The shifting of a body beside him, a dip of weight in the mattress, has him swimming towards the shore of consciousness hours later.
"Kate?" he slurs, turning towards the source of warmth. But it isn't Kate he encounters when he opens his eyes.
"No, it's Lily," the little girl greets, propped up in the bed beside him with her notebook open in her lap. "Morning, sleepyhead."
"Lily," Kate chastises on a hum, but there's a chuckle in her voice, amusement traveling in from somewhere outside of the room. Too far for his liking.
He lifts his head from his pillow to see her in the office, sitting at his desk with her laptop open in front of her. Her body is wrapped in a soft grey sweater, a worn looking pair of jeans that he thinks he actually recognizes from years past, and it almost takes him back. Makes him feel for just a moment as if this six year gap doesn't exist between them.
"What time is it?" he mumbles, sitting up next to Lily and scrubbing at his eyes. He blinks a few times, and wills the residual sleep lingering along his lids, gathering in the corners, to dissipate.
"It's almost noon," Lily informs him. "I wanted to wake you up earlier for breakfast, but Mommy and Alexis said you needed your sleep," she explains rather solemnly.
"Which he obviously did," Kate chimes in as her fingers dance across the keyboard, eliciting an itch in the tips of his own. But he has no idea if his brain possesses the power of creating stories any longer, if he's lost that too.
"Next time," he begins, leaning towards Lily and lowering his voice to a whisper. "You wake me whenever you want."
Lily grins, pleased with the newfound partnership, even more so when Kate huffs in disapproval.
"Did you have good dreams?" Lily asks, closing her notebook and squirming to shift onto her knees.
She sits back on her heels to stare up at him with curious eyes, but Castle hesitates at the question. He hears the cease of typing then, Kate getting up from his desk chair, and he quickly shrugs his shoulders.
"I don't know. I can't remember if I dreamed anything or not."
"I hate when that happens," Lily sighs, patting the top of her notebook. "I like to draw what I dream about when I wake up."
"Oh yeah? What'd you draw today?" he asks, flicking his eyes up to Kate as she enters the room. Her gaze is dark despite the sunlight that spills over her, holding enough memories of his dreams from the night before for the both of them.
"You," Lily quips, dropping her notebook into his lap and pointing to the page she easily flips back to. It displays a plethora of activity from top to bottom, corner to corner, all drawn solely in black pen. "I normally draw with lots of colors, but I left them upstairs when I came down with Momma to check on you, so she let me use one of her work pens."
"Wow, Lily," he praises, sweeping his eyes over the images of surprisingly well-sculpted figures, their bodies drawn to near perfection, defined facial features he can tell she's practicing to improve, along with varying areas of shading decorating the page, a flurry of symbols drawn in the background.
"I've had this one before, though," she explains, sounding slightly disappointed. "Momma goes out to find you - see she's wearing her vest. And I go with her even though she tells me not to. And we go all over the world and right before we finally get to you, I wake up."
Lily's innocent retelling of her dream leaves his chest feeling hollow, empty and aching.
"I'm glad you don't have to look anymore," Rick murmurs, moving to wrap an arm around her small shoulders without thinking. But Lily shoulders hunch at the contact, not expecting it, and he quickly shifts back, earns the curious flicker of her gaze. He wants to be able hug her, offer some reassurance, but instead, he lets Lily reclaim her notebook and watches her scoot to the edge of the bed.
She may be excited to have him back, to have finally met her father, but he almost manages to forget that Lily doesn't even know him. That he's still nothing more than a stranger to this little girl.
"Me too, do you want breakfast now? Lexi kept it warm for you," she informs him, hopping down to the floor.
"Sure," Castle replies, pushing the tangle of blankets from his legs. He has to ease them over the side of the bed, his limbs feeling stiff, his bad knee alive with an aggravating pulse. "I'll be right there."
"Okay!" Lily chirps, skipping out of the room and through the study while Kate draws closer.
She lowers to the edge of the bed beside him, her lips quirking ruefully once Lily's disappeared.
"Sorry about that," she sighs, raking a hand through her hair, but Castle shakes his head, can't understand why his chest feels so very tight.
"No, I'm happy she has such a vivid imagination."
"Told you, she's like her dad. A real handful."
He glances at her through the corner of his eye, catches the beginnings of a smile on her lips that spread to his.
"I just hate that she's been dreaming about that," he admits. "I hate that all she knows about me is that I'm just some guy who disappeared into some deep, dark place."
"That isn't all she knows," Kate argues, twisting towards him, but he continues to glare down at his knees. "She knows that you're an amazing writer, that you were my partner and the best dad to Alexis."
"Kate," he sighs, but she covers his forearm with the drape of her hand. Her touch has always been an effective silencer.
"She knows that you made the best smiley face pancakes, that you would have game nights with her uncles at least once a week, that you hate spiders just like she does." Kate stretches her thumb to graze the inside of his wrist, brush along his pulse. "She knows our story."
He glances up to her from beneath his lashes, tries not to become distracted by how lovely the sentence sounds on her lips, how beautiful she looks under the stream of sunlight coming from his window and tangling in the locks of her hair.
