I'm here to interrupt your happy cronut stories with some "In the Belly of the Beast" AU angst. Have a good day.

He knew something was wrong.

He had a feeling when she called and told him not to ask what she had to do, like she wanted him to know that something strange was going on but couldn't tell him the specifics. And then she wasn't answering his calls. Not entirely out of the ordinary when she's working a case, but she'll usually send him a text to apologize if she can swing it, or let him know if she's going to be home late.

And the boys weren't answering his calls. Which is equally as unsettling because Esposito will usually jump on any chance he can to rib him, especially if it can be done while calling Beckett's attention to his panicking.

Apparently he had a reason to.

He sits at the precinct and he waits because he can't do anything else. He's useless – utterly useless. All he can do is sit and stare at her chair, taking up space. He can't go home, but he can't leave. He can barely breathe, let alone look for her. It's the fear of when Alexis went missing times 10 and that kills him. But when Alexis went missing, when they took her to Paris, he had her to fight for him. And he had the entire precinct. He had international embassies, his father – He had Beckett. And the men who took Alexis? They wanted her alive. Kate's out there somewhere with bad information, impersonating a contract killer for some drug lords and he knows how this story plays out. If they find out she's lying -

"Mr. Castle."

He looks up and sees the unfamiliar man from narcotics standing in front of him. He forces himself to stand up, staggers a little bit at the sudden change in movement and ignores the look on his face.

"Did you find her?"

"Mr. Castle, based on the partial address we obtained from Detective Beckett and the ping off the original cell phone tower, our analysts were able to find the house where we know Detective Beckett was held."

Castle pauses, swallows down the bitter feeling crawling itself up his throat.

"Was?"

The man doesn't answer directly.

"The place was empty. Not a soul on site. We did find this, though."

The man standing in front of him holds out his hand, a small piece of paper pinched between his fingers.

He hates this man. He doesn't even remember his name but the unsuppressed anger floods through his system, pooling in his fists and behinds his knees and he nearly jumps forward, demands they look harder because there's no way that all they found in whatever damn place they searched is a piece of paper when his partner has been missing for hours and this is all his fault.

"It's addressed to you."

His blood turns solid and he's frozen, his eyes locked onto that sheet of paper he's still holding out to him. His chest starts to burn and he realizes that he stopped breathing, sucks down as much air as he can through his fisted windpipe and his hand moves on its own accord. He sees his name on the front, her familiar handwriting.

Rick.

Not Castle.

His knees give out from underneath him, his chair rocking dangerously as his body crashes into it.

They find her two days later.

He's a mess, hasn't eaten for days and hasn't slept in longer. He hasn't left the precinct, just an unhelpful body that they banished to the break room. So when the call comes in that there were two unidentified bodies found in a forest, one of them vaguely matching the description of his fiancé, he forces himself to have hope. As far as they knew, she'd been alone. They have no reason to assume there would be anyone else.

He goes with the boys, ignores their warnings and their stern faces and the pity in Gates' eyes because no, she's alive. She's still his fiancé and she promised she'd be home for dinner and she's still not here.

He sees the man first, blonde and younger with his throat slit cleanly, just as Elena had done to the other victims. He passes by him, though, looks towards the other crowd of people, is 5 steps away when Ryan and Esposito are right there in front of him, pushing him away from the woman face down on ground and he's not sure when he stops fighting them to see her and starts crying instead. Ryan and Esposito lead him gently towards the ground, and there's a prideful part of him that tells him to stop crying but then he hears Esposito try to talk to him - hard-ass, ex-special forces Javier Esposito - and his voice is shaking and his pride can go to hell. He's done. He's through.

The medical examiner and the local officers are milling about, talking about what happened. The man had died first, the laceration to his throat killing him almost instantly. It appears that she rolled him over and dug his phone out of his pocket. Apparently, this forest is known for its shitty reception, and there's no service in this ravine. So she crawled her way over to the hill. Apparently there's skid marks going down. She tried to climb up the hill to get to a place with reception and just… gave up.

