Hi all. After I got such a good response to my first story in this fandom, I figured I may as well play with this plot bunny I've had for a while. Hopefully you all like it. (Disclaimer: as I have never been shot I'm not entirely sure the medical aspect of this is 100% accurate, but just roll with it please.) I'm also still working on the two WIPs I mentioned in "the professionals", so if you have any suggestions for those please let me know. And now, on to the story.
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Kensi Blye has never been shot.
She's weirdly proud of that fact. All the guys – Deeks, Callen, even Sam – have taken a bullet before. They talk about it sometimes, making jokes about how her feminine charms and doe eyes must be some kind of natural deterrent, and she lets them because she can quietly lord it over them. Who, me? No, I've never been shot. I must just be better at evasive action than you.
Sure, she's come close. Her vest's taken a few bullets, she's been shot at more times than she can count, and there have been a few near misses. But, sans vest, she's never had a bullet make contact. Never had it pierce flesh. Ricochet against ribs. Splatter blood on the pavement. Leave her bleeding out on the floor.
Kensi Blye has never been shot.
Until now.
/
For a moment all she can see is red. Panic grips her chest as reality hits, and a voice echoes in her ear, soft and warm and full of concern.
You'll wear a vest, right?
Yes, Deeks, I'll wear a vest.
Good. Because I won't be there to protect you, and –
Baby, hey. It's fine. I can take care of myself, okay?
And she can. That was never in question, was never the issue. But she hadn't gone into the field alone, and that was the problem.
It takes Kensi a second to realize that her eyes are closed, and more than a second to open them again. Her mind is moving slowly, her body even more so. Thoughts are taking way too long to translate into actions, as if some part of her knows that it's already too late. What's done is done, and –
What's that noise?
It's a muffled sound, something in the distance. Kensi blinks, once, the action almost laborious despite its simplicity. There's something above her, something looming. Menacing. She tries to move, but all she can manage is the slightest twitch of her fingers. But it's enough. The looming shape moves away. Then the noise comes back, but this time she realizes what it is.
Words.
Someone is speaking. Kensi squeezes her eyes shut, hoping that reducing the number of stimuli will allow her to focus on one. If her eyes aren't working to make sense of the haze around her, maybe her ears can decipher the words.
She gets about half of them, none of them good.
"- so much bleeding… can't stop it… the goddamn ambulance?"
The words aren't addressed to her and in some distant part of her mind she knows that's because she's not capable of answering. Whoever's talking – and the voice sounds achingly familiar – isn't talking to her. They're talking about her. Like she's too far gone to understand.
The words trail away and Kensi becomes aware of a faint pressure, something pushing down on a spot just below her right rib. It doesn't hurt, though – at least, it doesn't hurt at first. And then, all at once, it does.
Pain radiates from a central point, the place of pressure, and then sharp tendrils shoot in so many different directions that Kensi wouldn't be surprised if she found out that someone had stabbed her a hundred times.
No, she thinks faintly, not stabbed. Shot. As that knowledge sinks in again she feels the absurd desire to laugh. I've been shot. Close to ten years on the job and she's finally been taken down. In the line of duty, at least.
This is a good death, she thinks absently, I'm okay with this.
"Kensi."
The voice cuts through the fog in her mind. It's filled with so much pain that it jerks her attention away from her own agony. She's not the only one in pain. For a split second that thought is comforting – at least I won't die alone – but then the implications hit. Someone else was hurt. She casts her mind back, beyond the gut-wrenching pain of getting shot, trying to remember what had happened.
They'd gone in hot – they'd had no choice – but they'd been careful. Sam and Callen had been wearing vests, but Kensi and Nell hadn't had time. They'd arrived less than a minute later, but that had made all the difference. They'd gone in shooting, and the bad guys had shot back, and somehow Kensi had ended up with a bullet in her chest.
But nobody else had been hurt.
"Kensi."
That voice. The pain. No, not pain. It's fear. And in response to that, her heart starts beating faster. Is the fight still raging on around her, while she lies bleeding on the pavement? She can't hear gunshots… but she can also barely hear whoever's saying her name. Maybe the bad guys are still shooting. Maybe some of the other good guys have gone down. Maybe they lost this time.
"Kens, can you hear me? Open your eyes." A beat passes, and when the voice comes again it's softer, pleading, almost desperate. "Please."
And that single word gets through to her. Kensi opens her eyes, blinking against the harsh light, and sees someone leaning over her. It takes a long time for her to process, for the haze in front of her eyes to clear. And then it does, and she sees him.
"Kensi?" Deeks' voice shakes, and if Kensi's not much mistaken she thinks she can see tears in his eyes. (Then again she may be mistaken. Maybe she's the one who's crying. God knows she's in enough pain to warrant it.)
She tries to say something in the affirmative, to let him know that she's alive (for now) and she's okay (kind of), but all that comes out is a faint whimper.
