Your Future
Chapter 16
Rick let Kate find a comfortable spot to sleep on that allowed him to hold onto her. "How do you feel, Mrs. Castle?"
"Happy." Kate almost didn't believe it herself. "Rick, there's one thing I need to tell you." Kate waited but he didn't say anything so she kept going. "I'm pregnant."
Rick was willing to either just sleep or make love to her, which ever she wanted. However, hearing that wasn't what he was expecting to hear. "Pregnant?" Had he heard her right?
"Almost two months." Kate was pretty sure but without a doctor or test sticks, she was only pretty sure.
Now Rick was up on his knees, looking down at her. "We're having a baby?" Surely she wouldn't tease him about this. This was big!
"Well I'm not having am alien," Kate said dryly. Rick kissed her with every bit of passion he had and she kissed him back with just as much.
"How did I not notice?" Rick couldn't believe it. He'd been keeping track of her periods so that he could help her with them and here she was pregnant. "Morning sickness?" He hadn't seem any sign of it so far or had she been hiding it from him?
"Not so bad, actually. I get a little queasy sometimes but really not that often. I guess I'm lucky in that regard." She had heard of worse. Women that had actually had to be admitted to the hospital because of it.
"Lucky you. Meredith had it bad with Alexis. And she took it out on me each and every time. You'd think I was doing it on purpose. Ruining her life forever. Her laugh wasn't so bad, but she could turn that sound into something that had more in common with nails over a blackboard. If she was miserable she made sure I was miserable." Rick shook his head at the memories.
"I'm going to need your help, Rick. I've never been pregnant before." She was actually a little scared. Not so much about this part, but later when it was time to give birth. They didn't have any kind of pain medication and she was worried about that.
"Anything, everything. I'll be here, Kate. I want to be here. I can't think of anyplace else to be. I love you!" Rick kissed her to make sure she knew that for a fact.
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Rick was holding onto Kate when she woke up the next morning. It was right where she liked him to be. As she lay there she turned some things over in her mind and decided that today was as good a time as any to find out what this group wanted in their future.
"Time to start our day, babe." Kate patted him and kissed him and got up. The first thing she wanted to do this morning was to take her ring off her finger. If he had had trouble making it it might mean it was fragile and she didn't want to lose it.
"What are you doing?" Rick watched her take her ring off her finger and take off her necklace that still held her mother's ring.
"Moving my ring somewhere that I can't lose it. It means too much to me. It's the only wedding ring I'm ever going to have so I can't afford to lose it by accident," Kate explained. "Besides, if it was hard for you to make, it must be easy to break and I'm not breaking it. And this puts it closer to my heart."
Kate suddenly found herself enveloped by Rick's arms. "Listen to Kate Beckett getting all mushy on me," he teased her. But he was touched that she was putting his ring closer to her heart.
"Good thing I'm a Castle now then," Kate said and kissed him.
However, before she started her day and since they were married now, she had a question. "Rick, why did you marry Gina?" He was divorced twice and while she understood Meredith, she didn't understand Gina.
"Gina." Rick knew this day was coming, but he could wish that it hadn't. "Remember, I was raising Alexis all by myself. Since she meant so much to me I kept thinking about her not having a grown woman besides my mother around to help her with things. Things I feared I wasn't suitable to answer or help her with." In the end he had proved he was more than capable of handling everything that had come up. He hadn't really needed Gina after all.
"All there was at the time was all those big titted blonde bimbos as you put it and Gina. All those women I went places with that Gina arranged were, let's just say not suitable to even date let alone marry.
"Gina and I were at least in the same line of work. We were compatible on paper. So I asked her to marry me and she said yes. But even before that and certainly after I never really let her get close to Alexis." Rick huffed out a bitter laugh. He had done it for Alexis and yet here he was, still not able to share her through no fault of his own.
"Even though that was why I had married her in the first place, all we did was fight. Suddenly my editor was my wife and I learned the hard way that that was a mistake. I was so stuck on Alexis having a mommy and daddy that I wasn't thinking straight. If anything Gina became worse after we were divorced and the divorce cost me a small fortune." Rick was basically done with explaining Gina and why he married her.
"Well, I don't want your money. That's not why I love you, Rick. Don't get me wrong, being married and rich would have been nice but your money didn't mean that much to me."
"Good, because I'm broke now. All the money I have is what is in my wallet. Not that I have anything to spend it on." Money was useless here.
"I don't even have a penny so I'm more broke than you are," Kate said. She poked him which led to tickling which led to…other things.
