A/N: Had to take a stab at a post 7x01 fic for myself. Spoilers for all of 7x01 obviously. This takes place during/after the final scene.

Finding Our Way

He was here. He was safe.

It hardly seemed real, watching him from the edge of the bedroom as he wound his watch before bed. This was his regular, nightly ritual. So ordinary. So nondescript. But he was there doing it for the first time in what felt like the longest nightmare she'd ever awoken from. Standing beside his bed—their bed—in his favorite comfy robe. His face relaxed, his hair in its usual ruggedly handsome style. If it wasn't for the sunburn kissed edges of his face, anyone looking at him would have been unable to tell that he'd been missing at all.

Wherever he was, he must have been well taken care of. He didn't look like he'd lost any weight—no, that wasn't true. Before the wedding he'd griped about having to switch back to his "fat pants" after putting on about fifteen pounds due to the stress of finishing the latest Nikki Heat novel before the wedding. He appeared to be back at his regular weight now, which meant he'd lost the extra, but fifteen pounds on a man of his stature wasn't anything too drastic. His hair appeared its normal length, so he'd obviously had a haircut or two during his absence and—

No, she stopped herself. She would turn off the cop brain. At least, for that night. They could go over the evidence again in the morning when things were back to normal.

Normal. The concept was so foreign to her. Any notion of normal had vanished from her life sixty-one days earlier. Ever since she stood in the elegant bedroom of his Hamptons estate and answered the worst phone call of her life.

Seeing the creased lines of worry cross his forehead as he stared down at the watch, Kate stepped into the room. "We'll find out what happened," she assured him.

He looked up to her. "I know. I was just thinking I feel like I just wore this yesterday. That we slept in this bed last night. For you it must seem like a lifetime ago."

She could feel the beginning of all the hidden emotions boiling in the back of her throat, but suppressed them for the moment. "Yeah it does."

"How did you not lose hope?"

I did, she answered silently. Every single morning when she woke up alone and reality hit her like a bullet train.

Most nights she'd dream about him. Though she did not always remember the dreams, she always seemed to wake up with the same ache, same dread in her chest. Martha told her. Alexis told her. Her father told her. But still, sometimes the little crumbs of faith on which she held did not seem like they could ever be enough.

"I did lose hope, you know, but I would get it back. I developed rituals in order to hang onto it."

"Like what?"

She shook her head. "It's stupid; it really doesn't matter."

"No, I'd like to know."

Saying them aloud felt so foolish. Like rubbing a rabbit's foot for luck or not stepping on a sidewalk crack. Childish acts akin to wives' tales, especially now that he was back, but before…each and every time she did them felt like a religious act. Those rituals were the only things holding her faith together.

"I would stare at your photo on the murder board. And I started thinking that if I would look at it long enough every day that that would keep you alive," she confessed, twisting her engagement ring around her finger.

That ring was another one of her rituals. Since the day he disappeared, it only came off her finger when she showered. Even then, she hated it, feeling naked and exposed without it safe on her ring finger. Each and every time she would practically leap from beneath the spray of water and jam it on her finger. Wet hands didn't matter—that ring did.

"I guess it worked."

"And then I had this thing about your chair."

"My chair at the precinct?"

"I wouldn't let anyone touch it. And then the night janitor came by and tried to move the chair and I freaked out. And I almost shot him."

He smiled at her and she felt it; the flutter in her chest. It was the same smile he always gave her when she was the one telling a story. Though her skill level paled in comparison to his, he always seemed to enjoy her stories far more than she felt he had any reason to. She hadn't seen that smile in eight weeks, nor had she felt the flutter.

Suddenly, their bedroom seemed too small, as though the walls were closing in on her. Or was it that it was too large? That they were suddenly far apart on a choppy sea not unlike the one on which Castle's dinghy was discovered. They had spent two months apart—a lifetime, as Castle had described it. For him, it was just a day; a moment in the grand scheme of things. But for her seconds ticked by as hours. Minutes as days and each week without him feeling like another ring forming on the trunk of a knobby oak.

The emotions swirling within her threatened to crush her chest beneath their weight. It would be so easy to give in to her desire to hold him, to kiss him, to tell him she loved him and beg him never to leave again. That was what she wanted, what she had wanted for sixty-one days, but life wasn't that easy; life wasn't that simple.

Though they had spent several hours together traveling to the camp site and back, they still had not touched. Not really. Their shoulders brushed together as they left the hospital and their hands touched as they walked through the brush down to the beach, but that remained their only contact.

Kate wasn't sure she could explain why she avoided his skin, his lips. It certainly wasn't rational. For sixty-one days, her only coping mechanism had been her walls. She built them high and strong, only this time not to keep others out, but to keep her from her feelings. If she let her emotions take over, if she allowed herself to fully submit to the fact that she might never see her fiancé again, she would never had been able to keep going, so she closed herself off from them. She compartmentalized again and again until she began to view her insides as a Russian nesting doll.