"It's okay," Deeks soothes, and as the pressure beneath her ribs increases Kensi realizes what it is: Deeks, trying to stop the bleeding. "Don't try to talk. The ambulance is on its way. Just hang in there, all right partner?"
The effort of concentrating on his words quickly wears Kensi out. She misses the next couple of sentences, and when she tunes back in she notices that there's someone else nearby.
"… my fault," says the other person, in a voice so quiet, so vulnerable, that Kensi feels her heart twinge. "I shouldn't have -"
"It's not your fault," Deeks says sharply, his usual playful nature washed away in the seriousness of the situation.
"But I -"
"Nell, stop." There's no room for argument, not with that edge to his voice. "Accidents happen, okay? You're not going to do any good blaming yourself. Right now we just need to focus on helping Kensi. Can you…"
His voice disappears into nothingness, and so does Kensi.
/
The transition from being unconscious to being painfully, fully awake is so jarring that Kensi feels a wave of nausea. White light blinds her and the smell of chemicals would knock her flat if she weren't already lying down on… something. It's not her bed, she knows that, but it doesn't feel like she's still on the ground outside the warehouse.
Bright light. Soft bed. Faint beeping.
I'm in a hospital, Kensi thinks, closing her eyes against the glare, and then, I'm still alive.
Or maybe she's not. She feels surreal, almost like she's floating. If this is what the afterlife is like, she thinks to herself, maybe it's not so bad after all.
The sound of voices pulls her out of her thoughts.
"Kensi?"
"She's awake -"
"Get a doctor -"
Then comes rapidly retreating footsteps, followed by silence. Kensi opens her eyes and sees that she is, in fact, in a hospital room. And unless everything she'd ever learned about death and dying is wrong, this probably isn't the afterlife. She scans the room, but the quick eye movement makes her head spin. So she focusses on the only other person in the room, and is entirely unsurprised – but noticeably relieved – when she sees who it is.
"Hey, Kens." Deeks is speaking in hospital tones: soft, respectful, cautious.
He's so gentle that Kensi can't bite back her knee-jerk reaction: "Oh god, am I dying?"
Deeks laughs, a strangled kind of laugh that makes Kensi's heart constrict. "No, Kensalina," he says, crossing the room (he'd been standing by the door as if he was protecting her) and sitting down on the chair beside the bed, "you're not dying. You might need to take a couple weeks off work, but the doctors say you're going to be fine."
Kensi hadn't been aware of how much tension she had in her body until she heard those words. You're not dying. You're going to be fine. Now her entire body relaxes, tension melting away like spring snow. You're going to be fine. Then she tenses again, remembering. "What about the rest of the team?" she asks, a hint of panic in her voice. She'd gone down before the fight had been over. Who knows what happened after that? "Are they okay?"
"Easy, Kens," Deeks says gently as she tries to sit up, suddenly desperate to do something, even though all logic tells her that she can't do a damn thing in her position. "Everyone's fine. Sam and Callen are out in the waiting room and Nell just went to get a doctor."
Kensi slumps back against the pillow, exhausted by her efforts (and hating that she's so easily tired; gunshot wound be damned, she should be out there helping instead of stuck here in a hospital bed). "Okay," she says, briefly entertaining the thought that Deeks might be lying to her, that there might have been other casualties but she's in too weak a state to be told about them. But there's a sincerity in his eyes that she knows better than to question. "Nell didn't get hurt, did she?"
"You mean after you took a bullet for her?" Deeks asks, raising his eyebrows. Then, to Kensi's surprise, he laughs. "Of course not. The second she saw you go down, she took out the guy who shot you and then two other bad guys for good measure."
Kensi laughs too, both at the story and at her own foolishness for doubting her friend. Nell can handle herself; she may be small, but what she lacks in stature she makes up for in skill – and determination. The same determination that had prompted Kensi to take a bullet for her would have prompted Nell to finish what she started, so of course the team would have kept fighting once Kensi was hit. She'd have done the same.
"Miss Blye?"
Both Kensi and Deeks look over to the speaker, a young woman with dyed-blonde hair and wide baby blues.
"I'm Dr Bilson," says the newcomer, giving Deeks a curious look before turning her attention to Kensi. "How are you feeling today?"
"I'm okay," Kensi replies, as honest an answer as she can give. As the doctor asks her a few more questions, Kensi just keeps repeating Deeks' words over and over in her mind. You're going to be fine.
/
As it turns out, fine may have been overstating things slightly. Kensi's been in hospital for almost a week now, and although they removed the bullet the same day she came in, she still isn't fit to be released (heck, she can hardly even get out of bed unassisted). It's been a long week, but all of the team members have come to visit her – with two exceptions.
Deeks, who hasn't so much visited as taken up residence in her hospital room.
And Nell, who sent Kensi a Get Well card and stuffed teddy bear but hasn't shown her face.
