Back and Forth (A Castle Fanfiction)

Finally Paradise

A week after Kate's testimony, her father was found guilty, and sentenced to one year's probation. Within the conditions for his parol, Jim was forced to join a program in order to get clean, and he followed the 12-step plan from AA every step of the way. By the time Henry reached eight months, Jim had become the best grandfather to Alexis and Henry that he could be. Once Kate finished out her last year in college and graduated with a degree criminal justice, she immediately applied to the police academy and began working to solve her mother's murder. One month into that program, however, Rick and Kate were married, and he was able to keep her from drowning in that case as well as working it with her.

Henry and Alexis continued to grow as their father wrote more and more books and their mother worked up the ranks. At twenty-four, Kate gave birth to the youngest of their kids, Paige Johanna, and the couple was thrilled to finally officially foster Cavin on a temporary basis. Javier stayed in Cavin's life as well as Rick's and Kate's, and when he returned from war, he turned his uniform over for a badge and a gun. There Javi and Kate earned the new nicknames Espo and Beckett, and the two were brought into homicide by the time Paige was two. Soon after, Kate was running the squad and Kevin Ryan joined their small unit.

Rick continued to be Mr. Mom as Henry and and Alexis grew into teenagers. When Alexis was fourteen and Henry was eleven, Paige finally outgrew the need of having her father around all day after going into kindergarten. When Kate and Rick were paired up to catch the killer who was copying Rick's books, Montgomery watched closely and decided that the writer did something for the team that no one else could. He soon offered a consultant's job to the writer and Rick joined the team of three.

Things didn't always go as planned, and every once in a while Kate and Rick would get themselves into highly dangerous situations, but to them, this all felt perfect. Everything was perfect, that is, until Kate was shot in the chest with her three kids, her father, and her husband watching in dismay.

After that, the world changed for the couple. While Kate continued to go at her mother's killers, Rick kept her safe while lying to her, helping her heal for another year until she started back on that case. The moment she dove back in to that, Richard packed a bag, had his kids do the same, and was gone before Kate left work. This fight between them nearly destroyed their marriage. But by the time Kate new to stop, it was too late. Smith was dead. The file was missing. Kate was no longer safe, and neither was their family. They went at Bracken hard, and they stopped his efforts with a bluff.

When they finally put the man away, Alexis had moved out, and Henry was on his Senior year of High School. Alexis had grown to be a lot like her mother in many ways, but pursued a much less intimidating field. She became a social worker, trying to help kids who had been in situations like Cavin had escaped. She saw what damaged could be done when talking with Cavin's friends and it changed her life for the better.

Henry had inherited his father's talents in writing, but found that a vast majority of what he wrote was better suited for television. He had so many ideas for T.V series that his room was filled with notebooks and binders dedicated to characters and plots and outlines of a pilot episode or beyond. He was in love with story telling and film and had a skill for making low-budget films that were extraordinarily popular online. This coupled his his charming good looks, strong jawline, kind baby blue eyes, sandy wavy hair, and a smile that couldn't be matched all added up to his tendency to be a chick-magnet. Too bad he just had eyes for one girl whom he had been dating since the summer before his freshman year. Michaela Linn, a young girl with Snow White looks and a shyness about her that lured every guy wore Henry's promise ring proudly on her finger and his letterman's jacket on her back at every single one of his baseball games and his plays. They were perfect together, and though this was only their first love, Kate and Rick half hoped that this was the girl Henry would hold for the rest of his life.

Paige, at this time, was only eleven. She was a gorgeous dancer, committed to her art more than she was to her school work, though her grades never suffered. She was extraordinarily gifted in modern and lyrical dance, taking point and tap as her side studies. She was young, new to point, and a bit too hard on herself from time to time, but she had everything going for her in the dance world. She had her mother's looks and her father's height, her mother's balance, and her father's openness to adventure in the everyday. She was far more reserved, however, but the adventures she took helped her creativity in daring choreography at every turn. She hoped to be a dancer on Broadway some day, and her voice and dancing skills had given her opportunities since her early childhood.

Martha and Jim had always been around the children while they were growing up, and so had their parents. The couple had managed to maneuver every obstacle and bound every hurdle with grace. Sure, they had their ups and downs, and that looming feeling that something could go wrong at any moment and could take Kate and/or Rick from this world had been a burden on the kids, but- there was nothing either of the two adults would have changed. They loved each other, and they were family. Even through the worst two months of their lives as Rick was God knows where and the world felt like it was ending, Kate never missed a beat in sparing her kids any extra heartache. This was the life they both knew they were meant to have, and they wouldn't have it any other way. They loved each other and their kids. Always.