Disclaimer- I still don't own Castle, Andrew Marlowe does, and I don't want him to sue me for playing in his sandbox.

This Friday was the last day before spring break for Natalie. We had agreed to take her to the Hamptons for a vacation. She had never quite been out of the New York/New Jersey area. Gates had worked with child protective services; so far, it was best that she was in police custody, technically, until we broke a fresh lead the Jerry Curtis murder case, which had gone cold. There were rumors flying between the gangs that Savage's drug ring wanted to catch Nat and keep her away from the witness stand. We didn't tell Natalie that, it would have terrified her.

Alexis decided to come with us to the Hamptons for spring break, although I knew she'd be circulating more with her friends, and Castle and I would be the ones that had to entertain Nat.

At 4:55, I got pulled aside by a detective from Vice.

"Savage has been seen in the Bronx," he informed me. "Take that little girl and get her out of here for a while."

"Perfect timing," I said. "Castle and I are taking her to the beach for spring break."

"Keep it quiet. And don't show her off, alright?"

"Alright," I said.

That night, I did the pre-check in with my fertility specialist; they were extracting my eggs tomorrow morning from the FSH treatments, Castle would give his sample, they'd put the fertilized eggs into me, and then we were going to Hamptons for the week, to come back to a pregnancy test. I hoped it took.

I went through the pre-surgerical tests and questions, and then my doctor came in to see me one last time before tomorrow.

"We went over your blood work, and everything looks fine," he began. "But, we checked your AMH levels again, Kate."

My heart dropped into my stomach. My AMH level were my Anti-Mullerian Hormones, the ones that determined my 'ovarian reserve' so to speak. He was speaking soft and in a low voice to me and I felt light-headed suddenly.

"We found them level dangerously low at 1.2. It was right a 2.0 when you started your last round of FSH, but this ... When it falls below 2.0, you know that it means it's low, and when it drops under 1 and becomes undetectable, and it's too late."

I felt the nervous and hysterical tears fighting their way out.

"What does this mean?" Castle asked. "Are we going to go ahead with the egg harvesting?"

"This means that things aren't optimal, but we'll go ahead and try, but we can't guarantee results."

Well, that was good news, wasn't it? But this was my last chance. I didn't want donor eggs or a surrogate carrying Castle's baby that we'd adopt. That seemed like a nightmare. It wouldn't be part me. It would be some other woman.

It was a mix of relief and stabs of fear that sleepless night. We put Natalie down for the night after starting a new book, and I craved red wine to calm myself down, but I was fasting until surgery tomorrow.

"This might be our last chance," I said to Castle. "I hope this is it. I hope we get a good number of eggs and we can keep trying…"

"Maybe this is the universe trying to tell us that maybe kids aren't in the cards, Beckett," Castle said, sitting down next to me on the couch. I shivered. It couldn't be.

The surgery went well, but they only managed to extract four eggs. They almost immediately placed two eggs inside my uterus before I was quite out from under the anesthesia, (they were placing two eggs in me at a time, hoping they'd take) and then told me there were only 2 other eggs waiting. I shivered at the news. My body wasn't doing what I wanted it to.

I road to the Hamptons in the front passenger seat with the seat leaned back so I could relax on the ride that afternoon. We arrived and Natalie immediately wanted to go to the beach. Castle took a chair down for me so that I didn't have to carry much, and I sat on the beach, watching as she and Castle skipped shells across the weak beach waves. I almost fell asleep, but I heard Natalie screaming, "I can't swim!"

I opened my eyes to see Castle holding her, swinging her around like he was going to toss her in.

"I was just kidding," Castle said, putting her down, her feet in the water. She was genuinely crying. "I'd never toss you into the water like that."

"It's not that hard," Alexis said. "I'll teach you. We can try in the pool, first."

"I'll save you if you start to drown," Castle offered as she walked away, wiping her tears. "Natalie, come on, I'd never do that to you!"

She came up to where I was sitting and sat down, a sob choking out of her throat.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

She shook her head and snorted her runny nose. "No. Rick was going to throw me in. And I told him to stop."

"Rick doesn't always get it when we tell him to stop joking around," I explained. "He does that kind of stuff to me, too. Men are like that, sometimes, you gotta spell it out for them."

She nodded, wiping her nose with her hoodie's sleeve.

"I can tell he's sorry. He'll say it soon enough."

"He didn't stop until I told him I couldn't swim," she sniffled. "I'm too old to not be able to swim."

"You're a New Yorker," I scoffed. "Of course you don't know how to swim, it's okay. You can learn. You learned how to read…"

She climbed into my lap and I held her for a few minutes until she stopped crying.

