Well here's the final chapter of my tale. Thanks to all of you who have followed, favourited and reviewed.

What a fantastic Castle day yesterday was! Stana live on GMA & Live with Kelly & Michael and then the 100th episode and what an episode it was!

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Chapter 9

When RJ and Beth came back downstairs, they discovered both their parents sitting on the couch, waiting for them. Whatever this was about, Kate had found it necessary to bring her husband in for support and he was now sitting very close to her, one arm around her shoulders and the other hand with a tight grip on hers. Kate looked up,

"Have a seat, both of you."

As the youngest Castles sat in the other two chairs, Rick quietly asked Kate,

"Are you sure about this?"

But Kate had made her decision.

"They should know. In fact we should probably have told them years ago."

Beth and RJ just looked at each other and then across at their parents. Whatever was going on, they wished someone would get on and tell them, the suspense was almost overwhelming.

"What I'm going to tell you is off the record. This does not appear in your article, okay?"

"That's fine, mom. This is off the record."

"Just over a year after you were born, RJ, I discovered I was pregnant again."

Beth gasped, this was obviously a story that did not end well and she immediately felt tears forming in her eyes,

"Mom?"

"Sshh, Beth, its okay, just hear me out. We were delighted. My first pregnancy had gone so smoothly, no morning sickness, no problems at all in fact and I couldn't wait to go through it again. We held off from telling anyone apart from immediate family and closest friends but planned to make an official announcement once I was into the second trimester. We never got to make that announcement."

Kate took a deep breath before continuing and Rick squeezed her hand, giving her the extra strength she needed to carry on, even though his eyes were also suspiciously moist.

"We'd been working on a case for a couple of days and we needed to go back and talk to a guy we'd interviewed earlier. He was a witness and we thought that, because he was scared, he hadn't told us everything he knew. Ryan and Esposito were already out checking another lead so I went alone. The guy worked in the kitchens at the Widmark Hotel but when he saw me, he panicked and ran. I had absolutely no idea, until that moment, that he was actually the perpetrator and not merely a witness. I chased after him, yelling to the other staff to call 911. I caught up with him okay but I didn't see the kitchen knife until it was too late. As we struggled, he stabbed me in the stomach."

Her son and daughter just gazed at her, both of them with tears flowing freely down their cheeks. They had seen their mother's scars, the gunshot wounds, the surgery scars, the stab marks and had heard the stories behind them. They had even seen that particular scar but had only ever been told that she'd been stabbed whilst making an arrest. Now they were hearing the full story and it was heartbreaking.

Kate continued,

"I managed to get my cuffs on him before the pain really hit home and when I saw just where he'd got me, I completely broke down. Paramedics were on the scene quickly and they managed to stem the worst of the blood loss but the damage, as it turned out, had already been done. The knife had pierced my uterus and by the time they got me into surgery, our baby was already dead. I'd been pregnant for just fifteen weeks."

It had been a very long time since Kate had talked about this to anyone except Rick. Even after all these years, it still hurt thinking about the child they had made together and yet never got to meet. Beth flung herself into her mother's arms,

"Oh, mom, why did you never tell us about this? Why did you two feel you had to go through it alone?"

Once Kate had extracted herself from her daughter's fierce hug and indicated for her to sit next to her on the couch, she tried to explain.

"It was something we always meant to tell you but somehow the time never seemed to be right. Anyway, that wasn't the end of the problems. Once I was in recovery after the surgery, the doctors told me that it was unlikely that I would ever be able to have any more children but we clung on to the lifeline of that word 'unlikely'. They hadn't said that I wouldn't be able to have more children, just that it was unlikely. You know how stubborn I can be when I put my mind to it and this was a battle I was not prepared to lose. Their concern was that, although there was nothing to prevent me conceiving a child, carrying to full term would be the problem."

RJ had been very quiet while Kate told the tragic tale of their lost sibling although he had moved from his chair to kneel behind the couch, hugging his mother from behind,

"Obviously your faith was justified," he said, looking pointedly at his sister, "But I can't help but think you probably fought the doctors long and hard."

