He's not surprised to wake up to the sounds of whimpering cries and tightly clutched hands at the hem of his shirt. It was either him or her. Even in the daylight the nightmares had been inevitable, lurking between shadows and in the empty spaces between the confines of thorax and the heart.
It took them hours to fall asleep, hours of turning the light on and off. Hours of hesitant touches, of the occasional curl of the lips at a stupid joke or the silent sigh at a careful brush across battered skin.
Her knuckles are white with the claw-like strain she has on them. Blue and purple is starting to stain the white canvas with explosions of color that speak of nothing but pain and too many memories.
Another sob-like sigh escapes her chapped lips and he starts running his hands up and down along the rugs of her spine, hoping that maybe he'll manage to soothe her back to sleep without waking her up.
She startles into awareness when he reaches her neck though and her eyes stray around unseeing for a couple seconds, wide and blank, until they settle on his and seem to find something she recognizes.
"It's okay," he repeats over and over, "it's okay."
His fingers are tangled in her hair at the base of her neck and she moves into him, her head coming to rest above his chest.
"It's okay, she's gone now," he mumbles into her hair and she pulls back from him again, searching his eyes.
"I'm not scared of her, at least not right now," she says and her voice has so many edges he thinks he might drown in it, "I'm scared of myself." She breaks apart around those syllables and he finds her clutching onto him, pulling herself closer to his chest, to his heart, as if somehow she could escape herself if she folded herself into him closely enough. Like maybe she could find some peace within the syntax of his heart.
"Kate-" he says, but he doesn't really know what to say.
He still remembers her eyes when she turned around. He remembers her red hands. He remembers the red water as she washed the blood down the sink. He remembers the blotches of crimson on white ceramic. He remembers the shiver in her fingers and the tremble in her knees and he remembers the way he had to hold her upright because of the way her knees buckled after she watched the water go down the drain. He remembers the sound of her retching echoing from every corner of the too white bathroom stall and he remembers the way she sank back against him and cried.
Most of all, however, he remembers the white in her eyes and the blankness that was so unperceiving even toward him.
He's never seen her like this before.
He hopes he won't ever again.
And he understands why she is so desperately trying to flinch away from herself.
"You didn't have a choice." He whispers. He pulls back just enough to see her eyes. They are clear now. An enigma of blue and green and they stare at him with such despair, with a kind of bottomless hope for him to make this better somehow. For him to make sense of the darkness.
"I-" she starts but he shakes his head before she can go on.
"You didn't have a choice." He says with more momentum now, index-finger reaching out to trace the jagged skin of her lips.
"There was so much blood," she whispers, tucking herself closer to him again. Her lips find the soft skin at the juncture of his neck, the patch of skin that speaks of innocence and vulnerability and a kind of strength that comes with it, and she hesitates for a second before she allows her lips to feather across this point of fragility.
His hands slide through her hair again, unfurling strand by strand of messy curls until the mess of it is bearable.
"I was so cold." He feels her lips shutter at his neck, feels the tremor climbing underneath his skin and echoed by his pulse.
"I didn't feel, Castle, what does that make me?" It's her, who pulls back now to look up at him.
"Kate-"
"No, Rick," she takes a shuddering intake of breath, "I didn't feel."
She tries to take a breath of good air but all it seems to do it choke her and she claws at her chest for a second, as if willing her corrupted organs to please, please start working with her again.
"I thought about you and our future. Our kids. I just wanted to go home." Her hands wave around his waist again and find some purpose at the firm line of his back, where they rest, splayed widely.
"When she tried to use that scalpel on me, I just couldn't think, it was over so soon and I just stood there and oh god Castle, I killed her. I don't even know why it's so different this time, but it just is." She looks up at him like she is expecting judgment but his eyes are just blue and somehow she isn't sure whether that makes things worse or better.
"Castle, I am going to hold our child with these hands, I am going to dress them with these hands that have killed a person. That have been tainted by the blood of a person. Castle, this is not okay." He feels her crying now. Her head is buried somewhere above his chest, tears leaking from her eyes to be directly soaked by the fabric of his cotton plaid shirt.
"Castle-" she whispers more to his heart than his eyes.
"Kate, look at me." He guides her up a little bit, waiting those seconds of hesitance before their eyes meet.
"They will ask. They will ask about the white full moon in between your breasts. They will ask about the small cut on your arm and they will ask about everything else. And I am going to tell them every single story." He reconsiders for a second, "well maybe not in detail but more like the general idea of it. And Kate, I am going to tell them about that one day your hands were red, and you know why?"
She looks up at him again, teeth cutting deeply into her already fractured lips and he leans forward to press his lips onto her battle-marred skin like maybe it's forgiveness and maybe it's pride and maybe it's just love.
"Why?"
"Because they're all stories about how you survived. Maybe this time was different, and maybe you got a little bit lost along the way, and maybe it wasn't okay. And maybe it was. But you survived. You saved yourself as you have so many times and came back to me." He tucks back a couple strands of hair and feels his lips curl upwards when their eyes meet.
"There is so much goodness in your eyes and sometimes, even after all these years, I am still astounded by the depth of your compassion and the kindness of your heart." His arms warp around her again, patiently waiting until she drapes herself across him until every curve of her body is pieced together with those of his. "You did what you had to do in order to survive but with me, or our children, your touch could never bruise, your touch could never be anything but gentle."
Her hand slips into his with ease then, fingers intertwining, as if they were meant to.
She doesn't wake up again that night and neither does he. And she hopes that maybe holding his hand can be enough to keep her from slipping away again.
AN: I tried very hard not to write a post-ep again. Obviously I failed.
Also the title is taken from a poem by pleasefindthis :)
Twitter: AlyssaLucyAnne
Tumblr: dancingontiptoes