Jack turned as Kensi and Deeks reached the rest of them. Taking the bag from Kensi he motioned to the noticeably pregnant woman coming to stand beside them.

"Marty, Kensi, this is Gen my wife, and Mackenzie my daughter."

Kensi reached out to shake Gen's hand. "Nice to meet you and congratulations."

Gen nodded. "Kensi? As in.." She looked toward her daughter and then up at her husband.

"Just Kensi." Kensi finished for her.

Gen looked uncomfortable and started toward her husband, Deeks intercepted her quickly holding out is hand and introducing himself.

"Hi, I'm Marty, though Kensi just calls me Deeks. It's our thing I guess, all couples have one. You look fantastic by the way, your husband said you're 7 months pregnant?" Deeks was rambling.

"7 and a half months, though I feel like it's been longer." Gen replied.

"Well you look fantastic, I mean if this one and I ever get that far." Deeks motioned back toward his partner who was glaring furiously at him."I hope she looks as good as you, I mean some women really let themselves go and you should see her with a box of donuts." Gen couldn't resist and smiled in spite of herself.

Deeks felt someone tugging on his jacket and looked down into the blue eyes of Jack's daughter. She was small with a heart shaped face and long slightly curly blonde hair. He smiled and kneeled to stand in front of her.

"Hi Mackenzie, can I help you?"

"You have a doggie?" Her voice was quiet.

"I do, his name is Monty. He's a bit of a mutt, but he's very smart." Deeks pulled his phone out to show her a picture of Kensi and Monty he had taken recently.

Mackenzie seemed to like what she saw. She stared intently at the picture before nodding to herself. "You marry Kenzie?" She asked looking up at him.

"Umm, well we just started seeing each other so, maybe um someday." Deeks coughed and looked at his partner for support. Kensi only shook her head with a smirk on her face.

Gen was the one who saved him. "She's asking if you'll marry her."

"Wait, what?" Deeks was confused.

"She wants a dog, you have a dog. Gen and I joke all the time that since we are married we share everything, so Mackenzie has decided to marry someone with a dog." Jack enlightened him.

"Awww Deeks, and you thought no one would ever ask." Kensi teased her partner.

"I guess being wanted for my dog isn't the worst thing." Deeks smiled, and turned back to the little girl who was patiently waiting for his reply.

"I think we might be able to work something out without marriage being involved. Why don't I get our dinner and you, your mom and I can go eat over on the grass. I can tell you all about Monty and I heard you like the ocean?"
Mackenzie nodded and Deeks continued.

"You're in luck, because I'm a surfer and the ocean tells me all of it's stories. If you want I can tell them to you?" Mackenzie nodded again and looked up at her mother.

"It sounds good to me. I think I'd like to see some more pictures of Monty too." Gen took her daughter's hand and headed over to the spot Deeks had pointed out leaving him to grab their dinners.

"Thank you." Kensi shouldn't be surprised by now, at how good her partner was with children, but it still caught her to see the kids react so well to him.

"No problem, I think you two probably need to catch up anyway. I'll try not to get engaged, or give up Monty, but no promises." Deeks grabbed the food and turning to see Gen staring at them reached back and pulled Kensi in for a long kiss.

"Be good you two." Deeks smacked her behind for good measure before turning and trotting back to his new audience.

Jack turned to Kensi. "I like him, you guys seem pretty comfortable around each other."

"Yeah, he's a good guy." Kensi agreed before grabbing her dinner and sitting down. "I believe you owe me an explanation. Oh and Mackenzie?" Kensi jerked her head in the direction of the little girl her partner was currently entertaining.

Jack sat down with a heavy sigh. "When we found out Gen was having a little girl I asked her if we could use the name of a friend I had lost. She assumed it was some one who had died overseas and I never told her differently." Seeing Kensi's shocked expression he continued. "You have to understand, I wasn't planning on seeing you again, ever. I figured it was a good way to honor your memory."

"Woah, so you killed me off and planned on never seeing me again? I should have aimed lower when I hit you."

Jack held up his hands and scooted a bit farther away from her. "That came out wrong. Let me start again, from the beginning, when I'm done you can hit me if you still want too."

Kensi just nodded, glaring at him.

"I guess it started a couple weeks before that Christmas." Jack began rubbing his hands over his face before he continued. "I felt like I wasn't getting better and the more I tried the worse it got, I couldn't stand the idea of disappointing you and the pressure just made everything so much harder."

"But I never..." Kensi started to protest before Jack interrupted.

"No you didn't. And that almost made it worse. You were perfect, always willing to do whatever I needed and never asking for more. It only made me realize how messed up I was. By Christmas eve I'd had enough. I put one of my sleeping pills in the hot chocolate I made you."

"That's why I never heard you." Kensi said more to herself. She had always wondered, when Jack had come home she'd developed the habit of being a light sleeper, but that night she'd never heard a thing.

"I wanted you to rest, and I didn't want you to try to stop me." Jack was speaking to the table now and Kensi had to strain to hear him, but she didn't want to stop him. She wanted and needed to know what had happened that night.

