Christmas for the Ages
A/N: Happy Holidays!
Thanks for coming along with me on a new Christmas advent/ure. The idea is that each AU gets a chance to tell its Christmas story. I'll mark the chapter with the AU in which it is appearing so that you'll know what universe we're in, and if the story requires more than one chapter, then it will be labeled: Ultimatum - Chapter 1, Ultimatum - Final Chapter, etc. I plan on posting one every day of December through Christmas Day.
I wish you hope. I pray for peace.
x
Ultimatum - Chapter One
A universe in which Rick Castle's wife, Kate Beckett, was captured by the Dragon (a Senator) and his cohort (the Chief of Detectives) in exchange for an incriminating file. Castle raced against the clock to save her life - and the life of their unborn child.
This is one of their future Christmases.
x
Kate grips the little girl's hand, keeps Elle close to her side as the court room doors creak open and the crowd spills out.
"Where's my daddy?" Elle says, up on her toes in the sudden current of people. "Daddy!"
Kate chuckles, squeezing Elle's hand. "Hang on. Give him a chance."
"No, now. Daddy!"
No way she releases the girl's hand, not with Elle's tendency to run, but she knocks her knuckles into the three year old's cheek. Almost four. Soon. Elle gives her a flashing scowl for that, but she stops calling for her father and waits with a little more patience.
Castle fights the crowd and happens upon them at the same moment that Elle catches sight of him. "Ellie-bell," he cries, swooping in to scoop her up in a big hug. Kisses to her cheeks and chin and neck, growling and snuffling until Elle giggles and flings herself back.
Because Castle has her and because Kate is done with having her, Kate lets go entirely and steps into her husband, her lips finding whatever is left of him that can be hers. "Hey, babe. How'd it go?"
He nods, a quick confirmation that his testimony was well-received and there weren't any surprises. Of course they knew the defense attorney was going to attack his reputation, bringing in the reports from the vehicular homicide scene at the bridge.
"It was exactly like we thought," he tells her, and now she gets a kiss of her own. Mouth to mouth, Rick breathing her in, Kate suffusing him with what confidence she can project. He does look a little better when he pulls back.
"Daddy, did you slay the dragon?"
"Did some of it, Ellie," he promises, squeezing her in his arms. "Mommy did the lion's share."
"Roar," Elle says, a little self-satisfied twitch of her lips.
Kate's days of testimony are well behind them, mostly because her information was the solid foundation of the whole case against the Senator. Elle and Rick were forced to entertain themselves for weeks while she went over her deposition with the prosecutor, and then she was recalled to the witness stand time and again.
This is the last of it. The Chief of Detectives was prosecuted and sentenced last week, and only the senator remains.
"Daddy, Daddy, it's time for special Christmas."
"Special Christmas," Castle grins, shifting Elle higher in his arms so he can reach a hand for Kate. She takes it, their fingers lace. "I don't know anything about this special Christmas you speak of."
"No!" Elle gasps. "You both promised. Mommy said-" She narrows her eyes. "You're kidding, Daddy."
Rick chuckles, kissing Elle's suspicious face. "I'm kidding, Ellie. It's too fun to tease when you're so excited."
"Not fun at all," Elle huffs, but she doesn't squirm to get down. The halls are still crowded, and she likes being high enough to see, to not be trampled by adults like walking trees.
Kate squeezes her husband's hand and they turn for the stairs, heading down the marble hall, threading their way through the late afternoon court crush. Together, always together, since the beginning of this mess when they struck a deal to let it go for their own safety.
But this case just wouldn't allow them to let it go. And now Kate is finally seeing an end to the injustice of her mother's death.
That feels enough like a Christmas special.
"Come on, Kate, pick up your feet," Castle calls back, tugging on her hand.
She tears her eyes from the courtroom's open doors, because the senator will never walk through them again. He will - from now on and always - come and go under guard.
He'll lose his freedom and his fiefdom for what he did.
And Kate gets all this.
The three of them walk the long expanse of Central Park with the sun so far set that the horizon is wrapped in a blue-green blanket. The Meadow is closed in December, but Elle trails her fingers along the chain link fence, peering through as they meander the pathway alongside. As usual, Elle talks to the nonexistent sheep under her breath, calling her imaginary animals by name, tugged along only by Castle's voice keep up, little shepherdess.
He watches her closely, since this game is his own fault, creating the world for her this summer when they were trying to make the long hot days evaporate while Kate worked with the DA on the Chief of D's and the Senator's prosecution cases.
"No time for sheep tonight," Kate calls back softly. "Come along, elephant." She holds her hand out for Elle, coaxing in that tender voice that the girl responds to. She's like Rick that way - Kate's attention, full and rich, is enough to captivate them both.
"Good girl," Castle murmurs, ruffling his daughter's hair as she flies past him and takes Kate's hand. It might have been a mistake to walk, but Kate said they've ben cooped up all day and need the exercise, run off Elle's energy.
"Say, come on Daddy."
Elle sparkles as she turns back to him, her hand firmly in her mother's. "Come on, Daddy. You hurry up. Maybe carousel?"
"Not tonight," he breaks it to her. "Christmas special, remember?"
