Phew!

Last chapter before the epilogue folks.

Chapter Twenty Seven: Get up stronger.

It's four o'clock by the time they make it out to New Jersey and the hospital. Exiting Kate's cruiser and finding themselves back in practically the same spot they were parked in when they left; well it's a coincidence that hits them both simultaneously.

How much things have truly changed.

Castle's eyes find Kate's over the roof of the car and in a rush seemingly out of nowhere it overwhelms him. Emotions rising and unraveling in a frantic spiral, chasing themselves throughout his body; his focus narrows to her face and everything he's feeling, everything he can read with ease that's shining out of her gaze engulfs his heart. It's so much, almost too much really. Beautiful, and breathless, a gift he's been bestowed with and the writer stares back at her, he stares and he stares, simply unable to look away.

Fear of her, of the power she wields over his heart still exists somewhere inside him yet, he won't deny it. There's a sliver, a faint, niggling voice in the far recesses of his mind, but it's drowned out so loudly by how beautiful he finds it that their story isn't over, isn't finished, isn't behind him. How in fact it's more remarkable, more alive now than perhaps it's ever been before because of all they've been forced to overcome.

He's been returned his wife, and she's looking at him like he's a miracle right now. It's downright profound in fact, the magnitude, the sheer scope and size of the wonder that he sees right there in her gaze. It's a punch in his gut in the best of ways, shaking something finally loose that he's never really wanted to acknowledge was even there.

He knows she loves him. Hell he's known it for years, but in the deepest and darkest part of himself he quietly believed that she would always mean more to him than he could ever mean to her. It was an insecurity he lived with and pushed past a thousand times, because having her love him, however much it was – was everything. It was his dream.

And then when Jack died and Kate left him he'd seen it as confirmation of that silent fear. His secret nightmare scenario had come to life. And the only way to cope with the harshness of the pain was to let it twist his view of her so badly, that he'd come to think of her as not having the capacity to even know what 'love' really was anyway.

It had been comforting to him in some weird and macabre way, a construct, a lifebelt he'd clung too.

But then she came home and someone shot his mother and somewhere in all of the turmoil and fear it was inescapably obvious that she was a rock. She was an immoveable object of stubborn determination, a calm loving voice to steady him, giving him a source of strength to feed off. In amongst his teetering world she stood and challenged him once again, she empowered him, pushed back every moment that he pushed her away. She shook his convictions up, twirled them about and finally she made him open up his eyes again and see.

He sees now how love alone can hold a person in the world when everything else is taken. Understands that grief has but two cures - time and reason; time is inflexible, it inevitably passes, and for Kate the only reason she needs is him.

He's her love, her past, her future, her now. He's her sunshine and her shelter, her partner, her up and her down. He's her great joy and her greatest gift, and he is worth everything to her every bit as much as she is worth everything to him. And as awful as this past year was, the fact remains that he would never have truly known this if all the events of this period had never been.

So if some things can only be learned from the very worst of adversities, then knowing the real power of her love for him is something infinitely precious, gleaned as it's been from such a terrible price paid.

Kate rounds the rear bumper of the car and reaches out her hand for him. Castle notes the ease of the movement and falls in love with it, the way there is now no hesitation, no fear in her of his rejection and it fills him up, makes him feel fully alive for them to be this way again. He takes her hand with an open smile, and their steps sync automatically as they head to the hospital entrance together.

By the time they reach the familiar floor where Martha has been staying Kate's stomach is awash with butterflies. For the second time today she struggles with a sense of inadequacy that she hopes simply needs time and lots of it before it finally goes away.

She sneaks a glance over at Castle and wonders anew at the capacity he has to love, to forgive, and how damn grateful she is for every piece of it. For as strong and stubborn as she's recently been, fervent in her desire to be there this time for her family, suddenly she's feeling uncertain.

There is unease within her that now that the crisis has passed, Castle's daughter and his mother will look at her and judge her and wish for her to be gone from his life once again. Castle has forgiven her, but that doesn't mean the other two women who love him just as much as she does will.

