This one's for the very lovely Sid, who requested it - or the first part anyway - so any frothing vitriol can be directed straight to her please and thank you. Title is from Ballade of Dead Actors by William Ernest Henley, because well.

Into the Night Go

Irony twisted the seam of Castle's mouth this morning, made him grotesque and foreign to her, and for a moment Kate wanted to herd the kids behind herself and keep them safe from the animal of their father's grief.

The catering company called to say that they were going to be delayed, wouldn't be able to have the food ready for everybody arriving at the loft after the service like they'd originally planned, and Castle had growled and stalked away from the kitchen island. Left Kate hunched over it, phone still on speaker even though it was only her, only her trying to fix the problem.

It was always Martha who was the perfect hostess, the one to turn her back towards any issue that arose and have it skim right off. When their wedding fell apart around them, each perfect, precise element crumbling to ash and unspooling through their fingers, it was Martha that rallied. Martha that said never mind darlings, nothing we can't fix. Every party - and these Castles love their parties - has been Martha's baby, seen her flitting around the loft making sure everything is just right and swatting at her son when he calls her Mrs Dalloway.

The reception has gone pretty smoothly, nobody really anticipating an afternoon of great entertainment, but Kate keeps catching herself wishing that Martha were here to rally everybody, maybe perform a rousing showtune at the piano, and every time a rolling tide of grief washes over her.

"Mama," a small voice says, and Kate turns at the tug of Lennon's fingers in the bottom of her dress. Her little girl has been stoic all day, chin set firmly in defiance of her trembling anguish, and Kate sinks slowly to her knees. The hardwood crunches against her bones and she grunts, shifting a little and taking hold of both of Lennon's hands.

"What's wrong, sweet girl?"

Bottom lip caught between her teeth, Lennon stares down at the floor and the sleek, straight fall of her hair comes tumbling over one shoulder. "Can I go to my room?"

"Of course you can," Kate says gently, sliding her arms around her little girl and bringing her in close to her chest, one hand cradling the curve of her daughter's skull. "Of course. I'll come up and check on you in a little while."

Lennon untangles herself from her mother's embrace and Kate gets to her feet again, legs aching. They haven't gotten a lot of sleep in the past week or so, stress and grief keeping Kate and her husband both up long enough to watch the dawn peek over the edge of the world each morning, and she's stiff with it.

In the kitchen, she finds her boys squabbling over the last bagel bite and she sighs, a hand descending to the top of each of their heads and squeezing just a little, enough to make them both freeze and turn on the axis of her arm to look at her.

"Sorry Mom," Archer huffs, breaking the bagel in his hands into two halves and handing one of them over to his little brother.

Her boys play like lion cubs, have done since they were small. Roughhousing and roaring, dragging their father into the mix whenever they can get away with it, and it's been exacerbated the past week, the two of them feral in a way that has mostly gone unnoticed.

Yesterday, Kate came off the phone with the company arranging the flowers to find all three of her kids in the kitchen, Lennon ramrod straight and proper on a barstool with her big brothers growling at her feet. Actually on their hands and knees, teeth to the jugular, and Kate had dispersed them to opposite sides of the house to cool off.

Castle hasn't been much help in corralling the kids, but she understands - god, she of all people understands. If this, taming the wild beasts, makes it easier on her husband, she'll get right down onto the ground with them and join the fray herself.

There are people still milling in the living room, talking softly in a way that Kate finds unsettling. Martha's actor friends are loud, always a spill of noise and light into the loft, and to see them so subdued now feels like overhearing the murmuring of the dead. Alexis is holding court, accepting platitudes, and as Kate does a quick scan of the room she realises her husband is nowhere to be seen.

"Katie," her father's voice comes from right behind her and she jolts, spinning to see him. "Everything's under control here. Go find Rick."