"Ooh, yes," she squeals, skipping ahead. Brought up short by Kate's hand. "Come on, Mommy. You hurry up too."
"Enjoy the lights, you little skunk." But Kate turns to look at him, eyebrows lifting as if to say come on then, Daddy.
He's having trouble walking it off.
He killed a man on that bridge.
But he picks up the pace to follow his girls down the path towards the 65th St Transverse, appreciating the pretty multi-colored lights in the trees. Trying to anyway, trying to lift his spirits for their sake.
He has always enjoyed the way New York City comes together for the holidays, how the usual randoms and weirdos and crazies (as Esposito might call them) turn out in Santa hats and strings of winking lights and Nutcracker coats. The things that always make Central Park scary to his daughter at night, those things are still here, but they have a sheen of delight and almost wonder during this time of year. The world isn't a better place, but there's this sense that it can be. It might yet still be, if they can all hang on to this feeling.
If they can just hang on.
Kate plucks his hand from his coat pocket, a look on her face that says she understands all too well. I see what you're doing. He gives her a weak smile in return, wishes faintly they hadn't decided to do this today. After his testimony in court. After he had to explain why he smeared a living breathing human being on the front grill of his truck.
"For Elle," Kate murmurs, the three of them linked hand to hand now across the path. The carousel is in view, and their daughter isn't paying attention to the quiet conversation her parents are having.
"I know," he answers. "I'm working on it."
"You're preoccupied. You're not here."
"I'm trying, Kate."
"Stop trying," she insists. "Be here. Not on that bridge. Not in the subway tunnel where you found me. Found us."
He shivers at that, and her hand squeezes around his. He's never been able to do what she does - box it up in neat containers and close herself off from it. He wishes he could. "I killed a man," he says, unable to make it work. "Not just that, but while he was dying, I turned the screws-"
"He was going to kill you," she snaps. "He was going to kill me. And her. The second he came back with that file you had. So you don't get to do this. Not now."
"When am I supposed to do it then?"
"Never."
He sighs, but the release of trapped air from his lungs does nothing to refresh him. He just feels bad.
"If you need more therapy, Castle, then please, go back to the therapist. But don't spend every day for the rest of our life hashing it out again and again. It's not helping."
"I tried the therapist," he mutters, defensive now, shamed. Stupid, he's so stupid to bring this up when all she asked was one night for Elle's sake. It's been four and a half years and he can't stop talking about it for one night? "No, you're right. You are right. I'm done. I'm finished. It's our special Christmas. She's nearly four; she'll always remember this. I'm good."
"You're not," she says flatly.
"Then let me pretend. Help me pretend."
He won't look at her face because he knows that was a cheap shot. She's not asking him to pretend; she's asking him to put his own crazy on hold for a night, to wear a Santa hat like all the other weirdos out here and make it happen for their daughter. He can go back to tortured when Elle's in bed.
"Alright," she says finally. "You want help? I'll help you pretend."
His heart clutches at the deadly tone of her voice.
She grips the back of his coat. Her eyes are dark and hard to read in the twinkling white lights. "You want a reason to let this go? To be with us again? I'm pregnant. There's your reason."
She watches as Rick Castle's whole face transforms.
Changing before her very eyes.
She used the news like a weapon, but joy transmutes his lead into gold, suffusing every element of his body, lighting up. He throws his arms around her and yanks her off her feet, her hand tugged out of Elle's, her breath leaving her.
"Oh God, Kate, really?" The question is barely out of his mouth before he laughs, bright and relieved, a smacking kiss in her ear and her jaw, her neck, her mouth. "A baby, another little baby, oh, baby-"
She laughs and fends off his bubbling ticklish crazy, kicks at his shin to be put down.
He does, and cups her face, kisses her hard, only a little frustration in it for the how of her telling, but then he lets her go and turns to Ellie. "Come here, my middle-"
"Castle," Kate intervenes, eyebrows lifting emphatically. She's not letting her almost-four year old blab it to the whole park and the world besides.
"Yes, yes, alright," Castle says, still hoisting Elle into his arms and kissing her cheeks until the girl stops protesting the rough treatment and giggles in submission. "Hey, my girl, my baby elephant, are you ready for our Christmas special?"
"Yes, I've been ready," Elle giggles, trying for impudent but fading under her father's attack. "Let's go, let's be faster."
"Yes, come on. We will. Mom's been trying to frog march us anyway, and you and I weren't having it. We've been moody. Are you ready for me to carry you fast like a whirlwind?"
"Yes, puh-lease," Elle sighs, drama in her flair. "Much better to be carried."
"Not for long," Castle murmurs, and Kate hits him for that slip. But he's already bumping against her to get her moving too, and it's for the best.
Columbus Circle will be crowded by now, and she's not sure how long the little elephant will last. Either one. No morning sickness this time, but her energy has been fading fast in the evenings.
Rick never even noticed. But he will now. He'll hover and cajole and tend and hen, all the time, and she'll snap at him and grow irritated and stop telling him things just to get him to back off, like he did last time.
Only this time, this time, it will be normal. Everything will be normal. No one is getting kidnapped.
Dragons are only for fairy tales they'll tell their children.