Thank you all so much for your continued support and enthusiasm for this story. I greatly appreciate it.
May gave way to June, and Kate and Rick settled into their new routine of physical therapy, Rick's daily visits to the respiratory therapist, and healing.
The nightmares came to Rick, Kate, and Alexis all three, although the longer she continued with her therapy, the fewer and farther between Alexis's nightmares became.
A week after they came home from the hospital, Kate dreamed that Castle really had been dead when she awakened in the hospital, that only the machines were keeping him alive until she, as his wife, could give her consent to turn them off. She awakened in their bed in much the same manner she had awakened in the hospital, screaming and sobbing and repeatedly crying out, "Castle! No! I'm so sorry!" However, blessedly, it took Rick considerably less time to get through to Kate that night than it had taken Alexis, Martha, Jim, and Esposito to get through to her at the hospital.
When the sound of Rick frantically chanting her name finally broke through Kate's sobs and screams, her conscious mind re-engaged. She began wiping at her eyes, but was stopped by Rick, the fingers of one hand gently brushing away the tears that had been streaming down her face, his other hand cradling the back of her head. "C—C—Castle?" Kate stammered, her voice breaking.
"I'm right here, Kate," he said urgently. "I'm okay. I'm right here. You were having a nightmare."
She blinked several times, her eyes adjusting to the dim light of their bedroom and seeing him there in their bed beside her, looking at her anxiously, worriedly. She grabbed onto him, holding tightly to him, burying her face in the spot between his neck and shoulder, inhaling shakily, breathing Rick in, concentrating on the feel of him in her arms, his breath warm against the side of her face as he crooned reassurances in her ear, the timbre of his quiet voice, the feel of his warm breath and solid form and his arms banded around her, one hand rubbing circles between her shoulder blades, until finally he brought her completely back to the present moment.
After inhaling and then exhaling another shaky breath, Kate pulled back, looking into Rick's eyes. Her fingers traced the contours of his face. "The first time I woke up in the hospital," she said, her voice raspy and trembling, "you were still out, and I didn't know yet that your lung collapsed when you were shot. You were on a respirator, and I was so out of it from the drugs and from coming out of the anesthesia that I thought you were dead, Rick, that the machines were the only thing keeping you alive, and I lost it." She fought a fresh wave of tears as she said, "I thought you were dead, that I had gotten you killed, and I..." She trailed off as Rick held her tighter.
"It wasn't your fault, Kate," he said. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I'm so sorry I wasn't there to reassure you when you first woke up." As irrational as it was, he felt badly that Kate had thought, even though it was caused by the fog and confusion of anesthesia and post-op drugs, that he was dead. He remembered that feeling, when Tyson and Nieman had had Kate, and he and the boys had thought she was the dead woman in the chair. It wasn't a feeling he liked remembering, and he hated that Kate had felt that about him in the hospital.
"Actually, you were," Kate told him. At his confused look, she explained. "Alexis and Espo were there...I still don't know what Espo was doing there, because it was the middle of the night, and my dad and Martha. They were all trying to get through to me, and I was trying to get out of my bed and get to you in your bed across the room, and Alexis finally had the idea to move your bed close enough to mine that I could see you and touch you, and know that you were alive. It still took some time to sink in that you had a collapsed lung and were on a respirator to help you breathe because of that, but that you'd be okay, but once it did, I finally calmed down." She shuddered in Rick's arms, the adrenaline surge of the nightmare finally starting to subside.
"I'm right here," Rick repeated. "And I will always be right here, Kate." His lips quirked in the hint of a sad smile. "I guess we should have expected this."
Kate's head was resting in the crook of his neck now, her head turned sideways so she could both hear and feel his pulse pounding strong and steady at the base of his throat. "I hate it," she said. "It's true, we should have expected this, but I still hate it."
"Me too," Rick said.
The cover of darkness, and the safety of Rick's embrace, gave Kate the courage to say what she was feeling in that moment. She lifted her head and looked at Rick. "This is why I can't lose you," she said emotionally. "I survived losing someone I loved more than anything in the world once. I know what it's like to be without you, and I don't want to even think about my life, or a world, without you in it."
"You're not going to lose me," Rick promised. "You cannot leave behind what is always at your side, remember?"
Kate nodded. "I remember," she said. "I love you."
"I love you too," Rick replied. "And you're stuck with me, Kate Beckett...for the time of our lives."
