Part II
Summary: My take on the Titanic story. Hopefully you guys don't kill me over the ending!
She laid the badge before her on the desk, leaving it on top of a stack of case reports Hetty had been breathing down her neck for. Kensi reached for her water bottle, and tool a long, cool, gulp. She checked the label, whatever it took to keep her eyes off the badge. "Iceberg water", she chuckled dryly.
Kensi was sprawled across her desk, doodling little stars in the margins of her paper as a small, stringy boy read a monologue from the Sound of Music. He was reading Rolf, but fit the part so badly that half the class was asleep and the other half were throwing out random insults whenever he paused to take a huge, whistling breath. Why he was even in acting classes was a point of wonder for Kensi.
Her dad thought the classes might help her fit in, make a couple friends, and be normal for once. His station here was a little more permanent, a couple years at the very least, so she might as well get used to it. Big surprise was, she actually liked it. The appeal of being someone else, and the glamor and dreams were all pluses. And she wasn't half-bad, though there was the annoying fact that no matter how hard she practiced the lines, or watched the movies, she could never get her eyes to lie, which hardly worked in her favor when she was supposed to be crying and looked like she'd won the lottery.
The boy finished to a small round of applause coming mostly from the teachers, as the class ended and kids began to pack up.
"Kensi! Hey, you!", one of the other girls shouted, her backpack slung over one shoulder.
"Yeah, what?"
"Are you free tonight? We were thinking, well, me and Lisa, of going to see Titanic tonight. 'Cept Lisa's bringing her boyfriend and they'll, like,just French kiss from the opening to the credits, so you wanna come with?"
Kensi stifled a grin. Marsha had the kind of 80's movie, valley girl, voice that always made her laugh.
"Come on, Kensi! Get outta the barracks for once, ditch your camos, and have some fun. What are you anyway, training to be a teenage Navy SEAL?", Marsha joked as they walked towards the parking lot.
Kensi shrugged.
"Leonardo DiCaprio is in it. He's hot!", her friend giggled, stretching out the "o" in hot. "If I ever get into movies, he is so on my list of people I wanna kiss."
"I dunno. I'll ask.", Kensi answered simply, as she pulled the door of their truck open. "Seeya."
Marsha gave a twitchy gesture Kensi thought was a wave and headed towards her mom's beat-up van.
Later, as Kensi stuck last week's leftovers in the microwave, she turned to her father, who sat at their tiny kitchen table, going through a stack of papers in a dull brown folder.
"Dad? Hey!"
"What is it, Kensi?", he muttered, hardly looking up from the folder. These days, they hardly seemed to talk at all.
"I'm, um, going out tonight. Gonna go see Titanic with people from Drama.", she told him, pulling the Tupperware from the microwave and pouring steaming soup into a bowl.
"Which people?"
"Marsha, Lisa, her boyfriend. Just people."
"People I don't know. How are you guys getting into town?"
Kensi shrugged. "I guess Lisa's boyfriend's giving us a ride."
"How old is this guy?"
"Am I under arrest?", Kensi joked. She didn't like being questioned so much.
"Are you gonna be?"
Her eyes widened. "What? You really think I've got nothing better to do with my time but get drunk and crash a car?", she shouted, angry that he had no trust in her whatsoever.
"I wasn't born yesterday. Look, I know I sound like a jerk, but I don't want my baby girl to end up as chalk on the interstate."
Kensi's hands balled into fists. His Baby Girl? "Oh, so that's it, isn't it? I am not a kid anymore and you can't just lock me up!"
"Last I checked, you were still living under my roof, and my rules. End of discussion."
He swept angrily at the papers on the table, sending a small scrap floating towards Kensi. She snatched it out of the air and seethed with rage as her eyes scanned the scribble.
"A court date? No you-", she crumpled the memo in her hands and let it drop. "You got drunk again, didn't you? The MP's got on it and she's suing for custody again. I don't believe you!", she yelled, knocking the soup from the kitchen counter.
