We know Kate's birthday is in November but we had a reason for waiting. A certain someone's birthday happens to be coming up and this is our birthday present to them. Happy birthday, Elle (daphnebeauty for those who don't know her)! We hope you like it.

Disclaimer: We'll leave the actual show up to our amazing king, Andrew Marlowe. However, that doesn't mean we'd be opposed to guest starring.

Kate groaned and rolled over. She opened one eye just a little, just enough to see the display of the clock on her nightstand. 6:42am.

She sighed and shut her eye again, before snuggling down into the pillow. Her covers were pulled up around her head and she clung to them, keeping them tightly wrapped around her. The heating still wasn't on in her building - even though it was November - and she was freezing.

Well, not actuallyfreezing. She remembered all too clearly how it felt to freeze to death, to feel your blood slowing in your veins, to lie there helplessly as your brain relinquished control of your body. She'd always hated being cold, but now every time an icy breeze caressed her skin the memories of her time trapped in the freezer came rushing back to her, almost crippling her with their weight.

Her phone started to ring, ripping her from her reverie. It was too shrill, shattering the early morning stillness of her apartment. She fumbled blindly on the nightstand for the device. Her hand closed around it and she brought it to her ear, keeping her eyes tightly shut. She used her thumb to feel for the button to connect the call, and clicked it.

"Beckett." She cursed inwardly. Her voice sounded like she'd been drinking sand. She waited for dispatch to give her an address, but that voice never came.

"No, Katie, it's me." Kate sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes flying open. She barely even registered the harsh sunlight streaming through a crack in the blinds, how her eyes desperately wanted to squeeze shut again.

"Dad? What's wrong?" She managed to keep the panic she felt from her voice, but she could do nothing to suppress the nausea rising in her stomach.

Jim chuckled. "Why does something have to be wrong for me to call my daughter?"

A little of Kate's panic ebbed away, although she was still far from relaxed. "Its 6:45am Dad."

"I wanted to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday." Kate glanced at the clock on her nightstand once again, this time checking the date underneath the time.

November 17th. Today was her 32nd birthday.

Kate decided not to mention to her father that she'd managed to completely forget her birthday. It would only worry him. "That's very sweet of you, Daddy. Thank you."

Kate could hear her father's smile in his voice. "You're welcome. Got any plans for today?"

She let out a sharp bark of laughter that rang in her ears and reminded her how early it was. "Yeah. Work."

She heard her father sigh on the other end, and rubbed her hand over her face. If she'd had a little more time to prepare for his call, she could have concocted some elaborate plan for her day. She hadn't meant to tell him the truth and cause that sigh, the one that seemed to come from the very core of his being.

She snapped back to the conversation at her father's voice, decidedly more haggard than a few minutes previously. "I know you have to work, but you should be with friends and family on your birthday honey."

"All my friends are at work, Dad."

Jim chuckled, and Kate smiled. "I know that. I just wish you valued your birthdays a bit more. For a few awful hours your mother and I didn't think you'd have any more."

Kate felt her brows knot together in confusion. "What?"

"Nothing. Not important." Her father sounded flustered, which only served to further intrigue Kate.

"But I think it is. Tell me, Dad. It is my birthday." She knew playing the 'it'smybirthday' card was vindictive, but she'd always been able to manipulate her father. It was a skill all daughters possessed. Sure she was a thirty-two year old woman but she still knew how to wrap her father around her little finger.

God. Thirty freaking two years old and still single. Still living alone. She knew most people couldn't pinpoint the year when birthdays stopped becoming something to look forward to and became something to dread, but Kate could. Her first birthday after her mother had died had been miserable, and ever since then her birthday had simply been another day to get through. She never told people when her birthday was coming up, only her father and Lanie actually knew when it was. Well, Castle knew by now.

Castle. She was not going to think about him. Not today. The fact that she hated being single on her birthday, hated the prospect of another year coming home to a cold bed, would not push her to thinking about him. Well, it was really her feelings for him she was hiding from, rather than the man himself.

Her father had been silent for too long, Kate had no choice but to use her detective tone of voice with him. "Dad. What is it?"

"It was your second birthday. God, you were adorable back then." Kate huffed in mock outrage and Jim backpedalled. "You're not so much adorable as strikingly beautiful now, sweetheart. Anyway."

