A/N: I don't know what this is. Thank you, Sandra, for the beta.
She wakes to the twisted knot of barbed wire in her stomach. The remnants of the nightmare fisting tight around her heart, tangled tentacles of terror in the roll of her gut.
Cross hairs and blood. Iron and desperation.
She can smell it, thick, sticky sweet, and clinging to the hairs in her nostrils.
She can't breathe.
Skin clammy, hot to the touch but drenched in cold sweat and the whole world closing in around her, the gasping roll of her own breath drags her up from the sheets. Fingers knot in the shirt at her back and she startles.
He stayed. She asked him to stay and he stayed.
She doesn't - can't - remember much. Alcohol and panic blur the edge of her memory. Him at her door, and the gun in her hand, late night tears and - he stayed?
"Beckett?"
He stayed.
What she fights to focus on loses all meaning. Panic sets in. Walls close around her. Tight. Constricting. She needs to go, to get up, to run, to move, to -
"Beckett?" His voice startles yet again, but he doesn't sound like he's been asleep. Not important. She needs to move. "Kate, breathe."
She can't, can't stay. The sheet flies back, white like a ghost across her bedroom. The ghost of her mistakes haunting her, her failures fluttering to the floor at the end of her bed.
Her hand flies to her chest. Her heart banging for freedom against the bars of her ribs, prisoner. It wants out. She wants out.
She stumbles, lands heavily back on the bed and Castle is there.
Castle stayed.
She's not aware of her body, none of it connecting. Noises too loud and too close and her limbs completely disjointed.
Nothing connects. Nothing.
Her heart thumps and Castle is here?
Shadows move, lurk like the demons in her head. Whisper, whisper until the voice becomes familiar, the movement slow and non threatening.
Castle?
"I'm here."
Where?
Her eyes dart, frantic, find movement and his shape suddenly so close, familiar. His smell over the burn of gunpowder. She finds his face, searches his eyes, seeing nothing. Nothing. It's him but nothing. His lips move and words she can't hear, can't focus on, escape.
"Wh-what?"
Her voice sounds wrong. Not hers. Broken.
" - gonna push down and you breathe with me, OK?"
"What?"
He drops to his knees in front of her, segments of his speech coming through. His eyes wide and his palms up and him lower now than she is, no threat. Castle has never been a threat.
She repeats it. Feels it sink in, no question. He would never hurt her. But she might hurt him.
Her nails bite into her palms and she focuses on that, on the pain. No fight or flight. Just - just her hands. Cold fingers. Sharp nails and the burn of pain in her palms.
He touches her feet and she startles again, eyes wide and dropping to the contact, the connection.
The entirety of his hand spans her foot, heat searing, his thumb lands at her arch. He pushes down so her soles fall flat, hard against the wooden floor of her bedroom.
Grounding.
"Breathe with me, Kate."
Kate?
She concentrates on her toes, on her fingers, on the tips and endings of extremities she can feel still connecting to her body. Not whole but it's a start. One puzzle, and the pieces still together.
Her eyes find his, search the blue and endless oceans of emotion trapped within. She wallows, sinks in, lets it wash right over her, and when his shoulders slump on a long exhale hers do too.
She breathes with him.
She shakes, but the breath comes. The breath comes.
Castle inhales and presses her toes, thumb and finger trapping each one in a tight pinch of pressure before releasing. She concentrates on each one, allowing her focus to narrow to each digit for the length of time he holds it in his grasp.
She keeps time, breathes with him, bonded to the rise and fall of his chest, and slowly, painfully slowly, the tightening in her own slips away.
As the panic dies down she shakes harder.
Cold.
Relieved.
Her body aches with tension that ebbs, melts into the furthest, deepest cells, back into nothing. Her muscles cramp and her feet, before numb and unattached, now burn as feeling surges back.
He rubs, slow heat into limbs too painful to move herself.
She hurts all over. But her breath comes.
"Good," he moves and - "I'm not letting go." He tells her before she can panic. "Good, slow breaths and when you tell me to, I'll get you a blanket, because your teeth are chattering real loud, Beckett."
He smiles, presses slowly at the arch of her foot, keeps her grounded and calm.
"Don't want you to bite your tongue."
She shakes her head, can't speak just yet but her fingers release the sheets and her hands fall into her lap. The bandage on her wrist scratches her palm and she becomes aware of the burn beneath.
She must have caught it again. Opened it up.
"When you're warm I'll get you another one."
Her eyes lift from her hands, her lap, to his. Questioning. Wondering how he always knows.
"I'm cold."
Her teeth chatter the words, dangerously close to splitting her tongue in half, but she gets them out and almost immediately a blanket curls around her shoulders.
It helps. It makes it worse. She shakes as her body comes down, her entire being jumping with adrenalin. Misspent and inescapable.
He rubs her shoulders and squeezes. Heat and feeling. Time and place. Humanity. All of it seeping back into her.
"Y- you stayed?"
"You asked."
He shrugs. Like it's that simple. Kate twists to question only to find her words stolen, swallowed up in the depths of his eyes. His face is washed clean of humour, of anything other than honesty. It is that simple.
"Is it too soon to -?"
"Nightmare," she rasps unable to look away as his eyes drop to her hand, coiling in her shirt. The scar they both know lingers beneath. "I'm so cold."
"We could -" he stops when her eyes flare with panic at the mere thought of climbing back into bed. He clears his throat, "- sit up for a bit?
She breathes again, slow, nodding. "I need -"
He frowns, already knowing. "Decaf for you for a while, 'k?"
She huffs a laugh, surprising herself when it escapes, watery. He paints his face with a smile in return but it hides nothing. Far too much for show given all they've seen of each other.
She touches his face. She doesn't mean to kiss him, not like this. But it's the only thing that makes sense.
It's that simple.