"Ah, hell.", her father sighed, stuffing the papers back in his folder. "It's all crap anyway, lawyer says it'll fall apart in front of the judge.", he told her casually.
Kensi took the Tupperware container and flung it at him. "Of course it will. Because you care about me so much it doesn't matter if you end up dead!"
"What? Kensi, I don't mean it like that.", he backpedaled. "I want to keep you because I want you safe, not running around in some rich kid's paradise with that bitch and her enabling boyfriend."
"My mother isn't a bitch! And she would've let me go!" She knew it was a low blow, but hardly cared as the blood pounding in her head nearly overpowered his next words.
"Go ahead, then, tell it to the judge."
Kensi didn't quite remember what she'd said or done next, or how she'd gotten up to her room. All she remembered was slamming her door, sending a stack of scripts resting on her dresser flying. She'd sat there, Watching the pieces of paper fall like sheets of snow, trying to breathe.
She grabbed for one random piece, an audition monologue for Maria,when she told off Captain Von Trapp for being the crappiest father on the planet. She'd read the piece last week, but the teachers hadn't really liked her much. Maria was supposed to be genuinely upset, not yelling and screaming with the ghost of a smile on her face.
Kensi took the piece, and slowly went to her bedroom mirror, looking herself straight in the eye. She started to read, willing her eyes to freeze, to become a stone-cold mask of someone who despite being reserved, could tear the Captain to pieces if she wanted. It was somewhat calming, whisper-shouting at herself in someone else's voice, pretending to care about someone else's problem. On the other hand, she happily noticed it wasn't quite as easy to see her eyes lying anymore.
"Going to Hollywood?", a familiar voice asked from behind the door. She instantly felt anger bubble up inside, but refused to give an inch.
"Maybe.", Kensi said, keeping her voice light and calm. She pulled the door open and forced a small smile on to her face. It was all about keeping in character.
"That sounds good. Kensi, I'm sorry, okay? I don't want to hurt you or make you feel like your mom and I use you for leverage. I'm sorry."
That's a lie, Kensi told herself. But she kept barreling on. "It's okay, I guess. I'm pretty stupid for getting so mad over some movie." That was a lie, too, but while they were both at it, who cared anymore?
"Okay. Well, I'm going out with some of the guys, so I want you to lock up tonight, kiddo. Call some of your other friends, I'm not around to complain."
"Sure.", Kensi replied, not mentioning that really, she had no other friends. She shut the door as her father made his way down the hall, letting the anger at what he was doing with his integrity come flooding back.
Once the front door clicked shut, though, she called Marsha and asked to be picked up, keeping her voice appropriately peppy. She'd stay sober, and out of trouble for tonight, and tomorrow, her father couldn't say anything, because she would have proven his trust. See what he does with that, Kensi told herself.
Lisa's boyfriend turned out to be a nice enough Jewish boy named Matt, someone who Kensi's dad would have approved of at first sight. He drove his mother's rented Volvo, and played old country songs on the radio. They parked close to the theater, bought popcorn and broke off pieces from one of those giant carnival lollipops. They threw popcorn at a couple kissing in the row in front of them, chuckling as they pointed up at another group of people.
When Lisa and Matt began to do the same, Kensi climbed up to the next aisle and gleefully dumped the kernels in her bag over them. Somewhere in the next few moments, Lisa's stifled yelp and Marsha's hand over her mouth as she sunk back into her seat, Kensi felt like any other kid. There were no more bases or judges, no more promises of honor or faith or anything. Just right now.
Matt pointed out a glaring usher, and they sat back to watch the rest of the movie in relative silence. As it neared an end, Kensi was surprised at how much she'd actually liked it. Usually, sappy romances were something she made fun of, or imitated in acting classes with a ridiculously bad English accent. Love could be nice, she guessed, turning her attention back to the screen as Rose reached for the whistle.
