What's good, people? I'm Fanfic-Reader-88, and this is my first NCIS: Los Angeles fic. Now, it's pretty late, but this takes place after "Uncaged" and at the beginning of "Unleashed", and there's also references to "Betrayal", "Descent", "Ascension" and "Talion". Now, without any more delay, this is "Almost Heroes". Hope you enjoy it.
(CBS and Shane Brennan own NCIS: Los Angeles.)
(Los Angeles, sometime in May 2017)
Simply calling it a long day would have been selling it way short. A better way to describe it would have been a long day that turned into a tragic night and was now evolving into a somber morning.
NCIS Special Agent, Navy SEAL and loving father, husband and friend Sam Hanna now found himself in the position of grieving widower, as he had held the body of his deceased wife Michelle, who died as a result of a loss of oxygen while being locked inside of an old freezer in a building that was formerly a pharmaceutical warehouse. The CIA agent's death was the final straw in a longstanding feud between Sam and Tahir Khaled, a Sudan native who had ties to Al-Qaeda and was responsible for numerous murders both in his homeland and abroad. Understandably and justifiably, Sam was angry and desired for revenge, but those feelings were preceded by collective sadness, not only within himself, but in his team/second family as well.
"LAPD is on top of it," Detective Marty Deeks told his girlfriend and partner Special Agent Kensi Blye. "You okay?"
"Nope, not even close," she replied.
Along with the general heartbreak she felt for Sam due to him losing Michelle, she was hindered by a sense of guilt because she and Deeks had been to the warehouse once earlier in the day when Michelle was initially taken, and she internally questioned how neither of them had realized it the first time. And although they had killed the gunmen and crooked security guard who were in the building - the latter of whom they had to bribe to enter the warehouse the first time, it still did practically nothing to remove the sense of failure that came with her thinking that they let her down by not being able to rescue her.
Meanwhile, in Sam's black Dodge Challenger, his partner and best friend Grisha Callen, who Sam and others simply referred to often as "G", had already unsuccessfully tried to convince Sam to go and see his son Aiden and daughter Kamran, along with warning him about not being able to work on the case officially, was now only able to go along for the ride if Sam would allow for it.
"I'm gonna hurt people, G," Sam told Callen with one more tear leaving his eyes as he spoke.
"Yeah," Callen responded, realizing that the man he referred to as his brother (and vice versa) was gonna go through with finding and killing Tahir no matter what. "I guess it's time for a career change for the both of us."
"Last chance. There's no turning back once we're in this."
"We're already in this."
Callen fastened his seatbelts as Sam started the Challenger, and in a flash, Sam sped away with Kensi and Deeks watching.
Sam had been longing to take down Tahir for over five years since their first encounter in Sudan, and it had appeared that he done so when Tahir was imprisoned and his cohorts were gunned down after a hostage situation at Aiden's school a year ago. But after yesterday, Sam and the rest of the team saw that simply locking Tahir up for life wasn't enough. For Sam, the only answer was death, and even if they didn't want to admit it, Callen, Kensi and Deeks knew it as well. At this point, the question wasn't if Tahir would meet his end, but it was rather when and how.
Not long after Sam and Callen left the crime scene, Kensi and Deeks did the same and headed back to Ops, presumably to meet them there and find any new information on the case. In a rare change from the usual, Deeks was in the driver's seat of Kensi's Audi, sensing that she may not have been in the mood to take the wheel. And while she was holding herself together better than expected, the loss of Michelle and the subsequent grief that it caused for Sam still weighed heavily on her. It was doing the same to Deeks as well, although there wasn't much sign of it aside from the fact that it took away his usually upbeat demeanor.
"It's already been a hard day and it hasn't even really started yet," Deeks said somberly.
"No, it hasn't," Kensi replied, somehow managing to not let her mourning drive her into complete silence. "I would say we have a long day ahead of us, but yesterday and last night still isn't over yet. At least it doesn't feel that way." A brief pause filled the car before more tears flowed from Kensi's eyes. As she attempted to wipe them away, she said, "I can't believe Michelle is gone."
"Neither can I," Deeks replied. "I know Sam is devastated, and I can't begin to imagine what his kids are going through right now."
"They're probably feeling just as bad as he is, and it might even be worse."
Kensi's own experience with losing her father just before Christmas when she was 15 gave her full understanding of how Aiden and Kamran most likely felt right now, and it was adding on to her own sadness. Another thing that continued to linger on her mind was the sense of guilt that she carried about not being able to get to Michelle in time, and not knowing that she was in the warehouse where they had been when they first got there.
"I still can't believe we didn't know she was in the warehouse until it was too late. I wish we could have found her when we showed up in the morning."
