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WARNING: This is fairly angst-y. Just a heads up.

Disclaimer: CBS owns it all.

xxx

Now:

"Kensi," he whispers through the emptiness that surrounds them both.

The night is silent in a way that he has never known, his own shaky heartbeats his only company. He has long since stopped being able to hear his partner's shallow breath, and it leaves him stricken with a kind of inevitable grief.

She coughs. Thank God.

Painstakingly, he pushes himself toward the sound. He searches blindly for her broken body, and finds her hair, matted and tangled. Groaning at the pain that roars through his bones every time he shifts his weight, he pulls her as close as he can.

"Deeks," she murmurs. He smiles half-heartedly, because his name has been the only thing she's said for hours now.

Absently, he wonders if she knows he is there, or if her damaged mind is simply calling out for the last hope it knows it has for survival.

Unsure of the answer, he strokes her cheek affectionately, well aware that this would be forbidden behavior under normal circumstances. But things have been so not normal for a very long time, and he seriously doubts that they'll ever get back to a time like that again.

"I'm here Kensi," he closes his eyes. "I'm here."

And his heart trembles in his chest, because he knows that her days are numbered with small numbers. And his fingers shake because there is a lot of blood on both of them, and while there may be people looking for them, he is not sure that they will arrive it in time to make a difference (and he will not leave without her. And he cannot walk away from this and know that she is cold and lonely and gone.). And all his training and wit and sheer stubbornness have not been enough to end this.

And he cannot live with himself if he lets her down.

"Deeks."

Her breath halts for a moment, and he freezes. When it resumes, he decides that he does not care, and it does not matter, whether or not she knows that she is calling for him, as long as she does not stop.

xxx

Before:

Callen sends them out to gather information, and they do not look back.

But it all goes wrong in the ways that they never expected it to. Easy banter is replaced by gunshots, and they are suddenly playing defensive. He goes down almost gracefully, and she becomes fueled by a kind of anger she has never felt.

But it is not enough.

And she will never forgive herself for that.

xxx

They learn very quickly how to survive in their small cell. Maybe six feet by six feet, it is dusty and hot with the sun. The walls are rough; there is a wicker chair in the corner. They are both loosely chained to the wall, with enough slack to reach one another, but restrained enough to kill any hope of escape. Deeks thinks that the accommodations could be much worse, and he tells his partner so.

Kensi only closes her eyes in mild annoyance.

A man enters the room on the second morning and leaves them water, but does not speak. Neither of them reach for it, and it sits there as a sort of timid defiance.

Later, although he does not know how much later, he will regret it.

Later, although he does not know how much later, he will learn to live with that burning regret, and it will hurt more than anything else in the world.

Two new men storm through the door not long afterward, and one keeps hold of Deeks' restraints, while the other reaches for his partner. And Deeks fights –God how he fights-, but she disappears through the wooden doorframe with panicked eyes that haunt him as he waits.

She is already long gone before he realizes that his throat is raw from calling out her name, in hopes that that might bring her back to him.

They return her when the disappearing rays of the setting sun have begun to play on the concrete ceiling.

She is swollen and limping, but still proud in a way only Kensi can ever be. Eyes that are narrowed and dark, but cannot hide the hurt from someone that knows what to look for.

And even though the only physical complaint he can muster is soreness, he hurts because she does. And it hurts him in his heart, makes its marks behind his eyelids so it can haunt him when he finally falls asleep that night.

Hours pass on silently around them once she returns. Because she cannot bear to look at him and know that she is vulnerable. Because he cannot stop looking at her, and knows with a terrible certainty that things will only ever get worse.

It all goes wrong in the blink of an eye.

But it stays wrong for much longer.

And that is what he fears the most.

xxx

Elsewhere: Before:

It started out very much like Dom. There was worry, replaced by fear, which was in turn replaced by a loss that does not leave. But those beginning hours have turned into achingly long weeks, and they are no closer than when they started.

Callen only remembers how easy it was to send his agents to their potential death. And the fact that he didn't know doesn't make it any easier to live with.

Sam thinks that this whole ordeal is a new kind of heartbreaking. For the women he loves as a sister, and the man that pushes all his buttons, but never fails to have his back.

So they do a lot of searching, a lot of calling and a lot of wondering. Bold assertions that lead them nowhere but right back where they started. And they wait for hours on facial recognition searches and fingerprint scans that give them nothing.

Gibbs calls them. His voice is sympathetic and soft, but it leaves them as lonely as ever. And when they close their eyes, they are surrounded by graveyards that never end.

"You sure you want to do this?"

"No."

Silence lingers more often now than ever before.

They change the agents' statuses to 'Missing' because they have to. And they hate it because that makes it real, and that makes it more permanent. What might have once been fleeting is now something that will follow them home because there are no right answers, and they will always be two steps behind everyone else.

