Thank you to all who are reading and enjoying. And a special thanks to my guest reviewers for taking the time to let me know what you think. You continue to inspire this story. The talks that you're waiting for are coming up soon, but in the meantime...


"We're gonna take off now," Ryan said. He and Jenny were the next ones to stick their heads in the door. "But we'll see you guys later."

"Say hi to Sarah Grace and Nicholas for us," Kate said.

"Absolutely," Jenny promised, and then she and Kevin left.

After the Ryans' departure, the scent of hot coffee reached both Kate and Rick. "Who's trying to punish us?" Castle asked, only half jokingly.

"Hey! No fair bringing real coffee around people who can't have it yet!" Kate called.

Lanie stuck her head in the door. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed. "I went on a coffee and pastry run. I've gotten a few nasty phone calls from Perlmutter, though, so I'd better get back to the morgue. You two take it easy, and I'll be back later."

After Lanie left, Gates entered the room. "I have to get back to work," she said, "but I'll be by to check on you again later."

"Thank you, sir," Kate said.

"Yes, Deputy Chief Gates, thank you, for everything," Castle said seriously. "Especially for letting me hang around for so long...and for letting me come back after...well...you know."

"Detectives Ryan and Esposito were Captain Beckett's team, Mr. Castle," Gates replied. "You were her partner, long before I arrived at the 12th. And even if I had removed you, I know you would have found a way back in before long, because you are nothing if not creative and persistent, Mr. Castle."

"He is that, sir," Kate agreed, doing her best to hide her smile.

Gates smiled at them then, a real smile, surprising them both. "Rest easy," she said. "After all this time, and all you've been through, you've certainly earned it. The hard way, as usual, but you've earned it nonetheless." She turned to leave, but when she got to the door, she turned back and looked at them.

"Sir?" Kate asked, slightly puzzled.

Gates gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head. "Another time, Kate," she said. Then she left. Kate and Rick were both silent as they heard Gates' footsteps disappearing down the corridor.

"What do you think that's about?" Castle asked as soon as he and Kate were alone.

"She-" Kate started to say, but she was interrupted by the arrival of both her gynecologist and the respiratory therapist for Rick.

"Well, Mr...Castle," the respiratory therapist said, consulting the patient chart in her hand, "are you ready to take a spin around the floor?" She was young, blonde, and impossibly perky. "Not a literal spin, but we do need to get you up and moving, so I can see how long you're going to need that oxygen, and determine what kind of therapy program to set up for you. I'm Janine, by the way."

"Kate," Dr. Simone Elliott greeted her. "First, I'm glad you're going to be all right. Second, your trauma surgeon, Dr. Gallison, said that you requested a consult?"

"Yes," Kate began. She looked at Rick to find him already looking back at her.

"Looks like we'll have to have that talk later," he said regretfully.

"We'll have it," Kate vowed. "I swear to you, we will. As soon as we're alone."

Janine was helping Castle out of his bed, and she had brought a portable cart of some kind for his oxygen tank, which she was busily placing in said cart, and then she began disconnecting him from various machines, chattering on about how it was only temporary and she had already informed Dr. Gallison and all the nurses on duty, and then grabbing his IV pole and suggesting he hold onto it and push it as he walked the corridor.

"Until later, then," Castle said. Once he was on his feet, he looked at Janie and Dr. Elliott and said, "You ladies will have to excuse me for a moment, but it's been way too long since the last time I did this." Slowly, he made his way to Kate's bedside, using the IV pole to help keep himself steady. Then, when he was close enough, he leaned down, biting back a groan at the pain it caused to explode in his chest, and fused his lips to Kate's. It was a warm and tender kiss, no tongues, no hands involved, just his lips on hers, a reaffirmation and a promise of what they had and what they would always have. Kate kissed him back with all the energy and passion she could muster, and he reveled in the feel of her soft, warm lips against his, her kiss making her own promises of tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and the rest of their lives, filled with her, with them, with their love, for always.

