jungle. His trust was a little shaky, like a tower with a few key support pillars removed, but they were building it back. It could be repaired.

She gave a swift glance to the medic stitching his shoulder and then back to him once more, her eyes catching his and her smile beaming now. I love you, she mouthed at him.

He gave it back with a curl of his fingers around her hands, nudging his knee between her legs on the stool. She scooted forward and squeezed her knees around his thigh, smiling brilliantly now, illuminating the whole room.

She'd given him the words but he'd given her the actions, and maybe finally they had learned to speak each other's language.

So ends Close Encounters 15: Never Say Never Again

Stay Tuned for Close Encounters 16: Skyfall

Kate woke instantly with dreams of Africa. This time it had been baby hippos crying for their dead mother, though the night before it had been Castle trapped in the rubble, Beckett unable to shift the debris from him as he bled out around, unable to even get to the regimen case just out of reach, all of it for nothing.

But that wasn't real.

They had the regimen.

Just to reassure herself, Kate rolled over in bed and curled closer to her husband, listened to his heart beating steadily in his chest. He had a stupid grin on his face too, and it made her smile, but she lifted up on her elbow and checked his bedside table.

The bottle of pills were there, one-third empty after a couple weeks of taking them every day. It was part of their morning routine now, and he didn't even grumble at her for it. After she'd brought the serum to Boyd and Threkeld, the two doctors had been thrilled to have the 'complete set' as they'd called it.

Reverse engineering the regimen was number one on their priority list, but Castle was unwilling to continue taking the serum regularly. And since they didn't have enough for a lifetime of even periodic ingestion, she had agreed it wasn't feasible. But to keep his blood cells stable - super stable - they'd agreed on these pills.

They weren't the regimen, but they were an extremely low-dose mixture of serum compounded with elements of the stabilizers. Almost like an inoculation, as Threkeld had explained it to them. This way, Castle's lipoproteins would remain high enough for his body systems, as well as adding just enough super to his diet so that he wouldn't fall into an immune response like before.

She was proud of him; he was being so patient with her on this. She was proud of herself too, for being able to compromise on it, to think it through logically. Castle had never taken the injections every day - only before and after a mission or when he'd been injured in the field, according to what he could remember - and the paperwork Castle had brought home with them from the Congo seemed to back him up on that.

So the schedule of injections and pills wasn't down to a science yet, but they'd agreed together on this program of recovery. They had even started up maintenance on their covert skills and self-defense techniques as a team. He'd asked her to promise to stay alive, but she only asked the same of him - and they were working together to keep those promises.

Kate leaned in and softly kissed those smiling lips, ran her fingers down his chest to caress his hip. When he still didn't wake, despite that good morning reaction to his dream, she slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

She felt really good for the first time in a long time. Black was still out there, a dark unknown, but even that was something of a relief. If they needed his specialty knowledge of the regimen and what it had done to Castle, then at least it was out there.

No, not just good. She felt amazing.

Castle still loved her, had forgiven her, and nothing could break them.

Coming Soon to an alert near you...