She burrowed into his chest, and he held her tightly. "I'm not hurting you, am I?" she asked anxiously.
He kissed her hard and fast. "No," he assured her. "I've got you, Kate. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna get through this."
"Will you remind me of that when I need reminding?" she asked.
"Always," he replied.
Four nights later, it was Rick in the throes of a nightmare, crying and calling out for Kate, begging her to stay with him, not to leave him, and declaring his love. "Castle! Castle! Rick! Wake up, babe! It's me, Kate!"
Rick jolted awake, choking on a sob. "Beckett? Kate?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said, brushing her hand through his sweat-soaked hair. "I'm here, Rick. I'm with you."
He shook his head violently, as if to clear it. "What year is it?" he asked.
"2016," Kate replied. Her heart picked up speed as she began to worry. Why was Rick asking her what year it was?
Rick looked down at his left hand then, at his wedding ring glinting in the moonlight shining in the room, and he took Kate's left hand out of his hair and looked at the matching ring on her finger. Then he let out a sigh of relief so big, it could have collapsed his lung all over again. "Everything got jumbled up in my head," he said, wiping one hand across his eyes before turning to meet her gaze. She was brushing one hand through his hair and had her other arm wrapped around the middle of his back. "We were back in the cemetery at Montgomery's funeral, and I was telling you I loved you and begging you to stay with me and not to leave me, and everybody was there, but the shooter was Caleb Brown, and Lanie tried everything, she tried so hard, but in the back of the ambulance, you..." He couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. "And Lanie couldn't...and the paramedics said...Oh, god, Kate." He was shaking now.
"Oh, Rick," Kate said sympathetically. He all but launched himself at her, and she held him as tightly as she could. "I'm okay, babe. I'm alive and I'm safe, we both are, and I'm not going anywhere."
He drew back and framed her face in his hands, his fingertips brushing lightly against her cheeks. "Promise?" he whispered.
"Always," she whispered back, resting her forehead against his.
His breathing slowly evened out, but he didn't leave the comforting shelter of Kate's arms.
After several minutes, Kate, her arms still wrapped around Rick, laid them down. Rick laid his head on her shoulder and felt her press a kiss to the top of his head. "I want to tell you a story," she said softly.
She felt him smile against her shoulder. "You want to tell me a story?" he repeated, and she heard the smile in his voice.
"I may not be as good with words as you are, but yeah, I want to tell you a story," Kate replied.
"You're plenty good with words, Kate," Rick assured her. "Especially when it matters most." He left unspoken, but they both understood, the added, "Like now."
"Well," Kate began, "there was this woman-"
"All great stories start 'Once upon a time,'" Rick corrected her.
"Right. Once upon a time, there was this woman, and one night, she went to a rooftop to question this man that she thought was involved in a murder case she was investigating. And this man was all kinds of annoying to the woman: he was cocky and arrogant and everything about him bugged the hell out of her. He wasn't involved in the murder, but he wouldn't stay away from the investigation. Even when she handcuffed him to a police car, he didn't stay away from the investigation...which is how he came to be running after the perp, carrying one shoe and with the handcuffs dangling from his wrist.
"After that case was over, the woman thought that was it, that she'd never see the man again. But she was wrong...and for once in her life, she was glad to be wrong."
"She was glad to be wrong at the time, or she was glad to be wrong in hindsight?" Rick asked.
"Both, really," Kate admitted. "Oh, at the time, not at first. At first, he killed her patience. She was honest about that. But she had to admire his persistence, and she did. And still does.
"Because this woman? She had been really closed off from the world for a really long time. Like a house where all of the windows are closed and the blinds and the drapes are drawn for years. And this man, he just kept coming around. He would bring her coffee, and he would come up with all these crazy theories, and he made her work more fun than it had ever been. He made this woman feel so many things...some that she hadn't felt in a decade, and some that she had never felt in her whole life.
"All of the joy and the hope and the dreams that she lost when she lost her mother...everything she thought had been buried in the ground that bitterly cold, windy January day...he gave it back to her, little by little. And he made her want things that she had been afraid to want. He made her want to believe in things that she had stopped believing in when her mother was ripped away from her.
"And there were obstacles and setbacks. They both said and did stupid things, thoughtless things, things that hurt each other, intentionally or not. But what the woman realized...in hindsight...was that when he got out of his handcuffs and was running down the alley holding his shoe in one hand, with his phone at his ear, telling her the perp was running away, he didn't do all that just to catch the killer, or just because he wasn't going to stay in the car even with the handcuffs. He did it because he would follow the woman anywhere, and do anything at all to keep her safe. He spent the next four years proving that over and over again in a variety of ways.