That night, while Alexis was making dinner (and giving us a break) we played Wii bowling with Natalie in the living room. Natalie got upset and went upstairs for a moment. I felt like she needed a moment to calm down, so we gave it to her.

Once dinner was ready, I went upstairs to check on her, and I found her room empty. The door was shut to the bathroom, and I saw the light was on. I knocked on it. "Nat, honey, dinner's ready."

"I'm not coming down!" she shouted.

I remembered how everything was a trauma at that age. "Do you want us to save some for you?" I asked.

There was no response.

"Natalie?"

"I started my period!"

"What?"

"My period! I'm bleeding everywhere! It's gross!"

My heart melted. No wonder she was so dramatic at the beach earlier today. And then, I panicked; we didn't have any pads here at the Hamptons. I wondered if Alexis had any. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"Don't tell everybody!" she begged through the door. "Please!"

"I'll be discreet," I promised. I ran downstairs and found Alexis in the kitchen, making the salad. "Please tell me you have a pad."

"Why? What's going on?"

"Natalie just got her first period."

"Oh, God, you're kidding!" Alexis said, looked disgusted. "No, I don't have any. Wow, that's awful to start it the first day of your spring break."

"Keep it quiet," I said, running back upstairs. I got a washcloth from my own bathroom and knocked on the door. "Nat?"

"Come in!"

I opened the door, and she was sitting on the side of the bathtub. "Here. Use this. In the mean time, I'm going to the drug store."

Oh, the joys of raising a teenage girl. It had officially started, she wasn't a little girl anymore. No wonder she was so moody on the beach.

"She started period, didn't she?" Castle asked as we pulled the covers back on our bed.

"Yeah, she did. How'd you know?"

"I remember this when Alexis was eleven, so moody for days at a time. And then, my mother approached me and told me."

"Oh, she called your mother?"

"No, actually, she had had for months, but never told me. I was dreading it, but it wasn't a problem. It was kind of a let-down when I thought about it."

"She knew what to do?"

"Yes. Sex Ed at Greenwood Day was really, really good, I guess."

"I had no idea what to do. I had heard all these rumors and horror stories about getting it, and then, it happened and my mom was there for me. We had a special girl's weekend at the cabin in Vermont, and she was like, 'this is a great thing! You're a woman now, Katie!' and I was so embarrassed. I just wanted it to be over. It hurt like hell and I wanted to die those first few days."

We both chuckled, but I didn't realize what a big deal it was for a mother to see her daughter pass the mark into womanhood. My first period being so painful had been an indicator that I had endometriosis, according to the OB GYN that had diagnosed me. So little was known about the cause of endometriosis, asides from genetics. And then, Nat was getting her period at a really young age, too.

"I hope Natalie doesn't get endometriosis," I said.

"That's random."

"No, it's really not. The signs were there when I was really young, like Natalie is. And now, we're waiting on an IVF to result in a positive pregnancy, and it just feels like..." For once, I couldn't describe the emotion I was feeling. It hurt, but it was like a weight on my chest. Maybe I was getting heartbroken, but I couldn't decide for what. "I can't describe it, sometimes, Castle. It feels like realizing I'm about to lose my ability to ever have children is going to change who I've always been."

"Sometimes… I've noticed... there's not always an easy answer," he sighed. "I love you. No matter what happens with this IVF. That will never change."

Natalie and Alexis had stayed up to watch the Night of the Living Dead together eating pop corn and painting each other's toe nails, so we let them sleep in. Castle left the house to writing in a local cafe he loved, and promised to check in with me as Alexis and I made the day special for Nat.

When they woke up, I took them to the Pancake Shack and we had brunch, where she ordered the stuffed french toast.

"You're not going to tell the waiter I got my period, are you?" she whispered.

"No!" I cried, almost laughing. "Why would I do that?"

"I don't know. You rich people are into announcing everything. People sing to you on your birthdays and stuff, why wouldn't they announce it and sing to me here? I don't want that!"

"I know, but today is a girls-only thing, I wouldn't share that with everybody else."

"Oh. I didn't think it was."

"This is a big deal, Natalie! And we're going to make the best of it."

"I think we should go shopping," Alexis suggested. I had avoided taking her shopping for thing she didn't need to follow Gates' advice. "There's a store I love just a few blocks from here over by the beach."

"Do you want to go, Nat?" I asked.

Natalie shrugged. "I guess," she said glumly.

