Rewound Epilogue

"...Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Good and breathe."

Kate's legs were dead weight, sliding from her hands to the bed as she relaxed back into his chest, sucking in a lungful of air.

"We're getting close. Good progress with that last push. It'll be time for Doctor Clark soon."

Castle swiped his hand across her forehead, fingers tucking a few sweaty strands of hair behind her ear. It had been months since she had needed his help with her hair, her left wrist now fully healed. But some nights since the cast had come off, he had found his fingers untangling the strands out of habit, and she had cut her eyes over a little grin and let him take up her brush, run long, gentle strokes through the thick, shiny ropes. Pregnancy did have some positive features, but this controlled exhaustion was not one.

They had been at this for hours. Twenty-three and a half, to be exact. Her water had broken at four AM the morning before, throwing a wrench into their original plan to spend the beginning of her labor at home in the bathtub. Instead, six hours into contractions, they had reported to the hospital, Martha and Alexis meeting Jim in the waiting room.

Six hours later, Kate had her epidural, and Castle had finally taken his first deep breath.

To say she had been amazing would not do her justice, and all signs said the baby was doing great. And no matter how this day went, it could never compare to the last two times he had sat beside Kate's hospital bed. Despite the sweaty heat of his wife's back steaming through his brand new custom "RhD" t-shirt, he shivered at the crystal clear images from the eight-month-old nightmare detailing her death.

But she had been pushing for nearly three hours, and in the past few pushes, all those hours of effort had begun to show. In between the quiet mantra of the nurse's counts of ten, instead of asking to look in the mirror or chewing ice chips, she had sunk into the mattress, pale and shaky.

That had been his cue to climb up behind her, careful not to dislodge the tiny catheter taped to her back that had kept her as comfortable as any woman in active labor could be for the past 12 hours.

They had planned for this, knew it was a possibility that she might tire out if her labor went as long as some first babies' did. So it was his voice in her ear, humming, "You're the strongest person I know; you can do this; just one push at a time."

Kate let out a tiny moan, then heaved in another breath and curled forward, muscles straining.

The doctor entered halfway through this one, peeked down, and nodded to the nurse as Kate let out her breath.

"All right folks, it's time to have a baby."

Kate tipped her head to each side to stretch her neck muscles and ground out:

"Thought it might be an elephant - aren't they in labor for three days?"

Well, at least some of her snark was back. The elephant joke was an old one. Usually she pointed out the fact that her razor-sharp memory of every minute of the past nine months had stretched out time, making her pregnancy the mental equivalent of that of the her favorite large mammal.

Nothing made him happier than those elephant jokes.

Castle thanked God, or fate, or time, or whatever force was behind the universe every day for her perfect memory.

Dr. Clark smiled as she slipped into her sterile gown and pulled on gloves.

"Daddy, are you staying there, or do you want to come down to this end?"

As Kate looked up at him over her shoulder, he squeezed her hand.

"Right here is just fine."

Her lips pressed into a tight smile as her eyes blinked closed.

"You've got this. Almost there."

She braced on her hands and scooted up slightly as the nurse rolled the sterile table over and detached the end of the bed.

"And then I get sushi. Oh, cold cuts. God I want an Italian sub for breakfast. And an extra-large, full-caffeine vanilla latte."

"Alexis is ready to take your order as soon as AP is out. And mother has had the champagne icing all night."

"Okay, Kate, about to start with another contraction, let's get this show on the road. You still want the mirror?"

"Yes."

Both answered at once, sharing a quick, smirking glance at their ability to be in sync even in the midst of all this.

The nurse adjusted the mirror's angle and helped lift Kate's leg as she drew in a deep breath and started to push.

"When we get to 10, I want you to take a quick breath and push again, can you do that?"

Kate's head bobbed against his shoulder as he felt every muscle in her body tense.

"Good. Good. Keep going. Harder, Kate."

His wife let out a grunt and bore down again.

"Excellent. And relax."

There were tears in her eyes as she laid back against his chest.

"Couple more like that and we'll have a baby. Now catch your breath and we'll go again."

Fifteen minutes later, Jonathan Christopher Beckett Castle announced his presence with a hardy yell, and immediately appeared on Kate's chest, messy and squirming and already latching on to her nipple to nurse.

His wife was smiling, the doctor was congratulating them on a job well-done, and his vision had narrowed down to the 20-inch-long chestnut-haired wrinkle-faced human uncurling his miniscule fingers over the swell of Kate's breast.

His heart turned a slow somersault in his chest.

There was nothing else in the world that mattered.

# * # * # * #

Around lunchtime, after all the relatives, blood and otherwise, had been through and Kate and Jonathan had napped, the flowers and balloons and stuffed animals started to pour in. In the sea of cobalt, navy, powder, and cornflower blue, an arrangement of reds and yellows caught his attention.

Kate was feeding Jonathan, again, so he crossed to the windowsill to pull the card.

They were tropical - orchids, red ginger, and a few large white and yellow clusters that his nose identified as the source of the sweet perfume scenting the room.

There was a tiny green envelope hidden among the waxy leaves, which he extracted without disturbing the rest of the arrangement. Inside was a card with no name, just a printed line under the standard congratulatory message:

"It was worth it, you'll see. Enjoy."

# * # * # * #

"Rick, can you go get him?"

Up from his nap, Jon, hungry as always, let them know it over the monitor. The kid always announced his appetite.

Twenty years ago, he swore if he ever had another baby, he would turn his office into a nursery. At least he could skip the stair-climber at the gym for the next few years.

On his way past the table, he snagged the small stack of mail and slid it into the pocket of his robe as he climbed.

