Beneath the Sword
Disclaimer: I still don't own it, and I am back to being a poor student with bills, so I'm even less worth suing.
AN: This is a wildly different take on what would be 8x08 I guess. It was begun over the summer as a "What if" separation concept. Now very AU.
It ends up taking several hours for the doctor to get to them. He takes a certain amount of comfort in the fact that they aren't a priority. His family is stable. Which in and of itself is a gift as far as he is concerned.
But he knows that the waiting makes Kate restless. She wants - no, this is Beckett, she needs - details. She needs facts, evidence, proof. To know beyond a doubt, first that their child is healthy, and then that the rest of their family is safe.
He doesn't blame her. Not for that. But he tries to soothe her into resting while they wait. It's difficult. Probably in part because of the lingering pain keeping her alert. But now that she knows about the baby, he knows that she won't ask for more pain relief. If anything, he bets she'll refuse her next doses. He sighs.
"What?" she asks, and he can tell she's a little amused at his expression. He will take the win where he can.
He gives her a look that's a little frustrated, a little put upon, but it's an act, a tease, and he makes sure she can see that. "You're a pain, but I love you."
The point had been to get a smile from her, maybe an eye roll. But she regards him seriously, her eyes clear of the cloud of pain that has hung over her since she woke up. "I know," she says, all solemn sincerity. "I love you too." She takes a beat, a breath and then adds, "You know that, right, Castle?"
"Of course," he says immediately. His voice sounds thick and strange to his own ears.
"Rick."
He looks up, all of it there for her, love, pain, confusion - the whole seemingly hopeless mess.
"I love you. That was my reason. I know you can't understand that right now. But I love you, and our family. Not just -" she makes a formless gesture around herself, meant to indicate the baby, he assumes. "You made me a part of your family, Rick, and I love it. Martha and Alexis, you and me. It's more then I ever thought I could have. More than I'm willing to risk.
The words hover dark and a little bitter on his tongue. But you left us, is what he wants to say. But then the doctor is there, and the focus shifts in the room. He grips his wife's good hand in support, doesn't say it.
She doesn't even know whether to be grateful or dismayed at the interruption. There is so much they need to say, but she's tired and worried. She needs to hear something about the baby.
The doctor explains that they had run the hormone test as a routine precaution. Her levels were high, indicative to a strong pregnancy. There was no evidence of trauma in an area that might be a threat to the baby, and the OBGYN they had called in was pleased with her initial exam. They were going to do an ultrasound shortly, just to be sure.
Kate digested it all as quickly as she could with her head throbbing as it was. She needed to sleep, but knew that she wouldn't. Not until after the ultrasound. Not until she saw for herself.
"What about the rest?" She hears her husband ask. His voice seems to come from far away, underwater. She forces herself back to the present.
"Mostly superficial, though of course the abrasions will need to be monitored for infection as they heal, we don't see a concussion necessarily, but given that Mrs. Castle did lose consciousness after the event, we're going to keep her overnight for monitoring, just to be safe. And we'll have someone come down from the rehabilitation department, take a look at that hand. It should heal in time, but given that it is the dominant hand, and in view of your occupation," he says with a glance at Kate, "we can't be too careful, and it's much better to be proactive."
They thank him, and he leaves with a parting word that someone will be in about her ultrasound shortly. That makes her mouth go dry and her breath catch, the very thought of the reality of this baby. She didn't know. How has she not known, in what, eight weeks, given their time apart?
"Were you sick at all?" Castle asks, his voice sympathetic even as she startles. She must have said that aloud without even realizing it.
She glances over at her husband, nervous for reasons that she doesn't even fully understand right now.
"I...no. Not like, I mean not like you hear people talk about. I was exhausted, and now that I think about it, I had this general queasiness that never seemed to go away. Made the idea of food distasteful, but then I'd be starving. But I just...we were a mess and the world was coming apart and I just assumed that was it." She feels like a terrible parent already, because she just hadn't put it together.
"At least I swore off coffee," she says without thinking.
He coughs next to her. She gives him a soft look of apology, but he surprises her. "Yeah, me too," he says. "Though replacing it with scotch probably wasn't my brightest choice." His eyes go wide as he says it, and she isn't sure for a moment if he's thinking about how she'll take that because of her dad, or if he's wondering if she's been drinking her own way through this separation.
"My drug was work," she assures him, although, shit that's not much better. She sighs and lays a hand on the unchanged plane of her abdomen. "Sorry, baby, I'll do better." She means both of them, she wants to do better by him, too, and she locks her eyes on his to be sure that he can see it.
He reaches for her good hand and squeezes, a gesture that she thinks - hopes - is both acceptance and a promise of his own.
She's torn between exhaustion and all the things that they need to say. What needs to be said and done to bridge the space that has opened up between them over these last weeks. She doesn't want reconciliation to be about the emotions of injury and near death and a baby. It needs to be about them. But she's so damn tired. Caught between healing herself and healing them, which feels frighteningly familiar.
Castle tugs on her hand, and she turns. His eyes look down at her, so full of all that familiar love and devotion that she tears up again. "Sleep, Kate," is all that he says.
She does.
