It's been too quiet around the loft.

There are, of course, times during the week when it's just her and Gram, maybe even her if Gram has a class or is just out and Dad is out on a case, but it's never like this. The loft just seems... dead. Her dad's been gone going on three weeks now. She's not a bitter person, she's never one to hold any kind of grudge, but lately, she wishes he'd never met Beckett. She's watched her dad go through heartbreak before, not really with her mom. She was only five, things just sort of happen at that age, and she was never all that attached to Gina, at least on an emotional level.

But they all knew that Beckett was different. Even Gram has been more open lately about Beckett being different to her dad.

On a personal level, she liked Beckett. She seemed genuine, unlike all the other superficial women that flock around her dad, hoping to get their hooks into the famed White Whale of Manhattan. She was getting tired of them. He may seem just fine, acting normal and charming when they're around him, but once they left, they left nothing but soured ambition and nihilistic sex behind. For the longest time after Gina, she just wanted her dad to settle down with someone and be happy. In the back of her mind, she thought it was going to be Beckett.

And now, he's off in Asia, or wherever he is right now, peeling away what he changed himself into for her to his old self.

With a long sigh, Alexis drops her chopsticks into the take out container and tosses it in the bag on the island and goes for the stairs. She has a bit of homework to get ahead of, and since Gram is out for the night, she doesn't have to worry about feeling bad for not wanting to entertain. She drags herself up the stairs and turns the hall to head to her room, but as she passes the door to the guest room, she hears a sound coming from her bedroom.

She stops for only a second, before realizing what the tone is, and increases her stride to her bedroom. It's probably Ashley, calling her on Skype to talk before he goes to bed. She flicks on the light and grabs her open laptop off her desk, the earbuds dragging on the floor as she sits on the end of her bed. She sits the laptop down onto her lap and puts the earbuds in, but her brow pinches and she sees it's a username she doesn't recognize.

Hesitantly, she moves her cursor over and clicks the green icon on the screen. "Uh... Hello?"

The unmistakable chuckle can only come from one person. "I'm not going to ask what took you so long to answer."

"Daddy!" She cheers as she sits up off her bed, sets her laptop off of her, and presses the earbuds in and bringing the mic on the chord closer to her.

"It's okay if you don't want to talk to me." He feigns insult.

"No! I was just downstairs and didn't hear my laptop." She explains, her heart bursting with joy at hearing her dad's voice. "Why are you calling me on Skype?"

"I left my phone at home, and just bought a new one today when I landed. Call it selective memory, but I could only remember your Skype name." He explains with his new phone, that he only bought today for this one phone call. He's missed his daughter too much to not talk to her again. "How are you, sweetie?" He asks sweetly.

"I-I'm-" she breathes, her smile breaking across her face, "I'm fine."

"So your grandmother hasn't driven you crazy yet?"

"No, we're getting along just fine. She's out for the night, actually."

"What about you, you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay." She explains, half lies. And she knows that even over the line, however far away he is, his fatherly instincts her kicking in and can already smell it on her.

"Alexis..." He pulls it out of her.

She crosses her legs under her at the foot of her bed. "The loft is too quiet without you here."

He breathes a long sigh into the line. "I know. I miss you too."

"So, where'd you go?"

Across the line, Castle drags his finger across the steel railing on the balcony of his hotel room, listening to the low tide of the ocean down below. "Caught a late night flight to Singapore, stayed there for a couple days."

"Really? How was it?"

Castle chuckles and makes an about-face in his pacing across his balcony. "Yes, I got you something, Alexis."

"I wasn't asking that, Dad." She rolls her eyes.

"I don't know," he honestly explains. "After a while, places start to meld together. Maybe it's just because I'm not really sight-seeing."

"Where'd you go after that?"

"Headed off to Bangkok, then Hong Kong, Tokyo. I just checked into a hotel, so I thought I'd call you, see how you're doing."

"Where are you now?"

He pushes out a sigh and leans back against the railing, looking at his unopened shoulder bag sitting on the neatly made queen bed. "I got into Catania this afternoon."

"Like Catania, Italy?"

"Yep."

"Wait..." she takes a pause and turns back to her laptop. "What time is it there?" She asks, going to her internet browser.

But Castle leans into his hotel room for a second, where the only thing out of place is the bottle of wine he opened sitting on the table. "Just after three in the morning."

"Dad, what are you doing up this late?" She asks, almost on a chuckle.

But he laughs, "Alexis, I've been in half the time zones on the planet in the past month. I sleep when I get tired."

Alexis nods her head to herself, knowing that he's at least taking care of himself to the point of not being dead. And she can feel in the air between them that both of them have something serious on their minds.

With his heart lodged crooked in his throat, it's him that has to voice is first. "Alexis, I'm so sorry I abandoned you like this. I'm-"

"No, no, Dad..." she stops him, a sad smile fading into her face from the bright smile she answered the call with. "Gram and I both know how you feel about her."

