AN: I'm a mom. If you've never had a baby, and/or object to hearing some of the unglamorous details of the immediate aftermath of childbirth, this may not be your chapter. Like chapter 1, not really graphic, but forewarned is forearmed.


Kate wakes to a weird sensation. The room feels warm enough, but she's feeling a little cold and clammy under the sheet. Throwing it off, she gropes around for the light switch and turns on the light over her bed.

"Huh," is all that she manages.

Alexis unfurls from her scrunched up perch on the sofa and pushes up to a sitting position. "Kate? What's wrong?"

"Uh, that session with the lactation consultant a couple of hours ago may have been a bust, pun intended, but now..." she waves a hand over the front of her hospital gown.

Two large, wet spots on the front of the pale pink cotton gown have merged in the middle of her chest. Kate pulls the damp fabric away, with a little shiver, and looks sort of dumbly at Alexis. "I should probably do something about this."

Alexis laughs, a little too loudly for the hour and the locale, and slaps a hand over her gaping grin. "This gets to be funny, right?" she asks through her fingers."Because, really? Kate? That?" She points at Kate's chest with no shame. "At four in the morning, that's funny."

Beckett goes for a scowl, but her heart isn't in it. "When your own baby makes your boobs blow up, there will be absolutely no-"

"No mercy, I get it," Alexis agrees, and hops off the sofa to rummages through the drawers for a clean gown. "Where's Dad?"

Kate runs a hand through her knotted hair and makes a face. A shower is sooooo called for. "He couldn't get comfortable in the chair. My guess is he gave up and went to get coffee."

Kate eases up off the bed and takes Alexis' arm for a minute to find her sea legs. Once convinced she can cross the room without face-planting, Kate accepts the clean garment and waves it in the direction of the private bathroom. "I'm gonna go clean up, and then how about we walk down to the nursery and see if we can spring your brother?"

With a hint of a smile on her lips, Alexis replies. "I really like the sound of that. My brother."

"Sorry for the age gap," Kate admits ruefully. "It's a little ridiculous."

"No doubt," Alex is agrees. "But you know what? I wouldn't change it, Kate. I like the way we are, our little family."

Family. Kate ducks her head so a curtain of hair covers her face, and clears her throat. It takes so little to get her going these days, and today in particular, she's been a total waterworks. She wonders how long it will take before things like this don't completely undo her. It better not last a day longer than her maternity leave, that's for sure. "I'm glad," she eventually works out around the burning in her throat.

"So if I hugged you right now...?" Alexis asks.

"You'd have to scrape me off the floor."

"Right. Later, then." Alexis giggles, and settles for planting a noisy kiss in Kate's messy hair. "I need to catch up on e-mail. I mean, unless you think you need help?"

Kate shakes her head and escapes, albeit slowly, to the privacy of the bathroom. Alexis watches her until the bathroom door clicks closed, and then digs her iPad out of her bag.

Inside the bathroom, the lighting is surprisingly merciful. Kate can turn on only the lights over the vanity, leaving the shower mostly untouched by the florescent glare. Way too early in the morning for that.

Kate lays the clean gown down on bathroom counter, wrinkling her nose as she pulls a couple of items out of the container provided by the hospital. Like her lactation issues, later on, this will all surely be funny. Maxi pads the size of a small canoe, and the scary, one-size fits all disposable underwear must be something women apparently don't talk about, saving the joy of this experience for other first-time moms to discover on their own. Forget how unglamorous childbirth itself is - Castle hasn't seen her in the disposable spandex granny panties yet. If she's lucky, he never will.

She's never that lucky.

Kate turns the shower on to a setting just short of thermonuclear and carefully divests herself of all things icky. Steam is already billowing out from behind the curtain when she pushes it back and gingerly steps inside...and almost swoons. The only thing arresting her downward progress is a white-knuckled grip on the stainless steel safety rail. There's a little plastic shower stool in the corner, and she drags it over with a toe and sinks down onto it, carefully. Kate likes her showers and her coffee the same way – hot. But this is overdoing it.

A little faucet adjustment and a handful of shampoo later, and she's on her way to feeling human again. It's slow going, rinsing her hair and scrubbing herself down. So tired, so shaky, and aching in places she didn't know she had. No afternoon of crunches on the balance ball has ever equaled the workout her abs have endured today. It reminds her of the days after her shooting a little too much for her liking.

When she's done washing off, Kate leans into the front corner of the shower, just letting the hot water beat on her back and shoulders. Even in the dim light, she can see the intermittent streaks of pink and red where the water runs off the little plastic chair and circles the drain.

