So I just saw that episode with the vampire guy who drew pictures of his dead mom and it made me wonder what Castle's 'tat' really was (because he never told Beckett). So I realized this idea I've had for a while now could actually work for it. It all started on the trip to Italy…

"Just because you showed me yours doesn't mean I'll show you mine."

It all started on the trip to Italy.

Richard Alexander Rogers was lying awake, looking up in the darkness at the place he assumed the ceiling was. (Although he could have been strapped to the wall and staring in the direction of the opposite wall, or strapped to the ceiling staring at the floor. He was absolutely certain that he would be just as sick to his stomach either way.) All the other teenagers on the trip were at some club, doing "research" on what Italian kids experienced. Well…almost all of them.

But Richard Alexander Rogers wasn't staying away from the club because of nausea – he had been raised by an actress/dedicated partier, the sickness hadn't been discovered that would keep him away from a party. Okay, maybe one that required major surgery. But only while the surgery was taking place. Unless the surgery went wrong and he ended up choking to death on his own blood…

Anyway. Rick wasn't staying away because of nausea. He was staying away because he, along with three other teenagers from the trip and one actual Italian teenager had been kidnapped. Unless the others had escaped and were calling the cops to come rescue him. Or maybe they went back to the club, Rick thought morbidly. And they're just going to leave me here to die. His stomach complained again and he fought the urge to throw up. He couldn't move. That or he didn't have the will to move. Whatever the kidnappers had put in that drug was strong enough to confuse him sufficiently so he didn't know the difference.

I should write a book about this. Rick thought. I'm pretty sure people go for the kidnapping-of-teenage-children type of thing.

Except those things usually turned into especially bloody murder novels.

Rick tried to remember what time it was when he along with Alice, Sophia, Robby, and the Italian kid calling himself "Merlin" had left the club. (He was probably in on it, Rick thought.) It had been dark, but it could really have been any time. Besides, he wasn't sure how long he had been out. Or how long he had been lying there staring at whatever side of the room was opposite him. Aaaaaaand the club thing wasn't exactly a planned part of the trip.

Which meant no adults to make sure everyone got back to the hotel.

Which meant no one had probably bothered to check if the four of them had made it back.

No one would bother to bring it up because if they got busted they'd be sent home…

Which meant no one was going to be looking for them for quite some time.

Enough time for five murders to be committed. Or four. That Italian kid was totally sketchy. Why didn't I see it before? I must have had too much to drink.

Richard Rogers never thought there would be a time when he regretted breaking that specific rule.

A door opened to his left (he was staring at the ceiling then), the bright light so piercing Rick squeezed his eyes shut and felt his stomach roil as his forehead started to throb. Maybe I did drink too much. Maybe the whole kidnapping thing was just an alcoholic dream and now I'm hungover. Maybe that door was opened by a teacher and I'm about to be busted for drinking underage and sent home in disgrace.

No such luck.

"Are you awake?" A heavily-accented voice asked. (Not an Italian-accented voice, Rick observed subconsciously.) Rick was yanked roughly into a sitting position.

"Ah, easy, easy. I'm awake, okay?" Rick forced his eyes to open, squinting through them at the man in front of him. Unfortunately the man was between him and the bright light so his face was only shadow with four tiny half-moons opposite each other and dark circles of shadow between them. The whites of his eyes.

"What is wrong with you? Were you drinking?" The man demanded.

"Uh, duh." Rick scoffed.

He wasn't scoffing two seconds later when the man punched him in the stomach. Then he was puking.

"Not good if there is too much junk in his system." The man muttered to someone outside of Rick's sightline. "Could mess up the procedure. Could be fatal."

Rick felt his blood freeze in his veins. He was going to die. He was going to die a million miles away from his home, from his mom…who was going to cook for her? Who was going to make sure she ate when she was doing a play or teaching a class? Who was going to make sure she paid the bills or moved out before she got evicted (again)? Who was going to drive her to the emergency room when she got too drunk to remember her own name?

"Well you better hope it isn't." Another voice said. A sharper, more sinister voice. "If we grab another one someone could catch on."

"Alright let's go, kid." The first voice said.

