Remember, a castle fanfic

Post Driven - Castle is starting to remember... This is an idea I have had floating around my head for a while and the hiatus seemed like a good time to put it out there. Nervous now.. If there's enough interest from you lovely folks I'll keep it going.

Remember

He woke up alone in their bed. Weak early morning light was slicing through the gaps in the drapes and diffusing out into mote speckled gauzy fans across the bedroom. One knifed across the empty pillow that was next to his and he stared, half-awake, at the tiny dust particles that swirled through the pale shafts roiling them into churning waves ... His gaze locked and he felt pulled in. Into the waves, into the ocean ... He shut his eyes, suddenly overcome. His stomach lurched. He screwed up his lips, eyes, against it and he felt the skin there tighten and sting from the fading sunburn. Castle turned his face into the cool of his pillow and groaned.

It was hot. Sun searing his skin. And swaying, always swaying. Random sickening movement. This was why he hated the ocean... Hated it. His stomach dropped to his knees suddenly as the too small boat dropped without warning from the top of a wave down, down...

Castle shot up from the bed, heart pounding and sick to his stomach. Something cold touched his face and a voice spoke right by (too close, too close) to his face. He jerked backwards. His back struck something hard. No escape!

"NO!"

"Castle!" Hands on his face. He grabbed at them. Grabbed hard and pushed them away. NO no no no no. "Rick. Stop!" Her voice. Wait, she was there? Kate?

Clarity snapped back hard as slap. And there she was, sitting on the bed right in front of him, eyes huge, with her hands up. Hands up? He stared for a moment, not comprehending why she was apparently surrendering - and, to him. But then he saw. Looked harder and -oh my god - his hands, his fingers, around her wrists holding her hands out and away from him. The skin of his knuckles was white with the force of the grip and he suddenly fancied he could feel the delicate bones beneath her skin shifting and grating together about to break. He stared. Horrified. Suddenly frozen.

"Castle. Let me go. It's ok. You can let me go now." Her voice, her words, suddenly freed his muscles.

"Oh! Oh no. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." He released her like she was on fire, bringing his hands back to his chest. Clenched them there, restraining their movement in tight fists. Her wrists were reddened where he had grabbed her, but she made no move to back away or cradle her arms to her chest. And he had to have really hurt her. "Kate-"

"I'm ok." She still had her hands up, palms out towards him now. Her voice was tight and controlled and he recognized what was happening even as his heart still thundered in his ears and he could hear his own rapid breathing like he'd just sprinted a mile. She was talking him down. Down off the ledge...

"I'm sorry." His fingers twitched, hands moving a fraction towards her, wanting to touch to comfort, but then recoiling again. And the look on her face. Too calm. Too controlled. God, she was really scared of him, hurt by him, but hiding it under years of professional griit. "I'm sorry."

What the hell is wrong with me?

"It's ok." She said again. Repeating herself and slowly lowering her arms, until her hands settled onto his knees still under the covers. He couldn't bear to look down to see what he'd done. "It's all right. Are you ok?" She asked. Still talking the madman off the ledge.

No.

He nodded. His gaze momentarily, involuntarily, dropped to her wrists. Reddened skin. Going to bruise. He swallowed the golf ball in his throat. Looked back up. Shook his head.

"Kate-" It was suddenly an effort to talk

"What just happened?"

"I- I don't know. Nightmare maybe?"

"Pretty intense for a bad dream Castle." She said. And there was an edge to her voice now. One that had become so familiar in the days since he had returned. He had heard it in the hospital when they had both realised that he didn't remember the last few months. He'd heard it since then again and again, from all of them: Kate, the boys, Gates, Lanie. Whenever he stumbled over something, did something, that triggered off the fear that things were not as healed, as normal, as they should be. Fear that he was not what he should be, who he should be. And he saw the suspicion too, in the sharp flick of their eyes as they tracked him when he stumbled. Again. And again.

Only Esposito and Ryan had voiced it directly. They had corned him in the precinct on his first foray back, and he had been quite frankly shocked by the accusations. Espo laid it out, coming up right in his face, suggesting that he was some sort of traitor, a criminal, a charlatan. Betrayer. And part of him understood where the other man was coming from. Espo went by the evidence, what he could see, touch, put together. He was that sort of man. And the evidence was there on video, in the tent left abandoned, the wedding clothes and watch stored there amongst the well stocked provisions and the newspapers. The newspapers... Why had he had those?

What the hell had he been doing?

But the rest of him stood flayed before their inquisition. Question after question. An interrogation. Trying to trip him up. Trying to blindside. Trying to get him to admit to...What? They didn't know and neither did he. But that didn't stop them bailing him up like he was a suspect in one of their interview rooms. Espo the bad cop, Ryan the good, but only by degrees.

Did he really do something? What was it? He must have done something. It was on tape. He had been complicit in something. Something that had betrayed them all and torn the guts out of his life, their lives. He couldn't deny it, but he couldn't put the pieces together and trying just made him sick to his stomach.

In the end Kate had saved him when his tongue tied in his mouth: dry and sticky. She stepped in, literally between them and him but he couldn't hear what she said over the pounding of his pulse in his ears. They apologized to him after she was done. At least he thinks they did. The words sounded right, but Espo's tone was all wrong. Ryan's was almost as bad. And even Kate's. All wrong. All wrong. She was there for him out of loyalty. Out of love. But it was all wrong.

Everything was wrong. He knew it. They knew it. Everyone knew it. They all danced around it, but it kept coming back: something wrong, something not right, he wasn't right. He wasn't who they thought he was.

And there was that edge in her voice again now. Concerned and edgy with, with something. Suspicious, concerned, careful. The cop talking the dangerous crazy off the ledge. And maybe he was crazy. Maybe they were right to be wary of him, doubt him, be watchful of him. And now he'd hurt her. She might be hiding it like pro, but that had to hurt. Thank god he'd snapped out of - it - when he did...

God.

" God, I am so so sorry. Let me get some ice or something." He risked another look down. "Or, or arrest me for assault or -."

"Castle. Stop." Kate interrupted his ramble. "'Nightmare maybe?" She repeated his words back to him, studying his face. He had no trouble reading her. She was onto something. She was like a hound on a scent when she thought she was onto something. He'd always admired her for that. Able to ignore everything else around her, every hurt, every distraction, and follow the lead wherever it took her. There was tremendous strength of will in that. And it had inspired him, inspired Nikiki Heat, for years. Now though he was appalled by her tenacity, her professionalism. Appalled because he was the reason she was once again needing pushing discomfort, pain, aside to follow a lead. "Maybe? You're not sure?" She came in a little closer now, keen and poised, and he had nowhere to go to retreat with the headboard against his back.

"Well, it was unpleasant and I was asleep, I think, so yeah, a nightmare." He forced the words out.

"But you're not sure." She said with pointed intent. "Castle, if you have to think about it that hard, and try to put it together like a jigsaw puzzle, then you're not sure."

"Well, what else could it have been?" He searched her face, puzzled. Oh. "Beckett... Memory." He breathed.