Kate tells herself she's being silly.

She tells herself she's being unfair to them, making scary assumptions and feeling defensive - but she just wants so badly to feel like she belongs - not just to Castle, but to this family once again. Her fingers tighten on Castle's unconsciously, until she's exerting way too much pressure and the blanching of her knuckles reveals her inner panic. She knows that both Martha and Alexis will know as soon as they look at them, that she and Castle are truly 'together' again.

"Relax."

Her husband's low voice pulls Kate back to the present and away from the suddenly intimidating possibilities that lie beyond the door before them. He wriggles his broad fingers beneath the death-grip that she still has on them and she finds herself managing to smile as she finally releases him.

In typical Castle style her husband overacts, bringing his poor, abused hand up to face where he pretends to thoroughly inspect it. "I think you almost broke something," he murmurs and when she rolls her eyes at him, just as he hoped she would, the writer smiles.

"Better?"

Kate nods, "Yeah, better," she admits.

Expression going serious he steps into her and cups the side of her face with a warm and gentle hand.

"They will not disapprove," he says quietly, cutting straight to the heart of her insecurities instinctively, in that way he's always managed to just 'know' her. "They might not be completely effective at hiding their caution, but they love you, Kate. They love you too."

She really wants to believe him.

"Still?" It's a whisper across dry lips while hope bubbles clear in her irises.

Castle smiles, "Still," he confirms. And he doesn't doubt it for the truth he just believes it is.

Then he's turning the handle on Martha's hospital room and before Kate can worry further he's guiding her ahead of him into the room.

Alexis looks at her watch and debates whether she should call her father, find out where he is and how he's doing and whether she has any hope at all of seeing him today. Well, him and Kate, she muses, and at the thought of her stepmother Alexis waits for anxiety to kick in.

It doesn't take all that long.

Her emotions are already all over the place today. Raw, re-awakened grief broke over her the moment she opened her eyes this morning. She knew that it was inevitable, she was anticipating it, and she even thought she was prepared. But the fact remains that the passing of an entire year since that terrible day her brother died, well it hit her pretty damn hard in the pre-dawn hours of the day. She woke to a churning in her gut and tears cascading down pale cheeks as she tried and failed miserably to hold images of Jack's sweet face at bay. All she'll forever miss Alexis has tried to temper, using her quiet joy that her grandmother is doing so much better as a balm against the bitter ache of her brother's loss.

To that end, she's spent the whole day thus far in Martha's still slightly sleepy company, but the later in the day it's grown, the more Alexis has realized that what she needs right now is simply her father.

She needs his arms and his shelter, the comfort of his presence to drive back her grief over Jackson, and as for this increasingly uncomfortable anxiety over Kate – well only when she is able to witness how things really are between them will she be able to settle herself again.

The last time she spoke to him, it was just to confirm that they were returning to New York today, it was barely a conversation even and yet he'd seemed more like himself to her in those few words they shared, than he's been in all the days since Jack was taken.

And the concern she feels about her father opening up his heart to Kate again, only to risk more heartache, is mixed with a guilty relief at no longer being the only thing he's living for. Once she bore that weight and reveled in it, but then Kate came along, and then Jack and things were so perfect that sharing her role as the focus of his attentions was completely worth the change.

Having more people to love had been so good not only for her father, but for herself as well. And deep within, in that small place that always holds hope because it's instinctual, Alexis still feels it could be that way again. Kate was once the best thing that ever happened to their family and Alexis wants more than anything for her family to be whole again.

Her wish is pretty much granted the moment she realizes that her father and her stepmother have just walked through the door. Her eyes connect with her father's and Alexis feels herself begin to smile because his eyes are so very much lighter.

She can see the day, the anniversary and all its memories hiding in the shadows beneath his gaze, but her father's strength, his will, that innate joy in living that used to be so infectious about him, it surrounds him like a cloud now. Bristling and bursting with energy there is a purpose in his step, his stance, the set of his broad shoulders – and Alexis senses how it's all coming from the change in his relationship.

