A/N: I wrote this for my Caskett friends who are heartbroken over S6 x E23 For Better or Worse. While I personally adored this season's finale, I feel so much sympathy for those who took it hard. If Ryan or Espo was in that car, I'm sure I'd be a "wreck" too ;-)

Warnings: Beckett/Esposito/Ryan/Parrish, Comfort/Angst/Friendship, Rated T for language, One-shot Complete.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, so I'm grateful to get them on loan. Thanks AWM and Co.

KATE'S GUARDIAN ANGELS

Kate Beckett hadn't slept in 57 hours. She looked like a shell of her former self, a drawn, darkly shadowed husk of the person she used to be. Still, the only thing keeping her horizontal on that bed were the sedatives Lanie had just forced into her. When Beckett refused to take them, Espo volunteered to restrain his overwrought friend, by standing behind her and locking both her arms against her chest while Parrish administered the dose.

"Lanie, we can't keep at it like this." Esposito, standing in the hallway outside the bedroom where Kate was resting, wasn't so much asking for an answer, as stating the obvious. Everyone on their team was exhausted from the emotional roller coaster of the past two weeks.

The off-duty medical examiner put the cap on the sedative's container, and stuffed it back into the makeshift med kit she had assembled over the last few days while looking after her distraught friends. The house in the Hamptons had been converted to a base of operations for all the people investigating Castle's disappearance, as well as those trying to keep themselves from going insane with worry. Both of these camps had a place for Kate Beckett, but by her own estimation, she was failing miserably at either side's noble goal.

Clearly trying to convince herself, instead of Espo, Parrish intoned, "We are doing what we can, and that's all there is to do, right now."

Even though she was fighting it, Kate knew her friends were right. The small voice of reason in her head was still somewhat audible. She needed to sleep. It wasn't just her head, or her body, that needed the rest. She needed a hiatus from being inside her own heart. Lamentably, the aching reflexive panic that permeated her limbs wouldn't let her obey rationality with consistency anymore, not since her heart fell off that cliff.

From Kate's clouded state she heard Lanie ask Javier, "Any news from Agent McCord?"

A mysterious string of events had brought federal agents in to investigate the groom-to-be's whereabouts, but the tenuous threads of evidence indicated to Kate that Castle's father might have played a hand in that.

Parrish was basically trying to distract Javier with this question. She knew nothing of note had come through without her notice. Every crumb of a lead was passed around the Hamptons compound like manna from heaven. From Martha's to Alexis' lips, and back again, the two women extolled the litany of possible explanations on the hour, every hour, like they were praying the rosary. This was their lifeline. With each round of plausible resolutions they repeated to each other, the frantic redheads trekked all possible trails back to psychological safety. Neither Rick's daughter nor his mother dared to stop this ritual, both of them doing it for the other's benefit, as much as their own.

Even though she couldn't blame them, both her intended in-laws were driving Beckett to distraction. Kate, Lanie, Javier, and occasionally Kevin and Jenny had been keeping to the other side of the house. For obvious reasons, Beckett was not the lead on this case, which they hoped against all logic, would turn out to be a missing persons, not a homicide investigation.

Kate Beckett wasn't the detached uber-detective that her missing fiancé had met five years ago. Way back then, the hardened exoskeleton of her mother-mystery pain had protected Beckett. It had made it easy for her to stay aloof, keep her emotions out of the trail of leads. It made Kate successful in catching killers where others failed. After falling prey to the obsession of finding her mother's murderer, and subsequently regaining control of that obsession, Beckett had transformed her wound into a weapon.

And that armor came in handy when she realized that the only successful strategy for dealing with the unapologetic dilettante in Richard Castle would be to insist on three things: an opaque emotional life, an arm's length of distance, and most importantly, a full strategic step ahead of his sophomorically fiendish mind.

But items one and two on that list, had been melting like butter since that day on the swing set. Not the first one in the rain, but the second one, when both Kate and Rick were worried that they might need to live apart. Since the moment Castle said her full name out loud, the sound of it had begun to call her back to a life she had given up pursuing in any serious way.

