Serendipity

"The curves of your lips rewrite history."

-Oscar Wilde

For a man with his jaw wired shut, Castle still had a hell of a lot to say.

They made twenty more cards with Alexis's help while his mother and her father went out to pick up dinner for everyone who could eat. The index cards were spread across his bed; he was covered in words and phrases, answers without questions, so that he had only to lay a finger on one to make himself heard.

Dinner was Chinese takeout, which smelled heavenly, but its arrival meant Ryan and Esposito couldn't focus on Beckett's irritated questions long enough for her to get a straight answer (or they were being purposefully dense). Martha invited the group to the waiting room for a makeshift dinner party.

This excluded Castle and Beckett both, so they pouted (Castle pouted) and kicked everyone else out of his room in retaliation, his daughter included. Alexis looked like she was going to park it in the chair beside her father's bed, but Beckett was ready to beg the girl for a few minutes alone with Castle. She hadn't realized, until now, that she knew exactly what she needed to say to him, had to say to him, and she didn't want anyone else around.

All she had to do was turn her eyes on Alexis, and the girl relented with a sigh.

So apparently, Kate had lost all control of her facial expressions. She squeezed Alexis's hand as the young woman passed, a silent thanks, and then waited until the room had been cleared before she reached out and let her fingers brush against his. The wheelchair was as snug against his bed as her father had been able to make it, and she was strangely grateful that no distance separated them now.

He was watching her, wordless, but not without sounds. Murmurs without substance, sibilants and fricatives which weaved together in the air around them like he was casting a spell.

She was willing to believe in this kind of magic.

He was on good pain medicine, she knew, and his eyes weren't able to hold hers for very long before they rolled around the room, flickering from place to place, but always coming back to hers to rest. She let the wordlessness go on, while the sound of his humming, grumbling, vibrating voice let itself be heard.

Finally she squeezed his hand.

He was quiet.

"I won't be able to take this for much longer," she admitted, tilting her head back against the look in his eyes. Her breaths were shallow because she didn't have the guts to expand her lungs; pain lit up her insides like heat lightning whenever she moved, distant, silent, but a warning of the storm to come.

She looked back at him, he was fingering a card, propping it up against his thigh as he watched her.

Ditto.

And he did look so tired. He'd been putting on a good show for his daughter, she realized. The lines of his face were deeper now, shadowed, and he was struggling to keep his eyes from closing.

"I need you to tell me who he is."

Castle let his free hand travel along his body until he came to rest on the Yes at his chest. He fluttered his hand around in the air as if to say Get me a pen.

Kate glanced to the empty chair with sudden horror; Alexis had left the index cards and the marker on the counter by the sink. She blinked, then met Castle's eyes.

He looked amused. She was not. She needed to know. She had to know.

This was her life.

Kate pulled her hand back from his and rested it against the side of the bed for a moment, her palm flat as she worked to gather her courage. It was going to hurt; it was going to be excruciating. But she needed to know. She took another slow, shallow breath, then she pushed off against the side of his bed.

Heat lightning became jagged bolts of cloud-scorching electricity, lighting up her nerves.

At the same moment, Castle jerked forward with a wordless grunt, snatching at her hand to collapse her forward. She fell on her face against his bed and panted into the covers, eyes squeezed shut. Pieces of herself broke off into the storm and swirled out of reach.

Any kind of exertion, any kind at all, required her abdominal muscles, and so wheeling herself around the bed to that stack of cards, the marker, was never going to happen.

When enough of her consciousness gathered itself back together, she realized that something was fluttering against her ear, flapping, back and forth, disturbing her hair, catching her eyebrow.

She rolled onto her cheek to look.

Castle was hitting her with an index card, over and over, his face livid.

No.

No.

No.

She watched the word on the downswing and quirked her lips involuntarily, let loose a puff of air that might have been laughter if she hadn't just gutted herself on that last move.

She closed her eyes and smiled though, let him see it, and left her head resting against his hip, his upper thigh, cradled in the place where they met. She felt the index card paint her cheek, her lips, her chin, and then his fingers were in her hair, like he was dispensing benediction.

"I don't have a pen," she explained, huffing out a breath as his fingers stroked along her ear. "But yeah, that hurt. Stupid idea."

Another rumble from Castle, and then that oddly comforting hum that seemed to emanate from his chest and vibrate right through her bones. She opened her eyes, found Castle watching her intently, putting the whole force of his will behind that stare.

"This is killing you, isn't it?" She managed to lift her arm and touch the round curve of his rib at her eye level. "You have too much to say. And no voice to say it."

He hummed again, brushed against the Yes card, then the No, then the Yes again. She was too tired to interpret, but she let her finger trace the path of his rib to the center of his chest, and then back down again.

His arm rested at his side, laying across her neck so that, with his curled fingers, he barely brushed the back of her head. His humming didn't stop, just changed tone and pitch occasionally as he sleepily stroked her hair, like one of his usual Castle soliloquies, without words but not without meaning.

