AN: Have fun with this chapter! *Contains a fair bit of torture* :)


It was dark, cold and musty. When Deeks came around, his head throbbed, pounding in time with his pulse. Damn. Why is it always the head?

"Hey, hey! Loverboy is awake!" a man's voice bellowed to some other person and Deeks' head pounded harder. He was so out of it that he didn't immediately recognize the voice, but when he squinted against a bright light that suddenly flooded the room he was able to make out none other than a smirking Granger.

"Hello, Sir Deeks. How's the head?" he asked kindly, too kindly.

"It's great. Concussions are the best."

"Well good!" Owen exclaimed, ignoring Deeks' obvious sarcasm. "We wouldn't want you passing out on us. We have a lot to discuss." Granger motioned to the man that he'd been talking to earlier, and a figure moved from the shadows. If Deeks had been more aware he would've suspected Jack in the first place, but everything had been (and still was) groggy. Oddly enough the first thing Deeks focused on wasn't Jack at all- it was the knife he held in his hand.

"I'm guessing that's not a butter knife?" Deeks joked halfheartedly, bracing himself. He was unable to contain his scream of agony as Jack plunged the knife into his thigh, and he found himself wishing that he was still unconscious.


"I don't know how this could've happened! We were so careful! The only ones we told were Nell, Hetty and you!" Kensi was fuming, pacing the length of her chamber with Callen sitting in the corner, Nell on her bed. Never in their lives had they seen Kensi so worked up. Over a man, nonetheless.

"Are you sure, Kens? I mean, someone could've overheard. Maybe it was Jack or Granger themselves," Nell suggested, her voice soft as she bit her lip, totally out of her element as she watched her usually collected friend on the verge of a panic attack.

Kensi sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands, and Callen came to sit beside her on the side Nell wasn't occupying. Her hand was already on her friend's back, and she and G held their breathes as they tried to decipher if she would get up and punch a hole in the wall or go off the deep end and break some of Hetty's priceless china. When she started crying, they both would've preferred one of the destructive alternatives as opposed to their normally toneless friend falling into a fit of hysterics.

When G placed his arm around a sobbing Kensi's shoulder, she leaned into his embrace, tears relentless and plentiful. "I... it's all my f..fault. I was the one wh..who suggested tha..that we should... elope," she cried out, stumbling over her words. They sat there for a few minutes and Kensi tried to calm herself down, furiously wiping away her tears. Callen looked at her, rubbing her shoulder blade.

"You really love him, don't you?"

She nodded numbly in response, another lump forming in her throat. She just wanted Deeks back.

"Kens, I promise that I will do whatever it takes to find Deeks for you."

"Promise?"

"Of course. You're my little sister. You'd do the same for me." Kensi allowed herself to hug him for a moment longer, positive that that had been the first time he'd ever referred to the two of them as honest to God siblings.

"Thank you, G."


Deeks slumped over, the pain and exhaustion radiating through his body.

"Get up, Loverboy. We still have more to do," Jack growled, winding him with what seemed like the millionth punch to his gut. He wanted to vomit.

"No, no Jack. Let him get his rest. After all, we don't want to have to dispose of a dead body, do we? Leverage-less, the princess would be all over our asses," Granger snickered as he cleaned a bloody knife, probably thinking about a distraught Kensi on a rampage.

"Why would she? After what I'll do to her, she won't bother thinking about this scumbag. Probably won't be able to think about much of anything." Jack smiled, steel-toed boot finding Deeks' side.

He wanted to stand up. He wanted to kill Jack. Slowly. "Don't you dare touch her..." Deeks tried to snarl, but it came out as more of a wheeze. He hardly even felt the punch to his jaw that knocked him cold, mind still trained on Kensi. All he could think about was making sure that she was okay, that Jack didn't lay his hands on her. He couldn't stop picturing her smile, her laugh... everything, being washed away by the pain that would accompany a marriage to Jack, both in the physical and emotional nature.

He had to get out of there. Not for himself, though. For her.


"G?" Commander Sam Hanna groaned after he locked the door behind the prince. "What the hell, man? It's two in the mornin'."

"It's... it's Kensi," he said, words coming out in short gasps due to his labored breath. He'd literally sprinted the whole trip to the commander's house. "Did you know she can... she can cry? Like... like real tears?"

"What the hell, man?" Sam repeated, watching as Callen plopped down on his couch like he owned the place.

