The air was damp and chilly when she stepped outside, the pale glow of the streetlights failing to make the night any less murky. The New Yorkers who were still out all seemed to be hurrying home, hunched against the small drizzle, and Kate herself shivered as she headed for the yellow shape of a cab.

She had the driver drop her off two blocks from her apartment; there was a small drugstore there open 24/7, and she felt like walking the rest of the way. She needed to shake off Castle's words, the weight in her chest that wouldn't let her breathe right.

After the semi-darkness of the cab, the neon lights of the shop were blinding. Beckett blinked, her eyes taking a second to adjust before she could orient herself, but she'd been there a few times before, knew roughly where to find pregnancy tests.

There was a vast array of them, brands that Kate had never heard of, or maybe seen once on TV. She stared at them for a handful of seconds, overwhelmed, before she firmly set her chin and grabbed two random boxes.

Okay, three. Castle looked like he needed a great deal of reassurances, and despite being mad at him for his poor word choice and his lack of trust in her, she wasn't going to punish him this way.

He deserved to know, if only because he had good reasons for freaking out. Well. Okay reasons.

She bit her lip and headed for the register, the boxes securely held between both hands, prepared herself for a judgmental look from the pharmacist. But the man behind the desk gave her a kind, tired smile, and took the tests from her hands without comment.

"Do you need any advice as to how to use those?" he asked softly after he was done scanning the barcodes.

Beckett parted her lips, flicked her eyes to the boxes - surely there were some kind of instructions inside? - and back to the man's brown, patient gaze. After all, what could it hurt?

"I do, actually," she answered with a small smile.

"It's nothing complicated," he assured her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Basically, the longer you wait, the more accurate the result. Most labs recommend you take the test about a week after your missed period, or, if you're not sure when your next period is going to be, three weeks after you last had unprotected sex."

"Three weeks," Kate echoed in a breath, surprised. She'd expected a delay, but she hadn't thought it would be this long. Of course, pregnancy tests were meant for girls who'd skipped their period, not overreacting Castles who'd forgotten to use a condom.

Well. He would just have to wait, then.

The man shrugged. "You can take it earlier if you want; it just won't be as reliable. But ultimately, it's your choice."

She nodded her thanks, paid with a couple twenties, and put the change back in her wallet before she grabbed the small plastic bag.

"Goodnight," she told the obliging druggist, and then she walked back into the cold, shivering night.

Three weeks.

She wasn't pregnant.

Of course she wasn't. Maybe she hadn't led the wildest life during her years with the NYPD, but she'd slept with enough guys to know that, with or without condom, birth control was a good, solid protection.

Beckett wasn't stupid. She knew there was always a risk, however slight, that no protection was ever perfect.

But Castle had been unlucky before, so to speak; Alexis's conception had already been one of those few, rare exceptions. The odds that he'd gotten Kate pregnant as well... Yeah, too insignificant to even be worth considering.

Still, when she curled in bed that night, the tests safely tucked in a drawer of her bathroom, she couldn't help remembering the way Castle had looked at her, so scared and desolate, like this was the worst possible thing that could happen; her heart bled.

Was it?

Would it really be so terrible if she was pregnant with his child?

She sneaked a hand under the large t-shirt she wore to bed, pressed her palm to the flat of her stomach. The skin was soft and warm, the pulse of blood underneath, and she tried to imagine what it would actually be like, a tiny human being growing inside her.

Huh.

It didn't feel real, no matter how hard she tried. She couldn't picture it.

But just because she couldn't see herself pregnant, couldn't see herself as a mom, didn't mean he was right. Maybe she'd be great at it - maybe-

Kate sighed and flopped onto her back, her skull digging into the softness of the pillow.

Who was she kidding? She was young, and she did have plans, and if the improbable happened - if she found herself pregnant - there was no telling what she would do. Which was exactly why Castle was scared, wasn't it?

Kate fisted her hand on the comforter, and closed her eyes.

Her friend Madison had gotten an abortion once. The summer after they'd graduated from high school. Maddy'd been seeing this guy, Jake, an exchange student from Australia who had gone back to his country as soon as classes were over. Kate's friend had moped for a month, and then realized that Jake had left her with a goodbye present.

