Advent, 2020

"I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams."

-Kim Gannon, lyricist

Their year is a war zone, and she's on the front lines.

She kisses her babies good-night through clear plastic, a shower curtain he's installed in the back den, delineating her side of the house from theirs. He put up clear plastic guards at every portal, that day she wept on the phone and told him she should rent a hotel for however long this takes.

It's taking too long. Taking too many lives.

She listens to her infant son crying in his father's arms, and she can not go to him. She video chats her daughter while the girl makes arts and crafts at a kitchen table Kate cannot sit at. They spend every possible day or night in the back yard, together, but separate, reminding the kids, no, you can't run to Mommy.

Castle, the ultimate in work-from-home parent, is sequestered inside with their two children, desperate to entertain them and fast running out of material. Shapes and colors and numbers lose their daughter's interest when her most pressing question can't be answered: When will everyone get better so we can be normal?

They talk it over again and again, sitting on either side of the plastic shower curtain, leaning against each other but unable to touch. What can they do for Charlotte, for Lukas? Charlie needs more than this, and poor Luke doesn't understand any of it. But this is necessary to keep their family safe, to not bring home a highly contagious virus, to not expose their children whose little bodies might be easily overwhelmed. To not expose themselves. They hash out the decisions they have to make every time: no, Charlie can't go to a small birthday party for her friend; no, they can't visit her dad; no, better avoid the park because it's overrun again.

Alexis is stuck in her apartment with her room mates, his mother alone in the loft, and Castle, so gregarious and full of sparkling personality and charm, fades a little more each day.

She's isolated. He's lonely. And her family is miserable.

When numbers finally drop, so does their caseload, less murders for a spell. Relief payments have come through for most, there's an extended unemployment insurance and benefits, the summer warms hearts and cools heads. Testing becomes more widely available, and then mandated, every three days, at the Twelfth Precinct.

It catches Esposito, asymptomatic, and he admits to her over the phone that he let his guard down and visited his mother and some cousins at an anniversary party. His family is being quarantined, the Ryans all have to get tested, Kate is in line as they speak, waiting in the squad car in the parking garage turned testing center. Her temperature is written in dry erase marker on the windshield.

After the test, she has nowhere to go. Doctors and nurses and the homeless have been put up in hotels around the city; she's afraid to go back to her house. She texts Castle with her desperation and he sets up a tent in the back yard, Charlie makes her a card in which she has written, I love you, Mommy, in painstakingly-formed letters that run the width of the paper and even fall off the edge.

She falls asleep looking up through the clear plastic moonroof at the faint pink glow of the city, grateful for their brownstone, for her husband, for her children. Longing to touch them.

She spends three nights in the tent before her test results come back negative. Jenny Ryan is positive and so is their little girl, and Kate has a flutter of panic thinking what if that was my daughter? Ryan spends fourteen days isolating from Jenny with their two kids, texting her help so often that Kate has Castle call him for advice, for cheering up.

When Jenny goes into the hospital, Esposito cries.

Fall ushers in brisk rain and holiday seasons that send an ever-increasing wave to the hospital with her. Desperation mounts as benefits set to expire. The homicide division is stretched thin as each of them, over time, is exposed, and quarantined, and has to await test results or stay home and isolate.

A brief bright spot is the day Jenny comes out of the hospital, an oxygen tank at her side, her cheeks ruddy, looking like her old self. Esposito, with a negative rapid test, masked and gowned, drives her home; one of his brothers-in-law didn't make it out of the hospital alive.

Their real estate agent, the one who sold them the brownstone, has a stroke while on the vent in an ICU ward upstate. Castle is the one who finds her obituary, and they sit shocked on either side of the plastic curtain, unable to cry. Unable to hold hands.

Mother has a headache, he texts her at work. He sends Alexis, masked, to convince Martha to get a test. A rapid test gives a false negative, and three days later, she's in bed, headache, some nausea, unable to move. Kate forbids Alexis to go—she needs to stay isolated herself—and instead visits his mother herself, wearing an N95 masks she's reused so many times she can't imagine it's any good any longer.

Martha looks pale, too skinny, and Kate manages to get some chicken broth and gatorade down her. She takes two more hours PTO and Castle texts her, please don't, please don't.

It shouldn't be Kate or his mother; this should not be a choice they make.

After nine days of stopping in on Martha, the woman able to sit up, she's breathing better. Thanksgiving approaches but no one speaks of it in Kate's household. Martha sends deliveries to their door, as if she has to make up for something. Castle video chats with her, we're just so glad you're alive.

Montgomery's widow dies of COVID.

LT goes into the ICU.

Jenny has persistent fatigue, she's being run ragged with the kids. Ryan takes Thanksgiving off, a few days around it, and Jenny seems to rally with the added help. This tenuous balancing act they do seems to work.

While Kate has to isolate after nursing Martha, the kids do online yoga classes, which Castle gets into as well, and one night Kate gets a video of her eighteen month old son trying to mimic his sister and father in downward-facing dog.

There are bright spots, like that. But it begins to feel like an endless uphill battle.

And Kate Beckett is sick of the seesaw, sick of her city, of protests that she believes in and yet is standing, somehow, on the other side of things. Vacation was suspended all summer, and now, winter creeping in on them, cold and dark and ugly, she's finally had it.

