Author's Note: And here we are, the last chapter. Thanks to everyone who has read/reviewed/followed/and favorited this story. It's got over 11,000 views which is far more than I ever expected for a random idea that wouldn't go away. I've enjoyed writing it, and hope that you'll continue to read my stuff when it pops up.
Jerry Tyson is put to death by the state of Florida the week before Thanksgiving.
Surprisingly, his death doesn't offer the comfort that Castle had expected and he spends the day on the sofa with his son, the warmth and smell of his six month old so familiar that they both drift off into an afternoon nap until the slam of the front door jerks him out of it.
Jackson's cry is loud and long, enough to give Alexis pause as she crosses the room with her arms full of books. "I'm so sorry, dad," she says with a cringe as Castle jumps to action, lightly rocking and shushing the infant. It's a bottle of milk and a diaper change later before he's fully satisfied, but his daughter still wears a pained expression like she's set off a bomb while she stares down her pile of books.
He's noticed the tiles. All variations of criminal law and procedure, all things which Alexis has occasionally mentioned in the past year or so though she's never actively announced that she wants to attend law school. But he hasn't missed the long conversations she has with Jim or Kate, the way that her eyes light up when the precinct enters into a conversation and she gets the opportunity to quiz his wife on the ins and outs of forging deals and determining sentences for the criminals that she places into prison.
Several minutes pass in relative silence, Jack's quiet snuffles as he eases back into sleep the only noise in the room until her clear voice speaks up, "Dad, I applied to take the L-Stat and I want to go to Harvard," the words rush from Alexis so quickly that he almost has trouble understanding her though he smiles when her meaning catches on.
"And you think I'm going to say no?" he asks, sinking into the chair opposite of her and swapping Jack to his other shoulder, "Alexis, I think you'd be a brilliant lawyer."
"No its not that - " she replies immediately, words halting while she bites her lip in a move so reminiscent of Kate that he wants to laugh. Apparently they are rubbing off on one another, "I just feel guilty for wanting to leave you," she admits after a beat, her head falling into her hands as she sighs. "It's not that different from when I was working towards undergraduate work. Except now there's Kate and Jack and I hate feeling that I'm going to miss so much if I move away."
Castle does laugh then, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder, "You do know that you've got another full year of Columba before any of this even matters, don't you? Not that I don't applaud your planning and thinking ahead, but its a little early to be agonizing over leaving your brother."
"But its what I want to do, dad. I want to study law and so something that makes a difference. I just don't want you or Kate to think that I don't care about Jackson or being involved in his life," she insists, her voice carrying the desperate edge that if so often held when she was young and desperate to make him understand.
"I would never think that, and neither would Kate. I know this isn't a conventional family, that its weird for you to be so much older than Jack but it doesn't matter where you are Alexis, if you go to Harvard or move to Japan, he's going to know you love him," he says gently, dropping a kiss to the crown of his eldest's head as he stands and passes a sleeping baby boy to her, "Now you hold him while I get started on dinner."
Alexis is her in second year at Harvard Law when Kate learns she's pregnant again.
It's over the Thanksgiving break that Castle's oldest daughter learns the most surprising news of all - she's gaining a set of siblings. Come April, the Castle family will consist of herself, Jack and another boy and girl of whom her dad has already taken to petitioning Kate to name Luke and Leia.
It doesn't work, of course, though Kate does concede to letting Castle pick the middle names for the newest, and likely final, members of their family.
When he announces that he's picked Johanna as a middle name over Christmas, both Kate and Alexis start crying. It's also that same day when Alexis meets the newest detective at the Twelfth Precinct, Taylor Roberts.
And it makes no sense at all how attracted she is to the guy who has been assigned to the desk between Kate and Kevin Ryan, but when he asks her to go get a drink she immediately accepts. Three days later, he kisses her when he drops her off at her dad's apartment once they've finished with their coffee date.
