This is a circumstance she never considered when he first slipped those rings on her finger on the day they made their forever promises to each other.

She should have thought about it, given the way their world works. She'd thought through a million potential issues and obstacles before she said yes, but this precise aspect of the situation had never entered her mind.

But reality has set in and now they're standing there as the rings make their reverse journey off her finger. His fingers are warm around hers as he slides them off, his grip firm yet gentle as always.

She feels almost naked without them, but it's a feeling she'll have to get used to. She reaches hesitantly for his left hand and slides his narrow gold band off, dropping it next to hers and staring silently at them as they lie there on the desk.

"For the next few hours, you're not you and I'm not me." He says, tilting her chin up and drawing her eyes up to his. "But when this is over, I'm going to put these back where they belong," he pinches her rings between thumb and forefinger and holds them before her eyes, much like he had on the night he proposed, "and then I'm going to take you home and remind you just how married we really are." His grin is suggestive and impudent and it goes a long way toward releasing the knot of tension in her stomach.

It's the first time since their wedding months earlier that going under for a case has required them to remove their rings, and she finds it shockingly hard to take them off. It's not supposed to be this hard, but she's so in love with life as Kensi Deeks that going under as someone else is harder than it's ever been. Still, they'll do it, and they'll do it well—because this is their job and because they have a life to get back to when it's all over.


For years, that is their ritual. Every time a case requires one or both of them to remove their rings, they find a quiet corner and slip them off together. Whenever it's possible, he is the one who takes hers off, his eyes telling her the whole time that he might be taking the rings off, but he's not removing his love or support.

She does the same for him.

When it's all over, he'll be the one to slide them on again. Sometimes he playfully recites his vows again as he does it, commenting cheekily that he feels like he gets to marry her all over again each time. Sometimes he does it silently, promising with his eyes that his promises are still as true as they were the first time he slid them on her finger. He must have recited those vows a hundred times over the years. She comes to love that little ritual, loves to watch him slip the rings back where they belong at the end of a long day.

Until one day he doesn't.

She returns to the mission in a daze, eyes red-rimmed but dry for the moment. Sam and Callen are watching her carefully, tenderly, trying to figure out just what on earth to say and how to let her know they're there for her. Their gentle looks just make it worse. She avoids Nell, who will be caring and sympathetic and won't know how to deal with it either.

The only things she can think of are sitting in Hetty's desk safe. That's where she heads first, the walls closing in around her and sucking the air from her lungs as she moves. Hetty meets her halfway.

"Hetty, I need—"

Before she can work up the strength to finish the sentence, Hetty is pressing three gold bands into her trembling hand. As soon as the cool metal touches her palm, she whirls to escape.

"Ms. Blye—" She hears behind her, but she ignores it and keeps walking. For years she's kept that name at work, but at the moment she's not Ms. Blye, Special Agent. She's not sure she ever will be that again. Right now, all she is is Mrs. Deeks, brand new widow. It feels like that's all she'll ever be again.

She drives, all but unseeing, for an hour, then two, then three, one hand on the wheel and one wrapped around the three small circlets. After an hour of her death grip on them, they start to cut painfully into her palm, but she ignores the discomfort and holds on tighter. After two, Nell calls and she silences the ringing of the phone and then shuts it off altogether.

After three, she winds up at the beach staring down at three gold rings in her reddened palm. She still feels naked without them, even more so now after years of wearing them than she had that first time he slipped them off.

Grasping the two that have lived on her hand for half a decade now, she moves them toward her finger, longing to have the comfortably familiar weight of them on her hand again. But before they touch her finger, she draws back and grips them hard. Once, early on before she realized a tradition had been established, she had put them back on herself before he found her to do it, and had been surprised to see the depth of the disappointment in his eyes when he discovered that she hadn't left it for him. Since then, she's always waited for him to do it.

This time, the wait would be endless.

Unable to stomach the idea of putting them back on herself, she slips his plain band on her thumb instead.

From the corner of her eye she watches a blond surfer ride a wave in, and her grief-stricken mind snaps to attention. She feels a flare of hope, imagining that it's really a normal weekend and they're at the beach and it's him riding in toward her. When the man lands and his hair is too short and his smile isn't right, grief hits her in the kidneys all over again as the hope dies out.

She turns and moves quickly away, hoping to make it to somewhere private before the iron fist around her stomach and her heart brings her to her knees.

She makes it around a corner behind an outcropping of rock before her knees give out and she hits the ground. Every system in her body physically revolts alongside her heart and she loses her breakfast on the sand as she goes down, shivering uncontrollably.

The grief is a physical thing, pressing down on her and twisting her lungs until she can't breathe, sapping the strength from her muscles.

She can't bear the thought of going home, back to the house where they'd built a life, a love, a million memories. He'll be everywhere there and yet he'll never be there again, and she can't comprehend that dichotomy, let alone survive in the midst of it.

She's not sure how long she's sat there when the first cool wind of the night bites into her bare skin.

Slowly, a new awareness brings the steel back into her spine.

He's not coming back, but she can still do one last thing for him.

Justice was the only thing she knew before him, and it's all she has left now. There's still an open case, a man to be hunted down and punished for ripping her life apart.


Her back is ramrod straight as she enters the mission again, sharply focused this time, in stark contrast to her earlier visit.

"Ms. Blye—" Hetty tries again as she enters the briefing room unannounced.

"Mrs. Deeks." She corrects her, face resolute. "My name is Kensi Deeks, and I want the man who killed my husband."


AN: Sorry about that. It just kind of grew out of the rings in Chapter 8 and the beach scene in Chapter 5 (brownie points if you can identify the sentence that's duplicated from Chapter 5 without going back to look).

This collection hit 100 reviews today- wow! Thanks so much for all your thoughts and reviews and messages.

I'm out of ideas at the moment—if you have suggestions, I'm open to hearing them.