Author's note: 'Tis my first attempt with these characters. Credit or blame can go to shawngf7 for encouraging me.
Cover
Kensi was limping to her car and blocking out all conscious thought when her phone rang.
She hit the call answer button by rote, lifted the phone to her ear.
Took a second to try to remember if 'hello' was the right word.
"Yeah?" she finally croaked.
"Kensi?"
"Callen?"
He was quiet for a moment, then:
"Something up with you?"
She swallowed hard.
Couldn't find the words.
"You okay?" He asked.
"Yes." At his silence, she added: "I am."
"We need you."
She struggled to respond to that.
Why wouldn't her mind process thoughts?
Just how hard had she hit her head?
She managed:
"Okay."
And hung up.
But before she could return the phone to her pocket, it was ringing again.
Call display said it was Callen again.
She ignored the call.
She was starting to realize that there were things she didn't want the others to see.
And so she found herself inside her car a moment later, crumpled behind the steering wheel, calming her breath and her mind, and trying to think her way through to an acceptable excuse.
They couldn't see her like this.
But they'd see right through a lie.
It was all so ugly and real.
And she found herself breaking down.
Then the world was shaking, and she wondered again how hard she'd hit her head.
But across the parking lot, beyond the blur of her tears, a man was pulling a woman into the open space and away from the building.
They both looked scared.
And Kensi could have cried with relief over what could only be an earthquake.
Danger didn't even register.
The world had just handed her the perfect cover.
…
There was chaos when she arrived at Ops.
The building had taken a beating.
People were bleeding.
Sam and Callen were both huddled over Hetty.
And Kensi felt a flash of remorse at the relief that hit her, when she realized that the gash in the tiny woman's side would likely keep all eyes focused away from Kensi herself.
In fact, all she got when they noticed her was –
"What's with the standing there?" from Sam, and
"You need first aid or you offering it?" from Callen.
Her silence made them both look up a moment later, and at the closer look, concern registered on their faces.
"Where were you?" Callen queried, looking her over.
"I took a tumble," she lied. "When it hit. Flight of stairs."
"You don't have stairs," Sam noted.
"Wasn't home," Kensi told them.
And though they went back to focusing on Hetty, Callen looked up from where he was keeping pressure on the wound, and told her:
"Get somebody to check you out."
"I'm fine," she lied again.
"So fine you haven't asked about Nate or Eric?" Callen questioned. "Or how Hetty looks?"
A moment of silence later, Sam noted to Callen quietly:
"Shock in her eyes."
But the last thing Kensi felt like doing was sitting the in back of an ambulance and answering questions about her cuts and bruises.
Her muddled mind tried to fix the situation by asking the suggested questions:
"Where's, um, Nate? And… Eric?"
The two men exchanged a glance.
And Sam spoke up firmly:
"Kensi, go get checked out."
So she stepped away.
(To get away.)
And went off in search of someone who might need her to keep pressure on a wound.
That was what Callen was doing.
It seemed like something she would do.
…
Nate was pretty sure Kensi hadn't seen him watching her.
She looked ready to pass out, but adamantly refused to be anyone's patient.
She'd apparently spun a story about diving to avoid broken glass from a window, and tumbling down a flight of stairs.
Nate wasn't sure he bought it.
He'd seen this woman take a beating and shake it off like a paper cut.
Her story didn't support the emotional shock. The almost fugue-like state she was walking around in was too much.
But there were injured and bleeding people all around them.
So he watched her from across the room.
And worried about what it was she wouldn't say, and how hard she'd fight him if he tried to find out.
…
When seven ambulances had been sent to local hospitals and the injured who were left were being tended to, Nate risked approaching her.
He never quite knew how to start talking to her.
And so he ended up gesturing to the blood on her shirt, and asking:
"Yours?"
She gave him a look, like she wanted to know what his issue was.
"It's not," she finally said.
And he gestured to the bloody wound on her head.
"But some of that is," he followed up.
And she gave him that look again.
"Do you need, like, some help, Nate? Did anybody check you out?"
"I wasn't hurt."
"That's good," she said simply.
And she was turning back to where she was attempting to clear debris from her desk when he asked her:
"So where were you? Who is this… odd… friend, of yours? Who has a window at the top of his staircase?"
She stilled, leaning over her desk, and when she looked up, her eyes were harsh.
"Did I say there was a window?"
