A/N: This would have been another story choice after I finished Leave the Light On, but I set it aside when I started writing With Lying Eyes. But now that I have a lot more of this story mapped out, I've decided to put it out there and see the reaction I get.

Prompt: When Castle finally loses hope and starts pulling away, he decides to go on one last case with Beckett that takes them to upstate New York. When they get stranded at a dingy motel for the night, tensions quickly begin to rise as she fights to tell him how she really feels. (Mid S4)

It's beginning to feel strangely empty. It's there, but... hollow now. Like an unbroken egg without a yoke inside.

He's been gone for a week. The only contact she's had with him over the past week is a few texts saying that he needs to focus on writing. His exact words were 'I think I should', like... it was an excuse.

An excuse not to come around.

She didn't push him, accepted it thinking that he was probably just feeling ill and his pride wouldn't let him tell her, let alone ask for help. She thought that he might have gotten over it when they got a body drop yesterday. But when she called him and heard his voicemail, she felt more dejected than anticipated, more let down and disappointed then she was prepared for when he didn't answer. And even more uplifted and felt more longing in her when she had to listen to his voice asking her to leave him a message.

She left him the address, but something about her saying she 'understood' if he was still sick, it felt like she had to tell herself a bold-faced lie.

It's always easier to push it all away and write it all off when he's with her. Always easier to just let things flow between them when he comes by in the morning like he... she can almost physically feel her heart crack when the words 'used to' cement themselves in her mind.

Even as she pushes the doors open to the morgue. "Hey, Lanie, you have anything?"

Lanie looks up with a large soda cup in her hand, sitting at her desk at the other end of the morgue, still sipping through the straw. She swivels herself around in her chair, her eyes going over to the freezer where the victim's body is being kept. "Didn't I already send up the full autopsy?"

Beckett comes to stand, leaning against the slab, feeling a nervous quake in her veins. "I was just..." She looks away and shrugs her shoulders, feigning being alright with whatever situation she realized this morning she's found herself in, "wondering i-if you've found anything new."

Lanie's eyes narrow as she stands up, setting her cup down on her desk. She slowly paces her way over to her, crossing her arms challengingly. "Nothing I didn't tell Javi when he came by this morning."

Beckett can tell that she's starting to get caught. "Oh." Her voice is small as she looks down to the cold metal slab with a raised brow and a nod.

"What's up?" Lanie asks, half caring and half accusatory.

Beckett looks up again, telling her face to express it away and throw her off, but it doesn't work. Lanie knows something is off and has been off for days. "It's nothing." Her voice is too high and pinched. If she doesn't buy it herself, Lanie is sure not to take it as an acceptable answer.

She's called on it by Lanie shifting her hips, pursing her lips, lidding her gaze, and crossing her arms.

Her lips squeeze and move off to the side as the words come up to her throat. "It's Castle."

"Where is he?" Lanie's question doesn't sound like a question. Her brow shoots up and her tone stabs her, like it's a challenge.

She asked when he didn't show up to the scene yesterday, but Beckett threw her off by saying she wanted to get to work. "He says he thinks he should focus on writing."

"And when was this?" Lanie asks, knitting her brow and lowering her gaze.

"Last week." Her voice is still too tight, too nervous. "I haven't seen him since." She painfully admits. "At first, I thought he might have been sick and was afraid to tell me, but... when he didn't show up to the scene yesterday..."

Lanie narrows her eyes and cocks her head off to the side. "Is this why you came down here?"

She didn't know what to expect out of this visit. She didn't really have a set goal when her legs carried her down here. Her subconscious going to the one person that would force her over the edge, maybe. "I don't know." She says with a tight, small shrug of her shoulders. "I-I just..." She says, looking back down to the slab, "can't figure out where it went wrong."

"Can't figure it out or can't admit it?"

Beckett doesn't answer, just looks up to her with nervous, sad, wide eyes, and an arched brow. She can't say it out loud yet. But Lanie's lack of tact is probably the sledgehammer she needs. "Both?"

"Kate..." She sighs and puts a hand on her hip with a shake of her head. "Don't you think that maybe he's tired of waiting?"

And when Lanie says that, she feels the veil of subtext vanish. "Lanie, we're just not ready, okay?" She weakly defends herself. "We need to-to..."

"Uh-uh." Lanie stops her with a wag of her finger, "What you need to do... is go after him while he's still there to go after."

It's a fear that's been scratching at the back of her mind for some time, ever since that case with that blonde bimbo he seemed so infatuated with. The thought that someone else might spark a new interest in him. She looks up to the ceiling, feeling her eyes burn at the thought of him just... losing interest in her like that. Of him moving on from her, like she was just a passing attraction that he never got the chance to stop and enjoy. Like she isn't giving him enough to stick around for.

"Kate, I don't have to be a detective to tell you that the guy's crazy for you." Lanie sasses after a long, contemplating pause.

