Dealing With Trust

19 - Epilogue

*At Aurora's Funeral*

Nick was standing in the back, not wanting to go any closer to the casket, in fear that everything would go wrong once again.

"You deserve to say good-bye one last time." Bishop said softly as she walked over to Nick, McGee, Gibbs, Sloan and Kasie following close behind.

"Thank you all, but I think I'm fine back here until the end." Nick said with a slight head shake as he looked longingly towards the casket. "You can all go and say something if you would like." He added with a shrug.

"Torres. Go over, we got you covered." Gibbs said with a slight nod as Nick also nodded and walked up to the casket.

Each step he took was more dragging and slow like the last  one.

Once he got up to the closed casket that was shining from the sun, he was already fighting back tears. Softly laying one hand on the top itself, he almost immediately tensed up, feeling nothing but sun warmed wood.

"I'm sorry." Nick whispered out before feeling a hand grasp onto his making him look over and see Ben standing there while holding his hand before sliding something to him.

Nick glanced between him and the paper before opening it and reading what it said.

- I'm about to hurt myself. - 

"What?, Ben, please do --" Nick started before Ben stopped him.

"Tell me about her." Ben said softly, slightly rubbing at his throat afterwards, his voice clearly unused for years.

Nick froze but nodded. "Did you want to get something to eat afterwards?, I'll take you to her favorite place." He offered, slowly easing into the idea.

Ben nodded and started to walk to the side with Nick.

"You look like her, just with blonde hair and a bit more fair skin." Nick admitted. "And I know for a fact that she would love you, even if she seen you right after her accident and forgot everything." He said.

"C-C-Can I S....?" Ben started to ask before giving up and using his phone to finish his question since he didn't want to hurt his voice any more than he already had.

'Can I stay with you for a few days?'  Ben's Phone repeated aloud as the boy looked to Nick who nodded with a smile.

"Of course, we already got the bad guy behind bars." Nick admitted, glad that the whole atrocity was over, still upset about the causalities.

Ben nodded with a smile 'That's good.' Ben typed into his phone before pressing the button so it could be said aloud once again.

Nick nodded before turning to look back at the casket. "Yeah, we got the bad guy once and for all."