Title: The Color I Bleed.

Author: eyrianone

Rating: T

Spoilers: Post-Ep 'Target'

Summary: His heart is screaming.

Disclaimer: (From ViaLethe) – 'Words are mine. World ain't.'


'I only need you when my heart is beating,
you are the color that I'm bleeding.'

Jason Derulo – 'Breathing'


The FBI checks and re-checks the data, and though it seems utterly impossible – Alexis is in Paris. There just doesn't seem to be any doubt about it. No weird re-routing. No bouncing around of signals in an effort to confuse a trace. Just a completely regular Skype call, cell phone to cell phone, plain and simple.

The relief that washed through him knowing his baby is alive has galvanized him, but it's bittersweet because the reassurance was so fleeting. And something weird, something beyond kidnapping for ransom or revenge is going on here. He doesn't know how he knows this, but he feels it.

Hell at this stage he isn't even sure he buys that Sara El Masri is even the intended target of this. As far as he's concerned either girl could be the intended victim.

All he knows is that he needs his baby back.

He needs her so he can keep breathing.

And finally there's a place to start looking.

Castle paces, his eyes unseeing as the FBI techs behind him start reporting in to Special Agent Harris. He overhears words like 'Interpol' and 'jurisdiction', and it dawns on him very quickly that things get complicated fast from here.

Fingers playing with his phone he almost, he so very almost calls Kate. But really, if this thing has gone international – what help can she truly be?

Other than watching his back of course.

Working things from here. And this he knows, trusts she'll do for him tirelessly. It's the reason he can do next what a part of him already knows is probably stupid.

But it isn't the rational side of him that's driving now. It's the darker, the truly lethal side of himself that's fully in control.

The side of him that only comes out to play with twists and turns and ruthlessness in his novels, unless of course something happens to threaten someone he loves.

They've taken his baby – and his heart is screaming.

So he can't stop. He won't even slow down. He's got connections and a vast amount of money, and the dark side of his personality in control. So he's going to find her. He's going to get her back, regardless of who he has to hurt to get it done.

Surreptitiously checking that the FBI guys aren't really watching him, Castle moves into his office and closes the door. He empties his wall safe of all the cash stored there, tucking the $10,000 into various pockets on his person. He can pull more from other places effortlessly. Grabbing his passport and the burner phone he keeps for emergencies now, he slips through his bedroom and sidles out the side entrance and to the front door unseen. He's left his regular phone on his office desk, disguarded.

Exiting his home he leaves the techs, his mother and the FBI behind him. He leaves procedure, and protocol. Rules, regulations, restrictions and Kate. He leaves Kate and the NYPD behind him.

But he sends up a silent pray that begs her to keep looking, and follows it with a second that asks her to forgive him.

But they've taken his baby and there is no other choice. And there will be all the colors of hell to pay when he finds them.