AN: This is a follow-up from Chapter 9, Ritual; consider yourself warned. That said, this is a little bit happier than the original.
The bathroom floor is cold, but it's become rather familiar over the last few months. First, there were the hiding days. The first weeks when she spent large chunks of time sitting there escaping from her mother and her friends who were constantly "checking in" and "visiting" and "helping out." Sometimes she did it under the guise of showering. Sometimes she just locked herself in to escape from being forced to interact with the well-meaning people that came to stay with her and babysit her for the first few weeks when all she wanted was to crawl into a hole and pretend that her life had ceased going on because his had.
Then came the teary days. The day she discovered yesterday's clothes on the bathroom floor because Deeks hadn't been in to pick them up after her. The day she knocked his favorite shampoo off the ledge and the bottle broke on the floor, spreading the scent so uniquely him through their bathroom for the first time in weeks and overwhelming her. The day she checked under the sink for an extra bottle of body wash and automatically made a mental note to add his to the shopping list, too, before she remembered that his was gone for a reason.
Then, sometimes, there were the quiet days. Days when she would come home from work and discover that the emptiness of the house made it feel enormous, and somehow the confined space of the bathroom made it feel just a little less empty.
Lately, there have been sick days: days when what little she's eaten decides to not stay down and the smell of something that never bothered her before suddenly overwhelms her.
The first missed period she hadn't even noticed in all the turmoil of that first devastating month. Those weeks it had been all she could do to force enough food, water, and air into her body to continue the hunt for justice. Anything beyond that had never entered her radar.
The second missed period she had blamed on the stress and the grief and her admittedly poor eating and sleeping habits recently. When justice was finally served it didn't bring her appetite back, all it did was leave room for the grief to roll back in, full force without the buffer of vengeance to check it.
Her calendar just reminded her that she's now into three missed periods and, despite the fact that she finds food difficult to get down on the best of days, both her bras and her jeans have been feeling tight.
By now the signs are too many and too obvious for her to keep pretending that she doesn't know what they mean.
This time, sitting on the bathroom floor alone, it's a discovery day. She's staring at a little white stick and a little blue plus sign trying to figure out if she's excited or devastated and wondering just how she's going to raise a baby who will never know his father.
She waits to tell the others until it just can't be put off any longer. Every time she thinks about it, she sees Deeks bouncing off the walls as he figures out the perfect way to tell their friends; she sees that delighted grin and expectant expression that she knows would have accompanied all his thoughts about the baby. By the time she finally quietly admits it to the others, most of them have guessed already.
She tells her belly as it grows "Daddy loves you" because she knows it's true, even if Daddy never knew it existed.
The pregnancy is a blessing and a curse. Every moment, every change, every appointment she goes to alone or with Nell is a reminder that the man who should be beside her, rejoicing with her, reveling in the growth of their baby and the changes in her body, is never going to know his son. Despite Callen and Sam and Nell and everyone else rallying around her, the pregnancy is often a reminder of just how alone she is now. She's never felt quite so lonely, even in the days right after Deeks' death, as she does in the moments when the baby kicks or she hears his heartbeat or the contractions hit and there's no one there to share it with. Pregnancy mood swings plus fresh grief make for a turbulent, difficult nine months.
Still, in many ways the pregnancy rescues her from her grief and anger. It saves her from herself and reminds her that no matter how alone she feels, she's never really going to be alone again. Deeks left that much of himself with her, inside her. She chokes down food she never feels like eating because this baby deserves to live and thrive and be healthy. She resists the urge to be reckless because there's a little piece of Deeks growing inside her that must be protected at all costs. Gradually, she opens up and starts letting people back into her life, because this little boy deserves more of a family than what she can give him all by herself.
In the end, it's her salvation. By month nine she can't even begin to guess where she would have been without this tiny mutant ninja assassin to live for. She's fairly certain that he has, quite literally, saved her life. Just like his father.