He wants to scream at them, wants to yell at them and tell them that Kate Beckett would never just give up – someone did this to her and he'll be damned if the last thing that goes into the report is that Kate Beckett, his fiancé, just gave up.

He wants to do that, but he can't. He's too busy throwing up when he hears the body bag zip shut.

Gate's calls her father.

He feels like it should be his responsibility – argues that it should be his responsibility because he's family but by the time Ryan and Esposito get him back to the station to tell Gates in person, he's almost catatonic. He stands with Ryan and Esposito as they answer her questions, watches as the tears fill her eyes and he can't help it. He moves forward and he hugs the woman, doesn't even register as her arms wrap around him. He's suddenly so thankful, so very grateful for this woman who always claimed she hated him, because he let her stick around. If she didn't let him stay all those years ago, he may have never gotten his chance.

Gates lets go first and steps away from him, back to the no nonsense Captain he's always known her to be, and tells Ryan and Esposito that she'll take care of the media. She sends them home, tells Esposito to inform Dr. Parish and then tells Castle that she can call him a cab if he needs it.

He decides to walk home.

When he finally makes it home, the table's gone.

There's no sign of the wine that he uncorked for the two of them, the candles and the flowers and the table settings. There's nothing there, no evidence of the meal that she promised she would be home for. He barely has time to register it though because he feels a body slam into his immediately, her daughter cooing and clutching and trying to comfort him but he isn't crying. He grips her shoulders, pushes her gently away. He tries to smile at her, leans down and presses a kiss against her forehead and asks if she's alright. Her eyes water and again he's so grateful to Gates because he knows that she must have called his family, too. And told them that Kate's –

His mother joins them, rubs a hand between his shoulder blade and he can't breathe. This is his family but she's gone and she should be here with them, talking about colors and stupid fonts and he needs to leave.

He tells them both he's tired, doesn't wait for a response as he kisses them both and then heads towards his bedroom, making it to the bathroom and shutting that door, before he collapses against it.

God, she can have it. The stupid font he wasn't serious about. The colors, the venue, the time. She can have it all. He doesn't care.

He just wants her here.

The wake is miserable.

He's standing in line next to her father, his mother and daughter taking a break from the receiving line, moving to talk to the rest of their precinct family standing near a sitting Jenny with a sleeping Sarah Grace in her arms and it's miserable. Her casket is right next to him and he has shaken more hands than he ever has at any book party or award show and it chokes him. His fiancé - his wonderful, beautiful, remarkable fiancé - was so good. She'd touched so many people in her life, worked so hard to build herself up from the ashes and he knew that. Of course he knew that. But now he sees it, and he's got her engagement ring on a chain around his neck and he's never felt more unworthy of her.

The faces are all starting to blur together. He's been standing in the receiving line for nearly 3 hours and the line is still out the door and doesn't look like it has any intention of stopping soon. Black Pawn people had showed up, the entire 12th precinct and what he assumes is every cop in the city not on duty, families of past victims, the Mayor and the police commissioner, Connelly and Patterson and Conrad – plenty of faces he recognized; even more that he didn't.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Mr. Beckett. I was stunned when my secretary told me."

He nearly falls over at the speed which his neck snaps over towards Jim and the man standing in front of him. He thinks he can feel all the eyes in the room on them and wouldn't blame them. He can't imagine what his face looks like.

It burns through him, watching her father shake hands with the man who had his wife murdered and then put a bullet through his daughter's chest.

Bracken moves away from Jim and stands in front of him. He squares up, can't stop himself, pushes himself to his full height and breathes out of his nostrils. It's not respect. It never will be.

"I'm very sorry about your fiancé, Mr. Castle," he says, holding out his hand, "This is a great loss for everyone."

