Chapter 26: Norfolk, Virginia - July 2015

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Teylor moved towards the hospital. He could have gone straight home, well, straight to Danny and Kara's house where he was effectively living, but he suspected (or hoped) that Caro had switched shifts so she wouldn't have to work graveyard on his first night back. They had been gone for more than a month and the sense of contentment that Teylor had felt upon receiving Caro's note had long since vanished, leaving him feeling vaguely apprehensive about his reception. There was no telling what Caro had been doing or thinking while he was gone. For all he knew, she might have changed her mind about their entire relationships and decided to dump him on his ass.

As he approached the nurse's station, he could hear Caro issuing orders to two rather young assistants, probably some of the teenage interns. He stopped in the hallway, lounging against the door jam as he drank in the sight of her standing there in her scrubs, curls pulled back in a clip to keep them off her face. There was no denying the fact that Caro was very good at what she did. Efficient, confident, and organized, Caro had no problem telling others exactly what she wanted done. She would have made an excellent Navy commander – assuming that she didn't get herself kicked out of boot camp for insubordination.

The teens noticed Teylor first, one of them raising her hand to hide a shy smile and the other one winking at him. Neither one alerted Caro to his presence, but she quickly picked up on their distraction.

"Is there something the two of you want to tell me?" Caro's voice was non-nonsense.

"No, but you may want to look behind you," one of them said, pointing towards Teylor as the other girl started giggling. Teylor knew the moment Caro realized it was him, her face shifting from annoyance to elation.

"Teylor!" Caro launched herself at him, arms encircling his neck and legs wrapping around his waist as she buried her head in his shoulder. "You're home!"

Teylor pulled her tightly against him, taking in the warmth of her body, the scent of her shampoo, the feeling of her arms wrapped around him so tightly that it almost hurt. When Caro lifted her face from his shoulder, Teylor realized that she was crying. He lifted one hand to brush away the tears as he set her back on her feet, leaning in to give her a brief kiss, making sure to pull away before it got out of hand.

"I guess I should go away more often if that's the welcome home I can expect," he teased.

Caro stuck her tongue out at him, then frowned. "I have another 45 minutes on my shift."

"And I need a shower and a shave and a fresh set of clothes," Teylor returned.

Caro reached up to touch his cheek, biting down on her bottom lip. "I don't know. The beard is kind of sexy."

Teylor lifted an eyebrow. On the ship he never would have gotten away with it but as part of the land crew...well, Danny certainly wasn't going to say anything and these days even Carlton occasionally rocked the scuff.

"Figured I would head to my apartment to clean up. Swing by when you're done? We can head home together."

"Definitely." With a sexy grin, Caro leaned forward to whisper into his ear. "And there's no reason we have to go right home. Might be nice to have you to myself for a few hours."

Teylor was whistling as he took his leave. While they were gone Commander Garnett managed to get the city water and sewer working again, allowing him the luxury of a lukewarm shower in his own bathroom. Checking the refrigerator, Teylor was pleasantly surprised to find several cans of beer. He cracked one, even though it was well past the expiration date, on the theory that alcohol didn't go bad, it just aged. Before heading into the shower, Teylor stopped before the kitchen table, pulling two well-worn pieces of paper out of his front pocket.

He opened the envelope first, staring down at the familiar loops of his mother's handwriting, re-reading the words that he knew by heart before setting the letter, unfolded, on the table. Next he set down the second piece of paper, the one in Caro's handwriting, listing both the size of her ring finger and providing him with a practical guide in the form of a small circle. Pulling off his dog tags, Teylor removed his mother's ring, rolling in between his fingers before setting it on top of the small circle, which it overlay perfectly.

Teylor took his time cleaning up, blatantly ignoring the five-minute limit on showers (the rule really should be five minutes per day, and since he hadn't showered in over a week, that gave him at least thirty minutes), before pulling on a clean pair of jeans and a long-sleeved polo. Checking his watch, Teylor realized that he still had another twenty minutes before Caro would arrive, and that assumed she left on time. Grabbing another beer from the fridge, Teyler lay down on the bed, closing his eyes and letting his mind drift to the days before he left Norfolk. Not so much the fight with Caro, but her showing up to say goodbye, then giving Danny that piece of paper with her ring size. Whether it meant what he thought, or perhaps hoped, it meant. Whether Caro was ready to take the next step with him, and whether she still felt that way, or if a month apart had given her a far too realistic demonstration of what being a military wife was like.

