No one's careful all the time,
If you lose me, I'm gonna die.
"Oh, man, I hate this part," Marty said.
"It was inevitable," Hetty said. "Do you really think he'd get a happy ending?"
"Hetty," Marty said. "You gotta believe in happy endings. I know it's just a movie, but come on." It was his third night in the hospital. Getting shot was starting to hurt slightly less and the anticipation of Sam's idea of training in tradecraft was growing leaps and bounds. Like jumping over buildings or over planets kind of leaps and bounds. Still, tonight he had Jello and Hetty, watching Bourne Supremacy with him.
Hetty had come every night. He wondered if it was some sort of next of kin bonding. He'd take Hetty over anyone he was actually related to so he was totally fine with it. "I wish they had subtitles for the Russian," he said. "And the German and the French." He looked winsomely at Hetty. She smiled at him like she saw through his bullshit but she obliged. It was her default expression and why he loved her.
"Thank you," he said. Hetty not only translated, she pointed out the mistakes the actors made.
"He and Marie could have made it if not for the bad guys," Marty said.
"There are always bad guys," Hetty said. "And most of them think they're patriots."
"But love can survive," he said.
She was silent for a moment. "Possibly," she said. "I hope so."
"Are we getting dramatic? Or deep? I'm kinda opposed to that," Marty said.
"Are you? You started it, Detective." She smiled at him.
They talked about the movie. He wondered if she knew he'd slept with Kensi the one time. It was Hetty, of course she did. She'd never say anything.
"Which is when she told me about the guy," Marty says.
Sam says, "Did she call him the guy?"
"You know what? At first she did not mention his name. She was talking about truly evil people she had known -"
"Yeah, Hetty's probably got a really long list," Sam says.
"She talked about this one in particular, a CIA agent she'd known. When the Iron Curtain went down, he was personally disillusioned by it. He felt his job had been meaningless. Hetty said it very contemptuously," he says. "So this guy joined with some other assholes and started a shadow group with other CIA agents, MI-6, they were going to make money, destabilize the world, fuck boundaries, no loyalty. That was their big plan."
"You are not being very precise," Sam says.
"You are a hallucination," Marty says.
Sam huffs. "I am not."
"They had this plan. They invited Hetty to participate. She said yes. But she meant no, because she was a spy. Am I being precise enough for you?"
"Yes, thank you," Sam says. "Please continue."
"Of course Hetty took them down and one of them vowed to get her and her little dog, too. If Hetty had a little dog. Maybe she did." Sam looks bored. "His name is Nigel Tuffnell -"
"That's the guy from Spinal Tap."
"Yes, it is. Also, you are so a hallucination. No way Sam Hanna knows characters from Spinal Tap off the top of his head. Let's remember I've been physically and psychologically tortured for over a year, with an emphasis on psychological. His first name is Nigel. He liked to, he had this big personal vendetta against Hetty. He kidnapped three agents she was mentoring back in the 90s and very early outghies. He had this theory about training agents. Torture, physical, psychological, break them down to pieces so they're nothing and then rebuild as super crazy murderous motherfuckers."
"Which you think he did to you."
"I know he did to me. I saw him. I met him." Marty closes his eyes. "He asked me questions once. In the beginning. All about the family. He really wanted to know about my mom. To make me feel bad, I guess."
"Maybe it was something else," Sam says. "You know there's something wrong."
"You're a hallucination," he says.
"No, I'm not," Sam says. He leans in, looming over Marty. "I'm a dream, this is a dream and you need to wake up right now."
Marty rolls to the side, knife in hand and up as he opens his eyes. It's another homeless person slipping into his space. A high voice says "okay okay" and the person backs up at the sight of his knife.
Marty sits up and does his morning assessment. Still hungry, still slightly feverish and the smell and appearance of the two infected wounds on his calf look worse and worse. Everything else is the same, broken or scarred like it's been for the last two months. Nothing's incapacitating yet and he can still run, so that's a problem for the future.
