I cannot thank all of you enough for your reviews, follows, favorites, and general reaction to this story. You continue to inspire me and my writing as much as Castle (the show) does. I hope you continue to enjoy the journey.
In the wee small hours of the morning the day after Beckett and Castle had been shot, Javier Esposito made his way up to the ICU. Lanie had been forced to leave, very reluctantly, right after he and Ryan and Jenny had left earlier, since Perlmutter was backed up at the morgue because of Caleb Brown, necessitating Lanie's presence when another body came in. Gates herself made sure that other detectives caught the case, since Esposito and Ryan were working on running down everyone involved in LokSat, making sure no one else would be coming after Beckett and Castle. When they finally finished, shortly before 4 AM, Esposito took Ryan home to his family, since he was almost asleep when they left the 12th. Ryan promised he'd be back at the hospital after he caught a little sleep. Esposito reassured his partner that if anything changed between now and then, he would call or text Ryan himself, told him to get some sleep, and then headed to the hospital himself.
When Espo passed through the ICU waiting room, he saw Martha Rodgers and Jim Beckett there, sleeping, Jim sitting upright in his chair with his head tilted back against one of the walls, and Martha practically collapsed in a heap on the small couch. Sheer exhaustion must have overtaken them, he thought as he rubbed at the back of his neck, not recalling the last time he'd gotten any real sleep himself. Well, he wouldn't wake them now. He presumed that Beckett and Castle were still out, because Alexis had promised everyone that she would call or text everyone as soon as they were awake. His news could keep for a few more hours. It would be a great thing for Martha and Jim to wake up to.
As long as he was here, though, he decided he'd peek in on Castle and Beckett himself. He quietly entered their room, which was cast in shadows from the dimmed lights, no windows in the room to let in the rapidly approaching dawn, and he wasn't entirely surprised to find Alexis sitting in a chair at Castle's bedside, her gaze encompassing both Castle and Beckett, exhaustion etched deeply into her pale features.
"Is something wrong, Detective Esposito?" Alexis's quiet question startled Javi. He entered the room, closing the door behind him.
"No," he said. "Everything's all right. Nobody else is gonna be coming after your dad and Beckett. We got 'em all. We're absolutely, 100% certain. After I took Ryan home, I decided to come here. I saw your grandmother and Beckett's dad asleep in the waiting room. I'll tell them later."
"I'm glad to hear you got them all," Alexis replied.
Javi approached Alexis then, hunkering down so that he was at eye level with her. "So how come you're not sleeping too?"
Alexis wearily scrubbed at her face with both hands. "Because every time I close my eyes, I see Dad and Kate lying on the kitchen floor in their own blood, barely conscious, clinging to each other's hands," she said. "I can't get it out of my head. I want to, but I can't."
Before Javi could reply to that, they heard a piercing scream from Kate's side of the room, followed by a keening that made both of their stomachs drop and their hearts hurt. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! GOD, NO! CASTLE! I GOT YOU KILLED!" followed by the most heartbroken, wrenching sobbing it was possible for one human being to produce.
Kate awoke to the sounds of machines beeping all around her. Her body felt heavy, and the room was dark. Her brain was a jumbled mix of high-powered pain medication, and memories of being shot, and her in-the-ether conversation with her mother, which Castle was present for...
Castle! The last thing he had asked of her was her promise that she would be there when he woke up. She had promised him she would be, and then begged him not to leave her, to promise her that she would be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. He had promised he would. The last word he said was, "Always."
Kate turned her head to see Castle surrounded by machines with a tube down his throat, and in her confused state, she panicked, thinking that he was dead, that the machines were the only things keeping him alive, thinking that she had failed him, failed them, believing in that awful moment that her going after LokSat had ended with her getting him killed.
And her reaction to that very-much-mistaken notion was raw, primal grief.
Not caring about the heaviness of her body, or the shooting pains radiating through her entire torso and the way she had to drag her left leg, sobbing and gasping for breath, Kate tried to get out of bed, but couldn't will her body to move. She was sobbing and gasping the same words over and over: "Castle, no, sorry, love." Dammit, why couldn't she move? She needed to get to Castle!
"Kate!" Alexis exclaimed, vaulting out of her chair and across the room, Esposito hot on her heels. "Kate, it's okay!"
"Rick," she sobbed, her entire abdomen on fire. Screw the physical pain, she thought darkly. If Rick was really dead, she would never not be in pain again. She had to get to him, try to bring him back, to hell with those machines and what the doctors said. She had been clinically dead after getting shot at Montgomery's funeral, and if anyone could bring Rick back, Kate knew, it would be her.
Alexis was still trying in vain to get through to Kate, but she was so focused in trying to move, trying to get to Castle, that she wasn't hearing the young woman. Esposito knew she wouldn't hear him either, and they were going to need help to get through to her and get her calmed down, as all of the machines Kate was hooked up to started going haywire, her heart rate and blood pressure going through the roof and continuing to climb.
