I'm sorry for the delay on this one and I'm also sorry in advance for the delay to follow - I'm leaving tomorrow to meet my newest niece! I'm SOOO excited, but that also means I won't be updating until I get back.

HOWEVER - This chapter is almost twice the length of normal chapters to tide you over :) I know I've gotten in the bad habit of updating every 2 weeks when my goal is to update once a week. I'll be striving to keep that goal when I get back.

Thank you all so much for all the support I've received for this story!

Also, special shout-out to all my anon reviewers bc I don't get to thank you guys enough as it is!

Chapter Ten

Rick swung the pantry doors open and tried to step inside, but Matthew cut in front of him, more than ready to help with snacks for their impromptu movie night. There was a steady thrum of rain droplets pelting the house, an ever-present taunt that their bonfire had been ruined, but the sound would soon be drowned out by whatever film selections the others were putting together upstairs.

Caste's eyes did a quick scan, found the popcorn on the middle shelf. "Aha!"

"What else?" Matthew asked, a bag of marshmallows in his hand as he stuffed one more in his mouth.

"Buddy, lay off the mallows." Castle lightly scolded, swiping the bag and putting it in place of the popcorn. "Save some for the rest of the weekend."

"Gram says we'll be stuck inside for the rest of the weekend." Matthew pointed out, eyes darting back to the sugary treat still within reach. "So we won't be able to roast more anyway."

"Still…" Castle muttered, a little more focused on scanning the popcorn instructions. "Come on, you can help me find enough bowls for everyone."

He stepped out of the pantry.

"Dad, we're ready whenever you are." Alexis called from the open stairway on the second floor.

"Thanks, Pumpkin."

"I came to help carry." Martha waltzed in with her surprising offer.

"Thank you. Although Matthew is supposed to do that, I seem to have lost my right-hand man."

"Right here!" Matthew ran out of the pantry, cheeks full with what could only be stolen marshmallows."

"Matthew, I told you no more." Castle sighed.

"I didn't!" Matthew vowed, ducking his head from Castle's gaze and going to grab a chair to reach the cabinets. Castle let out a low groan and caught his mother's gaze. She quirked an eyebrow.

"What?" Castle snapped.

"Nothing." Martha sang.

They gathered drinks while the popcorn was in the microwave and then divided the salty treat into enough bowls to share.

"Here, Bud. These are for Kate and Alexis." Castle instructed Matthew and watched the boy dash ahead of him and Martha, up the stairs to the entertainment room with the largest screen in the house for watching movies, complete with home theater chairs and no windows for a true movie theater experience in the comfort of their own home. If there was to be no bonfire tonight, they were certainly still going to enjoy themselves.

"Richard, wait." Martha stilled him just before he joined the others.

"What's wrong?"

"You really aren't going to let Matthew keep running the show, are you?"

He was stung by her words, thinking only of the moment with Matthew a minute ago. "Mother, it was few marshmallows. I'm not going to make a huge deal out of that during our vacation."

"He lied to you." Martha pressed and it was stunning to come from her. After all, she'd never been much of an authoritarian herself. And for that reason alone, Castle felt the flush of humiliation rising through him. His mother was criticizing him in a way she never had. In the way he handled his kids.

"It's not a big deal." He insisted.

Martha huffed. "For heaven's sake, it's not just the lying. Don't you see the pattern you and Kate have created that everyone is following? Myself included, I'm not happy to admit." She was met with a blank expression and a creeping suspicion that she was justified in pointing this out. "You don't discipline him. You don't set any boundaries. And that may be well and fine for now because he has such a sweet disposition, but that can turn sour fast."

Castle swallowed roughly. "We discipline him."

Martha studied him, debated whether she'd said enough. She'd always been one to speak her mind, but now she was straddling a dangerous line between expressing concern and being overbearing. She didn't want to crush him, to make him doubt his ability to raise this boy right, but her heart was in a knot over what she'd seen and where they were headed.

"Just..." She placated with a soft sigh. "Think about it, Kiddo. I know it's ultimately between you and Kate to figure this out so I won't say anymore."

And with that, she turned and went into the room with her share of the snacks and drinks, her voice ringing out in a grand entrance as if she hadn't just snuffed all the good feelings out of Castle. He paused for a second, peered into the dimly lit room where Alexis had already set up the movie and everyone else waited for him.

Lightning streaked across the sky, drawing his gaze to the hallway window where the storm was building momentum.

They set boundaries for Matthew. They did. It wasn't like they let him run wild like an animal, Castle reasoned.