Kate smiled,

"Yeah, you're right on both counts. I worked damned hard to get myself as fit as I possibly could although, of course that couldn't really help the internal injury, my fitness did help my body's ability to heal itself. After two hard years, they finally gave us the go ahead to try for another child but they kept emphasizing the risks that we would be facing, the risks both to the baby's health and to mine. Once we got the news that I was indeed pregnant again, that was when I decided that it was time to follow the doctor's instructions to the letter because I wasn't willing to allow my stubbornness to risk the baby's health. We went straight away to see Captain Gates and asked for permission to take a twelve month leave of absence, a request that she was very happy to grant. As I said earlier, the risks would increase as the pregnancy progressed so we spent the first three months travelling. Your dad had been due to do several promotional visits abroad for the latest Nikki Heat book so I took the opportunity to go with him for once. By the time we returned home, it was time for me to start taking things easy. From the six month point onwards, I was virtually on permanent bed rest. God, I was so bored but knew it was all absolutely necessary to get the final outcome we were both longing for. I was being constantly monitored and by the time I reached thirty five weeks, the medical staff decided it was too risky to try to reach full term and so they took me in for a C-section. And what do you know; we had a perfectly healthy baby girl."

She smiled down at Beth, who was now sitting on the floor with her head on her mother's knee.

"Wow, mom, I can't believe you went through all that, just to have me!"

"And I don't regret one second of it. Trust me, Beth, you are worth it."

For the first time, Castle spoke,

"Would you two excuse us for a moment?" and with that he took Kate by the hand and led her into the study, leaving RJ and Beth to try to process everything they'd been told in the last few minutes. They both knew that their mother was a tough, no-nonsense cop but until now they had never really appreciated just how tough she was as a person. The other thing they had learned during this was the depth of the love their parents had not only for them but also for each other. They had both glanced across to their father many times while Kate had been talking and the changing expressions on his face told them all they ever needed to know about the depth of his love for his wife, still as strong as ever after all these years.

Ten minutes later, Rick and Kate returned, hand in hand.

"Look, guys, we've just been having a chat about what your mom said at the beginning about this all being off the record," he looked down at Kate for a final confirmation before he continued and received an affirming nod in return,

"Well, RJ, if you want to use it in your article, you can do as far as we're concerned but, Beth, it has to be okay with you as well. I've always wanted the world to see the amazing woman that I see when I look at your mother and this may be a difficult part of the story to tell but in the end it's a tale of triumph over adversity and as far as I'm concerned it simply sums up the woman that is Kate Castle, my wife, your mother."

Kate blushed, listening to her husband's loving words but soon gathered her thoughts and returned to more practical matters,

"If we're planning on keeping our dinner reservation tonight, it might be as well if we move past all this drama of days long gone and actually get ourselves ready to go out. Come on, move, don't just sit there!"

With that, she dragged her husband back towards their room with a final glance over her shoulder at her children, who still hadn't stirred,

"I said move it, you two!"

Later that night, after a very happy and cheerful family meal, Kate and Rick were lying in bed, discussing the interview and subsequent revelations.

"Are you sure you're okay with all that coming out?" Rick asked because, as ever, he needed to be absolutely certain that Kate was happy with the decision.

"Yes, Rick, I'm fine. I wasn't sure about this article in the beginning but I trust RJ completely. I know he'll do a great job and I also know that he'll take anything out of it that I'm not happy with. As for all that about the stabbing, they needed to know and now that they do, there's absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be public knowledge. I'll be retired soon, now and so will you. Once this article is out there, telling the story of our lives together, we can just disappear into the sunset of our retirement and leave the rest of the world to their own devices. God, Richard Castle, I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you."

Castle smiled that smile that always made the butterflies flit about in her stomach,

"Always, Kate Beckett, always."

That's it, folks! I have written another story, just a one-shot this time, which I'll post in a couple of days.

Thanks for all the support.