Prompt: Kensi is held hostage by Jack and Deeks rescues her.

Sidenote: I've reworked the prompt a little bit because we now know Jack's not the one who actually kidnaps her. Also I don't like the idea of Jack being evil. Technically there is a little bit of Jack vs Deeks though.

From: loveacanadian

Rating: T I guess. There's nothing too bad in it.

Genre: Romance? Angsty angst angst!

Relationship status: Canon

Summary: Deeks goes to Afghanistan to rescue Kensi, but with the appearance of Jack things don't go quite as he'd hoped.

"Deeks, wait for us."

"Detective Deeks, wait for back up, and that's an order."

Deeks ignored both Callen and Granger's words, running through the tunnel towards his destination.

The rest of the rescue team – Granger, Sam and Callen – immediately abandoned their current courses in favour of following the detective. Whilst they were all eager to find Kensi, they had all secretly hoped that Deeks wouldn't be the one to find her. In hindsight, now that they had heard Deeks notify them through the comms to say that he believed he had found the cave where Kensi was being held, splitting up to cover more ground didn't seem like the best idea. Now there was no one to stop Deeks from running headfirst into a potentially hostile situation. As appropriate as it seemed to have Deeks to find her given their status as partners, the other members of the team knew that the probability of finding Kensi's mutilated body was quite high. They all knew what had happened to her predecessor. They also knew that finding Kensi like that was something that Detective Deeks would never recover from.

When Deeks burst into the cave, it took him a second to register that the form huddled against the wall under a blanket was his partner. Without a thought for his own safety, and a complete disregard for protocol, he ran straight over to her. Was there someone else in the cave? He didn't know. All he was focused on was getting to Kensi. Fortunately for him, they were alone.

"Kens?" he called quietly as he gently touched her shoulder, trying to wake her up and hoping with all his heart that she wasn't dead.

"Kens," he repeated, shaking her more forcefully.

If the sight of her lying there looking so frail didn't break his heart, the first word that left her mouth did.

"Jack?"

As glad as he was to hear her voice again, he couldn't deny that hearing her utter her ex-fiancé's name hurt. It hurt a lot.

"No, it's me, Deeks," he corrected, his hand gently caressing his cheek of its own accord, as if it thought it could heal all the pain she had been through.

"Deeks?" she croaked, her voice a perfect match for her tired and beaten body, as she slowly opened her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you, of course," he replied as his hands found the mental cuffs that encircled her wrist and followed the chain they were attached to to the wall.

"Makes a nice change from me always rescuing you all the time," she retorted, chuckling slightly at her words.

Deeks couldn't help but laugh a little too. "Your jokes definitely haven't gotten any better. Clearly you haven't been spending enough time with comedic geniuses, such as myself. You know you had us all worried when you decided to go off on your own little adventure holiday."

"Granger's itinerary sucked," she replied with great effort, weakened from her time as a prisoner. "And there was no pool."

Deeks chuckled softly again, the sounds of his laughter mixing with hers. It was a wonderful sound, one which he thought he might never hear again.

As glad as he was to laugh with her again, Deeks knew he had to turn his attention back to the task at hand. She wasn't free yet. As he rattled the chains that bound Kensi, wondering to himself why he didn't carry a set of bolt cutters on him at all times for situations like this, the pair heard the unmistakeable sound of approaching voices. Judging by the language, it wasn't Deeks' back up.

Kensi turned towards Deeks, fear in her eyes.

"Go," she urged, knowing that she couldn't let them get a hold of Deeks. Sure, she'd been able to withstand their torture over the past few days, but she knew that seeing them do the same to Deeks would break her, not to mention the memories it would bring up for him.

"Deeks, go," she repeated, fear rising in her voice. She couldn't watch them break him. It would break her, knowing that her reckless actions - which had all been for nothing seeing as she hadn't seen Jack once since her kidnapping - had led to Deeks being hurt.

"I'm not leaving you," he replied stubbornly, looking her in the eye. He knew what it felt like to be left and he wasn't going to do it to her.

He checked that his gun was still in the holster on his thigh, ready to defend them against Kensi's kidnappers. Remembering what he had brought with him, he reached onto his belt and pulled out the knife that Kensi had loaned him and handed it to her, gently closing her fist around it. If he failed and they came for her, at least she would be able to defend herself.

"Thank you," she said softly. It was both a thank you for caring for the knife in her absence and for stubbornly refusing to leave her side. It seemed like no matter where she went or how far she ran her partner was always there for her, defiantly refusing to leave her.

Deeks stood and moved into position behind a rock by the entrance to the cave. He could detect two distinct voices making their way towards him. He just hoped there weren't more. Normally he would trust that his partner would have his back in this situation, but with Kensi still chained to the wall and limited in her ways of attacking her kidnappers, he did have some concerns.

His heart raced as the voices got closer and closer. He knew it was only a matter of seconds before they entered the cave. Timing was crucial. Too early and he would lose the element of surprise. Too late and they would be on him before he could act. He had to make his move at just the right moment.

As soon as the first man entered the cave, Deeks struck out to the side with his elbow, hitting the man in the head. He used the man's dazed state to his advantage and wrestled with him, smashing his head into the hard rock wall of the cage and letting his unconscious body fall to the ground. By this stage the second man was already on Deeks. He put up a much better fight. In the end, just as he was pushed backwards, Deeks pulled his gun out and pointed it at the man. But it appeared the man had the same thought, pulling his own gun on Deeks. Deeks would have shot the man right then and there, risking a bullet to the head, just to know that the man wouldn't be able to shoot Kensi, but then he heard the words that caused both of them to pause in shock.

"Stop it, both of you."

The man turned around to Kensi, his gun hand lowered slightly in surprise. Deeks knew this was his chance to disarm the other man, but something about Kensi's forceful and desperate tone made him hesitate.

