Professional Liar

Summary: Why exactly does Kensi hate being a "professional liar"? Thought of this while watching Brimstone, and adding in the extra fodder The Bank Job gave me. Originally a oneshot, but decided to make it a 2-parter with a hint of Nate/Kensi.

At the bottom of Kensi's box, below the things that carried relatively normal childhood memories, like blue ribbons and costumes, was a grimy baseball with half the stitching torn out, and dirty little fingerprints still layered across its face, like it hadn't been touched in years. She sighed, falling back in her chair, wondering why on earth she'd kept the thing anyway.

"Hey Kensi! Go stand over there and throw it. It'll go really high, like on TV!", Jack Connors, the base commander's youngest son, shouted, tossing the baseball to his newest friend. The Blyes had gotten here less than a couple of weeks ago, but he liked Kensi good enough. Not like that, but in the way that they both liked the same flavor of ice cream.

"Okay!", she giggled, winding up for a good pitch, her eyes meeting Jack's the second before she let the ball go. The post-game analyzers or whatever they were on TV always made eye contact sound important, so she guessed they maybe had something right.

Jack sent the ball flying over the yard, past a tiny playground, and over a small row of poorly maintained bushes, which closed off the yard from the commander's home.

"See, that was just like the-" Jack was suddenly cut off by the telltale sign of shattering glass.

"Shit!", he shouted.

"That's a bad word.", Kensi felt obliged to tell him. "Wait....wow, you're gonna die, Jake. You hit your house.", she added, standing on the tips of her toes to survey the damage done to the base commander's living room window. According to her father and an assortment of other marines, Jake's dad had blood cooler than Canada in winter and had been genetically altered to become the perfect marine by a bunch of eggheads working in the White House basement. Not that it scared Kensi...that much.

"I know. Aw, man! Well, my dad's at some bar somewhere and um, my mom's shopping, so I guess if I go inside and put the ball away, we could just tell them I was um, with you and some other kid must've done it. We could say that it was Private Geiger's kid. Y'know, the fat guy that stole the Halloween candy out of the hall?"

"I think I just wanna tell your dad. And get it over with."

"No way! Here-", Jake paused to dig in the pockets of his shorts, and came up with five dollars and two sticks of gum. "That's all yours. Just don't say anything."

He poured the bills and candy into her hands, with a tiny smile. Kensi grinned back. You usually didn't get stuff just for a little lie, and she didn't get much of her own money, or anything else that wasn't "necessary" for that matter. Maybe if she kept saving up spare dollars, she could buy a nice car or at least a real baseball bat, not the kiddie plastic ones.

She unwrapped a stick of gum and stuck it in her mouth. It was still a lie, sure, but it didn't seem quite that bad.

"Carla, you hear about Connors' place?", Kensi's dad said with a small chuckle.

"What now, he keeps a ferret in his toilet? Honestly.", her mother joked, spooning more soup into Kensi's bowl. They were having a nice, quiet, rare dinner together, with the last of the sunset filtering in through the open kitchen window.

"Wouldn't surprise me. Nah, some kids broke his window. I remember pulling the stuff as a kid, so me and the guys thought it was pretty funny. Of course, Connors comes raging in, knowing him, he'll have the MP's and NCIS on this place by tomorrow. Guy just doesn't know when to back down.", he laughed.

Kensi's spoon dropped with a small splash in her bowl.

"NCIS?", she gulped. She'd heard about them, the Navy's special cops, but when Kensi thought of cops, she always thought of gangster movies and back alleys in New York. Cops were for serious stuff, like bank robberies and killing people. Breaking a window couldn't be that bad, right?

"He's probably gonna try to say vandalism or property damage. Baby girl, don't worry about it.", her father reassured.

"One of your friends didn't do this, right, Kensi?", her mom asked, as though she was catching on to what was right at the tip of her daughter's tongue.

Kensi shook her head. "Nope. But I feel bad for Jack, because it probably gets cold at night, and they can't close the window.", she told them, playing dumb and making sure she kept her eyes on the wall, or the table, of her food. Lying didn't work unless your eyes could lie, and even though she'd practiced in the mirror, Kensi wasn't very good.

"Poor kid.", Kensi's dad agreed, with a knowing glance across the table at his wife.

Closer to bedtime, Kensi was getting less and less nervous with each tick the second had made on her clock. Her parents hadn't pressed, and the only out-of-place thing that had happened so far that night was a phone call. Tomorrow, she and Jack would be at school and even if NCIS did come by, they wouldn't get arrested. With a smile, she shut of the lights and yelled Good Nights down the hallway. Jack's money and the remaining gum was shoved under her mattress, safe from anyone who came by her room.

Just as she was genuinely drifting off, she felt her father's weight at the foot of her bed, his hand gently trying to shake her awake.

"Dad?", Kensi muttered.

"Yeah, kiddo. Come on, wake up okay?", he said softly, pulling on her arm.

"Are we moving again?"

"No. Just, hey Kensi, who do you think broke Connors' window?"

She shrugged, relieved that in the dark, nobody could see her eyes or tell she was lying. She remembered what Jack had told her, to say that it was Private Geiger's kid.

"Maybe it was that kid that stole the candy out of the hall on Halloween."

"Hm, Didn't know Private Geiger had a daughter, Kensi. Least Connors' wife said on the phone she saw Jack and a girl playing ball on her way home."

With that, she knew she was caught. Kensi tugged on her pajama sleeves, involuntarily hanging her head.

"Jack was the one that hit the window and he paid me five dollars to say it was Private Geiger's kid!", she pleaded, hoping she wouldn't be sent to jail by Connors' dreaded NCIS agents.

"So you did this because Jack paid you? You lied about breaking the base commander's window because you were paid?", her father said in a low voice, getting angrier by the word.

Kensi nodded, her eyes brimming with silent tears. She didn't care if she was the worst liar on the planet, she just wished she'd left Jack's stupid money with him.

"Did Connors fire you? Did we get kicked off the base?", she blurted, suddenly more worried about her mom and baby brother than she was about herself.

Her father didn't seem to notice. "If someone put a gun in your hands and told you to shoot somebody for money, would you do it? Huh, kiddo, would you just blow the guy's head off?"

"N-no"

"You sure about-", he reached for her arm, then suddenly paused. Looking from Kensi, back around the around the room, he shook his head with a whooshing sigh.

"Ah, dammit. Baby Girl, listen, okay? Don't do this again. Don't lie to get yourself something, or to save your butt, got it? There's no honor in it.", he said wearily, like the wise old men on cartoons.

"Okay."

He tucked her back in, breathing heavy and slow. Once Kensi was back in the realm of almost-but-not-quite sleep, a question came to mind.

"Dad?", she whispered, half surprised he was still perched at the foot of her bed.

"Yeah?"

"But that's what you do. People give you a gun and you...shoot people and people like Jack's dad blow people up and you guys...get money for it and Sarah's dad's in Special Ops...they lie a lot. So why's that okay?", she asked, yawning between sentences.

Her dad sighed, not quite knowing what to answer. Thankfully, his daughter had drifted off before he had to.

"You just have to do what's right, baby girl.", he whispered, watching the pale outline of his fingers brushing cheek, wishing the blood on his hands never had to touch her.

Kensi let the ball drop from he hand, back into the box. Jack had given it back to her the next day at school, trying to talk through his split lip, pretending their lie had worked. The ball landed with a hard metal clink, piquing Kensi's curiosity. She dug through the boxes contents again, until her fingers met with the rounded edges of a Sherriff's badge. Slowly, she pulled it out, biting her bottom lip to keep the next wave of tears from coming.

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