When they pulled apart, he rested his forehead against hers for an all-too-brief moment. Then he whispered, so only she could hear, "I'm sneaking into your bed after lights out. Just giving you fair warning."

"I'll be waiting," she whispered back.

And then Castle was off to walk the halls with Janine, while Kate settled in for an intensive interrogation session, accompanied by a physical examination, to determine once and for all whether she and Rick could have a baby together.


As they got closer to the loft, Esposito noticed Alexis becoming more and more tense. Martha didn't look too certain herself, but seemed determined to soldier on. Castle's mother was a lot stronger than any of them gave her credit for, he thought, except maybe Castle and Beckett and Alexis.

When they arrived, and got out of the car, Alexis froze by the car. She just stared up at the windows of the loft and tried not to hyperventilate. Martha approached her granddaughter gently, carefully. "We have to face it sometime, darling," she told Alexis. "The longer we wait, the harder it will be."

Alexis swallowed hard. Images of her dad and Kate, bloody and losing consciousness but still holding onto each other in the only way they could at that awful moment, their hands clasped together, some guy leaned up against the dishwasher with his eyes open in the fixed stare of death... Alexis violently shook her head in a failed attempt to clear it. "I know," she said shakily. "I know we do. I'm just...not sure that I can."

"You can," Esposito told her quietly, matter-of-factly. "You know I wouldn't let you go up there if it wasn't safe, right?"

"That's not what I'm worried about," Alexis replied, almost unthinkingly. She was worried she'd have a panic attack or start hyperventilating or just crumple into unconsciousness when she saw the kitchen again because of the combination of physical exhaustion and nightmarish memories of the day before.

"You won't be alone, Alexis," Martha promised her. Then, taking her hand and gripping it tightly, she led Alexis to the entrance to the building with a look of grim determination on her face that was a stark contrast to Alexis's deer-in-the-headlights, terrified-out-of-her-mind-and-trying-desperately-not-to-give-in-to-the-terror expression, with Esposito following behind them.

When Martha unlocked the front door and stepped inside, hand in hand with Alexis, nothing seemed out of place. There was no smell of cordite in the air, no evidence whatsoever that a violent ambush had occurred here nearly 24 hours ago. Esposito softly closed the front door behind them and stood in the foyer, watching and waiting.

Swallowing hard again, Alexis let go of her grandmother's hand and, trembling all the way, slowly approached the exact spot where she and the others had found her dad and Kate just yesterday morning.

The first thing Alexis noticed was that everything had been thoroughly cleaned up. The faint smell of pine still hung in the air. The kitchen looked no different than it had every day prior to yesterday.

Then Alexis looked more closely at the exact spot where they had found her dad and Kate and instantly realized why it had looked different to her. "The floorboards are missing!" she exclaimed, surprised.

"Oh," Esposito said, coughing and then clearing his throat as he slowly walked forward to join Alexis and Martha. "Yeah. Well, I, ah, couldn't get those clean no matter how much or how hard I tried, so I finally decided it'd just be easier to pull 'em up. I'm guessing Beckett and Castle are gonna want to redo at least the floor anyway, so this way, they have a head start."

"You pried up the bloody floorboards?" Alexis asked, shocked.

"I'm sorry if I overstepped," Esposito began, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, "but I just couldn't get them clean."

"You cleaned up," Alexis realized. "You put everything back the way it was...or as close as you could get it, anyway. It was you." Then she realized something else. "That's how you were the first one at the hospital after they woke up and I texted everyone! You said you'd been nearby when you got my text. You were here! You were here, cleaning up!"

Esposito dipped his chin in a nod. "I was," he said.

"Why you, Detective?" Martha asked. "And how did you get in?"

"Somebody had to do it, Mrs. R.," Esposito replied. "I had the time, I couldn't sleep, so I decided to make myself useful, because I didn't want you and Alexis, or Beckett and Castle, having to come back here and see that. I knew it would be hard enough for all of you to walk through the door the first time without having that waiting for you. And Castle told me a while back that he'd hidden a spare key and where." He did not share with the ladies that the spare key was taped to the bottom of the stapler in Beckett's desk drawer at the 12th.