"Right," she nods, smoothing her hands down the pencil skirt of her black dress. Her dad has been a godsend, especially today. Lennon has been brooding and silent, Archer and Flynn ferocious, but all three of them are still respectful - a little fearful - of their grandfather.

All too well, she remembers what that was like. When she was small, Kate wanted more than anything to impress her father, to hear him say how grown up she was, and her kids fall into prim silence at a look from him in much the same way she always did.

"Thanks, Dad," Kate says, accepting a kiss on her cheek before she heads for the office. Flynn is haunting Alexis' husband, a sombre little shadow sticking to his heels, and Kate exchanges a glance with her son, gives him a little nod.

Better this than more fighting with Archer.

All of the lights are off in the study, and even with the bookshelf walls allowing the lamplight from the living room to spill through, shadow drapes in rich swathes along the floor. Coming around the desk, Kate finds her husband on the floor with his back to it, knees drawn up and arms tight around them.

"Hey," she murmurs, sinking to her knees and reaching behind herself to tug off her shoes so that she can sit back on her heels without getting spiked. Castle's head rests back against the desk, his eyes closed, and for the first time the bloom of greying hair at his temples makes him look weary, instead of distinguished.

Reaching out, Kate unfastens his charcoal tie and slides it out from underneath his collar, wrapping the silk around her fingers over and over again as if she's about to spar. It feels all wrong, and she lets it pool in her lap instead, reaching out to touch her thumb to his jaw and circle.

"How are the kids?" he asks, and her heart sings out in gratitude. Even here, on what must be one of the worst days of his life, her husband's selflessness is staggering. This morning, he got all three of the kids dressed and ready to go while Kate coordinated last minute hurdles and tried to make herself somewhat presentable.

She had come out of the bedroom expecting to need to hassle the three of them into putting on their funeral clothes, found them instead nestled together on the couch and sharing the iPad.

"They're doing okay. Lennon went up to her room. To cry, I think. But they're tough, Castle. They'll be alright."

"My mother is dead," he says, eyes coming open, and he lifts his head to see her. "She's dead, Kate. She's not coming back."

A sob escapes her and Kate leans in to wrap both arms around his head, as if to shield him from the hurt. It takes some manoeuvring, hips wiggling in the tight grip of her dress, but eventually she gets him draped half in her lap, his cheek mashed against her shoulder. "I know, baby. I know."

"I miss her," he moans, head rolling until his face is buried against her chest. She feels the scald of tears through the fabric of her dress, fingers carding uselessly through his hair.

More than anyone, Kate understands how words cannot possibly be enough. That there's nothing she can say to make the hurt less, nothing her husband needs to hear right now. Instead, she tries to let him know with the warmth of her body and the skim of her lips at his temple that he's loved, and that he doesn't have to get through this alone.

His mother didn't suffer. She went out with her typical flair, one moment delivering a rousing monologue during a dress rehearsal and the next, just like that, the light had gone out of all of their worlds. Kate is glad for it, that Martha never even knew what was happening; there was no bleeding out in a filthy alley for her, limp as a discarded marionette.

"Do you want me to get rid of everyone?" Kate asks after a little while, her arms beginning to ache with the weight of her husband's body.

Castle lifts up enough to look at her, grief marring his features so that his mouth is an ugly slash, his skin salt-slick and pulled taut as a mask. "Could you? I just want you and my kids. I can't handle anybody else."

"Okay, it's okay," she soothes when his face starts to collapse again, sliding down his skull like tar, and she pushes on the back of his head to bring him in to her embrace again. "I'll get rid of them, Rick. You okay in here for a little while?"

"Yeah," he sighs, easing off of her to let her get to her feet again. He stops her with the clutch of his fingers around hers and Kate hesitates, sifts her fingers through the spill of his hair again. "Hey Kate? Thanks for loving my mother so much."

When his wife first suggests it Castle is grumpy and petulant, stalks away from her at the kitchen island only to meet three round little faces, crammed together on the bottom step and staring silently up at him. He goes slowly to his knees, mindful of that old skiing injury, and all three of them reach out for him.

