AN: I started reading starvingstudent's "Law and Order" months ago and, when I got to chapter 11, my brain refused to wait for the next chapter and began writing its own conclusion. This chapter is that conclusion. Starvingstudent generously gave me permission to borrow her story world and post this here.

This picks up immediately after chapter 11 of "Law and Order." If you haven't already read that piece, you should definitely do so before reading this because A) it's amazing and B) this won't make any sense if you don't know what's going on there. I'm going to forego any explanations of what's going on and assume you've read that story.

The original is written mostly from Kensi's perspective. This is largely from Deeks'. That's just the way it ended up.

Ch. 11, Law and Order

"I don't know how to deal with this."

"This is who I am and what I am, Marty. You said you'd understand. Please… understand."

He shakes his head. "I don't."

He stares at her for a long moment. His eyes are clouded with both pain and confusion. He is in turmoil. "I think you should go," he whispers.

She moves back towards the door and picks up her purse. She stares at him for a long moment. He looks as devastated as she feels. Behind him, Monty watches with sad eyes. "I'm sorry," she says.

"I'm sorry, too."

–-

Monty ambles over to her as she slings her purse over her shoulder and leans against her leg. Scooting down, she rubs a hand over his shaggy fur and presses her forehead to his for just a moment. Giving one last scratch behind his ears, she whispers into his fur.

"Goodbye, buddy."

Deeks watches her go, feeling like the air has been sucked from the room with her.

The door closes behind her and he sinks down to the couch, reeling. The last few minutes play through his mind, sinking in a little more each moment.

He sees her tear-stained face, her caving in on herself, fragile in a way he had never seen her before.

It hurts to realize that she came to him for comfort and he just made everything worse. He's never watched anyone die, but he remembers, vividly, watching his father bleed on the floor in front of him as a child, and he wonders how much worse it must be to see it happen to someone you trusted and cared for: to staunch the wound and hold their hand and have it all not be enough. To watch their life fade out right in front of you.

Two.

She said there had been two.

Not just her partner, but someone else she had known and presumably cared about. Two in one day.

The enormity of it strikes him, the fragility of her when she came in and settled into his arms. Kensi has never been fragile. She's strong and adaptable and ready for anything. But tonight, she'd been breakable, she'd needed him to be a safe harbor, and somehow he'd led them straight into a minefield.

But, what could she expect when that world on television had seemed so far removed from anything he thought she might be dealing with? When she's been lying to him for the better part of a year?

He hadn't been lying all those times he told her that he loved her. He thought she was it. It hurts to see her hurting, it hurts to not be able to fix it. It hurts to think she lied to him, and it hurts to think she might not be the woman he thought she was, whom he'd loved.

But, damn, he can't imagine what it must be like for her. She'd already been reeling with grief and exhaustion and stress when she walked through his door, while he'd been blissfully unaware of the bomb that had just exploded in her life, that was ticking even then in his living room.

The reel of the night continues to wash by, and he hears her last quiet I'm sorry, the goodbye muffled in his dog's fur, and suddenly it hits him that she was saying goodbye.

Goodbye like she didn't expect to see him again.

Goodbye like she thought they were over.

Over.

The word hits him like a sucker punch in the gut.

Did they just break up?

Is life that cruel? To give him a past that has driven so many away, then to give him the one who could handle it all, who made him whole, only to lose her because he can't handle her profession because of that very past?

If he can't handle what she does, can they be anything but over?

Kensi returns to work the next morning looking, if possible, worse than when she'd left the day before. Sam hadn't expected her to be all better– he knew none of them likely got much sleep last night, least of all her– but he'd at least thought she would have a chance to breathe and pull herself together to face the new day. He can't say that he's feeling particularly stable, either, but a night in his own house with his wife in his arms had gone a long way toward taming a little of the turmoil inside.

He'd expected maybe she'd find her way to Marty and find some comfort there after everything. And then, with that thought, a feeling of dread comes over him.

"Kensi?" He ventures tentatively.

She looks up at him in question, but does not voice an answer.

"Did you see Marty?

