Thank you so much for all the favorites, follows and reviews! I was not expecting what happened at the end of the episode. How could she walk away from her family? That gave me a lot to think about with Kensi and Deeks and their future.
Of course Deeks' Mom is giving Kensi binders of wedding plans to look at. Kensi seemed to want to start planning the wedding in the last episode so Roberta is taking action.
I think that nobody but Callen knows that Joelle didn't really die, so I wrote it like that.
I'm sorry it took a little longer to finish, my ideas were all over the place for this episode.
This picks up after the ninth episode of season 9, Fool Me Twice (9x9).
Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS:LA.
He woke up and saw that Kensi was already out of bed. It was still early in the morning, much too early for her to be up. With the days getting shorter as it neared the holiday season, it was still dark out. Not finding her in the bathroom he went out into the hall.
He walked downstairs and saw her sitting at the dining room table with her knees up to her chest. She was holding a mug in her hand and she was staring straight ahead obviously deep in thought. It reminded him of the many times he'd found her like this in the past year. The same time last year, she was having trouble sleeping through the night because of the accident.
He approached her slowly and spoke softly because he didn't want to startle her. "Hey."
"Hey." He kissed her on the top of her head and went to get himself a cup of coffee.
"You're up early." He stated not wanting to seem too worried.
"Yeah, I couldn't sleep." Getting a cup out of the cupboard, he poured himself a cup coffee. "That's gonna be cold." He tasted it and made a face.
"Cold." He stated lamely. She chuckled to herself and shook her head as he started a new pot. "Means you've been up a while." He took a seat across from her. "Something wrong?"
"No, just a weird dream and then I couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to get up."
"What was it about?"
"Uh, it was about Jack, we were at the altar…" She paused to see his reaction. "But when he put the ring on my finger, it turned into a spider and then I woke up."
"Wow." He was surprised that she was thinking about that.
"Yep, it was definitely weird."
"What do you think it means?"
"I don't think it means anything." She was telling him so there wouldn't be any secrets between them, not so he could obsess about the meaning.
"But why would you be thinking about that?"
"Deeks, I'm not thinking about that or him. It was just a dream."
"Okay." He waited a moment but then decided he had more to say. "You don't think the presence of ex-boyfriends or wedding plans have an influence on your dreams."
"Oh my god." He was going to make this a bigger deal than it was.
"Maybe we should look up what it all means."
"No, Deeks."
"I think we should."
The coffee machine dinged indicating that a new pot was ready. He was going to need the caffeine for the long day ahead.
They walked out of the mission and into the cool breeze of the night. There was a sadness surrounding them as they stopped at their cars. They had all known Joelle a long time but their trust had been lost when she deceived Callen and was part of the rogue CIA group. The group that Sullivan or Ferris was in when he took Kensi hostage. But that didn't mean that it didn't affect them.
Kensi and Deeks had spent most of the day with Joelle's husband and son in the boatshed and it saddened them to think that they had just lost their wife and mother.
"I feel sorry for her husband and son. They shouldn't have to go through this." Deeks broke the silence.
"It's so sad for her son. He's so young." Nell said. It was always sad when kids were involved.
"He's such a great kid." He said solemnly. His voice was full of emotion. He'd spent time with the boy today, seeing how kind and innocent he was.
They stood there in silence again, not quite knowing what to say.
"Why'd she go back into the building? She could have walked away." Eric asked but not expecting anyone to have an answer. If they could just turn back the time and tell her not to go, everything would be okay. But the reality is that it isn't.
Kensi had yet to say anything and Deeks was worried. He reached down to hold her hand and as if it was an immediate reaction he could see her eyes glaze over. She turned away from Eric and Nell slightly not wanting them to see her like this but she knew it was pointless.
"We can never bring a child into this life with this job." She whispered to Deeks.
"I know. I don't understand how someone can put their child through that. Disappear for days without a real explanation as to why. It's horrible."
"It's too dangerous." She said, her voice wavering. Eric and Nell silently listened to Kensi and Deeks sharing their concerns. "Why does this keep happening?" The full force of reality was hitting her, all the consequences this job could have. First Michelle and now Joelle.
"I don't know. I don't know why things like this happen." He composed his thoughts. "But we all have to be thankful that we are going home safe tonight." It could be any of them at anytime when they come across their suspects.
