AN: I realize there are some jumping-around-in-time themes happening that might be confusing, so:
Callen and Sam on the dinghy = present daybr /
Anything with Torales and/or the fortress = pastbr /
Italics/book quotes = to be revealed...can't give everything away!
Thanks for reading along! Despite this mess of gourmet angst, it does get better by the end.
'The fighting is done and nobody's won
So now we're just laying here with steaming empty guns,
And half of my heart has always been yours
So now I'm just laying here in pieces on the floor.'
"Half-Hearted" ~ We Three
~OL~
Their yellow dinghy doesn't look so, well…yellow anymore.
Night falls by such agonizing pie slices that Callen almost flips the sun the bird. Almost, because he's out of fight and anger and insisting that things go off without a hitch just because he's had enough of FUBAR missions to last two lifetimes.
"Think we're near land?"
"No, G." A sigh. "By my calculations, we're somewhere in the dead zone of the North Pacific."
"M'kay," says Callen, like that's a normal sort of update to get from your partner.
It hits Callen right as that thought coalesces, with the same shattering fascination as putting murder suspect clues together—this never felt like a mission at all.
He's not quite sure why, but from the moment Hetty called them into the bullpen at that strange hour, none of them clocked in. Not mentally, not emotionally, not even professionally. Callen sat beside Sam on that stealth plane, across from Kensi and Deeks in the aisle, all of them too somber and keyed up to sleep…and it felt like a post mission decompression time. With the same sloppy vulnerability they experienced in Deeks' bar after closing hours, a little buzzed and voluble, admitting things they never would outside of this team, not even to their families.
Maybe my humanity really will be the death of me. Wouldn't that just be the way.
Callen doesn't mind the thought so much, and he wouldn't change one second of how he lived with this team. Not in exchange for the love he's known in return. It's all he's ever wanted and they handed it to him without provisos or conditions.
We love you, every action of every day said, just because you are you. You do not have to earn it.
Reality kicks him squarely in the teeth once more when the dinghy goes over a sharp bump and pain spikes along his back.
"Sam," he says. "Sam, come here."
Sam, of course, doesn't hear him or chooses to ignore him, in keeping with the pattern of the last three times Callen's said this.
His partner hustles around on one knee, the other stretched out before him and black with infection where another shard of bone threatens to peek out from the makeshift bandage again. Disjointed fingers play with a sewing needle and a Styrofoam cup of water.
Callen reaches out a drunken hand. "We don't have a magnet, Sam."
"Clasp," is all Sam says, pointing to the ration box.
Callen squints at the box's white front. It does indeed have magnetized clasps on either side.
Sam runs the needle over the magnet again and sets it in the water, on top of a piece of plastic acting as the leaf. "It won't seem to settle on North."
Stars begin to wink above them, more than Callen has ever seen in his life. He never knew the sky could hold so much colour, especially this far from light pollution. Flickers of white, sapphire, pink, and yellow play across the sky, as if someone set a prism to the cosmos to let the first of all light shine through in polychromatic fragments.
Callen treasures that he gets to own this one thing, if it's the last thing he does.
"I suppose we could just follow the constellations." Sam misinterprets Callen's awe of the overhead view. "But they're no good for navigation when the sun comes up."
Callen wishes he could see the stars up close, wishes for a lot of things. Even if a neon pathway was lit up for them back to Taiwan or some speck of an island, it wouldn't matter. Callen feels like he's failing at his job, saying what needs to be said so his team doesn't have to.
"Sam…" His lips tremble for a moment and it surprises him, such an out of the blue physical expression of emotion that he freezes. "We can't…you've gotta stop."
Sam bristles next to him, sloshing the cup. It smears the blood-soaked bottom of the dinghy even further. Callen would appreciate the irony of being marinated in his own sauce if he couldn't feel, with visceral clarity, every single laboured pump of his heart exit his body.
Each breath is audible now.
"Why are you talking like this, G? Come on, we've gotten out of worse." Sam sounds almost betrayed, and Callen feels a low sting of guilt.
