A/N: "You had a gorram time bomb living with us!" is a quote from the movie Serenity. Serenity is a sci-fi movie starring Nathan Fillion (Castle). The two characters Mal and Inara have a complicated back-and-forth, will-they-won't-they sort-of romance.

Princess Kate, unable to persuade Joshua to go home, soon found herself back on Serenity, riding through the forest with him, Castle, and Esposito. When she told the three of her plan to travel to Hattania, Castle insisted that they take his boat, which was anchored further up the river, less than an hour's trip away. As they rode on in companionable silence, the forest grew mistier and mistier, until they couldn't even see the path in front of them.

"Look," said Sir Castle, pointing up at something stretched all the way across the sky. "It's a double rainbow!" The others looked up and, sure enough, there were two separate rainbow lined up beside each other, shining through a hole in the canopy of leaves.

"We should really get out of here," said Esposito, urging his horse to go faster. "A double rainbow means twice the leprechauns." Joshua gave him an odd look.

"You fight dragons for a living, and you're afraid of leprechauns?" he asked. Esposito glowered at him.

"Leprechauns aren't fun, trust me," he said. "They steal your gold and they lead you into traps and they try to cripple horses." The words were barely out of his mouth when Joshua's horse buckled beneath him. He shrieked and looked down, but whatever had injured his horse was hidden by the mist. He jumped off the whimpering horse and unsheathed his sword, swinging it through the air in front of him.

"Sword!" squeaked an Irish-accented voice from somewhere below waist level.

"Would you quit whipping that thing out every time you don't know what's going on?" demanded Castle as he and Kate turned around to watch Joshua wave his sword around in the fog.

"But he said that leprechauns were dangerous!" said Joshua. "They… they steal your gold and lead you into traps and all that stuff." He looked up at Esposito. "Tell them." Esposito nodded slowly, then lost his battle to keep a straight face and started to laugh.

"Nice," said Castle as he and Esposito did a "Feed the Birds".

"Come on out O'Ryan," said Esposito. An extremely short man in a green vest and hat rode in on a squat mule, floating just above the mist. "Thanks for playing along."

"O' course," he said, tipping his hat.

"You're friends with the leprechaun?" asked Joshua, baffled.

"He's my Dragon-fighting partner," shrugged Esposito as everyone but Joshua started forward again on the trail. "And he knows Hattania better than anyone else, so he's coming with us."

"I'm also lucky," O'Ryan called back as they began to leave Joshua.

"Wait!" he called, sheathing his sword and hopping back up on his now-recovered horse. He galloped to catch up with them, and then their assorted group of travelers continued on towards Castle's boat.

Sir Castle's ship was both extravagant and stalwart, the kind of boat that earned some prestige just for its look in the harbor, but that could also battle fierce rapids and get you to where you were going. The kind of boat that only someone with Castle's money would be able to own. A vessel like his would stay with you until the day you died.

"Everyone aboard," said Castle in a singsong voice, swinging off of Serenity and helping Kate down. They loaded the horses and O'Ryan's mule on first, and then their motley collection filed on after. "And keep a sheath on that sword," he added to Joshua. He chuckled at his rhyme, but stopped when he caught the princess glaring at him.

"We go that way up the river," instructed O'Ryan, pointing north.

"Then… this boat will deliver," said Castle, adjusting one of the sails.

"Alright, no more rhyming," ordered Kate. "I mean it."

"Serenity Scene It?"

"What?" said Josh, blinking away sleep as he looked up to see Castle holding a square game box with Summer Glau and Nathan Fillion's faces on it. Maybe it was the sleep-deprivation and worry, but Josh could have sworn that he'd just pulled it out from behind his back like a cartoon character.

"Do you want to play Serenity Scene It?" clarified Castle.

"What is that?" asked Josh.

"It's like regular Scene It," Castle explained. "Only with the best science fiction movie ever made." In response to Josh's questioning look, he said, "Oh, my daughter Alexis dropped off a bag of games, movies, changes of clothes, etcetera."

"Ah," said Josh. "I've never actually seen this movie."

"You haven't?" said Castle. "Oh, we should watch it. It's so good." He began rummaging around in his bag. "Beckett loves it, even if she'll never admit it." He extracted a DVD case from the bottom of the bag. "Found it." Castle moved away from Kate- reluctantly- and slipped the disk into a compact DVD player beneath the television.

"Am I going to enjoy this?" asked Josh as the movie started up.

"Only if you enjoy awesomeness."

Castle's boat was making its way up the river in a steady, smooth motion, the strong bow slicing through the dark water. Sir Castle adjusted the wheel and then, hearing a ticking noise, snatched at the saddlebags on O'Ryan's mule and pulled out a bomb.

"You had a gorram time bomb living with us!" accused Castle, throwing it as far off the boat as he could. It flew downriver clunked a laundering man named Tom on the head, who then slumped into the river and died.

"Sorry, forgot that was in there," said O'Ryan back on the boat.

"Don't let it happen again," said Sir Castle sternly, returning to the wheel.

"Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down," Captain Malwas saying on the TV. "Tells you she's hurtin' before she keels." Castle smiled, as always, loving the line.

"That was good," said Josh when the movie ended. He leaned back, keeping a hand on the hospital bed, a constant connection to Kate. He wondered if the movie had reached her- if anything they had said reached her.

"Oh, yeah, one of my favorites," agreed Castle. He too kept a hand on the hospital cot, and made no move to pull it back.

"Except I didn't really care for the whole Mal and Inara thing," said Josh, referring to the two characters who seemed to be both the best and worst people for each other. "I mean, obviously Mal can never be with her, so the fact that he can't just give it up ends up just being annoying."

"Well, that's Mal," said Castle. "Never gives up, even if it's good for him. Even when not letting go tortures him, when the sheer pain of loving a woman he knows he can never be with is enough to shape his character, to alter every decision he makes."

"Annoying," repeated Josh, breaking a long silence. Castle glanced at him, then at Beckett, and unexpectedly began to regret popping the movie in at all.