Although Kensi has never been a morning person, it's afternoons that she's come to dread. She can handle the mornings – usually Sam or Callen will come to visit and sit with her while she picks listlessly at her breakfast, and then she'll sleep until Deeks wakes her up for lunch. And then come the long hours, the waiting, when she's too exhausted to sleep and too keyed up to do anything else.
These are the hours when she relives the shooting, wondering what she could have done differently, whether it would have helped if she'd waited, whether Nell would have dodged the bullet in time. She wishes things had played out differently, of course, but she doesn't regret what she did. She'd take a bullet for any of her friends, and she knows they'd do the same. (It may not help with the actual pain, but it does ease the frustration.)
It's during one of these long afternoons, while Deeks is (reluctantly) at work, that Kensi gets an overdue visitor. But they don't come in right away. After the fourth time they pace in front of the door, Kensi breaks the silence.
"You can come in. I'm not going to bite."
The footsteps slow, stop, reverse. Nell pokes her head around the door, looking sheepish, but complies when Kensi beckons her in.
Although Nell has never had quite the presence that Hetty does, or the quietly intimidating manner of Sam, she's always had her own kind of confidence. But there's no trace of it now. She takes up the seat near the bed, but she doesn't look at Kensi yet. Instead she looks down at her feet, uncharacteristically uncertain.
Finally she looks up, meeting Kensi's eyes. "I'm sorry," she says simply, almost sweetly. "If I hadn't hesitated out there, if I'd just been a little bit quicker or – or a little bit braver – then you wouldn't have had to -"
"Hey," Kensi interrupts, and Nell's babbling cuts off at once. The other woman takes a deep breath, seemingly working hard to maintain eye contact. "What happened out there – it wasn't your fault. I chose to take that bullet, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. There's no reason for you to feel guilty about it. Okay?"
Nell doesn't answer right away. When she does speak her words are hesitant, carefully chosen. "I know it's not logical," she says. "But I just feel like… if you'd been out there with your actual partner, you wouldn't have been in that position." She pauses, and then finishes even more quietly, "I feel like it's my fault you got hurt."
"Don't do this, Nell," Kensi says evenly. She hesitates, and then reaches for Nell's hand (being very careful not to jostle any of the wires or tubes that are currently attached to her). "Deeks told me what you did. If you hadn't reacted so quickly when I went down, someone else could have been hit. You took out the guy who shot me, and that if nothing else means you have no reason to feel guilty." She waits for Nell to meet her eyes again before adding, "You did the right thing."
It takes a couple more days, but finally Nell believes it.
/
Almost two weeks after being shot, Kensi is finally allowed to go home. Deeks picks her up from the hospital, complete with a change of clothes and a takeout container of her favorite noodles. He fills the car ride home with chatter, not expecting much in the way of responses. And that suits Kensi fine, because she's lost in her thoughts.
Still wondering about what it would have been like if things were different. About what would have happened if Deeks had been in the field with her instead of on the sidelines, restricted by an injury he'd sustained a week beforehand (although that hadn't stopped him from coming to her aid when she went down). About where she would be now if she hadn't taken the blow. About how things would have gone down if she'd had time to put her vest on.
It's all pointless, she knows, this meaningless conjecture, but it doesn't stop the thoughts from going through her mind. And Deeks, to his credit, lets her work things through at her own pace. He falls silent as they approach the house, sensing that she needs the quiet, but when she starts talking after dinner he's right there with her.
"I should be back to work by the end of next month," she says as they clean up takeout containers and plastic cutlery. "Hetty said she's happy to keep Nell assigned as your partner until I get back. Is that okay with you?"
"Sure," Deeks says easily, holding up the trash can for Kensi to dump their rubbish into. "We make a pretty good team. Not, like, Densi good -" he goes on, referring to themselves using the nickname that Nell had jokingly given them months ago "- but we do what we can."
They share a laugh, and then by unspoken agreement they don't mention it again. Not being on active duty is going to drive Kensi crazy, but at least she knows her partner will be in good hands.
She's got a long way to go until she's fully healed, but this is surely the way to get there. Besides, if the guys can get through being shot, she sure as hell can too. And it was just one bullet anyway – Deeks and Callen both took more than that, after all.
Anyway, she thinks as Deeks brings her yet another bowl of ice cream while she curls up on the sofa, maybe this whole recovery thing won't be so bad.
And despite the fact that she's on more painkillers than she can keep track of (she's set reminders on her phone so she actually remembers to take them all), and the fact that on her bad days both moving and breathing hurts (on her good days, she can get away with the latter without wincing), and the fact that Deeks won't even touch her without asking for permission first (he's so scared of hurting her)… despite all of this, Kensi can't help but feel strangely content as Deeks puts on her favorite horror movie and settles himself down beside her, with Monty curling up in between them.
Because the truth is, Kensi Blye has never really, truly felt safe.
Until now.
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This is a completed one-shot and will not be continued. Read, review, get in touch, etc. See you all around!