A/N: This is the fic that I wrote for the numb3rs gen fic exchange (yeah... I know that was ages ago, yet I'm only just posting it now. I wanted to tweak it a bit before I posted it again, since I didn't really have a chance to polish it as much as I'd have liked before it was due and, well... I'm still not completely happy with it, but at this point I'm sick of fiddling with the damn thing!). The prompt was: Colby and Megan get stuck in a lift. What secrets get revealed to each other? friendship. Thanks to my beta, pruehall over on LiveJournal (though I've fiddled around with it so much since I sent it to her that it's more like half beta'd... so if there are any mistakes in there... blame her! Kidding, any remaining mistakes are my fault...)

And I own nothing, per usual.

"So… when did you get back to LA?" Colby asked conversationally and Megan snorted humorlessly.

"Just a few hours ago. You see, this guy hit me with a tranq dart and the next thing I know I'm tied up in the back of a van in LA and you're being thrown on top of me," she replied sarcastically.

"Oh. Uh, sorry about that. I wasn't aiming for you," he said apologetically and she rolled her eyes.

"No kidding. My aim is usually a bit off when I've been beaten almost unconscious, too," she snapped and he winced as her loud words reverberated around the small elevator.

"So you have any idea who those guys were?" Colby asked as he shifted slightly, pain shooting up his arm as he did so. He swore under his breath and Megan twisted slightly, trying to get a good luck at him. Not an easy thing to do when you're tied together back to back in a service elevator.

"No. I never really saw them. Are you okay?" she asked, concern coloring her words.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think they dislocated my shoulder, but I'll live," he said, his voice low in barely concealed pain.

"Of course you're fine. You're always fine," she said exasperatedly, still trying to situate herself so that she could actually see him. She had only gotten a quick glance at him when he had been thrown into the back of the van by their captors before the doors had been slammed shut and they had been forced into darkness. Colby hadn't made any noise during the relatively short ride from wherever it was that had captured him to wherever they were now, and she didn't break the silence either in case he was, perhaps, tracking where the vehicle was going. When the doors had been thrown open at their new location her eyes had been overpowered by the harshly contrasting light and by the time her eyes adjusted enough for her to see anything but white spots Colby had already been removed and she was being dragged out as well. They had been thrown in the elevator and tied together, back to back and then the elevator was moved briefly, most likely enough to get them stuck between floors.

"Look, Megan, I've been beaten up before. It's not that bad, I promise," he said in what she was sure was meant to be a reassuring tone, but the weakness in his voice only served to increase her concerns, doing nothing to ease them.

"Right. I'll pretend that I buy that for now. You have any idea why they want us?" she asked as she continued to wriggle around in the ropes.

"Not a clue. I was checking out a lead when they hit me. I thought it had something to do with that, but then they wouldn't bother with you," he said and she scoffed slightly.

"What, am I not as important as you or something?" she asked, though she knew perfectly well that that wasn't what he had meant. Busting on Colby was a favorite pastime of hers and one that she had missed dearly since she had left LA.

"No, I just mean that it seems like an awful lot of effort to go all the way out to DC to kidnap someone who used to work with the team who is investigating you for trying to kill your mistress," Colby said dryly and Megan snorted.

"Fair point," she conceded with amusement in her voice. "So who do you think it is?" she asked after a moment.

"It could be anyone. Well, not anyone- I'm pretty sure that my mother isn't behind this-, but a lot of people. I really don't know. They haven't said what they want. Actually, they haven't said anything," he said tiredly and she could feel his back press into her a bit harder and she knew that he was fading fast.

"You wouldn't happen to have a gun, knife, your cell phone or, you know, anything helpful on you, would you?" she asked hopefully, though she doubted that the answer would be affirmative. For one if Colby had something that would help them he most likely would have used it already.

"No, they took all my stuff off me. They even took my wallet, badge and ID, and my dog tags," Colby said and Megan heard a note of sorrow in his voice when he mentioned his missing dog tags. She knew that even now, long after his discharge from the army, he still wore them all the time except for when he was doing undercover work.

"Mine, too," she said and silence fell for a few moments before Megan spoke again. "What do you think they want with us?"

"I really have no clue. Maybe they're going for ransom, but it seems a bit odd. I really can't think of any reason for someone to kidnap you in DC and drag you all the way out to LA and then just tie us up in an elevator and leave us. Hopefully David, Don and Liz will have an answer to that question when they find us," Colby said with more certainty than he felt. His left shoulder was throbbing and he had a head wound that was still bleeding a bit and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. Probably had something to do with that very solid kick by a steel-toed boot that he had received to his ribs. The rest of his body was aching, too, but at the moment his shoulder, head and ribs were at the forefront of the symphony of aches.

"I miss LA," Megan declared suddenly and Colby couldn't help but chuckle.