She wants to touch her babies, kiss their faces, hold them.

With Advent approaching, their personal and daily celebrations of the true meaning of Christmas—and the start of their family—they hold another wrenching conversation at the shower curtain, her phone in her lap waiting for the call (positive) or email alert (negative).

He's afraid she'll lose her job. She's afraid she'll lose them.

She's afraid she's already lost herself.

In a video conference call with Captain Gates and her union rep, Detective Beckett demands the whole month of December.

Off.

After three hours of stone-faced Gates's clear disapproval and the union rep's reluctant defense of her rights (he thinks she should man up, soldier on, no one else is asking for their vacation days all in one lump, all the rest of the police force is managing it, why can't she?), she has her month.

Ten days are paid time off. The rest is labeled sabbatical. No pay.

They can afford it. But they don't celebrate yet.

She falls asleep at the shower curtain, back to back with him, separated by plastic.

She wakes when the email alert comes to her phone.

Negative.

And then the alert pings on Castle's, and his test, negative, her daughter's, negative, and the baby—negative.

At five in the morning, December 1st, they tear down the plastic shower curtains, and she holds Rick against her body for a long time, heedless of Charlie pressing herself between their legs or Luke trapped between their arms.

She holds them all.

"I don't know that I want to go back," she whispers against his neck. The baby is curled between them on the brown leather couch, their daughter sprawled across their thighs and nearly asleep but fighting it for The Grinch on television. "Nothing will be the same."

"Already nothing is the same," he answers softly. "If you want to look at other careers, I won't tell you no." His arm around her neck makes her feel wanted, his fingers dusting the top of her cheekbone both aroused and weepy. She tries not to weep. She has her family and many do not.

She has the advent of December, and so very many do not.

"Other careers," she marvels. Already nothing is the same, and she's not sure people out there really know that. Or feel it like she does, like they have been feeling it. It's too real for her, having been called to the scene one too many times. Scenes she doesn't want to take into Christmas with her, but feels responsibility to each of them not to forget.

Is it worse than 9/11? Is it worse?

It is its own laboring, grieving animal and it will not be still inside her.

His fingers dust her cheekbone, a kiss against her forehead. "We'll set up the tree tomorrow. As per usual."

At that, something in her lifts. "That profane fiber optic tree can go in here with the television," she huffs.

He rumbles in amusement and lays a hand on their daughter's back. "She loves my fiber optic tree."

"I love that little one we picked out that year," she sighs. "With its matchy-matchy decorations."

"We always did themed trees in my house," he protests. "What did I know?"

"Sad for you, so sad for you." Lighter now than ever, and she raises her lips to his jaw for a kiss because, at the time, they weren't dating exactly and she was the sad one. "But that one goes in the bedroom."

"Good thing we bought a fake tree last year," he says. "Who knew?"

She feels the same urge—keep inside, stay away from the world, be safe, sheltered, protected. She has that privilege and she knows it; it doesn't mean she won't use it. "His allergy turned out good for us." She smooths two fingers over Luke's nose, watches his eyelashes flutter in response to her. When he was born, Rick held him close and whispered I am your father. And Kate groaned, couldn't believe she'd somehow not thought of that. "Though the allergist said Luke would likely outgrow it."

There is a nice, easy silence for a while. The television volume is low, but Charlie murmurs the words to her favorite song, rousing for the end chorus of Whos in Whoville as they celebrate Christmas despite the lack of ribbons, tags, packages—

"Boxes, or bags!" Castle whispers along.

She smiles, stroking the baby's cheek.

"I had been thinking last year of getting her a puppy this Christmas," he breathes softly, nodding to their daughter. Not quite asleep, so close. "But maybe next year."

"I can't bear to think of going out to stores, even masked," she admits, cringing. "I see commercials and it makes me flinch, how they touch each other."

He chuckles darkly. "I've already ordered most of their gifts online. It will be a matter of shipping."

"Good luck with that," she sighs. Sinks into that feeling, will it be enough, will they get what they need in time, will a pandemic ruin their Christmas. "Hey, you know? So what. They're little, they don't need stacks of presents—so says the Grinch anyway."

"Charlie doesn't need stacks of presents?"

She snorts. "She can learn to be grateful."

"We could wrap up toys she hasn't touched in months and she'd never know."

Kate giggles, smothering the noise in his shoulder. "Luke has no idea either."

"No, seriously, there are maybe five presents coming for her that are... no, not necessary, but yes, I'd like to give her something amazing this year, see her eyes light up." Rick smiles fondly at the back of their daughter's head. "You're right though. All those other things don't mean much compared to this."

"This, yes. But Christmas isn't just about us, is it?" She takes a shaky breath, composes herself. "We haven't filled up the Advent calendar yet. We meant to bring Charlie in on it this year, remember? Spreading the Christmas spirit. Like you did for me, when you gave me the calendar."

"Yeah, you're right, you're right." He pulls her in, a hug too fierce for a mac-and-cheese-and-hot-dogs for dinner night. He clears his throat, gives the baby a bit of room. "We've missed two days already. Does that matter?"

"Never too late for Advent."

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