A/N: The finally written epilogue. This will be the very last chapter, folks. Hope you've enjoyed the ride.

You look at the lights that surround you. Buildings outlined by the lights inside them and around them. Individual lives happening inside each of those windows, oblivious to the windows around them and the lives inside of those. You turn and walk slowly back to the bench, though not entirely by choice. It's been a year since that case and your knee still isn't the same, though the doctor told you it might ever be the same. Cragen got you a desk job and you help out on a lot of the cases, which is a hell of a lot better than being the desk sergeant downstairs. Every morning you walk in and exchange looks with him, never envying him.

You sit down on that bench you sat on a year ago and can still feel her pressed up against you. Feel her gaze boring into you as she removes your glasses. You don't really remember walking away anymore. You've made yourself forget that, and it also helps she walked to you, even if it was a little late. But it doesn't matter now. Hasn't for a year.

Closing your eyes, you let yourself fall away from the world for a while, the sounds of the city becoming part of you until you are a part of them. You don't hear as she comes up to you and sits beside you until you feel her hand sliding into yours. Eyes still closed, you smile and give her hand a squeeze. All the questions that had been attacking you just a year ago as you sat with her are gone now, replaced by different ones. Ones that suddenly seem much more important than those of a year ago were. Now it's questions about the distant future, not the here and now.

Because you're come to accept the here and now as it is. Because the here and now you're happy with, for once. Truly happy. You have another year on the Job before the Department makes you retire, and even then, you could go over to the DA's office, work with their investigative squad. Something like that. But for now, you're still a cop, still a detective, and even though the same kind of cases are dropping on your desk, you're happy. Of course, it's mostly because she's still with you. From that day in the hospital, she's been with you each painful step of the way. And that... that is why you can really smile these days. She's stayed with you.

"Cragen said we can go home."

"Just us?" you say lightly, joking.

You can picture the smile gracing her face. "Elliot, Fin and Julian already left."

"Let me guess, to hit Meloni's?"

"Probably." She falls silent and you continue to picture her with your eyes closed. "Listen, I was thinking-"

"Uh-oh."

She laughs a little and you want to make her laugh more, really laugh. The kind of laugh that makes her sides hurt and steals her breath until she's left gasping for air, yet still you continue to make her laugh, until she's begging you to stop through tears of mirth. You've done it before and you wish you could do it now. "Anyway... I was thinking that maybe we could go out tonight."

You open one eye and look at her. "Really... And while you were thinking, did you think of a place where we might go out?"

She smiles, and you know what it means instantly.

"Oh... out. I gotcha." You open the other eye, too, now. "Out," you mutter. "Interesting." But you make no move to leave, and she makes no move to take you away, of which you are glad. Lifting the hand that holds hers, you look at them, together. With your thumb, you stroke the back of her hand and put it back down on your leg, closing your eyes again.

"You okay?" her soft voice asks after a few minutes.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am." And you are. "You know, it's been a year since we last sat like this. Up here."

She's quiet.

"When you let me leave that night... That whole case was just... I kept flip-flopping between remembering Vietnam and remembering how you let me walk away. When we caught Cusack and I got shot... I was so happy that damned case was over." You pause. "In the hospital... I never though you'd come to me. Never crossed my mind." You pause again, listening to her breathing. "I love you." You open your eyes then and look at her. It's the first time you've said it to her, the first time either of you has said it to the other.

"I love you, too, John."

You squeeze her hand again. "Wanna go out?"

She smiles. "Sure."

She gets up, and you do too, slowly. You follow her as she walks to the door that leads back downstairs. As she opens the door and begins to go inside, you hold out your hand to stop the door while you turn around and look at the bench you were just sitting on.

You haven't let it happen again. You haven't let her walk away again.

"You coming?" she calls.

You smile and turn inside, letting the door slam shut behind you.