A/N: This is gonna replace the Alphabet one-shot series I was doing. There's gonna be a couple of re-posts before there's any new content.
SPOILERS for Rule 91 and is set after Ellie gets back from her mission.
I don't own NCIS.
"I didn't mean for us to happen." She sighs before walking away.
"Goodbye Nick." She adds before leaving and never turning back. Nick stands there, silently allowing the tears to fall down his face. He wordlessly begs for her to turn around but she doesn't. She desperately wants to but she doesn't she keeps walking forwards.
11 months later.
Ellie steps off the plane taking her to DC. She heads through the airport and collects her luggage. She gets through the airport and out into the open of DC. She missed this city so much, even the rain.
Of course, it was raining at the moment but she hasn't seen rain in so long that she practically skips out into the rain. She's walking down the street, intending on walking to, well she hasn't quite worked that out yet but she hears a honk from the road. She looks over to see Gibbs driving in his truck, he pulls over and rolls his window down.
"Ellie?" He asks, the surprise very much evident in his voice. She nods shakily, she hadn't planned on seeing someone she knew so soon. She thinks back to how she left things with her team. Badly is the only word to describe it.
"Get in, get it or you'll catch a cold." He adds gruffly, she could tell he was trying to hide his emotion by the deepening of his voice. She puts her luggage in the back before climbing into the passenger seat before driving off.
"Where do you need to go?" He asks, the answer should be simple but it just isn't.
"I-I'm not quite sure. Can we go back to your house?" She asks timidly, he nods slightly and she relaxes slightly. She thinks back over the mission, maybe she had been ready for it but she'd turned into someone she didn't like. That same person completed the mission perfectly.
Taking in down a terrorist cell and saving thousands of lives, but at the cost of her own. Well, not really, she survived, just but a part of her died when she left for the mission. The once happy and bubbly person that she used to be is gone from her, the person that's left Ellie can barely recognise.
And Nick. God, she's felt awful every single day after what she did to Nick. She can barely recognise herself when she looks in the mirror. The girl that rejected Nick like that wasn't her, but maybe it is her now.
She hardly identifies the car stopping until she feels the cool air on herself again. She opens her eyes, scarcely noticing that they had closed in the first place and she sees Gibbs' house. The home that she'd slept in countless times. It was so much of a comfort for her; to be back in one of the safest places that she can remember.
She numbly gets up and stumbles inside, she sees Lucy and bends down to stroke her. She cuddles up to her and Lucy nuzzles against her. Gibbs heads over to the fire and starts to feed it. She moves closer to the fire once it gets going and hugs Lucy tightly. The dog curls up around her and they stay like that while Gibbs takes a seat on the sofa.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" He asks plainly. She knows that she should, that she should open up and discuss everything she did wrong. Not with the mission, no that went perfectly because of all the training that she'd put in. Well, as perfect as it could've gone given the circumstances. Everything that went wrong with saying goodbye to her team did, she couldn't have done it in a worse way.
"Are they mad?" She replies after a long time of thinking.
"McGee, no. He's not mad, just sad. He missed you a lot, he'd check in with Vance every week to see if you were okay. But he stopped after a few months, he accepted this new way I guess." Gibbs says.
Ellie sighs sadly, she didn't want to cause her friends pain like this but she had to. She felt a little hurt that McGee gave up on her but she couldn't feel too bad after the pain she put him through.
"What about Nick?" She replies, realising that Gibbs hadn't said anything about him.
"Well, I don't know if mad is quite the right word. He's heartbroken." Gibbs replies while rubbing his temples.
"He is, or he was." She asks, hoping for the latter but wishing for the first.
"He still is. He was so angry at first but he kept expecting you to come through the elevator doors. I could see the hope every time it opened. After a while the anger dissipated into sadness, unlike McGee he didn't ask Vance if you were okay, he begged Vance to tell him anything about you. He would call your phone pretty much every day and leave a voicemail about his day. He would go over to your place every week and tidy up, water you plants and make sure everything was perfect for if you got back. He never gave up on you Ellie, he still does this stuff. In fact, he'll be at your apartment now if you want to go and see him. He waits around for a few hours after he finishes tidying up just to see if you'll come home." Gibbs says, his eyes read sadness.
