Icarus

A/N: Takes place during 8x14. (God I can't seem to get through this painful season fast enough, lol.) I just feel like they did so much wrong and we never got enough of the stuff we needed to justify/rectify/make sense of it all. So this is just a little scene I thought about that went unsaid in the show, but really needed to be addressed IMO. I hope you enjoy!

—-

Castle stirred, a cramp forming in his shoulder. He rolled over onto his back, flexed his arm, and groaned at the relief of the returned circulation.

His head was pounding; he hadn't had that much to drink in… well, he wasn't quite sure. But it had been a long time. He blinked, trying to orient himself to the dark bedroom, when he turned and saw Beckett's crouched form. She was on her side of the bed, feet flat on the floor with her elbows on her knees.

It wasn't quite the sight he'd expected to wake up to.

"Kate?" he muttered, before trying to clear some of the frogginess out of his throat.

She didn't answer.

"What're you doing up?" He reached out a hand and touched her back. Her whole body was stiff, tense. "What's going on?"

Castle sat up, trying to clear his alcohol-muddled brain enough to focus. She wasn't talking, so what could he observe? She was hunched over, curled into herself. She was tightly wound, her back rigid, but she didn't appear to be crying. Could she just not sleep? But why wouldn't she face him?

"Beckett, talk to me." He rubbed his hand in circles on her back, and it seemed to coax her back to life.

She turned to face him, her expression scrunched up like she'd been in deep thought.

"What is it?" he asked.

Beckett licked her lips, eyes darting back and forth as she studied his face. "It dawned on me."

"What did?"

"Your timeline. You were in Thailand for what, two weeks?"

"About. Yeah."

"And you couldn't call. Top secret, all that."

Castle didn't like where this was going. His stomach soured, the scotch churning and curdling in his gut with every word she spoke. "Right."

She pursed her lips, her eyes sad and lifeless looking in the dark room. He wanted to touch her again, but he wasn't sure he should.

"And then you figured something out that led you to Loksat. To L.A." Castle said nothing, only listened to Beckett's soft, almost dulcet tones. "Through your father, perhaps. Or so says Hayley. And… you came back. To the U.S." She swiveled her legs around until she could tuck them up under her body.

"I'm fuzzy on the details…"

She nodded. She knew that. "But you were in the States at this point. You had access to telephones."

The accusation hung between them like a sour stench. He wanted to back away, both physically and also to retreat from this conversation, but Beckett pinned him with her matter-of-fact stare. The guilt that burned his insides was worse than any alcohol, any hangover.

Because she wasn't wrong. In fact, she was being much more calm about it than he'd be, if he were in her position.

"I suppose… I must have known it would be too dangerous to call. The same reason you didn't call me when Vikram tracked you down." He knew it was a low-blow, but he was defending decisions he didn't even remember making. He was blind here, and therefore it was almost impossible to justify the choices he'd made when he was a completely different man.

Beckett didn't give any reaction to his statement, only a deep inhale. "I knew you were home, with Alexis. With Martha. I didn't call you because it was dangerous, you're right. But I knew you were okay. And technically, you knew I was okay." She licked her lips again, her fists clinging to the mess of blankets in her lap. "You didn't call us, Rick. And we didn't know if you were alive or dead. I'd been gone two days, you'd been gone two weeks." She looked to the ceiling, and her calmness in the face of this realization made Castle feel a thousand times worse. Nothing she said was wrong, and he'd do anything for a do-over.

"Kate…"

But she continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "A simple, 'Hey, I'm alive and okay but I can't talk right now' would have sufficed. Hearing your voice…" She worked her jaw from side to side, and Castle looked down into his lap. He'd messed up. Royally. He knew that.

"I guess I'm just surprised, is all. To learn that you spent most of the two months you were gone in L.A. chasing ghosts without me, and just… chose not to tell us. It doesn't sound like you, to intentionally let your daughter wonder if you were dead."

It felt like she'd stabbed him. He had half a mind to feel his chest, just to be safe. But instead he heard his own pleading voice say, "Because it isn't me. I don't know why I did that."

Beckett held up her hand, once again stopping him in his tracks. "I don't wanna argue, Castle. I'm just… processing."

Processing the fact that she'd spent six weeks longer than necessary fearing the worst. Wasted vacation time to 'find' him when he could've already been found. Came dangerously close to losing her mind over the never-ending cycle of 'what ifs' because he'd been too narcissistic to let her in, let her help.

His hubris had almost broken their relationship. He'd tried to take Loksat down solo, so that what - he could fly home a hero? Justify the absence he hadn't wanted in the first place? Castle didn't know what his motivations had been back then. He only knew how close he'd come to his own demise - and theirs.

Perhaps erasing his memory had been the only thing that salvaged it in the end. He doubted she would've ever given him another chance if she'd discovered his mission sooner, regardless of his intent at the time. (Surely it had all been for her, but did that even matter?)

"Just… go back to bed, Castle," Kate sighed, and laid down on her side, facing away from him.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to feel her melt, to know that he hadn't ruined everything by telling her what he'd discovered.

But she curled into herself again, and he knew she was telling him to back off. She wasn't crying, but she was done talking. There was nothing more he could do, nothing more he could say. (Erasing his memories didn't erase the past.)

So, he laid back down on his side, facing her, studying her form until sleep finally took him once more.