Tell me that there's more,
Tell me you're worth fighting for,
You are.
Everything I know,
Everything that mattered,
You can make this easy,
Believe me.

At the perfect moment,
Just say that everything will be alright

Make me believe,
Lie if you have to,
Stay here forever,
Tell me this won't end.
Make Me believe,
Know that I need you,
Don't leave me alone here.
This doesn't have to end,
This doesn't have to end

'Make Me Believe' Tupelo Honey

Chapter Nine: For what it's worth, I tried.

It's amazing the things that you don't think through.

Like bringing him home, just having his physical presence in the loft again, the bulk and size of him, the comfort of knowing they're breathing the same air. That she can reach out and find him, expect to see him brewing coffee in the kitchen, or raiding the fridge at midnight because he's craving something sweet. All this, this day-to-day minutia she's needed, craved like a heroin fix and now he's here and . . .

He's the same man in all the intrinsic parts of his personality. The desire to please, the way he gives even when he's so far from himself. The familiar patterns of his speech, the way he drags his fingers just so through his hair. The way he sits facing the person he's talking to, deliberately moves to align himself as he's trying to explain everything that is missing, all that he doesn't know. This man who's been through hell - hell they can't really comprehend – none of them, because until his memories return they're just guessing at what's truly been done to him. He's exhausted himself today trying to be what two strangers to him have needed - and she's just let him.

And it's not - right. Because he's not . . . He's not the same. He's still her Castle and at the same time . . . He isn't.

He stands on the roof-deck of what is apparently his home - his opulent, spacious, must-have-cost-him-millions home, and he stares out into the dark and the city that surrounds him.

The city feels . . . familiar. The bustle, the energy of it is soothing when so much else that really should be is not.

Castle sighs heavily, he's alone and it's late and he knows everyone else inside is sleeping. But while he's exhausted, his mind is just restless and the open space up here, the fresh air calls out to him.

It feels so good to be in the open air again. Feels like forever and apparently it has been a while since he's been free to simply go where he pleases.

Castle leans on the parapet wall and looks over, down into the street below and around him at the lights and he wishes he could at least remember the people who are a part of his life if nothing else, but his memory is just . . . It's like a black hole to him. When he tries to call to his mind their faces, his history with them, anything beyond waking up in that horrible place little more than a week ago there's just - a blankness within. An area of his mind that feels locked, impenetrable, and pushing to enter into it leaves him with a feeling of great unease, twisting around his heart and leaving him breathless if tries too hard to go beyond it .

It scares him. This is his own mind and it scares him – and he's stuck in something like a limbo. A stranger even to himself.

It's little, what Hunt and Kate have shared with him this far, merely the barest details of his abduction - the why it happened and how long ago. And the way his body feels – abused, he understands enough to guess that he's lived through something truly awful. Something that drove him they say to do this to himself. To wipe his own mind clean of the horror, hiding away his feelings and his memories of everything and everybody in the process.

He knows intellectually what's happened to him, what a 'fugue' state is. And he swears he can feel the block inside his mind - dark and swirling like a vortex that tells him that what they say has happened to him is true. And yet despite that it's all just so damn hard to really believe.

Because how could someone hate him so much that they'd physically take him away from all that he loves, and then proceed to put him through this?

What does that say about not just them - but him?

He has so many questions and he doesn't really have a clue where to begin.

Still, he gained his freedom today, and a small part of his story has been filled in.

How he's got this beautiful, grown up, accomplished daughter who so clearly adores him. 'Alexis'. He loves her name, and how she looks at him with so much love, how she spilled it out how terribly she missed his face, his voice, his hugs, his advice. He's spent just a few hours in her company and it's been like magic to him simply being around her. He doesn't recall anything about raising her – yet he does know in both his heart and his soul that she is unquestionably his.

Then there is his mother - Castle smiles into the night just thinking about her. How flamboyant and how theatrical and how vibrantly alive a woman she is. Her hand wrapped around his fingers is something that feels completely right to him. Her smile when she looked deep into his eyes - he doesn't know her, and yet he recognizes it. The scent of her perfume is comforting – a balm, like he's known the smell of it forever and her embrace when she held him was simply the most natural place for him to be.

Next is 'Hunt' the 'friend' who found him. About the first face he remembers apart from some staff at the place he's been. Except Hunt is his really his father, well biologically. Works for the CIA, highly secretive, has no real relationship with him. Still, it was this man who found him, brought him home, dealt with his abductors. Castle knows this says far more than words about the man's feelings for him.

And then of course there's Kate. His. So very beautiful, and so deeply sad, her stunning eyes just so damn mesmerizing. Her smile is like light to him, a beacon in the darkness. He adores her and he just innately understands this. He feels it, knows that it consumes him - this love. That it's a passion he's never known before her - burning at the core of his being and he's completely terrified of it.

Something is so wrong that he feels all this for her but can't even remember the day they actually met. He knows it wasn't yesterday because he already knows every curve, every expression, and every plane of her lovely face. If he closes his eyes then he sees her body, how it curves and molds to his. He knows without touching more than her hand how strong and yet how fragile she always feels beneath his fingertips. She is fantasy made flesh, dream made reality; he knows that he knows her intimately - that he loves her beyond all reason and yet their history is nothing but darkness to him.

And darkness, anxiety, fears, they color everything when he thinks about her, when he scrapes and pushes and scours his mind for the places where she should exist.

