'Waking with eyes closed from technicolour dreams,
Crystal kaleidoscopes were singing blue in green…
I was shown a few things I'd been getting wrong—
She told me I'm a good man and have been all along.'

"Figment of Your Mind" ~ Bruno Major

~OL~

Hands.

Hands smother him.

Not just hands, but fingers and nails, bobbins winding him with their plastic over his face. Cinched tight by thread and wheel. Hands that won't stop pinching, grasping, shoving, swiping, piercing, adjusting, pulling, pulling, pulling, pullingpullingpulling

"Agent Callen?"

But not the right hands. Not the ones that Callen has charted to the point he can decipher them in his sleep.

WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP.

Twirling wings…a window above Kensi's face…

"Get me a defib!"

"What," Kensi protests. "You want to do it here?"

"Do we have any other choice?"

"How far is—"

"Blood transfusion—"

"Is there enough time? Can we make it to the ship's OR in time?"

Where is Sam?

"Probably not…but we owe it to them to try."

~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 forgotten dreams without value to buy any set piece from them.

He is here and he is nowhere and he is standing on a beach full of…

Red sand?

Callen looks down and the red gushes from him, from arteries let loose to sunlight. It waterfalls down his face, his chest, warm and steaming along the tracks of his shins.

That doesn't seem right, his panic stirring afresh. Where did Kensi go? Why is the sun so quiet? Would she really leave him alone?

Sam?

But no one answers. His dreams aren't so sweet and the guns have long since stopped booming.

"You with me? It would be a jerk move of you to die now after we came all this way."

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

"Get me an emergency shot of epinephrine!"

Sweet dreams…ah, sweet dreams…

Sam? Where are you? Talk to me!

SAM!

G Callen is alone.

~OL~

"We need another IV over here! Now!"

"Why is the big one fighting us?"

An angry sigh. "I don't know."

Sam? Sam, please.

The insistent fingers and their grip are gone, and this feels far worse. He is alone. Always alone in this casket of loss, outfitted just for him and padded to prevent any escape. It is quiet here, so quiet it rakes the inside of his skin in brackish stripes.

Th-thump…th-thump…th-thump…

Booming, those are the guns booming.

"Agent Callen? Can you hear me?"

Th-thump…th-thump…th—

"His heart stopped! We're losing him!"

~OL~

If someone were to hand-write a list of every single memory that formed in one instant, so outlandish no one would ever believe it—Kensi Blye would easily have over a dozen pages to her name.

She always shudders to think what Hetty's must be like, those are you serious, are you actually for real? experiences and witnessed moments, stolen by the eye's camera whether one likes it or not. Her friendship with Frank Sinatra comes to mind…

This is a moment that Kensi would very much love to never remember again.

Her presence alone is one never ending breach of protocol. Just to stay on the medivac helicopter required her to grab a black ops sergeant by his chin and shake it, spitting like an alley cat and furious at the very idea that they would go investigate the yellow dinghy without her.

Hetty's pull on the decision hadn't hurt.

Now there was a phone call that will go down in Navy legend.

They assured this feral agent that it was a million-to-one longshot and Kensi shouldn't get her hopes up, but she had convinced them to let her ride along anyway.

Somehow—somehow there they were.

Exactly where the scientific readings said they would be. Sam and Callen curled up together on a battered dinghy, so far gone they didn't even hear the helicopter hover overhead or a rope ladder drop.

Taking Callen's face in her hand, right as he uttered that one aching word and flatlined, will go down in the 'worst memories of my life' category.

Kensi lost sight of the boys and her husband once they made an emergency landing on the American aircraft carrier currently stationed off the coast of Hong Kong.

And now…and now two hours later she's out of bed, throbbing in so many places that her body is one giant klaxon of pain—

But snarling at any nurses who dare approach her. Shattered hand cradled in a sling against her chest, covered in second degree burns all down her side and face, Kensi bares her teeth until the press of people part.