But they will tear this town apart before they lose anyone else.

xxx

Before:

It might have been two weeks since they arrived, but Deeks cannot say for sure.

(Kensi might know, but she is sleeping restlessly across from him, and he does not have the heart to wake her.)

However long they have been here, they still do not know exactly why. Not that knowing would make this any easier, but he still wonders sometimes.

His jaw is sore, and probably bruised. Left shoulder likely dislocated, several fingers broken. A twisted ankle would make escaping difficult, if he still had the desire to try.

The men that have trapped them here are the worst sort of men.

Angry at the world, angry at each other, angry at him for putting up a fight and angry at Kensi for surviving, and they hate everything with such a passion that he almost admires them.

He thinks about running away. Bolting through the door that they sometimes leave cracked and never looking back. But he knows with such total conviction that he will never leave Kensi, never could leave her.

It leaves him lost.

"You okay?" Her voice drifts through his thoughts without warning, startling him. He blinks back, offering her a calm smile.

His responding "Yes," comes out a lot less convincing than he'd hoped, but she accepts it all the same.

She looks a lot worse for the wear than he does. Maybe because they enjoy watching his obvious despair as they steer her out of the room more than they do her cold looks as they take him.

If these men were teachers, he'd accuse them of playing favorites in the worst of ways.

There is an angry gash on her right cheek, pulsing violently against her sallow skin. Her left wrist is broken, and, judging by her strained breathing, he suspects several ribs are as well. Legs are bruised and clothes are torn. They have both lost more weight than they know what to do with, and they always drink the water they are given.

And while they both think that they might die here, neither one of them has the heart to say it.

If she lets herself think too much, she begins to think that her entire life has been pointless, in the most tragic sort of way.

If she lets herself feel too much, she realizes that she does not want to die here, covered in her own blood and so eternally marred.

If she lets herself admit too much, she comes to realize that she wants him to live more than she wants anything else.

She cannot stand to watch him die, and that almost scares her, because it means that she cares more than she ever expected to. That somehow, he has wormed his way into her heart, and found it nice enough to stay.

"You think that they're coming?" She asks this softly, afraid that he might not know what to say any more than she does. He smiles at her.

"I bet they're on their way right now."

This makes her laugh, and she slides against the wall until she is next to him.

Once upon a not-too-distant past, they did not trust each other.

And they overcame that hurdle with the help of Russian agents and unforgiving red beams.

Once upon a not-too-distant past, she was an unmovable mystery.

And they found themselves on even ground with the story of an old lover and a broken heart that she might have let him mend had things not gone so very wrong.

"Tell me about yourself, Deeks."

He pauses, because those words sound like they are promising the kind of secrecy that you cannot break. But she leans her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes wearily, and he knows that all she wants to do is listen to something other than her own thoughts.

So he talks about his father, and admits that he has done nothing but prove the old man right. He whispers the story of a mother who was never brave enough to fight back and never lonely enough to leave. How he learned to love someone during the summer between his junior and senior year. How he learned to lose someone, and how he learned to let them all go.

She offers no advice, only squeezes his hand when his voice breaks or the space between words stretches too far to ignore.

And when he is done, she tells him about how the life her own mother loved turned her back on her. How that first funeral started the procession that could never find a good place to stop. Her father's death and her many questions. All the times she was happy, and all the times she felt as if she belonged somewhere worth being. A man named Jack who loved her before he didn't. A man named Sam who trusted her before he had a reason to. A women named Hetty who saw more in her than she ever saw in herself.

He wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her close.

And although the weight of their dilemma has become almost too much for them to handle, they take comfort in the fact that they are not alone.

How they wish there was more than this.

xxx

Now:

She can feel her skin, clammy and red, and knows that she is dying.

Deeks' even breathing from somewhere above her, and she is relieved that she is not alone.

(She does not know why she worries so much, she has not been truly alone since before the bullets that started this all.)

Her own lips are moving around a word that feels like his name, and she winces at the damage her fingers have found on her torso. There was a time in her life when she was comfortable in the darkness, and now she tolerates it only because she could not face herself in the sun.

She feels that her world has been dark for a very long time now.

"Deeks," she does not understand the urgency in her own rasped voice. He does not respond, and she finds that she does not want him to.

She supposes that this is what Dom must have felt. Forgotten and cheated. Lonely and weak. Scared and anxious. She wishes that Callen and Sam were here, because she is tired of waiting. She wishes that her friends weren't putting themselves through the hell that she knows they are.

And they are all empty wishes, because she does not have any shooting stars or dandelions or birthday candles to help her make them real.

She feels that she owes Deeks more than she will ever have the chance to repay him. For opening her heart and easing her mind. For being strong when she couldn't be, and for having her back even before he trusted her to have his.

Her whole body is on fire, and she knows that she is fading.

Deeks shifts above her, and she can faintly see the gleam of his tired eyes as he awakens.

