WARNING: sexual abuse heavily implied. Violence.
Chapter six
They sat in her home office, mid afternoon sunlight trying to filter through the pale curtains Callen had drawn closed, just the two of them. Hetty had wanted to do this alone and Callen understood, but he also wasn't going to allow it: Deeks was his team, his friend and his responsibility. He needed to be able to understand how he might react to things in the field after what he had suffered, and try to find a way to help him. Hetty said he was looking for a way to punish himself for not finding Marty sooner, for not killing Masters outright, and she might be right, but she was also wrong. Callen wasn't a stranger to trauma, if anyone could help Marty through this he could.
It had still made him feel ill as he sat beside Hetty and together they had activated the footage Masters had taken of Deeks. He wished he could say he was shocked by the inhuman treatment, the callousness, the degradation of his friend as he watched video screen. He wished he didn't know how flawed humanity could sometimes be.
"Does he still have a penis?" Evelyn Masters was giddy with excitement as she and her husband circled were Marty was strapped to the table and trying to ignore them. That question got his attention though, tired blue eyes opening wide to stare at her incredulously.
"Of course he does, it's just tucked inside for protection, like a whale or a crocodile. Look here," he reached out and pressed a finger to the sleek shimmering fin and Marty's entire body jerked.
"Hey, boundary issues!" he snapped, his voice hoarse from yelling, arguing, pleading. Masters didn't acknowledge he'd spoken, continuing with an almost tutorial air as he leaned over Marty.
"You can barely make out the slit into the pocket that houses him but if you press-"
"Get the fuck away from me!" their friends voice cracked and he jerked so sharply on his restraints he reopened a wound that began to trickle blood along his wrist. "What the hell is wrong with you freaks! Don't touch me!"
"Oh," Evelyn seemed intrigued, her eyes almost glassy as she looked at her husband in question, "can we see it? I want to see it."
Hetty reached out and slammed the lid to the computer down with a snap and the room settled into thick silence. After a long moment she exhaled very slowly before breathing in deeply through her nose and repeated the process for a long while. Callen began counting backwards from a hundred in his head, in Russian.
"I believe we have seen enough," she announced, her voice steady and clipped. Callen nodded. They had seen enough, enough pain and humiliation to last a lifetime. Callen didn't know what was worse: being sexually assaulted; being strapped down and studied; being dragged from the large tank and sat on a commode in the middle of the room every time he needed to use the toilet so he didn't pollute his breathing water; being used as entertainment; being treated like a pet; being completely ignored…
"Jesus," he muttered and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and clasp his hands over the back of his bowed head. He'd seen things like this before; not the non-human thing but the torture, the humiliation, the terror and complete lack of disregard for another being, for life. Tragically it was something that happened to people every day of every race, age and gender. It had never happened so completely to a friend of his before though, and compartmentalizing that, being able to find a distance to help deal with the horror of it, was different. It always hurt to come across, but this time it twisted deeper.
"Jesus," he repeated after a moment. "I should have killed them," it came out more of a whisper but he felt the rage deep within. He could still do it, kill them, and make it look like an accident, or a home invasion gone wrong.
"Maybe," Hetty said softly beside him and lay a warm hand on his shoulder, "but it would not have changed the past." She turned silent a long moment before opening the screen and closing the program before anymore footage could play out. "Perhaps once Marty has been back for a while we can revisit this discussion, but I do not believe it will come to that." Callen nodded, he didn't think it would either. They took lives in their line of work, killed and were killed to the point where Callen sometimes worried about his dwindling levels of remorse, but he still believed in the law, in the higher power of justice, in not murdering someone out of anger and the need for vengeance (even if the rage almost physically pulled him to react). That kind of thing could destroy a person.
"I think I'll have Eric destroy this," she plucked the memory stick from its home. There were days worth of footage to still view, "and then I believe its shell would make an excellent target at the range."
