A/N: Contains spoilers for Driven! I cannot express how happy I am it's back! Post-episodic-Tuesday-Castle-hangover hugs all round.
"And I just wanna love you
Don't wanna lose me
Don't wanna lose you, oh
If it gets harder
Then I don't wanna break all alone
I wanna break in your arms"
He sleeps before she does.
It overtakes him quickly with quiet, apologetic yawns that make her lips lift - the closest thing to a smile that has graced her face in the longest time.
He beckons her back to the bed with him, holds out his hand and then drops it and instead draws back the covers, waiting. When she unties her robe he does the same, sitting on the edge of the bed, movements slow as if not to startle her.
She clicks off the light and sits down, swinging her knees up and wrapping her arms around them as he gets comfortable.
He settles against the pillows, smiling, though not as widely as before, patting the space at his side. She goes, rolling slowly, letting him take her hand as they crawl into bed and lie face to face.
He curls her fingers inside his palm, envelops her wrist, bringing her knuckles to his lips. She doesn't speak as he kisses her hand, doesn't shrug or pull away, but she doesn't reach out to pull him closer either.
He must realize, but he doesn't question it. Instead, he breathes slowly and his eyes rove her face, though not with the intensity she expected. For him, perhaps, it has only been a short time and if yesterday was, to him, the last time he looked at her, then a soft smile and tender love is all that should flood his expression.
But for her it's been months. And she's been ... driven!
Laying here in the bed feels wrong somehow when previous nights she fought through sleeplessness to keep her eyes wide and her mind sharp. To find him!
Now her efforts feel almost wasted, useless. She accomplished nothing.
Yet she cannot bring herself to think of it that way. Searching for him and reclaiming what they had could never be that for her. When doubt crept in, when darkness took the last of the light she clung to, her drive and her search kept her together. Kept her human. Kept her alive.
His eyes close and reopen and the time between each blink is gradually getting longer, the pull of his fingers over her skin becoming slower. Her presence seems to soothe him, she wishes his did the same for her.
She imagined so many scenarios, but never this. Finding him dead, not finding him at all, another decade spent in a desperate search for answers and justice for the loss of someone she loved? Yes, she pictured the worse case scenarios. But she also clung to the idea of a reunion, to the ache in her being turned towards passion and relief and the beginning of hunt that would culminate in bringing him home.
She didn't expect this!
He doesn't remember. His questions are her questions and neither one of them have the answers they so desperately crave. She's edgy below the surface, worried, frightened even of the things she's yet to discover. For the truth that will be unearthed about the man she's in love with, willing to give up her life for. Willing to kill for.
She's frightened more so for that fact she's not sure there's a truth out there she'll discover that could stop her loving him. It's relief too, in that knowledge, that no matter what else happens between them she has that, that thread of belief still burning inside her, even if she finds it hard to place right now. It's still there. Somewhere.
They don't speak and the silence takes him under. As soon as he drifts off, deep enough that she doesn't disturb him, Kate pulls her hand back, tucks it under her chin and stares.
She stares for a long time.
She stares long after his eyes are closed and his breathing even. Long after the deepest dark of night takes the room, longer still, until a gentle snore rumbles out into the bedroom, rattling nothing but her internal foundations.
He looks the same.
In the dark of the room that she's found it hard to settle in for months, she maps the shadows and learns the new lines of his face. She sighs and follows the fall of darkness over his sunburned cheeks and wonders where he's been.
How does he not remember?
Her arm lifts, her fingers hover but don't touch. She wants so badly to reach out, stroke his face, take his hand, feel the beat of his heart beneath her palm, but something inside just can't quite seem to bridge that sorrowful distance.
Not yet.
She tried so hard to hold herself back from him, as he apologized, as he fought through his own confusion to make it better for her, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't bear to be apart from him any longer and as soon as they had touched the tears had come.
But now she doesn't want more tears, not while he sleeps at her side and not every time she reaches for him. There have been enough tears to last a lifetime, now she just wants answers.
She deserves them! They both do!
Tomorrow won't be any easier and she should sleep, but there's a small part of her that half expects him not to be there when she opens her eyes. He's back but not at her doing, not with her help, and the unknown possibilities that fester in that knowledge are almost worse than him not being here at all.
She can't lose him again.
How does she know he'll be here when she opens her eyes?
Not bridging the distance between them leaves her cold, not laying down at his side and finding peace when it's all she's wanted for months makes her chest feel like a raw and open cavity.
She's not sure if she can stand it, or if she'll survive any of it, again.
But if she falls asleep she faces the prospect of waking up and finding it's all been one hellish nightmare. It's not like she hasn't been there before.
In the beginning she would throw herself upright and scan the room. Her heart would pound and her skin would be cold with clammy sweat, the whisper of his half-remembered caress attempting to warm her skin.
Not anymore.
She's woken herself time and again with the harsh bite of his name tripping over her tongue in desperation. Seeking him out, arms reaching, throat aching from her silent scream.
Not anymore.
She's toppled from the sheets, landing roughly on the hardwood floorboards, fingers aching from their frantic search of the bed. Empty handed, more than once she's roamed the loft in the pre-dawn hours, room to room, expecting to see him curled up in his office chair or pottering about in the kitchen.
Now she doesn't wake gasping or searching or frantic, the loss is already there, prevalent under her skin, wired in her veins - a mainline straight to her heart.
She thought she'd never see him again. She'd started to believe it, and she misses the nightmares that used to wake her, wanting, agonized, full of fear and longing, because they were better than waking to silence and cold dread thinking that he was gone for good.
She thought she'd never see him again.
But tonight could be different. If she allows herself sleep, tonight could be different.
She could try.
She could sleep and in the morning open her eyes and find him there. Maybe find hope in daylight, find it and keep it and let it settle in the way his words have, the way they still do.
Sleep will come, if she allows it, but not yet.
For now she watches and waits and clings to that tiny thread of belief she has in him, the one stretched tight and so very near snapping, but still there after all this time.
She clings to the love that kept her motivated, the love she sees in the confused misty swirl of his blue eyes. The love she feels swelling up, like a tide to the shore, a river to the dam.
It's still there. And soon enough the dam will break and sleep will come, but not yet.
For now she'll quieten the questions that mill about in her head with the sound of his breathing. She'll force herself to be content in watching the rise and fall of his chest, and leave the rest for another day.
He's home. Castle's home.
Her heart aches but at least it's in one piece. Facing the questions with him is better than facing a lifetime without him and it's hard to put aside the force that possessed her in her search, to allow her body to relax, but she shuffles closer, drops her head to his pillow and waits until they breathe in time.
Her eyes get heavy but she fights it, shaky fingers moving against her will, finally flaring out to rest over his hand. She dips one fingertip to the heat of his wrist, touches his pulse and closes her eyes.
For many nights his words have been the silent echo that lit the dark. Tonight will be no different. She drops her head to his shoulder and feels the warmth of his body crest her skin, permeate and dissolve the last of her iron grip on wakefulness.
She has questions, but below them, underneath everything she still has her belief. In him, in them.
It hurts. It's hard. But they'll get there.
They'll find their way home.