The well-wishes still poured in daily three weeks into their adventure in parenting, and getting anything done with a baby in the house required multitasking.

When he handed their freshly-diapered, thumb-sucking bundle over to a slightly rumpled, bleary-eyed Kate, he refilled her water glass and then settled down beside her on their bed to read the cards.

"Patterson finally got around to harassing us about not naming him after his character, 'Alex - it would have matched so well with Alexis, after all.'"

Kate only hummed in response. Glancing over, he found her smile only for their son, who nuzzled against her bare chest, making that tiny squeaking noise they had all become accustomed to with every swallow.

Castle moved through two more notes forwarded from Black Pawn colleagues without interrupting mealtime.

He unsealed the final green envelope. Instead of a card, thick card stock sandwiched around a single glossy photo.

A tropical beach filled the rectangle, deserted except for two tow-headed boys in swim trunks, racing away from the camera, trailed by a little girl in a ruffled suit, blonde braids flying, their footprints the only ones denting the pristine stretch of sand. In the foreground, a woman stood watching, profile backlit by the sparkling sun reflecting off the sapphire water, her honey-toned bob just brushing the tie of her bikini.

Eyes narrowing, he tipped the photo to pick up a ray of light through the blinds.

Jon squawked, impatient as Kate shifted him to her other side on the pillow.

"Who's that?" she asked, catching sight of the photo as he squinted.

A tingle had begun somewhere down his spine, and now it rose to full-blown gooseflesh, standing every hair on end.

Castle waited until his son was settled again, then passed the photo to Kate.

A moment later, her eyes met his, brows arching high.

Flipping the photo, Kate read the scrawled words written in permanent marker aloud.

"Bill, Everett, and LeAnn, 8/10/2014. I know those names. Well, two of them. Hannah's kids. I thought she had made it all up."

"It's her, isn't it?" Castle almost whispered.

"With the angle and the glare, it's hard to say for sure."

Hannah was a murder suspect in an open investigation. She had fallen off the face of the earth the day she escaped from holding. Their only clue had been the small fortune that automatically transferred out of the Senator's investment account early the morning of his death, but which even the FBI couldn't trace past the third shell corporation in the Cayman Islands.

But now, they could trace the envelope, the ink, compare handwriting, something. And the kids, if she was hiding out on some tropical island, those kids would have been reported missing around the time she disappeared.

"We should call Espo, let forensics-"

He stopped at the look she gave him, eyes wide, brown irises flecked with emerald, mouth agape.

"I think she did it for me. Whatever her own motives were for killing Bracken, that card she left at the hospital that morning? That was an apology."

"So what do you want to do?"

The sounds of their son contentedly nursing filled the long pause that followed. The warmth that had filled Castle's chest when Jonathan was born crested again, giving the room a rosy glow. Whatever happened with Hannah, whether justice was served, or the case went cold, he had what he wanted right here beside him.

Her voice, rough and low, startled him out of his reverie, drew his gaze to her brimming eyes.

"We all deserve the chance to move forward."

# * # * # * # * #

Author's note:

I am not capable of adequately expressing how much your involvement in "Rewound" has meant to me. I started planning the story around September 2012, before Castle and Beckett were engaged, before "Veritas" solved the Bracken problem (for now), and before I was pregnant with my now one-year-old son. Fifteen hundred of you followed this story, making the most followed on FFN in the Castle fandom.

I don't know what I did to deserve that, but I need to give credit to my beta, my psychologist, my friend, Alex (Caffinate-Me here, at aspen_musing on twitter, and aspenmusing dot tumblr dot com on tumblr). You ALL CAPS YELLED. You cheered. You kicked my very pregnant a$$ numerous times (figuratively, of course). You swung on swings. You teetered as I tottered. And one day I will fill my swimming pool with margaritas and let you swim in it, because at this point, that's the volume it would require to even halfway pay you back for all your hard work on this story. Do you remember that scribbly photo of my handwritten plot notes? DID YOU EVER THINK I WOULD ACTUALLY GET IT FINISHED, IN A SEMI-STRAIGHT LINE?

To Joy (International08 here, at intl08 on twitter, international08 dot tumblr dot com), YOU CAUGHT THAT M-RATED DREAM CHAPTER JUST IN TIME. So glad we have had so many adventures during the years it took me to write this story. Here's to many more.

To Dia, (Fembot79 here, at fembot77 on twitter, fembot77 dot tumblr dot com) who helped with the cheering all along, and then swooped in at the finish with some key insights, I owe you yummy, yummy coffee. Chocolate. Coffee-flavored chocolate? Chocolate-flavored coffee? How about a fruit basket, instead?

To Jade, (at mjsofter on twitter, mjsofter dot tumblr dot com) the artist extraordinaire who has forever associated that scene from "Nikki Heat" with my story. Thank you; it would not have been the same story without your talent and creativity on the cover.

To my husband, who read behind the scenes and kept me out of trouble, there will be further research. ;)

But most of all, to every one of you who has read, reviewed, favorited, followed, tweeted, reblogged, or had a fleeting thought about this story despite such long waits between chapters, thank you for not giving up, even though some of you thought I had. I would never leave this story unfinished. I hope the finish lived up to the start.

"Rewound" has been my second baby, my first real attempt at plot, and such a fun story to write. It's you all I have to thank for the fun. Now, all of you, go read someone's chapter this week and LEAVE THEM A REVIEW. It will make a writer's day. You certainly have made MANY for me.

Love, Kate

at kate_christie_ on twitter

kathrynchristie dot tumblr dot com