In the beginning of Kate and Lily's week long stay at the loft, both Alexis and Kate are hesitant to leave him alone, both on the verge of taking the entire week off from their respective jobs. But he already feels like a burden enough as it is, has disrupted their lives enough in the last six years to last a lifetime; he isn't going to ruin their careers too.
He convinces Alexis first.
He's already awake after another night of strange dreams he can barely remember, waiting for her with a cup of coffee when she comes downstairs dressed in a pantsuit and uncertainty at six a.m.
"I can take another few days," she reasons, her fingers clenching around the messenger bag strapped across her chest. But he can tell she wants to go, that she's tackled this job like she has everything else in her life, with passion and loyalty.
His daughter is making a difference, helping families like theirs, and who is he to keep her from that?
Rick practically pushes her to the door.
"I'll be fine, Pumpkin." He gives her a kiss on the head and promises her that he'll be okay, that he won't leave the loft alone, won't disappear again. "I'll be here when you get back."
She stares up at him, looking so grown up with her short hair and fitted blazer, yet still so young in her struggle to leave him. So Castle wraps his arms around her, hugs her tights against his chest and props his chin atop her head.
Alexis huddles into him, presses her cheek to his shoulder, and sighs. In that moment, it's like she's the teenager he feels he just left, not yet so mature and marred by his disappearance and all that has come with it.
"I'll see you after work, Dad," she decides, pulling back from his embrace with a soft smile.
He squeezes her shoulders, letting her step back to pull open the front door. He shoots her an encouraging smile as she drifts into the hall, and reluctant as she is, it's enough to send her on her way.
Kate is a lot harder to sway, which Alexis probably knew all along.
She's joining him in the kitchen minutes after Alexis's departure, a knowing look already etched into her features. But she says nothing, lets him make her coffee like he used to while she prepares what he's learning is Lily's usual breakfast of cereal and fruit.
He learns that morning that their daughter isn't as much of an early riser like Alexis was as a child. Accompanying Kate upstairs just before seven, he watches with some amusement at the effort Kate puts forth to wake her.
"See, this is why you have a bedtime," she huffs, pulling back the covers despite Lily's whine of disapproval. "Come on, Peanut. You want to be late for school?"
She does possess the same enthusiasm for learning that Alexis always did, the same excitement for school every morning. The mention of it has her rubbing at her eyes, yawning away the remnants of sleep while she crawls out of bed.
After she's gone to the bathroom and changed into her school clothes, Lily proves to be her usual chatty self. She sits at the bar, her legs swinging from the stool while she talks to him over breakfast, telling him all about the book they're reading in class and how impatient she is to get to the next chapter because she reads faster than everyone else.
He listens intently, the pride simmering through his chest, and wonders if Alexis has already donated all of her old childhood favorites to her younger sister, or if Lily has yet to discover magical worlds of Narnia and Hogwarts. He stores away the reminder to ask later.
Once her cereal bowl is empty and she's sipping the last of the orange juice from her glass, Lily looks to him with hopeful eyes. "Can you come with us to drop me off?"
He glances to Kate, rinsing dishes in the sink. But she merely arches an eyebrow, leaving the decision up to him.
At least it's an easy one to make.
"Sure," he smiles, his heart swelling when Lily beams in approval.
He may not necessarily feel like a real dad to her yet, still needing the chance to put in the time, but Lily wants him to come with her and Kate wherever they go, wants his company. And it means everything to him.
The drive to Lily's school in Tribeca is brief. Kate drives through traffic with the same skill he remembers and they arrive in front of the elementary school with plenty of time to spare. Apparently Lily likes to be early, since she wastes no time unbuckling herself from the car seat.
"You're sure you have everything?" Kate asks out of what sounds like habit.
"Yep!" Lily slips her arms through her backpack and stretches from the backseat to press a kiss to Kate's cheek. He perks up with surprise when she shows him the same courtesy, pecking a quick kiss to his as well.
"You promise you'll still be here when I come back?" she questions seriously, narrowing her gaze on him in a move he swears she picked up from Kate's interrogation tactics.
Castle meets his daughter's seeking brown eyes with a sincerity he hopes she'll be able to read.
"I promise."
Lily studies him for a moment before she finally nods in approval. "Okay, see you both after school. Love you!"