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"Stay right next to me, Castle. I don't know what's going to happen now." Kate found a crate to stand on and whistled twice to get everyone's attention since most everyone was here.
"I have a few things this time and one big one to talk about. First, the number of teepees that we have and how many we need. It isn't hard to do the math. At three people on average with over 500 people we'll need a lot of them. We have a list and if anything changes who gets the next one can be revisited. The idea as it presently stands is that we'll continue to clear the trees to the south to make room for more teepees.
"Many thanks for the wedding and all everyone did to make it successful. I owe each of you for all that you did. Especially Hannah for my dress and wreath. I loved my wedding so very much.
"Crops! We've been collecting seeds so we can plant them and start growing our own food instead of hunting for it. To do that means we need fields to plant them in. That means chopping down a lot of trees then burning away all those stumps. Crops are still a distant dream, however, maybe we can do it on a small scale.
"Today we need to finish the corral for the milk cows then capture a few and milk them then release them to do it all over again next time.
"Finally, I want to talk about who's in charge of this group. My job was to get us all here so we didn't freeze to death up north. Well, we're here. The basics for everything has been set up for our future.
"So one month from now we're going to have an election. Think about what kind of system you want to have and who you want to lead it.
"There's only one thing to keep in mind. We will not be repeating the same mistakes that got us into this mess. Weapons are to be used for hunting only and I do mean hunting only. We will not be using them to kill each other for any reason.
"We have to learn from all the mistakes that we made. We have to do things differently. Money here is useless so we aren't going to have any. Now or in the foreseeable future.
"We as a race did a lot of things wrong and we are not going to be repeating them.
"We have been given a chance and we are going to use that chance to the best of our abilities. So talk to each other. Come talk to me. It's time to decide just what the human race means this time.
"Are we killers and that's all we are? Can we learn something better?
"Keep in mind for the planet to be dead that means each generation made the planet worse. We need to set an example for future generations or we might as well have died in those six plane crashes and let nature do what it wants to do without the human race on it.
"Think about it. Talk about it. One month, people." Kate was done; she got off her crate and stood next to Rick.
"Too much?" Kate asked him.
Rick smiled. "Does the word extraordinary still mean anything to you?" She was still extraordinary to him.
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It didn't take long before people approached Kate to talk to her, telling her that she should just keep doing what she had been doing. Being in charge and staying in charge until she didn't want to be any longer. Kate thanked them and told them that they still needed to think about it. To be sure this was what they wanted. She was no dictator and didn't want to be seen as one.
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Kate had a question so she made her way to the horse corral where their hunting teams should be thinking about going out again today using the horses.
"Is using the horses working out? I mean no saddle and not much control that I can see. And you have to get what you kill back somehow." Kate just wanted to make sure this plan was working for them.
"We're going a lot farther out now, partly because we have to to find any game to hunt. We've got an idea on how to get it back this time so we'll see. So yes, the horses are a big help. We've even seen another herd of horses when we decide to add more. It's working." That was good enough for her. They were the ones doing the hunting, not her.
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Kate stayed close to the horse corral since today was going to be the day Rick had set aside to do his own hunting. Only in his case it was possibly going to be a lot harder.
Finally she watched as Rick and three of their hunting groups showed up. The hunting group had weapons while Rick had two of their four two-man dome tents. He handed off one of them before going over to Kate.
"Please be careful. I'm not raising this baby alone." This had the potential to be dangerous and that alone had Kate worried.
"We'll be great. Nothing to worry about." Rick wrapped his arms around her.
"What are you looking for again?" She knew he was after what they needed to make homemade penicillin but not the actual items.
"Lactose Mono-hydrate, cornstarch, sodium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, potassium phosphate mono, glucose mono-hydrate, zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate." Rick listed them all off easily.
Kate still didn't understand how he kept all that in his head but somehow he did.
"We might be gone a while. At least two weeks if not longer," Rick warned her again. Even after finding it all it was going to have to be filtered and he still had to figure out how to do that yet. Knowing and doing where two different things.
"Just come home, that's all I ask. If you don't find something then you don't. I just want my husband back." She knew him. He would do something stupid and get himself hurt, she just knew it.
"I promise to be very careful. We've come too far to fail now." Rick kissed her soundly and headed over to his horse. He stood there for a bit to figure out how to get on a bare back horse since he'd never done it before.
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Kate was walking around just checking things out when she saw a group headed her way. It had only been a few hours so it couldn't possibly be about what government they wanted and who was going to be in charge.