Alexis breaks from his face and notes how tightly their hands are clasped together and when she looks to Kate next, she sees the same new strength of purpose on her stepmother's beautiful face.

Kate smiles at her shyly, a faint shrug in her shoulders as she clearly looks to Alexis for acceptance and even approval now. The promise of earning both, of knowing that it will take time hangs implicitly in the air between them. Alexis nods in acknowledgment and Kate breathes more easily, turns her focus to Martha and her husband as Rick moves towards his mother's side, pulling her right along with him.

Martha is sleeping, but the drastic improvement that's been made in the paralysis that was affecting the left side of her face is evident even in slumber and immediately amazing. Kate hears her husband's sharp intake of breath beside her and when he turns to look at her his eyes are so full of little boy it has her heart seizing.

"She looks . . . "he begins, then stops - stuck for the right words.

Kate steps in closer and breaking from his gaze she studies Martha's face intently for herself. "She looks like your mother again," she says, turning her attention back to him.

Castle nods, grinning at her like a school-boy. "Yes," he says, "that's it exactly." He lets go of her hand then, focusing completely on his mother as he slips quietly into the hard plastic chair at the side of her bed. He reaches for her left hand carefully, needing to touch her but reluctant to wake her, and this time when his large, strong fingers cradle Martha's, Kate doesn't despair that her mother-in-law seems dwarfed and frail by comparison, it just seems wonderful, it just looks right. Still, it tugs at the grief of the mother inside her, knowing she'll never see Jack's hand holding hers in this way.

She's about to excuse herself, let him sit with his mother for a while when Martha stirs and sleepy blue eyes open, animating the actress's lovely face. Castle reaches out his free hand and gently grasps his mother's shoulder and Kate smiles widely at her, reassuring. She assumes her mother-in-law remembers she was with her when she came around from her surgery, but she isn't totally sure and she doesn't want to be a shock.

But Martha just smiles.

It's a little lopsided still, the control she has regained of her face still imperfect, but it's a Martha Rogers' smile, real, delighted and somehow mischievous. Martha's vibrant personality is completely behind it and as she looks between Kate and Castle a few times - it widens.

"Hi, Mom," Castle's deep voice is loving, tender. "Forgive me for being away for a bit," he tells her. "Alexis tells me you've been busy amazing everyone and that Dr. Browne is supremely proud of you, says you're his miracle patient and that you're gonna be able to move out of the hospital really soon.. And I'm so glad, I'm so glad that you're doing so well." He nods towards his wife then, and if he could only see himself, if he could only see how his smile goes from tender to adoring. "And look, Kate is here, Mom, and . . . things are . . . Kate's home again."

Martha pats the hand holding hers with her able free one. She strokes over her son's forearm and brushes the hair back from his forehead and Castle leans into her touch, greedily soaking up that love only a mother can give.

"Riich . . . arrd."

The word is hoarse, and quiet, a little broken but definitely intelligible. And three sets of startled eyes search the actress's face.

Martha chuckles a little, nods her head at the questions all over their startled faces.

Yes, she knows it's a real word and the right word and yes, she meant it. She found it within the jumble inside of her head, and she knew it for what it was. She then proves it to them by saying it again.

"Richard."

Alexis bursts into tears, Kate wipes the wetness from her cheeks in surprise and Castle, Castle just bounds forward and kisses his mother on the bandage still secured around the top of her head.

"Hi, Mom," he says again, laughing this time, happy because he sees her coming back to them, and it's another beautiful gift, he thinks. Another gift to lift them all today.

Stepping into the loft this time feels like coming home, and Kate lets her eyes travel over the familiar space with more than a little sense of appreciation. Castle trails into the kitchen ahead of her and Kate simply follows, lets her steps duplicate his as she lets that feeling of being just where she should be settle down inside her.

She loves this place.

She has from the very first moment she stepped inside. So many years ago now, back when Castle was a flaming annoyance whose council she was still about to seek.

And even with all that has happened here over the years she loves it still. This space has been their landscape. The backdrop as they fought and struggled, loved and lived, planned and lost. Their life together began here and ended here, now it will see them begin again.