"Love you too," Kate replies with ease while Lily opens the car door, glancing to Castle expectantly, but he doesn't realize the words are for him as well.
"Love you too," he rushes out before Lily can slam the door closed and skip off to school, waving to them as she blends into the congregation of kids.
They watch for a long moment, their daughter's vibrant purple backpack like a beacon amidst the crowd. Once she disappears with a cluster of her classmates through the school's front doors, he feels Kate's eyes fall on him.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, just… it feels wrong to leave her here," he admits, spreading his hands out atop his jean clad thighs. When he tears his gaze away from the elementary school, he sees he's earned the inquisitive tilt of her head. "I mean, I just found her. Or well, she found me. And I - it's like her first day of school."
He catches the flicker of realization in her eyes as Kate nods her understanding. She orientates her body towards him in the small space of the front seat while they're still parked, has that look on her face he recognizes from the times she's told him pieces of her past. Like she's about to share a secret with him.
"On her very first day of preschool, I took the entire day off," she reveals. "I parked my cruiser not far from the playground, stayed for the few hours until it was time to go in and pick her up."
His heart swells, mourns, aching with the longing to go back in time. To be sitting in the car beside her then like he is now.
The smile laces along the edges of her lips, soft and reminiscent. "I did the same thing when she started kindergarten, but cut it down to just the morning for this year."
"And you made fun of me for hiding in the bushes on Alexis's first day," he huffs, relishing the gentle sound of her laughter.
"You want to spend the day hiding in the bushes, Castle?" she teases, but he has a feeling that if he asked her to, she would find a better place to park and camp out here with him.
He sighs, tempted, but shakes his head. "It's just a few hours until it'll be time to pick her up, right?"
She reaches across the space between them to curve a palm over his knee - just a show of sympathy, he reminds himself, even as her thumb strokes his patella - and offers him a gentle lift of her lips.
"Right. And she'll be thrilled when we're both here waiting for her."
He glances back to the school, probably already in session by now, and thinks about the little girl inside, her prevailing attachment to him. "Yeah?"
Kate squeezes his knee. "I'm sure you've noticed, but Lily is already extremely comfortable around you. If she wasn't, trust me, you'd know."
"She is quite vocal," he concedes, internally delighted when Kate's smile grows, pride surfacing in her gaze.
"Exactly. So you're doing fine, just keep letting her lead," she shrugs, withdrawing her hand and readjusting in her seat. She shifts the cruiser into 'drive' and he drops his hand to his knee, covers the spot where the permeating warmth of her palm lingers, trying to trap it there.
Castle sits back in the passenger seat, relaxes a little, but can't help glancing back to Kate as she pulls into morning traffic.
"You really think that 'love you' was for me too?" he asks quietly, watching as the corner of her mouth curls slight and lovely.
"Yes," she murmurs. "She would have added 'Momma' to the end if it wasn't."
The soft thrill of her confirmation flutters through his chest and Castle smiles, lets this moment of joy consume his entire being, relishing in the knowledge of his daughter loving him.
Despite his absence in her life.
"Where are we going?" Castle inquires once they return to SoHo after dropping Lily off at school.
"Back to the loft?" she answers with a confused crease tugging down her brow when he huffs in what sounds like disappointment. "Where did you think we were going?"
"The precinct?" he mumbles, sliding hopeful eyes towards her still, but she shoots an incredulous glance his way.
"Castle, I took the week off."
"The entire week? Beckett, you can't do that. We've talked about this, the city needs you. You're like Batman," he reminds her, but she merely rolls her eyes at the comparison. "And I want to go back to the Twelfth too. It… hasn't changed too much, has it?"
"No," she assures him, easing her foot onto the brake as the traffic light turns red. "Luckily, that's one thing that never seems to change too much."
Beside her, his chest expands with visible relief.
"I was thinking that we could use this time to figure some things out," she adds, flexing her fingers around the steering wheel. They have six years' worth of things to figure out and has no idea where to even start.
"Oh, yeah, of course." He nods, but still gazes over at her with pursed lips and imploring eyes. "Can we at least go for a visit sometime soon?"
"Sure," she gives in on a sigh, pressing down on the gas pedal, ignoring the spread of Castle's grin in victory. "But for now, we're going back to the loft."
