They find him in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, a rustic shack out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town. A farm that has been foreclosed on.

Tyson and Nieman are gone, obviously.

He's nothing but an emaciated bundle of bruises, scars and broken bones, fluttering in and out of consciousness. The hospital's doctors talk about recovery in terms of months, if not years. Of physiotherapists and counselors.

She's intimately familiar with the vocabularies, but it all sorts of washes over her, away from her when she sees him that large white bed, bandaged and hooked up to various machines in an induced coma as his body slowly heals.

There's angry red welts and burns on his skin, and his hair has been shaved back to allow the doctors to check and repair any head trauma. He looks…weak. Frail. He's never looked like that before, not to her. He's been big and broad, his sheer physical presence a constant comfort in her life. She didn't even mind the layer of fat that used to sheathe the muscle on his stomach, quite liked it actually. Gone now. Sloughed away so that he's skin and bones and it feels like he's literally evaporated away in the time they took to find him.

Too long. It took her too long.

She feels angry, a pure white fury that burns through her, that has driven her these past few weeks till they find him. She's going to find the sonofabitch who did this to him, and she's going to put him down like a rabid dog. She knows that. She feels hopeless grief, that he might not ever be the man he was, that they might have ripped such holes in his psyche, done such damage to his brain- to his soul. She feels for their family, the sleepless nights that the three of them have endured together- the daughter, the mother and the almost-wife. They haven't ended yet.

But mostly…

Mostly she's just grateful he's alive. The devil can take the rest. The world can burn.

He's alive.

His eyelids are sticky, almost too tired to open, like they haven't been opened in a while. Eventually, they flutter wide. His whole body throbs with a dull ache, and his mind is fuzzy, vague, stuffed with cotton wool. He's in a hospital, hooked up to multiple machines that beep and buzz quietly, the rest of the large private room empty. Pale sunlight filters in through the window blinds.

His throat is parched.

The last thing he remembers…the last thing he remembers is fuzzy too. A dark room. Intense pain across his back and shoulders and ribs…and every part of him. Then blackness.

The door opens. With difficulty he shifts his eyes across to see who it is.

"Castle? You're awake?"

"Beckett." His voice is but a croak. She strides rapidly to his side, a sight for sore eyes and more, soothing fingers across his brow.

"Hush, it's OK. The doctors said it would take your vocal chords some time to recover." Her eyes are green and wide and loving, and he feels a single tear leak out of the corner of his own at the sight.

Oh fuck, the thought of seeing her again had been one of the few things to keep him going. Allowed him to push through the pain and the misery. She was here. She was real and she was here and he could smell the cherries again.

A second tear slips out, follows the first.

She leans down with a thumb, wiping it away, pressing a kiss to his cheek,

"Alexi-"

"Shh. I'm going to call her and Martha in a second. They'll be here."

"How…how long?"

She looks away, guilt and shame flickering over her features. He wants to wipe them away, tell her it wasn't her fault, but his voice finally fails him.

"Two months since we found you. Another two-and-a-half weeks in an induced coma."

She takes a deep, juddering breath.

"Oh God, Castle, I was so afraid…"

She sits down on the side of his bed, hands resting on him. Gingerly he lifts one arm to her (his fingers are stiff and in splints…oh, that's right, they were broken, one by one- he shies away from the memory), tugging her down onto him till she's lying half draped across his torso, her hair tickling his nostrils.

"Are you OK? Tell me you're OK." She whispers into his chest.

His memory is spotty, vague, but it is full of pain and darkness and fear. Too much. Too soon. He shies away again.

"I don't know."

He held himself preternaturally still, focusing on his breathing. Slow in and out. Keeping his mind still, his arms still, his legs still.

Just like they'd taught him in that shack. Blow by blow, burn by burn. Drops of blood spilling on the rough, matted ground, on the deep brown dirt that had seemed to grow rustier by the drop. Blood and pain and sweat and his own hoarse screams muffled into his gag at night, every night. Nights on end, nights never-ending, pain never-ending.

"Richard. Should we begin?"

Dr. Anna Chau is a slim, spare woman, steel-grey hair around her temples, her black-rimmed glasses making her look more like a schoolmarm than a psychiatrist. Her working offices are simply decorated, with warm landscape pieces and a comfortable blue armchair in which he's ensconced while she sits across from him. Her expensive cream pantsuit goes well with those professional but pricy shoes, but in her hand she holds a cheap biro, hovering over her pad, ready to take notes. A digital recorder sits on the table between them, green light showing that she's turned it on.