Alone in their bedroom, she could let go, but she feared if she did, she'd never be able to contain them again and she would cry for days. There wasn't time for that, not then. They had to figure this out before the trail went cold.

As Castle gazed up at her, Kate's overwhelming longing began to overtake her. His strong arms around her could easily be the antidote to the series of knots filling her gut; they certainly had been in the past. Plus, what was the point, really? Of physically separating them. It only succeeded in hurting them both.

He was there. With her. He wasn't going anywhere.

Relenting to her desires, Kate fell onto the bed and wrapped her arms around her fiancé. When his closed around her body, she felt it. Everything unfurled, including her hold on her emotions. The tears began to slip readily from her eyes and so she smothered herself against his chest, breathing in his scent and listening for the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat.

"I am so sorry...for everything I put you through."

She listened to the words resonating through his chest and the guilt began to creep over her for how she'd acted that day. How foolish and unloving she must have seemed to him, treating him with distain when, for all he knew, he'd been gone merely a few hours. Castle was kidnapped and held against his will while an elaborate cover-up plot kept them apart. He was just as much a victim as she.

"It's not your fault, you know," she sniffed back her betraying tears. "You went through stuff too so…"

"Well it's not the same; I can't remember. Though I do know I missed you terribly, because there's no way I wouldn't."

She adjusted her position against his shoulder as the next wave of emotions hit her. Castle—her Castle. He was there, but something felt off. Not the same. Like putting on your favorite shoes only to find someone else had been wearing them for a few weeks and stretched them out and all the wrong places. They were the same, but they weren't.

"We can't just, um, pick up where we left off, can we? As if nothing happened."

He always had a way of reading her mind, didn't he? "No."

"We'll get there. We'll find our way home." He pulled his arm tighter around her shoulders and pulled one of her legs into his lap, drawing them ever closer.

His words were a comfort to her, just like they had been from a time long before they had ever met, but just saying that they would be okay and actually being okay were two very different things.

For several more moments, Kate remained in his embrace, feeling lighter just from the presence of him. When she became more aware of the remnants of tears tickling her upper lip, she slid from him and grabbed a tissue from the box on her nightstand, using it to mop up her face. She tossed the used object into the nearest waste can before shrugging off her robe and tossing it on the end of the bed. Turning, she watched as he did the same.

In their perfected unison, they slid into the bed both of them oddly being mindful of keeping to their respective sides. When Castle's toes brushed hers, he smiled, and leaned in for a kiss. Instinctually, she leaned away. Castle's eyes widened and he could hardly have shown more displeasure if she'd actually slapped him. The times she turned down affection from him throughout their courtship could easily have been counted on one hand.

"I'm sorry," she apologized quickly. "It's just…it's just too much right now."

"I-I understand," he replied in a tone that made clear he did so with great reluctance. "I wasn't going to—I mean we don't have to—I mean…" he shut his eyes briefly to stop his stammers. "I was just going to kiss you."

He turned his head and lowered his chin a few inches to his chest. Kate bit down on her bottom lip as his expression reminded her of a puppy who had just been smacked across the nose with a newspaper. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, leaned in and kissed his cheek with feather-softness. Without waiting for his response, she sunk down into the mattress.

Being back in their bed suddenly felt so odd to her. For the first few weeks after his disappearance, she loyally spent every night in that bed, foolishly thinking that somehow, someway he would show up there in the middle of the night with the perfect explanation for what happened. Then, as time wore on, it became more painful, and she only spent a few nights there a week to placate Martha's kind requests to see her more often. But, with the onset of his sixth missing week, staying there became too agonizing. All scent of him had gone from the room, yet every objected remained heavily laden with their memories, each of which stabbed at her heart sharper every time.

With the light out, they lay in silence for a moment before she heard, "Kate? You do believe me don't you? You do believe I don't remember anything that happened over the past two months?"

Her soul—every fiber of her being—wanted, needed to believe him, but deep down her cop brain remained unconvinced. She knew he didn't clearly remember everything—he could never be that foolish or, quite frankly, that good of a liar, but she could not help but wonder if he remembered some things. If he had the ghosts of memories he wasn't sharing with her. Whether because they were too painful or too shameful, she did not know, but she hoped in time he would share them with her; for now, though, his word would be enough.

"Yes, of course." She was silent for a few moments as the guilt returned to her again. She shamefully remembered their conversation on the beach by the campsite and how she had treated him. For that, he deserved an apology.

"I'm sorry I didn't earlier. It's just…with all the evidence. I was afraid that maybe…maybe you didn't-"

"What Kate?" he jumped on her uncompleted thought.

Twisting the ring around her finger again, she sighed. "I don't know. That maybe you weren't ready to be married again. Maybe it was too soon. The month before the wedding was crazy with Bracken and Rogan and I thought maybe you-"

"Katherine Beckett," he cut her off, sliding his hand beneath the covers until he reached her bicep and gave it a gentle squeeze. "There is absolutely nothing that would stop me from marrying you—except me literally being kidnapped. I promise you. I may not remember what happened during the past two months, but I'm certain I spent every second of it trying to figure out a way to get back to you. I love you."

