A/N: So, I have deep emotional issues. I know I'm an angst writer, but there is no excuse for this. I have no excuse. It mostly sprung from watching the phone scene from tonight's episode. For some reason, I imagined Kensi calling Deeks just to hear his voice. Honestly, I'm evil. Evil plot bunny hopes you like this, though.
Songs used are:
Without You -RENT
Fall For You - Secondhand Serenade
Permanent - David Cook
Papa, Can You Hear Me? - Barbra Streisand
Hello - Evanescence
Somewhere - Westside Story
Obligatory tissue warning.
(*)
God, our heavenly father. Oh God, and my father, who is also in heaven.
"Gone surfing!"
Kensi was prepared. Eventualities, possibilities, no, they were real. They were present, and they accepted them as not a possibility, but a likely outcome.
Even he did, and he wasn't even an agent.
So she was prepared.
She just thought she'd get more than two years.
(*)
The irony makes her laugh sometimes. It wasn't a stakeout, no long chase sequence right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Not a shootout in the most literal sense of the term. It wasn't even a fucking collar.
Just a rogue suspect with bad (good) aim. And it wasn't a haze of bullets (weren't you listening? She said it wasn't a shootout).
Callen and Sam were even on their way. They would have gotten there earlier, but they blew a tire earlier in the day.
Remove the hubcap. 2. Loosen the lug nuts. 3. Jack the car off the ground. 4. Remove lug nuts and tire. 5. Secure new tire. 6. Line up the lug nuts and tighten 7. Lower the car to the ground.
(*)
By all means, he –they – shouldn't have thought this would be anything more than a rogue, trigger-happy suspect.
Shouldn't have thought? He was nothing more than a rogue, trigger-happy suspect. Just a speck of plankton, scraped off the foot of the earth.
Not that it did a lot of good, anyway.
(*)
Will you feel like you're all alone, when no one's there to hold your hand?
(*)
When Kensi was sixteen, she did her laundry by herself for the first time. Her father was dead, she was living with some ancient great-aunt of hers, and suddenly she was thrust into a life where she had only herself to rely on.
Good practice.
She had one pair of jeans, one pair of cargo pants, three shirts and one sweater. Three weeks into the first semester at her new school, she had worn every possible combination.
The first time she heard "Little Orphan Blye" was also the first time she discovered a rip right in the knee of her jeans. Small, at first. Barely noticeable, but soon the absence would grow and take over one of her only sets of pants. Till it consumed everything.
When she asked Aunt Rebekah if she could procure any new clothes, the old woman simply sniffed, handed her some brightly colored undergarments and an obscenely huge shirt, and shoved her in the direction of the washing machine. Kensi managed to stuff everything in the washer and turn it to the appropriate setting by herself, something she was irrationally proud of. She sat by the machine for 45 minutes, before its quiet beep alerted her that it was finished.
She lifted the lid with a small twinge of excitement, and her mouth fell open. Stunned.
The entire contents of the basin were stained a horrible red, and on top of the matted pile of Kensi's entire wardrobe sat a single red sock.
She plunged her hands into the basin, grabbing a random shirt and scrubbing it furiously in the sink, but the red took over everything. Kensi scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed as if she was only making it worse.
The red trickled into every garment she owned, tainting everything with the most horrible shade of crimson.
(*)
He was wearing a white shirt. Deeks, she means. She still finds that vaguely ironic. A signal of defeat. Of resignation.
Then again, maybe it was wholly appropriate.
Funny how quickly one tiny piece of metal can bathe an entire life in another color.
(*)
She guesses she held on. Her hands slammed him into the pavement, compressing his chest so hard she imagined it was cutting off his oxygen supply.
(ha)
In retrospect, it probably happened quickly.
It probably only felt like an eternity, as she watched with horror knawing a hole in her stomach.
The puddle of red grew under him. It tainted the edges of his hair.
He would have hated that.
She remembers that best.
"Gone surfing!"
(*)
She wonders idly sometimes how normal people deal with things like this. She supposes they go to a shrink, or talk to a friend, or cry in someone's arms, or some shit like that.
She's glad she isn't like that.
Because she's prepared. She can deal.
She's dealing.
(*)
I may have failed, but I have loved you from the start.
(*)
He told her he hated Titanic.
She threated to kick him out of his own house (she never would. They both know it.).
They had fallen asleep on the couch too many times, Kensi's hand slowly stroking Monty's furry head. That last time, Deeks insisted she take the bed, claiming that he could honestly say he took Kensi Blye to bed. She had slapped him.
She hadn't meant it.
