Disclaimer: I don't own Castle or else we'd already know who Castle's dad is.

Prompt #25: Disappearance - The discovery made him vanish within himself, and Beckett was the only one who could talk him back.

Words: 1,133

Richard Castle was gone.

Nobody knew where he was. He took enough clothes for up to a week. His house in the Hamptons was empty. He had effectively dropped off the face of the earth, and nobody knew how to find him.

Gina and Black Pawn Publishing got a short message saying he would be taking some time off and not to contact him. Alexis only got a text on her phone saying he was going someplace quiet and not to worry about him. Martha recieved a terse voicemail saying the same thing, along with the accusatory "How could you not tell me?" tacked at the end.

Those who didn't know Kate Beckett thought she was being incomparably cold. She didn't seem to care about Castle's sudden vanishing act, and there was no indication that she was looking for him. She was cool as a cucumber and impassive as a mountain face, working through her paperwork like an automaton.

Those who did know her, however, knew she was suffering, that seeing Castle so broken had hurt worse than anything she'd ever experienced, including the bullet that had almost killed her.

She'd never seen him so distraught before. Not in all her years of knowing him. She'd tried to get him to talk about it, but even she had no luck.

Well, he'd just recieved a tremendous shock to his system. A shock that rocked his very foundations, potentially calling into question everything he ever believed in.

Richard Castle now knew who and what his father was.

And the discovery shattered everything he thought he knew about himself. He needed space and time to put the pieces back together, and Beckett was more than willing to give him that time and space. She'd needed it herself, once upon a summer.

The week passed. Then another passed. People began to worry even more when nobody could reach him. Calls went straight to voicemail, texts went unanswered. His credit cards and bank accounts showed no activity aside from a large cash withdrawl the day he disappeared. Ryan and Esposito even tried locating him with his phone's GPS or his car's LoJack. Neither panned out - Castle's experiences with the precinct had given him the knowledge to disable both. He had gone completely off the grid.

When Richard Castle ran away from home, he did it well.

Still Beckett worked her days away, solving murders with the same dogged determination as always. She barely spoke to anyone about her private life and stopped hanging with her coworkers outside of work. Not even Lanie was able to break through the stoic shields that Beckett had raised about herself. Her friends knew it was her way of coping and let sleeping dogs lie, sure that she'd bounce back in her own good time.

A month after Castle disappeared, Beckett's phone buzzed on her nightstand at four AM. Ever since Castle left, she'd been unable to sleep for more than three hours at a time. She sat up, shutting her book and rubbing her untired eyes as she flipped open her phone without looking at her caller ID. "Beckett."

"Kate, it's Alexis."

"What's wrong?" she asked, instantly alert. "Is it Castle?"

"I just got a text from him. He's in Central Park. Meet me there, please?"

"I'll pick you up and we'll go together." Beckett threw on her jacket over her tank top and sweatpants, crammed her feet into a pair of shoes, and grabbed her keys before she hung up. She made good time to the Castle loft, where Alexis was waiting on the sidewalk in her pajamas and a jacket as well, wearing sneakers and a worried expression on her pale face.

The streets of New York City were almost empty at that time of night, so Beckett flouted most conventional traffic laws in her haste to get to Central Park as fast as possible. Part of her was terrified that if they didn't hurry, Castle might disappear like the morning mist that still had its vaporous grip on the city streets.

They found a parking spot and bolted from the car, two women desperately searching for the man they loved. Armed with Beckett's flashlight, they scoured every bench, every trail, every hidey-hole and every inch of the entire park. Sunrise was almost upon them, staining the eastern sky with streaks of red and orange when Alexis pointed and whispered, "There."

His back to them, he sat at the edge of Bethesda Fountain as it gurgled and bubbled, his gaze staring at something unseen. The Angel of the Waters seemed to watch over him, her arms reaching for him as if to say, "Here he is."

Beckett held Alexis back as they started forward cautiously, each step taking almost too long to execute. Slowly the distance between them narrowed.

Thirty feet.

Twenty feet.

Ten.

Five.

Three.

His head tilted ever so slightly. "Alexis?"

A trembling smile broke over the red-haired girl's face. "Hey Dad." She stepped in front of Beckett, hesitated for a second, then reached back and grasped the detective's hand. "Kate's here with me."

"Kate?"

When Castle turned to face them, Beckett's heart broke. His clothes hung looser off his body and his face was pinched and drawn, as if he hadn't been eating well. The dancing blue eyes she remembered were dull now, filled with a hurt even worse than when he learned that she remembered his confession. They blinked now, as if unable to believe she was standing before him.

"You gave us all quite a scare, Castle," Beckett said, giving him a weak smile.

"Sorry," he mumbled as he rose to his feet. "I just..."

"I know." Damn, did she know. He'd needed time to reconcile the truth with himself. "I know, Rick."

Castle opened his arms, and Alexis ran into them sobbing like a child. Beckett approached more slowly, but her embrace was just as tight as his daughter's. The three hugged each other long after the sun rose and burned off the morning mist, spreading light across Central Park and ending Beckett's month-long nightmare.

There'd be questions later. Where he'd been, what he'd done, how could he do this to the people who cared about him? But for now, Beckett reveled in the strength of his embrace.

Richard Castle had come home.

And here we are, at the halfway mark! Enjoy the angst!

Review please!