"Hi Kate, we have a question for you." She looked at the others for some support but didn't get much. "It's December and we were wondering if there were any plans for Christmas. A celebration of any kind?"
"Christmas." That was not what Kate had been expecting. She was beginning to wonder if Castle had left too soon. She knew Christmas was more his thing than hers.
"I don't know what to tell you. When I was a homicide detective I didn't celebrate Christmas except to offer to work it so that other officers who had families could celebrate it together as a family.
"We don't have Christmas lights which doesn't matter since we don't have electricity. Pretty sure Florida doesn't get snow. No shopping malls so no shopping for Christmas presents. Beyond that I don't know what to tell you.
"Create your own, I suppose. Make up a plan and get some help to make it work. If you want to celebrate Christmas then you're going to have to come up with your own celebration. If there's something you need maybe I can help. Just not sure what I can do." Kate was at a loss to know what to do for Christmas.
"I was too busy trying to get everyone here that I didn't even celebrate my own birthday. I'm afraid that you're on your own." Kate watched them walk off talking to each other.
Depending on just how long it took Castle to find what he wanted he might actually miss whatever that group came up with.
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Kate was done with her day and was stripping to get ready for bed. Not that anyone had a real bed yet. Those were still a long ways off, she was sure.
Laying down to try and sleep showed her just how much she missed having Castle with her. He hadn't even left behind any clothes for her to smell to remind her of him.
Looking at her dad's watch that miraculously still worked told her it had only been one hour more or less. Worse she knew she wasn't going to get any sleep any time soon. She got back up, got dressed, and went back outside.
She wasn't hungry but she took an orange anyway so she was doing something. Anything to keep her hands busy.
It was amazing just how quiet this place got in the middle of the night. So very few people were up.
Suddenly someone saw her wandering around doing nothing. It was one of the older folks. "Insomnia?"
"Something like that. I used to be able to sleep on my own with no trouble. Now suddenly I can't," Kate admitted.
"Worried about what people will choose to do?" He meant the vote Kate wanted.
"Not so much that. Anything they decided will hopefully be a good choice. It's too early for us to do any real damage to the planet, however, what we do now will affect what our children do in the future.
"My job showed just what man was capable of doing to each other. I really would like to think that we're better than that, but you never know," Kate shrugged.
"It may be defeatist but I think man is doomed. Maybe we do well, but the future's something none of us are ever going to know. We over populated the planet and carved up the planet into different countries. Then we fought each other because we didn't trust the other. Who says we won't do the same thing this time?" he questioned her.
"We don't know," Kate said. "We can only do what we can now. The rest is out of our hands. Perhaps if we teach our children better maybe things will change.
"Those people were desperate when they stole us from crashing planes then sent us far into the future. I mean look what we have to work with. Castle's right when he talks about us being the Flintstones. We're simply not living in caves."
"At least we don't have dinosaurs. Though living in houses made of massive rock slabs might not be so bad. Even if it did take dinosaurs to make them." He laughed a little at the memory of that cartoon.
"Rock televisions," Kate added and it made both of them chuckle.
"Just keep doing what you're doing, Kate. The rest of us will follow. You're the only real leader we have even if you're not used to it.
"Look around. Who is going to replace you? We don't even have a CEO of any company here. That private in maintenance is the only military we have.
"Secretary, teacher, homemaker, auto repair, software engineer. You know more about all the people here than anyone. You had my vote before we even left to come here. You've still got it. Without you we would be freezing and dying, trying in vain to get here. Just like those kids." He shook his head at the kids' stupidity.
"Thanks, but I was just trying to do what I could. It looked like someone had to," Kate said.
"I'm not overly religious though I'm betting several here are. Something to keep in mind by the way, but there is a saying.
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
"So long as none of us become homicidal killers maybe it'll just come true. Better get some sleep. People are going to have questions about just where you want to take us before they decide what to do.
"Between you and your new husband, we just might do pretty well. What our children end up doing is out of our hands provided we teach them the right things." He got up and left Kate.
Kate sat there, wondering what to do. "Children." Kate laid her hand on her belly. "School!" Now she had one thing that she needed to solve and do it before the vote. She knew they had one teacher and one retired teacher that was just going to have to come out of retirement. But they were going to need more than just those two.
What she didn't know was how to solve the religion question. More than one armed conflict had happened because of religion.
"School first, religion later." Kate decided to solve that problem first. It did get her back up and headed home to get some sleep.
