Epilogue
She has been at his bedside for three days, terrified to leave him, to risk being away at a vital moment. Martha comes by daily, sitting with her, bringing her meals to share. They talk about the old days, when she and Rick were just kids, and what is hopefully to come.
"He will be thrilled to wake up and see your dazzling face," Martha promises her softly, touching a gentle hand to Kate's cheek.
"I'm not so sure," she sighs, recalling their last exchange before the funeral, the fight in her office.
For ten years, he has been keeping his involvement in her own mother's case from her. He has been meeting with mysterious men in parking garages and making back alley deals.
To keep you safe, an annoying voice that sounds suspiciously like her mom's old I told you so tone continues to echo through her brain.
He has been putting himself, his family, at risk for the last ten years to keep her safe.
Her own bullet wound burns with guilt, with shame.
"I'm sorry," she tells him when she's alone, watching the rise and fall of his broad chest. He is lying on his back despite the bullet's entry there. The doctor was forced to intubate him upon arrival due to the bullet's exit through his chest, knicking an aortic artery and causing blood to seep into his left lung.
She was stuck in the waiting room throughout the excruciating hours of surgery, pacing the floor and snapping at nurses who tried to mollify her. She called her dad somewhere around the twelfth hour, weeping into the phone until he strode into the waiting room and held her through a pathetic sob she had been holding in for years.
Her dad was sober now, five years, but the years before had cost their relationship.
"He's going to be fine, honey," Jim Beckett promised her, rocking her from side to side in the blessedly empty waiting room, her body wracked with tremors and still wrapped in her dress blues and Rick's blood. "He's strong, just like you."
"Dad," she rasped into his shoulder. "So much has happened."
She told him while they waited, before Martha arrived, and they all became the hospital staff's worst nightmare.
Midway through the third day, the doctor deems it is time to remove the tube, that Rick is stable. She takes that as a good sign, but remembers vaguely how this procedure goes. Her throat feels raw with the phantom pain.
Richard Castle chokes awake while the tube is being extracted from his throat.
She encases one of his hands in hers, encouraging him to breathe when his eyes flutter open, finding her.
He can't speak yet, but his gaze sparks with recognition, shifting from a dulled grey to a near blue. His fingers tighten around hers as the tube is freed and he takes his first tentative breath, trying not to choke.
"Easy breath, Mr. Castle, very slow now," the doctor instructs calmly, but Rick is barely listening, his eyes trained on her and unmoving.
"He should be able to speak soon, but his throat may be sore," Castle's doctor tells her instead. Kate nods, barely tearing her own gaze from Castle. "Once he's ready, allow him a sip of the water. Just hit the call button if you need anything at all."
"Thank you," she murmurs, ignoring the good natured wink the doctor shoots her as he's easing out of the room.
Castle's fingers flex in hers and his thumb hooks around her left hand, her fourth finger. His brow furrows before his eyes go wide.
"Hey," she croaks, clearing her throat before she shifts from her chair to lean in closer. Gingerly, she reaches for his face, brushing the flop of disheveled hair from his forehead. "Hey, Castle."
His lips part, the sound of her name rasping at his lips. She lets go of him to retrieve the water from his bedside, touching the tip of the straw to his chapped lips.
"You've been out for a few days," she says while he takes a slow sip, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. "But the shot was through and through. Having it come out through the thoracic cavity is why you needed the breathing tube. Just gotta keep breathing on your own."
Castle's eyes flutter open and he shakily draws back from the straw. "S-shot?"
Her stomach twists with unease. Not the amnesia thing, not again.
"At the funeral," she prompts gently. "Montgomery's funeral. You… you jumped in front of me."
Rick startles and hisses at the movement.
"Careful," she pleads, hands hovering over his body as he winces through what she knows from experience must be ripples of agony.
"I'm back," he whispers, his wide eyes staring at the ceiling before flashing back to her. "Must be - oh, Kate. You're my Kate."
Confusion spirals through her brain, her brow falling into a crease. "Excuse me?"
He turns his head, staring at her with something like gratitude spilling from his gaze. He wants to say more, she can tell, but his eyes flicker back to the water. She eases the straw past his lips once more, watching while he takes a painful sip.
It takes him a moment before he's able to meet her eyes, focusing hard.
