This will be the last chapter. The characters don't belong to me.

Telling yourself that you need to be happy, wanting to be happy with what you'd been given, and actually being happy are all very different things. Her declaration months ago that the mission was to be happy did not instantaneously make them so. Sure, being able to drink as much coffee as she wanted, eat all the Hostess snacks she could stomach, helped. But babies in the park still tugged at her heart and she still wanted to throw a shoe at the TV when the tax commercial asked her if she'd made a tiny human being that year. Seriously, hadn't they used that same pitch years ago? And each month, she still felt the tears well up in her eyes, even though they were no longer 'trying.'

And Deeks...he tried to go back to what was no longer normal, to the joking, playful ease that had slowly left their relationship over the course of the last year as the frustration built. Frustration that was kept just below the surface and would occasionally bubble over into arguments and standoffs that rivaled their first weeks as partners. And for all of their efforts, it seemed like they would fail at this new mission too.

Then one lazy Saturday afternoon they were sitting on the couch watching football and she nudged him suggestively with her foot and he gave her his best cheesy pick up line and she was laughing as she led him up the stairs to their bedroom. The chuckles had only grown louder as she sat on the edge of the bed and watched him start to undress. The unexplained, completely un-Kensi-like, full-blown giggle-fit that had erupted may have wounded a lesser man, but he hadn't heard his wife laugh like that in too long. He didn't know why or what she found so funny, and she told him through watering eyes and residual laughter that she didn't either. It was just good to laugh. The sex that had finally occurred once she calmed down and caught her breath was both heated and comforting, like it had been before it served a purpose beyond just pleasure and enjoyment. It was as if they'd turned a corner.

That lazy Saturday was years ago now. The much-wanted baby never came. He would never chase a curly-haired half him, half her down the beach. In that sense, perhaps she had failed. But her success, realizing that she was blessed just to have that man in her life and making sure she showed him that every day. They had had a very happy life. That mission was an ongoing success. They took all those trips that he always told her they would. And they did good, saving the world on occasion. But the day had come now, to hang up their guns. Time had finally caught up with them physically and the loss of their team leader to his lifelong mission, it had been the final straw. Both had taken desk jobs and the State of California deemed those jobs appropriate occupations for foster parents.

The child he chased down the beach may not be genetically his or hers and the face of that child might change from time to time, but there was always laughter. They made it their next mission that they would give these children better than either of them had in their comparatively brief times in the system. But ultimately, they would give these kids better than their team leader had, better than 37 foster homes and no first name. They would give these kids a happy childhood, in honor of a little boy named G.