The Last Battle

"But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story."

-The Last Battle, CS Lewis

X. The Great Story

x

Kate lies immobile, bound by pain - and a degree of breathlessness after his confession in the dark - and all she can do is call his name.

Rick. Please. Rick?

The silence that meets her feels prophetic of their future, the emptiness between them, but she struggles for a deeper breath and finds her hand opening on the bed, seeking. Castle.

The whir of the pain pump delivering a more potent dosage brings her a strange slide of panic, as if she's being called away, and she turns her head, straining to see him in the darkness. The pain medication makes her heavy, makes it hard to stay.

She calls his name again but he must have fallen asleep.

He doesn't stir, his profile unmoved. The loneliness of his last words to her makes Kate hurt, all over, and she wants so badly to erase those broken dreams, to smudge out his dimming visions with her lips, her hands, with her body.

But that's not going to happen.

Her lips don't have the words, and her body won't give him what he wants. Her body can't provide the flush of color to his dreams, and her words won't give him that spark of hope. Not now anyway, not so broken and barely mended, not when she can't even go to the bathroom let alone bear him up under all of this. Her body, her hands, her mouth - they can't give him any of that.

Well, but they could.

She's alive - he's alive - they will have a future, and it's together, and despite their broken pieces, they can build their lives into whatever they like.

Kate can give him - would give him anything. She has always dreamed about kids with him; they've had those conversations, worked it out; it was just a matter of timing. But he's right. Their timing is lousy, always has been, and just like they had to just go and get married despite the world conspiring against them, this might be another thing they decide to do, consequences be damned.

They're alike in that, jumping headfirst, flinging themselves at it. Into it, into life.

A family with someone who loves me back.

She swallows fast in the darkness, but the tears come anyway. Streaking back to her ears, cold at her neck.

He didn't say with you. She thinks, she hopes, that's just because it's an old dream, and he's using language from decades ago, from the time after Meredith's infidelity and Castle raising Alexis alone. She has seen with her own eyes how tender and raw that wound still is, and she always tries to handle him carefully around those places.

She hopes he doesn't mean her. She hopes that the way she is built and how she leans don't send the wrong message, don't tell him lies about just how much she loves him.

"Castle," she whispers. Rick.

But all she hears are his snores, the rough breathing that signals his aliveness in the room. Breathing. It's comfort enough to stop her tears, despite the heaviness in her chest from the pain killers that drag at her veins and weigh down her limbs.

Since waking disoriented in the hospital, this is the first time she's been able to see past this night. To see a future again. For them, for herself, for standing on her own two feet and getting out of this hospital and embracing him, embracing life as they once did. She's been there and done that when it comes to rehab, and it was seriously beginning to depress her, the thought of going through all of that pain all over again, and worse - watching him in it as well.

How bleak her thoughts have been when she's actually allowed herself to think. And now how much hope has been infused in her blood like a drug.

She has to get out of this bed.

They have a future to build.

x

Her sleep is riddled with bullets. She wakes soaked in violence but the pain meds smother the images, obscuring them until she can't remember what it is she dreams. She only knows the semi-dark hospital room and the panting of her own breath and the confusion that turns her around, disorients her.

Her eyes catch on Castle in the next bed and hook, unable to look away. He's in shadows, all dark shadows, indistinct, but she knows him. She knows every line of his body, the breadth of his shoulders and the curve of his upper arms where he hides all his strength. The cage of his ribs has always been like a great beast, and she can almost feel him beside her, taller and wider and somehow stronger as well, which surprised her in the beginning and then has become such a touchstone, so integral to who they were.

Are.

Who they are.

All that strength and certainty which lies so dormant now, shrouded. But it's still there; it's not just about his muscles or his ability to shoot a gun - or her own. It's about who they are together.

He's a good man. She's not sure she deserves him, but she will fight like hell for him, to keep him safe-

Kate swallows hard and closes her eyes.

She didn't keep him safe at all; safe is a lie. Safe is impossible, not just being a detective but being alive. A misstep, an accident, a disease - anything could happen, and does happen, and safe is such a ridiculous thing to strive for.

Who wants safe?

She wants happy. Content. She wants fulfilled, she wants purpose. He completes that for her, makes that possible after her job leaves her hollow, dark, broken.