"Please, Sam." He can't speak above a whisper now, not with the slushie slurp of his lungs. "Please come here."
They're pressed together, no personal space to speak of on the cramped float, but Callen trusts Sam to know what he means. He's not asking for physical proximity.
"I refuse to give up, G."
"I know you're not," Callen soothes. "Because there's nothing to give up."
"Kensi and Deeks will—"
Callen grits his teeth. "I know you know that Kensi and Deeks are—"
"Don't say it. Don't you even say it." Sam's eyes burn, more out of frustration than anger. He checks yet again through the supply kit and comes up empty in the hunt for a flare.
"Maybe I can make one," the former SEAL says. Again.
This time when Callen's lips tremble, he doesn't bother stilling them. Who else is going to see? Who else would care or judge him here, at the edge of the world?
Blood bubbles over his bottom teeth. "Sam, look at me."
Sam talks over him. "Assuming I can start a signal fire without destroying the dinghy, these granola bars should keep it going long enough for another boat to see."
"Sam?"
"If only we hadn't lost the oars. They were wood and fibreglass, perfect for a small fire."
"S…" Callen has to swallow and it tastes like metallic treacle. "Sam."
Sam roots through their rations pack for matches, though there have been none the last four times he inventoried. "You're lucky BUD/S covered this exact scenario—I'll get a signal fire started in no time. Besides, we're highlighter yellow, right? No air rescue is going to miss that."
"Come on, Sam—"
"I have to keep—"
"Sam."
The big man stops, swaying in place.
Callen snakes a hand around his shaky wrist. "Look at me. Please."
Sam doesn't, but he ceases his frantic motion.
"We can't just…" A full body shiver wracks through him, so violent that it almost dislodges Callen's grip. "G, I refuse to accept there's no getting out of this. It's not who I am."
"Sam." They are each other's back up, have been for almost fifteen years now. Callen's not going to fail Sam when he's needed most. So he says what needs to be said, the lost words haunting their thoughts. "Our lives ended the minute we hit open ocean. Kensi, Deeks, Rhea—they're all dead. It's over."
"Not for me, it's not. Not until there are no other options left."
Callen's breath hitches, because they reached that point hours ago. "It's over, Sam."
Sam punches the side of the dinghy, startling Callen. He jolts, wincing.
"I'm sorry!" It's impossible to really see each other amidst the pitch black out in the middle of nowhere, but Sam must hear his squelching gasp of breath. "I'm sorry, G. Hey, hey, just settle for a second, alright?"
He shifts around so that he's propped on one elbow next to Callen. There's a wet snick sound once his leg moves that almost makes Callen throw up, the dreaded crunch of Sam's bone rubbing against itself.
Sam goes still for a long minute and Callen wonders if he's finally passed out. Because Callen still has a loose hold of his partner's wrist, he can feel the second Sam's heart misses a beat or three and starts back up at a woozy rhythm.
They rarely fight for real, and certainly not when one or both of them are this far gone. It rattles Callen more than the numb sensation in his limbs.
Part of him appreciates the paradox, that he was once shot over half a dozen times and survived, but this time…this time two bullets, broken ribs, and subdermal hemorrhages are enough to kill him. This time he's drowning from the inside out. He wonders which will do him in first.
There's another trapeze moment, Sam's face heavy and sad. Callen looks up at him.
They've just had their bedtime ration of water but neither bothers to sleep. It's their third act, and somehow both Callen and Sam know that if they close their eyes, let their threaded pulses drop below a certain resting rate—there's no waking up.
Then Sam pitches forward, pressing his battered forehead to Callen's. It's warm—too warm, feverish, sweltering—and blissful against his chilled skin, because this is Sam and Sam means home, even in the farthest reaches of the ocean.
Callen breathes out, shaking, trying to recapture lost oxygen and express everything. All the stolen moments of fear and love and knowing that he belonged somewhere now, to these people, through the vein-to-vein contact and hold on Sam's arm.
