Everything That Glitters Part 2


She's surprised when she wakes up at five in the morning, not because she woke before Castle's alarm went off, but because she was asleep in the first place. Lately if she's up, she's up, but she must have dozed off. Maybe the contentment of knowing where everyone is - under her own roof.

Kate scrapes a hand down her face and then pushes off against the mattress, sliding slowly out of bed. Castle's own sleep patterns have gotten sporadic these days; he'll often wake at the slightest touch, be jostled into awareness by the shower cutting on.

She tries to go slowly, leaves him still asleep in the bedroom as she pads quietly down the hall. The living room couch is pulled out and Allie and Rafe are sacked out, but Dashiell is downstairs, puttering around the kitchen, being about as quiet as Dash ever is.

She figured he'd be here.

He gives her a lift of his chin when he sees her and she crosses her arms against the cool air as she makes her way towards him. Dash leans in and kisses her cheek; she lays her hand against his chest and receives it, drumming her fingers against his shirt. He's already dressed too.

"When'd you wake?" she murmurs.

"The clock was a four," he chuckles softly.

She grins back at his joke and shakes her head at him. "We should go out for coffee. Don't want to wake them."

He nods but at that moment the stairs creak and they both swivel to look. Ellery is sneaking downstairs, caught on the middle step as she's trying to be quiet. She rolls her eyes at them and continues on, comes to them in the kitchen.

"What?" she hisses, slapping Dashiell's arm. "Don't look so shocked."

Kate presses her lips together to hold back the smirk. "It's five a.m. Maybe you didn't realize?"

"Whatever. I'll have you know that my day on set starts at four. In the morning. Four. So I've been getting up earlier than you all for years."

Dash cocks his head and Ella sighs.

"Okay, fine. Not earlier than you. But mom for sure. Ever since you retired, Mama, you've been a sluggard."

Kate startles out a laugh and then freezes, turning to look over her shoulder at the sleeping Allie and Rafe. "Hey, let's go out for coffee, okay? We can bring back breakfast for everyone while we're out. Ella, you up for it?"

Ellery's face splits into a wide smile, eyes as blue as the Pacific. And crinkling at the corners, just a little. Just enough. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd love that. Dash, you don't mind me tagging along?"

"Tagging along?" he snorts. "It's not an exclusive club. This is just the first time you have ever managed to make it."

Ellery pushes on him a little with those narrowed eyes, but this is also the first time that it looks completely relaxed, at ease. Just messing with her brother and not really antagonistic. Kate's been regretting all the words she never said, all the ways she never managed to convince her daughter to come home and stay. But now she's starting to think Ellery needed to be away for a while, needed the chance to grow up without them.

"Okay, guys," she says, glancing down at her pajama pants. "I'll get dressed and then we'll go."

"Sounds good," Dash says immediately.

"We'll wait out here. Quietly," Ellery stage whispers.

Kate can't help the smile as she heads back down the hall. Because this morning, she's going to get coffee with both her kids.


Ellery sits on the same side of the booth with Kate, bumping shoulders with her, turning her head to listen when Kate speaks, touching her elbow lightly for her attention. Kate's never had her daughter so blatantly hang on her before, at least not since Ella was a tiny little thing, silent and so clever.

Dashiell, as usual, is the one who carries their conversation, moving back and forth from idle commentary to weird trivia, just like his father.

"If there's a brain injury in that region, Wernicke's area, you can end up with Wernicke aphasia. You understand what everyone is saying to you, but when you speak, it's word salad." He stuffs another bite of waffles into his mouth, looking both erudite and goofy at the same time. Such his father.

"What's that?" Ellery says, sneaking her hand over to snag one of Dashiell's strawberries. He slaps her hand, but he's too late, and Ella snickers at him, leaning back against Kate as if for defense, chewing on her prize. "Word salad."

"Word salad is where speech is typically fluent, but senseless and empty of content. I'm sure you've seen it before - it's one of those stereotypical stroke victim characterizations that are in movies. You know - where the old woman wakes up and sees her son and he's asking her how she is, and she says something like, I need a lamp."

Kate snorts and shakes her head. "Sorry, kiddo, but I can't say that I've ever seen that movie. I need a lamp?"

Ellery giggles but Dash points his syrupy fork at his mother. "What do you know? You never watch anything. Dad's always talking about some movie you've never seen."

