AN: This will hopefully be a four parter, with chapters that run like this: Callen (After), Sam (During), Kensi (During), and Deeks (After).

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Really.

Homecoming

From experience, Callen knows nameless calls to his personal cell phone generally originate from one of two categories. People with the wrong number looking for that Thai place in Marina Del Rey, and operatives foreign or domestic interested in recruiting/torturing/killing him. Either way, it's necessary to excuse himself from their latest briefing to take it, so he tosses a "don't trace this" kind of glare to Eric and Nell and steps out for a minute. He figures he has about thirty seconds before the caller loses interest and hangs up, leaving him enough time to swing into the privacy of the empty armory before answering.

"Yeah?"

On the other end, breathing. Shallow, hesitant breathing. So, no, not a potential pad Thai customer, which is a shame because that's the closest thing he has to a best case scenario.

"Hello?" he tries again, not sure what he's expecting, and not entirely ready to give up on the wrong number theory.

"G?"

The familiar voice is scratchier than it was when he last heard it, six weeks ago. His own breathing comes to an ill-advised standstill. There are a lot of questions he should be asking right now, but one in particular needs to come before the rest. "Where are you?"

More breathing, and he struggles with the fact that he can't do anything to force an answer over the phone. Too many adrenaline-filled seconds tick by before he hears anything from the other end. When it finally comes, the answer is whispered and unsure, making him press the phone tighter against his ear, as if that would make it clearer. "The boathouse."

Relief, plain and simple. It shouldn't be possible to be feeling this much relief and still carry so much tension, but Callen's giving it a shot.

"Stay there," he orders, bursting out of the armory and moving at what could best be described as a frenetic jog towards the desks. "I'm coming, Kens."

Deeks is going to go over the edge when he hears that he wasn't informed within milliseconds of his partner's phone call, but Callen knows that he would have insisted on coming with him, which can't happen. He needs just a few minutes to lose his temper with his junior agent before her watchdog of a partner steps in and puts a stop to it. Six weeks she's been off the grid, with no warning, save a cryptic sentence to a bewildered Nell, who was the only one present at the Mission as late as it was on the night Kensi took off. If there will ever be an occasion where it's okay to pull rank and pitch a full blown fit, it is right now.

But the minute he sees her, he knows he won't be able to do it.

She's sitting on the table, legs dangling off the side, with her arms wrapped so tightly around herself that he can almost see her nails cutting into her skin. When he steps in front of her, she doesn't make eye contact, but she does somewhat unfurl herself out the tight position she'd been hunched into. Callen swallows, but doesn't say anything, taking a minute to just look at her.

Her feet are shredded, dirt and blood covering what are surely nasty cuts, chipped nail polish shimmering blue through the grime. He wonders where her shoes are, if she even wore any to get to the boathouse, but stops. Because, picturing Kensi wandering barefoot through downtown Los Angeles? So not somewhere he wants to go today. But from the look of the gravel stuck to her skin, he gets the feeling that he already has his answer. There are deep red rings around her wrists, rough around the edges but still well-defined. Cuffs? She's been cuffed? Pursed lips are sucked against clenched teeth when he sees the cluster of scratches concentrated in the area where the lock must have been. She'd tried to pick it, but only after she'd tugged against the metal hard enough to leave bruises that still look fresh.

His eyes move up and glide over familiar long, tan limbs that are bruised and splotchy. Yellow and green. They're thinner, and she's lost muscle tone, but it's not so bad that she won't be able to get it back. He can tell easily because she's barely dressed. Navy blue sweats cling to her legs just above the knee, and her grungy, white sports bra leaves her stomach exposed. Which is where he spots the large patch of stained gauze that can't possibly be hiding anything good. Her face is more or less untouched, with the exception of the still-dark bruising that creates a shadow on the left side, from her chin to her cheekbone. He'd be relieved, but he knows that the lack of injury more likely results from the desire to keep her pretty to look at than any compassion on her assailant's part.