"Apparently," he told her. "You… ducked away? From broken glass from a window?"
"Picture frame," she countered. "Whoever said I said window…"
She shrugged, wiped distractedly at the drying blood on her forehead.
The sleeve of her jacket pulled back as her arm moved.
And he was a bit disgusted at the sight, but a bit grateful for the argument:
"Did that staircase also wrap a bruise right around your wrist?" She glared at him, and under different circumstances he might have let her intimidate him. But he followed up quietly: "I didn't think they could do that. Mine… doesn't have fingers."
She tried to turn back to the desk again at that, but grabbed on to it for support instead.
"Kensi?"
He reached out a hand to try to help her.
She shoved it away.
"You're not that kind of doctor, Nate."
He opened his mouth to tell her he wasn't any kind of doctor, he was a psychologist.
But suddenly she was walking away from him.
And he watched her make her way over to Callen.
And he knew that he could make an official request to have a session with her.
But 'official' channels took time.
And if he had to go home wondering what had happened, he might not sleep tonight.
So he waited, and kept an eye on her, and wondered why he – a trained psychologist of all people - didn't quite know how to talk to her.
…
"Hetty's looking better," Sam announced as he approached Nate later, smiling a broad and genuine smile at the thought.
"That's great," Nate acknowledged.
Then Sam's expression changed, and -
"G!" Sam called across the room.
And Nate followed his gaze.
And blinked at the sight.
He'd only been looking away from her for a minute.
So how was it that Kensi was unconscious in Callen's arms?
…
Nate had to talk in circles to convince Sam and Callen that they should be with Hetty while he stayed with Kensi, and later they'd switch.
They were in the same hospital, but Hetty was sedated and likely out for the night, and Kensi was likely to wake up soon.
Her injuries were limited to a concussion and copious cuts and bruises.
But the wraparound bruise on her wrist would have been plainly visible in a hospital gown.
And some kind of loyalty made Nate continue his apparently amusing talking-in-circles, until the other two men walked away without ever ducking behind the ER curtain.
Nate sat and watched her for nearly twenty minutes before her eyes finally opened.
"You have a concussion," he told her quietly.
And then he waited in silence.
It wasn't a tactic he used often with his patients.
With most of them, he prodded gently.
But she wasn't most patients.
Wasn't even really a patient, today.
And it was another twenty minutes – twenty minutes of Kensi staring at the ceiling and avoiding his eyes – before she finally spoke up.
"You're not leaving, are you?"
"No. Not yet."
"It wasn't work related," she told him.
"That's not really the point," he returned.
"What do you want me to say?" She finally lifted her head and looked his way. "That outside the job I'm just one more stupid girl who leaves the bar with the wrong guy?"
His heart squeezed at all the things that could imply.
He swallowed before he could ask her:
"Is that what happened?"
Her anger at herself seemed to be propelling her:
"I went home with some guy whose idea of foreplay was backhanding me across the face." She challenged him: "Happy?"
"No."
He was definitely not happy. And she must have seen that, because she softened, looking at him.
"I don't want to be this girl. I'm not supposed to be that girl."
"I think… I think the problem is that he didn't give you a choice."
"I don't want to be the girl who didn't have a choice! I don't want to be the girl who was ever any kind of helpless! I carry my gun all the time! And I know self defense, and I work out, and… and still somehow I end up on some jackass's kitchen floor and he's kicking me and pulling at my belt, and…" She broke off, biting back emotion.
"Kensi, did… so he -"
"No! No, he didn't, I - wasn't - But… but no thanks to me! You know? I mean… I couldn't fight him. His roommate came home. That saved me. Not strength, not skill. Some jackass's roommate."
He knew he sounded like the psychologist he was when he noted:
"And that's hard for you."
She said nothing, settling back against her pillow again.
So he told her:
"We should have a real session about this."
"You want me to do more of this?" she asked him. Incredulous.
"It's important," he said truthfully. "I'm the guy who should know. What happened, how you feel. You can keep whatever you want from the others. Me knowing is part of our jobs."
"I hate that."
"I know."
She went silent again for a long while, not looking at him.
Then, finally, she asked contemplatively, staring at the ceiling again:
"You know it's weird? The same kind of blows… they hurt worse. That way."
He didn't know.
And as he watched her drift off to sleep, he wished desperately that she didn't, either.
…