He nods to himself, feeling his eyes burn in the salty air of the coast and looks down to his shoes. "I just really thought she was the one, you know?"

"Well," she pushes it out, looking over to the small notepad on the edge of her desk across the room, "maybe she still is."

But Castle shakes his head. "No, Alexis, I almost got her killed, and I don't know what miracle I was granted that she's still alive, but I'm not putting her life at risk any more by being around her just because I can't get over her. I just want her to move on with her life like I was never-"

"Dad, Beckett's dad called."

With that, every explanation and every excuse, every intention, sincere or otherwise, is gone. He's thrown back into the pit of his heart where the memory of her, and the feelings he's told himself are buried, live. "He did?" He asks, a tight grip of dreadful anxiousness choking the life out of him.

"Yeah, he called about a week ago." She says, grabbing the laptop and moving over to her desk.

"Ho-how's..." He hesitates, not knowing if he even has the right to ask about her anymore.

"I asked," she finishes his question in her head, giving him an out of asking, "and he said she was fine, but..."

Castle swallows passed his emotion, "But?"

"Dad, he sounded... off."

"Off how?"

"I don't know, like... he was..."

Castle's eyes drift shut as his mental lexicon pulls up a piece of information. "Like he was drunk?"

"No, it's not that. He just sounded really anxious. He asked if you were here and I told him you were out of town on a business trip. But," she says, grabbing the notepad off her desk, "I wrote the number down in case you ever came home. He just sounded like he-"

"Like his daughter just got shot?" He finishes for her. "Alexis, I don't think he was calling for Beckett."

"Then what was he calling for?"

He sighs heavily again, deciding not to explain what it feels like being a father. Alexis broke her arm when she was seven coming down the stairs, and he went out of his mind then. The long three weeks where he was willing to break both of his own arms if it meant bringing his little girl out of that struggle were the worst of his life... until all this happened. He can't begin to fathom what it would be like having to watch her go through what Beckett is going through. That takes a special kind of strength.

"Give me the number, Sweetie."

The picture in his hand shows his hands are shaking.

The crusade to avenge her death was never his idea. She was young when she took up that mantle. He never cared much for catching who did it. He just wants her back. Katie probably accepted her death. She may have gotten lost searching for her killer, but she at least accepted it her death. He just wants her to move on, live her life.

But right now, that's a ways away. Right now, she's just trying to get her life back. And it's killing him.

His fingers pinch the photo at the bottom where his wife looks back at him with her beautiful smile. He misses her so much. Then his eyes travel from the steering wheel to the passenger seat, where the unopened bottle sits. He's been out all day, busying himself. He tried to fish. He usually enjoys it, but when he's literally worrying himself sick if he'll come back and find her on the floor again, he can't. But he told her he'd stay out for the day.

Josh came down and is spending the day with her. She texted him a while ago, saying they were in the middle of a movie. But he lied to her, gave her an out, and excused himself by telling her he picked up a tip at the bait shop about night fishing. Instead, he's sitting in a deserted parking lot in his car, being tempted by a creature he thought he'd thrown off his back years ago.

She doesn't have any idea what he's going through, and she can't either. It'd slow her recovery and she's slowly getting back on her feet. She can move from room to room now with help from a walker and pain medication, but it tires her quickly. She was even wearing jeans for the first time when he left this morning.

He grimaces to himself as he rips his eyes away from the picture and his hand flies down to the seat. But when his fingers touch the label, his phone ringing on the dashboard stops him. Frustrated, he grabs it and answers. "Yeah."

Rick takes a pause on the other end of the line, standing at the foot of the ocean. "Jim."

Jim's breath catches. "Rick?"

So that's what Alexis meant, he thinks to himself as he traces the outline of the moon on the water. "Alexis told me you called."

"Yeah, b-but... that was last week, Rick."

"I'm sorry, I've been..." he stops, searching for words precise enough but vague at the same time, "indisposed. Is this about Kate?"

"No, not really." Jim says honestly, shaking his head and looking back down to the picture of him and his wife, him being the afterthought in the photo. "Aren't you going to ask about her, son?"

Rick swallows and stares out into the ocean, "I don't think I have that right anymore, Jim."

"She's fine, Rick." He answers for him. "She can move around now, but it's slow." He explains in a tight voice.

"Look, Jim, I appreciate the update, but..." Rick decides to here that he needs to be the one to lead the conversation. He called looking for someone to talk to, and he can't be the one to be overly emotional. Jim sounds stressed enough. "You didn't call me because I was Kate's partner, did you?"

"Rick, I'm not strong enough to do this." A blurt of honesty rips out of him, making him feel weakened and vulnerable. "Johanna was always the strong one. I don't know how to do this."