It turned out they never needed to revisit this conversation again. It remained strictly between Hetty and Callen, one more dark secret never aired and Marty, not even in his darker moments, ever mentioned to them a wish for vengence.
One and a half years later, after their entire financial wealth had unexpectedly gone down the drain, bankruptcy and foreclosures ruining them, a few embarrassing video's being linked onto the internet and humiliating them in the business world proved too much for Alexander Masters. He cracked, publicly claiming that it was the mermans fault, that he'd been cursed by a sea devil, that if they would just find the Argentinian he would get his creature back and prove to the world he wasn't a failure or a fraud. He had been shipped to a secure psychiatric hospital that was tight lipped about their treatment but that assured the world they were doing everything they could to help him. They had no idea how long it would take to help him enough to be released, if ever.
His wife Evelyn moved back into her parents trailer across the country and became their caregiver as they aged. She never remarried.
…
Two days after they got him back Marty sat alone at the massive island bar hunched over a bowl of cereal. It was his favourite brand, the crunchy sugary goodness rolling over his taste buds like a little bit of heaven. He was just glad that he was able to taste the sweetness at all. He'd never considered what being submersed in saltwater for an extended period of time would do to his tastebuds, and he still hadn't regained the ability to enjoy anything but the strongest flavours.
His next spoonful paused halfway to his mouth when the front door opened and closed and heavy, unusually heavy, footsteps started heading his way. After a moment of quashed jumpiness he scolded himself for being such a coward and finished shoveling the food into his mouth just as Sam entered the large, open concept room. The big guy moved right for him, no longer bothering to make his steps loud enough to be heard now that Marty had a direct line of sight. Marty appreciated the effort and smiled a big milky grin at him before shoving another spoonful into his already full mouth.
"I can't believe you eat that crap," Sam grumbled and moved to the coffee maker, noted it was empty, and leaned against the counter instead to face Marty with crossed arms. Marty couldn't help staring at the bulging muscles. Seriously, the man was built like a tank on steroids. If Marty had been able to pretty much hold his own in a fight against that then how the hell had he ever let three stooges grab him from the familiarity of his own home in the first place?
"You'd believe easier if you gave it a try," he said around the mouthful, distracting himself from his thoughts, and Sam just looked more disgusted.
"This body is a temple, feeding it that would be a crime to religions everywhere."
"More for me," Marty shrugged and then frowned as a thought came to him. "How did Hetty even know I liked this stuff? I can't see her having Chocolate Flakes sitting beside the Wheaties and Bran in her cupboard."
"Seriously?" Sam raised and eyebrow and Marty narrowed his eyes. "You had three boxes in your kitchen, it was an easy guess." Oh, right…the kitchen he wasn't allowed to go back to anymore due to fears of compromise. Nodding he looked back down at his cereal and tried to regain his uncaring façade; it was annoying how easily it slipped these days. "Along with the skittle stash, the pop tarts and the chocolate-peanut butter sandwich spread. How the hell do you stay in shape eating all that sugar?" It was a throw away remark meant to distract and Marty had to chuckle to himself even though he didn't know why that was funny. He looked up and, bingo, Sam had that tiny little furrow between his eyes that meant he was worried about something. Namely: Deeks. Marty hadn't seen that look since he'd been going through PT after getting shot and Sam had shown up to every session to egg him on.
"Jogging on the beach, surfing, and trying to avoid hand to hand combat training with Kensi. Keeps me burning calories all day." He contemplated having another bowl of cereal even though he was full and glared halfheartedly when Sam, apparently reading his mind, snapped the box away and tucked it back in the cupboard. He couldn't help freezing when Sam had gotten close but was able to brush it off quick enough that Sam may have not noticed. Then again the telltale moment of silence reminded Marty that Sam didn't miss much of anything, which was really inconvenient at times.
"Yeah well you're going to be burning more calories unpacking your stuff this afternoon." That got Marty's attention right quick.
"My stuff? Explain."
