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Learning to Let Go
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Prologue: An Act of Desperation
"One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too."– Friedrich Nietzsche
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Marty Deeks' Apartment
Wednesday - 23:45pm
When Kensi Blye was five years old her, her Grandpa Gonçalo's house had caught on fire. Whilst he'd had a clear, safe route out of the small rented condo, his beloved Highland Terrier 'Betsy' had been trapped behind the kitchen door by the searing hot flames. Visiting him in the hospital the following day, her Mom had been livid, shaking with rage and demanding to know why her only father would be foolish enough to put his life in jeopardy to rescue a stupid dog.
Her Grandpa (whose body was wrapped so thoroughly in bandages he'd reminded Kensi of an Egyptian Mummy) had just pulled his oxygen mask to one side and said one simple sentence in response.
"Julia sweetie, you'll never understand the lengths to which you'll go to keep something you care about until you're on the verge of losing it."
Those words had stuck with Kensi long after Grandpa Gonçalo had passed away and Betsy had taken up residence in the Blye household. They'd been with her throughout her entire life – she'd taken comfort from them during the bad times and humility during the good - and she'd thought that she'd understood them. It was only right now that she realised that all she'd really understood was the concept. She'd had no idea how it would actually feelwhen those words became her reality – to feel so fraught, so desperate in the face of a potential loss that all rational thought ceased to exist and the needs of the heart overrode the sound logic of the mind.
Kensi had neverlost control of herself like she had tonight. Ever.
But then, it had been a night of many firsts for her.
She was lying on her back in the king-size bed in Deeks' apartment. Her partner was coiled tightly around her, their limbs completely entwined and his face pressed in to her neck; the light stubble on his jaw and the warm puffs of his breath tickling at the exposed skin above her collar bone while he slept. Her left arm was wrapped around his torso and her hand stroked slow, soft circles on the warm skin of his back; it had been the only thing that she could do to soothe him earlier, though now it seemed she did it more for her own comfort than his.
He'd terrified her tonight. It was only now, when the storm had finally passed she could finally admit that to herself.
Her other hand grasped his left one tightly and she found herself gazing down at it in the barely-lit bedroom, eyes focussed on the brightly coloured nail polish decorating his short-cut finger nails. She and the team had ribbed him mercilessly about his 'manicure' earlier, but there was no humour to be drawn from the polychrome cuticles now. Now the clashing techni-coloured hues served only as a devastating memento of an innocent's life cut tragically short – one of two lives that NCIS had failed to protect - and not for the first time since she'd received the notification from Eric, she felt the tears of remorse stinging at her own eyes.
Not wanting to wake him, she carefully extricated herself from Deeks' unconscious grasp, pausing only once when she felt him stir against her before shuffling gingerly out of the bed. Pulling on the plaid shirt that she'd practically tore off his back earlier, she was assaulted by the memory of her lips against his while they'd stumbled through the bedroom, his kiss almos0t as desperate as her own, though their desperation was born of entirely different reasons:
His, to escape the memory of the vulnerable nine year old aspiring beauty therapist he felt they could have just as easily saved as lost. Hers, the selfish act of a desperate woman standing on the verge of losing the one person who meant more to her than anybody else in this world; the only man she trusted with everything she had.
She could still taste the salt of his anguished tears on her lips, and the small part of her heart that remained intact after the events of the today crumbled to dust at the memory.
The bedroom door opened with a soft creak, and she slipped through barefoot, carefully pulling it closed behind her. Flipping on the light switch of the lounge, her eyes immediately settled on the carnage near on the far side of the room. One toppled model surfboard, a broken vase, and the shattered fragments of that hideous arrow-lamp lay in a cluttered heap on the carpet.
She padded over to the mess – stopping to grab a wastebasket on the way over - and crouched down next to it to clear up larger shards broken glass, letting out a hiss of pain when one of the smaller fragments sliced into thumb. It was as she raised the injured digit to her lips to catch the trickle of blood that she saw it; that shattering flash of gold, silver and blue glinting up at her from amongst the debris.
Reaching out with her good hand, she grasped the offending item and as she stared down at it a broken sob caught in her chest as tears welled in her eyes.
It was Deeks' LAPD badge.
Her partner had every right to be so upset, so angry with her – with the whole team - because he was right. He'd been right the whole time and they hadn't listened to him.
If they'd followed police procedure, multiple lives could have been saved tonight.
It was NCIS policy that had gotten them killed.
And now, she was pretty sure he wanted nothing to do with OSP, with her, ever again.
You'll never understand the lengths to which you'll go to keep something you care about until you're on the verge of losing it.
She was pretty sure Grandpa Gonçalo didn't mean throwing herself at her distraught partner in a self-centred attempt to prevent him from leaving NCIS – from leaving her– and returning to the LAPD.
God, she was so selfish. She was supposed to be his friend, someone he could rely on to be there for him, to ease his suffering when he was in pain. All she'd managed to do was hand him one more problem to deal with.
She wouldn't be surprised if he tendered his resignation in the morning.
The remorseful tears she'd been holding back finally fell.