"Go get your grandmother and Beckett's dad! Hurry!" Javi shouted. Alexis bolted from the room, hitting the light switch on the wall on her way out, and flooding the room with bright fluorescent light, to get Martha and Jim as the night nurses and attending physician came rushing in.
Esposito had a few feet head start on the medical staff, and he got to Beckett first. He gently grabbed her upper arms, since she had managed to struggle into a half-upright sitting position. "Beckett, it's okay! Castle's all right!" Esposito shouted.
But Kate was still caught in her flood of grief and her frantic need to get to Rick, to touch him, to feel him, to will him back to her, and the adrenaline was a surging tidal wave through her battered body, so she didn't listen to Espo any more than she had listened to Alexis, who returned then with Martha and Jim, the three of them pushing their way through the crowd of medical personnel to get as close to Kate as they could.
Beckett slapped weakly at Esposito's shoulders and chest, nearly disconnecting an IV in the process, as she kept gasping and sobbing out her mantra of "Castle, no, sorry, love" over and over and over again.
"Beckett, he's okay! Castle is okay!" Esposito shouted. The machines were a cacophony of high-pitched beeps, but still Kate fought, refusing to let them lay her down again, refusing to be kept from Rick, still sobbing, gasping out his name over and over and over again, still fighting to get to his side.
Watching Kate fighting to get to her father's side, Alexis suddenly had an idea, and prayed it would work. Johanna Beckett, watching helplessly from the corner, fearful that, despite Roy Montgomery's reassurances, if she interfered too much again, if Katie saw her again, everything really would get messed up for Katie and Rick, and she couldn't let that happen, heard Alexis's idea in her mind and silently encouraged it, knowing the young woman was on the right track here.
"Detective, Mr. Beckett, help me!" Alexis called. Everyone was ignoring Castle, who was still unconscious, but Alexis was standing by his bed. "Help me move Dad's bed closer to Kate's! You two move Dad, I'll get the machines! If she can see him more closely, if she can touch him, maybe Kate will calm down!"
Jim and Esposito immediately sprang into action as Martha alternately argued with the nurses and the attending physician and tried to get close enough to Kate's ear that she could speak directly to her over the ever-rising din of shouts and machines. The most sympathetic nurse helped Alexis with all of the machines and IVs that Rick was hooked up to, while Jim and Esposito carefully maneuvered Rick's bed as close to Kate's as they could get it.
Then Alexis was there, lowering the rail on Castle's bed, then lowering the rail on Kate's bed, and Jim was shouting, "I'm her father, dammit, and if anyone can get through to her it's me, so all of you kindly shut up and get out of the way!" The machines were still going crazy, but everyone yielded to Jim Beckett, who approached the head of Kate's bed as everyone else took their hands off of her and dropped back. Gently gripping her upper arms, Jim firmly said, "Katie. Katie, look at me! Look at me, Katie!"
Tears pouring from her eyes, Kate met her father's gaze. "He's dead," she wailed. "Rick is dead."
"No!" Jim shouted. "Rick is NOT dead, Katie! He's NOT dead! Do you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying? Rick is ALIVE! Castle is ALIVE! He's ALIVE, Katie!"
Her father's voice finally penetrated the hazy fog surrounding Kate, aided by an equally insistent whisper in her other ear: her mother! "Listen to your dad, Katie. Rick is alive. He's going to be all right, and so are you."
"Castle's alive?" Kate gasped out.
"Yes!" Alexis shouted. Then she felt Alexis's hand in hers, gently tugging, until Kate's hand was in Castle's hand. Castle's warm hand. "Dad had a collapsed lung. He's not on a ventilator to keep him alive. He's on a ventilator to help him breathe because they had to re-inflate his lung. He's alive, Kate! Dad is alive, and so are you!"
The adrenaline was still flowing, and Kate tried to clear her fuzzy head. Her dad, her mom, Alexis, were all insisting that Castle is alive.
Then it hit her all at once. Castle is alive. Her Castle is alive.
He is alive, and she is alive, and all of the grief is swept out like a rushing tide, replaced by a relief so overwhelming it would have brought Kate to her knees if she weren't already in a hospital bed.
"You're alive, Rick," Kate rasped out in a tear-choked whisper as she looked at him in the bed next to her, his hand in hers. "You're alive."
There was so much more she wanted to say to him-"I love you. I'm here. I love you. You're okay. I love you. I'm okay. I love you. We made it. I love you so much."-but the pain in her gut had become a living, fire-breathing dragon, and the adrenaline was receding almost as quickly now as the mistaken grief had mere seconds ago.
She wouldn't let go of his hand, though. Whatever else happened, Kate vowed to herself, she was not letting go of Castle's hand for anything. Her dad, with Alexis's help, started to ease her back down onto her pillows when she let out another gasp, although this was not a gasp of pain or grief, but a gasp of delight, because Rick just squeezed her hand!
