Even though the gap in his memories has him feeling as if he were just here yesterday, it's strangely surreal to be back in his loft. The emptiness that now seems to inhabit the space is palpable, overwhelming, despite Alexis's efforts to make the place feel more like home prior to his arrival.
He knows that his daughter still lives here, but from the sounds - and looks - of it, she typically occupies the place solely for sleep, the rest of her time spent at work. The hints of his mother's theatric tastes seem to have gone along with her. Any trace of Kate has practically disappeared too, none of her artwork on the walls, her trinkets gone from his shelves, the framed photos of her no longer occupying his cleared desk space.
"Sorry, Dad," Alexis apologizes nervously when he inquires about that last part, but his heart eases a little as she tugs open the drawers to reveal all of his things. "I would use your desk to work sometimes and some things were just - too hard to look at."
Of course, he doesn't fault Alexis in the least for that, dismisses her apology right away. He does begin to feel a bit better, though, a little more hopeful, once he begins to rearrange his belongings across the hardwood surface, smiling at the photos of a young Alexis, his mother, Kate.
But he's missing someone now.
"Hey, do we have any photos of Lily?" he asks, emerging from his office to find his daughters - wow, he still can't believe he has two now - in the kitchen. They're sharing a snack that Alexis must have made at the bar, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into the shapes of stars.
Lily glances up from her sandwich to point to the refrigerator. "Alexis keeps all the important pictures up there."
Castle drifts towards the stainless steel doors with greedy eyes, his heart immediately swelling at the images he encounters.
There's an ultrasound pinned near the top, far enough along into the pregnancy that the baby can be seen with ease. There are pictures of Lily and Alexis over the years, even a few with Kate, her smiles tired and tamed. None of those unbidden grins that show glimpses of her teeth or moments of captured laughter he used to witness so frequently, but smiles nonetheless. There are a handful of photos of him as well, arranged amidst the collage, but he can only frown at those. The differences are obvious between the past he was a part of and the present that he isn't.
Castle startles at the sound of a key turning in the lock, the opening of the front door. But when Lily hops down from the barstool, he knows whom it must be and his heart picks up speed, skips a few beats.
"I'll take those up to my room for us, Momma," he hears Lily volunteer.
He steps out of the kitchen in time to watch Lily sling a royal purple backpack over one shoulder, dragging the larger black duffle behind her, while Kate looks on in amusement.
"Thank you, Peanut," Kate chuckles as Lily hustles towards the stairs. "Call if you need help, though."
"I will," Lily chirps. "But I won't." She trudges up one step and then another with the bag heavy on her back, her teeth grit in determination.
"She really is just like you," Castle grins, meeting her in the foyer and offering to take her coat out of habit, grateful when she lets him. She hesitates for a moment, but she lets him.
He's even more grateful when he opens the door to see that the closet near the entryway is still the same.
"You'd be surprised," Kate muses, watching him hang her coat with something soft in her eyes, eyes that are bloodshot and exhausted. As if she's been crying. "She inherited quite a few of her father's qualities, in my opinion."
Rick's lips twitch at that as he eases the closet door shut.
"You okay?" he asks, lowering his voice even though he can hear Alexis busy in the kitchen, depositing plates into the dishwasher.
"Are you?" she counters, scanning her eyes over his ill-fitting dress shirt, the jeans that hang a little too low on his hips. Because yeah, wherever he's been for the last few years obviously did not offer him the best diet.
"As okay as I can be," he shrugs, taking a step closer and brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. It's an impulse he probably should have ignored. But he loses his breath when Kate catches the back of his hand, holds his palm to her cheek.
It's then that he notices her wedding ring is missing.
But instead of relief or joy at the sudden realization, the potential of what it could mean, he only feels his stomach twist into even more knots.
"Me too," she breathes out, resting her cheek into his palm and quirking her lips for him.
"I know it's not - that we can't just go back, pick up where we left off as if nothing happened, that so much has… changed, but we'll find a way to be okay again, Kate. All of us, I promise," he whispers, wanting fiercely for her to believe him, wanting to believe it himself.