Maybe that's what he meant by yes and no both.

He held the answer she needed, but it was trapped somewhere between them. In a pen or index card not yet written. She wanted to cry, but that would signal some kind of defeat, and this felt as far from defeat as it could be while still in a hospital, sitting at the bedside of someone you loved who'd been shot.

She sat up, surprised, and looked at him.

He looked equally startled, even though she was certain she'd been saying nothing out loud.

She stared at him, but he was gesturing to a card with his hand, then reached out to tug on her ear.

Listen.

She laughed, winced as it vibrated and pulled in her guts, and squeezed one eye shut to ride out the tremors. With the other still open, she watched him.

Joking.

What did that mean?

But he was shaking his head, using his finger now to circle the word, no, to circle the letter.

J.

"J," she whispered, lifting an eyebrow at him.

Castle hummed in agreement and moved to I Love You, tapping the last word.

Her chest was too tight; she didn't meet his eye. She watched his finger tapping the word, over and over, and then circle that y-o-u with a little grunt for attention. Was that her heart pounding loudly in the room, filling her head with noise?

He had made Alexis write out two of those cards, twins, and he'd hugged her with one in each hand, embracing her with I love yous. She wished-

No. Pay attention. "You? J. You?"

He made a motion with his hand that she'd seen on the set of the Nikki Heat movie earlier this year. Hurry up. She raised an eyebrow and glared at him a second before it hit her.

"J-U." She smirked back at him. "You're spelling. Got it. J-U what?"

He circled D in Ditto; she repeated it back. He skimmed his hand over his body searching for another card, looking anxious.

Most were single words: bathroom, water, help, yes, no, mother, alexis, kate. A few phrases that he'd made Alexis write out for him, because he'd tried to be silly with his daughter in an effort to cheer her up: Don't worry, I love you, You wound me, Hey pumpkin, Make me a new card. He'd written a few himself, but his handwriting had been shaky, his frustration evident, and Alexis had taken over.

Castle grunted at her and she raised her eyes to him. He shook his head back and forth.

"J-U-D what, Castle?"

He wrinkled his brow at her, skimmed his hand over all the cards and then shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh. The letter isn't here?"

He nodded happily. He was still half-reclining in the bed, and his eyes struggled again to keep him with her. She was weary herself; she couldn't seem to lift her head off the bed, and the way his left hand had molded itself to the back of her skull felt good, drugging-

He nudged her, grunting again, and she opened her eyes, surprised they'd been closed.

Castle was using his right hand to tap on her name.

"I'm awake."

He circled the A in kate.

"A?"

His hand flew to bathroom.

"B. A-B."

Then the one at his right thigh: Make me a new card.

"C. A-B-C? Oh. ABCs. Um. Okay, well, if we've got A and B and C here, then it's not those. And you said, J-U-D, so it's not D. Um, we've got the E in Yes. F. . .?"

He tapped No.

"G?"

Yes.

"J-U-D-G?"

He blinked, tapped. Yes, again. His hand skimmed-

"Judge?" she guessed, lifting her head from his hip, despite how it tugged on her stomach wound. "Judge. You're spelling judge."

He splayed his hand over Yes and regarded her seriously. No laugh lines in that face now, just shadows, and darkness, and a knowledge he didn't want to bear.

"One of my judges," she said softly. One of the judges she used for warrants.

His head was heavy over Yes.

"Which one?"

He moved again; her heart thudded too hard in her poor, mangled chest. Dizziness swamped her and she blinked to keep Castle in focus.

Mother.

His finger circled the M over and over, round and round, almost sensuous, and her mouth went dry.

Judge M.

Judge Markway.

She took a shallow breath and raised her eyes to his; he knew, he knew she understood. His fingers abandoned the card and moved again, trembling with an exhaustion that she felt echoed in her soul.

Kate.

He tapped it again.

Kate.

Kate.

Kate.

She let her head fall back to his hip, shifted her hand to capture his still tapping fingers, curled around them in a fist to keep him from the cards.

Silence.

Their hands joined and rested against his belly; his other hand threaded through the strands of her hair until the pads of his fingers made contact with her skull, points of heat and warmth.

Was this being broken?

No.

She opened her eyes and looked at Castle, but his were closed, his head tilted back as if unable to bear it a second longer. His murmurs had ceased, his humming was gone.

She shook off his hand, and he didn't stir; she could tell he was awake. His awareness was with her in the room. She fumbled on the bed a moment, searching for the right cards, unable to move far as her stomach sent ripples of pain through her.

She found the first card and pushed it into his hand, closed his fingers around it. His eyes opened.

She tapped the edge of the card until he lifted his head and opened his hand, the little white card now revealed, the black marker definite.

She put its twin on top of it, one layer after another, pressed it into his palm with her thumb as if marking him.

I love you.

and

I love you.