This time her eyes flick away and remain on a cluttered corner a dozen yards away. Her answer is short and soft. "Yeah."

In that moment, he knows there is much more there. Much more information. Much more pain.

"And…?" He prompts, as gently as he can.

"And I told him."

"And…?" He nudges again, though the look of her has already given him the answer.

"And it mattered."

Wordlessly, he compels her to stand and draws her into his arms. At this moment, he wants nothing more than to pound this lawyer into the pavement, then scrape him off and beat him back down into it again. He can barely remember a time when he's seen Kensi cry, but she lets go of one stifled sob into his chest before she forces it back down. He wishes she would just let it go and cry. She just lost a partner and a friend. The man she loved has just walked away, he assumes, when she was at her most vulnerable. If anyone deserves to cry, it's her.

"I'll kill him." Sam growls as she tries pull herself together in his arms.

"No," she draws away from him abruptly. "I knew it could matter, Sam. I knew. He has every right to walk away. That's on me. I lied to him for months. I should have let him go months ago, or told him the truth. This is such a huge part of who I am, and it's such a contradiction to who he is. I should have known that it would matter. At the very least, I should have told him better."

Sam says no more, but privately, her words do little to calm his fury.

Four days later, Marty is shocked to spot her across the bar in a far corner, sitting with a solemn group of people dressed in black.

His feet are moving him across the wide room toward her before he has made the conscious decision to do so. His progress is halted by the large bulk of a man in a black suit appearing directly between him and his goal. He has no problem imagining this man as a part of an elite fighting squad. He has power and discipline written all over him. To Marty's surprise, he speaks to him, his features granite and his voice cold. His position blocking the path is no coincidence.

"Are you Marty?"

This is definitely one of Kensi's coworkers, then.

"Martin Deeks," he offers, stretching a friendly hand out, though the other man's demeanor brings out feelings in him that are far less than friendly. The hand is spared only a brief look of disgust, as if it were crawling with disease.

"Get out."

Taken aback at the abrupt order, he shakes his head a little and tries to reason.

"I just–"

"Get. Out."

"You have no right–"

When the big man cuts him off, his voice is filled with carefully controlled fury.

"I have every right. I am her family. You're just some idiot who deserted her when she needed you the most. I suggest you walk out that door before you need assistance to do it."

He doesn't notice the woman next to the man-mountain until she lays a calming hand on his arm. The ring on her finger and her instant effect on him tell Marty she is probably his wife. She, too, is dressed in black, and though her eyes are kind, her aura is somehow still fierce.

"I suggest you do as my husband says before there is a scene." Her glance back at the oblivious grieving group is pointed. "I am sure we can agree that making a scene would not be helpful for anyone we care about today."

From the look in his eyes, Marty guesses that the other man might disagree. Causing a scene and letting out some of his emotions might just help him a lot. Nevertheless, he allows his wife's hand to draw him a step back, but not before leveling one more pointed look at Marty and then at the door.

The woman's voice stops Marty before they have moved far away.

"This life is not for all of us, Marty. It's not easy to be always worrying about the one you love. It will not always be black and white and it will rarely be simple. And if you know that it is not for you, then it is probably best for both of you if you walk away now and don't complicate things further." Her level gaze holds more understanding than her husband's had, but no less steel. "You have a right to be hurt. But you also need to know that you left her when she was at her most vulnerable, and she may understand that, but the people who care about her may not be as forgiving," she pauses to nod at her husband and the group behind them. "They are a fiercely protective group. If you decide you can handle it, I can tell you that there is no better family to be a part of. If you think about it, I think you will see that the very things that we love about them are the things that make them do this. You know who Kensi is."

The big man flashes one last glance at him, "he knows nothing about Kensi."

Despite a perverse desire to stay and seek Kensi out just to spite the man walking away from him, he turns and heads for the door, willing at least to admit that this is not the time, that he needs to be sure of his own decision before facing Kensi with it. Remembering the fury in the other man's face, he feels the sting of the words again, deserted her. Does she really understand? Will there ever be redemption in the eyes of these who call themselves her family for what they see as his desertion? Does he want redemption?