It went like this: the physical torture first. Solitary confinement. Waterboarding. The usual experimental dentistry. Bones broken, not reset properly. No fun. Then he woke up in a mental hospital. A perfectly nice institution where he was told he was locked up for his own good. See, he had this delusion he was a lawyer, cop, spy named Marty Deeks. He wasn't. He was someone else who never graduated high school, who couldn't even surf. It made sense someone like that would want to be someone else. Marty wonders if the nice doctors and nurses even knew it was all a lie. He did actually graduate high school, college, law school, NCIS training classes like Sniper Urban Hostage Taking. Not that he didn't have his doubts some days. Then it was back to the physical torture where they all called him Martin. No one called him Martin. He didn't correct them.
The next time he was in a halfway house. He had a cousin visiting him all the time to tell him he was a loser. He could never be that person he was convinced he was. The cousin made sure he took his meds. One day Marty went out and took a bus at random, then another bus, then another. He walked one way then the other. He was in a real city, and they couldn't control all the internet ever. He googled himself and found his memorial page. He sent his letter to Kensi the next day.
Men in suits brought him to his "cousin's" apartment a week after his trip and shot his "cousin" in front of him.
They didn't go back to physical torture this time. They just imprisoned him in one of their training facilities.
Nigel himself came to the training facility. He had pictures of Kensi laughing, looking over her shoulder, her hair long and thick. She was definitely have a few great hair days in those pictures. She was standing with some guy who had Wall Street frat boy grown up hair and a nice suit. The guy looked at Kensi like she was the sun and moon. Which, Marty can admit, is how everyone should look at Kensi. "This," Nigel said, "is what your wife is doing now."
Marty moved the pics on the table. They were all cropped close, he couldn't see her body or his. Just shoulders and hair. "My widow. She thinks she's a widow. She should be happy. I'm glad she's happy."
He wondered if Kensi had gotten the letter when the pics were taken. Or if she'd gotten it later. Or if it had gone to the wrong address. Maybe he'd remembered wrong. He had every excuse for remembering wrong but he was sure he hadn't.
"Are you really happy?" Now that he thought about, it wasn't Nigel that time. Or there was another man who had the same pictures. He knew he was questioned more than once, taunted with the same damn pics. It was always nice to see Kensi.
"I am really happy for her. I mean, it kinda sucks. It's gonna throw a little wrench in my whole getting the fuck out of here and going home plan, but hey, I charmed her once. All the way into marrying me. I bet I can do it again."
"Do you think you're funny?"
"Yes, yes, I do. Why do people ask that question? Of course I think I'm funny. I'm making jokes and I don't think they're bad jokes."
He escaped two days later. He thinks he only killed three people.
He has a plan. He escaped with a plan and he is going to keep to his plan. He can't contact Kensi until he can do it in person. He doesn't believe any of the pictures Nigel and/or the other man showed him, but if Kensi has indeed moved on and found someone else that just means she didn't get his letter. Or by the time she got it, she found someone. Which is fine, because she thought he was dead. She should be happy. Once he gets back to her, they will work everything out.
But there's people watching her so he can't call her because they would know. Hopefully she's looking for him, stealthily, but if she's not, then she's safe. So he will get to California and back to LA and find her. Or whomever is still there. Then someone else can take over.
The merry band of Nigel not Tuffnell is after him, too. They're more up-to- date on Marty's current appearance. They're also very unhappy with him for escaping. Stealth, he thinks. Everything is stealth. He is stealth. Stealth is he. He blinks at his own thoughts, going in circles again.
The sun is coming up so he vacates his deserted house. He easily finds a line of his fellow travelers so at least he knows where today's breakfast is coming from. It's pretty good food, too. Even better, there's an older fellow offering barber services. He smiles as he sits down in the chair. "I can use some cleaning up," he says. Sometimes he does an accent for fun, but he's past that kind of work now. As long as he stays unmemorable, he thinks he's okay.
He's spent two months running. He's off the grid with his lack of ID, his shit appearance and his general slightly crazy demeanor. But he's made it this far, wherever he is.
The barber is a really nice guy, like most of the people he's met in the last two months who take time to help the homeless. At Marty's request he gives him a nice close shave. The barber manages to avoid nicking the scars Marty's acquired.
"Buzzcut," Marty says. "Like the good old days." When he worked with someone who had a buzzcut, he adds in his head. He hates pretending to be military.
"You look good," the barber said.
"You're a liar, but thank you," he says.
The barber asks for one favor. He says he asks everyone whose hair he cuts. "If you ever meet a man named Peter Carlson, with brown eyes, 6 feet tall, you tell him he come home anytime he wants."
Marty promises.