Disclaimer: I'm asking Santa for the rights to Castle this Christmas. But until then…it's still a no!
Fertile Imagination Epilogue
Fruition - Part 5
Eight months and one week later…
Friday July 12th, 9.47pm
"You hungry?" Castle asks, when Kate opens her eyes after the five-minute catnap she managed to snatch between contractions.
They've been speeding up, the time between each shortening, the pain a little more intense with every one, though she's still managing to get by on true grit alone. His kickass wife.
"A little thirsty. And I packed a pear in the bag. Could you get that?"
"Water or juice?"
"Just water, please?"
"Another one?" he asks, watching her face, and then turning to look at the readout from the monitor.
"Mmm-hmm," Kate nods, screwing her face up, and curling forward over her bump. "Feels like I want to push," she moans, holding her breath and then letting it go in one burst.
"I'll get Nurse Ratched," he says, handing her a small bottle of water, before heading for the door. "Just relax, and keep breathing, Kate. Short, panting breaths like we practiced. You know it's still too early to push, honey."
"Don't call her that," groans Kate, panting. "I swear it's going to pop of my mouth out when she has to stick a needle in my ass or something, and then she'll take it out on me."
When he comes back into the room with the midwife, they look as if they might have made their peace. The woman is smiling and she lays a friendly hand on Kate's ankle, cooing quiet words of encouragement.
"How about we take another look down there, hon?" she asks, making no attempt to banish the writer this time.
Kate surrenders to the indignity of another uncomfortable internal exam, scooting down the bed and letting her knees fall apart before she's even asked; an old hand by now. She stares up at the ceiling, counting the acoustic tiles until it's all over, fingers tapping out a beat on the mattress.
"Seven centimeters," Bonny Trucco announces, clearly pleased with her progress.
But Kate groans, dropping her head back onto the pillows in frustration.
"But I want to push," she whines, looking at the midwife and then over at Castle. "So badly."
"Honey, it's too soon. I know you're feeling a lot of pressure down below, but pushing too early is bad for you and for the baby. Focus on breathing through that urge, just like I showed you. Short panting breaths, and dad, you can help with the counting. Won't be long now, Mrs. Castle," she says firmly, patting Kate's knee.
This time when she leaves the room, Kate's lip is trembling, and Castle can see that she's on the verge of tears.
"Oh Kate," he soothes, running his hand down over the back of her head and then kissing her damp temple tenderly. "You heard her. Not long now, babe. Then you can push like the superwoman I know you are."
"I hate this," she huffs, swiping angrily at her tears.
"Hate what, honey?"
"This!" she moans, slapping her hands down on the mattress either side of her thighs as if it should be patently obvious what she means and her husband is deliberately being an idiot. "Being cooped up in here, all the stupid rules, being so fat," she spits, and Castle has to hide a grin behind his hand.
"Kate, you're pregnant and gorgeous. Not fat."
"Unreliable witness," she grumbles. "Move to strike."
"Why? Because I love you? Hmm? Because I married you after I knocked you up, Detective," he teases, tugging on her gown, humoring a tiny ghost of a smile out of her. "Because you're having our baby, Kate?" he whispers, leaning down to peek at her even though her head is turned stubbornly towards the window.
"Don't. You'll make me laugh," she groans, covering her eyes with her hand.
"Is laughing on the banned list too?"
"No. But I might pee myself again," she moans, glaring at him when he starts to laugh. "Castle, it's not funny."
"Yes it is. And I'm going to remind you of this when we're old and grey and sitting out on the deck at the Hamptons house wearing giant, matching, incontinence panties."
Kate snorts. "Yeah, you'll get there before me, old man."
"That's more like it," he tells her, sitting back down in the chair beside her, offering her the cup of ice chips.
"Wanna help me do a crossword?" he suggests, trying to distract her and kill time.
"No."
"Cards then? We could play Poker?"
"Poker? Are you kidding me?"
"Well, your poker face could be pretty interesting."
The glare he gets tells him the answer's no.
"Go Fish?"
"Castle?" she warns him with her voice alone this time.
"Okay, so no card games. How about your iPod, wanna to listen to some music? A little Rihanna to get you in the mood?"
"Uh…no. Could you…could you read to me?" she asks, looking vaguely embarrassed to even be asking.
"Read? Sure. My pleasure. What are we…?"
"I packed The Little Prince," she blushes, dropping her head, and twirling the end of her braid. "My mom…she…"
Kate covers her face with both of her hands as the tears Castle's been expecting all day finally come.
"Hey, hey, hey, now," he says, settling next to her on the bed. "Kate? Kate, listen to me, honey?" he tells her, gently prizing her hands away from her face. "You're getting tired, sweetheart, and missing your mom…totally understandable. I can only imagine how much you want her here for this. If I could, Kate…you know I would do anything for you," he soothes, wrapping her up in a hug, rocking them both.
"I know," she sighs, her voice faint and laced with the frustration and exhaustion he knows she's feeling, a taint of grief to her tone too.
"Read to me?" she asks him again, pressing the thin, worn volume into his hands. "The part about the fox and the rose."
When Castle takes the book from her, it falls open at the very pages she wants him to read from; the spine loosened and the pages worked apart by her frequent forays back to this passage, which he take as a sign that they hold some meaning for Kate.
He looks up at her, gives her a hesitant smile. He feels slightly nervous to be reading something she and her mom shared, doesn't want to let her down. But then she prompts him again with a jab of her foot, and so clears his throat and begins to read.