He shakes so broadly and for so long that it sloughs off his tough, agent persona like a wet dog. His sense of self sufficiency. His strategic mind. His hope.
Sam leans back after a moment of just being close, in each other's air. "I'm not giving up, G."
"I know you won't."
Sam doesn't reply other than to carefully pat Callen's sternum, mindful of the long streaks of flayed skin running down his torso. Counterintuitive as it is, Callen is reassured by the broad heft of his hand, the burden of how different they are and the fact that at least, at the very least, he does not have to die alone.
He gazes up at stars, at this promise of silent witnesses to the world's petty toil. Torales seems so small all of a sudden. They all do. What are terrorists to stars, around for thousands of years and burning brighter than a human life?
Perhaps we are their stars, he thinks, recognizing his own delirium. He is not wrought with infection like Sam, but blood loss slowly siphons his ability to concentrate. They watch us rage and fall and be wished upon.
Off the dinghy's port side, there's a funny puff of air and then spray rains down in a fine mist. That's odd. The sky is perfectly clear at the moment, not a cloud in sight.
Sam stiffens. Gingerly, taking it by increments so as not to jar Callen, he sits up and lets out a soft cry.
"What?" Callen doesn't take his eyes off the bright Sirius star, partly because moving his spine is a nightmare. Salty droplets wet their faces. "What is it? Don't tell me we're about to be eaten by a shark."
In answer, a dark form glides over the Big Dipper with the outline of a long, half sweetheart shape. It's barely two arm lengths from their dinghy, a flipper the breadth of several football field goals brushing the bottom of it. Though Callen winces again while it coasts along his back, he can't stop his slack jawed wonder. It's fortunate enough that they weren't capsized or rolled over upon, let alone that they got to see it at all.
Then their night time visitor passes soundlessly back into the water, the breath from SUV-sized lungs spraying them again.
"No way," Callen breathes. He listens to the blue whale sing on its way back down. He almost says, Eric's not gonna believe this when I tell him. He'll flip out and pepper us with marine biology facts and…before he catches himself.
The sight of the whale fluke seems to distress Sam even more, somehow. He begins to tremor as well, his violent and small compared to Callen's. "If I wasn't sure before—now I know we're really far from land."
Callen says nothing, not because he's lost his breath or to save oxygen, but because he is tired of verbalizing things no one else will. He wishes Deeks was here, to say what they're thinking and maybe use a joke to wipe the mournful looks off their faces in the process.
"Do you think they suffered?" Callen asks.
Sam is utterly motionless for a beat. It's a suspension, just like the sun earlier that night, a hover of time.
Then he slides an arm under Callen's head, so that his neck is nestled in the crook of Sam's elbow. The lie falls from his mouth with tender words. "Of course not. Kensi probably fought to the end but they finished it quick, no question."
Callen is consoled, despite knowing better. "I miss them."
"Me too." They're rocking now, though Callen can't tell if it's Sam's body or the waves. "Me too, G."
Pat…pat…Callen hears his own blood, what's coming out of his nose and off the chest of what was once his stealth shirt, drip onto the rubber. He doesn't much notice or care, still hardly blinking while he stares up at the sky and listens to the low, barely-there whistle of blue whales miles below them.
Nothing makes sense and everything does, the passing of time and its effect upon them fracturing like a kaleidoscope in radiant Fibonacci fractals. One of the stars must be a planet, with the unusually bright, amber way it winks at Callen, and for some reason it makes his breath hitch again.
"G?" Sam hears the sound, instantly on alert. He places a hot hand against Callen's cheek. "G, stay with me."
Callen wonders if Torales ever takes time to look out his window at this same view, to appreciate that no matter how poor a person is, every human owns the night sky. He wonders about what Hetty will think when they don't return. He wonders how she'll explain the failed rescue to Ambassador Carson, the funeral he'll have to plan for a daughter even without her body.
He wonders if Kensi and Deeks held hands when they died.
Suddenly he cannot see the stars at all, blurring together in wefts of discoloured string.
"Come on, don't clock out on me now."