"She's had me tell her the story of how we met practically every night since she was old enough to ask," she adds with a gentle twitch of her lips. "That little girl knows everything about you, she just hadn't met you yet. And yeah, it's only been a day and she's still getting to know you, but she already loves you, Castle. Just like I know you already love her."
He sighs, because yeah, of course he loves her. She's his daughter and even though he was unable to meet her prior to yesterday morning, to even know she was a possibility, the instinctual adoration flared up the moment he first laid eyes on her.
"I just don't want to overwhelm her."
"I'm more worried about her overwhelming you," she chuckles, withdrawing her hand from his arm and rising from the bed, waiting for him to join her. "Now come on, Alexis really did keep your breakfast warm."
Castle stands from the bed, grunting when his right knee buckles for a second before he can find his footing.
"You okay?" Kate asks, examining him head-to-toe with a critical eye. The horror born from the collection of scars decorating his back still lingers in the depths of her irises and he quickly nods in hopes to dispel it.
"Yeah, fine. Just that old skiing injury flaring up again," he promises, doing his best to stand tall and walk alongside her through the bedroom.
He follows Kate out into the living room, where their daughters are already camped out on the couch with the television on, searching through the channels.
He pauses to drop a kiss to the top of Alexis's head while Kate goes ahead of him to retrieve his plate from inside the oven.
"Morning, Pumpkin."
"Afternoon, Dad," she parrots, her grin encouraging as she glances up. "Sleep okay?"
"Best I have in years," he lies, even though, for all he knows, it may be completely true.
Kate's pouring him a cup of coffee when he continues on to the kitchen, but she hesitates halfway through, glancing towards the fridge.
"Coffee's good, Kate," he murmurs, climbing onto the barstool and curling his fingers around the fork next to his plate.
Of course, knowing it was once their best form of comfort food, Alexis made him pancakes. A smiley face of fruit stares up at him, bacon and eggs on the side, and he knows he has to be starving by now. He was barely able to eat even a fourth of his dinner last night, but his stomach churns at the sight of the eggs.
He drops the fork.
"Castle?" Kate's already coming around the bar when he glances up, her brow knitting in concern. "Hey, what's wrong?"
Sick of eggs yet, Ricky?
"No," he mutters, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. But the sound of the voice, the flash of a bowl filled with runny scrambled eggs, splits through his head like a migraine burrowing through his skull.
The muffle of Kate's voice is closer, but he bows his head forward, tries to make it stop.
They're a great source of protein and we gotta keep you healthy. After all, you're in it for the long haul.
"Alexis, do you mind taking Lily upstairs for a second, grabbing her crayons?" The words disjointed, Alexis asking a question, the echo of footsteps grows louder and then disappearing.
"Rick," she calls again, her cool hands on his face, but he can barely breathe. He feels as if he's going to faint, bursts of white all consuming behind his eyes, still there even when he tries to open them. "Castle, you're with me. You're here with me." Kate keeps repeating it, saying the words like a mantra until his heartbeat stops hurting with every throb, until the blinding whiteness overtaking his vision subsides, and he can finally open his eyes to her.
"Too many eggs," he chokes out, feeling insane. But Kate isn't looking at him like he's crazy.
"You had a memory?" she murmurs, her body pressed against his side, shielding him as her hand drapes at the back of his neck, anchors him.
"I don't want to remember," he croaks, ashamed of it, but if he's freaking out over scrambled eggs, who knows what else will set him off.
"Hey, Castle, it's okay," she whispers, scratching softly at his scalp. Like she used to whenever they would have a rough case, a bad day, and he zeroes in on the gentle scratch of her nails. "Just stay with me. I'm not going to make you eat the eggs."
A ragged piece of laughter scrapes its way up his throat, even though he knows she isn't going for funny, not at all. But he feels her deflate with relief beside him nonetheless, dropping her forehead to his temple. They don't speak for a few minutes after that and he's grateful that she stays, still and warm with her body so close and her breath fluttering against his jaw. He's grateful that she doesn't press for him to talk about it.
"He - he made me eat eggs, needed me to healthy. Healthy enough to stay alive," he recalls, forcing himself to stare down at the fluffy egg whites on the plate in front of him, to quell the instinctual response of his body's panic.
Kate straightens a little beside him, but doesn't step away, doesn't drop her hand from his nape. "He?"
But Castle shakes his head. "I only heard the voice. It was like… a flashback?"
"Like PTSD," she murmurs, her fingers thoughtlessly smoothing along the skin below his ear, driving him mad in the best way. A good distraction.
"You knew right away," he realizes, finally turning to look up at her, reading the understanding in her eyes. "That's why you sent Lily and Alexis upstairs, before it could get bad."
"I never wanted anyone to see me during my episodes," she says with a shrug. "It's hard enough to get through without an audience, especially when it's your daughters. Whom I should probably go check on."
"Thank you," he sighs, flexing his fingers before reclaiming the fork he let fall. He has to wait for the shaking of his hand to subside before he stabs a piece of fruit.
Kate squeezes his shoulder before she goes, strength infused in her fingertips and leaking into his bones.
"Always."
She makes him believe for a fraction of a second that it's all okay.