Kate Beckett is broken.
Castle studies his wife's face, framed on the blue-white pillow by the uneven, mahogany spikes that remain of her shorn curls. His vision blurs, and he looks at her hands, focusing on the curve of each manicured fingernail until he can swallow down the tears.
Her body is battered, abused in every way a person, and a woman, could be. Three days with those monsters. His heart hiccoughs over a run of uneven beats. He inhales, cautiously lets out the air, waiting for the adrenaline to retreat.
The skin of her face swells more with every hour, fissured and red, jaw mottled purple, lips ballooned and weeping from jagged splits in the shiny, stretched flesh.
After almost a day, her eyes remain closed, her story, a mystery.
Castle's breath catches at the thought of knowing. Scans and doctors have told him enough, maybe too much.
When Esposito taps on the door to her hospital room and motions for Castle to join him in the hall, his grip will not release. All five fingers are numb from the past seventeen hours spent clutching that pale, limp remnant of his wife. Her left arm and hand, with his platinum band circling one finger, appear untouched, while the rest of her is in ruins.
The burn of blood returning to those digits sends him back to the only time Castle has let go of her hand since he found her in that hole. That hour replays behind his eyelids. The doctors need to examine her, run tests, so he stumbles into the nearest restroom and empties his stomach inside the first stall. He heaves into that toilet until his shaking arms can no longer hold him upright, then he sinks to the grimy tile floor, feeling only the tepid linoleum under his cheek and the cool stripes of tears painting sideways over the bridge of his nose. Eventually he washes his face, clenches his jaw, and returns to her.
That is the last time he has pictured the how. There is no time to entertain disgust, or the icy tendrils of self-loathing because he should have seen it coming. There is only the woman he loves, and finding ways to help her get through this, survive, once she finally wakes.
But now, he uses his other hand to pry his fingers from hers, stands on feet that spark with the pins and needles of disuse, and leaves his eyes on the motionless form under the crisp white sheet.
Esposito interrupts his view when he pulls the door shut, forcing Castle to blink, stretch the aching cords of muscle in his neck to face the stone-faced detective.
Licking thick, parched lips, Castle clears his throat and speaks his first words in hours.
"Did you find them?"
The syllables come out cracked and gruff, disjointed, like the rest of him, draw an answering shake of Esposito's head.
"No."
That single syllable pokes another hole in the thin shell of his control. Castle's eyes flick to the window, stare at the closed blinds as if to conjure her through them. His lids scrape shut on the image of her, small and weak in that bed. His insides clench in shame; he cannot even picture her as she is now without a sinking weight filling his chest.
Kate is his light.
Fisting his hands, his nails dig into the meat of his palms, and he opens his eyes.
"Then why am I out here?"
The other man straightens, leaning in until Castle can see his own distorted reflection in his eyes.
"It's not her."
Something inside Castle splits open.
"What?"
Esposito's eyelid twitches before he rasps out confirmation.
"The woman in that bed is not Kate Beckett."
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