"What if we stayed out for just a little while longer?" he counters, his brow quirking with the suggestion. "It's a nice morning and we could just go for a walk."
Kate gnaws on her bottom lip, knowing in her gut that it's a bad idea. She obviously doesn't know where he was kept, how much human interaction he was allowed, but he's spent so little time outside the safety of the loft, the hospital, that she's afraid to risk doing anything detrimental to his recovery.
Though… he seems okay now, in the car with her and the buzzing life of the city around them. He didn't show any signs of panic last night during the brief drive to her apartment, and Alexis never reported any issues on his transfer from the hospital to the loft either. Maybe exposure to the outside world could be good for him, healthy, what he needs.
It's what he wants at least and she can already give him so little of that.
All she really wants is to see that hopeful half smile on his lips blossom into something full and beautiful. The kind of smile she has so dearly missed and still not seen.
"Okay," she decides as the loft comes into view, parking her car along the sidewalk and unbuckling her seatbelt. "We can walk around for a bit, maybe go to the nearest park."
The if you can handle it remains unsaid between them, but he doesn't seem to mind.
He's too busy doing his best to contain his enthusiasm, to keep his expression neutral and calm. But his eyes never fail to give him away to her, clear and blue like the brightening morning sky above, rays of sunlight shimmering through his irises. She smiles at him despite herself.
"What?" he chuckles, some of that excitement swirling with curiosity in his gaze. Kate shakes her head, but doesn't try to wipe the smile from her lips.
"Nothing, I've just… missed looking at you," she confesses gracelessly, preparing for the onslaught of gloating. But it's not delight or arrogance that overpowers the question in his gaze.
Castle stares back at her for a long moment, a hint of wonder there, and curls his hand into a loose fist atop his thigh. An action she recognizes from times he's needed to refrain from touching her.
Her heart sinks.
"I'd give anything to have the last six years back," he murmurs, reading her mind without trying. "To have been able to spend them like this, seeing you."
Shit, she didn't expect him to reel her heart up into her throat and damn near make her cry. But she takes a deep breath through her nose, keeps any potential tears at bay, and hooks her fingers around the handle of the door.
"Then just never leave my sight again."
Initially, Castle sticks close to her on the sidewalk out of habit, and then out of necessity, trying to avoid the flow of pedestrians. But soon it's more than that and he's doing his best not to wince at the cacophony of noises coming from every direction.
He's been outside since his return; he hardly noticed the surrounding sights and sounds on the ride home when he was released from the hospital. No, he was calm and unbothered while settled inside the tinted vehicle with his mother and daughters. Similar to how the blanket of darkness and the distraction of Kate and Lily held all of his attention last night, again this morning on the drive to school.
He's been fine each time. No bubbling sense of panic, no uncomfortable flutter in his chest or ringing in his ears or through his skull. But now, outside on the streets in the sea of bodies, exposed to the unmuted screams of sound coming all around, he feels as if he's on the verge of short-circuiting.
"Castle?" Kate's voice breaches the whirlwind of sensory overload. Her arm eases through his and tugs him gently off to the side, leading him only a few steps farther before drawing him out of the human traffic. When he risks a glance, he sees they're tucked into an alley between a soul-cycling center and a coffee shop. "Hey, Castle, look at me."
He huddles against the building's side, turning his back to the sidewalks and feeling Kate circling around to stand in front of him. Her hands drape at his biceps, but he can't tear his eyes away from his shoes, the dirty ground beneath.
"Rick," she says, pushing in closer. The toes of her ballet flats appear between his, the heat of her body radiating warmth that helps with the hollow ache pulsing through his chest. "It's okay, we're going to go home."
"I can't," he chokes out, the two simple syllables so tangled, he isn't sure if she's able to make them out or not. "I can't do this, Kate." And he doesn't even understand why, what's wrong, only that it's too much, that he can't think. He can barely even focus on her. "I can't do it-"
"Shh, hey, yes you can," she murmurs, one of her hands descending to the side of his throat. Her fingers layer over his frenzied pulse point, her thumb brushing the taut skin below his jaw. "It's just a short walk back to the car, a couple of minutes tops. You're going to make it back with me so we can go home."