Kate clambered out of bed and wandered through to her kitchen, smacking the button to start the coffee machine and perching on one of the barstools at the kitchen island while her father settled into his story.

"Oh God, Jo, she's crying again." Jim poked his wife just under her ribs, the spot he knew woke her up faster than any place else. He knew all the places on his wife's body, and all the different things they could accomplish. They'd both been too tired recently to utilize certain areas, much to Jim's chagrin.

"What did you think? That just because it's her birthday she might let us sleep in past," Johanna paused and looked at the clock on the nightstand before groaning, "five am."

Jim pulled a pillow over his face and moaned into it. "I was kinda hoping." He threw the pillow onto the floor and pulled himself out of bed. He stumbled across the floor – it was way too early to be turning lights on. He'd rather run the risk of serious injury than subject his eyes to that particular brand of torture.

His wife also managed to drag herself from their bed and joined him. They made their way down the hall and into their daughter's room.

Katie stood in her crib, clinging to the rails for support and screaming as loud as her tiny lungs would allow. Her beautiful features were marred by her agony, her usually milky skin a mottled shade of crimson.

Johanna rushed to their daughter's side and lifted her from the crib, holding Katie's tiny body to her chest and shushing her gently. Katie's head nestled into her mother's neck and she clung to her shirt, but her crying barely sank even one decibel in volume. Johanna began to pace back and forth, rocking their daughter and singing to her so quietly that Jim couldn't make out the words.

Johanna turned to her husband, the despair on her face echoed on the face of their daughter. "There's something seriously wrong with her, Jim. I tried to feed her an hour ago and she threw it all back up. She's not even retaining water." A tear broke free from Johanna's control and rolled down her face, dropping to the polished oak floor of Katie's room. "I've taken her to the doctor's office four times and they just keep saying 'give her children's Tylenol' but I've tried that and it's not working and she's just getting worse and she's dehydrated and she won't stop crying and God, Jim." Johanna sucked in a heaving breath and let it out with a sob. "Something's really wrong."

Jim moved to his wife's side and enveloped both of his girls in his arms. "It's okay. Shush now, Katie, it's alright." His voice was low and deep, and his daughter mercifully stopped crying and turned to look at him, blinking away her blurred vision. The dark lashes framing her green eyes were clumping together with her tears, making them look even darker. Her perfect rosebud mouth opened in wonder at the sight of both her parent's faces looking down at her.

She reached her arms out. "Dada." Jim took his daughter and held her close to his body. Johanna rested her arms on the edge of the crib and rested her head on them. She sighed, and Katie turned her head to look at her mother, perplexed.

Jim walked over to his wife and tugged on her arm until she stood up. He gently placed his drowsy daughter back into her crib and then took Johanna's hand, leading her out of the room.

In the hallway, his wife's knees gave out and she sank onto the unforgiving floor, curling into the fetal position and letting her sobs wrack her slender frame. Jim dropped to his knees and gently lifted her head until it rested in his lap. "Shhh, it's okay. Hush now, Joey. Sit up, love. It's okay."

Johanna moved to a sitting position, leaning heavily against her husband. Her head rested on his shoulder, and his arm moved around her waist, holding her to him. "Once it's light, if you're still not happy, we'll take her to the ER, okay?" She managed to nod and he kissed her hair.

Truthfully, he was just as sick with worry as his wife was. He was just doing his utmost to hide it. Johanna needed him to hold her up, and that was all there was to it.

A half hour later the sun struggled its way up over the horizon. Johanna took it as a signal to check on their daughter.

Jim was in the kitchen making a much-needed coffee for himself and his wife when she screamed. He dropped his favourite mug on the floor, not even stopping to acknowledge that it shattered all over their tiled kitchen floor. His wife's scream sounded like it had been forcibly torn from her.

When he reached his daughter's room, Johanna was sitting on the floor, cradling Katie's limp body in her arms. Jim could tell just by looking that their baby was running a fever, her onesie clung to her tiny frame and he could see the dampness from the doorway. Johanna briefly looked up at her husband's entrance before returning her gaze to Katie.

