Peace Will Come

For Rachel

Pain ripples through his system, a rising tide flooding his chest, drowning him from the inside out as his lungs ache and his heart gives out under the pressure. Tears well in his eyes, drops rolling down his cheeks as he winces against the ache, the burn, the slice of agony through his system that he can't ignore, can't handle, can't—

His arms give out, weight collapsing back onto the floor, thudding through his system as violently as every broken beat of his damaged heart. But her hand is in his, fingers quivering and weak and he holds onto her as tightly as he can, forces every bit of strength his broken body can muster into holding her as close as possible.

Her name curls at his tongue but dies on his lips in a desperate gasp, and his head lolls against the floor, temple knocking against the hardwood. It would be painful if he could feel anything at all.

His vision is a haze of her face, staring back at him, surrounded by a halo of her hair, her grimace fading into a smile as his vision blurs.

She whispers his name, a whisper broken in the space between them, in the mind that's giving out to match the rest of him.

And he lets his eyes fall shut.

The world is bright. His eyes are closed, but the world is bright, shining through closed lids in swirls of pastels, of smoke twining with itself, waves of different shades lapping at each other, mixing into new shades, maintain the view's beauty. It has him almost not wanting to open them.

To risk seeing what comes next.

What it means that his chest is no longer burning with the cut of a bullet, that the pound of his pulse is silent.

But he forces himself to blink his eyes open, and finds that it's not to pearly white gates with sun beams casting the perfect shadow at his feet. Not to an infinite sea of clouds or the glaring sterility of a hospital room. Nor to a burning pit engulfed in flames, or a man with horns, or a doctor shining a flashlight in his eyes.

It's to a vacant New York City street.

He would laugh at the absurdity of it, the impossibility of it, if he wasn't imagining a lurch in his ceased heartbeat, a fictional twist in his gut. If his breath wasn't caught in his chest, painless no matter how long he finds himself holding it, and his brain wasn't halted with confusion.

Sunlight gleams on buildings above, on frames of metal and glass window panes, seems to glow like a halo over the skyline. His eyes fail to burn when he stars at the sun high over the empty world in which he stands, unsettling his already rattled mind, making him look away. At his feet, slicing a worn yellow line painted on black. It seems to glow, too, the contrast hazy.

He squeezes his eyes shut, expects his head to pound with racing thoughts, with the challenge to decipher this empty version of New York, this glowing world around him. But no pain comes. His silent heart doesn't rattle through his skull anymore than it does along his ribs.

It can't be heaven. Or hell. Purgatory, perhaps. A version of it in which he's trapped in between the two, stuck for eternity on Earth, alone and—

"Rick?"

She's all sharp features and soft smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. Her frame is bathed in the same sunlight that falls over the city, brightness gleaming on the high of her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose. It seems to glow behind her, bright and beautiful and framing chestnut locks of hair and sharp features alike, just as it does with everything else.

Her cheeks are stained a pale shade of pink now, and he stares, because last time he saw her they were the color of porcelain as her blood seeped onto their kitchen floor.

They're not dying anymore, but he's not sure they're alive, either.

"Kate?" he says, and his voice is swept away into the emptiness, seems to echo between them, reverberate in his mind. "Where are we?"

Her smile falters, just for a second. A moment in which the assault of perfection is muted by a flash of regret in her eyes, a flicker of pain across her features. Until he blinks and she's beaming again, smile returned and his mind scrambling to decipher whether or not he imagined the moment it faded, reflected his own uncertainty upon her.

"You'll know soon," she says, voice soft and lilting and melodious.

Her fingertips trip along his forearm as she speaks, dotting punctuation across his skin. They skim the tense tendons at his wrists before she twines her fingers with his.

He swipes his own thumb over her wrist, presses hard against the spot where he would normally feel her heart thundering, but it's just as silent as own pulse.

Before he can comment, ask her to explain, she's drawing him forward, making him stumble over his feet, trip over the bright yellow line in his race to catch up with her. The world stays hazy, glowing around him from every direction, tracing the lines of building, of the sign to the building before them.

The Angelika?

She turns back, glancing over her shoulder, smile as blinding as his love for her.

She's always been beautiful, but here she's flawless, ethereal.

His angel.

He's powerless to resist her.

There's a moment. A split second as his eyes fall shut on a blink and her hand tightens around his and his shoulder brushes the edge of the doorframe and everything seems to halt to a stop. His feet still, his eyes snap open, breath coming out in a stutter.

