Chapter Nine:

As Castle speeds through the busy streets of New York, rushing to get to the all too familiar emergency room, Arthur Reagan, a reporter from Starr Magazine, talks to his boss on the phone. "You know how we were putting Martina Regal on tomorrow's cover. That's out. I have something way bigger than her four week jail episode."

His impatient boss yelled from the other side, "What's bigger than that? It better be good."

Arthur smiled mischievously. "Have you ever heard of Richard Castle?" It was a dumb, useless question, he knew, but he couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Arthur!" his boss warned.

"What about a 'Katherine Beckett'?" he looked down on his sheet of notes. That was her name, right? Yeah, it was.

Short lived silence was his answer at first. "She…she was Castle's muse, right?" It was the first time that Arthur had ever heard his boss ask someone else if something was right before. Usually, he just said what he thought, even if it was completely untrue.

Arthur's face lit up with a grin, and he began walking towards his mother's Taurus that he was using because his car was in the shop. He slid in, frowning slightly. He hated this car and it was an embarrassment to ride in it, but he didn't have another choice. It wasn't exactly in his budget to get a rental. "Oh, I think she was a little more than a muse, if you get what I'm saying."

"Arthur, do you have a point? Kate Beckett was ten years ago!"

"What if she's the mother to Castle's kid?"

A gasp sounded on the other side and Arthur smiled again. He succeeded in what he was hoping to do: surprise his unsurprisable boss.

"Are you sure?"

Well, no. But when were magazine reporters ever sure? Then again, the kid sure did look like both of the adults with them. Why else would Castle come here? Unless to see his kid. And if it wasn't theirs, who cares? Magazines get the wrong information all the time. "Pretty sure," Arthur finally answered.

He could sense his boss's frown. "I don't want 'pretty sure', Reagan, I want there to be no doubt. I don't want to be another one of those untrustworthy magazines. I mean, look at Sparkle," he spoke, referring to Starr's main magazine rival, "They have true facts in it."

Arthur bit back a sigh. "I'll go to the courthouse to see if I can find a record of birth for the kid."

-oOo-

By the time they had arrived at the hospital, Arianna's arm had swollen twice its normal size and had turned into a rainbow of colors: blue, black, and even purple. Castle could tell that Beckett was doing everything she could to avoid looking at it directly. Castle helped Arianna out of the car-she was crying too much to walk-and carried her into the emergency room. Kate and Alexis were right beside him. Castle went to sit with Arianna in the waiting and tried to calm her down as Beckett went to the desk.

Alexis seemed unsure of what to do, so she lingered by Beckett's side. Kate got some forms to fill out, and they both went to sit down beside Castle. Kate's leg bounced anxiously as she tried to fill out the forms, but she was shaking too much to do so. Alexis took them from her and began to fill them out quickly, "Thanks," Beckett told her before turning to her little girl. Grasping her uninjured arm, Kate rubbed it reassuringly. "Hey," she wiped the tears away that fell from Arianna's eyes. "Shh, it's going to be okay, but you're going to get a cast put on for a while, all right?"

Arianna nodded and sniffled. Already becoming comfortable in Castle's present, she rested her head on his chest.

"What color cast do you want? They may have pink." Kate told her, and Castle noticed that the girl's tears were slowing.

"Blue." Arianna told Kate as her tears finally stopped. Kate couldn't help but laugh at that and even Castle let out a chuckle. Kate felt a tap on the back and she turned to see Alexis holding the forms out to her.

"Umm," Alexis murmured. "I filled in most of it, but I wasn't sure about some things." She gestured to the area where you were supposed to put known allergies and then to the position of 'father.'

"Oh, it's great. Thanks." Beckett took the forms from her. She glanced briefly at Castle-which didn't go unnoticed by the man-as she stared at the blank. Filling coming to a decision of doing what she always did on forms like this, she put a neat line through it before looking at the allergies column. She wrote 'none known of' in her neat script.

Alexis stood quickly, "I'll take it back up there for you." Kate nodded in thanks and watched as the girl bounded off towards the nurse's station before turning back to her daughter, and, coincidentally, Castle.

"It hurts, Mommy," the youngest brunette whimpered.

"I know," Kate told her.

Castle took this as an opportunity to talk, "I broke my wrist once-I'm not going to tell you how though because your mom will kill me-and my mother thought it was the end of the world. Be thankful that your mom's not as much as a drama queen as mine is." Kate looked up from Arianna to glance at him, mentally begging him to tell Arianna more stories so she would be at least a little distracted from the pain.

"How do you know my Mommy?" Arianna asked, sniffling slightly.

Kate looked at Castle with wide eyes. "Well," Castle spoke. "I'm a writer. You know, of books." Arianna looked up at Kate for reassurance and Kate nodded slightly.