Kate tilts her head in acknowledgment, feels Ellery sit up straighter next to her. "How about my movies? You've seen those, right?"

"Of course," she says immediately, turning intent eyes to her daughter. But Ella doesn't seem to be worried; in fact, she's moving right along like her question was rhetorical.

"Okay, so the one Nick was talking about Friday night - the Fast and Furious franchise - you know, the one we met on set-"

"No," Dashiell laughs. "No way. You met Nick on set of that stupid Fast and Furious 38 movie?"

"It's not thirty-eight," Ella says scathingly. "Come on. It's a reboot-"

"What about the movie?" Kate interrupts, lifting an eyebrow.

"Well, it's like Dash was saying. The guy gets in a car wreck; he's on the run because he's found out who's behind the..." Ella glances back and forth between them and then waves it off. "Never mind. Plot holes abound. But he wakes up with that aphasia stuff. Word salad. Everybody on set was quoting the line because it was so stupid."

"See?" Dash says triumphantly, stabbing his fork into his waffles again. "I told you."

"I didn't say I didn't believe you," Kate huffs back. "I said I've never seen that in a movie about stroke victims."

"Mom," he whines. "Come on."

She smirks and glances out of the corner of her eye to see Ellery smiling into her coffee and sliding her fingers across the table again to steal another strawberry.

"Okay, so Wernicke's area. What about it, Dash?" Kate asks, playing distraction for her daughter's move.

"Anyway," he enunciates clearly, narrowing his eyes at Ella. "You damage Wernicke's area and you sound coherent, but it's totally a mess. But then there's Broca's area-"

"Jeez, all these names," Ellery groans.

"Shut it, baby girl," Dash snaps back, slapping her hand again. Ellery retreats with a little smile and Kate laughs softly at them, lets Ellery curl up against her side. "So back to what I was saying. If you have a brain injury to Broca's area, your aphasia is different - you can comprehend everything people say to you, but you can't get at the words to speak back. You're mostly mute."

"Aphasia," Kate hums, studying Dashiell. "I guess it's not as simple as you're making it sound."

He gives her a cocky grin, crooked, and shrugs. "Yeah. Simplifying it a lot. There's really a hundred different kinds of aphasia you can have with injuries to those areas, but the thing that stuck with me would be how awful that would be. To understand what people are saying but not having any way of communicating back. To be forced into silence."

"For you? Hell, yeah. Dash, you talk more than anybody I know," Ellery snorts.

"I have a large quota of words," he smirks. "Me and Dad."

"Ooh, if Dad had aphasia, wouldn't that be terrible?" Ellery shivers and grins. "I mean, his whole job is based on being able to have words. If Mom had it, not much change there. We probably would never notice. In fact..." Ella peers at her critically, a little smirk on her lips that Kate rolls her eyes at. "How do we know Mom doesn't already have that Broca's aphasia?"

"Mom still talks. Coherently."

"Maybe it's word salad," Ella pipes up, still smirking at Kate. But she can't quite keep a straight face and she cracks up, laughing again. "I'm gonna use that. I'll make up business cards that say, Please excuse me. I have aphasia. And then no one will make me talk in the morning."

"You're certainly talking enough now." Dash sighs and scoops up a couple strawberries, dumps them on a napkin and slides it over to Ellery. "Stop stealing mine."

"You like it," Ella says back, already propping one into her mouth.

Kate just smiles, draws her arm over the back of the seat and strokes her fingers through Ellery's pony tail. Ella startles in surprise and half-turns in the booth, her eyes catching her mother's and offering one of those shy, small smiles. Her little girl smiles. The kind she used to give Kate out from underneath that dark hair when she was a stubborn three year old.

"If you need me to talk more, baby girl, I can do that. Aphasia or not."

Ella sucks strawberry juice off her thumb and leans in, gives her mother a soft kiss on the cheek, a little sigh at her ear. "Love you, Mama."

"Love you too, sweetheart."

"Hey, no!" Dash bursts out. "I gave you some already. Stop stealing my strawberries, little thief."

Kate glances over and realizes she's been used as a cover for a sneak attack; Ellery's wriggling in her seat like she's so pleased with herself, her hands cupping protectively around the three strawberries she stole.

Ella turns and gives Kate a wide-beaming smile. "Mama, keep talking. You're a good distraction."

"Mala svraka," Kate laughs.

My little magpie.