Alexis surged forward and hugged Esposito then. "Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you so much."

"You're welcome," Esposito said, giving Alexis a pat on the back.

"Let me add my thanks, Detective," Martha said, hugging him herself when Alexis released him. "And now, if you two will excuse me, I'm going to go and lie down for a while. I think now, I'll be able to sleep." She turned her attention to Alexis. "If you need me, darling, I'll be just upstairs, in my old room."

Alexis nodded. "Okay, Gram."

After Martha went upstairs, Esposito said, "So I guess you're next, huh?"

"I don't really feel like sleeping, or eating, right now," Alexis said. Esposito opened his mouth, but Alexis held up a hand and hurriedly said, "I know, you're gonna say the same thing Dad and Kate said, that I need to sleep and I need to eat. I know I do. I just...My system needs to come down a little further from all the tension and worry and adrenaline before I do. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," Esposito replied.

"I think I'm just gonna hang out and watch a movie," Alexis said. She shifted her weight then. This was ridiculous, she chided herself. Gram was right upstairs. But if Gram could actually sleep, then Alexis should let her.

"What'd you have in mind?" Esposito asked. He moved into the living room and started checking out Castle and Beckett's collection of DVDs.

"Something funny," Alexis said.

And then Esposito saw it. "Perfect," he said. He pulled a DVD off the shelf and held it up for Alexis to see with a flourish.

"Airplane!" she said.

"The greatest comedy movie of all time," Esposito said, cracking a smile. "Guaranteed to have you laughing until your sides ache."

"You really think Airplane! is the greatest comedy movie of all time?" Alexis asked, interested.

"Yeah," Esposito said. "Ryan and I have had this argument so many times. Of course, Ryan's really into The Three Stooges and The Marx Brothers. It's not that he hates Airplane!, he just thinks Room Service is the funniest movie of all time."

"Dad and I have had this argument a million times ourselves. He likes Airplane!, but he thinks Spaceballs is funnier," Alexis replied. "And it is funny, just not as funny as Airplane!...which I also happen to think is the greatest comedy movie of all time."

"'Surely you can't be serious,'" Esposito quoted the movie, as serious as Robert Hays in the movie.

"'I am serious. And don't call me Shirley,'" Alexis concluded the scene, quoting Leslie Nielsen with just as much gravity as he had said those two sentences in the movie. Then she smiled, a bit self-consciously, and Esposito smiled back at her, not self-conscious at all.

"Airplane! it is, then," Esposito said, heading to the TV and turning it and the DVD player on. After he had put in the videodisc, he looked over his shoulder at Alexis. "Do you mind if I stick around? I haven't seen this in a while, and I could use a good laugh today." He knew Alexis didn't want to be alone, and even though her grandmother was right upstairs, he also knew that she didn't want to bother her grandmother, or make her come downstairs, or even go upstairs herself and disrupt the sleep Martha so desperately needed.

"Yeah, sure, you're welcome to stay if you want to," Alexis replied, taking a seat on the couch and hoping she didn't sound too eager or relieved at his offer to stay, though she was both of those things.

Esposito settled himself in the chair. The movie began, and Alexis was sound asleep before the plane full of comically crazed characters who narrowly, and hilariously, avoided crashing was in the air. Esposito turned the volume on the TV down but left the movie playing, then slipped Alexis's shoes off and gently laid her down on the couch. She shifted slightly, stretching out, her head pillowed on one arm, then settled back into sleep.

He sat there for half the movie, his gaze cutting back and forth between the film and the sleeping Alexis. Then, restless himself, and finally convinced that Alexis was far enough into slumber that she probably wouldn't have a screaming nightmare, and if she did he'd be there to calm her down when she awoke, he moved into the kitchen and raided Castle and Beckett's refrigerator and cabinets before quietly putting together a pot of his grandmother's homemade chicken noodle soup for Alexis and Martha to eat when they woke up.