He's at home supervising dinner when he gets the call.
Lucy's pushing her vegetables onto Noah's plate, James is calling her out on it, and Castle's just trying to get through a meal that ends with most of the food being ingested. He evens out the portions and instructs Lucy to eat her meal, grabbing his phone and answering quickly when he sees that it's Esposito.
With one single sentence the easy-going smile is wiped clean off his face.
"Dad, what's wrong?"
James is the one who picks up on his change in demeanour first, but the moment he asks, Lucy is suddenly serious, turning to him with wide eyes.
"Dad?" She wonders, and he drops the phone, hanging up on Esposito without another thought.
Fuck.
He grits his teeth, trying to hold back the tears that spring to his eyes, because they'll only scare the kids.
This cannot be happening.
"I need to drop you guys off at Gram's, okay?" He says, his question not needing an answer, but it gets the usual responses anyway.
"Why?"
"Where are you going?"
"Can't we come too?"
He gets them all up, grabbing his keys and his phone and ushering them towards the door in their pyjamas, leaving their meals half-eaten at the dinner table.
"Can't we finish dinner first?" Noah wonders, chicken pieces in his hands as he follows his siblings to the door.
"No, I need…" he trails off, trying to erase the images that Espo's words have seared in his mind. "I need to go pick up your mother and you need to go stay with Gram," he decides, handing his phone to Lucy.
"Call your grandmother and see if she's able to watch you," he instructs, and Lucy pouts, her eyes calculating.
"I want to come with you."
He stops at the elevator, jamming his finger on the button four times over in an effort to make it move faster.
"Not this time, Lucy," he says, his tone so definitive that she doesn't even try to argue.
"What happened to mom?" James wants to know, and those damn tears blur his vision when he sees the distress on his son's face.
"Mom's fine, okay?" He says, trying to sound assuring. "Mom's fine."
Mom has to be fine.
…
It takes him far longer than he'd have liked to get to the hospital, but the moment he enters the lobby, Ryan is there, his distress visible.
"Where is she?" He demands, the tears he has been holding back suddenly unstoppable, even in the face of actual answers.
"She's in surgery, they didn't say much else," Ryan says, his eyes nervous. "He came out of nowhere, Castle, I swear."
He disregards Ryan's words, knowing rationally that there's no way they wouldn't have had her back, but his wife was just stabbed and he can't think straight.
He grabs the first nurse he sees, desperate for answers, and he gets pushed off to three different health care professionals before he hears from someone who was there when she was brought in.
Two stab wounds to the stomach.
She'd been talking about scaling back, about retiring, and now this has to happen?
All he can see is images of Johanna Beckett in that alley with stab wounds, and it's morphing into Kate and she can't die.
God, she can't die.
She's always telling him that she couldn't do this without him, parent their kids, but dammit she's more important than she ever gives herself credit for.
How the hell would they survive without a mother?
They wouldn't.
He wouldn't.
Oh, God.
He's still a wreck when the surgeon emerges to speak with them, unable to even form words to respond.
She's stable.
Stable.
She's going to be okay.
He falls against Ryan, finds he's not the only one crying in relief.
…
"Hey, Castle."
She smiles for him, puts all of her energy into it, and God he must look awful if she's trying this hard to reassure him.
"Kate."
He steps closer to the bed, afraid to touch her, afraid to hurt her even more, but he takes her face in his hands, presses kisses to her forehead.
"I love you," he repeats over and over, the relief making him hopeless, unable to see anything other than her.
She's okay.
"You feel okay?" He asks, knowing all that the doctor said, but checking her for any sign of distress.
"Where are the kids?"
Her eyes flit to the door, equally hopeful and afraid of them seeing her like this, but he shakes his head.
"They're with my mother. I didn't know…"
Fuck.
He didn't know if he'd be bringing them to find out…
"Can you ask her to bring them here?" She asks, tears in her eyes for the first time since he entered the room.
"Yes. Yes, I'll call her," he assures her, sees her whole body deflate with relief.
"Thank you."
"You scared the hell out of me, Kate," he murmurs, pulling a chair to her bedside and taking her hand.
"I'm sorry."
She's crying silently now, turning her head away from him as if he won't notice.
"Hey," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her hand. "It's not your fault."
She sniffles, nodding. "I just want to see my kids," she mumbles, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket, her hand still in his.
"Three kiddos coming right up."
…
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