And Callen knows this is his cue to say something witty or comforting, to reassure Sam that he's not leaving him behind and never will, the very reason they're here in the first place.
But Callen feels the bread crumbs slip from his eyes, a river down crimson stained cheeks.
"Ssshhh," Sam hushes him. He wheezes through his own agony. "I've got you, G, I'm here."
"There was…" Callen's eyes, at last, clench shut. His throat aches. "There was a flower."
~OL~
Thirty hours earlier:
Torales' personal quarters don't look anything like your Hollywood version of a terrorist's base camp abode. There are no guns in crates with straw (why is it always straw?) or blood stains or the ghostly screams of past victims echoing from the corners.
In fact, when Callen is forced to kneel before the plush red armoire, he does so on an equally plush rug.
The armoire is very throne-like, however. Something that does fit with the dictator flavour Torales emotes with his proud stance and calm, calculating eyes where they rest on the blood dripping down Callen's shirt.
He woke alone in a cement cell, only to hear Sam and Kensi's voices already raging from somewhere down the hall. She swore a blue streak that made even Callen impressed and Sam babbled on and on in Mandarin…
He hadn't heard Deeks, but that didn't mean anything. Perhaps, Callen reasons, they are a distraction while Deeks works his squirrely magic to get them free. It wouldn't be the first time.
Their yells followed Callen's trek all the way into this room and he would be lying if the thought of them in pain while he hunches here in front of a dictator doesn't weaken his resolve not to reveal anything.
Blood loss toys with his sense of logic, apparently—Callen doesn't get the memo about Kensi and Sam's ire until Sam himself is also escorted into the room. And now he's swearing enough to rival Kensi. Two burly men hold him by the arms, a third with a rifle at Sam's back. It's a good thing too, since Sam's shoulders sag upon catching sight of Callen.
"Oh man." Sam switches to English. "I thought they'd killed you, G. We were demanding to see your body."
Callen blinks while they force Sam to his knees beside him. He looks unharmed, relatively speaking. Other than some bruises around Sam's face and neck, probably from the hallway ambush, he seems fine.
"I'm okay," Callen says under his breath.
Sam turns vicious eyes onto Torales, without one hint of fear or tactical reasoning. Callen is so shocked by this that for a minute he can't do anything but stare.
"His back is bleeding," Sam snaps. It's waspish, a heated razor of molten fury. "He needs better bandages than the weak job your boys did."
Callen glances again at the ACE bandage they secured around his right arm, where a through and through bullet perforated. There must be a matching one on his back, accounting for the bulk he feels. He'd taken the shoddy medical care as a comfort, that Torales needs him coherent and…not dead for whatever is coming next.
But his back…
Callen felt the shot to his spine in the way a glass pane feels the bite of a sandstorm, melting away the coating of his flesh, hitting the girder of his vertebrae. When he woke, he lifted his shirt to see no exit wound.
Not that he needed to. Every time he breathes, the hot pebble of the bullet lodged somewhere in his latissimus muscles tickles bone.
"Ah yes." Torales is unfazed by the harsh way Sam's words ring around the room. He leans forward, elbows on his knees so he's at eye level with Sam. It's the first time he's spoken, and his English is not as accented as expected. "Your friend here isn't dead, a small miracle really."
Then he turns the monitor lizard stare onto Callen, who hates this much more than being ignored. "That bullet is the only reason you're still alive."
Callen says it before Torales can, because that's his job and he wants to be on an even playing field for the upcoming unpleasantness. "It's slowed the bleeding. Plugging the hole."
"Very good. You have advanced first aid training." Torales maintains eye contact, a fact Callen does appreciate. "Yes, that second shot to you was an accident. I ordered my men to take you alive, otherwise this whole operation is a waste."
A fish of dread belly-ups in Callen's stomach. "Operation…you knew we were coming."
Torales sizes him up like a prized catch. "Funny how our hearts get us into traps, isn't it?"