"Would you believe me if in - in another life," he croaks out, the words strained but desperate to breach his lips. "We're married with kids in a Brownstone in Greenwich?"
Kate startles, some of the water from his cup spilling onto her knee. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm sorry, for the last time we saw each other," he whispers, his voice softening to something soothing, as if she is the one with a bullet hole in her back. "At the hotel-"
She jerks to her feet, her heart pounding so hard her hands shake. "You're… he was right?" she breathes, Castle watching her from his hospital bed as if he already knows it all. "There are two of you?"
"No," he dismisses quietly. "Just one for every universe."
"Not this again," she groans, but he's calling her name, begging for her attention in that painful husk.
"In the other… in his world, we never fell out of touch," he manages, wincing through every rough swallow. She tries to offer him more water, but he ignores her, pressing the words out. "The core things happen - I still move to LA for a while, Johanna - your mom still dies, we still investigate her murder, you still get shot, but we do all of it together," he rasps, swallowing past what she's sure is raw inflammation. She should force him to drink more water, to stop talking, but she can barely breathe. "We get married on a beach in the Hamptons, your dad walks you down the aisle, and we have three kids. Our daughter, she… god, she's just like you, Kate."
"He - he was right?" she chokes out again, her cheeks suddenly wet. "But why - how?"
"I don't know," he tells her hoarsely, helplessly, looking as exasperated as she feels. "I just woke up there one day, with you as my wife and the world - my world - completely upside down. I couldn't remember anything past that day at the swings, but I was convinced we lost touch-"
"Because we did," she says for the millionth time, but this Castle doesn't disagree with her. They stare at each other for a long time as she processes all of this when a horrible realization hits her. "Is he… is he dead? The Castle who was here, he was shot-"
"Considering the bullet hole is in me," he winces. "I'm thinking he might have a good chance of being back in his world if I'm back in mine."
Kate nods, but places a hand to her mouth, pacing away from Rick's hospital bed.
Alive. The other Castle is likely alive and back with - with her? The other her? None of this made any sense. But she supposed it never would, that she would never have answers - not any based in logic.
All she knows now is that the man she spent the last month falling back in love with is gone.
But the man she's known for this lifetime is here, and he is alive too.
"I don't know how to do this," she whispers, more to herself but to him.
But he answers anyway. "Me neither."
She looks back to him, finding him watching her helplessly, longingly.
"I can't tell if you're looking at me like that because that's how you looked at the other me or-"
"I think this is just my face when I look at you no matter what," he chuckles roughly, cursing under his breath when it visibly costs him.
Kate sighs and hedges closer to his hospital bed once more. She nudges the straw of the water to his lips, waiting while he takes one more slow, pained sip. She studies the pallor of his skin, the stains of violet beneath his eyes, the lines of crow's feet edging out from the lines around his face.
This man, this version of Castle, looks different than the man who she has known for the last six weeks. He looks older, weathered, as exhausted by life as she is.
"I'm assuming you're looking heartbroken because the other me was a better version?"
She huffs, but shakes her head and cradles his near empty water cup to her chest. "No, I just - he spent the last month convincing me how much he loved me and now he's… well, gone."
"Same boat," he frowns, but he carefully tilts his head at her. "But I'm glad, I think."
She sets the cup down and eases her hip against the edge of the bed, her fingers toying nervously with the chain around her neck. "Why?"
"Because she wasn't you," he admits, looking almost relieved as the words exhale past his lips. "I mean, obviously, she was in a sense, but not my you. The one I have a history with. I got most of 'that' Castle's memories eventually, but they all felt… off, not mine. Like I was borrowing someone else's life. Living in a dream."
Kate nods slowly, recounting Rick saying similar things over the last month, especially in the mornings, waking up mumbling about kids or the Hamptons. Like he was dreaming of another life.
"And you remember everything from this life? Your life?"
Castle breathes slowly, his chest shuddering with it, but stares up at her. "I do. I remember missing you for the last twenty years. Hating myself for the last ten."
"Looking into my mother's murder without me?" she whispers, watching shame etch across his features, but he doesn't deny it.
"I just wanted to keep you safe," he murmurs, staring up at her with remorse. But there is determination blazing in his eyes too, a kind of fire the man she's spent the last month with lacked. "I would have done anything to keep them away from you, so that's what I did."
