Thanks to my beta for her help.
This is only my second time publishing a story in English. It's not my first language. Hope you enjoy it anyway.
Beckett knows she's too late from the moment she gets through the door of the motel room, Esposito at her back.
The darkness of the room swallows them whole. No stars shine in the black sky behind them. No light to make the hope to find Castle and Ryan alive brighter. The hope to find the Triple Killer and put him behind bars, the only place that would make his future victims safe.
Beckett stops at the entrance of the room, slightly out of breath after running out of her police car and up the stairs to the room. It only takes her a few seconds to see them. The outlines of two persons standing out in the darkness. Two shadows, two holes in the room empty of others.
One is on the floor. From this distance, Beckett doesn't notice anything else. The other one is closer, he's tied up on a chair with arms behind his back, his head falling on his chest at an unusual angle. It didn't take her long to guess.
Ryan and Castle.
Neither were moving. Neither seemed to react when they entered the room.
Her heart stops.
Her breath too. It gets stuck in her throat and she's drowning, drowning in the lack of air and the weight of the silence in the darkness that gets heavier with every passing second. The room becomes small, too small it suffocates her and she can't stay immobile waiting while Castle is silent and not talking. She needs his words. She needs him to talk. Maybe she needs him too.
Beckett feels more than she sees, the other cops passing her to run through to the room, to make sure their suspect isn't here anymore. She doesn't wait for confirmation before running to Castle, taking a quick look to Ryan to make sure Esposito would take care of him.
"Castle? Castle!" she kneels in front of him, yelling his name for a reaction, a proof that he's alive and that she hasn't lost him because Tyson was smarter than they were. Castle stays still to the sound of her broken yells, caged in his pain caused by Tyson.
Beckett puts her flashlight beside her to free her hand and rests it on his cheek, lifting his head slowly. Her shaky fingers move across his cheeks to examine his face in the gloomy room, seeing what her eyes could barely see, feeling his still warm skin throbbing under her touch. Shadows of his eyes face her, the darker edges of his closed eyelids is the only thing visible. She holds her breath and places her other hand on his throat, checking for a pulse, before moving it quickly in front of his mouth. Her skin catches a faint hint of breath and she exhales. He's alive. Whatever Tyson did to him, he didn't kill him. Her hand falls to his shoulder to resume her examination, to find the wound that keeps him unconscious and that's when she feels it under her touch.
Warm and slippery blood flowing continuously against her hand, between her fingers, in a rush to escape his immobile body.
His blood. No no no no. Her heart misses a beat, shrieking with her mouth at once incoherent words of despair and promises to save him despite her inability to protect him. She presses her hand against his wound, or what she could see of it in the half-light, in an attempt to stop the flow. Beckett reaches for her flashlight, screaming something to Esposito about telling the ambulance to hurry up, her fuzzy mind unable to make up the exact words she used nor Esposito's answer. She quickly adjusts the flashlight toward her hand stained of his blood, moving it a bit to see the wound and then she realizes –
He's been shot by Tyson.
That son of a bitch.
Anger bubbles in her, tangles in her panic and her urgency to save him (please, let her save him, please please please, she's pretty sure she couldn't do it without him, she couldn't lose him too).
"Ka…Kate…"
She startles at the sound of his voice, barely audible, almost a whisper he exhales in the dark. Her thumb resting on his cheek draws smooth and reassuring circles on this skin, her hand shakes slightly of relief of hearing his low but broken voice dancing to her ears.
Because he still has a chance to survive now.
But the moment is gone in a blink, a brief flash of light in the darkness. Castle opens his mouth with determination as if he needs to say something to her, but his pain swallows him whole and he's unconscious again.
And that's when Beckett starts panicking. Air becomes heavy, weighs like bricks on her shoulders. No no no no, he couldn't give up, not now. She leans toward him to feel his breathing: it's quick and weak but it's still there.
"Hold on Castle, please hold on, stay with me. The ambulance is almost here, it's on the way. Stay with me, you're gonna be okay. Castle you hear me? You're gonna be okay."
Her voice breaks in the last words even though she tries to control it. Her colleagues are here, in the room, but she doesn't care about what they might think of her or hear. She only cares about him, about Castle making it out alive. Her words bounce on the walls like gunshots in the air, yells of anger and despair. The louder she talks, the more he survives and the more she can convince herself she hasn't failed him because he got shot and she couldn't do a thing about it.
But begging him to survive isn't enough.
She needs action. She couldn't stay here and just talk with him, hoping someone else would be able to save him. She needs to scream her frustration to someone because she couldn't, for now, make Tyson pay. She presses Castle's wound again and half turns her head toward Esposito.
"Esposito! Where's the damn ambulance? We need an ambulance NOW."
Esposito barely has time to open his mouth to answer an ambulance siren screams, filling the silence.