"The Little Prince went to look at the roses again."
"You're not at all like my rose. You're nothing at all yet," he told them. "No one has tamed you and you haven't tamed anyone. You're the way my fox was. He was just a fox like a hundred thousand others. But I've made him my friend, and now he's the only fox in all the world."
"And the roses were humbled."
Castle puts on a different voice to read each part, but Kate stops him with a hand to his arm.
"No," she says, opening her eyes and shaking her head slowly. "No funny voices."
"What? No voices? But Alexis loved my voices," he says, trying to sound deeply offended, but pleased to see her distracted anyway.
"She was five, you're her daddy, she loved everything you did, Rick. No voices," she repeats gently, closing her eyes again to listen to him. "Just you," she murmurs, and her request tugs at his heart.
So he picks up the book and continues reading in his own rich baritone.
"You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. One couldn't die for you. Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three for butterflies). Since she's the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."
As he reads aloud, Castle realizes that the words mean so much more to both of them than any veiled children's tale about a fox and a rose. They have killed for one another; he truly believes that she is extraordinary; he can be boastful at times and yet she still loves him; she inspires him to greatness; and he walks beside her despite the danger that her life can entail. They have each made the other into something more than they were when they met, and now they get the chance to do that together, by lavishing attention on their child.
He catches Kate's eye when he pauses, and they look at one another, the quiet exchange full of so much unspoken meaning, and then he drops his eyes back down to the illustrated page and continues to read.
"And he went back to the fox."
"Good-bye," he said.
"Goodbye," said the fox. Here is my secret. It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux," Kate repeats quietly to herself, using the original French.
"I always loved those lines. They're so truthful," she tells him. "My heart knew that I loved you before I did," she confesses, lifting his hand to her lips to brush a kiss to his knuckles, before pressing the cool metal of his wedding band against her cheek.
Castle stops to listen to her, overwhelmed by her honesty and this little insight she has just shared with him; something she's clearly thought about at some point in the past. She's his wife now, but no less of a surprise than the first day he met her.
"It's the time you spend on your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It's the time I spent on my rose…," the little prince repeated, in order to remember.
"People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn't forget it. You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. You're responsible for your rose…"
"Ahhhhh!" screamed Kate, as he neared the end of the page. "I think our little rose might be coming sooner than we…ohhhhhh. Rick? Please? The nurse?"
She looked frightened this time, her eyes wild as she clutched at the sheets, her face pale, a sheen of perspiration on her forehead.
He pressed the bedside call button, and then, unable to wait for a response, he rushed out into the hall, calling for Bonny Trucco or Dr. Shapiro.
"Hi, Kate," says Dr. Gabby Shapiro, when she strolls calmly and unhurriedly into the room, her stylish Armani suit and high-heeled pumps making her look as if she should be chairing a board meeting over on Wall Street, rather than preparing to help deliver a baby. "I hear things might be speeding up. You about ready to go?" she asks Kate, earning a very definite nod.
"Rick, good to see you again," she says, shaking Castle's hand. "How's our mom-to-be holding up?"
Castle grins at his pained and panicked wife, love shining out of his eyes.
"She has been a real trouper. Dr. Shapiro. Totally fantastic," he says, beaming at Kate, so proud of her.
"Great. Well, let's see if we can't get this show on the road," says the well-groomed doctor, taking the latex gloves the nurse by her elbow offers and pulling them on.
Gabby Shapiro's manner, her bearing, her whole persona exudes confidence and authority, and both Castle and Kate relax in her capable care.
"Well, I'm pleased to say that we're in transition," she announces eventually, after giving Kate a thorough examination. "You've reached eight centimeter's Kate. Good job. Your contractions are going to come faster now, probably closer together, and I'm afraid they're going to be a little more demanding," she says, a euphemism Kate instantly translates as 'more painful'.
"But can I push? I really want to push, Gabby?" Kate tells her doctor, the strain of holding back showing on her face.
"Not yet, I'm afraid. Push too early, and you could tear your cervix, Kate, risk bleeding, even delay things further. Don't worry. Rick and I will count you through each contraction. I want you to give me little panting breaths, blow through the peak of the pain and down the other side. Think of it as a hill you're climbing, then visualize the coast to the bottom."
"How long, Doctor?" asks Castle. "How long until she's fully dilated?"
"At a guess, I'd say another half-hour to an hour, maybe. Now, I'll just go get changed, and let's see if we can't get this thing started. Bonny Trucco is off shift now, so I'm afraid you're stuck with me until this baby decides to make its grand entrance," she tells Kate confidently, patting her knee before she leaves the room.
Castle has to restrain himself from doing a little victory dance at this welcome piece of news.
A/N: The reaction to this story continues to be overwhelming. Your patience as I feel my way through this is so much appreciated. Thank you for indulging me. I'm trying to portray the slow process, moments of boredom and exhaustion of giving birth to a first baby with this multi-chapter approach. And believe me I would never have called it an 'Epilogue' if I'd know that's how it would come out. Too late to change it now, so I'm going with it. I promise we'll meet baby Castle in the next chapter. Liv
Extract taken from 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
For the anon guest reviewer who hated Kate's middle name "Houghton" (as well as the bridesmaid dresses and the engagement ring) I'm afraid we're stuck with it, since it's the middle name AWM decided to give Kate Beckett. It also happens to be Katharine Hepburn's middle name FYI. Well, you didn't think I made that up did you?