"Katherine Houghton Beckett, will you marry me?" Each syllable that fell from his lips, roused long dormant parts of herself, parts that froze comatose when her mother's life fell out of her own.

Since that time, instead of depending on a static emotional pain to inform her right action, she depended on the dynamic back and forth with Rick to find her way. His promise of "always" had become her new North Star whenever she felt unsure about what to do next.

And then, with Bracken's incarceration for the homicide of Johanna Beckett, even that solid edifice of decade-old pain gave way. Parts of herself that hadn't moved an inch, in all of her adult life, were suddenly unbound. It felt alien and strange to be free to grow and evolve internally, without an obvious threat to everything she stood for.

Without the compass of Castle's presence to constantly reorient herself during these last few life-changing weeks, she wouldn't have been able to enjoy it, either. This new tender growth inside her was exhilarating. She was smiling for God's sakes! Smiling! At nothing! At just the idea of marrying him! No one, not even the quick-draw Katherine Beckett herself, could get used to this precipitous change.

Still, that enjoyment came only because Rick was there telling her it was okay to trust. She had never done this kind of loving before, not as an adult. She would have been a scattered, lost little girl inside if she had to deal with this expansive new freedom all alone. She imagined that if Rick hadn't been there to hold her just after she marched Bracken into custody, she would have felt the same reverse claustrophobia that lifer-inmates feel when they confront wide-open spaces for the first time.

Beckett wondered that day, 'What did it mean to feel safe enough to change?'

She was happy to figure out the answer to that question over time, as long as Rick was by her side. It was a cruel joke that Castle had fostered her newly formed soft center, and now it was the very thing making her useless to find him, or whomever was responsible for this.

Beckett was crumbling in a way that was scaring the shit out of everyone. None of them could get used to it. McCordy, Esposito and Ryan kept starting sentences as if the 'real' Beckett, with the brilliant detecting mind, would chime in at any moment, take control of the room and set everyone on the path to righteous action again.

Regrettably, that woman seemed completely absent from the person impersonating Rick's fiancé, the person alternating between inappropriately directed outbursts, and withdrawn blankness, and examinations of evidence that lead to no sudden insights. Lanie and Ryan were better at hiding it, but Espo's eyes reflected a horrified ice that meant it was just as bad as Kate suspected.

Quietly, in half a whisper, Javier Esposito admitted, "I can't watch this much longer."

Lanie pulled out her phone, "I'll call Ryan."

Kevin and Javier had been spelling each other during their 24 hour standby as Beckett's bodyguards. And while they told Beckett that it was for her own protection, in truth, they wouldn't leave her side mostly because they feared Beckett would harm others, and possibly herself by accident. Esposito had already needed to restrain her a total of six times, in various ways, since they found Castle's car on fire.

From the moment Javier saw Kate unravel at the scene, he had assigned himself as her personal detail. By this point, Espo had been hovering nearby during 50 of Kate's last 57 hours. His nerves were shot. Not because he couldn't handle the extended duty, there was nowhere else he could think of being. He didn't need more than a few hours of sleep to keep him going right now.

It was watching Beckett being slammed up, down and sideways by the emotions ripping through her, that was unhinging him.

Even though he had never seen this much outward emotional expression from her, it didn't mean he judged her for it. It would have been more accurate to say he judged himself for it.

Javier Esposito hated one thing about himself above all his imperfections. He lost his cool, and let his emotions show, way more than he could abide. It would never really be okay with him that he couldn't just wipe that part of himself off the face of the earth forever.

So when he saw other people in his life letting their emotions fly, it didn't really matter if the situation called for it, his heart would start to pound with the beating drum of self-loathing for the one thing he couldn't control. And when that happened, all he wanted to do was bolt from the room and escape the uncomfortable twinge of recognition that reflection brought up for him. He knew he wasn't 'supposed to' feel that way, at least according to his counselor at the PTSD support center, but that didn't make it any easier to be around, on a visceral level.

