I'm sure that I'll be deeply unpopular for wounding Kate that badly, but I need her incapacitated for this story to work. Also, I have no first-hand experience with explosions, and I hope never to receive it, but if you spot something glaringly wrong, please let me know, and I'll try to correct for it. Also, if the characters seem to be a bit out of character, do let me know; I want them to feel as genuine as possible.
Another note I'll make (from future scrivendown in chapter 5) is that I'm going to be updating more often. It keeps the queue moving along, and keeps the rabid Castle fans (like myself) happy. I picked Wednesday semi-arbitrarily; it's the day I wind up watching Castle, anyway; I feel that updating any closer to the weekend makes the turnaround too short for me. As it is, I have to write 2000-3000 words per week just for this.
Thanks go out this time to BelleEpoque17 ("zombified!") and Vocalcreature for reviewing, and you there! Keep reading and reviewing, because there's plenty more fun coming up.
Kate felt the bed being raised, and immediately took in her surroundings. She was in a utilitarian hospital room, sparsely furnished, and quite large, with New York's lights visible through windows shaded with Venetian blinds. The nurse left, taking a clipboard with her, and as soon as she cleared the doorway, Kate saw Jim Beckett standing in the doorway to her room.
"Hey, Katie bear."
"Hi dad," she said, wincing through the pain.
"Rick called me. Told me that you'd gotten yourself blown up again."
Kate let out a mirthless, dry laugh, before steeling herself to talk. "How long have you been here?"
"I've been here since yesterday morning. It's just about 4 AM; we weren't expecting to hear from you for a while yet," Jim said, crossing to sit next to Kate.
"Anything on the bomb?" Kate asked, then let out a soft whimper in pain.
"I don't know. You've got the whole precinct there trying to dissect what happened, I hear. Well, almost the whole precinct; there's two lost puppy dogs outside waiting to hear from you."
Rick walked through the door, looking sombre and slightly rumpled, as if he had slept in his clothes on a lounge chair, which, of course, he had. Following behind him was Lanie, looking tired but alert, her face tinged with worry for her friend. In procession, they moved towards Kate's bedside.
"I thought I'd lost you again," Rick said quietly.
"You didn't." Blinking through a haze of pain, Kate looked at Rick and saw a mirror of her pain reflected there, a sense that she must look truly terrible again, cocooned in bandages, and she flashed back to the last time she'd seen that depth of pain on his face: lying there, in the moist grass under the harsh sunlight, feeling the burning in her chest, knowing she was bleeding out, and his hand was there, trying to save her, confessing his love to her, moments before she blacked out from shock. She still feigned amnesia of those events, but she knew she would eventually face the consequences of doing that.
"You gotta stop making such a huge mess of yourself, girl," came Lanie's acerbic tone, cutting across her daydream. "Stop letting the boys let you get bombed."
Again Kate laughed humourlessly. "Would if I could, Lanie," she said, making Lanie's lips twitch into something resembling a smile.
"Your doctor will be in to see you soon," the nurse says, as she re-enters with a tray of assorted vials of medications, and Jim and Lanie use that as a cue to leave.
Rick lingers for a few moments, after the nurse has added the medications to Kate's intravenous solution.
"Do you know what I though the last time I saw you like this?"
"What?" asked Kate, noting the pain of her jaw was slowly dulling again, and feeling slightly dreamy.
"I wished I had gotten in front of that bullet before you got hit. I wanted to have saved your life. And," he says, then stops, takes a few slow breaths, starts again. "I wish you remembered what I said to you then."
"But I do," whispered Kate, her eyes feeling more and more leaden, but she struggled to stay conscious through the infusion of drugs. "You told me you loved me. And Rick?"
"Yes, Kate?" Castle said, leaning closer to his battered, broken muse.
"I love you too," Kate Beckett breathed, slurring slightly, before lapsing into unconsciousness.
Rick was stunned.
Lanie looked at him as he pulled the door to Kate's room shut behind him as he left. His expression was one of total shock and awe, and he felt himself tingling.
"You all right there, Castle?" asked Lanie, watching Jim Beckett retreating down the corridor.
"I must be dreaming," he said vaguely. "She told me…"
"Told you what, Castle?" Lanie asked, irritation rising, then a spark of inspiration shorted it out, and suddenly a huge grin appeared on Lanie's face. "She finally told you how she felt, didn't she?"
Castle said nothing, but his mouth slowly lapsed into a comfortable, relaxed smile, completely of it's own accord.
"Well, what are you doing out here?" Lanie asked acerbically. "Get yourself back in there, or you aren't man enough for her. Go in there and look after her," she said, then turned and marched down the corridor, fishing out her phone, on which she sent a brief text to Esposito and Ryan, demanding her bet winnings.
Castle saw the logic in what she said, so he turned and went in, taking his jacket off and hanging it over the back of one of the visitor chairs, before sitting down to watch Kate's slow breathing, and thanking whichever god saved her again from death.
As the night wore on, and the sky began to show the first signs of light, Richard Castle began to drift off, and his head slowly drooped onto Kate's bed. And something buried within her consciousness slid her arm across as she slept to lay it around Rick's head, gently cradling it.
And so writer and muse slept.
