Thank you so much for all the reviews and follows and favorites! They make me so happy! So keep them coming! Anyways, I hope you like this chapter, it was pretty hard to write, I tried to capture the grief that both Kate and Emily would have felt, but I don't think I did it justice. So, even though this one was hard, and I was basically crying by the end of it envisioning the situation, I hope you can get through it! I promise I will try to make it a bit easier to stomach from here on out, with more Caskett moments, and eventually happier moment between Kate and Emily. So on that note, try to enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Castle.

The girl looked shocked and full of disbelieve in one.

"You're my what?" She exclaimed.

"My mother? That's not true. My mom is not you. No way. Why are you even saying that! You're obviously not her. She doesn't look anything like you! She has blond hair, blue eyes, is older than you, and doesn't sound like you, and IS NOT YOU!" She shouted out.

"So, since you are obviously not my mom, who in the heck are you then? And where is she? And my dad?" Emily asked, her tone still raised, anger, frustration, desperation, and fear coloring her tone.

"Emily," Kate said, looking broken, and helpless, knowing that with Emily not aware of her adoption, her task of alerting her daughter to the horrible situation at hand was going to be even worse than she could ever have dreamed possible.

She knew that Emily would not accept any of it, she was sure she would handle it exactly the way she herself had when she found out that her mother was dead.

So she reached for Castle's hand, and squeezed it as she began to talk.

"Emily, my name is detective Kate Beckett. I am a homicide detective from the twelfth precinct. The case we, my partner Richard Castle and I and the other detectives there, have been working on involves a serial killer.

The person in question has been killing sixteen-year-old teenage girls. The reason you were brought here to the hospital is because the serial killer broke into your home and tried to murder you."

At this Kate had to stop because of the look on Emily's face, and the sounds she was making.

The girl sounded line she was chocking on rocks. Her breathing was rushed and labored, her voice a high-pitched noise of terror. Her eyes held the look Kate knew only too well, that of a hunted animal, the desperate, tortured look that came with being held hostage with a gun to your head, the face of an already dead man.

She darted her head about, looking around as if there might be someone in that very room trying to get her again.

Her terrified gaze latched onto Kate, and as if forgetting her confusion, and anger at Kate's statement that she was her mother, reached out and grasped Kate's hand, her grip like a vice, as she whispered

"Where are my mom and dad?"

Her voice sounding as if she almost knew what was coming next. Kate spoke, her voice shaking with the effort not to break down and cry, as she said to her:

"Emily, while you were being drown, your parents walked in. They had come home early. When they walked in the killer pulled out a gun, and shot them both.

They did not survive. The killer fled your house, leaving you on the floor, where neighbors who had heard the commotion found you minutes later. They called the paramedics who brought you here, and saved your life."

She finished, not going into the paternity issue yet. She had been looking down the whole time she told Emily what had happened, knowing she would not be able to continue if she looked up or stopped talking.

And now that she did raise her head to look at her daughters face she knew she had been right not to look at her before this moment.

Her expression was even more horrible than when she had been told she had almost died.

Her face was so covered in anguish; her eyes so tightly closed it looked like they weren't even there. She was gasping for air, sobs racking her body. Tears ran in rivers down her cheeks, dripping like raindrops off her chin. Her mouth was tilted so far down it seemed like it would be stuck like that forever. She looked more terrified and heartbroken than Kate had ever seen; the only thing that had come close to this expression was when she herself looked in the mirror.

As her daughter wailed, she herself began to shake, the pressure she had been holding in bursting out of her mouth, even as she clamped down on it, her hands, which had been flung away from her daughter upon her admission, pushed on her lips, pulling the together trying to hold it in.

She stared at the girl who was convulsing in front of her, helpless to hold her together, and feeling like there was nothing she knew how to do to make it better.

She couldn't make it better. The girl's mother and father had died, in her mind leaving her alone in the world, with nothing she could do.

So they cried together, one yearning to hold the other, to stroke her face, and help her feel loved, to take the time to our her back together, the other determined to hate the world forever, and never truly live again, the same way her mother had, sixteen years ago.

…

Finally Emily's crying slowed to a tortured low moan, and she reached out for Kate's hand again, pulling on it to get her attention, as Kate's face had been buried in her hands and lap the whole time Emily mourned.

She startled at the touch, and Castle, who had been sitting there the whole time, tears running down his face as well, reached out and put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

She looked up and saw Emily staring at her, tear tracks down her face shining in the harsh hospital lights.

She stared into Emily's eyes and tried to smile at her, hoping that maybe, if she could convince Emily to trust her than she could possibly have a place in her daughter's life and come to be recognized as her mom, though she knew she would never be able to hold the place in Emily's heart she wished she could occupy.

She didn't regret giving Emily up for adoption, but she couldn't help but think about how this never would have happened if she hadn't.

Then Emily spoke, her shaky voice breaking the silence.

"What did you mean earlier about being my mother?"

Kate looked at her, and made the decision that she would explain now, and try to help her understand what was going on. And so she began.

"My mother was also murdered. That was 16 years ago. The night after her death I had a bad night. A month later I found out that I was pregnant.

I was so young though, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle a baby on my own. So when I had that baby, I made the hardest decision of my life, by giving my baby up for adoption.

Emily, that baby that I gave away so she could have a better life was you. The people who adopted you were your parents. I am your real mother, and I am so truly sorry.