AN: This started as a scene idea way back in March that I fought off for months, like, 'that's too sad…I can't write this.' Then in late August I made the mistake of listening to Jess Ray's "What Have We Found Ourselves In" while sad one night. By the third verse, this entire thing was born and plotted. Then I got angry about Sam pushing Callen away in the latest season, listened to a lot of Fernando Velazquez, made myself cry, and welp – here we are.

It would be super generous to call this a case fic, more themed towards exploring character dynamics by using a very cruddy situation, but there is some Mystery Intrigue™ as I'm incapable of leaving it out apparently. (Sorry Deeks isn't conscious for most of this! I promise I'll write him in more next time!)

Quotes and title are taken from All Quiet on the Western Front.

Enjoy!


'Maybe in one hundred years, one million laughs, one million tears
We will have a clearer view – this wasn't about me and you.
See, this was written long before and carries on after we're gone,
This story that we found ourselves in…
What have we found ourselves in?'

"What Have We Found Ourselves In" ~ Jess Ray

~OL~

G Callen falls in love with a lilac blossom on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, in that trapeze suspension right before the sun touches the horizon.

It's a purple lilac, faded from being flown in a sea gull's mouth far away from land. Starbursts of fuchsia and diluted lavender line the flower, with tiny blossoms rising in a crest along a stem so green that it makes Callen's eyes sting. The colour is ice after an eternity in the desert of this place, though he's never been surrounded by so much water in his life. It hurts more than any wound.

Water, water everywhere…

Water, as it turns out, is not their problem.

Callen ignores the tableau of it all for one fleeting moment, his heart so full of love and ennui for this flower that he almost chokes on it. Almost adds more salt to what has already caked to his blistered skin. The seagull hovers in the air for a moment while riding a current of air, as if to better allow Callen's eyes time to adjust and soak in this flower and the orphic things it makes him feel. His heart is a jar full of pennies, shaken around in glittering spectacle. The sting in his eyes becomes something that he can't ignore, and with a nauseous upheaval of regret, he closes them.

He's not even sure why a sea gull would need a flower. For a nest, perhaps? To woo a lady sea gull?

"G? Hey, G—you with me?"

When Callen opens his eyes, the bird is gone. And then he does cry, one small bread crumb of a tear fallen before he even registers it. He's left so many bread crumbs over the years, with very few following them deep into the woods of his shaken conception of the world. Just one person, really.

"G, you're scaring me."

Some bottom-of-the-barrel reserve is left in him enough to suck in a rattling breath and reply, "Get in line."

A massive gust of air, a sigh, passes over him, in perfect time with the long shadow cast across his face. "You don't sound so good."

"Yeah?" Callen quirks a brow, swallowing against the glass in his throat. "Well at least I look better 'an you."

Sam's eyes are dark, even darker, somehow, by the cloudless spring day. The slanted angle of the sun's setting casts his brown irises in apse-like relief, grooved with gold and hints of emerald. Callen knows every tick of his partner, from the scar behind his right ear to the way he favours his left knee on cold mornings. Callen knows by the forty-five degree angle wrinkle, creasing Sam's eyebrow on one side, that he's not just worried.

He's reaching the end of a short tether, about to lurch from its yank on his strategy-spinning mind.

With Callen on his back, there's just enough room for Sam to kneel next to him, if he braces one foot against the end of the bright yellow dinghy. Rubber squeaks in protest of Sam's palm while he squirms to get comfortable or at least to shift into a position for better assessment of Callen's face.

Callen, for his part, zeroes in on the gauche splint around Sam's right shin, the one so matted with blood from where bone previously poked out that he's shocked Sam is conscious at all. In a way…in a way G supposes it makes sense. They've both been in and out—this is it. They've slept through the second act only to wake at the same time for the final scene.

G gazes at Sam, without any kind of worry on his face, and Sam gazes at G, so overwrought by concern that he's pale with it.

Though Callen parts his lips for a joke, all he says is, "There was a flower."

Sam still thinks it's Act II, not realizing they've reached the end. His face roils and snares into a thundercloud. He bends and puts a hovering ear to Callen's chest, inhaling a sharp breath of his own at whatever he hears.

His voice buzzes with tension, though he attempts to sounds normal. "Oh, was there? You should have pointed it out. I did see an albatross go by with a fish just now."