His heart seems to jerk, beat itself against his ribcage just once and stills again, and his feet feel locked to the ground. Whatever world this is, it tilts off kilter, would send him tumbling to the ground if not for Kate's hand wrapped tightly around his.

"Don't worry," she says. "It happens." But her brow is creased and he watches shaking fingers rise to trace along the column of her sternum.

He does the same, flattening a palm over the middle of his chest, where his heart had beat once only to fall silent again.

And careful steps draw him deeper into the Angelika, following Kate's lead even as something twists in his gut, instinct making him turn back to doors that snap shut as soon as they've walked past. He can't help but wonder if he'll ever see the city that lies beyond them again.

Her fingers drift along his thigh, tracing patterns against the fabric of his pants as her head falls to rest on his shoulder. It's almost normal, the way he wraps his arm around her shoulders and holds her close, steals a piece of popcorn from between her fingers only to have her elbow his ribs playfully in return, pull away with a glare over her shoulder.

Almost normal. If not for the sea of empty seats surrounding them. The fact that the popcorn they snack on appeared from nowhere. That the door to the theatre swung open with perfect timing, again.

Panic still clutches at his mind, a painless form of consciousness that has his mind spinning but the ill effects of such confusion failing to appear. Not when his breath seem useless and his heart isn't beating and neither is hers and—

"Kate?"

He wants to ask. Wants to know so much about how she's so calm and how she knows what to do. About why the world is empty and fulfilling their every request before they can so much as form the thought.

How, if their hearts aren't beating, he can still feel the warmth of her in his arms, the flood of love in his chest.

But she flattens her palm to his cheek, a soft smile playing at the corners of her lips. Her touch laces around his body, soothes the cracks in his sanity, blurs the inconsistencies of this version of reality as fingers climb the column of his neck, cradle the back of his skull.

"Don't worry," she says.

He blinks, nods his head just as she leans forward, lips dusting affection to his own, warming the empty cavern of his chest, making it reverberate not with his heartbeat, but something stronger.

Something infinitely more important.

"We're together," she whispers. "That's what matters, right?"

He nods again, lips parting around a shaky breath of unspoken adoration but she's turning away again, burying her hand in the bucket of popcorn, letting her head fall back onto his shoulder.

"Now watch."

As soon as she says it, the screen lights up.

The world is black, his eyes closed, chest burning with a ripple of simmering agony numbed by something. The same thing that has his tongue tasting like cotton and eyelids heavy and mind scrambling to understand the beeping that reaches his ears.

Orange flashes across his eyelids, has him forcing them open.

Black fades to white, blinding in its intensity. Bright and white and reminding him of—

Kate.

He tries to say it, tries to force it from the aching muscles of his throat, past the burning agony piercing his chest, rooted in his ribs. But all that comes out is a pained gurgle around the tube he realizes is down his throat, silenced when a nurse shushes him.

"You're okay, Mr. Castle."

But that's not what he wants to know, not what has his thoughts unfurling in a messy blur of Kate's face. Kate's blood. Kate's life lost to yet another gunshot he couldn't protect her from, a case that was meant to be over. His fingers twitch at his side, trying to motion the question his lips can't form, lungs can't breathe into the silence of the hospital room between beeps of his heart monitor.

He manages, just barely, to get the nurse's attention, fingers barely cooperating when he twists his hand, smoothes his thumb of the bare skin where his wedding ring should be.

The nurse looks back at him, and the smile on her face eases some of the pressure in his chest, her words bringing it back with a hitch of his breath.

"Your wife's okay, too," she promises. "As is your baby."

His body jerks against the theatre chair, hand launching their popcorn from their legs as he scrambles for her hand, clutches at them until his knuckles blanche and he's sure his fingertips are tingling.

She's staring down, at her lap, at her stomach. He watches her free hand lift from the armrest, fingers skimming over the flat expanse of her belly, the white fabric of her shirt when she pushes away the leather of her jacket. Her hand tightens around his, eyes lifting at last, brimming with tears.

He wonders if she can feel the pain, the draw of sadness at her silent heart or racing mind. If she can feel it like he can, numb to the physical but suffering under a crushing weight on her chest.

"I didn't know," she says. "If I did, I wouldn't have—"

"I know," he interrupts, clutching at her tighter. His gaze drifts between hers and her belly, his other hand reaching up to curl at her shoulders, massage the painless tension from the muscles there. "Kate?"

"Yeah?"

He swallows, the words thick as they climb from within, heavy on his tongue as he forces them into the silence, forces himself to keep staring into the gold and green of her eyes.

"Are we…dead?"

Her teeth catch at her lip, eyes flicking to their joined hands. "No."