"Your stuff, as in the things that you own that Callen, Kensi and I have packed up and discreetly moved out of your apartment and into G's place for the time being. That stuff." That…Marty actually hadn't really thought that far ahead in his plans yet but that was-
"Hold on, Callen's place?" Something in his chest squirmed at the idea and, strangely, he wasn't sure if it was in a good or uncomfortable way.
"Yeah, he's got the spare rooms and the space. We figured it'd do for now, until you find another place."
"You mean until you don't think I'm a flight risk anymore" he snapped and immediately regretted it. He hadn't meant to say that and, if anything, that pissed him off more. He took a breath to try and control the flare of temper. Sam watched him silently, clearly waiting a moment until Marty had calmed down before slowly shaking his head.
"I mean until you feel up to finding your own place again. It's not easy finding the right place to live around here that's affordable and inconspicuous, and it's even harder when you're trying to sort yourself out. No sense in rushing it and Hetty's place is nice and all but…" he trailed off and smirked a little. Deeks thought about the glass cabinets full of rare collectable teapots and china, the elegant and slightly more mature style of decorating, and the katana series hanging on display. Actually those were pretty cool, it was the one in the umbrella stand by the door that concerned him. Point being that Hetty's place was awesome, but it was also…Hetty's. The idea of staying here was a bit unnerving, no matter how much he liked and respected her.
Staying at Sam's was out of the question for obvious reasons. Kensi didn't have a spare room and, even if things between them weren't a little bit stressed right now, they both liked their space too much for him to live on the couch. That pretty much left Callen, unless he got a hotel room somewhere, which made him uncomfortable in ways he didn't care to think about. He hated hotels.
He drank the chocolaty milk from the bottom of his bowl and tried not to think about how much he'd liked his old apartment, how long it had taken to feel comfortable there, to make it his own. Everything was in box's now and-
"Hold on, you three packed my stuff?" Three trained investigator's whom he'd only invited into his home under the duress of healing bullet wounds, had gone through all of his belongings. People he knew had gone through all of his belongings. Shit, if he had managed to retain a single secret about himself after everything this new fact cemented the notion that his privacy was pretty much toast now.
"Yeah," Sam's tone was unnervingly understanding as he agreed, watching Marty with that careful gentle way he adopted when he was trying to be supportive. "Don't worry, we put Kensi in the kitchen and living room. G and I took the bedroom and bathroom." Marty could only shake his head at this. At least he knew his porn collection hadn't been seen by Kensi, he just hoped the guys hadn't rifled through it too deeply. He didn't need all his kinks exposed. Sam didn't seem to care either way as he just smirked with the typical amount of teasing and pulled away from the counter. He kept a more than reasonable distance between Marty and himself as he moved to the living room and parked it on the couch. "If you want to pack up what you've got here we should get going. Hetty needs you back in the office tomorrow or she's gonna start having difficulty with the cover story."
"Yeah, sure," the relief he felt at that was almost embarrassing but he moved as ordered, needing the distraction, needing something to focus his time on. He moved stiffly, his damaged and then overworked body almost unbearably sore as he moved to get the few items he'd gathered the last two days together and straightened the room as best he could. When he came back to the kitchen it was to find a bottle of extra strength muscle relaxant, an unopened bottle of water on the table and Sam pointedly ignoring him as he watched the news.
If Marty's hand shook while he picked up the water nobody would know but him.
…
He went back to work the next morning, grateful for the distraction and wearing long sleeves to cover the crusted over wounds on his wrists. The official story was that he had been deep undercover. People believed it because Hetty said so and Vance, trusting her, backed her up.
It helped that Callen and Sam glared at everyone who so much as looked at Marty and his visible injuries too long. Kensi, despite being more defensive and awkward around Deeks, had taken to smiling like a predator ready to gut people that spent more than a minute talking to him about things not work related. Eric and Nell were surprisingly normal about the whole affair, which was a relief.
