A/N: Just a quick toe in the water aftermath piece regarding the finale.

As always, thanks Jess for the cattle prodding.

Enjoy!

She blinks slowly, almost lazily, and she thinks maybe she's drunk or half asleep or perhaps this is all some kind of very strange dream. She can feel that her eyes are open but she might as well be wearing a blindfold for all that she sees with any degree of clarity. Slowly, though, reality starts to come back to her and when it does, everything explodes all at once.

It changes like this: in one moment, there's a cold steely silence that is almost suffocating, and everything that she sees is out of focus and badly disorientated. In the next flash of time, everything is bursting forward, a catastrophic orgy of colors, motion and sound.

And pain. Dear God, the pain.

It's all around her at first, swirling and moving, but with each gasping inhalation of air, she starts to realize that the white-hot pain is coming from the back of her head. Instinctively, she lifts a hand to feel for a wound, but before she can move even so much as an inch, something is catching her hand, and pressing it back downwards, towards what feels like a mattress.

"Kensi," she hears, the voice muffled like someone is speaking to her from a great distance away. She can't make it out well enough to identify it.

She opens her mouth to try to respond – to try to say something, anything - but when she does, the sharp and tangy taste of iron fills her mouth, and she just about gags on it. She tries to cough, but the pain in her head intensifies and instead, she falls backwards, exhausted and defeated.

And just a little bit pissed off about both things.

"Kensi," the voice says again.

She blinks again, using all of her remaining strength to force herself to focus, because something feels important; something feels necessary.

"Michelle," she gasps out as memories flood through her, and she vaguely remembers why it is that she's where she is. Everything is fuzzy still, and at most she can make out the brilliant colors of the people standing over her. Their edges are dulled, though, practically bleeding into each other with each frantic blink of her strained eyes. Still, she remembers Sam's wife, and the desperate need to save her at whatever the cost. "Where's Michelle?"

"Michelle is fine, Kensi," the voice tells her, and finally she recognizes it as belonging to Hetty. A hand slides into hers, small and wrinkled, yet strong and determined in a way that only the tiny Ops manager can pull off.

"Safe?" she mumbles, suddenly feeling as though something is sitting on her chest. She tries to remember why she feels like this, and can't manage to pull forth anything more than moments spent leaning out the window, frantically clutching at the sheet keeping Sam's wife from plunging to her death. She thinks that she recalls the flush of victory as she'd pulled Michelle up onto solid safe ground. And then…then there'd been nothing.

Except this heavy feeling now.

And pounding in her head.

And the iron taste – surely blood - in her mouth.

"It's all right," Hetty assures her in that soothing voice that is uniquely hers, the one that sounds like pure silk being cut like cheese through a grater.

"Did I get shot?" Kensi finally manages, wondering why her vision refuses to clear up. She feels gentle hands pushing her backwards on what she now knows is a gurney once more, and straps being pulled across her body. A brace is sealed around her neck and head. Normally she'd protest both actions, but right now she finds that she lacks the strength for it.

"No, my dear," Hetty tells her, squeezing her hand again with a surprising amount of strength. "You were knocked unconscious, but you're going to be just fine. We're getting you to a hospital now to get checked out."

"No. Don't need to."

"Of course not," Hetty agrees, and Kensi thinks that she detects a note of amusement in the little woman's voice. Well that's a good thing, right? Hetty wouldn't be joking around if the wound she'd suffered were serious.

Right?

Right. Of course not. Time and place and all of that.

"Sleepy," Kensi admits, slurring a bit. Just the same, she tries to sit up again. This time, the straps hold her, and she sags backwards.

"I want you to keep your eyes open and keep talking to me," Hetty orders her, her voice growing very firm and directed. "Can you do that?"

Kensi tries to nod, but wincing ends up gritting out, "Yes," instead.

"Good." To someone nearby, Hetty says, "Are we ready to go?"

"Yes, ma'am. Will you be riding along?"

"Of course," comes the immediate response. Then, to someone else lurking nearby, Hetty asks, "Are you sure that you're all right?"

"I'm sure. I want to be with them. I need to be."

"Go," Hetty says. "Bring them home."

"Bring who home?" Kensi demands, suddenly surging forward again against the now oppressive restraints. That everything in front of her eyes is still little more than a blur means nothing to her; the voices she hears around her are serious and the way her gut is suddenly clenching is telling her that something has gone wrong with the rest of the op.

With Sam and Deeks.

Deeks.

Jesus.

She starts to struggle. Starts to panic.

Her head pounds and the hazy grays and blacks turn to violent reds and brilliant golds. She turns her head and for a moment, focus is restored and she sees a body bag on the ground, the zipper being pulled up.