He tries to manage a sound of approval, but it just comes out as another keening noise that has Kate lifting her other hand to cradle his cheek.
"Castle, listen to me," she whispers. He jerkily lifts his hands to her waist, clutches the sides of her jacket so hard his fingers ache. "You're the strongest person I know. You always have been and I'm so grateful for it."
"Not," he rasps out, because there's no way that's true. But Kate is insistent, squeezes lightly at his neck.
"Yes, you are. How many times have you done the unthinkable to save my life?" she demands, her voice firm yet somehow soft against his overworked senses. "You helped me solve my mom's murder, you saved Alexis when she was kidnapped and taken to Paris, you've survived the last six years."
He squeezes his eyes shut at the onslaught of memories kept, the throb of those still trying to reemerge. But all he can ever see when anyone mentions his disappearance is a dark room, a dim light, the cold seeping into his skin any time he envisions the space.
Not much of a lead, hardly a memory at all.
"That's how you made it, Castle," she breathes, migrating her hands to the back of his skull, threading her fingers through his hair and scratching soothingly at his scalp, cradling his head. Making him feel safe. "How you came back to me."
He attempts a shallow breath, forces his eyes open and upwards, forces himself to look at her. Kate cups his face in her hands, stares back at him.
And then her gaze drifts down to his mouth.
And for a split second, his damn near panic attack, the trauma he's having a hard time controlling, doesn't even matter, because all he can think is that Kate Beckett is about to kiss him.
But then her eyes are sliding back to his, her hands slipping down to his chest. One of her palms splays over his heart, and she doesn't kiss him, but she leans in to touch her forehead to his, offering them both a moment of reprieve. The peace the simple gesture brings him in the midst of his barely subsided madness is almost just as good.
Almost.
Kate tells him to pick out a movie when they return to the loft, hoping he'll find something that will take his mind off of what had happened on the sidewalk, eliminate the slump in his shoulders and the frown carved into his lips. Because she doesn't think she can bear the sullen look on his face, the shame in his eyes, for much longer.
She gives him excess time, acting on the idea of making popcorn, adding M&M's to the bowl, just the way he's always liked. But when he fails to emerge from his office minutes later, she abandons the snack on the kitchen counter.
"Castle?" she calls from the living room.
The silence has panic forming in her chest, spreading like a virus through her system in seconds. The worst case scenarios swirl through her mind in the few steps it takes to reach the wall of books - another kidnapping, a hostage situation, a medical emergency, all of it causing her heart to beat too hard against her ribs. And it's silly, paranoid, but she just got him back and she refuses to lose him again.
Her thoughts of paranoia come to a halt, though, when she finds him sitting in his office chair. He's hunched over his desk, his head in his hands and the notebook Lily gave him last night open in front of him.
Kate frowns and ventures closer, her bare feet silent on the hardwood, and then the rug that surrounds his desk. She pauses once she's beside him, peering over his shoulder without alerting him and scanning her eyes over the notebook, the first page almost filled.
A timeline, laid out in the same fashion she would organize a homicide on the murderboard. It starts on the day of their wedding, spanning through six years of empty space, to the present date. Notes in his blocky handwriting stretch from the top of the page to the bottom - words, sentence fragments, bits of his memory, all crammed around it.
Eggs - no other food. Water. Keeping me healthy, keeping me alive. What purpose?
Beatings to the back, doctor said it scarred like either rope or a cord, not a typical whip. Latest scars are a few months old. Why did he stop? Who is he?
Setting is dark, cold, a cave? Single light, red dot in the corner, cot to the side. Walls are grey, floors concrete. Where was the door? How did I escape?
Kate sucks in a quiet breath as her mind tries to picture the place he's describing, the flashes of memory he's jotted down, and the questions that are currently haunting them both.
"Rick," she murmurs, curving her palm over the rounded edge of his shoulder. She snags her bottom lip with her teeth when his flesh ripples beneath her touch, his entire body shuddering and his hand quickly moving to splay over the page.
"Sorry," he rasps, burying his fingers in his hair and sitting up straighter. "I was trying to - I just want to understand."
"Understand?" she echoes, migrating her hand to his nape where all of his tension usually gathers, feeling the raised edge of a scar beneath the pads of her fingers.
