Bursting into Life
AN: Hi there. So this is my first Castle fic, and my first published story in quite some time. This was actually inspired by Chezchuckles' story, Things to Do in a Boring Meeting. If you haven't read that, I highly recommend it. You might not see the resemblance at first, but perhaps by the end? We'll see. Thank you for reading.
Disclaimer: I do not own Castle, nor am I affiliated with Castle or ABC in any way.
"Kate." It's a croak, it's quiet and rasping, and for a moment she thinks she's imagined it completely. But it's there.
"Castle?" It's tenuous, incredulous, and she can barely believe that she's asking but she's got to be sure. She's got to check and hear for herself that he's really gone, that it's just her wishful thinking, before she can give up on him and just walk away. "Castle!"
It's a long moment, the longest of her life, because this desolation makes every instant feel like a lifetime but then –
"Kate." Again. It's again. It's – "I'm here. Kate, I'm – I'm okay. I'm just – "
The air whooshes out of her lungs in a gust. "Castle." It's reverent and adoring and she doesn't care. It's all she can possibly manage to force out when she's cresting on this wave of relief.
"Kate. I'm okay. I'm – I think I'm just a floor below."
Now that she's thinking, now that the fog of panic has started to clear, she notices that his voice takes longer to reach her than if he'd just been on the other side of the doors. One floor. God. It could have been so much worse.
"Just – " she swallows. "Just one floor?" It's moronic and repetitive. She knows she's better trained for emergencies than this, that she ought to do more, say more, but for once she's too personally invested to step back and she doesn't know how.
"I think…" His voice rises up to meet her, unsure. "I think so."
The moment is heavy, weighted with both relief and fear. She takes a second to just breathe, but then doesn't know where to go from there.
It's silent for a few more long, heavy breaths and it's enough to get her heart thudding in her chest.
"Say something." It's louder than before, sounding more like her familiar Castle, but she can hear the plea hidden underneath the artificial composure.
Oh. Castle. "I don't – I don't know." God, what do you say in a situation like this? She swallows thickly, spits the words out. "What do you want me to say?"
"Anything." And it's this that tugs at her already battered heart. His voice comes out smooth, an eerie calm that doesn't settle quite right. He's hiding his desperation, his panic, for her. Even now, he's thinking of her. She closes her eyes, trying to muster up the strength and the wit, but the only thing he asks for, she can't give him. He has all the words, the most beautiful words that never fail her. She knows that whatever she could say would never live up, could never compare – but damn it, she's got to do something. She has to try.
"Castle, I can't… it's hard to think of anything else right now." It's a horrible attempt and she knows it, but she hopes that the sound of her voice, regardless of what she's saying, might provide some semblance of comfort.
"Don't think about now, then." It's insistent, and she cringes at the image of him that her mind has conjured, alone and utterly terrified.
She can't help but want to help, to soothe, but she doesn't – "Then what, Castle? Think of what?" It comes out dry, cold, but she needs to control herself. Losing it certainly isn't going to keep him calm.
"I don't know." His voice is sullen, spiritless, and she can feel the grief begin to swallow her whole.
"The future." It startles her, his sudden idea. There's a lilt to his voice as it picks up at the end, as if he realized the ingenuity of his idea as it spilled from his mouth. And although she can't see him, she knows a bit of light has returned to his eyes. "A year from now, three years from now. Tell me, Kate."
The request is simple but the tone of his voice and the use of her first name is enough for her to stumble over her next breath. Her mind is whirling and God,how did they get here?
It had started as a basic follow up on a lead. They'd gone to rouse a suspect but when they found his apartment empty, they'd turned to leave. Castle had been whining lately about always being a step behind – she drives, she walks ahead, she's first out the door and first into every building – so when the elevator doors finally opened she stepped aside and let him get on ahead of her. He'd already walked through when she saw a fluttering of movement in the stairwell. Nothing was there, though, when she turned to look, but by the time she'd turned back to the elevator, the doors were already sliding shut on his amused smirk.
She shook her head, letting a little smile flit across her features as she thumbed the down button, expecting the doors to pop right open on a waiting Castle.
What she didn't expect was the resounding boom from inside the shaft, the clamor of the cart slamming against the walls, and a man's shout that had her heart dropping through her stomach.
Because it's Castle inside the elevator.
She lurched off her feet, laying flat on her stomach, palm pressed against the closed elevator doors. She pawed foolishly at the seal, the junction where the doors met, as if she could separate them with sheer will.