Teylor wasn't sure how long he lay there, the same questions running through his head over and over, before he heard the apartment door open. Caro entered quietly, and he heard her drop her coat and bags on the chair, probably assuming he was asleep from the lack of light. There was a slight rustling and he knew that she had picked up the papers from the table. He tried to picture what she looked like standing at the table, still wearing her scrubs, maybe having pulled the clip out of her hair so that it fell around her face like a messy halo. She would read the letter once, maybe twice, taking longer than normal as she struggled to decipher the words in her rusty Spanish. Maybe she would roll the ring around in her fingers as she read, the way she and Danny did with coins, both of them seemingly unable to stop fidgeting.

He was so lost in thought that he didn't hear her enter the bedroom. "How did you do it?"

Teylor's eyes popped open at the question, before slowly sitting up, slightly surprised to see that Caro had taken the time to change into a pair of slacks and one of those fancy blouses that tie around the neck in a knot. Teylor vaguely wondered how difficult it would be to get off before turning his attention back to her question.

"Do what?"

Caro sank down, straddling him, leaning forward until their foreheads touched and he could almost taste the tears that shimmered on her face.

"How did you keep going? I had my mom and Danny and Chris, but you lost so much. Your parents. Your brothers. Your nieces. How did you do it?"

Teylor thought back to those first dark days, when he hadn't been sure that he could keep going. When he had blamed God and the government and himself for what had happened, for letting them die, for not saving them When the only reason that he continued to get up in the morning, the only reason he hadn't walked into his parents' house and never left, was because of Manny and Christopher.

And the team.

He couldn't abandon them, not when they had already been through so much. For months that was how he had made it through the day, that burning desire not to cause his team, his brothers – still reeling from the loss of Benz and Berchem and Smith and Cossetti and Bivas and Chung and Lynn and Walker – any more pain.

And then in Connecticut, when he saw Caro, everything had changed.

For the first time since that day in Louisiana, he had actually felt a spark of hope. And in the months since, he had started to believe that the words his mother wrote in that letter were not just the delusions of a woman on her death-bed, but a vision of the future. Imagining what it would be like to see his mother's ring adorn another finger, Caro's finger, as they built a new life together.

"The guys kept me going until I found you," Teylor replied, his voice hoarse.

"They were there for you when I couldn't be. I didn't even know you were alive," Caro replied.

Teylor paused, not wanting to ruin the moment, but knowing that it had to be said. "That's why I can't leave the team, the Navy. As long as they are going out there, I have to be with them. Even if it means leaving you for months at a time."

Caro's hands tightened on his biceps as she sucked in a deep breath. She leaned back slightly and he saw the same riotous emotions that he was feeling reflected in her eyes: the love, the fear, the resolution.

"I know that, Tey. I thought about what you said before you left – about needing to be there for them and I get it. It's the same reason I stayed in Cornwall instead of going to Norfolk to look for Danny after my dad died. There were people depending on me. I couldn't leave them behind. The past couple of months were hard, but I survived." Teylor opened his mouth but Caro covered it with her palm. "The only thing… I don't know if I could do this with kids. I saw how hard this was for Kara and …I don't think I could do that. Not right now anyway."

The image of a baby boy with jet black hair and blue-green eyes flashed through Teylor's mind, but he pushed the picture aside. Someday. Maybe.

"Well, fortunately, I'm not on the Danny Green family building timeline," Teylor replied lightly. "No reason to rush it. We aren't even married."

And there it was, the question that hung between them. Caro opened her fist to reveal his mother's band.

"I would be honored to wear your mother's ring, to wear your ring," Caro said tearfully. "I didn't know – I didn't understand what it meant to you. And I'm sorry about what I said. I just don't think before I speak sometimes and…"

Teylor raised his hands to frame Caro's face, cutting off the flow of words with a kiss. When their lips parted, Teylor reached down to take the ring from Caro.

"Caroline Green, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Caro held out her left hand, which trembled slightly as he slid the ring on, before drawing her hand up to and kissing each of her fingers and then her palm.

"Yes."