Madison's parents had never known. It was Kate who had held her hand on the way to the clinic, and had waited for Maddy to come to in the small, too-clean recovery room. It was Kate who had comforted the young woman, dabbed at the fat tears that kept rolling down her cheeks.

But Madison, with her natural enthusiasm, her appetite for life, had quickly gotten over the initial heartache; Beckett had never doubted that her friend had made the right choice.

Of course, Maddy's situation then was very different from Kate's situation now.

Beckett shifted again, rolled onto her side, her hand unconsciously brushing her collarbone, feeling for her mother's ring. It was in her jewelry box, of course, not around her neck; she sighed, chewed on her lower lip.

There were times when she longed, so badly, for her mother's advice, her mother's comforting touch - it made it hard to breathe still.

Five years.

Would she spend her whole life missing her mother?

She inhaled slowly, pushed the air out, did it again. She wouldn't cry; she wouldn't let herself cry, not tonight. Castle was being alarmist, his own experience coloring his perspective, but there was no reason for it to get to her.

Everything would be fine.

And if she was pregnant, if they had somehow created a new life between them, then she would deal with it when she had to. All in good time.

Castle's baby. She had the fleeting vision of a small thing with blue eyes, a mess of dark hair like the one she bore in all the baby pictures displayed at her parents', tiny feet that wriggled-

and then she was asleep.

Rick wrote until the wee hours of the morning.

It was all Nikki Heat, but it would never be material for the book. He wrote about Nikki buying a pregnancy test, taking it alone at her place, her body curled on itself against the cold tiles; it was positive, two pink lines that glared at her, and she cursed, sent the test bouncing off the wall.

It wasn't right. He deleted the scene, started another one.

This time she was silent, her mouth pursed against the tears, her fingers clenching over her cell phone as she considered calling her mother.

But it wasn't right either.

Next was a scene where the test was negative, and the young detective closed her eyes in relief, a laugh tangling in her throat - or maybe it was a sob. Her life wouldn't have to change, no terrible decisions would have to be made, and Nikki was grateful. So grateful.

Still, for a moment the ghost of that baby lingered behind her eyes, a hazy remainder of a dream - a nightmare? - that would never come true; Nikki's heart quivered...

Castle huffed and pushed the keyboard away from him, his fingers rebelling against the words they'd just typed; he hunched forward, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. A frustrated moan vibrated in his throat, he clamped his lips over it, counted backwards from ten and straightened in his chair.

The computer was placidly waiting for his next move, cursor blinking, the white stretch of the open document somehow soothing Rick's misery.

He rolled his chair close again, his hands instinctively finding the keyboard.

He didn't let himself think, just wrote, let it all pour out of him, the heart-stopping anxiety, the regret, the anger laced so tightly with want that he could no longer tell one from the other.

That scene was different. He might actually, with a few modifications, be able to fit it in the book.

Nikki Heat was watching a playground, waiting for her murder suspect - a single dad - to appear with his progeny. The colors were bright, the red touch of a slide, the green of the trees in the summer; children were running everywhere, laughing and shouting and crying when they fell.

One of the mothers was Nikki's age, maybe even younger. When she turned, opened her arms to her little girl, her profile reminded the detective of a girl she'd been to high school with - Marisa Heller.

Whether or not it was really Marisa Heller wasn't relevant. Even if that laughing, tender young woman was someone else, it was completely possible that Marisa Heller was married somewhere, had a kid or two, a handsome husband who was a doctor, a lawyer, that kind of thing.

The kind of thing Nikki might have had, too, if her father hadn't been shot in that bank, if her life hadn't been completely turned around when she was nineteen.

The woman tickled the little girl, and Heat stared, couldn't help it, watched as the fat baby legs wriggled, the pink dress wrinkling as the child squirmed, her round mouth parted in soundless laughter, her blond curls dancing past her shoulders.

She might never have that.

She might never get to hold her own child, to tease that soft skin with her fingers; she'd chosen a different path. She'd chosen justice.