He's cataloguing everything. He used to do that at the shack, every nail on the wall, every pile of dirty straw. Anything at all to take his mind off his body, off the unending days. Of course he'd escape into his memories of his family, of Beckett, but he didn't want to do that too much. Didn't want to taint the memories, associate them with his pain. So he catalogued the shack, day in and day out. Even now he could remember too many details. Too many more than he wanted to remember.

He'd wanted to go to Beckett's doctor, Burke. Burke had respectfully declined, citing a full roster of clients and a citing a need for him to a build a relationship with a separate counsellor who wasn't privy to all of Beckett's darkest secrets and had referred him to Dr. Chau.

He's reluctant to talk too.

His vocal chords have recovered now, from their bruising and injuries, but months of sitting in silence, of punishment for even a single whimper or moan or sob during the daylight hours have taken their toll too.

He doesn't like to move. He doesn't like to talk.

He catches the pitying looks at home sometimes. From Alexis, from his mother, even Beckett. He wants to say something, to explain why he moves so slowly, why he rarely speaks, but he can't. He can't subject them to that, not even second hand, not that kind of pain. It was fine when he was drugged, in hospital, sleeping in and out medicated sleep. It got worse after he came home, after the nightmares started, after the whole world started weighing in on him, collapsing in on him.

"I don't…"

Even those words cost him.

He finally fully understand Beckett's need to escape after she'd been shot, find sanctuary, find a place and a peace where she didn't have to talk to anyone, explain her healing. He finds himself wanting the same, but knows how cruel it would be to them. He can't do that. He's been missing for months already, he doesn't want to go missing again.

He does fantasise about it, sometimes.

The doctor's smart though. Just as smart as the degrees on the wall say she is, writer's eyes flicking over the framed diplomas, the MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins, the undergraduate from Harvard. She's smart enough to understand, to know what he needs right now, in this moment.

"How are you sleeping?"

"Not very well."

"Tell me about it."

"I keep…I keep waking up every few hours. That's what they used to do. Keep waking up, or just keep me awake."

"Mhhm."

"And then when I do sleep, I have nightmares."

Slowly, simple sentence by sentence, he finds his words. They're not pretty or elegant or amusing. But they're there. They're there, and for now, that's enough.

It was not the beginning she'd dreamed of. There was no rooftop ceremony, bathed in sunlight. No hundreds of friends and family and well-wishers. It wasn't the beginning she'd almost got in the Hamptons. No rows and rows of outdoor seats, hundreds of boxes of wedding favors stacked up on a table. No trellis.

But it was a beginning, and she'd take it.

He stood beside her, as tall as ever, but gaunt now, his broad shoulders stooped. Even months after he'd been released from hospital, he was still underweight (he kept joking about how he'd been meaning to lose weight, and silver linings…she just kept trying to feed him and feed him). A pale and silvery scar ran over the top of one eye, and underneath that ill-fitting tux lay even more- welts and burns and new skin grown over that which had been flayed away. She'd traced every contour, every bump, every little part of his body, learning it anew as he'd spoken about what had caused each different addition- the cold, mechanical, lifeless tone he spoke in, the distance he maintained from his experiences even now, that told it's own story, one that broke her heart with every word.

Slowly over the last few months, he'd come back to life again. His broken fingers had healed, so he'd started writing again. Nothing for publication, not yet. Just catharsis. He allowed her to read bits and pieces, and she knew he was keeping things back to protect her. She loved him for it and hated that he felt he had to.

But those dull, washed-out blue eyes came back to life again, the old sparkle returning in flashes. He didn't come back to the precinct, not yet, but he worked cases with her when she came home. Throwing around theories like the old days. Sometimes he walked with a limp, especially on the cold days, but other times he had his old swagger and he'd pick her up off the floor in his arms and take her to the bedroom and break out the kinky box.

And then one day, just casually over breakfast as they sipped coffees, he looked up at her, taken her hand in his and leaned forward.

"Hey Beckett, I think I owe you a wedding."

And here they were. Small, quiet, intimate ceremony. Just their family, both blood and precinct.

It was their beginning, and she'd take it.

A/N: Obviously I hope the show doesn't go down this road, but the image of a broken, scarred Castle just wouldn't leave me alone. Stitched together from a couple of drabbles I wrote separately that coalesced into this brief impressionistic post-ep. Anyway, let me know what you thought, as always. I appreciate the feedback.