At 3:34 she had woken up to the sound of the TV, and figured Deeks had fallen asleep on the couch. She slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed and tiptoed out to turn the TV off.
She hadn't rounded the corner before her eyes fell on Deeks, sitting ramrod straight, staring intently at Kate Winslet as she and DiCaprio held onto each other desperately.
You jump, I jump, right?
She never mentions it. She wonders why now.
(*)
Her apartment doesn't get any messier. She doesn't figure it would, she's still never there. Now she throws herself into the job with a fervor that she knows the guys see as almost frightening.
It is frightening. She doesn't care.
Because at the end of the day, no matter how many she catches, someone's Deeks
dies.
Has no one told you she's not breathing….
She manages to save one victim of a chest shooting.
She holds her hands to the man's chest, stemming the flow of blood. One of her fingers catches in the pool of red liquid, and she stares at it with the dispassionate curiosity of scientist, but she doesn't break. Just keeps pressing, and hears the ambulance just in time.
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
The man lives another two years, to be knifed to death in the back of some seedy bar.
Kensi decides the universe has a really fucked up sense of balance.
(*)
Nate reappears four months after it happens.
Every day he tries to talk to her about "what she's going through."
Every day she deflects and tells him to go talk to Callen and Sam, they're the ones who look like someone killed their dog (she never realizes how appropriate the choice of words is), they're the ones "going through something."
The eighteenth day, he follows her out the back alley to her car, insisting she needs to talk to someone about him.
She pushes him into the row of garbage bags and never looks back. It was a soft impact. He'll be fine.
"Gone surfing!"
(*)
Monty lives with her now.
Sometimes his brown eyes stare balefully up at her, just stare at her for long minutes, and she lowers her forehead to his shaggy head, and lets out a strangled whisper.
"I know, boy. I know. Me too."
(*)
She remembers the ride to the hospital being painfully slow.
She remembers the intersection of Flower Street and Ruth Street, because she's always liked how rustic those names sound together.
She doesn't remember the doctor stressing that he never made it off the table.
After, she goes home and calmly cleans her father's sniper rifle.
Laisse-moi partir avec toi….
Her mother comes to the funeral. Kensi tells her that she chose to abandon her for fifteen years. She was a notch on the abandonment bedpost.
She remembers telling her mother to go to hell.
She remembers staring at Deeks' image on the funeral program and wondering why everyone looked like they had the right to be crying over Deeks.
And at home, she plays the message again. Deeks' voice chirps into her ear, bright as always.
"Gone surfing."
She allows herself to think he has.
(*)
She imagined the child would be named Annabelle Rose. She never really knew why. It was an eventuality.
A possibility.
But she had his eyes.
Kensi always liked that part.
(*)
The day it happened, the message was the first thing she listened to.
Every time since then, when her fingers have dialed the number out of instinct, she doesn't bother to stop herself.
"Gone surfing!"
Rose: I don't know the steps!
Jack: Neither do I! Just go with it.
She dials it at least six times a day, now.
There's no other way to hear him.
She's starting to forget.
She's starting to forget his smell, the way his hair always stuck up in a particular place and the way she'd smooth it down with a roll of her eyes.
She's starting to forget his uniquely awkward running style, and the endless reality shows he forced her to watch with him.
The bed is starting to lose the indent on the left side.
She wishes she could forget his importance.
(*)
The stars gleam, the poets dream…
(*)
"S'okay, Fern. Had – had a good run."
Her head shakes furiously. She's always been good at denial.
"Run implies its imminent end. Doesn't apply."
He coughs and that goddamn red taints the edge of his mouth.
He stares at her with such intensity and with a great effort; he reaches up and wraps a loose curl around his finger.
"It was a really long day," he quotes. "But we made it."
Her eyes probably well at that. Or they would, if Kensi Blye wasn't made of stone.
Deeks smiles, and she can't figure out why.
"We made it, Kens," he whispers. "You and me."
"Forever," she hears herself whispering, and still can't figure out why.
Deeks smiles, and she knows how much effort it takes.
"Yeah," he breathes. "Forever."
And his eyes flutter shut.
She never needs to take his pulse. She never takes her hands off his chest.
(*)
Three years later, almost to the day, it pays off.
She's not a stupid, emotional mess. She never was. She never rushed into the path of a gun. She performed her duties with the utmost care and precision.
She just stopped being careful.
The bullet doesn't even hurt.
She thinks idly that Sam's daughter Jessa loves Monty and smiles.
It's over before she realizes it how easy it is.
And he's the first thing she sees.
Somewhere, we'll find a new way of living
(*)
Jack: it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think. At least, not about anything but the pain. Which is why I'm not looking forward to jumping in there after you
(*)