Even once she's back in Boston and neck deep in case studies and class work, Taylor stays on her mind and a steady presence via text messages and phone calls. He even surprises her by spending a weekend with her in the city, and she shows him around the campus. They eat lobster while overlooking the Boston Harbor, and she gives up a spring break trip to Paris to instead go home and spend the week in Manhattan.
They are very quiet with the relationship, if it can even been called that, with Alexis insisting to her father that its all very casual and friendly. It's Kate who knows better, with the woman being the one who sees Taylor's face light up whenever he gets a text from her or hears the way he talks about Alexis.
Kate knows they are going somewhere but she keeps it to herself and Taylor is always careful on the days that Castle trades his Mr. Mom uniform in for the familiarity of running down leads and tossing out theory.
He finds out how decidedly not casual the whole thing is when Kate goes into labor a full two months early.
Its terrifying as he waits for his mother and Alexis to arrive, Jack sitting quietly on his lap as nurses and doctors wander past. His three year old only asks if his mom will be okay, and Castle can barely manage to tell him that he hopes so before the threat of tears have him ducking his head to hide them. But Jack sees them anyway, his tiny arms folding around Castle's neck in a small hug that temporarily eases the fear clenching around his heart.
Hours later, long after the doctors have halted Kate's labor and placed her on bed rest while they pump her body full of steroids, he sees his oldest daughter and the detective talking. Their hands are laced together, heads bowed into one another until Alexis' red hair goes flying around her head as she laughs at something he tells her.
The look Taylor gives her while she laughs is the thing that does it, a pain slicing through his heart at the realization that someone else is slowly winning his baby girl over, because Castle knows that look very well. It's the same one that is so often on his face when he looks at Kate.
The twins enter the world two weeks later, screaming and red faced. And they are so small, so utterly fragile, that he flounders at first. Irrationally afraid that his large hands will somehow hurt them.
Of course they don't, he shows the same gentleness that he had for both Alexis and Jack as he holds the two babies. They both barely equal the weight of one child, each of them just touching the scales at three pounds. But they are perfect, twenty fingers and toes, heads of dark hair and bright blue eyes.
It's a short-lived moment for the four of them, Kate only able to brush her fingers against their fuzzy heads before doctors are wheeling them away for extra tests. There are still so many questions about the things they can't see, so many worries for two babies who have entered the world earlier than they should have.
Kate spends the first night in a haze of painkillers, the stitches from her incision burning sharp against her skin and reminding her of her last surgery. It's only the warm weight of Castle's hand enclosing her own that keeps her from a panic attack when she wakes in the middle of the night with the pain in her abdomen momentarily replaced by searing heat in her chest from a sniper's bullet.
He talks her out of it, reminding her that it was years ago and this trip and this surgery are for a very different reason - that they have two babies who are so worth the pain and anxiety of the last two weeks. And its completely true, she realizes as much when their small faces pop into her mind and her body finally relaxes back into sleep.
"Charlotte."
"All I can think of is the spider."
"Castle!"
The snap of his last name draws him out of his slight trance and Castle suddenly sits upright, glancing around the hospital room before meeting Kate's eyes. His wife is glaring at him from her bed, holding their little girl as she nurses. It's something that she is trying for the first time as her attempts with Jackson never took, and it also marks a first for Castle as Meredith had never even considered it for Alexis.
He decides there is something profoundly beautiful about it with a slight smile before his attention moves back towards Kate.
"I'm sorry but Charlotte is - I mean, its either a spider or that brunette from Sex and The City. Neither are options that I want my daughter aligned with," he explains, frowning when Kate rolls her eyes at him.
"I was thinking more Bronte than Goldenblatt," she answered, her nose wrinkling slightly as the baby squirms against her chest and releases with a soft 'pop'. "But okay, fine, what have you got? And do not say Leia."
"Katniss," he replies easily, chuckling at the responding glare and biting down on the urge to toss out Nikki.
As much as Kate loves him, he's not sure he'd survive that one. But that same day, she tosses out Jameson for their boy and he almost chokes on his coffee.