And he was Matthew. He was a good kid.

But Castle felt that seed of doubt his mother had planted already taking root in his heart, even as he tried to explain away her side of it.

His gaze flitted back to the room where his family was gathered, chatting away excitedly while they waited and Matthew's voice rose above the rest, demanding their attention.

Was his mother right? Were they ruining Matthew - or had the damage already been done?

They had turned the night around. A rainstorm had ruined the bonfire, yes, but they'd made the most of their forced indoor adventure with everyone settled and content with a movie.

But the storm was not to be underestimated.

As the film inched towards the end, the screen suddenly went black in the already dark room.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Alexis groaned.

"It's too dark!" Matthew instantly cried, his hands clutching at Kate as their surroundings continued to be pervaded by darkness.

Kate quickly dug her phone out of her pocket and powered it up, letting the dim light placate Matthew's fear. "You're ok." She promised, already gathering him close to move out of the room.

Castle was the first to reach the door and threw it wide open for the others. The rest of the house was dark, but at least it wasn't pitch-black like the inside of the home theater room and they could discern where they were going. At least the lightning was providing them flickers of light.

"There are matches and candles in the kitchen." Castle doled out the information. "I know I stashed a few flashlights around the house, too. Alexis, you know where the -"

"The one in my room and in the laundry room." Alexis finished and promptly spun around to go grab them.

"Meet us in the kitchen!" Castle called after her. "Everyone else," He gestured grandly to the stairs and it was mostly missed by the group. "Follow me."

Kate hefted Matthew onto her hip, not at all above carrying a five-year-old if it meant she didn't have to worry about him tripping or walking into something. And in a small corner of her mind that wasn't focused on dealing with a power outage, she was secretly thrilled that Matthew had chosen to cling to her out of everyone else around. And maybe proximity had something to do with it - she was sitting right next to him when everything went dark - but she was choosing to see it as a small victory of some sort.

"Kate, what are we going to do?" Matthew murmured dramatically into her shoulder.

"Hang in there, Buddy. The power could be back on any minute."

Or it could be out for days. She inwardly sighed.

Castle was dumping the contents of a plastic bag onto the kitchen counter when she reached him, small candles rolling out everywhere.

"I wish we had stuck to one side of the house." Castle suddenly muttered. "We can put candles in the bedrooms, but I don't like the idea of having so many spread throughout the house. If a fire starts…"

"Well, let's start with flashlights, then. We don't need candles right now." Kate decided.

When Alexis found them, Castle had piled all their supplies - candles, lighters, matches, and one lantern - in one heap on the counter and Kate was on her phone with the power company, trying to discern the size of the blackout, the likelihood of getting everything up and running again sometime soon.

"Do have any sort of generator, Rick?" Jim asked.

"Yeah. A little one." Castle answered and all heads snapped to him.

"Well?" Jim prompted with a half-smile.

"It's in the garage… somewhere." Castle admitted.

Martha groaned. It was somewhere in a four-car garage that doubled as storage space on the other side of the house, cloaked in complete darkness. And if Castle was being honest, he wasn't entirely sure that it was even there.

"Thank you." Kate muttered into her phone and abruptly ended the call. "Well," She sighed. "It looks like it could be a while. Power lines are down everywhere and half the town is without electricity. We might need that generator."

All eyes were back on Castle and he was inwardly cursing himself for not being more prepared in his own home. But he could only think of two other times when the power had been out while they happened to be there. It wasn't a common situation here.

But Kate was right. They could really use the generator right about now.

"I'll go look for it." He finally agreed, swiping a flashlight from the counter.

"I'll go with you." Kate let Matthew slide down to his feet. The boy stood there, dumbstruck, as Castle and Kate took off down a dark hallway and disappeared from sight.

"They've been gone too long." Matthew argued.

"They've been gone for fifteen minutes." Alexis pointed out with a quirk of her eyebrow, challenging Matthew to keep this up.

The four of them had moved to the sitting room nearest the kitchen, taking a few candles with them to keep the darkness at bay.

The candle flames flickered and cast orange glows on the faces of everyone around them. Alexis rubbed Matthew's back. "You know what Gram is really good at?" She asked him, shooting her grandmother a conspiratorial gaze.

"What?" Matthew took the bait.

"Telling stories."

"She better not be telling stories." Castle huffed somewhere to Kate's far left. She was deep in the underbelly of the garage storage closet, up to her shoulders in tools and spare tires that looked like they hadn't been seen in years.