"Deeks," she gasps. "I need to –"

"Kensi," Hetty insists. "Calm down. Please."

"Deeks. Where's Deeks…"

"We're going to get him," another voice says, and this one she recognizes as belonging to Callen. His hand settles over the one of Hetty's that is still clutching hers. He adds pressure to it. "Don't worry, Kens."

"Callen," she sighs.

"Close your eyes; we got this."

"You have to –"

"Bring them home," he finishes for her. "And we will. Whatever it takes."

She forces her eyes to meet his, the pain of such focus intolerable, but seeing the truth in him means everything.

And once she sees it, she allows the strength to run out of her.

Just for now.

She's lying in a hospital bed, her head rested against the oversized pillow, a white bandage wrapped around her head (the doctor had informed her that she'd been knocked unconscious by a gun to the back of the skull), when she hears the loud voices shouting their way down the hallway.

She hears doctors calling out orders, the words sliding in and out of her brain no matter how hard she tries to make them stick. She grabs onto the things she understands – breaks and bruises and possible deep tissue damage. She hears someone say electrocution, and then they're moving away from her, making it harder for her to understand what's happening.

Then she hears Callen speaking, hears him say Sam's name.

And then he asks about Deeks.

Whoever he's talking to answers him in a voice far too low for her to make out.

What she does hear is Callen ask, "Are you sure?" It's enough to send a cold jolt of fear right through.

She starts to rise, but before she can get even an inch, the flashing pain in her head starts again, and Kensi finds herself pitched back into darkness.

"Is he dead?" she whispers, just seconds after her eyes open again. Callen is sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to her bed, a newspaper in his hands. There's a strange shake to them, though, and even through her pained and slightly drugged state, that worries Kensi more than she cares to admit.

Because nothing scares Callen.

Nothing.

"Who?" he asks, putting down the paper and looking at with weary blue eyes that haven't seen sleep in days. She doesn't miss the way he blinks as if to get focus, and then does it again because such focus is beyond them all.

"Deeks."

"No. And neither is Sam."

She exhales in relief. But then, frowning as she studies Callen's still deeply troubled face. "Then what's going on? What happened? Why were you asking someone if they were?"

He smirks about because he's not at all surprised about her eavesdropping. "I was asking the doctor if he was sure they'd be okay. As for what happened, well, we were double-crossed," Called tells her. "They knew who Sam was, and they suspected that Michelle was with us, too. You were with her so you know what happened to Michelle; Sam and Deeks got grabbed for the purpose of trying to force them to out Michelle." He runs a hand over his heavily stubbled jaw, the hair there thicker than she has ever seen it.

"Callen, tell me."

"They were tortured, Kens. Both of them."

"How bad are they?"

"They'll recover."

"Callen," she says again, this time impatiently.

"They will recover," he says again. "Because they know how to."

"How?"

"They've both been through this before."

"Deeks has?" she asks, shock clear in her expression. She knows he's had a few bad run-ins, but somehow it's never occurred to her that her happy go-lucky partner might have gone through a few different shades of hell.

Specifically one called torture.

"Not his first rodeo, Kens; he's had some undercover jobs with the LAPD go pear shaped and he's apparently been hurt just as bad in the process."

"Torture is torture," she whispers, wincing through the sharp pains shooting through her. "It doesn't matter if you have gone through it before."

"No, it doesn't," he agrees with something of a frown. "But both Sam and Deeks are going to live through this, and that's something, too."

He's right, of course. And actually, it's everything.

"What do I do to help him?" she asks him after a few long seconds have passed. For anyone else they have been awkward but Callen is used to quiet, even gravitates towards it; he'd simply watched her carefully.

"Let him be strong."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that for five hours, both he and Sam withstood something terrible, and he needs to know that it didn't break him; he needs to know that you don't see him that way," Callen tells her, and he thinks that this is the most serious conversation that they've had in a very long time.

She closes her eyes, and nods, letting his words curl over her.

This isn't the Kensi Blye that he's used to. The one he knows is smart, tough and defiant. The one lying in the bed looks heartbroken, and he can't help but think that there's more to it than just being upset over what happened to Deeks. That's certainly key, but there's something else there, too.

Deeper emotions and feelings.

Perhaps things that she should have known better than to let herself feel.

If only one could ever truly control their heart.

"Rest," he tells her. "You took a pretty hard blow to the head, and you look like hell, Kens. It's okay to let down for tonight; everyone is safe."

"You promise?"

"Have I ever lied to you?"

She smiles slightly. "Yes."

He chuckles because yeah, she's right. "Well, I'm not lying this time."