Kate squeezed his hand back, and a sound somewhere between a moan and a cough turned everyone's attention to Rick, who blinked owlishly several times until his eyes locked on Kate, who was looking at him through puffy, reddened eyes, with tearstains drying on her cheeks, and her hand clasped in his. He started fighting the ventilator then, and now the doctor and nurses and Alexis and Martha surrounded him the way they had surrounded Kate mere moments ago.
"Mr. Castle, you still need the ventilator until at least tomorrow afternoon," the doctor said sternly. "Doctor's orders."
"It's okay, Rick. You're okay. And I'm okay. Nothing else matters," Kate rasped. She saw the instant that the worry and concern flared to life in Rick's eyes, and she squeezed his hand in what she hoped was a reassuring manner.
"Okay, we're going to sedate both of you after this little episode," the doctor said.
Castle waved his free hand frantically, but in his weakened state, it looked more like a fish flopping around on the deck of a boat. He sloppily made a writing motion with his hand. "Someone get me a pad and pen!" Alexis exclaimed. "Dad wants to say something!"
Esposito hustled out to the nearest nurses' station and returned with a pen and pad of paper. "Here you go, Castle," he said.
Castle weakly gripped the pen, the pad of paper sideways on his lap. Everyone watched as he laboriously wrote something on the paper. When he finally finished, he handed the pen to Alexis, who was standing at his bedside, and struggled to get the sheet of paper torn off the pad. When he finally did, he held it up towards Kate. Jim took the paper from Rick's hand without reading it and handed it to Kate.
Kate looked down at the paper. Castle had sloppily scrawled ten words on the paper, which is why it had taken him so long. But to Kate Beckett, in that moment, they were the ten most beautiful words in the English language.
I will be there when you open your eyes ALWAYS! ! !
All of the machines attached to Kate were back to giving normal readouts now. She let herself be lowered back onto her pillows, keeping her head turned so that she could see Rick, who had his head turned so he could see her. The doctor said something about sedating them both to get them through the rest of the night, but Kate didn't pay too much attention to that, nor did Rick.
They were too busy gazing at each other, hands still clasped, Rick's note clutched tightly in Kate's other hand, until the effects of the sedatives overtook them and they were asleep once more.
When the crisis had passed, and Kate and Rick were asleep once more, the nurses made to separate them, until Alexis stepped up, blocking the nurses from Kate and Rick's joined hands. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," she said firmly, "unless you want a repeat of what just happened here when they wake up again."
The nurses exchanged looks all around, then looked at Alexis, standing in front of her father and stepmother, still holding hands in their medically induced sleep, the look on her face and her body language outright daring them to make a move towards Rick and Kate.
"All right," the sympathetic nurse said. "We'll leave them be."
"Thank you," Alexis said.
The nurses and doctor departed, leaving Alexis, Martha, Jim, and Esposito crowded into the ICU room. "Did you see how hard Katherine fought to get to Richard?" Martha asked.
"She's always been like that," Esposito said. "She always will be. And he's the same way with her. That's how I know they're gonna be okay. It'll take time, but they'll get there."
"We'll all make sure they do," Alexis pledged.
Jim looked at his daughter then, her hand still clutching Rick's tightly, even under the effects of the sedatives, his sloppily written note clutched just as tightly in her other hand. Though both of them were lying on their backs, their heads were turned so they were facing each other even in their medically induced slumber. "We certainly will," he murmured, echoing Alexis.
In that moment, Jim Beckett made a vow to himself, and to Johanna. I let Katie down so badly when we lost you, Johanna. And we forged a kind of peace treaty after I quit drinking. I don't fault Katie for doing what she had to do to get me to see reason and get sober. She was right to do it. But no matter how much she protests, I'm going to be there for her this time, the way she wouldn't let me be last time. I'm going to finish earning back the trust I so badly broke when we lost you. Rick is the number-one man in her life, and that's the way it should be. But standing in the distant shadows, mostly watching her life with my nose pressed up against the glass...I can't do that anymore. I won't do it anymore. She's not going to shut me out like she did the last time this happened. I simply won't let her. We were close once. It'll never be exactly like that again, but I refuse to believe that we'll never be close again at all. I'm going to fix our relationship, Johanna, I swear it...to you, to myself, and most importantly of all, to Katie.
And over the sounds of the machines monitoring Katie's and Rick's conditions, Jim once again felt Johanna's presence for the first time in hours, and he could have sworn he heard her whisper, "You will, Jim. It'll take both of you, working together, and some time and patience, but you and Katie will find your way back."
And for the first time in hours, Jim Beckett smiled. It was a tired smile, but it was a genuine smile, because he knew in his heart that Johanna was right, and that he and Katie would finish fixing their relationship, no matter how long it might take or what they might have to do to achieve that goal.