"Why I freaked out on the street," he grumbles, lowering his other hand from his head and closing the notebook. "What's wrong with me and what else might make me have a meltdown like a crazy person."
Her eyebrows arch and she withdraws her hand.
"Like me, you mean?" His eyes snap up to her, confusion tugging down his brow. "You think you're the only one here who's had a meltdown, Castle?"
"What? No, Kate, I didn't mean-"
"Did you think I was crazy whenever my PTSD flared up?"
He shakes his head and pushes up from the desk. "No, no, I'm sorry - I just... can't stand not knowing. Having this chunk of my life missing, the dreams, freaking out over things I don't understand."
"You were probably isolated," she points out while he paces away from her to walk the length of the room. "Probably kept somewhere secluded and quiet with your captor as your only source of human interaction. Even if you don't remember right now, parts of your mind still do, your body. It's just reacting out of instinct."
Her logic doesn't seem to matter in that moment, the anguish written across his face only etching itself deeper into the lines of his skin.
"Castle, we'll figure this out. We'll find a way to get your memories back," she insists, but he scoffs, bitter and hollow in response. So unlike him, it almost surprises her.
"Come on, Kate. You know as well as I do that there's no way to guarantee that," he mutters, directing his gaze towards the window, glaring into the sunlight.
"But look at you, you've already managed to dream, to remember a few flashes, and it's only been a couple of days since they found you," she objects, crossing the room after him. "They're still there, Castle. You just suppressed-"
"And what does that tell you?" he snaps, spinning to face her. All of that little boy excitement from their morning with Lily, the hope, the glimmer of joy, is gone. An aching mixture of exhaustion and that same shame from earlier is all that remains, burning bright and painful in his eyes. "People suppress stuff they don't want to remember, usually because it's so painful or traumatic that they can't deal with it. So what happens if these memories do come back?"
She purses her lips at the question, the answer on her tongue, but she can see that he isn't done yet.
"I'm going to be so damaged - you don't need this, Kate. Neither does Alexis or Lily."
"Damaged?" she repeats in disbelief, cornering him against the window. "And you think I'm not? That I wasn't? Do you not remember all the time you spent waiting for me after I was shot?"
"That's different," he mumbles, his eyes involuntarily flickering to her chest, where her scar has healed, but still remains in reminder.
"The circumstances are, but ultimately, no, it isn't," she growls, snagging his shirt, when he tries to move past her. "You loved me," she persists, gaining the reluctant glance of his attention even as he still tries to break free of her hold. "You loved me despite my damage, despite the PTSD, the wall, the nightmares that would wake us both up in the middle of the night-"
"Kate," he moans, covering his face with his hands. She doesn't even realize her eyes are beginning to sting until he's going blurry in front of her and her cheeks are wet. "You have a life, a daughter, a husband. You had something good and stable, and I - you can't just throw that away for me."
So many words, memories of her own from the last six years, things she's been dying to say to him, race through her mind. There's so much she wants to say, but all she can do is shake her head at the absurdity of it all, the idea of a life without him.
"But I love you."
His hand drops from his eyes, soaked in agony and frustration, and he stares at her with desire and desolation battling in his gaze.
Kate unfurls her fingers at his side, over the recent bullet wound he sustained, touches her other hand to his cheek. The overgrown stubble abrades her palm, but she cradles his jaw, strokes her thumb to the edge of his devastating frown.
"My life… without you, it's not complete. It's not right, Castle," she murmurs, her voice nearly breaking over his name. "How could you think you don't belong in it? That I could ever be with someone else when I will never get over you?"
He slumps back against the wall, so defeated and worn, and this is new territory for her, witnessing him beaten down and broken. It isn't him. Castle is an optimist, always ready to tackle a problem, fix it in whatever way he knows how, not succumb to it. Trauma changes things, people, but she's determined not to let it change him. Not completely.
Kate follows the sink of his body, uses their height difference to drop her head to his chest. It only takes a moment for his arms to wrap around her, for his lips to press against her hair. She closes her eyes, listens to his heartbeat and the sound of his breathing, reminds herself that it's all real.
"I love you too," he gets out, one of his broad palms cradling the back of her skull. "Only thing I'm sure of anymore."