Rick won't let go of her hand, but she doesn't seem to mind, allowing him to keep her right hand captive in the embrace of his while the doctor examines the graze of a bullet to his side that he can't remember enduring.
After Castle finally had the chance to see her again, to hold her, the doctor returned before he could say much else to her, before he could ask all of the questions burning on his tongue, about the last six years.
God, how can he not remember six years? How can so much time be erased from his brain? How is he supposed to live without remembering while Kate has to continue on with the burden of knowing every second, the years of grief carved into every line of her face, haunting her dark eyes? He can see it more clearly now that he has the chance to truly look at her in the harsh lighting of his hospital room. He can see how the years have aged her, the violet circles painting the skin beneath her eyes, the loss of weight and prominence of bones.
"Your hair's darker," he mumbles, thoughtlessly, the low hum of his voice seeming to startle her for a second, and her left hand automatically rises to the waves that fall past her shoulders.
He's scared, so scared, to ask about the silver band he's caught sight of on her fourth finger. She never liked silver very much before, always preferred gold. But six years offers a lot of time for change.
"Yeah, I just - stopped keeping up with it, the highlights, everything," she explains, raking her fingers through it before dropping them back to her lap. "But at least Lily seems to like-"
Her sentence is quickly silenced by her own mouth, her eyes flashing with a flare of panic, and she spares a nervous glance at the doctor taking notes on his clipboard. But Castle squeezes her hand, tilts his head in question when she looks back to him with her bottom lip pinned between her teeth.
"Castle," she sighs softly, redirecting her gaze to their tangled hands, drawing the other up to the edge of his hospital bed to aid in cradling his palm in both of hers. "There's so much I have to tell you, so much that has happened since you - disappeared."
Her eyes are shimmering when she lifts them once more and his heart trembles in his chest, its beats spiking on the monitor.
"Ms. Beckett," the doctor warns, but Castle shakes his head.
"No, please. Kate," he breathes, practically begs, maneuvering his hand within the embrace of hers to collide with a set of her fingers, lacing his through them. "Tell me everything, everything that's changed."
"Mr. Castle, your recovery is a very fragile process that should be taken slowly. There will be plenty of time to-"
"Time?" Castle echoes incredulously, shooting a glare at the older man he hasn't even bothered to learn the name of. "Do you even realize how much time I've lost? And you want me to sacrifice more?"
"Sir, I know that-"
"No, I lost my memory, not my mind, and I'm completely capable of learning the truth." He unthinkingly swipes his thumb over the ring on her finger, feels her go utterly stiff in the chair beside him. "No matter how hard it is."
The buzz of a cell phone breaks through the silence before anyone can speak, and Kate reaches for the pocket of her leather jacket, moves to rise after a glimpse of the caller ID.
"Kate," he murmurs, the panic already clawing at his chest at the thought of her leaving, but she squeezes his hand, offers an apology in her gaze.
"I'm sorry, I just have to take this, but I'm not going anywhere, Castle. I'll be right outside," she assures him and he reluctantly lets go of her hand. But she pauses before she leaves the room, holds his eyes with hers for a split second, and he notices the tiniest spark of color has been resurrected in the tombs of her irises. "I promise."
Kate leans back against the wall just outside of Castle's hospital room doorway, draws the phone to her ear and closes her eyes.
"Beckett," she gets out, hearing Tom's sigh of relief on the other line.
"Hey, I got your note." She has to think to remember what he's talking about before the note she scribbled out and left on the kitchen counter flashes in her mind.
Had to head out. They may have found Castle. Call when you wake.
No, 'I love you' added at the end, no sign of her name, just clipped orders. Shit, she makes a horrible wife.
"Are you okay?"
Kate bites down on her bottom lip, doesn't want to shed any more tears, especially not with him.
"He's alive," she manages to say without letting the words scrape so brutally past her lips, but Tom is silent on the other line.
She waits, listens to him breathe, gather himself.
"What do you want me to do?"
Her eyes flutter shut once more with gratitude and she swallows down the emotion clogging her throat, thinks about what matters most, what's kept her going all this time.
"Will you take Lily to school for me?" she asks, wrapping an arm around her abdomen. "Promise her I'll pick her up. Castle's… I'm the only one here right now. Alexis and Martha haven't shown up yet and he's terrified."
"Yeah, of course," he answers quickly, but she knows what's coming. He's still a detective too, after all. "I know we'll likely have to talk about it later, but has he been able to tell you what happened?"
Kate sucks in a breath, shakes her head before she realizes he can't see her. "He doesn't remember anything. The last thing he knew, he was in the crash on our wedding day, and then he woke up here. Everything else is a blank."
She can hear Tom blowing out a breath on the other line, can feel the skepticism in his momentary silence, his contemplation, but his question holds no judgement when he asks, "And you believe him?"
"If you were here, if you saw him, you would too," she mumbles, peeling her eyes open to glance back over her shoulder, into the hospital room where Castle lies in wait, staring at the ceiling while his doctor speaks words that he obviously isn't listening to.
"And if I loved him?" Tom adds quietly, but Kate can only purse her lips, can't even begin to think about what this means for her marriage, her life, her daughter.
"Not now, Tom. Please," she whispers.
"You're right, I'm sorry," he sighs over the grumble of their coffee machine coming to life, the flick of a light switch. "Listen, don't worry about Lily. I'll make her breakfast, tell her you had an early case and that you'll see her later. We can talk more then."
