A/N: Based on a prompt from castlefanficprompts. I hope the prompter enjoys!
Ryan looks up at Beckett as she finishes speaking, her hand curling around her enlarged bump. "You do realize that you technically don't work here anymore."
"Technicalities aren't going to solve this case," she snaps back and rolls her eyes when she sees her fiancé flinch. "Take Castle with you, I think he's going a little stir crazy around here."
Esposito narrows his eyebrows at her and then turns his gaze to the other guys standing across and just shrugs. "Can I go?" He feels silly asking, knowing that two days ago when Beckett had gone on maternity leave, he'd been temporarily promoted to her spot and mostly called the shots. Until this case brought her and her writer back in.
"No." Kate answers. "You're staying with me. We can go over financials and see if there are any discrepancies."
He bites back a groan and throws a helpless glance at Ryan and Castle as they back away from the ticking-bomb that goes by the name Beckett. "See you, 'Sito." Castle grins and then presses his lips against his fiancée's cheek hastily. It's a beat later that they both begin to move toward the elevator, leaving Esposito on a suicide mission.
"Have you heard from Ryan or Castle?" Beckett asked as she waddled - yes, he took notice of that with a grin - back to her chair and slid down. "We sent them out there two hours ago. They should be back by now."
"Don't worry," he says quickly, remembering Lanie telling him again and again to keep things stress free around Beckett since she announced her pregnancy. "I'm sure they're fine. Probably just found a lead and ran with it."
Kate sighs, sinking into her seat and nodding her head. "Yeah, you're right." She said quietly. Since she'd become pregnant, there had been few times that she hadn't spent time with her fiancé. The separation was killing her. In an attempt to distract herself, she pulled a file and began to read as officers began to hover around the TV.
Esposito noticed it first, the building in flames and the sheer shock among the officers. It takes him a moment to register what building it is. Then, his heart sinks.
"Beckett," he says cautiously. "Isn't that the building we sent Ryan and Castle to?"
Kate huffed out a breath as she turned in her seat, a sinking feeling in her chest as she saw the building in flames. She tried to speak but her mouth opened wildly. Instead, she picked up her phone and tried Castle's number, throwing her phone down in frustration when she got voicemail.
"It can't be," she muttered under her breath. "It just can't."
Throughout the course of her pregnancy, Kate had gotten used to the aches and the pains and the swollen feet and the pampering from her husband. More recently, the appearance of Braxton Hicks contractions had made her life nothing short of a living hell.
However, the pains that shoot through her are different. She's not sure how to explain it, its feels numbing almost. As she stands, looking at the flames, she tries to ignore the pinching and pulling and her child as he rolls around inside her. It doesn't get easier, with castle and Ryan stuck inside the building she can't help but wonder if this will be the last moment she ever spends with her fiancé.
"Kate," she hears a voice at her side. "What are you doing here?"
She freezes at the voice, turning toward her best friend with a guilty look on her face. She tries to think of an explanation, but the pain shoots to her again and she buckles, gritting her teeth.
"Kate?" Lanie's voice is softer now. "Are you okay?"
She wants to answer yes, but it somehow doesn't seem that easy. Her best friend is a trained medical examiner, and she knows for a fact that she will not be able to pull the wool over her eyes. Kate take a deep breath and then exhales it.
"Castles inside," she says instead. "With Ryan."
Jenny Ryan steps out from behind Lanie with a distraught look on her face. Kate sympathizes and recognizes it look almost immediately, expecting that the same mirrors on her own. Kate takes a deep breath again ignoring the shooting pain as it rolls through her. When the sound of water stops hitting her eardrums, she becomes numb once more.
She turns around quickly, ignoring the numbing pain as she catches Esposito's glance. He advances toward her. "They've searched the building," he tells her. "There's no sign of Castle or Ryan anywhere."
"That's impossible!" Kate nearly yells. "Castle wouldn't just not answer my phone call, Espo; neither would Ryan for you, or Jenny for that matter." She glances at the blond who simply nods her head, and Kate is thankful that her assumption was correct.
Esposito places a palm on either side of her shoulders, attempting to calm her down but it doesn't do much. She's tenser than needed and he doesn't seem to notice how every few minutes of contact she tenses again. "Beckett," he sighs. "If they're in there, we don't know where they are. We've looked over the blueprints, they've been inside… there's no one there."