"Then where are we?" he says.

Her smile is slight, hesitant, but alight with conviction he's long since learned to trust.

"We're where they give us something to live for."

The world is a rainbow of pastels, blinding white and soft shades that ease the rushing beat of his heart. Windows paint sunlight across the tiled floor, the bed nearby, the bassinet for which he finds himself reaching. Light gleams in the glass, brightens up the baby's face. He finds himself lifting the child into his arms.

She fits against his chest perfectly, nestled in his arms, sound asleep and beautiful and his heart lurches with affection. Her lips are pursed and eyelids flutter, a brand new world hidden as she slumbers, and he finds himself lifting her higher, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of her head.

"Stop hogging the baby."

Laughter tumbles from his lips, a quiet breath as he turns on his heel to where Kate is propped up in her hospital bed. Hazel eyes stare back at him, hazy with sleep that has lids fluttering open and closed against the bright white sterility of the room. Her hair's a mess and her features are drawn with exhaustion, and yet her beauty still steals his breath.

A smile stretches across her face, her cheeks stained a rosy pink, and it's enough to have him staring, blinking away the image of color seeping from her features as her blood seeped from her body.

"Me?" he chokes out, blinking away the image, forcing himself back to the moment. With his daughter's breaths silent puffs against his chest and his wife staring at them both with the most brilliant glimmer of love in her irises. "You're the one who held her until you fell asleep."

Kate shrugs, smile widening. "Well, you should have held her while I was sleeping," she says. Her hands clutch at the fabric of her blankets, lifting them to reveal a slice of empty space at her side. "Come here."

He does, drifting towards with steps to match the serenity of the moment, the peaceful love that enveloped him in warmth when he drops onto the hospital bed, next to his wife, their daughter nestled between them. And—

"What do you think we'll name her?"

He blinks, turns away from the screen with rock plummeting through his system, stomach churning it a way that would be uncomfortable if he wasn't numb to pain.

Kate is still pressed against his side, but she's lifted her head from his shoulder to meet his gaze, "Rick?" she says. "What do you think we'll name the baby?"

His gaze falls to her stomach again, to find her fingers playing with the hem of her shirt, slipping beneath it to trace patterns against her stomach for split seconds he would miss if he would let himself blink.

"We have a girl?" he says, instead of answering her question, his mind still racing to understand that she's pregnant, too confused to think of names.

Her response is a shrug, a shy curl of her lips that has him wondering if she's wanted a daughter. If she's shared his dreams of a small Kate Beckett, curly pigtails pulled tight at either side of her head betrayed by the glare she'd learn from such a young age. Inquisitive and confident and beautiful and perfect.

Shit. He still wants it. More than anything, for that image of them happy in a hospital room with a precious, healthy baby girl.

"So it seems," she says.

His gaze cuts to the screen, black again, and back to her. "How do we know if it's accurate?" he chokes out, too desperate for it to be true. For their future to be so beautiful. For their future to be a possibility.

"It is," she says.

His brows furrow, teeth catching at the corner of his mouth. "How do you—"

"She looks back at him, eyes bright, locked pointedly on his as she draws her hand from her stomach, presses it to her sternum instead. "I've been here before," she whispers. "It's— It's accurate."

He nods, breath failing him, gaze flittering between her face and the screen, still blank spare for his imagination of what she may have seen back then. Of what gave her the will to live after her heart jerked to a stop, a bullet just barely missing it.

His mouth tastes of cotton when he speaks, dry and making the words come out as a husked slur quivering with uncertainty. "How do we…get back?"

She smiles at that, squeezing his hand. "You'll know when the time comes."

He feels it before he sees exactly what causes it. This warmth in his chest that has him pausing on his walk through the loft's empty hallways. It draws him to a pause, the love that radiates through his system, burns through his veins to tingle at the tips of his fingers and toes. His hand presses to the wall, weight shifting from one foot to the other until his ear is pressed to the paint.

Giggles from from the other side, muffled through the wall but drifting through the silence of the apartment. Laughter that punctuates sentences spoken in another voice, Kate's voice.

He doesn't care about the words being spoken, barely processes them as he listens instead to the lilts of joy as she speaks to their little girl. As she draws giggle after giggle from Lily, filling the air with a beautiful symphony of joy he once doubted would fill their home.

It's enough to have his heart clenching, a smile spreading across his face as his forehead knocks against the wall. He can imagine them, playing in Lily's bedroom, sunlight reflecting from the walls and painting them in a glow of soft purple and bright robin egg blue. Their daughter's face lit up with the most brilliant of smile's and Kate's eyes crinkling at the corners with her glee.