We finished our late breakfast and went down to the store Alexis was talking about; it was called Aviary. There were a lot of little knick-knack hipster-type presents all around. We looked around at some of the clothes, and Alexis just went crazy picking stuff out in her own size. It wasn't quite as professional as my style, and even though the clothes were small (and included double-zero sizes) they were too big for Nat in general.

"Just let me try these on, I'll be quick about it, and then we can go!" Alexis promised.

"Alright," I said. Nat and I looked around at the knick knacks around the store. There were cute little owls made of wood all over.

"What's this one?" Nat asked, pointing to a bird made of light weight woods.

It wasn't an owl. "I think... I think that's…" I frowned. "Why don't we ask?"

"That's a striped cuckoo," the sales girl said.

"Oh," Nat and I said together.

Alexis popped out in a dress that was a muted, soft maroon with patterned flowers on it. "What do you think?" she asked excitedly.

"I don't know," Nat muttered.

"It's cute on you," I noted. "Everything cute on you anyway."

She put her hands on her hips and twisted around to look at herself in the mirror. "I'm really liking this dress," she noted. "I'll try something else and be quick!"

"You've heard of cuckoo clocks, right?" I asked Nat.

"Yeah, I just don't know what they look like."

I looked up Cuckoos on my iPhone. "This says the cuckoo is known for being brood parasitism."

"What's that mean?"

"That means it uses the brood to survive. The mother bird lays her egg in another bird's nest and then abandons it. The other bird, it feeds it like it feeds her own babies and raises it as her own."

"That bird sounds like an asshole."

"Natalie!" I cried, trying not to laugh at her foul language.

"But you're laughing," she said, a sneaky smile on her face.

"It's a bad word, Nat," I said, trying to be stern.

"I didn't know!"

"The hell you didn't know!" I teased. "You did, too."

"Here's the next one," Alexis said, popping out of the dressing room in a blue dress this time.

"Yay or nay, Nat?"

"Yay," Nat muttered, unenthused.

Alexis picked out dresses to buy from the ones we tried on and I offered to buy one for her. We were checking out when Natalie asked me for another pad to change into. She wanted to check and see if she needed a new one. I slipped it into her hand before went to the restroom.

"Is Natalie ready?" Alexis asked, taking the shopping sack from the saleslady.

I glanced around the shop, hoping Natalie was just enthralled in something she found fascinating since coming back from the restroom, but she was gone.

"Natalie?" I asked, going to the restroom area. I knocked on the door, but another salesgirl came out.

"The little girl left with her father," the salesgirl said. I blanked. Castle was at the cafe, writing. "A man with a mermaid tattoo on his arm? He brought her out of the restroom."

I gasped and immediately pulled my gun out of my purse and took off after him. "Natalie!" I shouted. I saw her being pulled along by a man who looked a lot like the Gabriel Savage type gang member. She looked terrified, but she was at least fifty yards away. "Police!" I shouted. "Let her go!"

He saw me, but grabbed her and whirled around a corner with her. I took off in a run, elbowing and shoving innocent people. I saw him with Natalie thrown over his shoulder, running down the alley behind a restaurant. So much for taking it easy after IVF, I thought. I made the choice; I pursued them.

He took off towards the dock, and I saw it; a little boat waiting with someone watching under the dock. They were going to take off by boat, in broad daylight, and take off with Natalie. They'd either kill her to keep her quiet or bury her in a child sex ring where she'd never be heard from again.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" I shouted. He didn't slow down. My legs had to be like pistons running after him, he had a lead on me. I pretty much had to leap off the dock, where he was wading into the water, but had Natalie in the boat with the other man, and she looked terrified. I just barely dodged the bullet from his gun as he shot at me, ducking behind a post holding up the pier.

"Kate!" Natalie shouted.

He had terrible aim, but he almost grazed my arm. I could feel the heat and hear the whistle of the bullet whiz by my head.

"Natalie, get down!" I shouted. I took a semi-blind shot, focused at his head, and ducked back behind the post. I heard big something splash into the water, and I knew I had hit him. I took a semi-blind shot again, and the other man was flung backwards.

I ran towards Natalie, who was still in the boat. I sloshed through the water and scooped her up into my arms, only to see the second man sit up from the tide, blood streaming into the water, his eyes focused on me, and he was lifting something- I dropped Natalie, and emptied the magazine of my gun into his chest.

After all that gunfire, I could hardly hear anything, asides from the screaming of the people on the beach. "Natalie!" I cried, reaching for her. I saw blood all over my arms, and she stood up. Her legs were coated in menstrual blood, but I picked her up and squeezed her to me. "Are you alright?"

She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I lost my glasses," she whispered. I pressed my forehead to hers.

