A/N: Sorry, couldn't help myself. The words wouldn't leave me alone. Not mine. Post Ascension (5x01). One Shot. I blame Gillian Alexy and Eric Christian Olsen. Title from Grace Potter and the Nocturnal's song. Scurrying back to my corner now. Thanks for reading.

He was trapped again. Not in that dusty repair room, no, he'd happily seen the end of that place, but inside his own head. In a spiralling labyrinth that was dragging him down faster than he could swallow new air (that didn't taste like blood).

He knew that. Every part of him that had seen this before, suffered through this before, knew it. But that didn't mean that he could pull himself out of it.

He could see them all watching him, her especially. Each of them waiting, impatiently, unsubtly, for those tiny fissures within his newly damaged psyche to splinter further, cracking open little by little until they were yawning chasms, spilling him open for their further scrutiny.

It didn't matter. Really. Not to him.

He didn't think about the pain too much now. Not that it wasn't there at all. But the bigger, more urgent feeling was the one he was listening to - the overwhelming desire to flee. That insistent scrambling inside his muddy head, his tightening lungs, his bruised belly that urged him to pack his shit and run.

As far away from those ridiculously, arrogantly (im)perfect agents that he known were staring at him in what he could only believe to be disdain. Or worse; the "pat-the-poor-hurting-detective-baby-on-the-head", over the top, "I'll never look at you the same way again" coddling that irked like the bitch it was. Sure, he knew he wasn't them (or himself right now). They liked to remind him of that every chance they got.

But, he didn't see Sam getting jokes about stringing kites up in electrical storms or putting screw drivers in wall sockets. No. But Deeks, poor unfortunate Deeks - he got a pair of insensitively flung wind-up teeth and a "there there" platitude about laughter being good for the soul or some other shit like that.

If only he had one left. He's pretty certain he left that on the floor of the body shop. Along with a few enamel fragments and about a pint of blood, streaming from his lips like a trickling tap.

That he was certain Kensi may or may not have stepped in. He didn't look to check and he wasn't sure he ever wanted to see that. She owned enough of him already.

All that was good had been left behind and all that remained was the parts he thought he'd put behind him with the bang of a .38 revolver and a sympathetic judge staring down at a young fluffy haired boy who thought he'd rescued his mother. If only he'd known then that there'd be nothing remaining.

Nothing more to fight with. Sure he put on a good show, but this back breaking straw to his camel revealed the frightening hollow within that he thought was no longer empty. Filled with the light of her that he'd clung to with terrifying clarity during those unendurable hours he'd been trapped in Siderov's House of Horrors.

But not even she was that strong.

He'd been the first to leave the bar. He hadn't meant to be but in the end, the happy pills and cracking facade of recovering joviality had worn off and in an effort to save himself, he's begun his flight there. Looking back without a glance, feeling her eyes boring into his burdened back, knowing she was as desperate to connect as he was. There were more words that needed to be said between them, but given his startling, blurted truths that were far too raw to be prodded at right now, he'd done the only thing he's been terrified she'd do to him, and pushed away.

Cast himself adrift of her and swum into the void.

Because all he could think about when he looked at her was the shame.

The itching, crawling sensation that flooded his skin, tightened his stomach into worms that slithered around inside, destroying everything in its path until all that was left was skin; one large Deeks shaped sack holding all the wriggling parts of him together in a series of flicks and twitches and sighs and hoarsely spoken words that he had no filter left to protect himself from.

And now his new writhing friends needed a dark corner in which to bury themselves in. Breeding and multiplying, lying in wait to consume him further until there was just a wet patch on the ground and a hungry dog to mourn over it.

He knew he'd lose. He knew he'd already lost.

And that unending tiredness, that internal fatigue had finally reached its peak. There may be nothing that remained for him. And right now, in this moment of absolute bottom, curled into couch trying to find the darkness again, he knew he'd let it take him when it found him. Sure, earlier he wasn't sure if he wanted to see it. Just hours ago, he'd been certain he wouldn't survive long enough to escape it.

But now there just was just too much space - in his short circuiting, whirling synapses, in the imaginary fault lines he'd constructed between them (those faultless others) and himself; the Detective was gone, and the scared little boy from decades earlier was left in his place.

He did the only thing left to do to protect himself: he'd bunkered in, erected fort walls with the insides of his apartment, built a fox hole with what remained of his soul and tucked himself away. From that garage, from her desperation filled face, from the tears sparkling in her eyes, from the tears missing from his now dead ones.

From Hetty, Bates, the responsibilities of having make clear thoughts and rational decisions. From more doctors with needles, waiting impatiently to stitch this most broken of policemen together. From light, that failed to bring hope and from the waves that were unable to soothe his now rough edges.

Taking heed from his past, he would wait out the fury; content to burrow further into the spiralling turbulence of his brain and sit, statue-like in the eye of the storm, and take it. Let the hits smash against his already fracturing self, shedding all the dead parts until nothing remained.

Nothing recognisable anyway. Not to himself, and definitely not to them.

And when the dawn broke each day in pinks and orange streaks across the room, sparkling the dust into stars as it floated through its rays, it would find only a shell remained of the man formally known as Deeks. Would it be enough to start again with?

He could only hope.

But for now, he let it go. Let himself be consumed by the flight until his wings melted into the sky and he fell to earth. And when that happened, on that final thump into the heavy ground, he'd awaken, and begin again.

fin.