Callen looks at Sam, only to see him still glaring at Torales. With his hands tied behind his back like Callen, they twitch in mortise shapes, as if he'd rather be strangling someone. His anger surprises Callen afresh and he nudges Sam subtly with his elbow.
"They dragged your body past our cell," says Sam under his breath. "Taunting us. They took photographs too."
Sam's choice of word—body, not just you—is as much of a dead giveaway as Sam's bloodshot rage. It's single minded, the surprising part, but his emotion is not.
Callen doesn't know what to say to reassure him: my back is agony, but at least I'm conscious now and got dragged the whole way here because my legs don't feel right? That's guaranteed to end in a blood bath more than it already probably will.
Callen assessed the room, since Sam seems incapable right now, but they're outnumber over three to one. While they've faced worse odds—they've never done so this injured.
"…A lot of people in my position go in guns blazing," says Torales, and Callen tunes back in only to realize the man has been soliloquy-rambling during their quick moment. "But a little research goes a long way and the world is none the wiser."
"Research?" Callen can't help but ask, to keep him talking. Sam nudges sharply in return. Callen ignores him.
Torales smiles and it's an instant douse of arctic water.
"I found out Jerome Carson used to work for the Vietnamese liberation force as well. A simple search, really, once I knew who to ask."
Vietnamese liberation force…Callen pauses over a laboured, shallow inhale to avoid pushing on the bullet where it throbs. Why does that sound familiar? His thoughts are a little soupy, his mind's camera blurring images together, and he can't hang on to the association.
Torales' next words are almost gentle. They sound so damask soft, in fact, that hairs flip up on the back of Callen's neck. "I knew she'd come, for his and his daughter's sake. That you'd all come."
Callen still doesn't understand, but Sam must. His body locks up, from his ears to his toes. Like Kensi, he bares his upper teeth for a moment. Callen wonders why his normally button-down partner isn't playing it close to the vest like they always do in these situations. He's better trained and this type of behaviour is rarely in the playbook.
The display of aggression only serves to widen Torales' smile. "Your friend is smarter than you."
It takes Callen a solid minute to understand that this rebuke is aimed at him and not Sam.
Torales turns his black eyes onto Callen. "He knows what I'm about to ask next."
It happens so fast that Callen doesn't even have time to see it—Torales slides an ivory handled pistol from under his shirt and whips it across Callen's face. Blood gushes out of his nose in dam-breaking squirts, warm and goopy. When the ringing in his ears fades, Callen spits out the blood between his teeth only to hear Sam raging. He sounds like an enraged bull, chest heaving.
After wiping it clean, Torales aims the gun at Callen's forehead. Not even two inches away.
"Tell me where I can find Henrietta Lange or he dies. And don't bother lying, as I'm already well aware that you are federal agents."
Not pulling any punches, then. Callen just blinks at the barrel, his eyes blank. This was never about Carson.
"Hey!" Sam snaps again. "Point it at me. I'm team leader. He doesn't know anything."
"That's why I am threatening him and not you." The words are factual, like a university lecture. Torales doesn't rise to the bait, though his eyes gleam with menace at Sam.
Callen's voice comes out equally blank, buffeted on the edges by a tight authority. "He's lying to protect me—I'm team lead on this mission and I report directly to Director Lange."
Torales cocks the gun, though he doesn't move it away from Callen. "A good choice, agent. You're going to make a phone call, asking her to come here."
Callen scowls at him, insides churning.
This, of all things, seems to surprise Torales. His head tilts to one side, lips parted and slack. "Are you really willing to risk your team on bravado?"
"We won't give anything, you bastard!" Sam tries to rise up on his knees. A guard pushes on his shoulder.
Torales is not just a megalomaniac like the Western papers portray him—he's a good judge of character too. He sits back at Sam's declaration, his eyes a lie detector needle.
"I believe you." With a flick of his hand and a nod, yet more guards descend to lift Callen under his arms. "But perhaps we can find a way to…loosen your tongue."
That beautiful, engraved gun barrel swings like a batter hitting a home run—straight into Callen's temple.