She feels the world around her dissolve to nothingness and then she feels her eyes close, inhaling the smoke and the sweat and the tears as they roll down her cheeks. She feels a pinch again, and then a rush of water and pain and she cringes. When she opens them again, it's Lanie in front of her, calling worriedly. "Kate," she says. "Your water broke."
Kate pushes forward again, trying to stand when Lanie pushes her back. "Kate, you're in labor," she tells her, as though Kate hadn't already figured that out. "You have to stay here."
"But Castle," she whimpers. "He needs to be here for this, Lanie."
It's been an hour since her water broke, although it's felt like a lifetime. There's no new news, no hidden passageway that hides her fiancé and she's growing more and more restless. The medic on the scene said she was six centimetres dilated when he checked her out only twenty minutes ago. They have time. She can get up, find out where the hell Ryan and Castle are, get them safe and then find time to deliver her child.
She tries to get up again but pain rips through her, causing her to fall back against the sheets and scream. The most they had for pain was morphine and she'd denied that instantly. She needed to get to a hospital, she knew that. But not without Rick.
"There's a hidden room not on the blueprints," he pants, glancing between Jenny, Lanie and then Kate. "It's the only place they can be." He runs his hand over his face and pushes himself up into the back of the ambulance. "There's only one problem, though: the buildings going to collapse. He won't send any of his guys in on a rescue mission that might not involve any survivors."
"They have to," Kate speaks before she can think, a whimper in her throat. "Let me talk to them," she tries to stand again, but the medic clears his throat.
"I don't think you're going anywhere," he tells her.
Kate huffs an annoyed response, but another contraction hits and she reaches out blindly, grasping the first hand she can find and squeezing it tightly. It's not until the contraction has been rode out that she opens her eyes and notices that it's Esposito's hand she had found. His face is screwed up in pain that she cannot describe and she grins an apology, falling back against the pillow.
"What are we going to do, Javi?"
Jenny steps out when they're talking, finding the chief and tapping him on the forearm. When he turns around, he visibly softens. "My husband is in there," she says before he can speak. "We have a daughter. She's six months old."
If the chief felt any emotion, he showed nothing. "I apologize, Mrs.."
"Ryan." Jenny answers. "One of the men you are leaving in there to die is named Kevin. The other is a mystery novelist, Richard Castle." She tucks her arms together. "Imagine what will be said about the New York Fire Department when a famous author is burned to the ground because 'no action' was taken."
"I do not respond well to threats," he tenses and leans forward to her. "So I best not be hearing a threat."
"It's not a threat," Jenny said quietly. "It's a promise."
And then, before he can huff another angry letter in her direction, she escapes back to the ambulance.
"Push, Kate." The medic is commanding her, but she's too tired of a sudden. Twenty minutes of steady pushing does that, or so she's been told. "Just a few more pushes and your baby will be here."
She wishes Castle were here to witness this. She wishes that she could tell him how much she hates him and loves him at the same time. Instead, her best friend stands at her side, clasping her hand between her two palms, whispering words of encouragement.
As another contraction hits, she barrels down and pushes again.
It's only a few more pushes – the medic was right – until she feels the baby slip from her, until she hears his tiny cries. She reaches her arms out instinctively and wraps him in her warmth, pressing her lips against his temple as the tears stream from both mother and son. "Hi, James," she whispered quietly. Despite coming into the world screaming, he's calmed down significantly since then. He stares up at her with wonder in his blue eyes. He looks so much like his father.
"You know, if your Daddy were here, he would have wanted to call you Cosmo," she chokes on her words, cradling her newborn against her chest. She presses another kiss to his tiny hand as it wraps around her finger. "God, I hated that name."
"What's wrong with Cosmo?"
Kate lifts her gaze and she meets his, her mouth falling agape. She's hallucinating, she's sure, but when her fiance, covered in soot and dirt advances toward her, she can't help but reach up and trace his features, feeling how real he feels underneath her fingertips.
"Kate," he presses a kiss against her temple. "I'm sorry I missed this."
"No, no." She's crying harder now – damn hormones. "It's my fault, I sent you there." She leans up and presses her lips against his, ignoring the pain of labor and how stiff her body felt from lying on the uncomfortable gurney. She needs to be close to her fiancé right now. "You're here," she breathed heavily.
Castle brightens and leans his lips closer to hers, murmuring, "always" repetitively.