For a minute he sounds sincere, but the longer Castle looks into his eyes he sees it. He doesn't know how but he knows that he's somehow behind all of this – behind Elena disappearing from her hospital bed and the man with the slit throat and Beckett not having a matching gash. He can't prove it but he knows and he can see it in the lines around the scar on Bracken's face when he makes the connection, the slight tensing of his wrist underneath his watch on the hand he holds out to him.

Castle looks down at the hand, and looks back up at Bracken, his own hands fisting at his sides. He can sense the looks from everyone in line, can feel the tension from Ryan and Esposito across the room, the confused look from his used-to-be-future-father-in-law and he doesn't care. He keeps his voice low, so no one else can hear him, but he has no doubts that Bracken does.

"Go to hell."

The first time her father catches him drinking, he thinks he's going to kill him.

He's not sure how much time has passed since he buried her, really couldn't tell you because the curtains in his office are still drawn and he hasn't left his building in days. He didn't mean to start drinking – He meant to start writing. He thought that maybe it would be the healthier way to deal with his fiancé's death, but then he wrote a scene where Jameson rescues Nikki from a drug lord, and when he goes and grabs her he calls out "KATE!" and then all bets are off.

He thinks that was days ago but he can't be sure and he thinks his daughter called Jim Beckett because there's no knock. Suddenly he's in his office and the bottle of scotch on his desk and the glass in his hand are crashing to the floor. He's never ever seen Jim Beckett so angry before, and he tries to pull himself up out of his chair and Jim shoves him right back into it, stooping down to look him in the eyes.

"I won't let you do to Alexis what I did to my Katie."

He stares at him for a moment longer before his eyes start to soften, looking Rick up and down a few times before his hand comes to rest on his shoulder.

"Hurts like Hell," Jim mumbles.

Rick swallows, looking at the man in front of him with new appreciation. At first all they shared was Kate. Now they share in the loss of losing the woman you love.

Finally, Rick nods.

"Hurts like Hell."

He finds it when he cleans out her apartment.

Lanie offers to help and he lets her, knows that this has been much harder on her than she's letting everyone believe, and Jim is busy but the lease is almost up and they need to get out of there.

It's the first time he's been there in months and it barely even smells like her anymore. There's a thin layer of dust on everything, and they know they should split up; get this over as quickly as possible but they both move towards her bedroom, and unspoken agreement to get the hardest room out of the way first. Lanie goes into the ensuite, and Rick takes a moment, steals himself before he opens up her closet. It's relatively empty, he notices, has to bite back a small smile because the loft has most of her stuff in it and maybe this wasn't going to be as hard as he thought.

There's some boatneck shirts hanging up, some slacks he hadn't seen her wear in years and he pulls them out, goes to set them on her bed when he sees the garment bag in the back of her closet. He sees the name printed in silver on the bag, knows immediately what it is and that he shouldn't open it but he can't help himself. He drops the clothes he had in his hand, reaches out and pulls the bag out before clipping the hanger on the edge of her boudoir. His maneuvers the bag over the top of the hanger, slides the zipper down with shaking fingers until the treasure inside finally comes into view and the garment bag falls to the floor almost gracefully.

He has to take a step back. It's not what he would have expected from her but he can see it. Oh god, he can see it – the way the tulle would move with her when she walked down the aisle, the sleeves barely kissing her shoulders but hugging her arms; the way her collarbones would call out for him to taste while they were dancing to their song.

He hears Lanie gasp but doesn't turn away. She moves slowly and steps up next to him.

"Wow," she murmurs, reaching out and trailing her fingers over the tulle, "It's… different. Not what I expected from her."

He remembers the way her eyes lit up when she spoke about how she didn't want to wait any longer – about how her mother would have loved it. He imagines her standing in front of a mirror in this dress – her dress – what she must have felt like when she finally looked like a bride, and coming to the realization that it was okay. It was okay to miss her mother, but that didn't mean that she wasn't allowed to keep moving forward.

Keep moving forward.

He tries not to cry but it's hopeless. The tears sneak past his lashes and down his cheeks but he doesn't make a sound.

"No," he whispers, "It's perfect."