The sounds fall silent, though. Rustles of life lingering, muffled through the door like a hushed noise he thinks could be his wife's voice. He lifts his head from the wall, intent on searching for the reason for their silence, but his toes touch the ground just as rushed footsteps come from within.

He watches the door crack open, already smiling when he sees Lily poke her head from within her bedroom, her mouth falling open on a squeal of delight as she rushes towards him.

"Daddy!" she shouts, rushing towards him, hands already outstretched and he just has to lean forward to curl his palms at her waist and lift her into his arms.

She's warm, sinking into his embrace with such trust for him that it melts his already compromised heart. Her lips press to his cheek, an exaggerated kiss pressed to his skin, and then her face is buried in the crook of his neck, his arms banded around her tiny frame. He presses his face to the top of her head, breathes in the soft scent of her baby shampoo.

It might be perfection. He thinks it's perfection—always does when he's holding his baby girl who wasn't supposed to exist in his arms. Until his eyes crack open and Kate's staring back at him.

Her green eyes sparkle with flecks of gold, lips curled upwards into a smile, teeth digging into the corner of it. She crosses her arms over her chest, leaning against the wall just as he had earlier, gaze dancing over his and Lily's embrace.

He lets his own gaze trace the length of her body, land on the swell of her stomach starting to poke out from beneath the fabric of her shirt, stretching to accommodate the two lives nestled within. Her fingers trip over her side to land on her rounded belly, smile stretching wider as his eyes catch hers.

His lips press a quick kiss to Lily's head, form words into the tangled strands of her hair. "Can I give Mommy a hug and kiss, too?"

She draws her head from his shoulder, bats her lashes at him to show off the hazel eyes she'd inherited from her mother. The ones he could never deny, from either of his girls.

"Sandwich hug?" she asks.

He smiles, nodding his head as he does and Kate draws nearer, arms outstretched to wrap around the both of them, embrace warm and loving even as amusement spreads across her face.

They hold Lily tight, and he kisses his wife over their daughter's shoulder.

"We look happy."

He jumps at the words, Kate's head lifting from his shoulder, fingers smoothing down his chest to calm him, to wipe away the phantom warmth of a non-existent embrace played before him on a now-blackened screen. Warmth dances in his chest, climbs the ladder of his ribs and chases the silent beat of his heart.

For a split second, he thinks he might feel life stutter within him again.

"I thought maybe I'd screwed it up," Kate speaks again, fingers hooking in the collar of his shirt to draw his attention, draw his gaze to hers.

He raises a hand, smoothes it along the crinkles her frown draws to her cheek, forces her smile to return. "Never," he promises. "You could never make me stop wanting that with you."

"You still do?"

His lips part around a response, an utterance of the obvious, but her hand is flattening over the silent beat of his heart, eyes locking pointedly with his. Stealing his breath with the realization.

This is where they're being given something to live for.

This is his something to live for.

He slots his fingers into the gaps between hers, draws her closer so he can paint his affection to her palm with brushes of his lips to her skin. "There's nothing I want more than that life with you."

Relief shines bright in her eyes, a whisper in the breath she releases. Her weight falls forward, head pressing to his shoulder, breath warm against his skin as his fingers trip down the ladder of her spine, trace patterns through the fabric of her shirt.

She breathes him in like she's scared it's the last time.

He holds her just the same.

Until he's dusting kisses to her head and letting the bubble of curiosity in his chest escape him as a choked question, a gasp against the crown of her skull.

"What did you see?" he says. "Last time…when you were here?"

Her head remains in the crook of his shoulder for a moment, clumsy fingers stumbling over his jaw, caressing his skin, drawing his gaze down to hers.

"You," she breathes. "It was all you."

Sunlight wakes him, warm against his cheeks and bright against closed eyes. Wakes him to a weight on his shoulder and an arm thrown over his leg, a hand tangled with his. To a broken blanket fort in the living room and a pound of contentment in his chest, through his veins.

It's Kate's hand that's locked with his, a loose tangle of fingers as she sleeps only inches away, head resting on her pillow. And Jake's head is resting on his shoulder, the rest of his small body spread lengthwise so his toes poke out from the lingering portion of their fort. Lily's arm is draped over his leg, her cheek squished against the floor. Reese lies at Kate's side, curled up in a ball at her waist.

He lets his eyes flutter closed again, a breath heaving at his chest, rushing through him with soothing ease, and—

"Three kids, huh?"