"So why call me, Jim?" Rick gazes out calmly onto the water, the city behind him quiet for the night.

"Come on, Rick. Katie's always saying what a great father you are."

"Jim," he chuckles darkly, letting her compliments go unnoticed, "you're a much better father than I ever could be."

"What makes you say that?" He asks incredulously.

"Because you did something for your daughter that I never could. You picked the right mother." He says back, a forceful tone sneaking out of him. "Kate's mother may be gone, but at least she gave a damn."

"And now she's gone, so what do I do?"

"Just..." Rick trails off, calming himself, "do what your father would do."

"I didn't have a father, Rick."

Rick slowly closes his eyes, a familiar turn being taken in his heart. "Then you probably made your daughter the exact same promise I did when they put Alexis in my arms for the first time." He says, wondering if he'll tell him without being asked. The emotional withdrawal isn't easy to get passed. "What was it, Jim?"

Jim gulps and sets the photo down to his leg. "That I'd never put her through what I went through."

Rick nods to himself, the time he made that same promise... the promise he broke... to his own daughter. "We're not allowed to go back on that promise, Jim."

Jim is silent on the other end of the line, and somehow, Rick knows what he's thinking, what he's going through.

"The emotional withdrawal isn't easy to get over, Jim. I know." Rick explains, pushing his hand deeper into his pocket. "When something bad happened, your dad wasn't there to teach you how to deal with it, and your mom... she was too busy working to tell you everything was going to be okay. So you do exactly what I did, and you bury it... and you hide it behind clever quips and excuses. It's not easy to break the cycle of neglect, Jim, but you can't let it win now."

"Rick, I came home last week and found her on the floor!" He defends himself. "I was only gone for twenty minutes while I went to get her prescriptions filled. I walked in and found her curled up on the floor whimpering! How am I supposed to deal with that?"

"You deal with it like a good father would. Being too weak to deal with it isn't an excuse, Jim, and doesn't give you any reason to go back on your promise to be there for her. When it comes to our kids, we're not allowed to be selfish and hide behind the excuse that you just can't deal with it. Because the second we do, we become exactly like our own fathers."

Jim nods to himself, his heart dragging back down any more words of weakness and pleading.

"Look, Jim," Rick starts again, shifting his feet and tugging on the inside of his pocket lining, "I'm not going to pretend I understand what you're going through. I... I really can't imagine what it's like having to watch her go through that kind of pain, but..." he shakes his head, unable to even think about it himself, "your daughter is the strongest person I've ever met, and in my line of work," he smiles, "I've met a lot of people."

Jim smiles, chuckling under his breath. "That comes from Johanna, Rick, not me."

"She can get through this, Jim. I know it. She just needs time."

Jim nods to himself again before he decides to shift the conversation. Something he found out, something Kate probably doesn't know yet, is that Rick can be wise when the situation calls for it. "What about you, Rick?"

Rick's emotions, kept under control the past few minutes, well up with a vengeance in his throat. "Jim, I don't expect you to ever forgive me for putting her through all this."

"What are you talking about?"

"I was the one who dusted off the file on your wife's murder in the first place, Jim. It was me who pushed her to look into it. It was me who said that we could do it. I promised her that everything would be fine if we were careful enough, but I was wrong and because of that, she almost got killed."

Jim sighs, his eyes narrowing out toward the windshield. "Is that why you haven't called her?"

Rick blinks at his burning eyes and looks back down to the sand. "It's for a lot of reasons, Jim."

Jim nods, understanding in the least. "You know Josh came down this morning, spent the day with her."

With those words, Rick's heart is ripped from his chest, what's left of it. "Good." He responses in a light voice.

"He's planning on proposing to her, Rick."

"Did..." he hesitates to dig, "did he ask you?"

"No, I saw him look at the ring the day we left the hospital. I don't think he's asked her yet."

Rick nods, "Yeah, I told him it'd be better to wait until she's recovered. It wouldn't be right if he got anything but an honest answer out of a delirious Kate Beckett who's high on prescription pain medication."

Jim waits him out for a second before continuing. "You really think Josh has that good of a heart, Rick?"

No, "Kate wouldn't say yes to a man who didn't, Jim."

"How do you know that?"

He sighs again, throwing out a couple of responses in his head before he tells Jim something that might help him, instead of ease his own conscience. "Becuase neither would Alexis."

Jim smiles again and looks down to his lap, at the photo still in his hand. "What do you want me to tell her, Rick?"

His heart freezes. "That's your decision to make, Jim." He says with his tattered heart in his throat. "It was good talking to you."

"Yeah, you too, Rick." He says and hangs up, letting his hand fall down to the center console, putting his head back against the headrest.

She's strong. She can get through it. If Rick Castle says she's the strongest person he's ever met, then she can get through it.

And as these words dance in his mind, his eyes turn to the bottle on the seat.

A/N: Emotional, huh? :o