But as she sat in her car, her eyes trained on the charming picture made by the mother and her little girl, she couldn't help the sharp, burning flare of regret for the life she'd lost, and could never have back.

Rick stared at his words, his heart in his throat, saved the document out of habit. Then he turned off his computer, rose from his chair, and headed for his bed.

The truth was - no matter how many times he wrote the scene, or which ending he gave it, it didn't bring him any closer to knowing what Kate would do. He hadn't spent enough time with her, hadn't been given enough chances to observe her - and he had a feeling that even if he had, she would still be a mystery to him.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe she really wasn't pregnant; maybe he was freaking out for no reason. But the damage was already done, wasn't it? He'd as good as told her that he didn't trust her enough to have kids with her.

It just - it was too early. For her, for them - they weren't ready. He wasn't unreasonable, was he? They couldn't do this right now; they needed more time.

Castle sighed as he shrugged off his shirt, unbuckled his belt and wriggled out of his pants. He grabbed his pajamas from the foot of his bed and slid them on, shivering a little before he lunged for his bed.

He'd have set the heating a little higher, but he knew even as he thought it that his brain was just trying to find ways around the admission that Kate had been right.

He wanted the best of both worlds. He wanted her in his bed at night, wanted to feel her smile against his lips, the long undulation of her body as he teased her, but he also wanted to keep his little world safe, his and Alexis's bubble.

He was scared of being vulnerable, exposed to her; he didn't want to give her that much power over his heart. To have her pregnant with his child, and not know what she would do-

But that was the thing.

He couldn't do this if he didn't trust her. No matter how long they spent together, no matter how much time she spent proving herself to him, laughing and talking with his daughter, he would never be able to read her mind - he would never know what was in her heart.

Unless he trusted her.

Unless he was ready to make room for her, to accept that sometimes life got in the way, brought them unexpected gifts, and that... They could learn to deal with them, together.

That was, if she still wanted him.

Rick rolled in his bed, buried his face in the pillow with a grunt. Shit.

He owed her a good long apology. Heartfelt and with tears in his voice - that would be even better.

Yeah. He'd never been very good at apologizing.

The next morning he watched Alexis eat her cereal, that careful way she had to press her lips tightly around the spoon, only release it when it was wiped clean; her hair got in the way sometimes, because it was so long, and she would push it back with a little flick of her hand, graceful and unconscious.

Maybe there was a little more of her mother in her than he liked to think.

"What did you and Kate talk about last night, after I went to bed?" she asked suddenly with a very direct look, startling him so much that he almost dropped his coffee.

"After you went to bed," he repeated distractedly, reaching for a paper towel and wiping the liquid that had spilled.

"Did you talk about the book?"

He sucked in a quiet breath, turned his eyes to her daughter. She was finishing her cereal, sitting straight in her chair with her chin held high, her usual, adorable kind of serious. He couldn't lie to her, but he couldn't tell her the truth either.

"A little bit," he said, thinking of the pages he'd written last night, that he would never use. "But she left not long after you went to bed, pumpkin, because she had to get up this morning."

"Oh yeah, for the surveillance thing."

Alexis shot him a sideways glance, as if to make sure she'd pronounced that right, and he couldn't help grinning.

"Nice vocabulary there, daughter."

She laughed - she always did when he called her that - and stood up, bringing her bowl and spoon back to the dishwasher, putting them where she could find room.

"Gonna brush my teeth," she told him, and she ran off to the stairs, her deep blue skirt flying around her white tights.

He watched her disappear with his throat tight, remembered the look on Kate's face last night, shocked and wounded, such hurt in her eyes.

No wonder. Jeez, he was such a hypocrite. He was so obviously in love with his daughter; he knew it showed, whenever he mentioned her, whenever he and Alexis were together. It just couldn't be helped. And Kate - Kate was a cop, and of course she'd seen that, how happy a dad he was, how proud, how amazed by his kid.

So when he'd freaked out about the possibility of a baby, that mere eventuality, what other conclusion could she draw but to think it was about her? That it was her the problem, and not...

Oh, damn it.

He needed to make things right.