"It's alright now," I whispered. "I promise."

"Ma'am! Ma'am, put the child down-"

I turned my head to see a man in a black police uniform, aiming a gun in my direction.

"What the hell are you doing?" I shouted. "This is a child! You're pointing a gun at a child, for Christ's Sakes!"

He lowered the gun.

Small town cops. Ugh.

"This is my daughter!" I shouted.

"You just discharged weapon in the city limits!"

"I'm a cop, I know my gun rights! And if you counted, I discharged all the bullets, including the one in the spout!" I snapped. "Those men were trying to take her!"

Today's big fiasco with the Savage gang trying to kidnap Nat was enough excitement for one day. I covered Natalie up in my windbreaker to cover up the blood and we called Castle to give a statement. Once they had our story checked out and they called the county's medical examiner, we took Natalie home for a bath and a nap. Someone had found her glasses, and they hadn't broken from the fall. She was pretty shaken at what she saw. I took her upstairs and gave her a bath. This was the first time she ever let me see her naked, and I saw a few scars that looked like she had had stitches at one time as she got into the bathtub. I scrubbed her back then washed her hair as she sobbed quietly in the tub.

"Kate, I really thought they were going to take me," she said.

"I know, baby," I said softly. "I wouldn't let them. Ever."

She took the washcloth from me with shaking hands and continued to wash herself off in the places she could reach. "I don't want to go back to foster care," she said. "I want to live with you and Rick. Not because you have nice houses and things, but because you guys actually like me and are nice to me."

"That's a long shot," I said softly. "Rick and I aren't foster parents, even."

"I'll be good," she promised. "I won't say words like bitch or asshole again."

"You just did," I said. The edges of her lips almost flickered up. "Why is it scaring you now, unlike when Jerry died?"

"I wasn't there. But I heard the gunshots."

"Wasn't that scary enough?"

She shook her head. "I hear gunshots all the time. But someone taking you, picking you up and running away. I was afraid you wouldn't come after me. You'd let him take me away from you and nobody would care."

"We care," I said. "Of course we care."

"I thought they'd kill you."

"Oh honey… that's my job. I'm used to people shooting at me. I've been shot, you know."

"You have?"

"Mmm-hmm," I said, getting the wide-toothed comb from the counter. I began to comb her hair out, which was easier since I had taken her for a haircut last week. "Are you done?"

"Yeah."

I got a giant bath towel out and held it up. "Okay, let's get you out of there quickly. You know taking baths while on your period can be bad."

"Where'd you learn that?"

"My mother."

"And she's dead?"

"Yes. A long time ago. I learned a lot from my mom."

"I want you to be my mom. Do you want to be?"

I had never anticipated being asked point-blank by Nat if she wanted me to be her mother. I wasn't sure of that answer myself. Adopting a child from the foster care system was difficult if you had never been a foster parent. And private adoptions were expensive. It would take years before we could actually take Nat as a daughter. But I wasn't sure, suddenly. Was it possible? "I think… I think we've just got to take this as it comes."

I toweled her off and turned my back as she put on her panties and a fresh pad. I dressed her in her pajamas and took her to bed, putting a fresh towel under her hips just in case she bled through.

Personally, I was still covered in dried salt water, although I had rinsed off Nat's blood and changed tops.

"She's in bed," I told Castle. "She's pretty shaken."

"I would expect it. Ryan and Espo called for you. Gates, too."

I took a deep breath and collapsed on the couch. "They tried to run away with her. Just take her when I had my back turned. They know. Gabriel Savage knows she saw him and he wants her silenced."

The nervous sensation in my stomach, mixed with adrenalin, made me shaky. How could Nat not be scarred from all that she saw? Not just the two men I killed to save her life, but being around gunshots, gang members? I wouldn't be surprised if she had already seen people doing drugs, gang initiations, other girls being raped, and the possibility that she had been raped or molested already still bothered me. Child Protective Services may never had any clue who her father was, her mother may have been homeless and slightly crazy to have allowed her staph infection to kill her, Natalie may be behind in school, but that didn't make her disposable. No child was. She was just as important as anybody else. She deserved a happy childhood, but hadn't had one.

"We need to talk about adopting her."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yes. Very. I'm about to go into menopause, Castle. At a very young age. My body's not going to be able to carry a child. It's time to face the music; there are some things I can't do, but being the person who protects Nat has to be one of those of those things that I can. You have to do it, too."

"And to think two weeks ago, you didn't even think you were capable of parenting her. Of course I will."

I had to keep her safe. Not just for the case, but because she was important.