"Thank you," she murmurs, withdrawing the phone from her ear before he can say his goodbye, tell her he loves her.
It makes her feel sick inside, like an even worse excuse for a wife than she already is, but she isn't sure she can say it back now. Not when the love of her life that was lost is suddenly back and in the next room.
"Kate?"
Beckett startles at the frantic call of her name, the flash of red hair rushing towards her, and braces herself as Alexis crashes into her, clinging to her shoulders and gasping at the sight she must catch of her father at this angle.
"Oh my god, it's really - he's actually - Daddy?"
Kate pulls back to steady Alexis with the squeeze of her hands to the other woman's biceps, ripping her attention away from her father for just a moment.
"Alexis-"
"I'm sorry I wasn't here sooner, but I had work until two and then crashed when I got home and didn't hear my phone-"
"Alexis," Kate repeats, interrupting her ramblings, and Alexis swallows hard, visibly tries to calm down and looks to Kate with a plea for answers in her eyes, for a briefing.
After working in Missing Persons for just under a year now, training for the job all throughout college, Alexis has grown stronger, harder and less vulnerable to the harsh realities of the world that stole her father, but in this moment, she's just a girl again. The twenty year old girl who lost her dad on the same day Kate lost her fiancé.
"He's okay," she begins, lowering her hands from Alexis's arms. "He was found along the coast of Delaware, floating alone and unconscious in a small boat, and sustained a bullet graze to his left side, but the doctor has already patched him up."
Alexis lets out a breath of relief, but her gaze turns scrutinizing a moment later. "What aren't you telling me?"
"He - he doesn't remember anything," Kate sighs out the admission. "Of the last six years, he doesn't remember what happened. All he can recall is the crash on the day of our wedding, everything else leading up to today is a blank."
Alexis's brow falls into a troubled furrow, her lips pursing into that puckered frown Castle used to once wear as well.
"But… how is that even possible? I would understand a few days or something, even months, but six years? Have you spoken to the doctor?"
"Not as much as I'd like to," Kate sighs, raking a hand through her hair and kneading at the back of her neck. "I got the call at almost four, drove here, and I've been with him ever since."
Alexis startles. "Lily-"
"Tom's taking her to school," Kate murmurs, glancing to her feet, but Alexis reaches for her hand, drags her gaze back up to the concerned blue eyes staring back at her.
"Tom's a good man," Alexis concedes, being as supportive as she's always been, but Kate shakes her head.
"I'm not - I don't know what to think yet, don't even want to try right now. All I care about is Lily and… making sure he's truly safe," she murmurs, turning back towards the doorway.
"You and I are on the same page," Alexis adds at her back and Kate offers her a smile of gratitude before they enter the room together.
In the past six years, Alexis, the girl she always assumed would be the least likely candidate, has been the true constant in her life. She never expected that his daughter would lean on her for support, that she would offer any in return, but she did and it only doubled the day Kate learned she was pregnant.
"Alexis," Castle breathes, his eyes sparkling sapphire at the sight of his daughter walking into the room, and Kate steps aside, nudges Alexis forward.
She watches with a lump in her throat as Rick is allowed to embrace his daughter for the first time in six years, hiding his tears in her hair and rocking her back and forth when neither of them let go.
"You know, it could still come back to him. His memories," the doctor, Xanders, she thinks, murmurs at her side.
"But what made them disappear in the first place?" Kate questions under her breath, allowing Xanders to lead her to the doorway, out of Castle's earshot. "How could someone forget six years of their life?"
"There are multiple possibilities, Ms. Beckett. There is the potential presence of emotional trauma, there are also drugs and drug interactions that could be at play, that can trigger memory loss, and there's even the chance he chose to forget, managed to block out whatever has happened to him," the doctor explains on a sigh.
"Happened to him? Are there any physical signs of trauma aside from the gunshot wounds? Torture?" she presses, the fear of it slow building through her chest, worsening when Xanders hesitates.
"I can't rule it out, nor can I confirm it," the man hedges, careful not to be overheard by Castle and Alexis, talking softly at his hospital bed. "The only signs I found that could be remotely close to that is a fracture in his wrist that appears recent, within the last couple of years at least, and didn't heal well, along with the appearance of healed abrasions on his legs. He also has some... severe scarring along his back, but again, it's older, I'd guess maybe a year or more, so I-"
"He didn't have scars before," she mumbles, her gaze having slipped from the doctor to linger on Castle, on his wrists and his upper body, imagining what the naked canvas of his back that her hands once mapped with precision must look like now.
Xanders releases a slow breath. "Then I'm definitely not ruling out some form of abuse, which increases the chance that the trauma he sustained could be a driving force in his memory loss."
"What do we do?" she asks as Castle's eyes lift from his daughter to seek her, worry infiltrating his gaze at whatever he finds.
"There's no way to force his memories to come back, to know if they ever will. All you can do is be there for him, attempt to acclimate him back to a normal life as effortlessly as possible, and be prepared for what he may need if those memories do return."
Kate bands her arms around her waist, a bad habit she developed after she no longer had him to aid in holding her together. "There are things he doesn't know that I… that he needs to know, that I can't keep from him. Don't want to."
"Your marriage to another man?" Xanders inquires softly with a flick of his eyes to her left hand, and she nods.
"Yes, but… it's more than that," she exhales, attempting to muster a smile that must fall flat for the man in the hospital bed. "I was pregnant when he went missing. He has another daughter."