"The woman fell in love with the man. She fell in love with him again and again and again. She's still falling in love with him again and again and again. She knew he was the forever kind of man. Which worked out very well, since she was a one-and-done kind of girl. And there was a time, several hours, that the woman was very afraid that she had blown it for good with this man, that she'd kept him waiting too long while she worked to be worthy of him and his love, that she had put her obsession with getting the men who killed her mother ahead of him one time too many, and she couldn't fathom her life without him.
"So she did what he would have done, she did what she had wanted to do for so long: she showed up at his front door and told him that she just wanted him, because she had learned...the hard way, but she had learned...that nothing mattered to her as much as he did, and nothing ever would."
Rick lifted his head from Kate's shoulder and looked her in the eyes. "And what did he do, when she showed up at his door and told him that she just wanted him?" he asked.
"He let her into his home, his life, his heart, his arms," Kate replied.
"She was already in his heart and in his life, and he wanted her there, and in his home and his arms, forever," Rick said.
Kate smiled at him in the dim light of their darkened bedroom. "And from that night on, they were together," she concluded. "They had a few missteps, obstacles, made some mistakes, but she knows, they both know, that they're partners in every way for always."
"Yes, they are," Rick said. He paused for a beat, then added, "That's a great story."
"The best part is that it's not over yet," Kate replied. "It's not anywhere close to over."
"It certainly isn't," Rick agreed.
They settled themselves in each other's arms again. Sleep stole over them gradually. And when the nightmares returned, in the weeks to come, they were there every time to console each other, hold each other, and talk each other down.
The physical therapy was grueling for both of them. Rick found the repetitive range-of-motion exercises boring, and Kate cursed the pain in her abdomen and her hip until it gradually started to lessen. Sometimes Kate accompanied Rick to his respiratory therapy. The respiratory therapy was the more grueling part for Rick, and Kate couldn't always hide her anxiety when Rick struggled. But they talked it out afterwards, with Rick assuring her that as much as it sucked, as much as her physical therapy sucked, it wouldn't go on forever, and by the end of the summer, they'd be back to normal, an opinion with which their physical and respiratory therapists heartily concurred.
Their family and friends were there as much as they could be, to talk and listen and give every kind of support they could.
A new tradition was instituted at the loft: Sunday dinner with the immediate family. The Beckett-Castle clan gathered around the dining room table every Sunday night beginning two weeks after Kate and Rick came home from the hospital. Jim, Martha, and Alexis were there every week, as the family caught up on each other's news. Sometimes Rick cooked, with assistance from Kate and Alexis. Sometimes they ordered in. But everyone was seated at the table at 7 PM every Sunday night to partake of a meal together, to talk and laugh and bond.
Alexis and Esposito started meeting with Ryan three times a week to help him study for the sergeant's exam, and Alexis waited to hear back from all the law schools to which she had applied.
Work kept intruding on both Lanie and Alan, so their proposed dinner double date with Kate and Rick was postponed twice. After the second last-minute cancellation the third week in June, Rick got the idea to invite everyone up to the Hamptons house for the upcoming long Fourth of July weekend. Ryan already had the weekend off, but he and Jenny hadn't made any definite plans. Lanie managed to switch weekends with Perlmutter, since Perlmutter wasn't big on holidays of any kind, and Alan had had the time off for weeks. Esposito got the weekend off at almost the last minute, and with Alexis, Martha, and Jim's blessings, it was agreed that everyone would spend the Fourth of July weekend at the Hamptons house.
Alexis had a study date with Ryan and Esposito, and Martha, Jim, Lanie and Alan were all working, but they would all be there, along with Jenny, Sarah Grace, and Nicholas by Friday night. Kate and Rick decided to go up early, arriving on Thursday afternoon, after checkups with their respective physical therapists, Castle's respiratory therapist, and their doctors.
They packed their bags and loaded the car before getting the latest progress report from the physical and respiratory therapists—they were doing very well and were to keep up the good work.
They walked into the hot July sunshine hand in hand, both wearing sunglasses. "You ready?" Rick asked Kate.
She smiled. "Oh yeah," she said.
And with that, they were off to the Hamptons for the long holiday weekend.