They'd come home, eaten a fast dinner, showered and put their pj's on. They were now in the living room trying to unwind from the day but it was proving to be hard. He was watching tv and Kensi was busy trying to find anything to do that would keep her mind off today.
He looked over and watched as she flipped through the binders his mother had brought them. She hadn't talked to him much about their wedding but he could tell that she was excited. He'd seen her looking at little things related to weddings when she thought he wasn't looking. She'd been dropping hints, asking him about the plans whenever someone else brought up the topic but had yet to ask him directly when they were alone.
Deciding to show some interest, he turned off the tv and walked over to her. He pointed towards the binders. "You doing some wedding planning?" He took a seat next to her.
She chuckled a little. "No, I'm already overwhelmed. If this is only for flowers then what is the rest going to be?"
"Well we have to start somewhere right?" He took one of the binders and started turning the pages. "Oh, I like these." He pointed to the light pink flowers on the page.
"You're on the third page, you can't just choose the first thing you see."
"What? I'm not. I like these flowers."
"They're pink."
"So? There's nothing wrong with pink, it's a nice color." She didn't respond as she went through another binder that was in front of her. She had absolutely no idea where to start with the wedding plans. Even if she was overwhelmed by the binders Roberta was giving her and Roberta did tend to get a little too excited about this, she was relieved that she was getting help. Also that someone seemed to get the ball rolling on this topic. Roberta may have wanted to go a little faster by suggesting grandchildren last week but at least progress was being made.
"What about these? They're blue, some might even say cornflower blue." He gave her his signature smile and that made her smile as well.
She took a closer look at the flowers he was pointing at. "I like them."
"Okay, we have one option." He went back to looking through the binder. There were so many different arrangements. She sat back in her chair and let out a sigh and he sensed that she was upset about more than just flowers. "You okay?"
She nodded. "Yeah, I just keep thinking about her family."
He knew immediately that she was talking about Joelle again. "Me too." He looked at her face filled with sadness.
"I'm so tired." Not just tired from the day, but tired of the darkness of this job.
"Let's go to bed." He said softly, then stood up and tugged her along.
They got into bed and Kensi gravitated towards his side. She just wanted to have him close to her so she put her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arm around his stomach. She spoke so softly that he could barely hear her. "I don't want our child to lose a parent to this job."
He matched her tone. "Me neither. Helping other people's families is amazing but it's not worth the risk of losing ours." She nodded her head against his chest.
"When I was talking to Nick he said that Joelle had become distant because of her job. She couldn't talk about classified cases with him so she shut him out completely. We can't have one of us working at NCIS and the other one not, we would be keeping secrets from each other and later on we would stop communicating altogether, I can't go back to that." He sensed that she wasn't done talking so he just listened. "And then with what happened today… I feel like every case is telling us that we should stop doing this, but I just don't know…" It felt like a warning, between Michelle and Joelle it became clear that this job was not suitable for the family life they wanted. "Single parent… I know Sam is doing a great parenting job under the circumstances and my Dad definitely stepped up when my Mom left and you said your Mom did everything to make sure you got what you needed but I just don't want that."
"Nobody ever wants that. It makes me think how lucky we are to come home every night. I'm so much more aware of it now, even just in these last few months, that I want a future and I actually look forward to it. The more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe we should just walk into Mosley's fancy new office and resign before it's too late." She stayed silent going over his words in her head. Every time they talked about quitting, it was sometime in the near future but now it seemed much closer. The dangers in general, the shoot-outs, explosions and the enemies they've made over the years should be enough for them to call it quits but even that isn't always safe as they saw with Michelle. "I want to come home to my wife…" He tugged her closer. "And my children from my safe job, where I can eat dinner with them and read them bedtime stories and I'm not working late, worrying about crazy things."
"You're gonna be such a good Dad, Deeks."
"I hope so."
"I can't wait to watch you play basketball with our kid."
"I'll teach my son all the tricks."
She lifted her head to look at him. "Hey, a girl can play basketball too."
She laid her head back down. "I know, but I recall someone saying they'd be a good mom to a boy." She didn't look up at him this time, slightly embarrassed. He kissed the top of her head. "Hetty told me once that I can have all the expectations I want when I have children, but I can never predict who I'm going to end up with."
"I remember that." It was before they had ever talked about the possibility of having kids together.
"She's right. We don't know what's to come, but we can enjoy what we get in the moment."
Thanks for reading!