He tears his gaze from the screen, images still flickering across it, Kate still staring at it as though she hadn't heard a word. As though Caleb Brown wasn't sitting at her side with a box of popcorn on his lap and a satisfied smirk gracing his lips.

As though—

"Kate!"

His fingers are clumsy in their rush to reach her, tripping over her shoulder and tangling, sticky in her hair, Blood seeps between them, blooms as a stain across her shirt, his skin. It's there even when his fingers trail along the column of her neck, paint her skin in smudges of his concern, to feel the lingering absence of her pulse.

"You're bleeding," he says, pleads when she turns to look at him, lashes fluttering over green eyes that crinkle with a smile.

"I'm okay, Rick."

"But—"

"She said she's okay," says Caleb from next to her. "No hush, I'm trying to watch this."

His gaze flicks only briefly to the screen, now bright with an image of Lily crawling up between her parents, rustling her brother's hair with a sleepy smile on her face.

But he looks back at his wife, face still pink with life that isn't there and joy that shouldn't exist, not now. Stomach now glaring red with another flare of blood from a bullet wound he can't find, that she doesn't seem to care about. Not now, not like when she trudged her way across their floor to join him in death.

In—this.

His hands still over her sides, curl tight at her hips. She's still warm, his handprints staining her clothing as much as evidence of a dying life that isn't there but must be if she—

"You're bleeding too."

Her hand lifts from her lap, flattening against his chest, pressing evidence of her statement to his skin, a smile on her face that shouldn't be there but is. A light in her eyes that he just now realizes has been missing all this time, that has his heart stuttering a single beat, breath leaving him.

Life seems to glimmer around her now, as she trails bloody fingers down his arm and catches his own, tugs him from his seat and past a grinning Caleb Brown, past a convenient theatre door.

She's bathed in light here. It makes everything brighter, everything livelier.

"Kate—"

"This is good," she says, a promise tumbling from her lips without a second's hesitation, with nothing but a widening of her smile to have it echoing in his mind, reverberating with another broken beat in his chest.

She draws him from the building, back to the vacant street upon which they'd arrived. A cab draws near, a faceless driver not saying a word as a door springs open and she's shoving him into the vehicle, piling in next to him.

Their hands never part. He takes the time to press his thumb to her wrist, feel a few subtle beats of her pulse.

Her weight shifts at that, leaning towards him so he's flattened against the seat and his shirt is stained with her blood, her chest, with his. Hands forever locked and kisses soft and sweet, something seeping into each one as she lifts her free hand, presses it to the side of his neck.

"I'll see you soon," she promises.

He opens his mouth to ask why, where she's going, where they're going in this cab with darkened windows showing nothing but a blur beyond them. But her hand returns to his chest, to his heart, his bullet wound, drifts along his shoulder to curl at his neck.

His eyes fall closed in comfort, her weight sinking against his side.

She paints flowers with his blood, touch light and drifting over his skin, until it reaches his pulse point and he realizes he can feel the steady beat of his heart in his chest again.

The world is black, his eyes closed, chest burning with a ripple of simmering agony numbed by something. The same thing that has his tongue tasting like cotton and eyelids heavy and mind scrambling to understand the beeping that reaches his ears.

Orange flashes across his eyelids, has him forcing them open.

Black fades to white, blinding in it's intensity. Bright and white and reminding him of—

Kate.

He tries to say it, tries to force it from the aching muscles of his throat, past the burning agony piercing his chest, rooted in his ribs. But all that comes out is a pained gurgle around the tube he realizes it down his throat, silenced when a nurse shushes him.

"You're okay, Mr. Castle."

But that's not what he wants to know, not what has his thoughts unfurling in a messy blur of Kate's face. Kate's blood. Kate's life lost to a gunshot he couldn't protect her from, a case that was meant to be over. His fingers twitch at his side, trying to motion the question his lips can't form, lungs can't breathe into the silence of the hospital room between beeps of his heart monitor.

He manages, just barely, to get her attention, fingers barely cooperating when he twists his hand, smoothes his thumb of the bare skin where his wedding ring should be.

The nurse looks back at him, and the smile on her face eases some of the pressure in his chest, her words bringing it back with a hitch of his breath.

"Your wife's okay, too," she promises. "As is your baby."

Rachel, I could never thank you enough to for friendship, laughs, and support you've given me. I love you, you majestic unicorn. I was trying to figure out which CM scene to Castle-ify and this is what came to mind. I hope you like it! Happy (belated) birthday! XX.

And, as always, immense gratitude goes to Lindsey for beta'ing this for me.