She squeezes his hand before lowering it from her cheek. The expression on her face isn't doubtful nor dismissing, but her features are too worn for positivity tonight.
Kate offers him a small nod before she starts for the stairs. "I hope you're right."
Being back in the loft isn't as uncomfortable as she feared it would be. Of course, she's been here too many times to count in the past six years, Lily even has a room upstairs, and she herself often spends time with Alexis in the living room, helping go over cases or simply talking through the snarls of emotion on the harder days. But it's different now that Castle is back.
She expects it to be awkward, and it is, to some degree, having dinner all together again, with four people instead of three, retiring to the guest bedroom upstairs with Lily rather than following him through his office when the night concludes, when he glances to her with longing that spears through her chest.
But she doesn't expect this sense of right, this sense of a homecoming, to nag at her, make her want to stay longer than just tonight.
Kate stays with Lily in her room, knowing Martha's is available since the older woman decided to opt for a hotel, jetlagged and weary from her traveling, but tonight, she needs the comfort of having her daughter close, of allowing the soft sound of her breathing to calm her as it did the night before.
She doesn't sleep, and eventually she grows restless as the night wears on into the early morning.
She ends up wandering through the loft at two a.m.. She's contemplating the idea of raiding his library, when she hears the sounds of distress coming from his bedroom. And things may be different now, they may no longer be together, six years may have passed, but that doesn't stop her from rushing inside his room the moment she hears those choked sounds, a muffled shout buried into his pillow.
"Castle," she murmurs, leaning over the side of the bed to catch his thrashing shoulders. She reaches out with one hand to flick on the lamp, and then strokes her fingers through his hair. "Rick, wake up."
"No, no," he gasps, jerking onto his side, curling in on himself. The movement exposes his back, where the t-shirt he wore to bed has ridden up.
The scars cause her to go still. The strip of his lower back that is visible is slim, but the glimpses of pink lines marring his flesh are thick, still healing, and without thinking, she allows her fingers to graze the edge of one that stretches towards his tailbone.
He arches away from her, hisses in phantom pain, and her heart constricts, catches fire in the same instance.
She'll kill whoever did this to him.
"Castle," she calls again, crawling onto the edge of the mattress, bending over the coiled ball of his body to cup his face in her hands, stroke her thumbs to the paper thin skin beneath his eyes. "Castle, it's me. You're with me. You're safe."
"No more," he gets out, his entire body trembling, his pulse beating hard beneath the heel of her palm. "Please-"
"Rick," she presses, her own voice beginning to crack. His eyes flash open, swing towards the source to find her hovering above him.
"Kate?" he rasps, staring up at her with hazy eyes, his pupils blown. His chest heaves so hard it shakes them both. "What - where-"
"You were dreaming," she whispers, brushing back the damp hair that clings to his forehead. "Did you… remember something?"
He gingerly shifts onto his back and her hands slip from his face to rest atop his chest, the front of t-shirt practically soaked through with sweat. His heart is still thundering against the cage of his ribs. Terrified.
"Just - dark, a dark place," he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. "Someone else there and - whip, something like a whip." Castle covers his face with both of his hands, trying to hide from her. He sucks in a breath, as if attempting to calm the rioting rhythm of his heart. "My back hurts."
She pins her lip between her teeth to stop it from trembling. Xanders mentioned the scars, but she hasn't seen them, hasn't let herself imagine how severe they might be, what he may have gone through to bear them.
"Here, let's get you out of these clothes," she whispers, curving one of her palms at his nape and easing him up into a sitting position. He shifts into her, curls himself around her and drops his head to the juncture between her neck and her collarbone, causing her for a second too long, before he remembers.
"Sorry," he grunts, quickly pulling away before she can lift her arms to hold him.
She sighs, rises from the bed and offers her hand to him instead. He takes it, standing on shaking legs for a moment before they enter the en suite together, the light blinding them both.
"I need to shave," he blurts, scrubbing at his jaw with his palm. "Look bad."