Callen's eyes prickle afresh and he shakes his head—carefully. "No, it was a flower. A purple lilac."

"G…that bird had a clownfish of some sort in its mouth."

"You're wrong."

Sighing, Sam sits back. "Sure, G. It was a beautiful flower and we're about to be rescued by a full coastguard team in hula skirts."

A frown steals across Callen's face like an impudent burglar before he can even think to censor the expression. Sam is dry, sarcastic; he used to put Granger to shame with his snippy comebacks.

But he's not pessimistic, nor is he one for cynicism.

"Sam?"

At his voice, Sam shoots upright like he's been slapped. He blinks fast. Their bodies rock in the waves, an undulation underneath Callen's spine and Sam's busted knees. They're both so bruised, they compete with the black fabric in ribbons around Sam's legs and the tattered shirt hanging off Callen's shoulders.

"I'm sorry, G. We're going to be rescued, of course we are."

Callen shakes his head again, just a twitch of his neck. He's not upset by Sam's joke—his attitude is closer than he understands—but that his partner somehow decided he has to lie to Callen about it.

"Sam," he says again, and this time it's a whisper. "None of this is your fault."

Sam's pupils eclipse his irises for an electrical burn of a moment, zinging up behind Callen's ribcage. And Sam's eyes fill with bread crumbs of his own. They're gone as fast as they come, so fast that Callen wonders if he saw it, more elusive even than the flower.

Then Sam is back in business mode. He takes Callen's pulse under his jaw. "Look at you, rambling about lilacs while we're on the job."

Callen doesn't have it in him for a comeback and this seems to distress Sam more than the dire events so far.

"G? You feeling lightheaded? Hallucinating?"

Callen reaches up to hook a hand around the fingers on his neck. "No, 'm fine. Inventory?"

Sam's face scrunches in a lightning fast move before he's back.

"Sam?" Callen tries to sit up, but Sam's heavy palm on his chest keeps him down. "I know you finished taking…taking inventory. How long?"

Their eyes flit over the emergency pack of water bottles, what they haven't drunk already, and mylar wrapped rations. The one thing they need—a first aid kit—is the one thing they lost in the hectic hours leading up to this. Neither of them has touched the food, too exhausted, queasy, and strung out to keep anything down.

At least Sam's eyes are back to their usual brown, panic response under control. His hand switches from assessing, though he doesn't inform Callen of whatever he gathers from his pulse, to comforting. Callen closes his eyes against the cool hand cupping his face. The sun protests this small relief, beating down on their flushed skin. Merciless.

"Sam?"

"Twenty-four hours," Sam whispers back. "We have maybe a day, Callen. Whoever stocked this dinghy didn't plan on needing it for very long."

"A day."

Above him, Sam sighs again. "…Yeah."

"We're not going to make it."

Sam's hand shifts to Callen's forehead—it's shaking. "I'll figure something out, G. I promise."

Callen doesn't want to open his eyes this time, doesn't want to see the devastation on Sam's face, threaded like a counterpoint through the broken melody of his voice. "Sam, you don't owe me anything. It's not your fault."

~OL~

Sixty-two hours earlier:

There is one singularly profound thing Marty Deeks is good for, every time, that none of the other agents or even Eric can be counted on to do—he always says exactly what everyone else is thinking and no one dares bring up out loud. Especially not with Hetty standing in earshot.

"This couldn't wait until morning?" he grumbles, the instant his and Kensi's feet are through the bullpen doors.

"Technically it is morning." Sam's comment is met with murmured agreement and yet more grumbles.

Callen reaches behind him to Hetty's desk and passes Deeks one of the large coffees—black—that he and Sam bought for the others. Kensi, now on Hetty's left in their rough group huddle circle, blinks blearily at the floor while blowing on her cup. It's been roughly eighteen minutes since a call woke them up in the dead of night, and yet Kensi still looks crisp in the all-black gear Hetty requested they wear, her long hair done up in a tight, braided bun, and even some mascara on her upper lashes.

Eric stands to Hetty's right, polar bear pyjamas and all, and for once he looks just as grim as her. In a subversion of the usual, this doesn't seem to be from the sudden phone call but from whatever he's loaded on the tablet in his hand. He scowls at it while watching everyone try to look alive.