It had never been as bad as this though. Watching Beckett out of control was a fresh level of hell. As an adult, Espo suffered through plenty of tears with his mom and sister with a modicum of patience. But Beckett was a stoic. In all their years together she rarely let Esposito or Ryan see a worried brow, let alone a tear. And never, ever had he heard something like the horrible sound that flew out of Kate's throat when Lanie wrapped her arms around her best friend and squeezed as hard as she could.

Kate's desperate outraged scream almost buckled Espo's knees underneath him.

Seeing Beckett lying there, despondent and listless as she gave into the drugs, was like a deja vu postcard from the worst parts of Javier's past. The flashback was making him nauseous.

He could see himself, laying prone in the bunk at his cousin's cramped apartment when he returned from his last tour of duty in the desert. Back in New York, nothing was falling into place as he had hoped. And every passing moment was making it harder and harder to relate to anything the mass of civilians around him were responding to.

Looking at Beckett's uncomfortably twisted frame, as she stared into dead space, he could almost taste the same disabling apathy he felt as his world fell apart, all those years ago. He could smell the stink of the white tshirt and grey sweatpants that he hadn't bothered to change in a fortnight. He remembered that pulling off and on mismatched socks, when he got too hot or too cool, was all the 'getting dressed' he could manage during that time period.

He had given up trying to straighten his bed covers or clothes, and just let the elastic cuff of his sweats ride up over his calves and gather around his knees for days. Beer bottles lined the floor around the bed. Dry cereal had begun to hide itself in the sheets because he ate it out of the box, since he couldn't bring himself to get up and get a spoon, let alone a bowl and milk to go with it.

On the tenth day of hiding out in those same grubby clothes, on those same nasty bedsheets, his cousin had called in reinforcements. Mrs. Esposito, and her daughter, promptly extracted her son and deposited him directly into the VA's treatment program for vets who were having difficulty with re-entry into the society that had become foreign to them.

Of course, Espo didn't go without a fight. Even while he sat there on that bed, silently screaming at himself to 'get up and put the damn bottle into the waste bin!' He couldn't force his limbs to respond to this simple and obviously needed request. Only the unconscious need to take a leak or grab another beer could compel him off that mattress. It was the only place that felt safe enough to hold him for some maddeningly inexplicable reason. He knew the situation had escalated beyond his control.

'I will not be one of those guys' he argued with himself, 'that needs someone else to screw his head on for him.' The rage at his utter incapacitating loss of control felt like fever symptoms it burned so hotly through his body. He clearly couldn't deny, however, that he felt too much vertigo to make any forward progress on his own, especially after the calendar page had turned over and his affliction was only getting worse.

But he didn't want it to be a touchy feely shrink. If he had to grit his teeth and take help from anybody, he wanted it to be another Army or Special Forces vet. He didn't know how that could happen though, since he'd rather swallow all his rounds than verbally ask for help from another enlisted men.

When he blankly walked through the doors of the VA clinic the first time, his mother veritably dragging him by his elbow, he had no idea what to tell himself, other than 'You're doing this for mom, just get through it to make her happy.'

He couldn't find his tongue when the person at the front desk asked him his name for the intake form. Seeing how disoriented he was made his mother and sister jump in and fill out most of it for him. Even after the awkward silent staring contest with the tiny balding man assigned to 'counsel' Javier, Mrs. E had spent an hour talking with the staff, and anyone who would listen, so she could find her Javi what he needed to get right again.

Lanie placed her hand on Espo's forearm to break him out of the the obvious signs of strain caused by whatever he was thinking about. "Ryan will be here in five minutes. They are on their way now."

At the sound of Kevin's name, the first dose of relief washed over Javier.

Lanie had been great with Kate. And working together to take care of her, she and Espo were getting along better than they ever had, even when they were dating. Nevertheless, Lanie couldn't help Javier where this was concerned. Only his partner had even the slightest clue how to disengage the demonic angst that was threatening to immobilize him right now.