"Oh yeah, what's not to love? Other than the whole 'being held against our will' thing, but hey, that usually only happens on every third Tuesday," Colby shot back and Megan snorted.

"You know what I mean. I like DC and I like what I'm doing, but I miss LA. I miss you guys and I miss Larry and I just… miss LA. I guess that I never realized how much I loved it here until I left. I left because I didn't think that I was happy anymore, but now I don't know. I think I just wanted myself to be the kind of person who couldn't just get over what the DOJ had me do and go on with my life and be happy, but maybe I am. I didn't want to be able to just keep working for a government I saw torture suspects, let alone enjoy working for them, but I did. And now I miss it; I regret leaving," she finished quietly.

"Megan, I… I'm not gonna tell you what you should do; you're the only one who can figure out what you want to do, and what kind of person you want to be. But Megan, there is more to our government than just that one program. Yes, there are people in the government who aren't exactly boy scouts, but not everyone is like them. In fact, most aren't; and I don't know if you're the kind of person who can see those sorts of things and keep going. There was a time where I didn't know if I was the kind of person who could go back to a government that had so easily abandoned me, and was so willing to sacrifice me. You just gotta be honest with yourself. Don't think about what kind of person you think you are, or what kind of person you want to be, think about who you actually are. Even if the truth hurts. It kinda sucked when I realized that I loved working at the FBI and with you and David and Don so much that I was willing to work for people who viewed me as easily expendable and work with people who didn't really trust me," he said and Megan felt a tear roll down her cheek and she wanted desperately to wipe it away, but knew that she had no way to do so. She was just glad that Colby couldn't see her tears – she knew that the last thing he wanted was her pity.

"Colby… I'm so sorry that we-" she began but he cut across her, a slight hint of amusement in his voice.

"Sorry that you were a bit suspicious and untrusting of someone who had lied to you since the day he met you?" Colby asked and Megan didn't reply- she didn't have an answer. "The fact that you guys trusted me enough to come after me? That meant a lot; and then the fact that you guys let me back in meant even more. So don't apologize. I deserved not to be trusted. What I'm still not convinced of is that I deserve to be trusted again. So please don't apologize, because you guys have all given me more than anyone could ever expect or hope for."

"Wow. That was one hell of an elevator confessional there, Colby," Megan said, shock resonating through her. She hadn't expected him to be so honest; Colby was one who tended to keep his emotions to himself. Which in and of itself constituted the understatement of the century.

Colby, on the other hand was trying everything he could to keep himself awake and was hoping like hell that his elevator confessional didn't end up being his death bed confessional. Every breath he took seemed infinitely more difficult than the previous, a feeling which was frighteningly reminiscent of Lancer's Tubocurarine. His head was pounding, reinforcing the notion that he had a world class concussion, and his shoulder was to the point where chopping off his own arm with a rusty butter knife was starting to sound like a wonderful idea.

"Colby? Are you okay?" Megan's voice cut into his inner musings on self-amputation and pulled him back to reality.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just wondering when the cavalry's gonna get here is all," he said with false bravado that Megan saw right through. His voice was getting weaker by the minute and she was wondering what injury it was that was sapping his energy so quickly. Either he had understated one of his injuries or had simply neglected to mention it.

"I'm sure they'll be here soon," Megan agreed, deciding that continuing their façade of false hope was the best approach to their situation. They were silent for several minutes before Megan, worried that Colby was perhaps no longer awake, spoke. "So how are Don and Robin doing?"

"Uh… fine, as far as I know. Don hasn't had an extended period of sulking bitterness recently, so I'm assuming that there still together…" he said, drifting off. He didn't pry into his boss' love life- David's love life, sure, but not Don's.

"Well, that's good," Megan began, but anything further that she might have tried to say was lost as the top of the elevator doors were blasted open. Even in light of his injuries and the position in which he was tied, Megan could feel Colby try to move to protect her from falling debris.

"Hey, Granger? You in there?" Don's voice echoed down into the elevator and Colby honestly felt as though he could cry from relief.

"Yeah, Don. And guess whose back in town? Megan," he threw back up as a rope was dropped down into the car.

"Hey Don, David," Megan added in a falsely cheerful voice with the air of someone who always ran into old friends while tied up in elevators.

"Uh… hey, Megan. Can you guys get up the rope, or does one of us need to come down there?" David asked, slightly nonplused by Megan's sudden and unexpected return from the east coast.

"Oh, you're gonna need to come down. We've been trying to untie ourselves for several hours now. Not that Mr. Big Strong Army Man has been much help," Megan said, unable to resist to the jab. Colby grunted in mild protest, but made no other comment. David dropped down into the elevator car in front of Megan and began cutting the ropes that held her and Colby together. Unfortunately the newfound freedom meant that Colby had nothing to hold him upright and as soon as the ropes began to loosen in earnest he began to pitch forward, saved from a face plant only by David's quick reflexes as he practically dived across the car and wrapped an arm around his friend's chest to stop his decent towards the solid metal floor.