It's when Lanie's words hit her ears that his words stab her heart. She's found herself replaying that day over in her mind a lot this week, like a song her brain has been stuck on. It was hard to think of when she was recovering. But then when she and Castle got back into step with each other after she came back, the pain started to fade because they seemed to go back to normal, aside from a small ache of guilt. But now that she feels the cold void of his absence, it seems like it's the only memory she can hold on to.

Like the only piece of him she can hold onto for any kind of hope.

And when Lanie sees Kate not moving to immediately throw her off, toss out some off-handed quip to dismiss her, Lanie starts in an obvious, sarcastic tone. "Oh Lanie, you've been drinking medical fluids, you're so crazy, you've spent too much time around dead people."

Beckett looks back up to her, wondering what brought out Lanie's mocking her. "What?"

"What, no snappy comeback about how he's just your partner and that I'm crazy for thinking he might just be a little bit into you?"

It's too late to correct herself, especially now since Lanie is pulling her down a trail. She's lost the ability to lie convincingly. "Oh... uh... no?"

"Kate, you've been fighting tooth and nail to deny it since he started following you around. What changed?"

She feels her body tighten in fear, her muscles constricting her and paralyzing her. "He..." She starts, forcing the words out, "might have... told me... h-how he felt."

Lanie's eyes freeze, her brow raised before pinching together. "When the hell was this?"

Well... it's now or never. She's only ever admitted this to Burke, and even he didn't press her on the issue. "It was... at Montgomery's funeral." Her tone is trying to be casual about it, but it's too forced and shaky.

"Like... before err..."

She swallows thickly, "Right as I got shot."

Lanie's eyes are still glaring over to her, as if being angrily stunned. "I thought you said you couldn't remember your shooting." When Kate only answers with a blink of her burning eyes, she can tell when Lanie's brain clicks everything into place. "You lied to him?!"

"What the hell else what I supposed to tell him, Lanie?!" She shouts in the strongest yet most dishonest voice she's felt come out of her in days.

"The truth?"

"What, after just putting the man who trained me to be a cop since day one in the ground, having the only lead in my mom's case get killed, on top of having just been shot? You want any more reasons why I couldn't handle dealing with that just yet?"

"How 'bout one that makes me give a damn?"

Her anger is getting the better of her, "Lanie, my whole life had just been uprooted! Forgive me for wanting to get back to normal before dealing with the fact that even after I threw him out of my life just days before, him telling me that he loves me."

"Kate, the guy thought you were dying! We all did. What was he supposed to do? Say 'it's been nice working with you'?"

"Lanie, telling him I just didn't remember seemed like the only option I had at the time, okay? It was the only way to get him to stay without breaking his heart!"

"Well, when were you gonna tell him?" She asks, shrugging her shoulders and crossing her arms.

"I-I just... thought that..."

Lanie just pushes her again with a lift of her brow and a purse of her lips.

"That we'd eventually just... get close enough to where it... wouldn't matter all that much."

"You weren't going to tell him?!"

"I thought it would get easier to just forget about it the closer we got, but... Lanie, I never thought that he'd just leave." She says in an honest, scared tone. It scares her. Mostly because Lanie won't stop pushing her. But that's why she came down here anyway. "These past months, I could feel us getting closer and as long we were, I knew that he still felt that way and that he was... willing to wait."

"Kate, what is it exactly that you're waiting for? The stars to align?" Lanie's tone drops into honestly caring. "The guy is nuts about you and you can talk all you want, but you are just as nuts about him." Kate can feel her heartstrings tug. "But you can not expect him to wait forever. Because, eventually, he'll move on and then what are you left with?"

It's only then that Kate can feel a tear slide down her cheek in a hot, painful streak.

"You need to go after him before it's too late, girl." She says and shifts her hips again. "And I'd do it sooner rather than later."

"No, Lanie, I can't. Gates is sending me upstate today. She wants me to search through the victim's home office before the local PD has a chance to contaminate the scene. I'm gonna be gone for two days."

"So? Take him with you." Lanie tells her, like it's as simple as that.

"Lanie, he's barely spoken to me in a week. You really expect him to just up and take off upstate with me on a case?"

"Did he really expect you to do all the things you've done with him when he's asked you? All the times he's asked you to dinner after a case, or out to a drink? Kate, the guy's been chasing after you for nearly four years. Don't you think it might be your turn?"

Trying to ignore the war going on between the fear her rational mind is giving her and the desperate longing her heart is giving her, she nods her head. "Alright, I'll ask him."

"Alright, good." Lanie says and turns, pounding her fist in the air as Kate turns to leave. "And tell him the truth or else!"

Kate stops with her hand holding the door open. "Or else what?"

"Or else you're gonna end up in one of these freezers."

Kate rolls her eyes and exits the morgue.

A/N: I wanted this chapter to be a bit longer, but that was the only place I could end it honestly. I'll get into the details of the case with the next chapter. And yes, I'll write this story in tandem with With Lying Eyes so those of you following that story (And those who aren't, please go read that one too) won't feel left out in the cold. Thanks always for all the ups and support in my writing! :)