"Thanks." Deeks settles in next to Callen, also blowing on his cup. As per Hetty's instructions, they're all dressed, but Callen spies an extra-fuzzy patch on Deeks' chin he missed in the hurried shave. After a sip or two, the detective perks up a bit. "So. What's so important that you had to wake us up at two-thirty in the morning for this clubhouse meeting?"

Despite the fact that Sam hasn't ingested so much as a sip of his own coffee, he still somehow manages to be the most awake. "You said you couldn't tell us over the phone, Hetty. Are we under attack again?"

Hetty shakes her head, uttering her first spoken word since they all congregated in the darkened NCIS office. "Not this time, Mr. Hanna."

Callen and Sam exchange a quick look, and Callen feels the same nascent dread winching his stomach that is reflected in Sam's eyes.

"An unsanctioned mission," Kensi says.

How she guessed the nuances of Hetty's face with such clarity, Callen doesn't know, but he's grateful. Even if it's a risky mission, he'd rather know up front than when the guns start blazing. Any intel is good intel.

"The mission is not…our jurisdiction, as it were." Hetty takes a moment to look each of them in the eye. "First, I assume you've all heard about the recent tyrant trying to revolt in Taiwan."

Everyone groans, even Eric.

"What a piece of work," he says, pushing up his glasses, and Callen nods.

That about sums it up.

Hetty doesn't react, other than to point a finger at Eric's tablet. "In a bid to overthrow the current regime in the Philippines, Tuong Torales has taken rather drastic measures to show he means business."

Then she stops, hesitating, and they all stand up straighter. Hetty doesn't hesitate or second guess her words with this halted cadence. Ever. Callen's unease grows, though he keeps his face clear of anything but professional interest and the increasing effects of his coffee in energizing him up to normal speed. Kensi has stopped moving altogether, cup paused halfway to her lips.

Sam finally asks for them. "Hetty, what did he do?"

Eric answers, swivelling the tablet screen to show the face of young girl, maybe sixteen years old. "Torales kidnapped Rhea Carson, the American ambassador's daughter and good friend of the current governor in that area. She works part time in his administration for extra credit."

It's clearly a ransom photo, Rhea's tearstained face overexposed by a flash camera in a dark cement room, huddled up on the floor, still in her pyjama pants and tank top, hands and mouth duct taped with more layers than are probably needed for such a short, skinny teenager. An ugly mushroom cloud bruise puffs the skin over her left cheek. In the corner, almost out of frame but not quite, is the gun butt of an M16 rifle.

A unison whisper of swearing and mutters and exclamations of dismay plumes around the empty room. Rescuing government leaders is one thing. But kids are another matter altogether and Sam's face turns stony. No one is sleepy now.

Callen's eyes whip to Hetty. "Not to sound callous, but why us? What does this have to do with NCIS?"

"Ah. There's the rub." Hetty is holding a cup too, but hers carries the whiff of something much stronger than coffee. She uses it to gesture to her chest. "Well, to put it simply—no other agency will do it."

They all stare at her.

Deeks steps up to the plate again. "Excuse me, am I hearing this right? There are no other American operatives willing to rescue the American ambassador's daughter from a known homicidal insurgent? What's up with that?"

Hetty says nothing, but somehow that is far more grating than if she'd spoken or yelled or done anything other than that tired, sad smile. Sam sets his coffee down on the desk in a messy rush, probably because he'd crush it otherwise; his fists are tight at his sides. Callen looks at Hetty and sighs too, seeing the tormented pain behind her otherwise stoic face. He knows the look well, after years of seeing it in the office doorway.

"What's the catch?" he asks.

"Ambassador Carson reached out, but the CIA and joint chiefs feel it's a fool's errand to try and get Rhea back," Hetty explains. "They banned any military or navy involvement to attempt otherwise. All branches have been ordered to stand down. Whatever happens is up to negotiations now, they feel."

Deeks snaps off a rude word and everyone just murmurs their agreement. He's their mouthpiece and right now he's singing truth, however much their government leaders don't want to hear it.

"You can't negotiate with a man like Torales," says Eric, quiet.

"No." Sam rubs his chin. "No, you can't."

Kensi cants her head in interest. "So I was right. This is a rogue type of mission."

"Not at all," says Hetty, surprising them a second time.