Thank God for the drugs that would take over their job and let Espo get a moment to talk to Ryan alone.

"How long has she been out?" Ryan asked his partner when he saw his boss finally at peace. He let his eyes linger a moment on Beckett's sleeping form, in the hopes that he could replace some of the more disturbing images of Kate's uncharacteristic eruptions over the past few days.

Espo reported, "About twenty minutes, Lanie says she gave her enough to keep her asleep for at least four to six hours, though."

Javier also stared at Beckett, because he needed to convince himself that it would be okay to leave her in Jenny and Lanie's care, while he took a breather. If he had made it this long without letting Kate slip away to start some renegade revenge plot against Tyson, or whoever she was blaming, he would never forgive himself for losing her while he stepped away now, no matter how badly he needed the break.

Espo addressed both women sitting in comfy chairs just outside Kate's room. "You go to the bathroom one at a time," his intense stare, and finger pointing back and forth between their chests, had them both at attention, "During which time, the on duty watch never takes their eyeballs off her. Are we clear?"

At any other time, this little direct order speech would have been met with indignation, or maybe even a slap from Parrish. However, both women had seen the German Shepard look of protective zeal in Javi's eyes as he took on the mission of saving Beckett from herself, over the last few days. And watching Kate, they knew he was on to something, not just playing staff sergeant for his own ego.

Both women nodded. When Javi didn't move, Parrish used Espo's own language to reassure him, "We got this." She gave a squeeze to the nervous hand dangling beside Javier's pant leg.

Espo took one more assuring nod from Ryan before both men headed outside, through the back patio toward the beach.

"Are you sure you don't need some sleep, bro?" Ryan was looking very worried about the yellowish pallor climbing into his partners' tanned skin. In the dark, the exterior light reflecting off the large house was casting sideways shadows across both of their faces as they made their way down toward the sand.

"Yeah, bro, I definitely do, but I can't sleep yet."

"What's going on?" Ryan knew with a set-up like that Espo was ready to spill about something. And that certainly explained why he was willing to leave Beckett with two untrained women, even under sedated conditions.

Even though Kevin was equally concerned for Beckett and Castle during all this, he had the distraction of Jenny's well-intentioned attempts to alternately distract him from, and get him to open up about, his concerns over the last three days. And Ryan felt guilty because he couldn't satisfy either of his wife's desires to comfort him.

Most of each day, Kevin had been chasing little leads around the outskirts of the feds' investigation, or taking care of tasks that the women of Castle's life seemed to be inventing just to keep themselves from going crazy. Though later, when he and Jenny were back at their hotel, she pestered him for more than he could give her. He tried to talk, but nothing would come out, and finally, today he asked her to go back to New York to her mom and the baby. It clearly wasn't helping either of them; even though she had stayed on to try to be supportive.

All Ryan could think about was how Javier and Kate needed him, and that having Jenny there, while a sweet gesture, was in the way of that.

When Javi reached the strip of beach where the sand hardened enough to walk freely, he turned and stared back at Castle's sprawling estate. Kevin saw the distant glow highlight the extra depth of the brow crease his partner had been deepening these last few days. He wondered how long it was going to go on like this, especially if no new leads came their way.

"Bro, you look like shit. I can take tonight's shift." Ryan knew Espo didn't think his younger partner could do much physically to detain a grief-crazed Beckett. That was the reason Espo hadn't split the shifts more evenly, which is to say, at all. But Ryan hoped a little poking would move Espo from his paralysis, and either get him to talk, or at the very least come back with a familiar sardonic quip.

Javier's face screwed up in a disbelieving expression, "Man, I don't need my beauty sleep, this shit's important." Espo turned toward his partner, searching Kevin's face angrily for something he might have missed earlier, "Or don't you think so? Maybe you're gonna tell me that you are headed back to the city with Jenny."