This is probably not the way he should be handling things, staring at her like she's some sort of Chechen code that he's trying to decipher, but she's yet to say anything, and he's not really sure what to say, himself. Callen wants her to speak. To lose her temper or make a corny joke that no one will laugh at, at least, not for the right reasons. Before Deeks came along, Kensi was the overly talkative one, and he wants that back. Just from cataloging injuries, he has jagged pieces of a story that he'll probably never know completely. That won't keep him from trying, though.

So, for now, he lets it go and opens his arms to wait for her to lean into one of the only hugs that he's ever initiated.

Kensi stays stiff in his grasp, but it doesn't matter because she's there, and not dead, and not mangled in a heap of a car that she drove like a maniac, and not in some foreign prison cell in a country that was the host to her latest "sticky situation". Sometimes he's amazed that she manages to keep out of trouble, even under Hetty's watchful eye, and he knows that the odds of her safe return were getting slimmer everyday. Six weeks. His hug tightens, probably out of some Freudian desire to wring her stubborn, team-worrying neck.

He hears a pained, little gasp and backs away to investigate. Kensi's hand flies to the gauze on her stomach.

"You want to take care of that?" he offers because it's pretty clear that she doesn't know what to do next. "Let's get you fixed up."

There's really no way to get her off the table without putting pressure on her injured feet, sans carrying her (which will not be happening while she's conscious), leaving Callen to wrap a firm arm around her shoulders and watch her shuffle agonizingly across the floor. She sits gingerly on the couch, but lies back when he urges her to. When he tugs at it, her crappy patch job peels right off, revealing a wound that, without the gauze in the way, he can tell came from a knife. Rough stitches zig-zag across it, holding the widest part together. It's evident that it was far from a professional job, though there's something familiar about the pattern...

"Tell me you didn't do these yourself."

Kensi's not really even looking at him, so he decides to go with his answer anyway. Again, not somewhere he wants to go right now.

It needs to be treated, probably why she didn't call Deeks, whose first aid skills have yet to be put to the test in the field. Callen's, however, are tried and true, which he's about to prove, as soon as he finds the first aid kit. He's hesitant to turn his back on her because he has no real guarantee that she won't bolt like a startled colt as soon as he does, but he doesn't have much of a choice. So he keeps his ears on high alert while he washes his hands and takes the kit out from under the sink, and exhales when he returns to find her exactly where he left her.

A second look at the injury has him hissing through his teeth, before blowing the air back out in a long, low whistle. "Must have been some vacation."

Kensi doesn't answer. Callen gets to work.

After he cleans the wound and applies more gauze than is necessarily needed, he tries again, making a witty (in his opinion) joke about Deeks whining at the door like Monty, waiting for his master to come home. She blinks and looks up at the ceiling, completely checked out.

So he calls Hetty.

There's no tea to be had in the boathouse, but Hetty's presence has the same soothing effect as her favorite beverage would on Kensi's taut muscles. Her unnaturally stiff spine eases into a curve along the path that Hetty's hand is tracing, as it runs lightly across the younger woman's back. "My dear girl," she murmurs, "It's good to have you home."

Hetty's own posture is relaxed, and if his boss is at all shaken by her youngest agent's sudden reappearance, it doesn't show. Her face is a perfect mixture of calm and kind, which may be why she's succeeding where Callen failed. He's sure that his features are at least somewhat tainted with the emotions that he's been concealing for Kensi's sake. Lips are probably tightened in anger, eyes slightly widened with concern.

"You were in the Galรกpagos," Hetty explains patiently, pushing a mostly completed form in her direction. "They're lovely this time of year."

Kensi looks a little perplexed when she's handed the pen, but with a little prodding from the operations manager, she signs the leave of absence request form that's been dated six weeks earlier. Just like that, in the eyes of NCIS, she's off the hook. Not that it means anything to her teammates.

Her badge is pressed into shaking hands, her gun entrusted to Callen, who tucks it into the waistband of his jeans. Hetty places her final gift (a copy of the key to Kensi's apartment, probably made without her knowledge/permission) on the table and leaves him to wrap his jacket around the junior agent and try to talk her into the car.

In the morning, he'll call Deeks. And Sam. And some combination of the three of them will work on figuring out exactly where she's been.

But for now, he'll call the real Thai place in Marina Del Rey and work on coaxing her to finish her meal.

Baby steps.