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Every Corner of Love
A Cora Castle Story

"Hi precious girl," Kate whispers as she opens the door to the nursery.

Her daughter is standing up, her miniature fingers curling over the side of the crib. A pacifier bobs in her mouth around a sleepy grin. Her thick, dark hair sticks up in tufts one one side and is damp on the other - she sleeps hot just like her mother.

Kate loves waking Cora up from naps. She's just a shade jealous that Castle gets to do this five days a week, but now that she's the Captain of her own precinct, she's guaranteed to get the weekends.

Kate brings the light with her as she walks into the room, using the glow from the lamp in the hall to navigate her way to the crib. She slides her hands gently under her daughter's arms and brings the whole warm bundle of Cora's body to her chest.

Cora's not a big snuggler, but Castle assures her it will come. She's only fourteen months old, Beckett, he'd explained. How could she not be a big snuggly bug like me? Kate had rolled her eyes and ribbed him for being a forty-two year old man who uses the term snuggly bug.

Today, Cora surprises Kate by resting her flushed cheek on her shoulder and letting herself collapse weakly against her mother's chest. A few seconds later, the baby wiggles a little bit, working her tiny arms down between them. Kate's heart feels ten sizes too big for her chest.

"That's so nice, Corabear. What a nice cuddle," Kate murmurs as she smoothes her hand up and down the perfect plane of her baby's back. "Let's go downstairs and see Daddy, okay?"

She makes her way down the stairs carefully. Castle's behind the kitchen counter, a spoon in each hand, stirring milk into two cups of coffee at once. When he sees his wife and daughter he lets the spoons go and just stares.

"Wow. She's never done that before," he says.

"I know."

"Are you loving it?"

Kate doesn't answer, just grins back, never ceasing in her strokes down the baby's back.

She walks slowly around the island and lets Castle press a kiss to his daughter's head. Cora blinks slowly and sucks furiously on her pacifier.

"She's really warm," Castle frowns. "She might be sick. You know, Alexis always got extra cuddly when she was sick."

"Oh, so she has to be sick to give her mom a hug?" Kate glares at him.

"No … I mean … no." Castle backpedals, but the glassy look in his little girl's eyes confirms his suspicions.

Sure enough, the pacifier falls out as a big burp escapes the little girl. Her mouth turns down as if she's about to cry.

Kate immediately starts up a soothing mantra of it's okays, rocking on the balls of her feet.

Castle spins around and gets a mixing bowl out of the cupboard, holding it close to the baby's face.

"She's not sick, Castle. It was just a burp, she's - " The baby interrupts her with a gag.

Kate's shoulder is suddenly warm and wet, and the sickness slithers down to gather between her chest and her little girl's body. Castle tilts the baby's chin and the next wave ends up in the bowl. A few more and it's passed, but Cora is distraught, crying weakly, confused about what just happened.

Kate feels an unfamiliar tightness inside. She keeps up a steady stream of assuring words. She's paralyzed, unsure of what to do next. They need to get cleaned up, but she can't just put Cora down.

Not for the first time, she's thankful for Castle's experience. He puts the bowl down and comes around behind them. He places his hands on Kate's hips and guides them through their bedroom and into the bathroom. He runs a bath and peels Kate's jeans and socks off, then lays a towel on the counter and takes the baby from his shellshocked wife. He smiles a little bit to himself. Woman can handle busting into a den of criminals wearing a bulletproof, and a sick baby renders her mute?

He lays Cora down on the towel and undresses her as quickly as he can, knowing it's better to get it over with instead of trying to distract the still trembling and crying little girl.

When he turns around, Kate's undressed and stepping into the tub, and he won't deny that after all this time, and after over a year of sleep deprivation, he still wants her just as fiercely as he did the day they met. Even more fiercely, actually.

He transfers the baby from his chest to Kate's. After his two girls are settled in the tub, he covers Cora's back with a wet washcloth to stop her from getting a chill.

He appreciates how sometimes the moments that touch him the most are borne of less than perfect situations, and this is an exquisite example. Sure, he'd known that seeing Kate, sticky and flushed in a tacky animal patterned hospital gown, holding his newborn daughter for the first time, would do a number on his heartstrings, but he thinks that this is even better. The way his daughter's crying melts into ragged breaths, then settles into calm. The way her tiny eyelids slide shut; how being held against her mother's heart can heal her in an instant. The way he can almost feel his wife's love radiate around the baby on her chest. It's stunning.

Kate's having an almost identical reaction. Not for the first time, she marvels at the new life she's made for herself, the life made possible by the man beside her.

Who would have thought that she'd ever let someone puke on her? She hadn't even minded the smell, something she'd hated her roommate in college for exposing her to more often than she'd have liked. Tonight, she hadn't flinched, hadn't moved Cora away at all, had only pressed her closer.

But the tightness in her chest is still there, banding around her lungs. It doesn't start to fade until Cora falls asleep on her shoulder. She closes her own eyes, letting the water and the press of Castle's lips on her bare shoulder ease the ache. Every wracking sob from Cora's little throat had shaken something inside her own body.

She thought Rick had shown her the depths of love, shown her every shade of it, every degree. For someone who'd been a bit romantically stunted in the beginning, she'd made incredible progress in the years since she'd shown up on his doorstep, dripping wet and driven. But this … she'd known motherhood would be a mountain, but she'd made her choices hoping for moments like this.

Katherine Beckett smiles blissfully up at her husband, adding another definition of love to her expanding dictionary.

A/N: I didn't think I'd ever write a Caskett baby fic, but here we are. I have more plans for Cora, at all different ages, if that's something you guys are interested in?