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They meet again for the first time in years under a volley of bullets.
Ellie covers him with the pinpoint accuracy he’d come to expect from her in their final months together and Nick takes the fatal shot at the guy who’d crept up behind her like they’ve never been apart.
He finds out later that this is the end of her undercover op; the final takedown, as it were.
None of the team had known what they would be walking into when they were called but they’d geared up and gone, all business as usual until his eyes had met hers across the room. She’d been wearing dark clothing and a mask that covered half her face and her hair was darker, but her eyes were unmistakable.
Nick had faltered at the sight of her but Ellie hadn’t, killing the man pointing a gun at him stone cold with a single shot before he had shaken himself out of it and they’d taken out everyone else, side by side.
Almost like old times.
Almost.
They don’t meet eyes again. Not as they round up the remaining suspects, not as they get driven back to the Navy Yard in the backseat together, not even as they debrief with Vance and the rest of the team reach an uneasy understanding of what Nick had always suspected, exactly why she’d left how she had, those years before.
And after it all, Ellie is the first to leave. Before anyone can start asking too many questions.
The rest of the team wonders if she’s gone for a private briefing with her handler but Nick knows… well, he knows Ellie. He hopes, as long as she hasn’t changed too much. As long as she’s still the same person under whatever it is she’s become since they last saw each other.
The memory of that day is almost enough to stop him from going after her, but not quite.
He takes the stairs rather than the elevator, knowing how painfully slow it would feel going all the way down to the lower basement.
She’d often come down here to autopsy when she needed space, he knows. There’s just something about this place that makes it easier to clear the head, easier to think, easier to talk, especially with the added presence of Jimmy to help everything along and add a new calming perspective.
Jimmy’s not here now but Nick can’t find it in himself to be disappointed, because Ellie is.
She’s stood over one of the tables – the one occupied by the very man who she’d shot when she’d first seen him – but she looks up when the doors slide open and he steps inside. Their eyes never leave each other as he stops, leaving some distance between them.
He considers her in the half light. Her clothes are more herself again but her hair is still too dark (more of a medium-brown than the blonde he remembers her with) and her face is a carefully constructed mask.
“So,” he addresses her directly for the first time, “what now? Another assignment? Time off?” he lifts one questioning eyebrow a fraction upwards, “coming back to NCIS?”
She gives a minute shake of her head and steps out around the table. They’re not any closer but at least there’s no longer a dead body laying between them.
“I would never assume that I could just come back like nothing happened,” her voice is quiet but travels easily across the room to him.
“It’s been years,” he reminds her.
She stares steadily back at him, “I know.”
“Are you okay?” he finds himself asking.
Because he still cares, even after all this time.
Ellie nods and while he’s not remotely sure he believes her, he doesn’t bring her up on it as she pauses then carefully returns, “Are you?”
Nick sets his jaw, a casual dismissal nearly escaping his lips until he stops himself, remembering how he’d promised honesty if he ever found himself in this situation, opposite the woman who’d simply walked away from the team – walked away from him.
“It took me so long to get over you,” he admits eventually, watching the way she shifts on her feet.
“I never got over you,” pressing her lips together, she shakes her head seriously, “I just buried the memories of you deeper. Thought that maybe, they wouldn’t hurt that way.”
Except that doesn’t work, not forever. He would know, he’s been through this, after all.
“Well, I couldn't do that anymore-” sometimes he wonders if they’d always been moving opposite to each other- “I couldn't keep burying everything. I was drowning in it all,” he takes a breath, “and it almost took more than I had to even begin to work through it all. But I did and I'm still working and I'm still here.” He jabs towards the ground with his finger for emphasis.
Ellie had built a steady career and life, then changed jobs, lost her marriage, had family ripped away from her and stubbornly changed herself until she could live off the edge of danger and away from anyone she might care about for years just because she knew she was capable of it.
“I'm proud of you.”
His hands curl into involuntary fists at his sides, “Don't say that.”
Nick had isolated himself from the beginning – no past long-term relationships to speak of beyond his Sophia and so many years of his life lost to his work – but had finally come to NCIS in the hopes that he could build something stable for himself. And Ellie had been a part of that, right from the beginning.
But they’d been looking for different things, been going in different directions.
And they’d both thrown the other off guard.
“Why? It's true.”
The last time she’d told him she was proud of him had been after he’d begun to patch things up with his father.
“You lost the privilege to say that the day you chose your career over me.”
He’d been looking to build a home and she’d been looking for an adventure.
“Were we ever going to work out, Nick?-” he tenses as she says his name, exactly like she used to, with so much care- “a workplace romance?” she tilts her head challengingly, “that never ends well, does it?”
What is it they say?
Right person, wrong time?