Sam's face is a jettied whirlwind now. "Hetty, that means we've been ordered to stand down too. Any direct involvement in rescuing Rhea would be treason."

Hetty takes a swig of her not-coffee and waggles a finger once she swallows. "Yes, but we're not technically navy at all, are we? We're naval investigative services. Though we serve the military, our little slice of the government pie is not mandated by any kind of elected ranking."

Eric squints. "What does that mean?"

"It means a colonel or general, anyone promoted by the military, can't come in here and order you to do something," says Callen. "Only the secretary of the Navy can, and even then, often a civilian review board is tasked with oversight of her actions."

"Precisely." Hetty's smile dims, and her eyes again rake around the circle. "I got the call personally from Jerome Carson. He's…an old friend from when we worked together in Vietnam. We are going to simply investigate the situation. If we happen to be in the area with an opportunity to get Rhea safely out, then we'd be negligent not to. Or at least that's the official version should any superiors find out."

If Deeks is the filter free voice of what they're all feeling, then Callen is the team's realist—and he knows he has to ask the questions they won't, or perhaps ones they haven't even thought of yet.

"Hetty…" But he doesn't want to ask it, suddenly, despite years of working these kinds of cases. "Hetty, how much are they asking for? To get Rhea back?"

The director's eyes dim too, a little more defeated than they should be. "Nothing. This isn't a ransom-based kidnapping at all."

Shock blossoms over Kensi's face. "Then what does Torales want?"

"For the current governor to give up his bureau and install Torales' regime as the new ruler."

Sam paces away from the circle and back, accepting Kensi's shoulder pat in silence when he walks back. Callen, too, feels the crushing weight of what's just been handed to them. Impossible odds are an understatement. It feels much like the mission to Mexico—and if that's their best case scenario, then Callen knows they'll have to pull a proverbial rabbit out of a hat for the rescue to work at all.

"I can't ask you to do this." Hetty's voice wavers ever so slightly on the last word and she clears her throat.

"Sure you can." Deeks offers a wink, then a wan smile which brings Hetty's back to her face. "That's why you called the best, right?"

Snorting, Kensi whacks his bicep and then squeezes it. "We're in, Hetty. We'll get Rhea Carson back."

Though Kensi and Deeks are seasoned agents, who have lived through unspeakable horrors and survived, they still have a measure of hope and optimism, an unsullied view of their abilities, Callen can't manage. That he'll never be able to manage, no matter how many years go by or how many happy endings they add to their poverty-stricken account. Neither can Sam, who catches Callen's eye again and asks a question with pursed lips. Callen frowns, brows knit.

"Leaving a child behind is wrong…my conscience won't allow it, not if we can help. I'm in," says Sam, watching Callen deliberate. "But only if he is."

And with that, everyone turns to Callen.

The faces of these beloved people, his bothers and sister, his family, who he has bled for and who have given pints of blood for him in return, every speck of it melts away until the only thing Callen feels is a heartbeat in his chest…

It's against his arm too—for it is not his heartbeat at all.

Sam.

Callen knows he is leaving Anna behind, still trying to get her bearings after being declared a free woman, but he has his own conscience to serve—the only reason for it existing at all being the reason he'll never leave its instigator behind. Sam magnetized Callen's soul to give his own moral compass direction, and because of that he refuses to let Sam run into danger without him there to guard his back.

Callen looks straight at Sam, then Hetty. "Let's do this."

~OL~

'Sweet dreams though the guns are booming.'

The quote, from a book in high school English Callen never even bothered to finish, flitters around his thoughts in shiny copper fragments. Like someone blew up a fountain full of coins and down they come. Scarlet and rusty brown catch the light, new and old. Pennies of forgot dreams without value to buy any set piece from them. Make a wish…

He is here and he is nowhere and he is standing on a beach full of white sand. Not just…not just very yellow or bleached sand—but white. Perfect, snowy, and warm between his bare toes.

Callen floats, but his dreams aren't so sweet and the guns have long since stopped booming.

Blood dots the sand, the ache in his empty hand, with the only working heart in the land—

Sweet dreams…ah, sweet dreams…

And G Callen is alone.

~OL~

It's one of those things you don't tell people, especially not your partner before life and death missions in the unsanctioned warzone of terrorist run Taiwan, but Callen's mind tunnel focuses sometimes. Not in a dangerous way, like a civilian having a gun pointed at them and then drawing a blank on the attacker's face when giving a statement later; not even in a whimsical, dreamer way. This habit doesn't impede his job by overriding his mind, a backseat passenger to his consciousness.