"That's not fair," she rasps, but his fingers twitch, grazing her outer thigh.
"I know," he agrees, surprising her. "I shouldn't have kept it from you. Should have chased after you that morning after the book party. I missed you. God, I missed you."
He coughs, groans at the repercussion of the action. She purses her lips, prepares to press the call button-
"You - are all I have thought of," he croaks out. "For the last decade. I had already opened the case before we - before the book party. The next day, when you were gone, I called your dad. Wanted your address."
Kate huffs and turns her head, horrified to feel her eyes misting over with the sting of tears.
"I didn't know how bad the alcoholism was, Kate."
"I know," she breathes, sniffling into her shoulder. "I didn't want you to."
"I got him into rehab," he confesses softly, earning the whip of her head, the spiral of shock through her system. "Before I could get any further, get in touch with you, I was getting calls from a guy named Smith and you were getting shot."
"That was because I was looking into her case on my own," she whispers, inching closer. "That wasn't you, Castle."
"Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't," he murmurs, his voice growing hoarser, cracking. "We should have worked Johanna's case together and we - I should have done it all differently. I'm sorry."
Kate ducks her head, letting the undone bun of her hair cascade past her face, hiding her eyes for a long moment.
"Is it too late?" he asks.
She almost laughs, a breathless chuckle expelling past her lips. "Really? I thought you were big on fate."
When she risks a glance at him, he's grinning, stupid and shy and a little drugged up, but also hopeful. So hopeful.
"Are you saying you're finally buying into the idea we belong together in every universe?"
She rolls her eyes, but she lowers her hand to her side, flirting her fingers along his, their index digits twining.
"Mm, it's only taken twenty years and some weird time-traveling, universe-switching phenomenon to begin convincing me," she muses, smirking down at the drop of his jaw.
"Begin?"
"Well, if all of this is true and not some weird, six week-long fever dream I'm living, I haven't seen you in ten years, Rick Castle." She snags her bottom lip between her teeth. "What if we're not as compatible as we were with our other selves?"
He gives her a deadpan look before resolution lights like a match in his gaze, igniting the haze of cerulean to a swirling blue flame. "I'll be better for you than that other guy ever was."
"That guy is you, remember?"
"You know what I mean," he volleys back. "I'm meant for you, Kate. You know it. I'll spend the next twenty years making up for the lost ones, proving it."
His teasing tone turns serious and her heart skitters for a beat. Taking a steadying breath, Kate eases on to the sliver of space at the side of his bed, delicately placing their entwined hands atop her thigh and leaning toward his broken body, holding his gaze the entire time.
"I may be willing to give that a shot," she muses, her lashes fluttering along her cheeks as she flicks her gaze to his mouth. A laugh rumbles in her chest as the beep of his heart monitor picks up, but she still closes the distance that he can't, seals a tender kiss to his lips.
Rick sighs, squeezing the fingers laced through his before tilting his head and parting his lips, tentatively stroking his tongue along hers. She moans softly, allowing the spill of sparks to flood through her body, lighting her system with stars.
He tries to move closer, to reach for her, and gasps quietly in pain. She places a hand to his jaw, steadying him with a brush of her fingers along his cheek.
"Careful," she chastises, stroking the paper thin skin beneath his eye. His lashes fall, tickling her thumb.
"We'll work on the case together," he promises, but her brow furrows, her eyes holding his as they open.
"Rick, right now," she murmurs, easing her other hand free of his fingers and hovering delicate fingers above the exit wound in his sternum. "I just want you to heal. To be okay." She dusts her lips between his brows. "To be with me."
His fingers flex atop her thigh.
"Kiss me again."
She smirks and cups his cheeks, kissing him slow and thorough and with a swipe of promise against his tongue. Part of her still fears she herself is deranged, playing into whatever deranged parallel universe fiction Castle has concocted, but this doesn't feel difficult or strange, like the last month has. Sitting in a hospital bed with this version of Castle feels familiar and real, and right.
"Still feel like you're dreaming?" she whispers against his lips, feeling them quirk into a smile.
"No," he murmurs, tipping his chin to kiss her again, tugging on her upturned bottom lip. "I'm wide awake, Kate Beckett."
A/N: This story was a bit of a challenge for me, so if you stuck with me until this final chapter - I owe you a special thank you.
x R