Someone had heard the noise, surely, and called it in, but Kate had taken those precious first moments to make sure they knew – police, Fire, the 12th – anyone and everyone who could help. They knew what happened, and they knew it was Castle.
So here she is, front splayed against the dirty parquet floor and hand pushed against the doors, trying in vain to reach him or, at the very least, to become as close as she can possibly get.
The future. Think, Kate. Think.
She's panicked and desperate and thinking about seeing his brilliant blue eyes one last time when it hits her like a sudden punch to the gut.
"It's the middle of the afternoon," she starts, and she can feel his attention snap to her, latch on, as if they're connected by elastic. The connection pushes her forward, makes her surge onward into the story just starting to form in her mind. "It's hot… July."
"Where?" He breathes, voice rough and thick, already caught up in imaging the scene.
"The precinct," she blurts. Isn't her greatest idea, but it fits. "The air conditioning is broken and the bullpen feels like it's at 150 degrees. Everyone's coated in a thin sheen of sweat, no matter how many fans we turn on."
She clears her throat, tries to get past the sudden nervousness bubbling up in her stomach, and makes herself dampen it. This is more important – him, here, right now.
"I'm not supposed to be there. Gates has already ordered me home at least twice just that day, and for once you agree with her. You're working on your latest scheme to get me out, something about food and ice cream and a movie of my choice, when I'm hit with a searing pain in my back."
"Kate," he interjects, and she can picture his frown, the crease down his forehead. "The idea was to get our minds on to something more pleasant. This doesn't seem like it - "
"Hush, Castle." Her mouth lifts at the corners, and her admonishment, calm and strong, makes him as silent as one of her glares would.
"Where was I?" she teases, and he groans.
"Back. Pain." He bites, and she can tell she's making him shift his weight like he does when he's fighting the urge to do something, like reach out and touch her arm or brush a strand of hair behind her ear. She only knows because she's caught him, fidgeting nervously, and then moments later his hand is outstretched between them before he changes his mind and pulls back.
She shakes her head to clear it. The story.
"I call out your name, and when your eyes lock on mine you know immediately what's happened." She can picture it so easily, the way their minds sync like they so often do without any words spoken between them, and she hopes he can picture it, too.
"You insist on calling an ambulance. I try to stop you, tell you it's not that bad, we can drive, but I know my arguments are futile. Between you and the boys, all hovering over me, we make it down from homicide to the lobby to meet the EMTs. In less than a minute I'm on the stretcher in the ambulance and you're climbing in after me."
She pauses there, to let him see it all and to gather her thoughts. She's crafted it so perfectly in her mind's eye, it's so realistic and possible and she wishes –
"Kate." It rips her out of her thoughts and back to the present, to the cool metal against her hand and the man on the other side. "What are you doing?"
"Telling you a story." She knows it's snide and beside the point, but she can't help but want to keep this fantasy, this secret, unrevealed for just a few minutes longer.
"You're killing me, Kate." His voice is flat, equally measured, and she swallows.
"Do you trust me?" she asks, and for a minute she's met only with silence. "Rick, do you trust me?"
It comes back steady, immediate. "Yes." It reverberates in the cart, hangs in the air around them both like a connection, a promise.
"Then let me finish my story." Her tone is gentle, caressing, and she hopes it's an acceptable substitute for her hand over his, fingers curling into his palm. She takes his silence this time as acquiescence.
"The pain seems to be constant, but the intensity rises and ebbs in waves. I'm on my back, forced to look at the dull silver of the ambulance roof, but I reach out blindly, hand waving, and you grab on. You lace your fingers through mine, and suddenly I can breathe. I can ignore the EMTs calling out to each other and radioing in to the hospital, I can push back the pain, and just focus on the way your fingers are a constant pressure against mine. How your thumb traces soothing circles across the back of my hand."
The words feel good in her mouth, coming off of her lips, and if she's not mistaken she can hear a faint hum of approval from inside the elevator.
"Before I know it, we're there. I expect to be helped into a wheelchair, rolled through the ambulance bay and the ER and seen as soon as possible, but the mix of the words "cop" and "Richard Castle" have sent people running. I'm still on the stretcher, being pushed to the proper ward, and you're jogging behind, trying to catch up."
The image is even stronger now, if possible, and brings forward a flash of memories from a year ago. Not of being pushed in – that she can't remember, although she's sure Castle does, and she hopes he's not envisioning it now – but of the hospital in general. Too white, too bright, and too lonely.
She forges on.