Don looked down onto the scene inside the elevator and if the situation weren't so serious he might have found it extremely humorous. Megan attempting vainly to untangle herself from the ropes that David hadn't yet cut- which were quite a few and were in an elaborate set up - while David was splayed across the floor, his weight on his hip with one leg shooting out and his foot on the opposite wall with his other leg bent and his knee between Megan and Colby's backs. And Colby was slumped forward with his head resting on David's shoulder and David's arm wrapped around him, holding him up.

"Megan- here. Take the knife and try to cut the rest of the cords," David said handing her his knife which was still open and had miraculously escaped cutting any of them when David had dived across the elevator.

"How is he?" Megan asked as she took the knife and began to cut at her bindings, turning her body so that she could see David and Colby. David didn't answer her immediately, he was speaking quietly into Colby's ear and Megan heard Colby grunt in reply and saw him shake his head slightly.

"Okay, Megan, when you're free, go up the rope, I'll bring Colby up. He doesn't think he can make it up himself," David told her and she bit back the 'no kidding' remark that was on the tip of her tongue. It had been painfully apparent since right about when Colby had lost the fight with gravity a few moments earlier that he wouldn't be able t make it up the rope and out of the elevator under his own power. But she finished cutting the restraints in silence and ascended the rope in the same manor speaking only to assure Don that she was fine when he asked.

Don and Megan watched as David cut the last of the chors off of Colby and gently lifted him onto his shoulders with Colby's arm snaked around his neck and gripping his shirt. Megan doubted that the fistful of shirt in Colby's grip was due to concerns of David dropping him, but rather suspected that it was a small form of release for the pain he was in. Being carried fireman style with injured ribs couldn't possibly be the most comfortable of positions.

David climbed up the rope slowly, careful to jostle Colby as little as possible and when he reached the floor he set Colby down so that he was propped against the wall next to the elevator doors and looked over at Don, who told him that the paramedics would be there momentarily. He nodded curtly and sat down next to Colby, whose head dropped sideways onto his shoulder almost immediately as David covered him with his coat.

The next day David, Megan and Don were all gathered in the hospital's waiting room along with Liz, Charlie, Larry, Amita and Alan waiting on news on Colby's condition after his third surgery to fix his two shattered ribs. This time it was to repair the damage that a small piece of bone had caused when it had ripped a small hole in his liver that had slipped under the radar during the previous surgeries. They had thought that Colby was pretty much out of the woods when his vitals had gone on the fritz again and the small rip was discovered. The group had been there for four hours in almost complete silence when Megan spoke.

"I'm coming back to the FBI," she said and everyone looked at her, several of them practically giving themselves whiplash in the process.

"What, this opened your eyes to how much you missed being kidnapped by deranged arms dealers?" Don asked incredulously, staring at her. As it turned out the men who had kidnapped Megan and Colby had been hired by an irate international arms dealer who had been arrested by the team, specifically Megan and Colby, almost two years earlier. He had cut off the ventilation to the elevator so that they would die a slow, agonizing death in the elevator as his revenge for what he perceived to be a wrong committed against him by the two. Don had heard many things in his years as an FBI agent, but he had to admit that this was a new one.

"No, but-" Megan began but the sight of Colby's doctor approaching caused the entire group to stand up in nervous anticipation for the news she bore.

"We managed to repair the damage and we also checked for any other possible internal injuries, but we didn't find any, so, barring any unforeseen complications, he should make a full recovery," she told them and they let out a collective sigh of relief. "Only two people can see him at a time," she informed him and it was immediately decided that they would all take shifts staying with him because the last thing that they wanted was for him to wake up alone on the ventilator.

Visiting hours weren't mentioned – the nurses here remembered Colby from his last stint in this particular hospital and they had developed a soft spot for the handsome and charismatic man with the James Bond like aura and were willing to bend the rules a bit and look the other way about his friends being in the room with him at all hours.

David was sitting with him when he began to stir two days later; Liz, who had taken the shift with him was out getting them coffee and so he was alone in the room with Colby when he regained consciousness. Colby began to panic almost immediately, fighting the ventilator and David hit the call button before grasping his friend's hand and telling him that he was okay, that he was safe and that everything was okay. Muttering in his ear that he had his back as Colby look up at him with absolute terror in his eyes.

The nurse removed the breathing tube quickly and within moments Colby was once again lost to sleep as David held his hand and thanked God that his partner was alive and that their team was as whole now as it had been in many months. Megan was coming back and Colby was okay and he'd be back at least two weeks before the doctors would want. Charlie was now the only member of their team that was still missing, but David was willing to live with that as long as Colby was the one who had his back and Megan was there to psychoanalyze them.