"Really, that's what I want to be when I grow up!" The girl exclaimed and Kate's brows knitted. She hadn't known that.

"You look like you'd make a good one. Anyway, you know your mom catches bad guys, right?"

Ari nodded, "Yeah, she's a superhero."

Castle laughed and Kate heard Alexis sit back down in the chair behind her. "Well, your mom needed help catches this really bad guy, and she knew how incredibly smart-slash-charming-slash-handsome I am, so she wanted me to help her."

"You forgot egotistical," Kate added, even though she knew that Arianna had no clue what that word meant. Alexis laughed and so did Arianna, not wanting to let them know that she didn't get it.

Castle got an I'm-so-injured look on his face, and Kate rolled her eyes. Neither noticed how both of them were easily slipping back into their old game. "Well, ignore your mom, she's just mean." He pouted and Ari giggled. Kate's heart tingled at her daughter getting along so well with her father. She knew that it wasn't good. Every second Arianna spent with Castle would make it harder for Kate to not tell Castle the truth. "After a lot of hard superhero work, I caught the bad guy."

Kate couldn't help it; she snorted. "Right…sure…that's exactly what happened." Sarcasm filled her words.

"Well, then, why don't you tell the story then?" Castle told her.

"I will. So there was this bad guy on the loose, right Ari? Well, I talked to Castle about it because," Kate thought for a moment, "Because he knew a lot of things about this bad guy." That wasn't exactly true, but what else could she tell the girl?

"And he just wouldn't go away." That part was true. "He wanted to help so much." Lie. He wanted to follow you around so much. "So, your uncle Roy told me to let him help." True. "And I did. After a few days, we got some information about the bad guy. We rushed over to his house to get him, and the bad guy caught Castle."

Arianna's eyes were wide as she looked up to Castle. "I rescued him, though, and got the bad guy."

Castle stared at Kate. "Wait-"

"Arianna Beckett?" a nurse called.

They got up and began to walk to her, but not before Castle leaned over to Beckett and whispered, "Saved by the bell…or, in this case, the nurse."

"Oh, Castle," she murmured back to him. "My story was so true."

"You didn't even mention the part where I head-butted the guy!" He exclaimed in her ear and Kate laughed.

She widened her eyes and put her hand over her mouth in faux shock, "Oops," she spoke before sauntering off into the room.

"The doctor will be right in." The nurse told them before leaving herself.

As Castle set Arianna down easily on the table, Kate thought of how amazing it would be to have him by her side at everything. Then, his phone rang, interrupting her fantasy. She blinked as he looked at its screen for a split second. "It's Kyra. I'll be right back."

Kyra.

His fiancée.

His love.

Everything that she wasn't.

That fantasy disappeared from her mind quickly as she grasped her daughter's hand.

-oOo-

"Castle, Castle, Castle, Castle," Arthur was murmuring to himself as he searched through the birth records of the last seven years. No Castles. None. Whatsoever. Damn it, he was going to have to call his boss back and tell him that he was wrong. Unless…could she be under Beckett? "Beckett," he began to search under the B's. "B-e-c…Beckett, here it is. This must be it. Arianna Beckett." He pulled the file out. Well, if this wasn't it there still was another Beckett in there. Her name was Kate too, but he didn't judge. Sure, it was a bit strange for her to give her daughter her first name as a first name in present times, but it wasn't unheard of. Look at Gilmore Girls, for instance. Damn, he really needed to tell his wife to quit watching that so often. It was embarrassing for a guy to know that.

He opened the file and looked down the year. It showed that the girl was about to turn six. That would work out. Kate Beckett had last shown up in a magazine including the author around that time. He had researched it on his phone on the way there, but he had wondered how she kept her pregnancy quiet from the press.

"Parents," he murmured to himself as he looked down at that column. Mother: Katherine Beckett. "Yes," he drug out the 's' in that word. Father: "Empty," he spoke to himself.

"Damn."

So, what do you think will happen next?

Okay, by the way, I don't know if birth records of in the courthouse or not. I've been to the emergency room once with my sister ( I broke my arm when I was really little, but I can't remember that) and I'm sure it's different here in Georgia than in New York City. Really, really, really, really different. And I'm not sure if a reporter would do that much research in a gossip magazine or not. But he is in this story. There is a Star Magazine, but I'm not sure if there is a 'Starr' or 'Sparkle'. I mainly get Seventeen and Teen Vogue. Things like that. Martina Regal is not a real person, but she is based on one. I will dedicate the next chapter to whoever gets what real life person she's based on. Sure, the dates are different (four weeks), but…

Thanks for all the amazing reviews. Keep them up, please. :)

Oh, and who else can't believe that this is chapter ten (including prologue)?