Twenty-eight years later, Andrew Martin Deeks is still her whole world. Single motherhood has been the hardest, loneliest, most joyous, rewarding adventure of her life. Tall and tan, Andrew has his mother's hair and his father's eyes. He's done three tours with the Navy and now he's home and is making his way through law school. His hair is curling over his ears and he's falling in love with a woman named Leah.
She is more soft and sweet and feminine than Kensi has ever been, but she's got steel in her backbone and fire in her eyes, and Kensi loves her from the moment that Andrew brings her home. Their relationship is less turbulent than Kensi and Deeks' was, but as Kensi watches it grow, she comes to believe that it's the same relentless kind of love, just in softer form.
If there's one way Kensi feels she has succeeded, it's that Andrew is far less broken than his parents were when they finally found each other. He's never had his Dad, but he has heard every story she could remember. He has known every day that he was loved, by his mother, by the father he never knew, and by the makeshift family that has always surrounded him. He has known the troubles and brokenness of the world but also known its joys and its goodness.
When the time comes that Andrew stops in one day to tell his mother that he's going to ask Leah to marry him, she leaves him alone for a few minutes to dig into the back of her top dresser drawer.
When she returns, she is carrying an old velvet box, picking pieces of dust and lint off it as she walks. Softly, she takes his hand and wraps his fingers around the box.
"You don't have to, but if you want them..."
Andrew furrows his brow for a moment, then opens the box.
"These were yours." It's a statement, not a question, though he's never seen those two gold rings inside before in his life.
Months into her journey of grief, after several attempts to put them back on herself, Kensi had finally given up. She slipped her engagement ring and wedding band back in their box and tucked them away and had his band resized to fit her ring finger instead. Those rings were his to put back on, and if he was never there to do it then it was never going to feel right to do it herself.
"You never wore them."
Andrew's statement pulls her from her memories and back to his blue eyes. It's the one story he has never heard.
"No. Not after he was gone." She wanders back in her own thoughts for a moment before smiling softly and telling him the story of that beloved ritual and the day that it ended. She tells him about her struggle to figure out how to live without him and the decision to wear his ring instead of her own.
"If there was one thing in this life that I never doubted, Andrew, it was that your father loved me. He loved me like I wasn't a mess, or maybe like it didn't matter that I was a mess. He loved me like I was his whole world. And he would have loved you the same way the moment he knew you existed.
"I was so jaded when I met him that I didn't believe that kind of love really existed anymore; it took a long time for me to start believing again, but he waited. He'd never had anyone love him like he deserved, but still he loved like it was the most natural thing in the world. And I loved him like crazy. In a world without bad guys, I have no doubt that he'd still be here by my side, loving me and teasing me and driving me crazy. We'd be that crazy old gray haired couple in their rocking chairs always fighting but still falling more in love with each other every day.
"That love is what gave me the strength to get though without him. That's what gave me the strength to raise you.
"I never could wear those without him by my side. But they were a part of a... an extraordinary kind of love story. And he would want you to have them to give to the woman you love, because somehow, even though you never knew him, you know how to love like he did. I want to know that his extraordinary kind of love didn't end with him, that it will have kids and grandkids and will leave a legacy like no one left for him. He wanted that so bad, to be a dad like his never was, to leave a legacy that he could be proud of. I just wish he could be here to see that he succeeded in that. He would be so proud of you. And he would have loved Leah."
When Andrew and Leah come to dinner, weeks later, with Kensi's engagement ring on Leah's finger, it heals something long broken in Kensi's heart. It doesn't remove that old ache for the man who gave it to her, but it reminds her that the story has not ended, that his love lives on in the heart of his son. It seems right, somehow, that the rings he chose for her will have a place in another love story, a new legacy of his love that will live on long after they're both gone.
AN: I really had no plans to continue with Ritual (chapter 9), but ittybittyalissa suggested the idea for this one, and it eventually decided it wanted to be written. I apparently have been on a married Densi kick lately, but the next couple that are in the works are set more in the current timeframe of the show. They're both a little stuck at the moment, but reviews tend to inspire me to finish things. :)