Disclaimer: Not owning Castle is my specialty.

A/N: Let me explain a bit about this fic: It was an assignment for my Literary Technique class. The assignment was suspense and exercising skills in skipping the main event to retell it later through dialogue or character thoughts. I couldn't post it until the class ended and now it has. So you get this fic as a Valentine's Day gift.

Set in late season 4


There's something dripping in the distance. An incessant sound that pulls her into reality. Her eyes blink open as it gets louder.

Drip. She blinks again against the darkness. Drip. Her heart hammers in her chest. Drip. She can barely see.

Her lips are chapped, aching. When she tries to move her arms, a sharp cry escapes her lungs. Pain lances through her shoulders and straight down her spine to settle heavy in her pelvis. The ache spreads to her hips, her knees. Her head joins the symphony with a rushing throb. Her stomach rolls its violent protest of the situation with the tang of blood on her tongue.

Everything comes back in flashes. Terrifying and grizzly flashes of skin, blood, sickening sounds of screaming and the smell of burning flesh.

Castle. Her heads snaps up, she fights off the pain, pushes it to the back of her mind because her partner is here somewhere. It's him she sees when she closes her eyes. His face contorted in agony as a knife slices through his skin. Oh god, her stomach churns when she thinks of the blood he's lost. Her brain floods with what-if scenarios and she can feel the sob well in her throat, a knot forming that she tries to swallow back down. She can't go there. She can't think of the blood or his shallow breathing. She can't think of his family or how she's failed him. She can't do it. She has to be smart. She has to get them out of here.

"Castle?" She can't see him, even turning her head does nothing but give her a sickening sense of dread. He's nowhere to be seen. She squints, tries to make out shapes outside the dim halo of light surrounding her on the slim chance that he's in that darkness. "Rick?"

If he's there, he's incapable of answering. Another wave of nausea rolls through her stomach. Maybe he just doesn't want to answer. She did this. She got them into this mess because she wanted her partner back and now he's hurt...or worse.

Not worse. Can't be. Her head drops, too heavy for her to hold up and she feels the pain resonate in the back of her skull. She doesn't have time for this. She has to find him and get the hell out of here. She wiggles her fingers, rotates her wrists and feels the plastic cut into her already raw skin. If she can just get her hands free...

But she can't. She's tried for hours. She's struggled to get free every single time Castle has screamed and she's still here. Her legs are immobile, her body aches from head to toe, and she can't use her hands.

Use your head, Kate. Come on.

She can't die here. She won't let him die here either. This isn't how it ends. She can't let it end with him parading flight attendants around her crime scene or pretending it doesn't hurt to see him working with someone else. It's not over.

They have to be missed by now. She doesn't know how long it's been but it feels like at least six hours. Maybe more. She can't get her thoughts together. Her head just hurts. She really needs to use the restroom and her stomach lurches.

Come on. Come on. Snap out of it.

Castle. Right, she needs to find him. She doesn't remember him being moved. She doesn't remember...the room she's in. It's new. Different. Even squinting in the dark, she can tell it isn't the same. He wasn't moved, she was.

No. No, no, no. Those sick bastards were not serious. They weren't. They couldn't have been.

But she's somewhere different. Even if this is a trap of another kind, she's separated from her partner. She has no idea what they're doing to him but she can recall very clearly what they already did to him.

Every sound he made echoes in her head. Every protest she yelled until her throat was raw is on repeat. How is she going to get them both to safety now? Beckett pushes the toes of her shoes against the muddy floor. Tipping the chair she's bound to will do nothing but she can make out a table in the middle of the room, beneath a single dim light bulb. If she can get to it maybe there's hope.

Her ribs scream in protest when she jerks forward to scoot the chair, she ignores them. Biting at the inside of her cheek, she powers through. Because she remembers the words said. She remembers the rules.

"Tell ya what, if you can keep your mouth shut then I'll let your little cop girlfriend go."

"No. Castle, don't. Don't listen to him."

But he listened. He kept his lips pressed tight and she heard every harsh breath, every whine and groan as electricity coursed through his veins. She'd been forced to watch him convulse and that wasn't the worst of what they'd done to him.

Her forehead aches from head butting their second captor in an attempt to get to Castle. And her jaw is throbbing from failing. She doesn't remember anything after that moment. Just the ultimatum he was given. Have they really let her go? Does it count considering she's stuck to a chair? Or has she simply been moved so Castle believes they honored their word?

It takes her longer than it should to get to the table and she worries they'll come if they hear the chair dragging across the concrete floor. No one comes. She hears nothing but the drip, drip, drip and the echo of Castle in her head. She can see a little better under the light and her blood runs cold.

Her badge, her gun, and the shattered mess that used to be her phone are all sitting right in front of her.

It's a game. It has to be. They wouldn't let her go.


Her wrists bleed steadily now but she's free. Her knuckles are skinned and stinging, her ribs are on fire. Her hip locks and makes her stumble every few steps. She keeps her gun ready, her heart thumps wildly, but every corner she rounds or room she comes to, she's alone.

She takes the stairs when she finds them. Her head is foggy, her vision blurs but she makes it to the exit. She has to get to a phone, call for backup.

She has to find him. She needs to figure out exactly where she is before she can do that. But there's another snag in her plan, another throb in her head.

The door is wired, a thin barely visible copper wire that she almost misses. Now she understands. It was too easy. She was never meant to make it out alive.