A menagerie of splints in strange shapes hold her finger joints together, pitiful reconstructions of bone alignment until the swelling goes down enough for surgery. Her disconnected joins swim in a soup of inflamed tissue.

Kensi is more animal than human right now. Though she's aware enough to recognize this, she doesn't care.

She doesn't care that she wasn't supposed to be on a secret mission to terrorist-controlled Taiwan just like she doesn't care that she it wasn't protocol to be on the medivac helo while injured, or to be on the carrier, or to be out of bed.

She doesn't care that this is a restricted ICU wing.

Sitting idly by while her family suffers is unfathomable.

Kensi's not sure she cares about anything anymore. Nothing but the figure currently huddled up on the floor down the hall.

One brave nurse tries to intercept. "Agent Blye—"

"Ayygh!"

Again, Kensi forgoes words for a harsh roar. Without even glancing at the nurse, she holds up a hand to silence her and marches down the hallway as fast as injuries will allow. Marines jump out of the way at Kensi's blazing eyes and taught jaw.

The source of her urgency is a crowd in the ICU's large reception room, all squatted down. They talk over each other, arguing about cc levels for a sedative injection.

"Hey!" Kensi uses her first actual word since waking and is gratified by the sight of eight plus medical experts jumping. "Get back, all of you. Make a hole."

It hurts her face to talk. Local anaesthetic, that they gave her on the helicopter, has long since worn off, though the IV drip she tore out of her arm five minutes ago and its steady supply of morphine starts to kick in. Its icy effects reduce some of the tooth-cracking tension along her neck.

Kensi bodily shoves an ER surgeon out of the way and he skitters.

"Agent Blye—"

"You shouldn't be out of bed—"

"Hematoma—"

"Can we get some privacy?" she asks over top of her doctor, who is winded from running down the hall when he found his patient gone.

"Actually, no." Kensi's doctor, a young Japanese man, frowns when he eyes lines of pain on Kensi's forehead and the way her splinted hand shakes. "Your wounds aside, he needs to be taken in for immediate surgery if we're to save his leg."

"I know, just…" Kensi rolls her jaw once, and the sting feels good. A tiny semblance of control in this night terror that refuses to be over. "Just let me talk to him."

The doctor ponders that for a few moments longer than Kensi is comfortable with, but eventually he nods. "Alright, guys. Break it up. Let's give the agents some space—and get a psychologist on standby."

At last, the remaining doctors and marines part, standing from their crouch. The crowd fades into the background.

And there, in all his bleeding glory, is Sam Hanna. Plastic dinner knife in hand.

How he managed to filch it off one of the staff while concussed and wavering with blood loss, Kensi has no idea. He's too far gone to really use it, slumped against the wall, IV line dragging from his arm like a leash, shard of bone splinted and wrapped but still weeping blood everywhere, eyes feral just like hers. A savage creature of savage rage.

Crimson pools onto the tile. The droplets are silent while they fall, the loudest sound Sam's uneven breathing.

It flips a toggle inside Kensi and her shoulders slump. The primal, granite cast of her face morphs back into something human.

She sits cross legged in front of Sam, her bare toe just shy of touching his.

"Hey, big guy. We're okay. I'm here, it's just Kensi. Just you and me."

The blue scrubs on them both are too small and too short, so she gets a bird's eye view of Sam's infected leg. Kensi grimaces, knowing that according to all textbook definitions, he shouldn't be conscious right now. The wound puffs with insidious black lines.

Sam knows what's going on, not dissociating like the staff seem to believe. His eyes lock on Kensi with devastating awareness.

But he reaches one hand up to clutch at his chest and looks shocked to find nothing there.

To find Callen's hand gone. Navy medics had to pry his fingers off one at a time.

This is the moment Kensi has been waiting for, the reason she broke every protocol in the book by barrelling down the hallway while still a critical patient herself. This is her cue to say something comforting. She wants to reassure Sam that they're all alive—for now—and it's going to be okay so long as they're together.

Kensi is the heart-guardian of this team. Watching from a high vantage if they need to let their guard down.

