A/N: Second to last chapter (plus epilogue) y'all :)) I can't believe I can actually say that...

Anyway, I played a bit with perspectives in this one because I thought it would be interesting to see the team through the eyes of an outsider - turns out I don't like it that much... well, maybe you do, if not: I'll never do it again :P

Thanks to kensi54382 for beta-reading!

Enjoy!


It seemed like it was days ago since they all had gathered in the emergency room until they finally heard steps coming their way. Not slow, scared steps from other family members having to fear for a beloved, but strong and confident steps that could only be the ones of a doctor. Six heads jerked up, coffee and tea cups standing long forgotten on the floor, and the doctor who entered the waiting area, found himself confronted with twelve eyes full of worry.

"Family of Martin Deeks?" he asked and glanced at the stack of paper in his hands. There was exactly one name noted and, judging by the note next to it, the noted person wasn't even a next of kin. So, why were there sitting six people in his emergency room, all looking like they'd kill him, if he was to say something they didn't like?

The smallest one of the three women stood and looked pointedly at him through her glasses. She was easily fifteen years older than the rest of them, but still more intimidating than the muscle man next to her.

"That would be us," the woman said and locked her hands behind her back.

"All of you? I may only speak to the next of kin and there is only one name noted in the file. Henrietta Lange?"

"Yes, that would be me. I can assure you that I would pass everything you say on to the other agents. We are the only family Mr Deeks has left," she retorted and got him to forget about the hospital rules. It would probably be better if he just told them what he knew. When he wanted to start, he registered what exactly had been said – agents. That would explain why they were looking at him like that, his patient was a detective and then this would be his boss and his team, or whatever they called it.

"Very well. Detective Deeks has numerous cuts on his back, some of them deep enough to have stitches, the rest should heal perfectly fine just with creams and bandages. The gunshot wound in his knee seems to be okay; I talked to Dr. Edwards so we can adjust pain medication and everything else, so that won't be a problem. The skin at his knuckles has opened at several places but that will be forgotten in a matter of days, as it is only the skin and the bones haven't been broken. What had us concerned was the damage done to his lungs, thanks to one of the broken ribs, but we were able to surgically repair the tissue. The other three broken ribs are no reason to be concerned, the detective just has to take it easy for some weeks until they have healed, there's nothing we can do to fasten that process. We stitched the cut on his temple and he got away with a slight concussion. All in all, he eventually will be fit as a fiddle, although it will take some time," the doctor ended his report and looked through his notes one last time. The detective had sustained a lot of injuries and it wasn't easy to keep count of everything. His eyes focused on one little, hastily written note that had him looking up the agents again, "Before you may see him, I have to warn you. Especially his chest and parts of his back are massively bruised, but there are no internal injuries."

He could practically feel the relief that washed over the agents and heard the collective breath being released.

"When can we see him?" the brunette asked, the relief most visible on her face. Maybe she was the girlfriend of the detective?

"Right now. He is already in his room; a nurse will walk you there. Five minutes is all I can give you, he needs his rest," the doctor explained and took a deep breath before he spoke up again, "Listen, I don't know what happened to him, and I probably don't want to, but I do know that those are not normal injuries that can happen on duty. We have psychologists that you all can talk to, if necessary."

"We appreciate that, doctor, but it would be best of one of us would be allowed to spend the night with him. We know how to handle him not to mention the fact that Mr Deeks wouldn't say a word to your shrinks," the tiny woman – Henrietta – said and gave him that look again that he didn't dare to argue.

"All right. I will get the nurse that will show you the room of Detective Deeks."


Kensi closed her eyes for a moment and tried to keep her relief at bay. Deeks would be okay. He would be well again. No reason to burst into tears; it only meant that she would have to listen a while longer to his rambling than she thought. Kensi willed the moisture in her eyes away and then looked into the faces of her friends and colleagues.

"Miss Blye you will stay the night with your partner, I think that will be the best solution," Hetty said and looked at her agent. Kensi could swear that she just winked. She nodded as a response, not really trusting her voice.

Eric and Nell were standing next to each other, still holding hands, relief showing openly on their faces. Kensi couldn't even imagine how hard it had to be for the two of them to only be able to communicate with the rest of the team via microphones and cameras, never able to physically help out if it got dangerous. They could do nothing but watch them and hope that they would all come back in one piece. Maybe this emotional straining situation was the reason for their strong friendship – if it even was only friendship anymore. Kensi glanced again at the locked hands and made a mental note to ask Nell about it, sometime in a quiet minute, maybe on one of their ladies' nights. She had to smile again and looked into the faces of Callen and Sam, both wearing their nothing-can-impress-me mask, but Kensi knew how to read them. Deeks, he always joked to deal with a tense situation, Sam and Callen on the other hand just stuffed their feelings away when they couldn't openly deal with them.

Callen returned her glance and a smile played around the corners of his lips. "I told you so, Kensi."

Before she was able to say something in return, a nurse walked up to them and Kensi was more than surprised to recognize Nurse Jane.

"Agents," she greeted the little group with a little nod, then turned to Kensi and asked with a chuckle, "Is the detective going to stay this time as long as he should?"

"Well, I'll do my best to guarantee that. And if I have to cuff him to the bed, I don't care," Kensi replied laughing and hoped to comfort Jane a bit, behind whose little joke stood fear for Deeks, fear that some bad guys were after him once again.

"I'm glad to hear that. He is asking for you, so I'd say I'll show you his room."


Deeks was lying in a different room than last time, but it was still a private room, and he was thankful for that. On one hand, he didn't have the all too curious glances from roommates and on the other hand he had time for himself, time to think.

