A/N: I realized I forgot a disclaimer and since I am quoting both a song and lines from the show I figure it would behoove me to note that I do not own either Change of Time or Castle. But I can always dream ...
I had a dream last night
And rusting far below me
Battered hulls and broken hardships
Leviathan and lonely
I was thirsty so I drank
And though it was salt water
There was something 'bout the way
It tasted so familiar
Time, love
Time, love
Time, love
It's only a change of time
In the end, he resisted the urge to run straight to her hospital room, disheveled and drained from his three day marathon waiting for word that he could see her. He wasn't sure if he thought that flowers, clean clothes, and a shave would somehow influence her or if he was just delaying the moment of truth. Nonetheless, he could feel his heart clogging his throat as he gave his hair a final pat, pasted his best laissez-faire smile on his face and pushed open the door to her ward.
What he saw stopped him in his tracks. Josh was there, holding her hand as he bent over a Beckett who seemed somehow reduced, smaller and fragile, as if much of the confidence, the determination that made her seem larger than life, had been let out of her body along with the blood they released from her chest.
Josh gave him an unfriendly glance but with a last murmured word and a brief kiss on the top of her head, he left and they were alone. For a moment Castle just stood there. Although a weak smile played across her lips, Kate's eyes, huge and dark in a face thinned out by trauma, regarded him warily. His questions were there, waiting just behind his lips but he couldn't quite bring himself to utter them, choking out a bit of his trademark foolish banter instead, anything to ease the pain he saw in her eyes.
And then she did smile and he was beside her. And he would have sworn it was just like it had always been between them, light and easy, except for the almost overpowering urge he had to gather her into his arms and never let go. Who could call him a coward for wanting just a few moments more of this before he ventured into the battered shipwreck he feared his declaration in the graveyard might have made of their relationship.
She spoke before he could gather his courage. Her words, though they made all the difference in the world, were tossed off so lightly he almost missed their implication.
"I hear that you tried to save me."
He gave a deprecatory smile and started to shrug it off , but then the real meaning sank in.
"You heard?" he asked. "You don't remember me tackling you?"
She looked off to the side as if trying to conjure up images out of a foggy memory and told him she didn't remember the shooting at all. But he noticed she couldn't meet his eyes and he had to be sure.
"You don't remember ..." he started to press her, but she finally looked back at him and her wordless pleading was more than he could take, "...the gunshot," he finished lamely.
"They say there are some things that are better not being remembered," she told him sadly. In his chest he could feel his heart break open just a little bit wider.
But he knew. Somewhere deep inside himself, he knew she was hiding like a child who pulls the covers over her head, thinking that somehow not seeing the monster in the room will keep her safe. Maybe she didn't remember, maybe she just didn't want to. It didn't matter, her words made it clear that their unspoken, or unheard, feelings would remain beneath the waves. Hidden but waiting as they treaded water above it.
He would do what she asked; he would give her time. He was good at waiting. And if the occasional, unwary moment found a tear escaping him as he sat alone in his study or haunted the precinct, waiting day after day for her, it would be okay. It was what he had always done, just another hardship to endure, and the salty taste of loneliness was familiar on his tongue.