She wants that for him. Not safe. Fulfilled. Not imprisoned in a high tower, but happy, smiling so that his eyes crease and his hands squeeze on her hips in that way he does when his words are tangled. He told her once that killing Derrick Storm was the only thing left to him, that his writing had lost its purpose, but meeting her gave him the Twelfth Precinct and a reason to write again, a reason to be there, to seek justice. And that is what she wants for them.

It may mean blood and death, and she has to be prepared for that. Life is blood and death, in the end, life consists of trauma and abandonment and heartache, and these moments, these episodes of joy are so fleeting that it's pointless to wall them up as if she can protect them at all...

She's so tired. Not just the ache in her chest, those two epicenters of pain that radiate out through her whole body, not just the waves of drug-induced heaviness. But her whole life makes her exhausted. What it's come to. What she can't endure, can't live without.

What is she even thinking, wanting to bring babies into this. She can't do babies. Babies can't do her. She'll ruin them. Even with Castle as their daddy-

Her breath catches in the darkness, arresting her every thought.

Their daddy.

Her heart flutters despite how corralled by pain it is, flutters and flips like something light. Winged.

She did this last time too, when she was shot. She talked herself out of everything she wants, let her PTSD and her past dictate her future.

No more.

Damn it, she wants out of this bed.

x

The physical therapist cocks her head, glances to the huge white chair that hulks between the beds.

Kate can't hold her breath - that would be bad - but she hopes. Fervently hopes.

One more time.

Just help her-

"Alright," the physical therapist says, sighing. "But you can't walk; you cannot put your feet on the floor and use those core muscles until we're sure the surgery sites have healed."

"I know," Kate says eagerly. "I understand. I'll do whatever you ask."

"Very good," the PT nods. She glances down at her phone. "I'll grab a tech, and we'll carry you over."

"Carry me?" she says, wrinkling her nose. But she smooths out her face. "Right. Carry me. So I won't walk."

"Exactly. But after we do our exercises, Kate. You hear me?"

She sighs. "Yeah, I hear you."

"Alright, I'm going to ease you on your back," the woman says, reaching in to brace Kate's spine and shoulders.

Kate lets out a tight breath, the shift in position making her ribs pop and spark with flashes of pain. Like phosphenes behind her eyelids, the ache flares and burns.

Once she's on her back, the PT wraps her fingers around Kate's right ankle, begins to slowly lift Kate's leg, the other hand bracing. Kate's ab muscles tighten, cramp, and she sucks in another terrible breath, clutches her hands in fists.

"Rate your pain-"

"Yeah, yeah," Kate grunts. "Up there."

"Can you please rate-"

"Seven," she gasps finally, and the PT holds her leg at about forty-five degrees. Holds it there. Agony.

Her muscles are tight, her lower abs so cramped her whole body is shaking, and it sends out tendrils of fire through her torso. Up into her lungs, into the cavity of her ribs so that every breath brings the flames with it, sneaking anguish into her veins.

"How's this, Kate?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah what?"

"Hurts." She swallows, but she's done this before, in exactly this way, starting with the leg lifts in bed and working towards sitting up unassisted, and then standing on her own, followed by those tentative baby steps forward.

Baby steps. She wants those. Aches for those. She will do this.

"Okay, good job, very good, Kate. Now the left." The PT slowly lowers Kate's right leg until it rests once more on the bed, and she recovers it with the blanket. She moves to the other side, flips back the covers, and wraps her fingers around Kate's ankle. "You ready?"

"No." Kate tries to laugh it off, but hell. Baby steps. "Yes. Go for it."

"I need you to tell me if you feel any tearing. This is the bad side."

"No kidding."

"Kate, I'm serious. You'll know the difference. Feel the difference."

"Yes," she answers, if it's at all an answer, and she turns her head to catch sight of Castle. He's still asleep, still working off the effects of the anesthesia, the trauma of surgery, but she can see his elevated torso, the slack line of his mouth, the flop of hair falling in his eyes. She wants to run her fingers through his hair and push it off his forehead.

Baby steps.

"Here we go, Kate."

She keeps her eyes on Castle, on his loose-limbed body, the promise of alive together. She tries not to tense, tries to keep her muscles relaxed, but she keeps anticipating the hurt.

She knows all too well how this process goes, and the months of physical therapy - of psychological therapy - loom before her like a dark sucking void.