Rick was dragged to his feet and pushed toward the light. Numb, he stumbled almost-blindly down the hallway, too meek and/or too weak to protest or fight back. It was bright in the hallway. There was probably white everywhere – white reflected light, and light seemed to be coming from everywhere. Rick's observing senses were on high as his mind tried to channel its energy into something more productive than a full-blown panic attack.

The man's hands were big. Probably as big as his shoulder. One of them was covering his shoulder right now, dragging him down the hall. The footsteps didn't echo very much so it wasn't a very long hall. There were no windows in this place. No windows or no other light outside that would filter in with the light around Rick and the others. It was all the same blinding bright. The floor was tiled – he could tell by the way his shoes dragged along that it wasn't unbroken or even cracked cement; the breaks were too uniform, too regular. The man was wearing gloves and his fingers didn't fill their cloth counterparts completely.

"In here." Rick's observations were brought to a halt as he was shoved through a door into a dimmer, but still much too bright room. It took a second for his eyes to adjust, but eventually he could actually make out shapes, colors, and then images.

That didn't make it any better.

Worse, actually.

They were in a surgical lab, or a very good attempt at a surgical lab. If Rick was betting, he'd put good money on the black-market style lab that looked very genuine and orderly but really was a bunch of black-market hospital gear placed in one room just waiting for the next unlucky patient for the untrained surgeons to tear apart – and look very genuine doing it.

He didn't want to see it. He didn't want to be as observant as he was or as smart as he was. He didn't want to think the things he thought and have the reasons he had and not be able to throw up any contradictory facts like he could do when anyone else made theories.

He didn't want to see the bloody equipment the surgeon-looking woman was washing off in the sink. And he didn't want to know that however long he spent in that room was plenty of time for her to cut open one or a few of his friends. Robby…Sophia…Alice… Rick swallowed a lump in his throat before ripping his arm away from the man and turned to face him.

"My friends," Rick hated that his voice cracked. "What have you done to them?"

The man had cold eyes. Cold, merciless eyes. He had deeply tanned skin and no hair. He was wearing all black; a black turtleneck, black cargo pants, black leather jacket, black work boots, and heavy black leather gloves. He laid a huge finger on Rick's chest.

"Shirt off." He said. "Get on the table."

Rick's knees felt weak. His stomach was doing flip-flops – and not just because he was both drugged and hungover. But if he was going to die, he wanted to know if his friends were okay. He clenched his fists.

"Just tell me if they're alive." He meant it to come out as a demand, but it sounded more like a plea. "Just tell me that and…and I'll do whatever you say."

"You'll do whatever he says anyway," The black-market surgeon scoffed. The larger, stronger, darker man's cold eyes flicked from Rick to the surgeon and back to Rick.

"Do not fight," He said in his heavily-accented voice. "It will make your chances of survival worse."

"Just tell me," Rick's voice was a whisper. He felt hopeless, helpless. "Please."

"They are alive." The big man said. "Now take off your shirt and get on the table."

Rick's relief was short lived. His friends were alive…but he might not be in a few moments. With shaking hands, he unbuttoned his shirt and stumbled over to the table, lying down on his back. The black-market surgeon put a mask over his face and he breathed in something that was definitely not pure oxygen and made his head hurt even more than it already did. It also fogged over his consciousness. He was going to pass out. His last thought was a prayer that his mother would have someone to make sure she didn't accidently kill herself.

*insert clever emoticon of a castle here*

"Rick," A voice called from somewhere…up. Rick was too muddled to know more than that. "Rick!" Whoever it was, they needed to calm down. Obviously, he was right here. "Rick, would you just freaking wake up you freaking idiot?!" Wait a second. He totally knew that voice. But from where…? "Rick if you don't open your eyes in the next five seconds I will slap you."

"Good morning to you too, Rob." Rick murmured, his voice slurred as he opened his eyes and stared up blearily at four other faces.

"Nothing good about it." Sophia murmured.

The events of the night came back to Rick with a shock and he sat up too quickly, groaning as his head spun and his chest ached, forcing him to flop back down on the bed…which only sent a jolt of pain on a whole other level through his chest.

"Ahhhh, what did those creeps do, replace my heart with a faulty double so they could sell my healthy one on the illegal organ black market?" He complained.