"Gotta wait for the sunburn to subside," she reminds him, leaving his side to retrieve a washcloth from the cabinet. She turns the sink's faucet to warm, running the water while Castle tugs the drenched shirt over his head.
The bullet graze on his side is still covered by the seal of a bandage, but Xanders assured them that he will be able to remove the bindings within a week, the stitches dissolving on their own. Kate avoids the surrounding tape once she rings the towel out over the sink, steps in close to wipe down his chest.
"You don't have to do this," he sighs, but Kate shakes her head, continues to cleanse his skin of the cold sweat that covers him, the residue of the nightmare.
"I want you to know that no matter what we are, Castle, I'm always going to care about you," she promises, mopping at his neck, beneath his jaw, watching his eyes flutter closed, wondering if she's somehow just made it all worse. "Let me just get your back."
He turns slowly and her fingers unintentionally go slack, lose their grip on the washcloth. It falls to the bathroom floor with an audible slap and Castle glances over his shoulder, his brow creasing with concern.
"Kate?"
But her eyes are stuck on the patterns marring his back, the crisscross of scars, the varying shades of faded white, pinks, light and dark, stretching from his shoulder blades to his waist.
"Castle," she rasps, dusting her fingertips to his massacred flesh, following a raised line, colliding with another. "What did they do to you?"
"I've only felt them," he mumbles, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "Listened to Xanders discuss them. I haven't looked, I don't - don't want to."
Her eyes dart back to the map of his skin that was once untouched, once sculpted and smooth beneath her hands. It has her biting back tears, dropping her forehead to his nape instead.
"I'm so sorry this happened to you," she chokes out, her lips whispering against his skin, and Castle reaches back for her, finds her hand and draws it around to hold against his chest.
"It's okay," he tries to soothe, brushing his thumb back and forth over her knuckles. "I don't remember. It's okay for now."
"No," she argues, but her words are falling apart, her voice wet and sloshing, and she lifts her other arm to wrap around him, to band with the other in hugging him from behind.
He seals one of her palms to his chest, over his heart, and Kate squeezes her eyes shut, relishes the steady pound of it beneath her hand.
"Whether you remember or not, I'm going to find out what happened to you, who did this to you," she vows, turning her head to rest her cheek to the top of his vertebrae. "I'm so sorry I never found you, that I didn't stop it-"
"Don't," he growls, slotting his fingers through hers, twining them together. "I would never blame you, Kate. I know that without having to remember. And I sure as hell don't blame you now."
She releases a trembling breath against his shoulder and withdraws from his back, her hand slipping free from his grasp. She bends to snag the washcloth from the floor, tightening her fingers around the damp fabric to stop them from shaking.
"I just… missing you was one thing," she murmurs, standing in front of him now, able to witness the anguish in his eyes, feeling it cleave through her chest, slice her in half. "Knowing you were going through this the entire time…"
Her sentence trails, the way she feels, the heartache and grief consuming her chest unable to be put into words, and Castle takes a tentative step forward, laces a careful arm around her shoulders, an innocent hug that she sinks into.
"I'm sure I missed you too," he says into her hair, rubbing his hand back and forth between her shoulder blades, as if she's the one in need of comfort. "Because there's no way I wouldn't have."
After they part in the bathroom, he changes into a clean shirt, prepared to attempt sleep once more. Of course, he doesn't want her to leave, to lose the comfort of her company, so he asks her to stay. To innocently lie in bed with him, keep the nightmares away. Like an idiot.
Kate gives him a sad smile, tilts her head towards the door. But it isn't rejection in her eyes, on her lips, and it reignites the waning little flame of hope flickering in his chest, keeps it alive.
"Lily," is all she says, explanation enough, and he whispers an apology that she dismisses.
Though, she does kiss him before she goes, a fleeting brush of her lips to his sun-seared cheek. And he thinks that somehow aids in allowing him to sleep through the remaining hours of the night without the horrors of nightmares invading his brain. Her touch like a talisman, warding off the evil he can't even remember.