ACHE
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warning: Major character death.
(4)
His heart still aches.
He really thought it would diminish over time. He lost count of the amount of people who assured him of that exact fact.
But no. It's still there, four years later. Regardless of any joy he feels, the dull ache in his chest remains, tainting every smile, every laugh.
They still look at him with sympathy in their eyes, the ones with all the advice, and he hates it.
They all told him to move on. It seems their supply of useless advice he will never follow is endless.
She wouldn't want this. You should move on. You can't live like this. She needs more from you. It will get better.
He thinks they're doing just fine. Well… They're doing their best.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, princess?" he turns to face his daughter, who beams at the moniker, and he smiles back.
"Do you think she knows we're here?" She asks, eyes wide with an innocence he would die to protect, as her dark hair tangles in the breeze.
"Yeah," he nods, staring down at the headstone. Tears pool in his eyes every time he sees it, and he's given up on trying to stop them. "I'm sure she does."
She clings to his leg, burying her face against the well-worn denim of his jeans, and his hand moves to stroke her hair reflexively.
"Don't cry, Daddy," she pleads, but her words have the opposite effect, as the tears spill down his cheeks silently.
It's been four years, and he knows the only reason he isn't currently lying in the ground beside her is the little girl grasping his leg.
Long dark hair and dark eyes; the mirror image or her mother. Sometimes it breaks his heart to look at her because all he can see is Kensi.
"Mommy won't want to see you cry," she says, and he lets out a laugh that sounds suspiciously like a sob.
"You're right," he agrees, reaching for his daughter, and lifting her into his arms.
For a girl that doesn't have a single memory of her mother, she knows her well.
"Uncle Sammy!" Her face lights up as she spots Sam over his shoulder, and he turns to see Sam approaching them before putting her down so she can run to greet him.
Sam grins as she throws herself into his arms, hugging him tight.
His grin falters when he looks up at Deeks, his smile suddenly sympathetic. Sam carries her in one arm, a bouquet of flowers in another, as he stands and moves towards Deeks, placing the flowers beside the gravestone carefully.
"We got mommy daisies," she rambles excitedly, oblivious to the two men who stand beside her with tears in their eyes. "Daisies are my favourite," she adds, and Sam nods.
"They're very pretty," Sam assures her and she grins proudly.
Sam places a reassuring hand on Deeks' shoulder and he ducks his head. Four years later; he isn't still supposed to feel like this.
Like half his soul is missing.
But then Emily giggles, and he feels that bittersweet tug that reminds him that he still has the other half.
oOoOo
He takes Emily to Julia's around noon, and he knows she was expecting him, despite the fact that he never mentioned it. They've done this for the past three years. Julia's the only other person who still has that same look in her eyes, as if she's too broken to repair, and his heart aches for her too, because she only got a year with her daughter before she was taken away again, this time permanently. He thinks of Emily, and how there's no way he'd ever survive it if she left this world before he did, and hugs Julia a little tighter when he says goodbye.
He doesn't even make it home for a drink; he ends up stopping along the way. The bar is empty –it's the middle of the day– and it reminds him of far too many shady places that he and Kensi stormed searching for suspects.
He drinks tequila even though he despises it because it was always her drink.
He doesn't even question it when Hetty arrives a few hours later and guides him toward her car.
(0)
She hadn't wanted to go back to work yet.
He'd teased her about separation anxiety and she had rolled her eyes but not denied it as her mother took Emily into her arms.
Julia's tone was reassuring, but Kensi's eyes remained defiant as she begged for one more day.
He ignored the tugging in his gut and told her she had to go back to work sometime. He punctuated it with a quip about her getting soft and she responded with an eye roll and an equally insulting retort.
It was a split second, and it's been played through his mind so many times in the last four years that he should be able to remember every tiny detail.
He had fallen to the ground with her, pressing a hand to the wound just off dead centre in her chest.
She had made a joke about him finding any excuse to feel her up at work. He'd laughed because he knew that's what she wanted, even though he had to force the sound from his mouth. She wanted him to laugh, and believe that everything was going to be okay; that their daughter wasn't going to grow up without the one parent who knew what they were doing.
He knew the moment she realised it, that the ambulance wasn't going to get there in time, because she started blinking way too fast and mumbling confessions that were never heard outside of their home. She had never been one for public displays or declarations. She did it when she was undercover, playing someone else. Real feelings were professed in quiet moments, behind closed doors.
"I love you," she was speaking so fast, and he just wanted it all to slow down. "I'm sorry I took so long to realise it. To tell you. I'm sorry I ever –"
"Shhhh." He implored, tears clouding his vision.
"I love you," she repeated, and he nodded, daring to remove a hand from her chest to touch her cheek. He ended up smearing blood across her face, but she smiled.
"You and Emily…"
"I love you," he forced out, the words reluctant to leave his mouth because it felt too much like a goodbye.
Her eyes fluttered and he shook his head in defiance.
"You can't die, Kensi," he ordered, tears flowing down his cheeks freely. "I can't do it without you."
In hindsight he regrets the words because she always liked to defy him.
(20)
Twenty years later the ache is still there, and he wonders why they ever tried to convince him it would go away.
If anything, it got more prominent, as he watched their daughter grow up, reaching milestones she would never see.
He wishes she had been there, because God knows (and everyone else, including Emily) he didn't handle some of them very well.
Sitting at the back of a movie theatre crowded with teenagers, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses as he watched some floppy haired idiot sneak an arm around his fifteen year old daughter wasn't exactly his finest moment.
He was at least smart enough to commission Sam and Callen into tailing them on the second date.
When she came home in tears because floppy hair liked Samantha James more than her, he spent an hour holding her and then hours later with silent tears streaming down his face because he hadn't known what to say, and Kensi would have.
Kensi would have had the exact words to stop the tears, while he just feebly tried to wipe them away.
oOoOo
It's when she graduates from college and gets her first real job that he thinks maybe he did okay after all.
She has the kind of normal life that he always wanted for her, a job that Kensi probably pretended to have a few times during her career, and she's in a relationship with a guy he almost kind of likes.
When said guy tells him he wants to marry his daughter, wants to spend the rest of his life with her, come good or bad or anything, he stares him down for almost twenty minutes and the kid doesn't even falter.
Kensi would have liked the guy.
(Kensi would have reprimanded him for threatening the kid five minutes into the first meeting, and then promised the boy something far worse as soon as she was left alone with him.)
It's then that he is convinced that this guy – Noah – could handle being married to a woman who is a Blye through and through.
He thinks of Kensi, the wedding they never got to have, and the diamond that was on her finger when she died, a reminder of good intentions and never having enough time.
He gives Noah the ring and tells him to do it tomorrow because time and opportunity aren't to be taken for granted.
They're married less than a month later, and when he watches Noah look at her with the kind of utter adoration that she deserves, he's thankful.
The ache that has become so familiar to him is still there, ever present, but somehow, today, it doesn't hurt anymore.