"We're in a private room and a doctor's already there. In seconds they have me transferred onto the exam bed and my clothes are already off, although I can't seem to figure out if they'd just removed them or cut them off. They're trying to cover me with something, a gown or a sheet, but the pain is making me writhe and twist and I can't stay still long enough for the doctor to assess me."
Castle sucks in a breath, ready to interrupt again, she's sure, but she plows on ahead before he gets the chance.
"You plead with the doctor, ask if there's something she can give me for the pain before we start, but she says it's already too late and we're running out of time. The nurses and orderlies are trying to hook me up to a few machines, the functions of which I am too disoriented to figure out. They're trying to squeeze in next to me in this miniscule room, jostling you as they're running about, but you don't let go of my hand. You don't let go, and you're my lifeline. You're tethering me down, coaching me through the pain as I barely listen to the doctor and yet somehow manage to do what she's telling me."
She takes a deep breath, trying to formulate the words as she visualizes the scene. It's too much, too good, and there are no words worthy enough to describe this but she's got to try. She's left Castle hanging, worried about her even in this fictitious scenario.
Although it might be painful, dragging him through this, at least now he's not worried what could happen to himin the present moment or now, or now, or now.
That thought sends her surging onward, words tumbling out of her mouth before she can over-think it. "Then it's over before I even know it's begun." She doesn't really register his agonized cry coming from inside the shaft. Her vision has taken hold of her, regardless, so she doesn't stop now; couldn't even if she wanted to.
"The pain is over," she breathes. "And you're there, still holding my hand, smiling at me. I'm soaked in sweat, still in shock, I think, from the blur of the last few hours. My face is wet, and only after you reach out to brush my face do I realize I'm crying."
There's a dull thud from the shaft and the sound jerks her out of her own head like she's been physically yanked up out of her thoughts. Her breathing stutters, she's thinking the worst, and croaks out, "Castle?" in a half yell for which she doesn't know how she mustered up the power. She's scrambling, hands tearing against the crack of the elevator doors with renewed fervor, and almost misses the answering groan and response, not floors or feet away, but instead just inches.
"Kate." It's breathy and pained but at the same time there's this undercurrent that she doesn't quite grasp. If she had to name it, she'd say it's something like yearning or need, but her mind is too harried to give it adequate thought. "Keep going, please. Keep going."
She takes a deep breath, tries to calm herself, and only then does she realize that silent tears must have leaked out onto her cheeks when she wasn't paying attention. She swats them away, impatient, and takes in one more breath before going in for the finish.
"We're absorbed in each other, eyes locked like they sometimes do, when a wimpy but ragged cry draws our attention to the foot of the bed." She swallows, her throat thick, and has to force the next lines out on a desperate whisper. "She's gorgeous, Castle. She's ours. And she has your eyes."
"Kate…" she can hear the incredulity and the fascination in his voice, the joy, and she has never wanted anything as much as she wants to see his face right then.
Suddenly she's being ripped backwards, her hand losing contact with the cool metal of the elevator, and she's so engaged in her vision, in her story, in him, that she can't process what's going on around her. There are arms around her waist, pulling her back, and all she can think is no, she can't leave him. She can't –
"Beckett. Kate. Kate!" She thinks it's Castle at first, but it's hard to hear over what she realizes distantly are her own sobs. The voice is much closer, behind her, and somewhere in the back of her mind she realizes that it's not some phantom or suspect that has her but Esposito.
"Castle," she whispers to him, her voice ragged and thick from crying. Her mind is whirring, and in some distant corner she is thankful that Esposito still has a hold on her, because she certainly isn't capable of keeping herself up. Her thoughts are a constant pulse of Castle. Castle. Castle.that she can't overcome and she doesn't know if she even wants to.
"I know, Kate." He soothes, right at her ear. His free hand, the one not still wrapped tightly around her middle, comes to brush back the hair from her eyes. "I know. But we've got to let Fire get in there and get your boy out."
So she takes a deep breath, her heart thudding and pulse bounding with Castle and she lets herself sink back into that moment. The one with Rick looking right into her eyes as their baby, their daughter is placed into her arms and she can't think of anything but how much she loves him, loves them. It's all she can do while she stands there, waiting, to see if maybe, just maybe, that beautiful dream she's created can become more than just that – a dream.
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life
- Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol
AN: And that's all I wrote. Literally. Considering writing an epilogue if there is interest, either immediately following the end of this chapter or perhaps somewhat farther (a year from now? Three years from now?) into the future. Thank you for reading.