It is her job to remind the boys that they're allowed to fall apart, to block out the world when it gets too much. Just like it's Marty's to be a mouthpiece and Callen's to face the gritty realities so they don't have to. Just like it is Sam's to protect what they love.

But something snuffs out in Sam's gaze, something she's never seen before…

"He." Sam kneads at his chest. "He left me."

…And Kensi simply hides her face in her hands. A puppet snipped of its strings.

She can't cry, hasn't cried since this all started save when they found the dinghy, and she doesn't now.

Instead, a split screen horror movie, Kensi's body begins to shake. She wishes, desperately, that there were tears after all. Her chest piston fires once. Twice, three times. It releases a wretched, bottom of the earth sob that isn't human either.

On the fourth, a broad hand appears, bloody, swallowing hers in a trembling grip. She keeps it close to her face and uses his knuckles to wipe a hair out of her eyes. Sam smells like salt water, underscored by that metallic tang of blood.

She and Sam are unable to speak for a long time.

Not don't want to or are comfortable enough with each other to be silent, though both are also true—but completely and utterly wrecked of speech. There are no words for this kind of grief.

Sam's heartbeat is too fast, and he's going to need surgery within the hour to ensure he doesn't lose his leg from the knee down…yet this too Kensi pushes aside.

She doesn't care. Why can't the world see that?

Leaning so far over her ribs protest, Kensi presses her forehead to Sam's fingers. They unfurl for a moment to run between the bridge of her nose and down her mouth, careful not to touch the burns along her forehead.

It is only with this gentle caress that Kensi finally knows she's safe.

They are experienced agents, all of them, even Deeks. They have been held hostage and shot, nearly died more times than Kensi can count. That would be a list.

This prisoner of war experience wasn't even particularly grisly, threat wise; nobody tried to harm them in unsavory ways. They were captives for just over a day. The torture was minimal compared to other cases.

But like Sam's eyes, something new has plaited between all four of their bodies. This time was different. Vastly different.

This time Kensi's ability to compartmentalize is obliterated, crushed into a million microscopic fragments. She feels like she's been blown apart and glued back together by a child.

That's not far from the truth.

She knows what a psychologist will call this when they inevitably have to face the music of what happened in that fortress. The word lurks under every mandatory evaluation and on Hetty's face when she watches the team go for a drink together after a tough case—

'Codependence.'

Maybe that word drags them into trouble more times than it's helped but then again, Kensi doesn't care. She serves her conscience and this team-family first.

Sam looses a sob of his own. "They tore me away from him after he flatlined again. I want to see him."

Kensi squeezes his hand. So that's what the yelling and alarms were about. "You tried to pull a jailbreak, huh?"

Sam sways in place and drops the knife. There's a nasty word for this too, one EMTs love so much.

Shock.

"I need to be there, Kens. I need to…know that he's…"

Kensi turns to the doctor where he kneels a few feet behind, his eyes suspiciously shiny. Her voice comes out harder than a millstone. "You kept them apart? After what they've been through?"

The doctor's downturned mouth is solemn. "I'll remedy that shortly, if…when Callen stabilizes. I apologize, Agent Hanna."

Sam doesn't hear him either, though his grip on Kensi is so constricted now that her fingers lose sensation. He looks through Kensi for a moment.

Then, suddenly, right in the face. "You saved our lives. Are you okay?"

Kensi's lips quiver for a moment. She stills them, refusing to let her mind wander to her last sight of Marty. There will be stories to swap later, what really happened in that compound, but right now her urgency to see Callen matches Sam's. If he's even alive. "I'm better off than you three, that's for sure."

This truth seems to get everyone moving, even Sam. He can't stand on his own, though he shies away from a burly nurse's touch. That's new. Kensi blinks at the standoffish behaviour and takes his elbow instead.

It's pitiful, the blind leading the blind, but between Kensi and a female orderly that he responds to with less guarded behaviour, they get Sam into a wheelchair.