After Ethan came, the nurses gave her two units of blood and a bag of saline to boost her flagging blood pressure. They certainly didn't cover than in the birthing class. The woman who taught the childbirth class delivered a baby and ran the New York half marathon three weeks later. A focused, athletic person like Kate? Childbirth would be a piece of cake.

Right.

Trembling and wiped out as she still is, a smile blooms on her lips. Kate has a son, now. She has a date with a little boy down the hall, a boy with her husband's solid frame and Kate's dark hair and long fingers. She knows it's a reflex; all babies grasp whatever touches the palm of their hand. He was only a few minutes old when resting in the curve of her body, Ethan grasped her thumbs and held on with both hands.

The baby book said that while it would be weeks before her child's vision would be good beyond a few inches, he would know the cadence and timbre of her voice right away, so she talked to him constantly, when he was in the womb. In the bed, in the car, at her desk, standing in front of a shelf full of baked Cheetos in the grocery store. Propped up in the hospital bed, Kate had leaned in, cheek to cheek with her son, a low melody on her lips. "Ethan. Ethan James. Oh, my sweet boy, how your momma loves you. Love you always, always, always."

The already sure little grip pressed in even tighter on the pads of her fingers, exactly what she needed to feel, that connection, that response. Just like his daddy, actually. His touch exactly what she needs, when she needs it.

One day she'll teach those little hands to pick out chords on her old guitar. Kate's smile grows bigger on that thought, and then recedes. Hormones are a funny thing, the up and down would be comical if the down that's hitting her now was something she could ever dream of laughing through.

It's a big day. On days like this, a thought loops over and over in her head - Mom should be here for this.

Kate knows she'll feel that way a thousand times over, for the rest of her life. Nothing she can do about it now. Her dad, a habitual early riser, will be in her hospital room before breakfast is served in the morning. He's wanted this baby so much, it's ridiculous. Or endearing. Hard to tell when she's so woozy. Jim, he will be missing his wife, too, but the baby will help. And hurt.

"Kate? Do I need to haul you out of there?" Alexis asks through a crack in the doorway.

Kate's head shoots up from its resting place against the cool shower wall and the subway tiles waver like a mirage, and then right themselves. "What? No, I...uh, I'm on my way out."

"Okay, I was just starting to get a little worried."

Kate cranks the shower knob off. "How long have I been in here?" It occurs to Kate that she has no idea; the whole day has been that way, too fast and slow motion all at once.

"Over half an hour," Alexis informs her, with a tinge of lingering concern in her voice.

"I...seriously?"

"Yeah, and it's like fog on the Hudson in here. Do you need help getting out?"

"Can you just hand me a towel?" Kate sways a little on the way, but manages to get to the other end of the small enclosure and hold a hand out through the curtain. The soft pile of a bath towel brushes against her palm, and it takes three swipes before Kate gets a good grip on it. She's not surprised when her step-daughter's hand lands in a death-grip around her wrist.

"Seriously, it's a hundred humid degrees in here. If you Peter Pan onto the tile because you're being all self-reliant and Beckett-like, I'm not gonna be happy with you, and Dad will flip."

Kate takes the towel with an unconvincing huff. "Fine, stay put for a second, will you?" She runs the towel over her dripping hair and swipes it over her body, doing the best she can while leaning heavily on the shower wall. Wrapping it around herself and clutching it closed with one hand, she peeks out at Alexis. "If I can just sit down, I think I can take it from there."

Alexis leads her by one hand to the toilet seat, where Kate gingerly sits down on the lid.

Kate hunches forward a little, swiping her dripping hair out of her eyes to peek up at her step daughter. "I can tell, you're thinking how glamorous this all is."

"I'm gonna run out and have one right away. Now, what do you need?"

"Umm, I have some pajama pants in my bag over there, gray ones. I can get to everything else from here."

Alexis brings her step mom the pants with a stern warning to not do anything stupid, and pulls the door just to, without completely closing it.

"Don't worry about your hair," the younger woman hollers back through the gap. "Just get dressed and I'll take care of it out here, 'kay?"

"Thanks, I don't think I could do anything with it." Kate reaches for the gown a couple of feet away on the counter. They're not exactly high fashion, but the lactation consultant pointed out that the ties in the back of the hospital gown make it easier to nurse without having to completely undress.

And dear, sweet, lovable Alexis is going to fix her hair for her.

"Right," Kate grouses, barely above a whisper. "Like that won't make me cry."