The final Nikki Heat book hits shelves a week before Halloween - four months before the twins fourth birthday.
It's a surprisingly quiet occasion, with the only real marking of the day being a delivery of the first printed edition to the loft.
It's one of the few times where things are going smoothly and Kate doesn't have to apologize to the delivery man for the screaming and wailing from one of her children. Miraculously, all three of them are huddled on the couch with Castle as he reads them a story. She can see Jack and Ethan losing a steady battle with sleep while Charlotte remains a live wire, twitching and flicking her fingers and toes.
Her daughter won't sleep, not with her brothers piled in beside her. She'll wait until the story finishes and then settle herself in a different chair.
And it always makes Kate smile, the idea of how independent her little girl is even at three years old.
She takes advantage of the silence, placing the package from Black Pawn on the middle of the counter so it is out of the reach of the six curious hands that live with them, and turns her attention back towards the fairy wings that Lettie will wear for Halloween. The wings which she snapped the elastic binding on the second day they brought them home and now require Kate to sew back on.
She's almost finished when the plane of Castle's chest crowds against her back, his ams encircling her waist a beat later, "Hello, Mrs. Castle," he whispers against her ear, and she laughs as he grazes his teeth against the tender skin below her ear, "You should wear those, you'd look hot."
Kate rolls her eyes because she knows its the reaction that he wants, swatting his hand from sliding underneath the hem of her t-shirt after she's tied off the thread and cut the excess off. "I'm just going to remind you that your child plays with these, that they are her very favorite thing in the world until at least next Tuesday," she tells him when she's managed to wiggle out of his grip in order to return the scissors and other supplies to their rightful home.
The face that he makes is the exact one that she expects, one of utter distaste, but it doesn't stop her from laughing, though it the smile dims somewhat when Castle eyes the package and the familiar handwriting of Gina.
And its serious for a moment, the air around the two of them thick with apprehension as he gingerly rips open the brown wrapping and breaks the taped seal of the box, "Do you think I did the right thing?" he asks, fingers hovering against the top of the box, his eyes so desperate for the truth.
"Castle….." Kate sighs, rounding the corner of the counter and drawing him against her body, "Nikki's time is done. You've told her story. She's solved her big mystery, she's found her peace. She had nothing left to give you - you told me that about three days after you started writing the book. You knew this was it for her, so don't doubt it. It's the right thing. It's time for the next great adventure."
There's a moment where he looks ready to protest, where his mouth opens as his eyebrows draw together, but he pauses before the sound escapes his throat. Instead, he kisses her, the contact light enough to keep them both in check but dripping with his unspoken thank you. Not just for her words to him a moment before, but for the million other things that he is grateful for - her love and their children first among them.
Castle rests against her for a while longer, seeming to gather strength from her embrace before he opens the box. But once the flaps have been lifted up, he's pressing the book in her hands.
She hasn't seen anything but the cover, hasn't read anything but the title 'Holding Heat', but Kate takes it from him anyway. Years of being together allowing her to read what he wants her to do as she turns the page.
It's just one of many dedications he has given to her over the years - its not even the first for Jack, or the twins, but the tears are immediate in her eyes. "Oh, Castle," she gasps, blinking against the moisture as it continues to build and blurs the words.
But they are already committed to memory, burning bright against the back of her eyelids as he hugs her to him, murmuring into her hair.
"To Jack, Lettie, EJ and Alexis - the lights of my life, the bringers of happiness, and my greatest accomplishments in this world. And to KC, because 'Always' is the best word of them all, and its what I have with you."
A/N: To answer a few lingering questions, Alexis does marry Taylor {deleted scene}. The kids full names are Jackson Beckett Castle, Charlotte Johanna Castle, and Ethan James Castle. Charlotte is called Lettie or CC, Ethan is EJ, Jackson is Jack. Both Jackson and Ethan are named after Castle and Beckett's dads (Jim being short for James in my mind).