"I wish we could have found her too, Kens," Deeks said, hoping to relieve his partner and girlfriend of her burden. "But the simple fact is that we didn't know she was there when we were first out there. And even if we had gotten her out alive, it wasn't gonna be easy for us. Tahir and his goons, they'd built their whole lives around hurting, torturing and killing people, and we figured that out when Sam went to Sudan. Hell, the guy was willing to kill his own sister, so that's a sign we weren't dealing with the average lowlifes."
"I know, Deeks, I know," Kensi answered, still not able to shed her guilt. "And I know we can't save everybody every time, but more often than not, we're able to outsmart the bad guys and rescue the innocent, no matter what it takes or how long it takes. And it's even harder to know that we failed this time, not only because it was Michelle that we couldn't save, but because we were able to help her before."
The "before" that Kensi was referring to was over four years ago when she, Deeks and Callen helped Sam hunt and ultimately take down Isaak Sidorov, a Russian crime lord who largely made his name and fortune from being an arms dealer and former FSB agent. He had been on the NCIS and CIA radars because he had been trying to gain possession of nuclear weapons, and later, once he acquired them, he had been trying to sell them. But the biggest cause of concern was his relationship with Michelle, who had started dating him while working under her alias of "Quinn".
Things came to a head when Sidorov placed a nuclear bomb in Mexico, and later set up a meeting between Marcel Janvier, an international killer known as "The Chameleon", and Naseem Vaziri, an Iranian government agent. During the meeting, Janvier alerted Sidorov of Sam's true identity, which later led to him and Deeks being captured and viciously tortured. Both of them had managed to survive, of course, but it resulted in both men being hospitalized, and put Michelle at even greater risk because Sidorov was now suspecting that Michelle was betraying him.
Because of this, Sidorov had two women assassins attempt to kill Michelle, but the pair who she referred to as "Barbies" would fail, with Kensi fighting them off before Michelle ultimately pulled herself up from outside as she had almost fell to her death. Michelle had then killed one of them, while Kensi had eventually caught the other when she ran into a car as she tried to escape from Kensi on her motorcycle.
Through all of the chaos and trauma - physical, mental and emotional, the team was finally able to put an end to things in a standoff on the helipad of the hotel where Sidorov and his henchmen were staying, which resulted in Sidorov's death. A little while later, Callen and Assistant Director Owen Granger found and arrested Janvier, and to this day, he remained locked up in prison.
In the midst of everything that went on, there was a giant elephant in the figurative room that had showed itself when Deeks unexpectedly kissed Kensi before his "failed-at-the-time" attempt to rescue Sam, and while it wasn't the official beginning to their relationship, the kiss, along with a heartfelt confession after their return to Ops after the shooting at the hotel, had went a long way with them moving forward.
"I just want you to know that the place I went to in my head to, uh, stop the pain... was you. I just kept thinking about... your smile, and your laugh. Everything. It's the only thing that got me through. For whatever it's worth."
Back in the Audi, as he remembered what happened four years ago, Deeks continued the drive to Ops while thinking about the collective loss that just happened, along with trying to focus on helping Sam finally take down Tahir. For now, however, he would try to comfort Kensi, while also reminding her that they weren't at fault for what happened to Michelle.
"Yeah, I know what you're getting at. What happened with Sidorov a few years back. I... I definitely remember that. We were able to help Michelle back then, and just like you, I wish that we could have saved her now. But all we can do now is be there for Sam. And we do that by going to Ops, finding out what else we might need to know about this, and by watching Sam's back, watching Callen's back and watching out for each other. We couldn't rescue Michelle again, and we can't bring her back to life, but if we just keep it together for however long we need to, and if we do what we do best, then this will be the end of Tahir. He won't be able to hurt anyone ever again. And that may help Sam to move forward. And we can be there for him if he needs us after this is all over."
While it hadn't totally absolved her of her pain, Deeks' words had given Kensi encouragement to push on and be able to do her job effectively. There was still a long day ahead of them, and despite the fact that there would be unexpected good news when it was all said and done, it wouldn't bring Michelle back or heal the pain of her being gone. But as it would be said with any deceased person, Michelle wouldn't have wanted them to sit and mope or be discouraged while her killer was still on the loose.
With that in mind, Kensi wiped her eyes again and exhaled, and as she looked at Deeks, she said, "you're right. You're absolutely right. Now let's finish this."
"It's finished," Deeks replied as he drove off.
So... as I finish this, it's already over 45 minutes into Season 9. But hopefully that won't stop anybody from leaving their thoughts on this fic. Excuse me if it's not great. It's been a while since I've written anything. But anyway, what do you think?