A/N: 3x24/4x01 missing scene - Castle in the ambulance with Beckett. TW? For death and blood? Well obviously not complete death but…yeah I'm bad at this. An attempt to try and clean up the mess of my brain with these little drabbles.

Kate – I love you. I love you, Kate.

Had she heard him? She had to. That smile–there was–that hint of–something–

God, would he see her smile, even just like that, ever again?

Every scream, cry, all swallowed up into the silence wrapped taut around Castle's head. Still bent over he held on, tending to her limp body with his hands that had yet to recover from the fall just moments before. They trembled over her chest in shock, stained with the life draining out readily onto her clothes, blots of the kind of red he always wrote of, but never thought to touch. Not like this. Not in this way. Not with her.

He fought to stop the flow, pressing against her wound, but he couldn't bring himself to do it harder in fear of hurting her.

"Kate no – no," he whispered. Though her burned greens had turned back from him, he desperately hoped his pleas would come through to her, to reach in her mind, to implore her to keep fighting. She had to keep fighting. He couldn't let her go like this…he wouldn't let her go like this.

"Castle–" Lanie breathed out. She dropped to the ground next to him, urging him to let her take over. He wanted to pass it off to her, but his hands refused to move. They still shook while planted, locked on, his body convulsing with simultaneous surges of fear and anger as her face continued to drain. "Honey-honey I know, but you have to–"

He peeled off of her as Lanie replaced him, struggling to keep Beckett going as they awaited the EMT's. Castle just watched. He'd fallen back, looking on the sight before him in disbelief. His jaw tightened, teeth clenched, fingers dug in, with eyes only fixated on her face…her beautiful, gorgeous face. Lanie had to do what she could, but all he wanted was to hold her – to cradle and keep Beckett warm, away from anymore hurt or agony that she could go through. She wasn't conscious, yes, but he wanted to do it. He wanted to do it for her.

For the woman he was in love with. He…he loved her. He said it, he'd said it out loud.

He loved her.

The squeak of the gurney snapped him back, a rush of reality washing over him with the chaos still surrounding them. He shot up with an eagerness in his step to follow the next move, to follow her, to make sure she stayed alive. Approaching the ambulance, he waited as they hoisted her up and in, and just as he went to join, one of the men halted him.

"Wait no," Lanie broke. Her eyes curved in earnest, and the tenderness in her voice reached off her lips to vouch for Castle. "Let him, please it's his partner–let him go."

Castle kept down, head hung as he reluctantly obeyed the hand of the medic, but with one word the man granted him right to pass, and he stepped up into the vehicle. Behind, Ryan and Espo stood readying the doors to shut. They made eyes at Castle, all of them exchanging their own gazes of fear, pain, and fury. Just before closing the ambulance, Castle gritted out in the lowest grumble neither of them had ever heard him use, articulating exactly what they all wanted.

"Find him."

Both nodded curtly as the doors slammed, followed by a couple hits back to signal the driver to take off. The alarm blaring, he turned around to adjust himself, keeping out of the way next to Lanie, but still be within reach of Beckett.

Setting her up on the monitors, he knew enough to see that her vitals were plummeting. The decline clear, he yanked off her glove, clutched her hand, and folded into his, pressed against his face.

"Don't do this – don't leave me like this Kate," he muttered against her skin. In between words he kissed it, letting his mouth hover over. He wiped the free hand over his pants to smear away some blood, before using it to brush back her hair. Soft. Just as before back in the hangar, when he'd swept it away while straining to hold her down and protect her. She broke before him, under him as he silenced her for safety. She was so close to death, and it shattered every bit of him to know she was a leap closer now. Just a couple seconds quicker…

It could've been him in her stead.

He held her hand to his heart – like hers, mangled in its own right – as he looked on while grazing a cheek and her forehead with the back of his fingers. Seeing the red slightly faded on his palm and tips, he shut his eyes, the torment continuing to spill out of his blues…his blues storming as a livid sea, lamely stifled between his lids as the water leaked through. If he ignored everything, she could've been sleeping. She could've easily just been fast asleep on the bed, on the couch, somewhere else where he could take care of her. But the blare of the monitors reminded him different, and that's when the earth crumbled beneath. She was dying, crashing.

The whine of the paddles charging combined with the flatline rattled him, his shakes worsening each passing second. He had to let go of her, he knew that, but he didn't want to. Maybe he could run the risk…take the charge and see his chances. Because if he let go, he'd let go and she might go, she might leave. She might die without knowing he was there until the last moment. He couldn't abandon her. The idea terrorized him. But he couldn't.

"Clear!"

He'd dropped her just before the last few seconds, his hand gripped to his mouth and face instead as he awaited her revival. Lanie looked on him, she herself losing it at the sight of her best friend, and the man so deeply in love with her wrenched in anguish.

"We have to keep up compression, Dr. Parish–"

She jumped to sub again, leaning forward to keep on with Beckett as Castle sat, lips parted, jaw slackened and dangled in horror as she continued to pale.

"Stay with me," he begged, leaning forward again. His voice wavered, raw and underlined with fragments of his soul, fervent in his supplication. He drew near to her face, cupping her farthest cheek as he pulled out her hair tie and soothed her head with his touch, as if calming his little girl to sleep. "Just stay, stay with me, Kate. I'm here…I'm here, and…ah, god, I love you–" he cracked, now barely audible. But that's all he thought, breathing it over her, vowing it even just for her ears.

So much blood. So much. So much of her–of her–

Drained.