Lennon's little hand settles on top of his at his thigh, his sons both clinging to the sleeve of his shirt and he sighs, sinks further down and opens his arms to them. They pile into a hug, his three youngest children, and then Kate comes to sit as well and suddenly the five of them are on the floor. He wishes Alexis were here for this, but she declined Kate's offer to join them. Wanted to go home with her husband, and that's a different kind of hurt that aches just as fiercely.

He stays for a while, his youngest daughter petting at his cheek and Kate on his other side, lips flirting with his temple again. The boys squabble a little, toes pressing hard into ribcages, but Rick squeezes them and they settle, slumped against him.

They get bundled up warm, shoes on, and then they pile out of the loft and out into the frigid March air. He carries his little girl, her cold nose pressed to the skin of his throat that peeks out from under his scarf, and Kate has Archer and Flynn, a hand each in one of hers.

The subway is ridiculously warm in contrast and their youngest son groans, flinging himself dramatically against the seat and clawing at his scarf. The car is mostly empty, an older couple at the other end and a teenage girl opposite them with gigantic headphones on, so Castle doesn't bother to be embarrassed.

"Flynnie, make room," Lennon moans, shoving on her brother's leg until he makes a space for her, and then the three of them are crammed in and jostling to be the one who gets to sit next to Kate. Opposite them, Rick stretches out in his chair and for the first time in days, he cracks a smile.

By the time they make it to the beach the kids are a little delirious with being cooped up in the subway car and then held tight for the walk from the station, and the moment Kate makes a little noise of assent the three of them are off, charging down the sand.

Reaching for his wife's fingers, Castle tucks them up safe from the cold against his palm and draws her in, brushes a bloom of a kiss to her mouth. She smiles, forehead settling at the juncture where his neck meets his shoulder, and his free hand comes up to cup the curve of her skull.

"Thank you for this. It helps."

"Wanna make a stick man?" she hums, stepping back from his embrace so that they can walk, their children specks of dancing shadow in the dusk. He misses his mother achingly, fiercely, but he knows it won't always chew at him like this.

Like Kate said once, one day he'll realise he doesn't mind carrying it around. He still holds her on birthdays and Mother's Day, still rocks her through the choke of grief, but she's okay. Most days it's a sweet kind of melancholy, stories shared with him and chased by a smile, and he hopes that he'll get there himself.

"No. Let's just walk, try to keep up with the monsters."

"Okay," she smiles, free hand nudging down into the depths of her coat pocket. All three children collapse dramatically onto the sand as their parents approach and Rick smiles, goes right to the ground along with them.

Lying back, the frigid damp of the beach soaks him immediately, but then the kids are piling on top of his chest, Kate cross-legged by his head and brushing his hair back out of his eyes, and he doesn't care about the cold.

"Dad," Archer says, rolling off of the plane of Castle's chest and flopping onto the sand, stretching a hand over his head to reach for his mother. "I really miss Gram."

"I know buddy," he says, an arm tight around his baby girl when she sags suddenly against him. Flynn is perched on one thigh, feet pressed hard against the other for balance, but he stills as well. All three of them waiting on him to know what to do here, how to handle this grief, but it's Kate that speaks.

Taking Lennon from him, she eases the girl into her lap and wraps both arms around her, hot breath washing against their daughter's ear and making her squirm. Castle sits upright and drapes an arm around each of his sons, keeps them trapped close against the heat of his body, and all four of them turn towards her, mother and wife and grounding force. The soft tilt of her mouth is just visible in the failing light, and Castle watches in something close to wonder as Lennon curls up close and her eyelids droop.

"Gram loved every single day that she got to spend with you guys. So the best thing that you can do, the best way that you can remember her and how much she loved you, is to make sure that every day you try your best to be kind, and fun, and brave. Just like she was."

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