Apperception

'There is no remedy for love but to love more.'
-Henry David Thoreau

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apperception: (n) psychology; [Latin: toward understanding] 1) the process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas he or she already possesses 2) understanding of an event that comes about because of knowing fully the conditions that inspired it

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Her hands are shaking as the elevator ascends.

She's bleeding, and soaked to the skin in river water, and she knows it's bad - bad way to start this, restart it, bad way to come home after four months gone - but she's out of options.

Maybe out of her head.

The bleeding won't stop. Every breath stings, and the blood soaks her shirt, the waistband of her jeans. She was too afraid to look after she dragged herself out of the river, too afraid to know. She just wants to get home. She just wants him back, wants to stop. She can stop.

He's finally dead. At least there's that. He tried to leave her for dead, but she took him down with her. He's dead and even if it comes back on her, home is safe again. He's dead.

He's dead. (She repeats it in her head like she doesn't believe. Desperate to believe it. He's dead.)

She's having trouble staying on her feet. She swallows against the urge to throw up, closes her eyes. The elevator lurches to a stop and she bounces against the side panel, falling to one knee with a grunt.

When she gets to her feet, the doors are beginning to close again. She has to battle her way out, but everything has been a battle since the night she slipped away. She struggles into the hallway, catches herself on the wall before she can stumble again.

Blood is smeared across the paint. She feels badly for that, but in a distant way, an afterthought.

She knows she's descending into shock.

But not yet. So close now, she will not let him find her dead in the hall.

Beckett pushes herself forward, every step an attempt to erase one hundred and seventeen days without him, without her family, one hundred and seventeen days of leaving.

Her shoulder crashes into the corner and she groans, the pain flaring sharply, fingers leaving bloodied marks on the wall. The East River has left marks on her as well, and she's shaking now, trembling so hard that she has to lock her knees to keep herself upright, press her arms against her sides where the blood seeps, warm.

But when she comes to their door, his door, her body falters. (Not her heart, never her heart, oh her heart ached for them, still aches, the missing so bad it's a taste in her mouth and a pressure behind her eyes.)

She slumps into the frame and lays her cheek to the door, and she thinks about stopping here, just for a rest, just for a moment. But sounds filter through from behind the wood, alluring and promising, remnants of home, and she forces herself to straighten.

She knocks on his door, more a tremor than a fist. Even as she struggles to stand upright (on her own two feet, stand up Beckett, she will meet him face to face and do him the courtesy of not forcing him to take her back-)

The door flies open and she falls inward, her strength giving way.

He reaches for her - pure reflex - but the clothesline of his arm across her abdomen takes the breath out of her. She reels. Pain in pinwheels across her vision.

"Kate."

The baby gives a piercing cry. Beckett groans as Castle yanks her upright and on her feet once more, but he shoves her back.

Her spine hits the door frame, but her knees are buckling.

His face is livid, and broken, and her vision is beginning to tunnel, going dark.

He lifts a hand to press the baby against his chest. The baby. "Beckett. How dare you-" He chokes off, staring at his hand, blood-stained, against the baby. "Oh, God."

She sinks to the floor as if in slow motion, everything giving out on her. She wishes so badly she hadn't come. Anything but this.

"Oh, God. Kate. You're-"

She blacks out.

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There's nothing he can do but catch her with one arm and lower her to the floor. The baby startles again, crying out, but he hushes her with half a thought, focusing on Beckett.

She's soaked to the skin and ice cold, her lips tinged blue, clothes and hair giving off an awful stench. Sewage, rotten fish. He knows that smell. After her car went into the river, the odor stayed in his nostrils for weeks.

"What the hell, Beckett?" He touches her icy cheek, but he feels her breath against the heel of his hand.

Breathing is good.

He skims his hand down her body, searching for the source of the blood. When he pulls apart her leather jacket, he finds it's been shredded - knife? - the material plastered to her torso. It's dark in the loft, and at first he can't see, but as he fumbles at her one-handed, his knuckles drag through something fleshy and warm.

Oh, God.

Blood. Lots of blood. Lots of - of wounds.

Instinct takes over. He moves swiftly, without hesitation. Pressing the baby to his chest for reassurance, he uses his free hand to check her pulse - it holds steady. He pries apart her eyelids to check for blown pupils - no, normal light response. He opens her mouth to check her airway - clear breath sounds, if ragged.

He skims his touch down her torso and shoves up her shirt, a ratty t-shirt stained with mud - and it reeks. Hudson or East River? It doesn't matter, but they were given tetanus shots and broad-spectrum antibiotics afterwards, and they didn't have open wounds like this.

She's going to need medical attention. No matter the reasons for her leaving, he can't do this alone. He has to call in support, even if he can't call 911.

And even still, fresh blood wells up from wounds he hasn't found. Blood under his hand, between his fingers, warm and wrong. He can't stem the tide.

He needs two hands.

"Damn it, Kate," he snarls, and it makes the baby cry out, pitiful and scared, but he needs two hands.

Swallowing back the rage that burns in his throat, Castle jerks to his feet. He lays the baby on the playmat, the mobile swinging overhead with moons and stars, and as he turns back to Kate, he fumbles in his pocket for his phone.

Her face is still on his lock screen.

It jolts him for a moment, how desperately he's held on to this anger like grief, and now she's here, passed out and fresh from mortal danger, and he's brittle with rage.

But he calls Lanie, putting the phone to his ear with a shoulder, as he comes to his knees beside his wife. His distant, estranged, infuriating wife.

God. What has she done? He presses both hands to the wounds he can see and prays that Lanie picks up.

She doesn't get to die on their damn living room floor.

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