Her gaze finds the stairs to the upper floor, to the place where she stood such a relatively short time ago and watched as her presence here brought Castle to his knees. In that moment she'd seen their lives detaching, seen into a future where all they were to each other was a painful memory. And in that terrible moment she'd known she would become as much a ghost as their son if that was the future she was destined to have. All she was, every part of her soul had raged within her as she begged the universe for a way back, a way to un-break what she had fractured.

Castle wraps his arms around her from behind then, pulling her form snugly against him and as he nuzzles his mouth against the side of her neck the painful imagery subsides, replaced by the feel of him alive and loving her, and the sight before her becomes just an empty staircase once more. Spinning within the circle of his arms she loops her own around his neck, looking up at him a little breathlessly.

That day she came home the loft was empty when she got there, and while she'd waited for him there was something she'd tried to do that she never actually managed to. With all that's happened since she hasn't given that mission a moments thought until now, but suddenly it seems important, something she needs to do this day.

"That day-" she begins, her voice stopping after just two words, the merest hint of a dark shadow crossing her face.

Castle jumps in immediately. "What?" he asks softly, his tone all concern, a frown crinkling his forehead when her eyes drift upwards and her head turns, she casts another glance towards the staircase behind her.

"I was upstairs when you came home that day, the day that I came back to you – do you remember?"

Castle swallows roughly, nods his head quick and tight.

"Hard to forget," he murmurs a little darkly. "I am so sorry, Kate. For how harsh I was with you."

Beckett shakes her head. "You were justified, we both know you were. And it doesn't matter, none of that matters, I just wanted to share with you why I was upstairs."

The writer smiles sadly.

"But I know," he says gently.

Kate frowns. "You do."

Castle inclines his head. "Yeah," he whispers, "The nursery." His voice catches on the last syllable, and in his eyes Kate sees so many memories, so very many broken dreams.

Feebly she struggles to find a smile.

"You're right," she tells him. "When I got here that day and you didn't answer the door, well I used my key obviously, but I don't think I've ever felt less like I should be somewhere, Rick."

"Kate-"

She applies gentle pressure over his lips with her fingertips, hushing the 'this is your home' she knows he was about to offer her.

"I felt like a thief," she confesses. "But it didn't stop me. I wandered around, Castle. I trailed through the kitchen, our bedroom, your office, the great room and then I found myself heading for the stairs and everything began to feel like it was a dream. It was like being awake inside nightmare. For a second it was the morning that I found him again, and I don't know, but I got to the top of the stairs, I got right to the door of his room and then I couldn't make myself go any further. I couldn't open the door, Rick. I couldn't bear to remember what I'd found that morning, and I couldn't stand to find a changed or a different room. I was stuck. I stood there for two hours before you came home. Two hours with my hand on the doorknob and my head against the door and ghastly limbo all around me."

The writer pulls her tightly against him, wraps her up in his arms and his warmth and whispers a litany of apologies against the shell of her ear, his voice calm and comforting. At length he lets her go enough for her to look back up at him.

"We don't have to live here," he says, surprised when at his words her gaze turns horrified.

"But I love it here," she says adamantly. "This is our home. Castle, I don't want to leave it, I'm just trying to explain something."

The writer looks confused.

"I am so not following."

"Don't you see - I couldn't go in that day because you weren't beside me. Going in that room meant moving on, facing the room as it was now – empty - and living with that. And I can only do it if you're there, Rick. So will you do it with me?"

He almost smirks, she sees it start to twist the corners of his mouth, that beautiful thing inside him that just has to find the light, latching onto her words and twisting them naughtily. But he doesn't, he pushes it down and finds a loving smile instead. His hands slip to her shoulders and he grips the upper part of her arms, he looks searchingly into her eyes, like he's assessing something.

"Today has been a big day," he says at length, "Momentous in fact. You don't have to face that room today to prove anything to anybody, Kate, most definitely not me, and certainly not yourself, sweetheart."

"I know."

Castle's eyebrow climbs, "But?"

"I want too."