When he finally releases her good hand, it's like being electrocuted. Like losing them both all over again.

Kensi inhales a breath that lifts her stomach and counts backwards from thirty, until she's positive she won't break down. The nurse just takes one look at her and gets another wheelchair.

"I'm fine," Kensi grinds out.

"Sit down, ma'am, or I'll push you in."

Kensi doesn't argue a second time.

In an oddly quiet procession, the two agents are wheeled to the manual elevator and up three floors towards a surgical suite. A large window looks over the operating room, where Callen is being kept alive by a ventilator, continuous blood transfusion, and a whirlwind of doctors.

He's been turned on his side in an unnatural position for the emergency surgery, to avoid aggravating the infected wounds along his torso or the bullet currently being fished out of his back. It takes three OR attendants just to hold him in place, a delicate balance even if they weren't fighting for his life.

"His brain activity was off the charts, before we anaesthetized him," the doctor informs them, quiet.

Sam turns to him. "Meaning?"

"Meaning he was in distress and aware of his surroundings more than we expected."

Kensi and Sam don't ask the doctor for details, about either this concerning statement or the surgery, and he doesn't offer.

Callen faces away from the window, but a camera records on the opposite side of the suite. They watch a TV mounted in the corner, being fed its footage in real time. Callen's face, though sedated, comforts Kensi.

The tiny viewing room is dark, like a theatre, and for this Kensi is grateful. She finally stops playing watchdog over her boys.

"You're here." It seems to hit Sam just now, even though he rode in the medivac helo with her and was mostly conscious for it, even though they just sat on a hospital floor falling apart together.

He stares at Kensi like he's never seen her before. His pupils are blown wide, too dilated even for this dim room, concussed to high hell like the rest of them. "You made it! They didn't shoot you…"

And this time Sam is the one bereft of conscious thought, shaking while Kensi rubs his back.

"No," she whispers. Low and soft like a prayer. "No, they didn't."

"I thought I was the only one left. I can't be the only one left. I can't. I thought…"

"I'm here." Kensi tilts towards Sam, propped up by the arm of the chair, and rests her forehead on his big shoulder. "We're all together, Sam."

Together. Here. Unabandoned, no team member forsaken.

She doesn't say alive, for she can't promise that. Not for any of them—she is fully aware that if Callen dies on this table, so will Sam.

Her stomach turns as forceps begin their dig into Callen's spine. Purple veins snake away from the wound, a mauve ring around one side of the hole.

"He flatlined." Sam heaves out a splatter of a breath. "Three times, Kens—three times."

It should be strange to see Sam unravel this way, disoriented and delirious and panicking with all the finite precision of a matador cape, but it's not. He looks on the outside the way Kensi feels inside her chest.

If any of them ever deserved to lose their cool, it's now.

Kensi strokes Sam's chest in a slow circle, a futile attempt to calm him down. "I know. Sam, hey, I know. I was there too."

"He died."

"Sam—"

"He was legally dead." Sam pounds on his good knee, the doc rushing to intercept. "He might have died not knowing how much I…thinking I didn't want him anymore."

The doctor is a twig of a man compared to Sam's bear-like body. This doesn't stop him from pulling on the fist. "Easy, Agent Hanna. Are you ready to be prepped for surgery now?"

Sam doesn't answer, the fight leeched out of him. He slumps in the chair and Kensi may not know what happened on that dinghy or what they talked about in Callen's final moments of consciousness—but here, from what she can see of the anguish in Sam's eyes…she knows they left something behind on it.

"He knows. Hey, Sam—Callen knows. He'll always trust in how much you care about each other."

Sam's fingers curl into a dead spider shape. Kensi flounders, sensing that she's not getting through to him.

And when a heart monitor suddenly shrieks a flat note, too long, Kensi finally cries.

For a fourth time, doctors defib Callen's failing body. This particular round of horror is apparently from a seizure that's causing him to asphyxiate on his own blood.