"You know Deeks?" G asked after he'd all but collapsed onto the seat, lounging back with his feet on Sam's coffee table.

"Get your nasty shoes off the table before Michelle comes out here and kicks you out," Sam demanded, rolling his eyes. "I swear, you act like you're royalty or something..."

G rolled his eyes, asking again, "Deeks?"

"Yeah, I know him. Can't say I like him too much."

"Well, you're just going to love this then."

"Somethin' tells me I'm gonna be very close to killing you by daybreak."

"Remember that favor you owe me after covering you in that battle awhile back?"

"Yeah..." Sam drawled, cautious.

"I'm about to cash it in."


"Hey gorgeous." Kensi spun around wildly, meeting Jack's bold gaze. She ignored him, walking away from the direction in which the moon was shining bright through the panes of the window she was gazing out of and towards the door to shut it in his face when Jack grabbed her hand.

"Watcha doing there?" he slurred, and Kensi realized that he was absolutely hammered.

"Get away from me, you bastardized, drunken, sorry excuse for a man." She wrenched her arm out of his grip only for him to pick her up and deadbolt the door.

"What the hell, Jack?! Let go of me, you idiotic..." Kensi thrashed wildly in his arms, pounding his back with as much force as she could muster before he dropped her onto the bed clumsily.

"Ready for some fun, Princess?" He leaned down towards her face in hopes of capturing her lips with his, but was met with a headbutt. As he stumbled away, Kensi hopped off the bed and kneed him in the groin, hard. Hard enough to give her a stomach ache, and she was a girl.

"Don't you dare try doing anything to me. Or I'll..."

"You'll what? Tell Hetty? There's nothing she or you can do to me. Only thing you'll be doing is making me a very happy man. Night after night. Just trying to give you a taste of what's to come," he interrupted, leering, trying yet again to kiss her. Kensi opened her door and shoved him out, dragging him by his shirt and all but throwing him across the threshold.

"Get away from me," she hissed before slamming the door and locking it, all the while trying to calm down her racing heart and convince herself that the chill bumps rising on her skin weren't a sign of weakness.


When Deeks woke up, the blood running out of the two stab wounds had dried considerably and his body ached from the punches and lashes. He sighed, thinking that he was alone and none of his torturers had stayed, but he was wrong.

"Welcome back to the living, Deeks," Jack slurred. Damn it. He's drunk.

"I never asked you," Jack began, adding a punch to Deeks' mouth mid-question for good measure. "Was it worth it?" Another punch accompanied that. "Did it make you feel good? Stealing another man's woman?" Deeks stopped trying to keep count of the punches that followed Jack's last question after he lost feeling in his abdomen. For a full-blown minute, he couldn't inhale.

"She.. was.." Deeks forced out, gasping as he spit out blood near Jack's shoes. "Never.. your woman. Never was.. and never will." If looks could kill.

"She will be. Tomorrow, the beloved princess will become nothing more than a slave. Even the peasants will pity her." His laugh was drunken and stupid, and his punches were unfiltered and harsh.

When it became obvious that Deeks wasn't going to get a minute's peace until Jack passed out or was ushered away to prepare for the wedding, he closed his eyes and saw hers staring back at him. He was back in that shed with her, kissing the tip of her nose, stoking her dark hair, watching her dance to music only she could hear. He was holding her hand on the beach, picking up a starfish to throw into the ocean so that it wouldn't dry up on the sand and die. He was a kid, looking out at the ocean for the first time, instantly mesmerized, instantly in love. His mouth was on Kensi's, and his hands were sliding from her jaw to her waist. She was stealing bites of his food even though she had a full plate of exactly the same thing in front of her. She was telling him that she loved him, over and over again. His mom was rocking him to sleep. Kensi's heart was beating underneath his ear as he held her impossibly close, content never to let go of her. Kensi was in his arms, smiling.

Smiling.

Jack didn't understand how somebody could possibly grin while they're foot was being broken, bone by bone, phalanx by phalanx, but for a split second Deeks was, despite everything. Because Jack wasn't going to win. Not really. Even if Deeks died tied to that chair and, God forbid, Kensi was forced to marry him, it didn't matter in the long run. There was nothing that would ever come between them, even the end of one of their lives. It was more than 'til death do them part, it was eternal. Their love was everlasting, omnipresent, untouchable.

So he smiled again before allowing himself to slip.