Jim moved over to where his wife sat and lifted his daughter into his arms. She weighed almost nothing anyway, and she hadn't eaten anything for a full three days now. As soon as Katie was gone from her arms Johanna seemed to wake up fully. She threw herself onto her feet and grabbed Katie's blanket from the crib.

The two of them didn't need words to communicate. They ran down the stairs, Jim only just remembering to lock the door behind them. The cool air of the early morning sent shivers down his spine, but did nothing to rouse their daughter.

The drive to the hospital passed in a sickening blur, and it seemed only seconds before they were rushing through the doors of the ER. Johanna almost collided with the reception desk in her haste.

The nurse manning the desk took one look at Katie and called a doctor. The man's face was lined with age, but his eyes were sympathetic.

He took Katie from her father's arms and carried her up to the children's ward, Jim and Johanna almost running to keep up.

An hour later, Katie lay in a cot in the pediatric ward. She had so many lines coming out of her that Jim was struggling not to sob every time he looked at her. His wife sat on a chair next to the cot, one hand trailing into it. She ran her index finger over their daughter's cheek over and over again, but she remained unconscious.

She had septicemia. Blood poisoning, in layman's terms. He wasn't sure which name for the thing that had almost taken his daughter made him feel most nauseous. The doctor had told them that if they'd left it another couple of hours, they would have lost her.

The thought was incomprehensible. Katie was their life now. Everything Jim and Johanna did was for her. Jim's gaze remained on his wife. Watching her, even utterly broken as she was, was easier than watching his baby girl fighting for her life.

A tear escaped his wife's control and rolled down her face.

"Joey, she's gonna be okay. They're taking good care of her. It'll be fine."

His wife turned to look at him, her eyes ringed with red. "We never tell her about this, okay? Her second birthday was a lovely family occasion. Perfect." She choked back a song as Jim nodded. "I can't relive this, Jim. I can't."

He moved his chair over so he could hold her hand. "I know, honey. I know. She doesn't need to know. It's okay."

Katie came home from the hospital a week later. They celebrated her birthday the day after, as if nothing had happened.

Kate was stunned into silence for a long moment. She'd almost died. Damn. That story had managed to erase any trace of birthday cheer she'd felt earlier. "Dad, why have you never told me this before?"

Her father sighed. "We didn't tell you when you were younger because your mother told me she couldn't bear to relive that day. That week. And, of course, I humored her."

Kate grinned. Her mother had always had her father wrapped around her little finger. "But why now?"

Jim laughed. "I didn't mean to tell you. It just sort of…happened."

Kate laughed too then. She slid off the stool and wandered back through to her bedroom. It was getting late and she had to be at the precinct soon. "Thank you for calling, Dad."

"No problem sweetheart. You know I always want to be the first one to wish you a happy birthday."

It was true, her father always called her to wish her a happy birthday, and he always tried to do so before anyone else got the chance.

"Bye, Dad. We'll have dinner this weekend, okay?"

"Okay. See you then."

Kate hung up and dropped her phone onto the counter, staring at it while she gathered her thoughts. Hearing stories from her childhood always stung now, she'd never get to hear her mother's side of the story.

It was weird to know that she'd almost died thirty years ago. She found, completely irrationally, that it made her crave life. She had to do something about her pathetic excuse for a life this year.

Her phone vibrated with the arrival of a new text message. She picked it up and couldn't help but grin when she saw the sender. Castle texted her all the time nowadays, and sometimes just called her for no reason whatsoever.

She was over trying to pretend she didn't have feelings for him. She just wasn't ready to act on them yet.

She tapped her phone's screen to open the message.

Not coming in today, I've got a lot of writing to do. See you tomorrow.

She grinned. Castle steadfastly refused to give in and use 'text speak'. His texts were always grammatically perfect, even down to his use of apostrophes.

Huh. Maybe he didn't know it was her birthday. After all, if he had, she was sure he would have wished her a happy birthday. Wouldn't he?

Alright, so Bee was up first. I'm next. Let's hope I can live up to her awesome first chapter.

We have an awesome poster made by the lovely oh-castle on Tumblr so if you wanna check that out then the link to my Tumblr is on my blog and Bee's Tumblr is her0ineaddict.

Review? Please? We'll love you. And, if our joy and love is not enough for you, I guess we could make you some virtual cookies or something. (I am clearly not above bribes.)