Pain. There will be, there is, so much pain in store for her. A black hole. It will drag her down into the darkness; it will swallow her. It will wreck her life so completely that rebuilding will feel sisyphean.

Impossible.

Her eyelids close as her leg lifts, her lashes fringing the view of her husband, obscuring the hospital room, the monitors, the IV until all that remains is the profile of his face. It's as if he's in bed with her, some early morning before the alarm, the light making everything hazy and golden, so that she could reach out and touch him.

And just as before, the first time she was shot and facing a litany of painful months ahead, the idea of him and what they can have brings both courage and determination, brings her forward into the now.

She can do this. She can make this happen.

A family with someone who loves me back.

x

When his eyes open for the morning, she is right there waiting. She can see the confusion that starts first in the crooked slant of his mouth and then the tug of the corner of his eye. His face is half turned to her, and his IV arm twitches. But then the smile breaks out and his lip curls.

"Hey," he answers - her question unasked but most likely in the tilt of her head and the emotions of her eyes. "I'm better now."

She would laugh with relief but it hurts too much. So she settles for pressing her lips together in their old way of communicating. His puns and her wry, held-back amusement. His smarmy comments, his goofy attempts - like courting her - while she merely observes, the strong currents of her emotions in her eyes, for him to read and interpret.

He must see and understand because his fingers lift from the railing where he still clutches, even in sleep, and he catches the edge of her chair.

"Alexis bought it for me," she admits, feels shy about it. And proud. She didn't even do it, whatever it was that made Alexis huff and drag out the iPad from her bag, order a host of things just to offset the ache in Kate's whole torso. "You have a tender-hearted daughter."

Castle's chest rumbles in something like agreement. "I talked to her," he says then, his mouth moving slowly. "When I woke... before."

"Yesterday," she murmurs. "She told me you had. I'm sorry I missed it."

"Didn't miss much," he promises back. "Pretty sure I fell right back asleep."

His eyes are so blue and clear this morning. She still feels the threads of last night's darkness, how they curl between them like wild kudzu, threatening to grow up around their happiness. This simple joy of being alive together.

"Rick," she sighs, the longing so desperate now that she has to blink hard to keep back tears. She doesn't want to call it grief, not this morning, this bright and together morning. She won't grieve something that hasn't been lost, that can even now be reclaimed. "The second I can crawl out of this damn therapy chair, I am going to wear you out."

He lets out a garbled noise, but his mouth is an amused slash, his fingers lifting from the railing again. She can't move to take them, she is that weak from the physical therapy, and from getting into the chair, but his hand fumbles down to her elbow, squeezes.

"You wear me out already," he rumbles, all of him still smiling for her.

She's said it badly, not the right way. She can't figure out how to make it come, how to get it right so that last night's dark-encrusted dreams can be banished for good. "Last night was like - my chest feels torn open again," she starts, "but the rest of me just wants you. I want you, Castle, and-"

"You always do," he says, his voice a rough burr that she calls cocky amusement. Some of that old light is back, the blue laughing eyes, the intent gaze. "You can't help yourself."

"Not that," she laughs, but how good it feels to laugh about sex, about animal lust and how flexible she is (was) and how she fell for him from the beginning (in his dreams). "Well that too, that's how we get there, of course, but I mean I want to ride until the wheels fall off. I want-"

"Ride me-"

"Oh God, can't you stop thinking about sex for one second?" she bursts out, right as Alexis comes in the door.

His daughter startles, Kate groans and lowers her head, and Castle laughs. Hard enough to wheeze, a hand coming to his chest as he grunts through his laughter, growling at them both for making him laugh.

Even that - the deep creases at his eyes and the broad smile and the breathlessness - bring her such wild and surging joy that she finds a way to lift her hand and capture his own, winding their fingers together. Alexis gives an awkward smile and slides into the room, standing nervously on the other side of Castle's bed. "Um. Hi."

No matter the inopportune time (when is it ever a good time for them?), Kate has to say this. "We're not waiting anymore, Castle. You hear me? Forget the terrible timing. I love you. We're having our kids, our Sunday brunches with juice cups and coffee mugs." She squeezes harder. "Are you listening to me? We-"

"I heard you," he rasps, his eyes so deeply happy that the burr in his voice can't mask his emotion. "I hear you. Juice cups and coffee mugs, Kate."

x