“I wouldn't know, I've never been given chance to try it!” closing the gap until there’s barely a metre between them, he shakes his head, “just years of fake relationships to get in with people and all the while keeping the most important parts of me close to myself. And when I finally begin to build a family for myself…” he trails off, his voice becoming softer, more broken, “because we weren't just a workplace fling, Ellie. We were family.”
Ellie had been his right person. Perhaps he had even been hers. But the timing had never been theirs.
They’re close enough now that he can see her eyes flicking between his, never settling on one for long as she searches for something.
“I still consider you my family,” she tells him eventually.
Nick doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say.
“And for what it's worth,” she continues after a long moment, “I'm sorry.”
He supposes that if there’s ever a time for a rule to be broken, it should be a rule six for a rule one.
An apology to your partner for screwing them over.
It doesn’t make him feel any better though, that he’d been right those years ago – the having nothing to apologise for had worn right off over time.
“But not for walking out on us.”
It’s not a question. And she doesn’t try to deny it.
“For hurting you,” she says instead, “for making you feel abandoned.”
“I didn't feel abandoned. I was abandoned,” he corrects, clasping his hands behind his back in an effort to keep some semblance of control, “but I know that it was never about me. My father, you, Gibbs. None of you ever left because of me.”
And hadn’t that taken a long time to accept. None of them left because of him.
“You made it all the harder to leave.”
The smile that crosses his face is humourless, “But not impossible.”
None of them left because of him, but none of them stayed for him either.
“I'd worked too hard for too long to throw it away then.”
“I know.”
He understands why she did what she did. But that doesn’t mean it hadn’t hurt him. And it doesn’t mean he can stop himself from wishing she’d picked differently.
“I'm not asking for forgiveness; I don't think I deserve it.”
The look that appears in her eyes is the first sign he gets of the damage the last few years have caused. It’s a weariness, a haunted loss, a barely concealed pain, and it makes the harshness in him soften.
“I forgave you a long time ago,” he tells her, almost like a promise.
“This-” she motions between them- “doesn't feel like a person who's forgiven me.”
He considers her, “Call it closure. The final thing I need to properly move on.”
Too many times he’s wondered about how this particular meeting might go, if it ever happened.
“So, are we closed? Is this it?,” she throws out her arms wildly and lets them drop to her side again, “because if you never want to see me again, I'll understand,” stopping suddenly, she swallows and her voice drops low, “I can't guarantee that I won't disappear again, I don't want to promise something I can't deliver…”
As she trails off, he feels himself stepping forwards, encroaching on the space between them until all he’d have to do is lift his hand and it would brush against hers.
“I don't want to let you down again,” she whispers into the air between them.
“And I can't put myself through this again,” he agrees as her eyes turn glassy with a hint of tears, “Ellie…”
Her name feels like a gentle sigh on his lips as he steps forward and pulls her against his chest, holding her close and feeling the rise and fall of her breaths.
“I've been so worried about you,” he murmurs into the hair tickling his face, “always, in the back of my mind, wondering if you're safe, if one day I'll come to a crime scene or turn on the news and it'll be you there, lying cold in front of me.”
Arms wrap around his waist and he feels warm breath on his ear, “I can't promise it won't be.”
“I know,” he forces himself to inhale deeply, “I did this, remember? I've been there, on the other side of this, you can't ever fool me with how dangerous it is,” he holds her all the more secure in his arms, as if he can protect her from it all, even though he’d never managed it in the past, not when she’d just walked away from everything he was offering, “or how it changes a person.”
“It has changed me,” she admits softly, “I'm just… not far enough out of it yet to know how much.”
That he can understand. Sometimes it’s hard to see the damage when you’re stood right in the middle of it.
“If you ever need help, I know people I can connect you with,” he promises, then pauses and adds with determined certainty, “and if you're ever in an emergency, know that I'd come to you.”
Ellie pulls back then. Their arms are still loosely intertwined and their faces are inches away from each other as she asks, “Even after everything? After all this time?”
“Well,” one of his shoulders lifts in an echo of a shrug, “you said it. We're still family, right?”
She narrows her eyes thoughtfully at him, “Right.”
A final squeeze to her arm and he pulls away fully, stepping back so no part of them is touching or encouraging him to do something that he will regret.
“So, how about you let me know you're safe on occasion, yeah?” he takes a breath, “maybe even hit me up when you're in town if you can-“ because even after everything, he wants her to be a part of his life- “I won't be waiting but, it'll be good to hear from you.”
After a moment’s pause, she agrees, “I will.”
He gives her a final nod then turns and begins to walk away from her, wondering if it had been this hard for her, all those years ago.
“And Nick?” stopping in the doorway, he turns back to her, “I don’t want you to ever think that I didn’t care about you. I still do,” she presses her lips together, “and I'm glad you're doing okay.”
Nick smiles. A genuine – if small – smile, right back at her, “I’m glad you’re okay too.”