"Mother caused nightmares for Alexis for weeks when she was eight."

"Castle, focus."

"I am." He grunted. She cast a look over her shoulder, flashlight following her gaze, and saw him struggling to move a shelving unit that was carelessly stacked in front of another. "Seriously, who did this?" He asked, but his question was drowned out by the sudden rumble of thunder over them.

In an instant, she was on the other side of the shelves, helping him move it back.

Castle's flashlight illuminated the back shelf, the beam of light sweeping over each row and coming up empty. No generator.

"Where the hell is this thing?"

He turned to push the shelves back without help, a little too roughly, and was rewarded with an object falling forward from it, unable to dodge it in the dark.

Castle's yelp had Kate turning back to him once more as something heavy clattered on the ground.

"Are you ok?"

"My foot." was his only answer as he eased his back against the wall and slid down to the ground.

He didn't see Kate, only the flashlight she was wielding as it shone on him, but he felt her deft fingers on his ankle and then his shoe as she eased it off of him and pushed the cuff of his pant leg up his calf.

"At least buy me dinner first." He quipped and could just imagine the glare on her face.

"Castle." was all she said, relieving him of a sock.

Her light showed the already-blooming bruise on the top of his foot and the small crack of skin in the middle where it was bleeding.

"I'll grab you some ice." She started to rise to her feet, but he captured her hand with impressive accuracy in the dark.

"No, stay. Just give me a minute." He said. "I just want to find this damn thing and get out of here."

She huffed and he could read her thoughts - yes, stubborn and insufferable man, that was him.

"What fell on my foot?" He wanted to know.

"Space heater. You're lucky. You could've broken a toe."

"So very lucky." He griped, staring at the outline of his throbbing foot. He expected Kate to keep looking, to get them out of here sooner, but she stayed glued to his side on the cold concrete, waiting for him.

"Castle," She broached.

"I don't need ice." He said swiftly.

"No, I wasn't - never mind…"

He sat up straighter, wishing his wife wasn't able to hide under a mask of literal darkness right now. He'd give anything to see her expression and read those subtle cues. "What?" He pressed. It wasn't as easy in the dark, but he still knew other tell-tale signs in the way she spoke, the words she chose. He knew her. At least, he used to think that he did.

"About what you said… about my work…"

"I thought we weren't going to talk about that this weekend. That was your idea." He cut in.

"It's just been playing in my mind on a loop. Rick, I don't want you to think I'm not in this."

He sighed.

"I know, Kate. I know you need to be fighting against injustice in your own way. You were wrong earlier - I don't want you to give up being a homicide detective, I just… I want you to love us more than the job."

She inched back from him on a recoil. "Castle."

But he couldn't take back his words if he really meant them.

"I already do. Rick, I married you. I'm adopting Matthew with you. I - I - you're everything and I don't know how else to prove that to you if you don't already believe it."

He took a slow breath and tried to get over the woundedness in Kate's voice, but hearing her words had his resolve crumbling. "You're different, Kate. It's not just work, if I'm being honest, it's all of it. You were such a driving force with the adoption all the way up until we got Matthew and then something changed." He shrugged, couldn't put his finger on the exact moment it happened, or even what had happened, only knew in his gut that he'd never felt more alone in his life than in the past few weeks, trying to deal with Matthew on his own. "If you're having second thoughts about it, you have to say something now before the adoption -"

"No!" She cut in sharply. Second thoughts about Matthew? About the greatest thing that had ever happened to her? Never. "Babe, I love you." She said fiercely. "And I love Matthew so much it aches." But it wasn't always enough, was it? Just loving someone. It was a battle to keep them and she'd been slacking. "I don't have doubts about either of you or about the choices we've made. I have doubts about me as Matthew's...mom." She finally got it out.

There was a stretch of silence after she spoke and she wished more than anything she could see how her words had been received by him.

"You're the best parent I know, Castle, and Matthew adores you. The two of you have this special bond already and you know just how to handle him and I feel like most days I'm treading water. I love Matthew so much, but I can't…" She gulped back whatever words were coming out and gave a hapless shake of her head that Castle couldn't see. "I'm not doing him any good. He deserves so much better." She swiped a thumb aggressively under her eyes, stopping the tears early in their tracks, but Castle heard them in her voice. He stared silently at the outline of her and god, that was so much worse than when he was screaming at her. "I'm not you, Castle. And I'm not the mom he already had. I'll never measure up."