"Why?"

"It's been a year," she says simply. "And here we are and I'm ready, Rick. This feels like the last demon I have to slay. The final step so that when I wake up here, in your arms tomorrow morning, I'm the version of myself that I intend to be."

"Kate-"

She hushes him with a look that's both penetrating and clear.

"You dealt with it. I know you did, Castle. You were the one who put it all away, every trace. You made yourself perform that task. And I have too – mentally a least – I have to do the very same. I need to and I need you to go up there with me. Please."

Castle sighs, objections all over the soft sound but what he says is, "Okay."

He lets go of her and Kate reaches for his hand, entwining their fingers intimately she tugs him towards the stairs. Her knees are trembling by the time she reaches the top, they feel a little jello-like and her heart is beating hard and fast inside her ribs. But she's determined, resolute, so she tugs again on her husband's hand, and forces herself onwards down the corridor that leads to what was Jack's room.

She recalls with a pang the day Castle surprised her with it, how beautiful a nursery he'd dreamed up for their baby, and she pauses, her hand feels suddenly heavy, so weighted down resting against the doorknob.

"Baby . . . "

Castle's voice is low and tender and that one word of endearment says everything. His concerns about her feeling like she needs to do this 'right now', his love for her, his commitment, his heartbreak – everything. And overriding all of it she hears the faintest tinge of fear. Then his free hand is covering her trembling one on the doorknob and stilling it just as she was about to make it turn.

"Wait," he pleads, pulling her hand free of the handle, capturing both of hers within his. He looks horribly uncertain all of a sudden and it dawns on Kate that maybe he doesn't want to do this right now. That maybe he cannot handle this room on this day of all days.

"What is it?" she asks him nervously.

"What you said, downstairs," he begins, his handsome face twisted with doubts, "About me dealing with it, packing up everything that was in this room and putting it all away."

His wife nods, tilting her face closer to his she can't help but see that he's suddenly paled.

"Didn't you?" she asks.

Castle borrows a habit from her and bites hard on his lip, he won't meet her gaze, training his eyes stubbornly instead on their tightly joined hands.

"I did, it's just that. . . "He stops, shoulders hunching like he's preparing to deliver some sort of blow. Her stomach churns and Kate feels her resolve bleeding out of her.

"Seriously, what?" she says a bit brokenly. Her husband closes his eyes; it makes him look as if he's praying and her stomach cartwheels again.

"Kate, I-"

"Please Castle, just tell me."

"It's still his room," he blurts out suddenly, his eyes opening again and instantly snapping to hers. "I mean, it's still a room that's full of Jack, and it won't just be empty or generic or what you're probably expecting, Kate. And I don't want . . I mean I couldn't bear for you to be blindsided by that. Not, not today."

Oh, Castle.

He pulls her hands up to his mouth, resting them against the curve of his lower lip, the warmth of his breath ghosting across the faint chill of her knuckles as he says, "You have made today something I didn't think it could possibly be – optimistic - and I want you to truly understand, Kate, that you've amazed me, made me proud, made me happy, stood by me and pushed yourself further than I would ever have asked of you. So if there is any part of you that's doing this for me or because you think I need you too – then don't. Nothing will make me think less of you, not ever again."

She smiles then, feels her nerves vanish beneath the gift of his praise and the knowledge that his desire to delay her is all about keeping her from any additional pain. She stretches up on her toes and kisses him lingeringly at the temple, before a gentle tug frees her hands and she buries one in the thick softness of his hair as the other lovingly cups the side of his face.

"Show me." Is all she says.

Castle steps around her and opens the door to what was Jack's nursery, and taking a deep breath, Kate steps inside.

It both is and isn't the same room that it was.

The thought hits her, tumbles through her mind sounding silly even within the privacy of her own thoughts. In literal terms of course it is - it's the same room. What was once a 'guest' room rarely used, that became a nursery for a much-loved baby boy. The same room where that baby died, the same room that's haunted her nightmares for a year and the same room that was once so perfect to her until it became the very embodiment of 'Hell'.