But Callen has an almost primal tether to Sam after all these years.

It acts up even when they're not physically in the same room, sensations narrowing down to their common denominator, parsecs of time compacted into singular images: the flash of Kensi's hair in the moonlight, Deeks waving two fingers to signal the all clear at the military compound gate, the dancer-like way Sam snaps a man's neck, lowering him softly to the ground, Deeks' wedding ring bulging under his black glove, a brilliant shard of glinting alabaster when Kensi bares her teeth in frustration at having to quietly knock a man unconscious, Sam's flared nostrils when he turns back from scouting ahead and is enraged by whatever he sees.

Then he ducks into another room.

Callen takes his first real, sharp breath since they parachuted from the stealth plane twenty minutes ago. Running to Torales' seaside fortress happened underwater. All the sensations bleed together now, syrupy paint with too much linseed oil added, in a way that forces pigments to mix and mingle and seethe and—

"G? Do you copy?"

Callen nods without missing a beat. "Copy, Sam."

In lifting up his rifle scope, he sees the green and white night vision forms of his team. There's a fourth person in the melee besides himself and the unconscious or dead guards.

"We've got her," Kensi confirms, also in a whisper so soft it sounds like static.

'We' means she and Sam, while Callen watches the hallway and Deeks stands at their rear guard with such a feral and protective expression Callen almost doesn't recognize him. The night is peaceful, aside from the crash of ocean waves outside, buffeting the eastern walls of the compound. Wind aids their entry into Torales' stronghold and masks the sound of their footfalls.

This is an off night for Torales, one of the rare moments when he must feel smug and comfortable over being in possession of the upper hand if he's willing to drop his alertness. It is…it strange to Callen, however, the more he thinks about it, that Rhea should be kept on the main floor of the stone fortress, barely four hallways in. This isn't wise security protocol even for someone new at this, a category Tuong Torales certainly doesn't fall under. Not with all the people he's massacred so far alone.

Rhea is—mercifully, in some ways—unconscious when Sam carries her out in a bridal hold, though whether from shock, injury, or hunger remains unclear. It's too dark to see her in any detail and Callen's night vision scope is of no help in scanning for anything wrong. Even gushing blood wounds tend to blend with the rest of the green and heat signature white in most cases. Kensi follows at Sam's rear, rifle raised to protect from behind.

When Sam gets within arm's reach, Callen reaches out and touches his shoulder. His fingers knead past Kevlar into Sam's shirt underneath.

Sam nods in response to the unspoken query. "She's alive, G."

"Time to head to the extraction point," Callen whispers to Deeks through the comm. link, who is farthest away by the southern entrance to the hallway and therefore probably can't see much more of what's going on than shadows. "Exfil will only be here for another hour."

"Copy." Deeks adds another micro memory to the pile of them clamoring around in Callen's head—just a gentle flick of eyelashes that snare meager light from arrowslit windows high overhead in miasmic bronze shards. "No activity from outside or the entrance."

"We're clear," Kensi confirms, where she faces the belly of the beast, in the opposite direction.

And then the air goes suddenly quiet.

This is not to say that it hasn't been hushed from the moment the quartet set foot on hostile territory, of course, with it being one in the morning. The guard rotation is in lax posture around the side gate, there's a lack of barking, lamps off in upper apartment floors, ocean waves lapping at the walls of what was once a historic castle with gentle rhythms. The compound is accompanied by all the signature soundtrack markings of a quiet evening.

But even wind has died now, making Sam's boots across the dusty floor the loudest sound.

The paint smears into an ugly, mud-ridden soup of not-colours that leech at Callen's thoughts. He halts, trying to make sense of this canvas set out in the rain. There is only time for one more snap of his mind's camera:

Sam's eyes whip around to rest on Callen's face, wide enough that the whites are showing.

Callen's stomach wrenches.

"Kensi, we have to—"

And then real orange filigree gets added to this ruined painting, so dazzling that all four are instantly blinded. Voices erupt in a hidden rafter by the windows.

Callen never hears the first shot, not when it cracks like superheated flint through his arm and lights up the world in a bright flash—but there's no missing the second.