Hot tears dribble over her eyes, watching doctors suction gunky brown flakes from inside Callen's lungs. Kensi quivers all over, so hard it rattles the wheelchair. She can't feel her fingers or toes, can't see beyond the world's vertigo spin.

"H'me?" Callen asked Kensi when she landed on the dinghy floor, and she gave him an honest answer. Incredulous that he could even muster that one word. It was the truth to say they were going home, for home is each other.

But this is a poison tipped sword. For if Callen goes, none of them will be able to find home again.

"Please," Kensi breathes, not even sure who she's talking to. "Please…"

As for Sam?

They have to sedate Sam after all. Doctors hear his screams all the way down the hall.

~OL~

"…And I mean hey, man, look. I'm just saying. It's dumb, right?"

A shuffle of waxy paper.

"You're a cultured guy, but you know nothing about a good V8 engine. Well…neither do I. But that's beside the point."

The squeal of a wooden chair leg on linoleum.

"You've got your horsepower or you've got your engine boosters but neither one is enough to win the race on its own, you know what I—"

"What are you doing out of bed again?"

Papers snap shut. "Uh…"

"Come on."

"I don't even like street racing," the warm voice whispers. "But Kens has got me reading this stuff and I have to keep up the charade that I know what I'm talking about. There's nothing else to do in ICU anyway, am I right? You have to be at least as bored as me. If you wake up, I'm thinking we can do some sick wheelchair races."

Beeping. Lots of beeping. It's slow, like the flash of a far away shoreline.

"I hope you're feeling better in there, brother."

~OL~

"Agent Callen…I know you don't know me. But I just want to thank you. Your team is the reason I'm still alive and going home with Dad. I wouldn't have survived without you."

~OL~

"Were you rambling to him about cars again?"

"Some of this stuff is…interesting."

"Uh-huh. Nice try, Deeks."

"Worth a shot."

"Unbelievable—just for that I'm going to braid what hair you have left into a knot."

A laughing gasp. "You wouldn't dare. Not once you get a look at this face!"

"It is pretty cute. Though you're not supposed to be talking yet until docs take the stitches out."

"When has that ever stopped me before?"

The rumble of a massive engine. A balmy wind across his cheek before a flower touches it. "You gotta wake up or my husband is going to drive me insane before this flight touches down in LA."

Silence.

"You…you just have to wake up, alright?"

~OL~

"I'm sorry, son…I'm…"

More warmth, but this is different, sharp and full of salty regret, precious diamond fragments cascading across his cheek. The woman's voice catches. "I'm so sorry."

~OL~

Something wet, falling on the wrinkly canvas that coats his body.

"I'm here. I'm here and I'm not leaving. Not ever again, G. Some things are going to change starting today."

That voice. He knows that voice, has known it since the day he got a new name.

The world floats in soupy waves, cradling his body. That same name takes a long minute to register, a hummingbird that flits out of reach. Coy. Elusive. A familiar feeling, really.

Then—ah! G Callen. That's who he is.

Callen can't open his eyes, but he breathes against plastic over his face in a pant.

"G? Hey, G! Are you with me? You finally waking up in there to match those crazy EEG readings?"

Yes. What do you think I'm trying to do?

"S…Sam."

That one word, three letters and a single syllable, costs Callen a fortune of energy to push out. He's tired already. It's worth it in exchange for a presence drawing closer.

More wet. More stuttered laughter.

More hands, but these Callen knows better than a lullaby. They slide gently under his shoulder and the back of his head to pull him close to a burly chest. He is rocked from side to side.

Kensi told the truth after all—home. I am home.

Callen can't smell Sam, not around the oxygen mask, yet the hand around his neck kneads.

In, out. In, out…

"I'm here, G."

This time, so is Callen.

~OL~

Sweet dreams, ah…these are sweet dreams.

And G Callen is not alone.

~OL~

' I am no longer a shuddering speck of existence, alone in the darkness—I belong to them and they to me; we all share the same fear and the same life…I could bury my face in them, in these voices, these words that have saved me and will stand by me.'