Marty, for his part, liked to pretend that none of it had happened. If he flinched when somebody brushed against him accidentally he made a joke about cooties. If he accepted coffees prepared and brought to him from the break room and then failed to even pretend to drink it. He doesn't do it intentionally and tries to hide that he has trouble accepting food and drinks he didn't prepare himself, and is maybe just a little stupidly grateful when nobody points it out.
Life, as it does, moved on. Except that now people knew and he was still waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Three weeks after being liberated he started to feel the itch build beneath his skin. The urge was familiar, instinctive, and he'd been fighting it since he'd first shifted and his mom had sort of half ass explained (around a mug of tequila) that even though he wasn't 'pure' his body needed to change once in a while. Of course she had slurred a lot while explaining, and gone off on tangents about how even a mistaken hybrid had the option to shift while she was stuck landbound after bad decisions and hormones that got the better of her.
At least she had stuck around (physically if not emotionally) until he turned legally of age, fulfilling her parental obligations of being there and in home (keeping him from the foster system) while his father rot away in jail after trying to kill them both. Marty hadn't been surprised when the police had shown up at his door on the morning of his eighteenth birthday to inform him that his mother had passed on. Their best guess was that she got drunk on the beach and passed out in the waves, drowning sometime in the night. He'd known better. He'd known she had most likely been sober (for once), had stripped off the clothes 'land-dwellers' found so necessary, and walked out into the ocean until she couldn't touch bottom. Then she had swum, and when it was deep she had dove down too far to make it back to the surface even when the desperation to breathe became overwhelming. She simply hadn't been able to outswim the current that eventually washed her body back ashore. She would have been pissed to know the ocean didn't even claim her in the end.
Most of what he knew about himself was trial and error.
When the urge to swim started to scratch beneath his skin the ocean became a huge, distracting playground begging for him to join it. Mainly his other form just needed to be 'let out' to exercise. He became antsy, full of energy, more talkative, less able to remain still and quiet. In other words he became a huge pain in the ass, which apparently wasn't that much different from his normal everyday. Soaking in his tub had helped cut the edge back, a preemptive strike, though it was often uncomfortable and just lying there with no distractions made him more aware than ever of his freak status. Callen didn't have a tub.
Regardless he thought he had been hiding his 'situation' well. Except apparently he wasn't.
"You know," Kensi started (four weeks after coming back to work), pausing to take a delaying drink from her coffee and shifting in the passenger seat. Marty looked over at her and waited, fingers tapping a rhythm out on the steering wheel absently. She pursed her lips, her nose did that cute little twitch when she was feeling out of sorts, and it wasn't difficult to figure out where this topic was headed. He couldn't help tensing. Somehow everyone had managed to bring his freakiness up in some way or another, trying in their own way to let him know that they weren't about to slice him into sushi, that they had his back. Everyone except Kensi.
Nope, he and Kensi had not talked about it at all. It was almost epic the way they'd managed to completely avoid any topic of conversation surrounding his 'condition' up to and including: fish, water, beach, bathing, surfing, abductions, restraints, living with Callen, signing Eric's vintage Aquaman collectors figurine (which dropped its monetary value to penny's but Eric had beamed at him for the rest of the week so he figured it was fine), beating the crap out of deserving people, and salt. That was just scratching the surface. Basically they spent a lot of time not talking, and he could admit that, of everything, this was possibly one of the hardest parts about being back on the job. He missed his Kensi. If anyone had suggested two short years ago that one day he would have an entire group of people (let alone one) that would know about his secret and that he hadn't disappeared off the face of the earth the moment he got the chance, he wouldn't have believed it. Being attached was dangerous but he was discovering that now that he was finally getting a taste of it, it was hard to let go.
"I have a tub at my place," she finally gushed out and he blinked. He had forgotten she'd been trying to say something. She wasn't looking at him though, her eyes focused intently on the entrance to the car dealership they were staking out. He didn't know what to say to that, and swallowed thickly a few times to try and figure it out.
"Uhhh-" yep, that sounded about right.
