This has been hanging around my hard drive unfinished since the finale. I sort of know where it's going and sort of don't, but one thing is, it'll be short, because there's not much time left to finish it now. Consider this a companion piece to The Trouble With Paris, which *does* have to wait to see what canon delivers. This is the other side of the story, AU, hiatus bridge, wishful thinking and all that.
The prologue was written long before the sneaks came out, and appears here unchanged. Sometimes there is only one logical way to go. I can tell you the rest is certainly not going to happen in 4x01.
Unbeta'd. I'll probably regret that :)
0—0—0
It begins with Josh stirring rehydrated mashed potatoes in the hospital cafeteria. It ends with him in the surgical observation deck, watching the BP monitor spiking again, watching Sam Kovaks - the only thoracic trauma surgeon in New York Josh would trust to do this better than him - stepping back from the table, hands drenched in blood, waiting for his interns to stabilise the patient so he can finish the job. It's all routine, one surgeon watching another perform his daily miracle. It's all routine, except the GSW to the chest they unloaded from the ambulance four hours ago has turned out to be a woman Josh last saw asleep in his bed.
0-0-0
It begins for Castle in the waiting room, surrounded by his family, hers, real and constructed. Her father, pacing without realising he's walking. His brothers-in-arms, stiff in their dress blues, her closest friend stubbornly wiping streaming eyes. His child presses against his side, still shaking, trying to comfort him as she comforts herself; his mother does the same, clearly thinking of scotch.
It ends with the surgeon telling Jim Beckett that his daughter's 'one tough cookie', that she's still hanging on.
It ends, but it doesn't; there's still Castle banging his way into recovery, two nurses vainly pulling on his arms, until the sight of the doctor bending over the woman covered in machinery brings him up short. Of course it's Josh. Of course it would be Josh. Castle's own attempt at heroism was futile, a moment too late, though god knows he'd have taken that bullet if he could. So Josh will be the hero. It fits the story well. So what if Kate Beckett spends her life with another man, as long as she still has a life to spend?
It ends, but it doesn't. And so it goes on.