"You had a healthy heart?" Rob gasped in mock surprise.

"'Illegal black market' is redundant, genius." Sophia sighed. "And I thought you were the one who was obsessed with grammar." Rick glared up at his friends.

"Thanks for your sympathy, guys." He said sarcastically.

"Yeah, we all had someone cut open our chests too, Rick. You're not going to be getting much sympathy here." Sophia smirked. Rick's mouth opened.

"But…how are you all sitting up when your chest feels like someone lit a fire inside it?" He asked.

"Pain killer." Alice explained flippantly. "Want some?"

"What is that a trick question?" Rick reached out his hand for the little pill his friend produced out of a bottle in her pocket. Looking around as he swallowed it whole, he realized they were all sitting in the room Rob and he were sharing in the hotel. "They brought us back?" He asked.

"Si." Merlin responded. "They even brought me here and I'm not even an Americana turista."

"Let me guess – nobody knows we were ever gone." Rick sighed.

"No." Sophia said. "And they never will."

"What? Why?" Rick sat up in surprise and anger, trying to ignore the burning in his chest. The four others looked at him with deadly serious expressions. "Rob?" He asked, feeling lost.

"Rick, we can't." He said. "If we tell anyone, they'll come kill us before the cops can do anything."

"Si."

"How do you know?" Rick asked.

"They told us." Alice said. "You were still…asleep. They told us they would have people watching us, all of us. They said we had something important and they were going to come back for it someday."

"What does that mean?" Rick looked around at them. "Guys, we have to tell someone. Seriously! I mean, they basically told us we were dead either way. Wouldn't you at least want to have a shot at being safe?"

"Wouldn't you at least like to have a chance at a life before they come back?" Sophia asked. Rick looked between his friends. He saw in all of their eyes that he was alone against them.

"Rob…" Rick murmured. His best friend shrugged helplessly.

"They kidnapped us and put something inside of us without anybody finding out what was going on. They brought us back to the place we were staying and nobody noticed. We don't have a chance." He said. "The only shot we have is to live our lives and hope that they get arrested for tax evasion or something."

"What else can we do?" Alice sighed.

"But we have to all promise," Sophia said, looking each of them in the eyes. "We have to promise that we won't tell anyone about this. Ever."

"I promise." Rob murmured.

"Si." Merlin nodded.

"Me too." Alice agreed.

"And I do." Sophia and the others turned to the last of their group. Richard Rogers felt hopeless and helpless for the second time in one night/day. But he couldn't let them down. After all, they were right about the men being good. And he didn't want to be the death of his friends. Besides…maybe this was the way someone would be able to keep his mother from accidently killing herself…for a little while anyway.

"Okay." Rick sighed in defeat. "I promise."

*insert clever emoticon of a castle here*

Richard Castle's eyes snapped open and he waited until the ceiling came into focus in front of his eyes. He looked to the side, watching the glowing numbers on his digital alarm clock change from 2:59 to 3:00. He already knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and speed-dialed the mayor – not his office, but the big cheese's private cell.

"Hey Rick."

"Hey Robby."

"Couldn't sleep?"

"No."

The two old friends were silent for a moment. They both knew what had happened – Castle had had the dream. Again. He had the dream fairly often. And every time he did, he called his friend. He used to call Sophia Turner sometimes…but that had changed. Obviously. Both Richard Castle and Robert Weldon had this conversation memorized.

"Do you ever wonder if they're actually coming back?"

"Constantly. Do you?"

"Absolutely."

"What are we going to do if they do?"

Back when Castle had first had the dreams, that line had been his. But as they got older, as they changed, the honor was transferred to the mayor himself. Castle didn't really know how or why…it had just happened. Not that it really changed anything. The response was still the same. He traced the invisible scar on his chest.

"I really don't know."

So, yeah. That's my story. Castle writes murder novels because he was kidnapped and something was inserted into his chest surgically. It's almost as far-fetched as a CIA mob hit, but just as fun. :D If you guys want (and probably even if you don't) I'll write a follow-up where the men do come back. Lots of murder and maybe even a treasure hunt. It'll be fun. Review! ~moonshadow2012