The steadiness of his tone did not in any way assuage her guilt. If anything, it made her feel worse for doubting him. "I love you, too."

She rolled onto her side and pulled his arm down around her, encouraging him to spoon against her. He did so easily and she felt him press a kiss onto the back of her head. The feeling of his body around hers caused her heart to momentarily seize in her chest. It was all too much, but she could take it, as the fear of not feeling his body against hers was greater; she needed to know he was there with her and the day hadn't been a dream.

Shortly before two a.m. Kate awoke with a start. She'd been having another nightmare about his car crash on their almost wedding day. This time, when she ran down the embankment, she could see him in the car, flames lapping against his skin. She rushed for the door handle, but she couldn't grasp it; the fire seared her skin and prevented her from getting a good grip. She watched with horror as he pounded on the glass, calling out her name, begging for assistance. She screamed too, and it was her own screams that pulled her from slumber.

Gasping awake, Kate sat up and found herself entangled in the bed sheets. She scrambled her way out of them, gasping through her tears. It wasn't the first time she'd had a dream like that one and, unfortunately, it would not be the last, but it was the first time she hadn't encountered her nightmares alone.

"Kate?" his gravelly voice traveled through the darkness, but it did nothing to calm her.

She backed her way out of the bed until her legs came in contact with the nearby chair. She sank down on it, but immediately dropped on her knees to the floor as wracking sobs overtook her body. She pulled her arms across her chest, grasping each elbow with the opposite hand and lowered her forehead until her hair all but covered her face, great, choking sobs overtaking her body.

"Kate, my god, Kate, honey, I'm right here." His fingers lightly came in contact with her shoulder, his obvious intention to comfort her, but his touch had the opposite effect. The floodgates had opened and she could no longer control her tears. She felt his arms pull her against his chest, but she could not have stopped not even if she wanted to.

It took the better part of five minutes for her hiccupping sobs to lessen. When they did, she began to speak through the fistfuls of tissues she used to mop up her face. "When your car crashed it was on fire. On fire," she repeated as though her lover did not understand the concept of flames. "I watched it burn and…and…"

"Kate, Kate." He stroked her back gently. "It's okay; I wasn't in the car."

"But I thought you were! I thought you were and…and then you were gone. It was like losing my mother all over again, except it was worse. Not knowing was worse. I didn't think it could be, but it was. Every day, every lead. It was like being strapped on a rollercoaster that never ended. It never stopped, Castle; never."

"Hey," he sighed, resting his cheek against the top of her head. "It's okay; it's over now. I'm here and we're going to figure this out together, because you and I—we can figure anything out, right?"

His voice rang of a lightness she wasn't sure she could feel again, but his words hit home. "Yes," she agreed, "we can."

Just a moment later, she felt his arms snake around her—one across her back, the other scooping under her thighs. When she realized what he was doing, she pressed her hand against his chest to stop him. "No, Castle you shouldn't."

"I'm fine," he said, lifting her from the ground and placing her back in bed. He climbed in around her in his typical ungraceful fashion and forced the covers back up over her body. "We're going to be okay, Kate; we are. We're going to have another wedding—a better wedding—and then we'll go on our honeymoon and start our lives together. It won't be tomorrow and it probably won't be next week either, but it will happen. You know how I know that?"

"How?" she asked gently.

"Because ours is a great love story."

Kate stared across the bed at him. It was too dark to see the details of his face, but she could see the outline of his head well enough to know she stared in the right direction. As always, she did so with a sense of awe. His unwavering faith in her, in them, never ceased to astound her. It was without a doubt one of the things she loved most about him.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked her. "Is there anything you want? Water or-"

"You," she breathed out. Reaching out her hands, she cradled his face and used it to guide their lips together, crushing her mouth against his. He quickly reciprocated, pulling her body in tightly as her fingers skimmed through his hair.

Kissing him for the first time in over eight weeks felt like being born again. This was the start of a new chapter in their lives together. They would move past this, they would find their way back to each other and be stronger because of it. Of that, she had no doubts.

As they kissed, Kate skimmed her hands down his strong back and around his torso. She knew they should have waited and she shouldn't have given in to her emotions and desires, but she easily suppressed that rational part of her brain with the knowledge that just the day before she hadn't been certain she would ever see—let alone kiss or make love to—him ever again. She needed him then more than ever, surrounding her, inside of her; everywhere.

When her fingertips inadvertently scratched across his freshly healed bullet wound, he breathed in sharply and pulled back from her. Quickly, she apologized. He tried to brush it off and kiss her again, but she stopped him, a rational thought swimming to the surface despite the love haze clouding her other thoughts.

"Are you sure you're up for this? The doctor said your dehydration was pretty severe and-"

"So you think I should drink a Gatorade first?" he questioned.

"Castle," she groaned, though she also smiled. It was the first real smile she had in two months and it felt good. Better than good.

He pulled her body against his and rolled them back against the mattress. Together. Together they would find their way home.