"Hey," he manages, and she smiles as best she can.

In the early light of the morning, he can faintly see the extent of the damage done on them both, and it very nearly makes him sick because he knows that they are running towards the end they swore they'd avoid.

Believing in a lie doesn't make it any more true, but it was so easy to pretend that sometimes they forgot to stop.

"They'll be here soon," he promises.

But he is not entirely sure who "they" is anymore. And he knows that placing the burden of their survival on a mysterious, possibly omniscient "they" does not make it any more concrete or certain. Nor is he exactly a reliable source on the concept of "soon," but he pushes through the lie for her sake, and she appreciates it all the same.

They have long since ceased their search for an explanation. The reason for them being here does not change the fact that they are here. Maybe these men want something, or someone, to blame. Kensi thinks that they are looking for a kind of revenge that will not mean enough once they get it, and hopes that they can look her in the eye when they kill her.

The sun rises.

And Deeks finds that he really wants to go home, but does not remember how to get there.

xxx

Elsewhere: Now:

As fate would have it, these pieces make a puzzle, and they solve it hurriedly, the taste of victory on their tongues.

There is a warehouse –always a warehouse, they think- several miles outside the city. And there are these men with shaky credentials and criminal records to boot. And they have not found their reasons, but they are past the point of caring whether or not there is one at all.

Callen gets them there faster than he could have gotten them down the street, and Sam looks out the window the whole way, as if willing the world to stop spinning, if only for a moment.

They both know the odds of their friends being okay, after all this time, is a terrifyingly low number.

They hope all the same.

xxx

Here: Now:

They take her for what he knows will be the last time.

He pulls so fiercely against his restraints that he feels his wrist snap, but that does not make him stop. She chokes out his name desperately, because being confined as they have been changes people, and the pride that was once so achingly apparent has been replaced by the knowledge that she needs him in ways she did not before.

So she struggles and he can feel himself losing control of all these emotions that he's worked so hard to repress.

The men whisper to one another harshly, aware that this is the climax and the resolution all rolled up into one.

"Deeks." And she has said his name so many times that he has forgotten what it means.

He watches helplessly as she twists to meet his gaze.

And this is the goodbye he never wanted to say, and it kills everything that only she could kill because he does not remember what she looks like when she is truly alive.

The door shuts, and the men are shouting. And now he knows that this will be a more exciting end than he anticipated, because they do not usually shout, and because there are footsteps from somewhere below him.

He is filled with a dangerous idea of hope.

They've finally come.

xxx

Here: Now:

Sam jumps out of the car before Callen has fully stopped, and goes to debrief the SWAT teams that have come to help. The building before them is daunting and dark. He can almost feel his friends' fear reaching out to him through the broken windows.

And he barely has time to blink before everyone is stationed and ready to go. Callen gives him the slightest of nods, eyes haunted by the memory of the past two months and all that they should have done differently.

Ducking through the empty hallways, he can hear frenzied movement upstairs. And he knows that they have found them.

They move up the staircase as quickly as they can risk, and the air gets thicker the higher they climb. He rounds the corner.

He will never know who fires first, but suddenly, they are fighting. Voices fly faster than the bullets, men who squint into the fire because it is the loudest thing they have heard in months. He does not see Kensi. He does not see Deeks.

He does not know where to be worried or grateful just yet.

xxx

"Kensi!" Deeks yells out, trying to be heard over the gunfire outside his door. He does not know how long he calls out for her, only knows that the likelihood that one of those firing guns was aimed at her heart is much too high for his liking.

He does not notice when silence falls, and it barely registers that suddenly, Sam and Callen are working furiously at his binds, trying to calm him down.

When he regains a sense of awareness, he is stumbling into the hallway, franticly searching for his partner. Limping towards the door that they always took them (to be beaten, to be scared, to be hurt), he is about to push it open before Callen stops him.

He turns to look at his fellow agents, just now registering their expressions, and the dread he feels in his own heart.

Callen shakes his head, Sam just shakes in general.

Deeks feels a terrible, quiet acceptance fall inside his chest, because this has been coming for much longer than either of them will ever understand.

He opens the door and does not cry.

And she is peaceful in a way that she has not been for a very long time and that makes him sick, because life was always far less than she ever deserved.

Callen and Sam can only watch as he sits next to her, as he has done so many times, and they know that he will never come back from this.

(They never really expected him to.)

"I can't leave you here," he'd told her one night, when they could see the stars through the shattered window.

"I can't keep you here," she'd replied firmly, and they did not speak another word until the sun rose again.

He does not know what he is supposed to do now, nor does he know exactly what he is doing.

He does not know what his is supposed to be feeling now, much less what he actually does.

He does not know.

And that does not make it okay.

xxx

He once said that it all went wrong in the blink of an eye.

And he now thinks that it may stay wrong forever.

So it goes, and it goes, and it goes.

xxx