Kevin rolled his eyes. 'Oh here it is again.' This was the familiar button Espo pushed to test Ryan's fealty. Kevin realized that Javi must be more upset than he was letting on, because whenever his feelings were getting the better of him, this was his partner's first line of defense.

Even after all they had been through, after betrayal and reconciliation rocked their relationship two years ago, it still came down to Espo's mistrust of Ryan's multiple affiliations.

As the easy-going peaceable partner, it was Kevin's job to run interference with outsiders to their partnership. Over these past few days that had meant mostly keeping the other women happy, so Espo could focus on Beckett. Usually, Esposito seemed very pleased that his partner was sent on the lion share of inane effeminate errands, like untying three hundred silk ribbons from the rafters so they could be returned to the catering company. Usually, pimping Kevin out to do the tasks that Espo disdained as 'unmanly' worked out just fine for the older detective. So, Kevin reasoned, there must be something bigger at play here.

Kevin clapped his partner on the shoulder, very glad that at least he was engaging with him now. However, he had to check Espo's eyes for the source of that unfounded attack.

"Javi, I'm not going anywhere." Ryan decided that he could best diffuse by getting straight to the point. "I'm sending Jenny home to Sarah Grace tonight. But I need to be right here with you and Beckett."

When Javier's expression didn't change measurably, Kevin gave his partner's shoulder a small shake to snap him out of whatever delusion was plaguing him. "Bro, I'm right here. Where are you?"

Esposito pursed his lips and breathed a heavy sigh through his nostrils, finally admitting, "No place good." After an awkward straining silence Javier admitted in a quiet voice, "I need back up, bro."

Kevin could see the pain staking through his partner's heart as he made this seemingly obvious request. He knew Espo must have been asking for something more than his physical accompaniment.

"I'm here. You can't get rid of me that easily. What's going on?"

Esposito paused to take in the bolstering, open-hearted eyes of his best friend. Kevin's nonjudgmental concern was the only thing standing between Javi and a self-destructive spiral right now.

Javier knew it was too soon to start thinking about the road ahead, but the sleep deprivation, the stress of Beckett's out of character rages, and Ryan's absence had pushed him prematurely to a possible breaking point.

"Bro, what happens if she can't come back from this?"

"We'll find him. We're not giving up ye…"

Espo cut him off, "No, that's not what I mean."

The accidental anger creeping into Javi's voice tuned Kevin's focus keener to hear the next sentence.

"What if she's breaking?"

Kevin could swear that he heard Javier's voice crack with the smallest intrusion of tears. But that was impossible, no way Espo would be standing still letting Kevin watch, if he was about to cry.

Kevin's assessment was correct. All that guard duty had left Espo too much time to daydream about worst case scenarios. And Beckett's unthinkable implosion was igniting Javier's most unthinkable fears. Chief among them was the dissolution of their team, and the fortifying partnership he had with Ryan.

As much as he lamented being surrounded by dorks, Esposito was a better man when Ryan was around. If Kate had been eaten by losing Castle, Espo, given his history, feared that losing Ryan might be similarly debilitating.

At the moment, no one was threatening Ryan's life. So, Espo was only dreading that Kevin would move on to a better job at another precinct, and get sucked into his family life so far that he'd have no time for Javier. Unfortunately, it almost felt worse to think about Kevin alive and well, but just not needing him the way Espo had come to depend on Ryan.

The very idea that Espo 'needed' someone, anyone, made him feel physically ill. He didn't want to believe how vulnerable his relationship with Ryan made him. All the fun they had, all the protection they gave each other, all the harmless ribbing, and covering up they did for each other, all the consistent checking in and following up with each other, it amounted to more for Esposito than he believed it did for Ryan.

Right now, Javier knew from experience that he needed to lean into his connection with his best friend, instead of follow his instincts to isolate himself. That was his best chance of getting hold of the darkness gaping inside him.

Kevin hadn't seen as much of Beckett's unraveling as Javier had. So he naively offered, "That's not going to happen. She'll pull out of it."

Javi squared off with Kevin. His voice mixed with anger and desperation as he yelled, "She might not."