"He's not alone is he?"

"Deeks? No. Hetty is with him. And he's sleeping, anyway."

"Good. And Sam?"

"Michelle is with him, which means I get you duty," he tells her with a smirk.

"Lucky you."

"That depends; are you going to shut up so I can read my newspaper?"

"Fine," she sighs. "But the moment he wakes up, I want to know."

"You will."

True to his word, Callen rouses Kensi from her sleep the moment Deeks comes to. He tries to warn her of what she'll see when she goes in (Hetty has returned to Ops for the short-term), but in typical fashion, she disregards him and demands to see her partner. That she's trying to be a badass while cruising around in a wheelchair appears to be lost on her.

It's not lost on Callen, though, because right now more than ever, he's glad to see a little bit of familiarity however bull-headed it be. Sam is being stoic and unemotional, and while that's typical of him, it's also unsettling because Callen knows just how deep emotion runs through his partner.

Deeks, though, he's being quiet.

And that's all kinds of wrong.

He pushes Kensi into Deeks' private room, warns her one last time with a squeeze to the shoulder and then walks away, shutting the door behind him.

"Hey," she hears from the bed, the voice so low and throaty. He doesn't sound like himself, his words mangled thanks to his injuries.

Her eyes flicker up to him, and it's only her many years of training that keep her from gasping in horror at what she sees. He's covered in bruises, the vast majority surrounding his swollen mouth. His jaw is about five different colors and much larger than it should be, and his nose is clearly broken.

She forces a smile, because if she doesn't, she thinks she might scream.

"Hey," she says back, her mismatched eyes locked on his blue ones. They're slightly dulled by all the drugs in his system, but still bright. Still him.

"Man of your dreams, huh?" he drawls out almost lazily, knowing her better – as usual - than she knows her self.

A hundred different replies go streaking like an out of control wildfire through her head – from the truth to something intentionally pithy. She's suddenly at a complete loss as to the tone that she's supposed to take here.

Let him be strong, Callen had told her.

Right. Okay. Sure.

Still, she has nothing because nothing feels right here. He's been hurt so very badly, and even the thought of trying to joke it off makes her heart hurt.

She thinks of him holding his hands out to her and refusing to let her die.

She thinks of a surprising kiss on a hill and wheels screeching away.

She thinks of the word trust.

She thinks of him refusing to leave her back no matter how hard she'd pushed at him to do exactly that during the worst days of her life.

And in that moment, she knows that this is all about something deeper.

"What can I do?" she asks finally, and it sounds so very much like what she asked Callen, but it's all that she has that is honest and real.

After all that they have been through both together and apart, she knows that she owes him this. No more walls, just the truth.

"Stay," he says, and the word is garbled and pained but she hears it anyway. His hand reaches out for her and she grabs it immediately, interlacing their fingers, and squeezing tight. "I like your chair," he tells her, and it almost makes her laugh with happiness that there doesn't ever seem to be a point in times when jokes don't work for him. "It's sexy."

"Oh, yeah," she agrees, her other tapping against the metal armrest.

"Maybe I can borrow it later. There's this punk six-year-old kid down the hall challenging everyone to wheelchair races. I think we can take him."

"We can," she nods, "But I get to steer."

"Of course," he confirms.

She wants to say more, ask more, but that's not what he needs right now.

He needs this. He needs her beside him, not pushing. Letting him be strong.

So she does.

"How long do they have you on a liquid diet?" she asks.

"Until I don't sound like Elmer Fudd."

"I always liked Elmer Fudd," she shrugs, and then immediately realizes what she'd said. She tries to cover it with a laugh, but he's watching her.

He blinks his eyes slowly.

"Deeks," she says, her stomach suddenly very heavy.

"You were with her," he answers softly. "I couldn't let them know who she was." He says this like she should know what he's talking about, and the reality is that she does; he'd submitted to heinous torture to save her from being hurt.

That his efforts had been in vain is something she plans to never tell him.

Her hand goes to her mouth for a moment, and then drops away. She bites her lip, and again fights back the urge to scream. Or laugh. Or cry.

She just nods her head again. And swallows several times. Once she finds her voice again, she manages a weak, ""I'll get you a cheeseburger as soon as they let me. Something with a lot of surfer crap on it."

"Pureed?"

"Until it's smooth like baby food."

He squeezes her hand, his eyes drooping even as a smile fights to his lips.

"I'm okay," he assures her.

"Yeah," she confirms, but doesn't add what she's thinking, which is: "but if you're not, I'll be here until you are."

She doesn't need to; he knows.

They'll find a way through this.

They always do.

-Fin