"Is that really how you feel?" He finally croaked. He secured one arm around her waist and pulled her in. "Kate," He rasped. "You're amazing." But she buried her face in his chest like his words hadn't reached her. He was still pissed as hell that she wouldn't get this out sooner, that she let it fester in her mind for so long with only those inner demons as a sounding board, but he'd deal with that later. He couldn't let her keep on with this disillusionment. "I get it. No matter the kind of mother he had, she will always be the best mom in his mind because she was his mom. But she's gone now and Matthew is still here. He needs you, Kate. And you're not any good for him? That's crap. You understand Matthew's pain in a way I never will. I wish you two didn't have to share such a dark connection, but if anyone can help Matthew learn to live with that kind of loss, it's you. Not me." He waited a beat for her, but she didn't move from him and his own thoughts were spinning now with all the ways to tell her she was wrong about this. "You measure up, love. In fact you set the bar pretty damn high. To Matthew, I'm just some overgrown playmate. He'll never see me as a dad."

"Castle." That was what did it. She withdrew from him with a feistiness in her again, ready to argue. How had they gone from fighting against each other to fighting for the other in a matter of minutes? Her hands fisted in the front of his shirt, trying to make sure he was listening. An overgrown playmate? "You're more than that." He felt one of her hands release his shirt and soon it was trailing up along his jaw to cup his face. She leaned in closer, her breath fanning against his shoulder. "You make the world magical." She whispered gently, with all the gratitude she felt for the man who'd given her a reason to walk in the light. "And you love so fully. So richly. You're generous with your love, Castle." She leaned her forehead against his. There was so much depth to this man, so much he could offer Matthew. So much he already had. "You are so good with our son."

Our son.

Her words filled the air around them as a breath of hope. They'd never said those words out loud, but there was no denying now that it was the only future they wanted with Matthew. Their son.

"I'm scared of doing this alone." He released his last fear into the dark abyss around them, all of their insecurities finally laid bare to each other.

"Never alone." Kate vowed before sealing her promise with a kiss. "And I know it doesn't solve everything, but I won't work another minute of overtime. When my shift is over, I'm off the clock and on my way home." She felt him sigh contently against her, but another thought of hers was close on its heels. "But I still… I don't have flexible hours, Castle. I can't change that."

"I know." He reassured. "But no overtime? Thank you." She could hear the profound gratitude in his voice, the peace over knowing where each other stood.

Everything that had been off-kilter finally shifted back into place. They still had hurdles ahead and insecurities that hadn't been vanquished, but at least they had this moment to build on going forward.

"I love you." She told him again. He was enough. She needed him to know that.

"I love you, too." He pulled her in, fingers trailing along her jaw and finding her lips so he knew where to aim. She shifted up and over his lap, her eyes starting to adjust to the dark in this room.

"How's your foot?" She asked as an afterthought.

He chuckled between kisses and she savored the sound. "Fine enough for this, trust me."

They matched stride without trying as they headed back toward the others, Kate's hand finding his and their fingers interlacing. They had the damn generator now, trailing behind Castle. And a moment of reconnecting that neither of them would be forgetting anytime soon.

It was the squeaking wheels of the portable generator that gave them away as they neared the sitting room, drawn to the animated voices of Martha and Alexis, to the warm glow of light spilling into the hallway they were treading.

"They're back!" They heard Matthew announce with no small amount of relief in his voice and Castle gave Kate's hand a reassuring squeeze before they breached the room. They could do this. They could be more for Matthew's sake and for each other's.

With the generator found and set up on the back porch and the essentials hooked in and running, everyone came to the same conclusion to call it a night. They scattered throughout the house with Castle being the one to put Matthew to bed during the storm.

Or, at least trying to.

When Kate had waited nearly an hour for him to return, she figured Matthew wasn't handling it well. But instead, as she went to check on them, she found both Castle and Matthew passed out on queen-size bed of that guest room. She went to Castle's side, brushing back his hair in a familiar gesture that gently woke him.

"Scooch in." She murmured.

He slid to the middle of the bed and she crawled in after him, curling into his chest. He enveloped her in his arms and breathed a happy sigh.

They had a world of problems between them with Matthew, the most pressing being his mother's revelation. He hadn't said anything to Kate yet. He would. Soon - because the longer he dwelt on it, the more truth he saw in his mother's words and in Matthew's actions. But for now, he had his partner back and all he wanted for the moment was to bask in it.

Behind Castle's back, Matthew was lightly snoring and the sound had a powerfully soothing effect on Castle, coupled with the warmth of Kate at his chest.

For one glorious moment, everything was fine.

Thoughts?

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