"Look, I don't even have to be there, I can get you a copy of my key, we can arrange a time and you can just go and have a –a soak or something," she looked uncomfortable and he felt uncomfortable, but she took a deep breath and finally turned to stare at him with her dark eyes. "It's not big or anything, just a standard size, but it's better than nothing and I can't exactly set up a kids pool in the living room so it's the best I can offer."
For a moment he was actually struck dumb and then, because he was an idiot, he spoke without permission from his brain.
"We're talking about this now?" she narrowed her eyes and turned back to look out the windshield, upset. "No, no it's not that I'm not grateful," he rushed to explain and she looked back at him impatiently. "It's just, I, you really want me in your place when I'm…like that?" Yeah, he'd left his brain at the office today, but apparently he said something right because now she just looked a little confused.
"What do you mean? I wouldn't offer if I wasn't comfortable with you in my home. You've been there before."
"Yeah, but before I wasn't…before I was still just a normal, albeit stunningly attractive, guy. You don't have to pretend to be comfortable around me now just because everyone else is," she was frowning heavily at him and his mind started yelling abort! abort! He shut his mouth and waited as she continued to frown, before her eyes widened and now she looked hurt and, shit, he just didn't know what to say to fix things.
"You think I'm not comfortable with you because you…because you're a merman?" she lowered her voice at the end, as though the kids skateboarding in the dealerships parking lot would somehow over hear them above the noise they were making. He shrugged and picked at his t-shirts hem.
"It has crossed my mind that things have been…tense between us and finding out that the guy you've been partnered with for the past two years is not exactly human might be a contributing factor." He felt like a kid. How did Kensi do that to him?
"Look," she was genuinely upset and she turned more bodily to face him. "I'll admit that I was never a fan the The Little Mermaid as a kid, okay? I thought she whined too much, people living under the water was stupid and impractical and I could never understand how they were so deep underwater but could still see everything around them clearly." He leaned back a little at her intensity. "And yeah, I'm maybe a little upset you didn't trust me enough to tell me, but I also understand why you didn't and I even understand why you still don't want to really talk with any of us about it. Or show us who you are. But seeing you at that place," and here she twisted back sharply to face forward once again and glared out the window, her jaw working. "You were…there are no words for what you are and yeah, that scared me, but to see you shoved in that tank, like a play thing while they…I can't stop seeing you contained, okay? It is hard for me to not think about what you went through, what you are still going through, when I'm with you and if that has somehow made you think that I am uncomfortable with you than I am sorry, but you are an idiot." She crossed her arms and snapped her mouth shut and if he hadn't known what to say before he definitely didn't know what to say now.
For the first time since he'd been grabbed, he smiled.
"Thank you," his voice absolutely did not crack at the end of that and he cleared it quickly, "but I've seen your bathtub and I don't think I could fit my legs in there one at a time let alone over a hundred pounds of scaly muscled perfection," it was easier to joke about than he expected and, thankfully, startled an indignant laugh out of her.
"I think it has less to do with the size of my tub and more to do with your eating habits."
"What's with everyone ragging on me about my diet lately? Have you no shame? Never attack a mans weight like that, he could be sensitive."
"Says the man who once told me I should wear more black."
"What? You look dangerous in black! I can't help it if that's hot." And click. Something he had been missing shifted into place and he grabbed his coffee from its holder and took a drink to wet his suddenly parched throat. When she didn't answer he looked back to find her watching him drink but she looked away as soon as he caught her. He looked at the nearly cold coffee in his hand, realized that she had brought it for him from her coffee run earlier even though she didn't think he would drink it. It wasn't laced with anything except sugar and, after a hesitation now that he was actively thinking about it, he took another drink and they settled into silence. That was until he remembered an insight from earlier.
"Who doesn't like the Little Mermaid? I thought that was a staple favourite for little girls across the globe."
"I preferred Thunder Cats," she shrugged and her lips twitched as she pretended to be more interested in doing her job than in him, "much more believable."
…
Tbc.
Up next: epilogue.