She sees him through her window, hesitating on her porch, long before he knocks on the door. In his hand is a bag that she assumes holds the things that she had left over at his place, things he must have cleaned out and be returning to her. She's still in her rumpled black dress from the funeral earlier and she just can't deal with this today. Today has already been enough. She can't take any more.

When he does finally knock, she takes a deep breath and opens the door, hoping this will be over quickly.

"Hi," he says quietly, hesitantly when she opens the door to him.

"Hi," she echoes lamely.

After an awkward minute of silence, he manages, "Kensi, I–" He falters and she cuts him off.

"I can't do this tonight, Marty. You don't have to explain; I understand. I really do. But I just can't do this tonight."

She reaches out and takes the bag from his hand, bowing her head so that he won't see the tears gathering in her eyes. When she looks down, instead of her clothing and toiletries she'd expected to see in the bag, she sees a casserole dish, a loaf of bread, and a box of ice cream.

He can see that she is fragile again, still in the rumpled dress he'd seen across the barroom, but he also knows that she is misunderstanding the purpose of his visit tonight. Her watery eyes are confused as they register the bag's contents and then flick up to his.

Tonight is not the end she is expecting. Tonight, he hopes, is a new beginning.

"I was hoping I could fix you dinner and we could talk."

She makes no move to let him further into her house, so he presses on.

"I love you," is the thought he starts with. "I would like to hear what exactly it is that you do, if you are willing to explain it. But I want you to know before we start that I trust you. I'm pretty sure I know what kind of person you are and I trust your judgement. If there have to be guns floating around in the world, yours are the kind of hands I want them in."

As much as the situation in the news had riled his sense of justice, he is ready to admit that he knows he doesn't understand the whole situation. He's seen enough of his own and his colleagues' trials in the news to know that things are not always–perhaps not even often– as they are portrayed. His own sense of justice has to accept that there will be things in her work that, like his, don't always work the way they are supposed to, don't come with clean-cut answers.

The tears are streaming down her face now, but her face is still a blank mask. She's hiding from him, even standing right in front of him. He reaches for her, a hand stretching toward her face to wipe the tears away.

It hurts that she steps away when he's reaching out to comfort her.

When her head lifts and she meets his eyes, still standing carefully away from him, her expression is a compelling mix of fragility and strength. She steps back to let him in the house, but she makes no move to sit, to draw them further into the room.

He meant to be the one that started this conversation, but she beats him to it, dives straight into the deep end to get it over with.

"Situations like this week…" she starts, "they suck, and they don't happen every day, but it's not going to be the last time something like this happens. This is my life. This is how I live every day.

"I carry a gun every day, Marty. Often more than one. Usually off duty as well as on. And I use it. Regularly. I am a trained sniper and I use that skill. I've killed people.

"I'm trained to use nearly every gun in existence. I've seen things that even you cannot imagine. I've looked a man in the eye and pulled the trigger and taken his life. I've lost two partners to this job. I've seen more people die than you can imagine."

Her words are deliberately stark. She needs him to know the harshest parts of her reality if he thinks he's going to step back into her life. He deserves the whole, ugly truth, and she won't be able to handle him coming back and then leaving again even further down the line when he discovers he really can't handle it.

"My father taught me that justice was important, that we were supposed to fight and protect the ones who couldn't protect themselves. He was murdered when I was fifteen. I needed justice and all I got were lies. For twelve years, all I got were lies and roadblocks. I joined NCIS to find the truth, but I found out for myself that sometimes it takes more than words to find the truth.

"Sometimes the law alone isn't strong enough to stop the people who need to be stopped, to bring justice. Sometimes it doesn't even really try. Your job exists because that is the truth. People don't just stop when you tell them to. They don't put their guns down just because they're outnumbered. They don't care about taking innocent lives. Laws need teeth, Marty. I and my team, we're the teeth. We are necessary, but sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes there's a lot of grey in keeping this country safe.

"This is who I am. This is who I'm always going to be. I can't change that, but I understand if that's not something you want. This changes things. I get that."

