Castle, Beckett, and their story are not my own. I'm just having a little fun with the parts of it we don't get to see on TV. Any mistakes/misrepresentations are entirely my fault.
He holds her that night, in the quiet of their bedroom, and revels in the way he finally feels complete. He has no memories of the two months he was missing – but that is not quite true. He has no words, no pictures, but he has feelings. Feelings that lurk at the grey-black edges of his conscious mind. And they are what let him tell Kate with complete confidence that he missed her those two months that he was away. They tell him that the companion of the completeness he feels now is the hollowness in his half-formed memories. For the second time in his life, he is afraid to even get close to a memory. Better by far to bury his nose in the sweet smell of her hair. Finally, Kate is in his arms. It is his last coherent thought before he falls asleep.
They do not awaken at night, though they cry in their sleep. Their unconscious embrace is enough comfort to them both. As usual, Kate wakes at six, long before the alarm she had set for seven thirty. She is wrapped completely around Castle, lying half atop him, head pillowed on his chest, legs entwined with his, his arms holding her tight. She cannot help blinking back fresh tears, even as she smiles. She makes no move to shift away. Instead, she begins to play with the neck of his t-shirt, stroking the elastic and cotton. She finds herself moving her hand lower to smooth the soft fabric over his chest and abdomen. She accidentally brushes over his nipple, then holds her breath when he moans softly. She risks a glance towards his face, and finds him still fast asleep. The pressure of his hands on her back hasn't changed, so she assumes that he isn't faking. She sighs and settles against him. With everything he – they – have gone through, she knows that he probably isn't ready yet to be intimate. Heck, she isn't even sure she is. Her mind and heart, that is. Her body is telling her to just go ahead and screw the consequences. But of course, she doesn't.
When he wakes, she is no longer in bed. He hears first her voice, then Alexis', and then the rattle of some utensils. He slumps back in bed for a second. He'd been having a terrible dream, where the shadows at the edges of his memories had started to come towards him, acquiring strange shapes. But somewhere within it, he vaguely remembers a warm hand soothing his fear, and knows that that was her presence. The memory of her warmth is what gives him the courage to rise and face this new morning.
He tries to be quiet as he enters the main space of his loft. For a moment, he feels almost like an outsider. Kate and Alexis are chatting easily about her college life, his daughter manning the stove while Kate cleans strawberries. He is struck all of a sudden by how tall Alexis has grown. The two months he was away suddenly seem real to him in a way they have not before now. His family has been changing while he was gone. There is a true warmth between Kate and his daughter that was not there before he left. They are no longer making an effort for his sake. What else has he missed? Suddenly he is no longer sure whether he has the right to intrude upon their privacy. Which is absurd, some part of him acknowledges. They would be the first ones to say so.
As he stands there, indecisive, Martha comes up to him, pats him gently on the shoulder. "Alexis was the only one who could convince Kate to take a break from looking for you, while you were gone. When they found your car burning, Alexis saw her trying to run into the wreckage to find you among the flames. I think that she understood then, for the first time, just how much Katherine loves you. She saw how Katherine refused to give up, even when everyone else told her that you were a lost cause. In the beginning Alexis talked to her just to figure out if they had found anything about you, but eventually they began to talk longer and longer, I think because it was a way to hold on to the man they both loved. And then, well, affection was inevitable, I think." Castle just blinks at her through her long, whispered speech, aware of the terrible pain his family had gone through, and unsure what his response should be. "They are both remarkable women," Martha finally states. "As are you, mother, as are you," he tells her, and draws her into a hug.