And then it all made sense to Ryan. Espo was concerned about Beckett, surely, but right now he was really talking about himself. Only fear made Esposito lose control like this. And Ryan knew that external forces simply didn't intimidate his well-trained partner. Espo could death stare a bazooka into submission without flinching once.

No, this had to be something inside Javier that was freaking him out, something that he couldn't control.

Ryan's mind set to telling a story. Despite Javi's raised voice, he knew that his partner wanted a trail of bread crumbs back to reality more than he could handle a direct confrontation in his current fragile state.

Kevin turned his body, so that both he and Espo would be facing the same direction, and threw his right arm over Javi's shoulders. "Can I let you in on a little secret?"

Espo's face turned toward his friend in confusion, but he was happy to get drawn into Kevin's life-affirming demeanor, "What?"

"Our story isn't over."

Now Espo was even more confused, "Huh?"

"We four, you, me, Beckett and Castle, started a story when we met. And it's not done yet."

"How do you know? If Castle's really dead, and Beckett can't come back to us, everything will change." Esposito stared down at the sand, exhausted to the bone just by uttering those words out loud.

"Well, I can tell you how I know, but you'll need to listen to the story from the beginning." Kevin sensed from Javi's grasping that he was willing to let Ryan lead. So he baited, "Do you want me to tell you the story?"

"Yeah, bro. I think I need to hear it right now."

"Then you'll need to walk with me." Ryan motioned down the beach ahead of them. "Can't spin yarns standing still."

Normally Kevin's distractingly optimistic dorkiness would elicit a much bigger reaction from Espo, but right now all Javi could muster before he turned over the wheel to his partner was "K."

As they started down the beach, Espo had no idea where Ryan was going with this, but he trusted his partner to either restore a little of his faith in life, or at the very least, lull him to sleep as he droned on in one of his interminable I-love-the-sound-of-my-own-voice tales. Either way, Espo needed to hang out with Ryan's indefatigably positive energy for a while, and plug himself back in to the parts of his psyche that were strong enough to handle whatever lie ahead.

"So, once upon a time, there was a gallant young rookie detective who got paired up with this barbaric jock of a cop…"

Reflexively taking his cue to call Ryan out, without even thinking about it, Espo cut in, "Oh, so this is a fantasy story?"

Kevin tried not to smile, and gloat, that he could start turning Espo toward his old self within a matter of seconds.

"Oh, no, mostly action and mystery, but I tell you the comedic parts are usually my favorite." He gave Espo a light playful punch to the ribs and continued, "So, where was I? Right. Young Sir Ryan the brave…"

They walked down the beach for a long while rekindling the memories, and the banter, that had carried them thus far. The stories chronicled their road to friendship, and valor, and justice for the people whose lives were taken too soon.

Every story had some mention of Beckett's influence or Castle's presence, or a distinct void where they should have been. And talking about them like this, in the way they had been, alive and kicking, seemed to fortify both Kevin and Javier. It restored their helpfully blind assumptions that everything would work itself out eventually, because it just had to. That was the way all four of them had always worked before, and they needed to remind Kate, and Rick (when they found him), that that was the way it needed to be again.

In the end, Ryan convinced Esposito that the story wasn't over, because they still believed in each other. And whether or not fate would bring Castle back, they would simply refuse to move on from their steadfast focus on each other's stories, as they unfolded.

Even though Castle's car flew off a cliff into a fiery ditch, as of this moment, the proverbial wheels had decidedly not come off, just yet.

Gratitude to purplangel, my muse for this fic, and just a sweet generous person who deserves good things.

Props to The Black Sluggard, the demigod of all things angst, without whose amazing images I would have never conceived of a piece like this.

Credit to GeekMom, SelimPensFiction, and JamieSpencer4 for taking the time to help beta (although I could always use more advice on this front).

And to all the online personalities who have welcomed me into the worldwide fandom - I'm lucky to be in such good company and playing for #TeamRysposito with such positive, fun-loving folk.