While her initial words register the shock she intends, he finds they don't have the impact she expects. As she speaks, he finds himself seeing her, this woman he knows, this woman he loves. And as she speaks, he sees what Michelle had said he would.

He sees the woman who desires justice. He sees the woman who needs the truth. He sees the woman who will place her own safety in jeopardy to protect others. He sees the woman who will fight for what she believes in. He sees the woman whose devastating past has shaped her into the person standing in front of him.

Far from being the unrecognizable stranger he'd thought he'd seen the other night, far from being someone so very different from himself, suddenly he sees in her the reflection of himself, all that he is and all that he believes in.

He sees the woman he's known all along she was, just with a few more pieces of the puzzle filled in. And he finds the picture is only more beautiful for being more complete.

He had come here tonight believing that he could accept her life choices even if he didn't understand them, but suddenly he understands, at least a little bit.

"I love you Kensi. This… will take some getting used to. But I love you and I want to try, if you still want me."

She still looks wary, as if she can't quite believe his words, though they are reflected in his eyes.

"I didn't understand at first. I thought I never would. But then…" he trails off, starts again. "I know you. And that's enough."

She doesn't answer in words, but this time when he reaches for her, she comes willingly.

"Forgive me for the other night? For getting angry?" he murmurs into her hair.

Her arms come up to reach around him, snaking under the fabric of his tshirt, skin on warm skin.

"Of course. I meant to tell you better. I'd been trying so hard to figure out a way, but then it just came out. I'm sorry for the way it came out. That I didn't tell you sooner. That I had to lie in the first place. Forgive me?"

"Of course," he mimics, holding tighter.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know that's not classified. Or I'll not tell you, if you don't want to hear about it. Would you rather–"

"We'll talk about it. We'll figure it out. But, later, okay? I understand. I really, actually, do. And I missed you. We can figure the rest out later."

He feels the last bit of tension in her soften as she finally allows herself to fall against him.

After long moments of standing there, they finally migrate to the couch, where he draws her back into his arms as they settle.

"You really…" she trails off, glancing up at him. He hears what she's not saying anyway. You really still want me? You really forgive me? You're really here to stay?

"I really love you." He says. "I really understand. I really want this to work." A smile creeps to her weary tear-stained face, and he wants to be the one to put it there, on good days and bad, for a very long time to come.

"I'm also really worried that the large black man you work with is going to try to feed me to the fishes if he ever sees me again."

She looks confused. "Sam? You met Sam?"

"Large man? Bald head? Death glare? Could probably wring my neck without breaking a sweat?"

"That would be Sam," she affirms. "If you pissed him off, anyway."

"I'm pretty sure my existence pisses him off," he tells her, recounting their encounter at the bar.

"Sam is… protective," she confirms. "But he'll behave or he'll deal with me."

"And that is going to… scare him?" He doesn't mean to belittle her, but he is only just coming to see this side of her that is not a desk jockey.

She only smirks.

"He'll behave. He'll get over it."

He looks down at the woman in front of him. She is not a large woman, but he has always known she was strong. He's realizing now just how much he had underestimated her strength. He's always known she had the potential to be intimidating– intimidatingly beautiful, intimidatingly smart, intimidatingly independent. He's only just now realizing that he should add intimidatingly strong and possibly intimidatingly dangerous to that list. Still, he finds he is still not intimidated.

He considers the mountain of a man he had met that afternoon, the way she had dismissed him without concern. He can't help but feel that he suddenly knows her better than he ever has before. And for knowing her more, he can't help but love her more.

The wellspring of strength in her runs deeper than he had ever imagined, and it's humbling to realize that she has chosen him to lean on. She, who dismisses The Hulk as harmless, wants him to be her support.

They'll have plenty to talk about in the days to come, things to apologize for and hash out and come to understandings on. Today, she buried her partner. Today, he can help her find the good in the world again. Today, he can help process the grief and hold her while she cries and be the safe harbor she can find some comfort in.

He settles in to the corner of the couch, settling her against his chest in the circle of his arms.

"Tell me a story about your partner."

AN: This was a hard one to find the ending for, and I'm only just barely satisfied with this one, but it's done– my first update here in a long time. Please let me know what you think!