"I, uh, well the truth is I was going to end it all and I didn't want you to stop me. Jack spit out the words in a rush.

"What? Why?" Kensi had been prepared to hear the story of how he left her, not that he'd drugged her so he could take his own life.

"After you were out, I left you a note, and went down to the beach. I always loved the ocean, sometimes it was the only place I felt calm after I came back, and I didn't want you to be the one to find me." Jack looked up at Kensi, who nodded for him to continue.

After a deep sigh he spoke quietly. "I couldn't do it, I tried, but in the end I just couldn't pull the trigger. I thought that it was a sign that I was getting better, I was so happy, I smiled the whole way home thinking that we were going to celebrate Christmas together and I was going to get better."

"But we didn't." Kensi stated flatly.

"No, we didn't." Jack agreed sadly. "I got home and destroyed the note that I had left, you looked so peaceful sleeping, I didn't want to risk waking you up so I slept on the couch."

Jack looked up suddenly. "Do you remember that reindeer you bought? The one with the red nose that played that stupid song?"

"I remember you throwing it away a couple of times and me rescuing it. You were kind of a grinch that year." Kensi agreed.

"It was so annoying." Jack said in his own defense.

"It was, but I liked it. I couldn't find it after you left. I figured that you'd managed to throw it away for good, and by then I had other things to worry about." Kensi looked pointedly at Jack.

"Point taken, I had one of the nightmares that night, I was back in the war zone, fighting and I couldn't see, there was so much smoke and dust. I was chasing someone down an alley when it dead ended. I had raised my weapon to fire when I heard that stupid Christmas song in the reindeer's high pitched voice. It was enough to wake me up."

Jack looked into Kensi's eyes, wanting her full attention for what he had to say next. "I woke up a foot away from the bed with a loaded gun pointed at your head. If I hadn't kicked the reindeer, you would be..." Jack drifted off unwilling to say it even after all these years.

"Why didn't you ever tell me." Kensi reached across the table to put her hand on his arm.

"Because you wouldn't have left. Your a fighter Kensi, you don't give up and you don't like to fail. You wouldn't have left and I couldn't take the risk, I couldn't take the risk of what could happen next time. I packed my bag and left 20 minutes later, I took the reindeer as a reminder. In fact I still have it in my office." Jack gave her a small smile.

Kensi took a minute to wrap her head around the information. "You didn't trust me?" She asked quietly.

"I didn't trust myself." Jack replied.

"You didn't leave a note."

"I thought it would be easier to just disappear. You were tough to avoid though. Once you had just missed me. I pretty much drifted from couch to couch for 6 months or so. I even gave my guns away, haven't touched one since."

Jack continued. "I was working odd jobs and living out of hotels for about a year. After a while I heard about a new in-patient treatment program in Arizona and I figured since nothing else worked, it was worth a try. 18 months later I felt like a new man, I met Gen when I showed up for my weekly therapy. She's a nurse, she was volunteering at the VA hospital, 3 months in we found out she was pregnant with Mackenzie and the rest is boring history." Jack finished placing his hands in front of him on the table and looking sideways at the woman he used to know so well.

"You never thought that I would want to know you were okay, that you weren't on the street, in a ditch or worse?" Kensi spoke carefully.

"Oh Kensi." Jack sighed, scrubbing his face. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but you were, are a reminder of a man I'll never be again. He died a long time ago and I spent a long time making peace with that. I can't go back, I've worked so hard to build a new life as the man I am now and I just..." He stopped. "I'm so sorry Kensi."

Kensi bowed her head for a long moment, not sure how to react. "Why now? If you couldn't see me, why here, why now? I mean why drive 7 hours with your happy little family to tell me that you never planned to look for me." Kensi stood up as she finished. It was all too much. She considered walking away, but she had already come this far.

"Mike Dawes called me. I don't know if you remember him or not, I stayed with him after I left a couple of times. He saw you on television 8 months ago, said something about a shooting when he called. I didn't think much of it, until a week later when the nightmares started again, not as bad as last time, but bad enough."

Jack watched Kensi pacing in front of him. When she didn't say anything he continued his story. "It took two weeks for me to go see my shrink, he's the one who suggested I come see you, try to make amends or something. I didn't want to, I had put that life, that man to rest and I couldn't see what good it would be to drag everything up again. Unfortunately the nightmares wouldn't go away, and when we found out Gen was pregnant again I asked the doctor if he would make some calls for me. I was planning on coming alone, but Gen wouldn't let me, she wanted to make sure I would be okay."

Kensi had stopped pacing, she stood looking at the ground refusing to meet Jack's gaze. She didn't notice when Jack nodded to her partner who had joined them, concerned that she seemed upset. She didn't fight it, when he wrapped his arms around her and whispered for only her ears. "You okay Fern?"

"I'm fine." Kensi leaned back and looked at Deeks.

"Later?" He asked.

"Later." She promised, and untangled herself from him.

Thank you for reading : ) for those who are waiting, I am working on roll with it, i just had to get this scene out of my head.