Missing

Kate Beckett sat curled up on her couch with her legs drawn up in front of her, her arms wrapped around her legs and her forehead pressed to her knees. She had been trying not to cry since she arrived back at her apartment, but had failed miserably, so she stopped trying, the tears pouring down her cheeks. Her choking sobs echoing through her empty apartment.

Watching the emotions playing out on Rick's face during the course of the day from when he first learned that Alexis had been taken along with Sara El-Masri. He was shocked at first, just like she had been, but shocked soon gave way to devastated.

When they had spoken on the phone and she had tried to reassure him the words he spoke nearly broke her heart.

"Don't. Don't promise me you'll find her if you can't to it, because I would never forgive you. Any more than I could ever forgive myself."

It had taken everything she had not to break down sobbing for him in the middle of the precinct.

When he arrived at the scene where the kidnappers van had been found, he was practically beside himself. She had never seen him so completely shattered, so completely beside himself with with desperation. Seeing the blood in the van had completely driven him over the edge.

When he walked into the bedroom with their suspect, shut the door and the screaming began, she was horrified, not just by the painful screaming coming from the man as Castle did whatever he did to him, but at the line that he had crossed without any hesitation. This was a side of the man she loved she never thought she'd see. The quiet vengeful father of a daughter in danger.

The last straw for him had obviously been when the house he had sent them to had come up empty, but with proof that the two girls had in fact been there. Leaving only their coats behind and the dead body of the other suspect. A man who had obviously been tortured to death.

When she had stopped by the loft on her way home he wasn't there. Martha had no idea where he'd gone, only that there had been confirmation that Alexis was still alive and that she was inexplicably in Paris, France. He had walked out the door, and hadn't been heard from since.

She had tried calling him four times which had gone straight to voice mail, sent nearly a dozen text messages that went unanswered. She had no idea where he had gone, or what he was doing, but her partner was out there...alone.

She walked into her bedroom and found herself drawn to the drawer she had given him last week for Valentine's day to find the shirt he had worn that night which he'd had such trouble getting out of. She pulled it out of the drawer and brought it to her face, inhaling his scent.

She quickly undressed, slipped on the shirt and buttoned it closed before crawling into bed. She sent one last heartfelt text message, begging him to get in touch with her, turned her ring tone all the way up and on vibrate so it would wake her if he responded before pulling the covers over her head and cried herself to sleep.

Praying to all that was holy that wherever he was going, he would still be the man she loved when he came back to her.