Kate looks around her and finds herself once more caught up in the wonder.

It used to be blue, cornflower blue with the night-sky painted overhead. White wainscoting rising high on the walls, a white and blue rug over dark-cherry hardwood flooring and a large sleigh-style crib used to dominate the room.

It's a shade of pale green now.

The floor doesn't have a rug, the crib is gone, and instead a tasteful daybed lines the wainscoting that still adorns the walls. The night-sky has vanished, the ceiling pushed back up instead to its original height, and somehow a skylight has been added, she's not sure where on the roof-deck it equates too, but overhead the real night-sky now softly shines through.

And, Jack, beautiful, precious Jack - is everywhere.

Simple black frames on every wall, elegant black and white photos in all of them. Kate's drawn in, moth to a flame as her heart both breaks anew and rejoices in the span of the same heartbeat.

Oh Castle . . . it's so beautiful!

She starts at the closest wall and follows them round, her eyes jumping from frame to frame, from photo to photo. Jack as a newborn all wide-eyed and shell-shocked, in the next he's asleep on his father's chest, Castle slack-jawed and dozing. There's Jack laughing, Jack smiling, Jack covered in talcum powder, each mini-milestone and precious day, the walls of the room now document an entire tiny life and it hits her hardest when she notices that she was also included here. Castle's keen eye capturing gorgeous mother-child moments among everything that was wonderful, special and fantastic in the short four months so beautifully preserved. A life she thinks, a whole life that he'd lost but kept safe here, treasured, remembered, proudly un-denied.

Kate whirls on him, finds Castle watching her carefully with dark, almost terrified eyes and she throws herself into his embrace, twines her arms tightly around his neck and holds onto him as if he's the only gravity around.

"Thank you," she whispers breathlessly into his neck. "Oh, Rick, thank you so much, it's so beautiful. Such a wonderful way to hold onto him, to all of it, to make it bearable to stand within this room again.

"Well now I wish I was responsible for it."

Kate feels the words rush out of him along with the breath he was obviously holding and he hugs her back strongly, his eyes when she finally pulls back to see him are calm again, maybe just a little teary.

"Alexis did it," he confesses, nodding his head towards the photos all around them. "Once I'd packed everything away, and I'd had the decorator change the color palette and the ceiling . . . "

He looks up and Kate finds herself copying him, the moon is just visible high over their heads and Kate focuses on it, on the reality of what is here now, what is gone, what must always be remembered. Somehow the room has become a perfect blend, and if one-day it evolves again into something more, well she knows that having Jack still be a part of it will be a blessing.

"I'm so glad she did this," she tells him.

Castle nods, "She said it was just too different, that it didn't feel right to just wipe him away. I didn't agree at first but it became a project for her, a way for her to work through her own grief and then with every new frame that she added it somehow started to become something really special." His eyes drift from the moon back down onto her face and he dips his mouth to cover hers for just a moment, because he just has too, before he pulls back and says, "It became a way to remember how much love surrounded him, and even though I'd planned to sell the loft with the divorce going through, I know now I would have asked her to recreate this for me, wherever I might have ended up."

Kate swallows hard, "But so many of these photos contain me?"

Her husband smiles, "I might have been forcing myself to make you a memory, Kate, but I would have loved you always regardless, my inspiration." He kisses her again and then pushes gently out of her arms with an almost apologetic smile. "Speaking of which, stay, be at peace with it and when you're ready, Kate, come down and find me. I've got to, I mean I'll be-"

"Writing," Kate finishes for him. It's been a long, trying, momentous, amazing day, but she knows that look that's in his eyes, that light that's wild and ready and alive again. And it's glorious. "Go, go," she says, ushering him to the door. "I'll find you and claim you back from Nikki later, babe."

She watches him until he disappears around the corner at the top of the stairs and then she turns back into 'Jack's room'. Her steps are confident as she tours the space this time, as she remembers, it hurts, it will always hurt, but she owns it now. All her great grief, her terrible mistakes, the love that she's miraculously managed to save, and within her an honest desire is born and Kate smiles, home again.