No, she remembered, love was always something tragic.
The four of them buckled in for the drive home as Matt reached for the tuner dial on his radio. Some staticky newscaster was talking about a car crash on the highway, his voice wavering as he glossed over the messy details.
"Are you guys okay with taking the long way? My uncle showed me some back roads that connect back to the base, and if we're giving Kensi a ride home it's wither that or the four-hour pile-up from that crash.", Matt said.
Kensi agreed. It wasn't like her dad ever came back too early from his late night binge drinks, anyway. "Yeah, sure."
They dropped her off an hour and a half later, to a thankfully empty house with nothing but black behind every window. Kensi unlocked the front door, happy to see everything was it's usual messy yet organized way. Nobody had been in since she left.
She climbed up to her room, savoring the somewhat foreign rush of really getting away with something. She hadn't done this nearly as many times as most of the kids she knew, and now she'd figured in to exactly what the appeal of stringing someone along was. She liked the feeling, though it was somewhat as though she'd smoked something or taken a pill. Who knew what the crash would be like?
The next morning was unusually quiet. Not only was her dad still out, the usual noises from the rest of the base, the drills, the kids playing in the yard, the mothers on their way to the Exchange, were gone. She couldn't even hear the jets taking off. Sleepily, if somewhat nervously, she made herself hot chocolate and toast, and turned on the radio to an upbeat station playing boy bands. Several minutes later, she heard the doorbell go, and pushed herself lazily off the chair.
"Coming!", she shouted into the empty hall.
Two MP's were standing on her doorstep, the younger of which had his had on slightly crooked over tousled hair.
"You Kensi Blye?", the older one, who looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than an officer asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Your mother awake?"
"It's 2300 hours in Paris.", Kensi told them, barely even thinking of how funny the rhyme might have been. Her heartbeat was quickening and her brain was working, connecting the pieces she didn't know had been there until now. Until it all made sense.
She rode silently in back of the officers' car into town, watching the back roads that she'd taken with Matt and the girls fly by. The officers were quiet, only grunting occasionally and moving to change the radio stations. Kensi knew where they were taking her, to the county police station until either her mother or Social Services came with her papers. She caught a glance of herself in the rearveiw mirror and forced the same steely look into her eyes as she had last night, reading the monologue in the mirror.
The station itself was rather boring, with plenty of people coming in and out, staying for a doughnut, or to drop off something for their husbands, or to check evidence and case reports. She played with a badge one of the Sherriffs had left beside a thermos of coffee, something to keep her hands busy, and her thoughts far away from the present.
"Shhh. It's gonna be okay.", one of the cops said to a little boy crying under a card table.
Kensi willed steel into her gaze and got up, pocketing the badge and heading for the door. Later, there would be time to cry and sort everything out. For now, she was fine. She had to be.
"That's a lie. There's no honor in that.", she whispered, brushing past the boy on her way out, not quite knowing where she remembered those words from.
Kensi had her head down on her desk, breathing slowly and evenly when Nate found her. He didn't notice the tears running down her face until he came around the front of the desk. Her eyes were squeezed shut, like something hurt. He was inclined to leave her there, though the sound of G's boots coming down the stairs stopped him. Nate moved the box in front of her face and rummaged through it.
"She'll kick your ass, Doc.", G laughed, gathering his things from the desk across Kensi's.
Nate pressed his finger to his lips. "Just let me put the harmonica back. Then I go into the panic room.", he whispered.
"Ha. If you live, check out the Lakers game tonight. I am gonna be owning the Jumbotron." With that, G headed for the door, humming an old song Nate hardly remembered.
When he had gone, Nate moved the box off her desk and met Kensi's wet, yet sparkling eyes.
"Thanks.", she murmured wearily.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Kensi shook her head and didn't move away when Nate squeezed her shoulder. After all, it was the truth.
THE END
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