When he had woken up from the anaesthesia and had looked into the face of his doctor, he had had enough thoughts storming into his mind to fill several books. The last thing he remembered was that his whole body was burning with pain and that his colleagues had been there, surrounding him. Easy enough to understand that his first thought was that he didn't want to wake up with that pain. Especially not wanting to wake up with the feeling of sucking air in but not getting enough oxygen from it. That was something he had liked to not experience, thank you very much. Scratch that - the whole last week was something he had liked to not experience. Relieved that he didn't feel pain at the moment and he could breathe properly, Deeks had succumbed to the welcoming darkness once again.


When he woke the next time, he was lying in said private room, just like before hooked up to countless machines, a nurse next to him.

"I'd say that it's nice to see you again, Mr Deeks, but I truly would have liked to never see you again in a hospital," Nurse Jane greeted him, smiling down.

Nurse Jane. He was in a hospital – again. Had he been awake before? God, how he hated being sedated. Every time he woke up from anaesthesia it felt like someone had juggled with his thoughts, his memories – like someone had tried to reboot him, but failed. This time it was no different, Deeks needed a minute to order the chaos in his mind. Right, he'd been shot in the knee then had been abducted and tortured. At least he thought so. It was like every single one of his memories was from a dream – hard to decide if they were real or not. Assuming hehadbeen tortured, that the memory was real, then he also had fallen apart in Kensi's garden and Sam and Callen –

"Where are they?" Deeks croaked out and frowned when he heard his voice.

Jane gave him a glass of water and looked at him knowingly.

"Your team? They're all sitting in the waiting area. We had to bring you to your room, after all, and we thought it would be better for you to wake up without six people in your room. I don't know how much you remember, but you were in a bad shape – you need to rest."

Bad shape?They must have pumped him full of the finest painkiller; he didn't feel as much as a slight throbbing anywhere. At least his memory of being tortured was real then, right? That would explain his injuries. God, he reallyhated anaesthesia!

Jane seemed to notice his slightly questioning expression and looked at him, biting her lip. "I think it would be best if your colleagues inform you about what happened."

Deeks nodded and tried to order his thoughts just a bit more. It couldn't be that hard to remember something that happened maybe five hours ago! Completely lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice how Jane left the room and by that, left him alone. Only when he wanted to run his hands through his hair out of sheer frustration with himself, he noticed the bandages around the knuckles.

He was hitting Kensi's punching bag. Over and over again. All the anger that he wasn't able to defend himself, that it was always was him who got beat up, that he didn't even know what the men of the cartel had been asking for, all of this anger, he let out on the bag in front of him. One right uppercut for every whiplash.

Deeks forced himself from the flashback and tried to get his breathing back under control. That, he hadn't been prepared for. Normally, he could remember everything at once or the memories came back with time, slowly and almost unnoticed by him. What just had happened was close to being scary. To completely lose control over his body and being sucked into a memory was not a nice feeling. He just hoped that the rest of the hours he had lost did not come back like that. The few pictures of the torture, which were in his head, were enough – no reason to live through everything once again.


When Kensi stepped with the rest of the team into Deeks' room, she was startled by how bad he looked, although she had known what to expect. He was practically completely covered with bandages and bruises, and his facial expression didn't look much better than the rest of his body.

"Deeks?"

As soon as he heard Kensi's voice, his face lit up, a small smile playing on the corners of his lips and his blue eyes got a bit of their shine back.

"Kensi," he looked into her brown eyes, before he realized that the rest of the gang was also there. "Hey, guys."

The greeting came back five times, all of the concerned faces slowly turned into ones that showed relief that Deeks came out of the ordeal relatively unscathed. Sure, he looked bad, but it could have been much, much worse.

"How much do you remember?" Kensi asked in a low voice and sat down on the bed, right next to his lower leg.

The next minutes – or was it more than just a few minutes? – flew by Deeks. The team summarized the last days as best as they could, everything up to the second he had lost consciousness because of the lack of oxygen. Nobody knew exactly what had happened in the warehouse, as Wells' men kept their mouth shut and the agents just had some evidence that gave those parts of the puzzle, but not an overview of the events. The more Deeks got to know, the clearer got the memories of what had happened. He saw bits and pieces of memories over and over again every time the warehouse was mentioned and he had to pull himself together to not get lost in them.

Nell cleared her throat, her voice soft and concerned, "Deeks? Are you alright?"

The two of them were good friends and Deeks shouldn't be surprised that she was able to read him almost as good as Kensi could.

"Everything just because of a laptop I can't even remember…," he huffed as an answer and hoped to distract her with that.

Nell frowned but it was clear that he wouldn't answer her implied question as to what was really going on with him, at least not now. "Strange, how life sometimes goes."

"You're right with that, Miss Jones. It is indeed often strange, at times even stranger than it appears at first," Hetty spoke up and gave Deeks a look that underlined the ambiguity of her words. Okay, she had seen through him, too.

"Not the slightest bit strange however is the fact that Miss Blye will be staying with you tonight, Mr Deeks. That way you can escape the psychologists, at least for now."

Deeks' glance wandered between his colleagues, who were all chuckling, then to Kensi who was grinning, and then to Hetty who looked at him meaningfully.

"Thanks, I think," Deeks said and tried to keep a neutral face, but failed at the attempt.

Hetty nodded to him one last time before she left the room, the rest following one by one until he and Kensi were alone.

"So, you stay the night?" Deeks grinned and glanced at her.

"Yes, I will. So, you can stop right now at pretending you're alright and start telling me what's bugging you," Kensi replied still smiling, voice so sweet it was terrifying.

Deeks swallowed. There goes his plan to keep the flashbacks to himself.


A/N: Well, he's in trouble now, with Kensi hot on his heels :) Next chapter comes the fluff you've been so patiently waiting for... as a little heads up, the next chap is going to be quite short, but the epilogue will follow just a few days after it, not a whole week to make up for the lack of length :)

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