She knew that she hurt Nick but she didn't realise that he'd still be waiting for her. She'd given up on that hope a long time ago. She knew what she had to do, she had to go and see him. The only thing holding her back was that what if she got there and he turned her away, after all she turned him away 11 months ago. What's to say he won't?
"He won't reject you; it might take a little while for him to open up but he would never reject you." Gibbs says in a simple tone, as if it were that simple.
She nods and gets up from her warm position. Lucy whines in objection but Gibbs pats the seat next to him and she jumps up to sit on that instead. Gibbs throws her his keys and she takes them before leaving. She puts her luggage back into his car and drives off to her apartment. The whole way there she can feel her nerves building in her.
When she arrives, she sits outside of her apartment building for at least half-an-hour, trying to psych herself up to go upstairs. She'd seen his bike when she'd pulled in and had stared at if for at least half of those 30 minutes.
She eventually opens the door and grabs her luggage and lugs it up the stairs. She gets to her apartment door and takes a few deep breaths before knocking.
oOo
Nick hears a knock at the door, he doesn't get his hopes up. It's probably just someone dropping something off for her neighbours.
The first few times it happened he let his hopes go up and it just made it more painful to open the door and see a random person standing on the other side and not her. It's been 11 months and he's only heard that she's alive. Nothing else.
He sighs deeply as he gets off the sofa and heads over to the door. He opens it and looks up lazily, he sees a pair of warm, hazel eyes staring at him. His breath catches in his throat as he steps back and sees the women he fell for, the women who took his heart out and stepped on it, the women he continued loving even though she was God knows where doing God knows what.
"Hi." She says shyly and steps into her apartment. She looks around and drops her bags on the floor. She turns around to look at Nick who still has the same surprised look on his face as when she first stepped into here.
Once the shock wore off her pulls her into a hug. At first, she's tense before she relaxes and hugs him back. He eventually releases her and grins at her.
"I can't believe you're back. Wait, you're back right. I don't think I could handle you leaving again." He starts to ramble and she chuckles a little.
"Yeah, I am back. For good." She replies. He releases a breath and pulls her into another hug.
"What does this mean? You're back for good. Does this mean that we're gonna go back to being friends or whatever we were?" He asks, his hands have moved down to her waist. She looks up at him, tears in her eyes.
"Nick, you know" She takes a deep breath before continuing. "God, I-I love you, Nick." He smiles at her and takes a deep breath.
"I love you too El. I can sense a but though." He says, his face says happy but his eyes, they read sadness.
"It's not a but, per say, just that. I, God, I love you but I don't love me at the moment. I-I don't like how I left things with the team, with us. I just can't get over the person that I became to do that mission. Even during the mission, I hate the person that I became." She says, at this point the tears that had been threatening to spill have. He looks at her, deep sadness in his eyes. He can't understand how she can hate herself when all he can see is goodness. He sighs deeply before speaking.
"I don't understand why you hate yourself El. I know that you've done some questionable stuff recently, while I don't know what happened while you were undercover, I'm sure that you saved a lot of lives no matter what you did. I'm not gonna stand here and tell you that you shouldn't hate yourself even though what I see is amazing because right now I don't know what you see but I am gonna stand here and tell you that I love you, I'll always love you. I can tell that you're going through something at the moment so I'm not gonna put the pressure of a relationship on you but just know that I'll wait. I'll wait until you can feel that you're in a good place, until you can see yourself like I see you because I see so much good and purity in you Ellie. I'll always wait for you." He says with so much emotion in his voice. There are tears threatening to spill over his eyes but he tries to hold them back. This is Ellie's time to break down, he needs to be there for her.
"Nick, I could never ask you to wait for me. You've already waited far too long for me. Gibbs told me everything that you did and I'm honestly so happy you did that for me but I don't know how long its gonna take for me to find a place in my own heart again." She says, burying her head in his chest. He gently strokes her hair and whispers soothing noises at her.
"I'll wait for you Ellie. I don't need you to tell me to wait for you. I'm gonna stay a constant in your life, I'll never leave you and I know I can't promise something like that but just know that if I could I absolutely would. I want to be the constant in your life El. I'll always wait for you Ellie. Always."