"Kensi?" the man spoke, sounding completely shocked.

"Jack," she replied, a small smile gracing her lips at hearing the sound of his voice again after all these years.

Suddenly her previous comment made sense to Deeks. She'd known Jack was here.

...

Four hours later, Deeks found himself standing outside the room that Kensi had come to call home – or at least her place to sleep – over the past few months. He knew she was inside, and more importantly alone, but he still hesitated to go in there. Jack was in the other room with Granger. After using his key to unlock the chains that bound Kensi, he'd surrendered his weapons and gone quietly when Granger, who entered the cave not long after, told him to. He offered no resistance, professing something about a top secret deep undercover mission, the sort that would require a man to leave his fiancé without an explanation. He rode back to the base with Kensi and Granger. Deeks had shared a vehicle with Sam and Callen.

Kensi had been allowed one hour alone with Jack to question him on matters not strictly related to the case before Granger had taken over the interrogation. Despite Jack's cooperation, the jury was still out about his potential innocence. But Deeks didn't care about that. There was only one judge whose verdict mattered to him, and he was still yet to talk to her after the revelation.

Soon his desire to see her won out, and Deeks gently knocked on the door to Kensi's sleeping quarters. After hearing her call to come in, he slowly opened the door and walked inside the cramped room, shutting the door behind him. This was the first time they had been alone since the return of Jack.

"Hey," he said as he sat down at the end of her bed, several feet from her. He wanted to close the gap between them, but he didn't know where they stood.

"Hey," she repeated, just as awkwardly as he had said it. The whole air around them seemed to carry a layer of awkwardness.

Deeks could tell she'd been crying. He didn't blame her. He'd never let on that he knew though. He knew she didn't want the hurt that Jack had caused her broadcasted to the world. She wanted to keep it to herself, but he knew. He always knew.

"So," he began, sitting his hands in his lap and looking at the floor as if it might hold the answers he was looking for. Normally he could talk non-stop for hours, but when it came to the important things he was at a loss. "Are you back together with Jack?"

"What?" Kensi asked, turning sharply to face him in disbelief.

"Jack, he rescued you, did the whole knight in shining armour thing, and while he was at it confessed that he's not the asshole you thought he was and that he never stopped loving you," Deeks replied, sounding a little harsher than he had intended to. He couldn't help it. He felt like he'd been on the brink of having everything he wanted only to have the ground crumble away from under his feet. Now he was falling, clawing at anything he thought might slow his descent. Hitting the ground was inevitable.

Kensi remained silent for a moment. His words hurt. But his voice, so full of pain and bitterness, hurt her the most.

"You saved me," she eventually said, her tone soft and quiet.

"Kens, he would have freed you once he saw it was you anyway. I just happened to get there first."

"That's not true," Kensi argued, feeling the need to stick up for her detective. "Well maybe he would have, but that's not the point. You were there. You flew halfway across the world to save me. You didn't leave me. That's more than..."

She trailed off, not sure if she wanted to finish that sentence. There were too many confusing thoughts swirling around in her head. She had to sort them out before she could let down her walls and talk freely.

"You didn't answer my question," Deeks accused, hurt fuelling his words.

"Really, Deeks, do you know me at all?" she retaliated, upset by his assumption that she would just forget the past few years of her life. "Unchaining me and giving himself up doesn't make up for all this time, for everything..."

"But," Deeks prompted, knowing that there was a 'but' coming.

"But, I don't know," Kensi replied sharply. "I don't know, okay? He told me some things and I don't know if I believe them. I just don't know if I can trust him again."

Deeks nodded, knowing that he had no right to enquire about exactly what Jack had said. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him in her own time.

"Just one question," Deeks spoke, knowing that he might live to regret these words. "Did you go out there, knowing the stakes and knowing the risks, just to find him?"

Kensi didn't answer. She couldn't lie to him. She'd known that if she made it out of there alive that this conversation was coming, but she was still no closer to being able to justify her actions. Granger was really going to let her have it when they debriefed.

"You did know he was there when you went out and got yourself captured, right?"

Still Kensi remained silent. She longed to take his hand, to reassure him that everything would be okay, that they would be okay, but she couldn't do it.

"Did you know he was there when you left LA?" he asked, his hurt slipping back into his words.

Kensi turned to face him. "Of course I didn't know then. Do you think that I would have... that after us... do you think I would have just left you like that?"

"I don't know, Kens. You do have a tendency to run."

"That's not fair and you know it," she snapped. She knew what he was insinuating. She hated that he was comparing her to Jack, but most of all she hated that she couldn't even come up with anything to say to stand up for herself.

"But you did know he was there when you went off, by yourself, without back up, without telling anyone, without telling me," he accused. He hadn't come in here to start a fight, but then again nothing that had happened that day had really gone as he'd expected.

"Yes, okay. I knew about Jack then," she admitted, her head falling in defeat. She couldn't look at his face right then. She knew it would be filled with hurt and that alone would break her.

"How could you do that, Kens? How could you risk yourself like that? Does this," he said, gesturing between them, "mean nothing to you?"

"I had to Deeks," she cut in desperately, turning back to face him. "I had to do this. I had to find answers. How was I supposed to move forward with my life not knowing? How could I move on? How could this, this thing, ever work while I still didn't have answers I needed?"

Deeks could see her reasoning, but he was too upset with her to just accept it. She's risked her life, and nearly lost it, just to see her ex-fiancé. That sort of thing hurt. He had an ache in his heart, one that he wished would go away if he just told her he understood. But deep down he knew it wasn't going away, not any time soon.

"And what about now? What about us?" he asked as he stood to leave.

"I don't know, Deeks. I really don't know."