He feels both pulled toward, bound to her, and yet like there is a distance, a chasm between them that he's both created and most desperately needs.

And he's so completely and utterly confused by it.

He's learned that he's known her for almost six years and that they've been together as a couple for two. He's also noticed photographs of the pair of them scattered around the loft, happy looking, smiling, so clearly and blatantly in-love. He wants to be that man again, for her, for himself, for his mother and Alexis and yet this darkness, this blank area in his mind seems to whisper mockingly of nothing but 'impossibilities'.

Castle wraps his palms around the rough-hewn stone edge of the parapet, looking up now, at the night-sky – little more than a wash of light pollution really above him, and he wishes there wasn't so much discord within him. Her voice, when it comes is soft and hesitant and it startles him.

"Castle?"

He doesn't turn from the wall, just looks over his shoulder to find her about ten feet away behind him.

"Hey," he replies quietly, his heart rate climbing as he tries to ignore the endless length of her long legs clad as they are in sleep shorts, the wave of carnal desire is sudden and sweeps through him. He pushes it back down fiercely. Immediately. Squashes it almost, somehow that feels necessary even as he supposes its silly. She's his fiancée after all and so he's certainly allowed to feel it.

Kate steps closer, comes to lean on the ledge of the wall beside him. Looking up into his face he can feel the concern radiating from her, her dark eyes are deep pools of it.

"I guess you can't sleep," she states quietly, before she starts apologizing. "I'm sorry. Today was too much wasn't it, I should have respected your feelings better when you said you weren't really ready for it."

She looks so worried and guilty and he knows he hates to see it, hates to be the cause of it.

"I'm fine," he tries to reassure her. "My mind is just trying to absorb – that's all. Today was amazing actually, in a lot of ways. Really - only a little overwhelming." He smiles deliberately, hiding his inner confusion from her. There's nothing to be done but try and work through it anyway - to learn all the answers to every question that awaits.

She smiles shyly in response, "You were amazing," she whispers to him. "Really, Rick. It was you, seeing you with Alexis and your mother, watching how open and giving you were with them. I wish I could explain to you how much of who you truly are I saw today. Even without any memories."

He nods in reply, looks past her out into the city thoughtfully. "Am I a good man?" He murmurs - a question to her obviously but it's spoken like he's really wondering.

"The best," she answers passionately, her small hand reaching for him and cupping his elbow, tugging on it until he looks at her. In his face she must read clearly at least one of his thousands of questions, because before he can say anything else - she's answering it.

"The people who abducted you, Castle, their names were Jerry Tyson and Kelly Neiman. He was a dangerous and psychotic serial killer; she was a gifted plastic surgeon. The things they've done, the people they've killed, it's a miracle that you survived this. But there is nothing you've ever done to warrant their behavior - nothing but try and stop them."

He nods, face still thoughtful and cast in shadows. He hears her belief in what she's saying, but it settles nothing inside of him.

"So what happens now?" He asks.

"We pick up the pieces of our life together," she answers. "Castle, there's someone I want you to see. Someone I'm certain can help you - help us. He's a doctor."

Castle raises an eyebrow but blanks his face, his expression becomes unreadable although she knows he must be expecting her to say this.

"You mean a psychiatrist," he says.

Kate nods.

"Mine," she tells him evenly, her tired face neutral and her eyes careful.

He finds he's surprised to think of her talking to a shrink, until he thinks further about how long he's been missing. How much she must have gone through for all those months of searching and not knowing what had become of him.

"You've been seeing someone?" He clarifies.

"For a long while on and off," she confirms. "Originally department mandated after my shooting, but then dealing with PTSD and then more recently for support after your abduction."

She says it quietly and so matter-of-factly but all he really hears is the word 'shooting', before it hits him. His vision tunnels and then they flash behind his eyes. Images quick and cascading. Feelings rise up inside him, despair, agony, hopelessness, loss. He feels blood slick and hot, sticky on his fingers, sees bright green grass, cloudless blue skies, Kate's eyes closing in slow-motion right in front of him.

He stumbles away from her blinking. His legs have gone rubbery, he's so disorientated. He has no idea in the moment if he's standing still or if he's still moving. No idea what's happening.

"Rick?" She calls his name and it's like he's hearing it underwater. It's garbled, muffled and feels like it's far away. It barely reaches him.

"Rick. Castle . . . Answer me."

Is she speaking to him?

"CASTLE." Her voice is so distant but like a shout now. A loud and desperate plea and his lungs heave for air as if he's drowning. He barely registers her body slamming into him, until her arms wind tightly, desperately around him.

"Castle . . . Castle. Please."

Fingers against his face, her breath against his neck, warm humid puffs of air. Somehow he hears her heart pounding. Hard and rhythmic, strong and fierce and it's the sound of it, constant, fast, real and hers that finally grounds him. His vision clears and the flashing images dissipate. Swallowing, Castle realizes his mouth is bone-dry and then he understands just how hard he has been gasping.

His hands find her waist, they anchor her to him, and he just holds on until he feels his breathing beginning to even. Once he feels like he's back in control of his body, he looks down at the top of her head - a sight that doesn't seem foreign to him. He pushes her back then. Eases her slightly away from him, just enough so that he can see into her face and there he sees horrified eyes looking back.

"What just happened?" Is her agonized question, "Rick, what was that?"

He stares at her open-mouthed, there are pictures in his mind that are new to him.

"I think," he mumbles, "I think I just remembered something."