A/N: To all of you who've stuck with me to the end, infinite thank yous. You have made this such a lovely adventure.

We Will Carry (You There)
home

After she comes back, they begin anew. Neither of them gives much thought to what being together again looks like, but she ends up at the house more nights than not, and slowly but surely her mess of laundry, malasada sugar, and sand creeps back into his house by the beach. The morning her lease is up, he finds her in the driveway, unloading boxes from her car, the final evidence of their separation spread haphazardly across his front yard.

She grins at him unabashedly and motions to him, silently asking what the hell he's waiting for. Her smile mirrored on his face, he helps her move home.

He could regret the time or the moments like this that they lost, but doesn't, because those years apart weren't in vain. Apart from Kono, he learned the edges of himself, the anger that held him hostage, and was able to allow himself forgiveness. For that, he will be grateful.

They may have gotten lost along the way, but they found each other again, and from there they've fallen back into step. At night, they tuck into each other, mapping devotion and commitment into each other's sinew and bone, moving together in love. He loses himself in the crescendos of her moans, her body welcoming him, home to him. His adulation is slow or frenzied, torturous or tender, but always attentive, always satisfying, always loving. (She loves him like this, primal and possessive and all hers.) And in the morning, they wake up in a tangle of lazy limbs, her hair in his mouth and the scent of their preset coffeemaker percolating.

No, he thinks, her back pressed close to his chest, his hand cupping the soft swell of her belly, barely noticeable and yet definitely there; he doesn't regret it. He doesn't know what their lives would be if they hadn't made the mistakes they did, what sunny days they could have had. He doesn't miss those maybes. What he does know is that they have mornings like this, warm and comfortable and altogether too early, and he wouldn't give that up for anything.

He reluctantly pulls himself away from the warmth of his wife to attend to his toddler son, grappling determinedly at the edge of the bed and babbling happily to himself. Easily, Steve sets the small body between him and Kono, who is only half awake but smiling.

"Like clockwork," she grumbles, looking at him through her one open eye. "He gets that from you."

He murmurs his agreement and can't help the smile that splits across his face at the sight of this, his family, everything he's been fighting for since he was sixteen.

It takes a while, but eventually the three of them get out of bed and make their way outside, Jack at his hip and Kono tucked under his arm. He presses a kiss to her forehead and she gives him a soft smile, eyes glowing, before she darts out from under his embrace into the water.

The sun is rising warm and golden across the horizon when he lifts and tosses him, grinning as Jack's delighted giggle rises above the break of the waves and he has a mouthful of hibiscus petals when he sets him down lightly in the sand.

He's not quite surefooted on land yet, but this doesn't stop his determined toddle toward the ocean. Like his mother, like his father, Jack finds home and joy and confidence in the deep swells, happier and more comfortable in the water than out of it. He crashes into Kono's waiting arms, and their combined laughter feels like destiny answered.

They began a world a way, alone and young and caught only in their feelings for each other. They started with passion, burning hot, fast, and destructive, unquelled by the wild and undulating ocean that hummed constantly in their lives. It almost ruined them, that anger that had thrummed like a drumbeat within him, but he likes to think there were stronger, smarter forces in the world than him.

And this morning, the ocean is calm, lapping cool and gentle at their feet.

This, he thinks, is how they continue: steadfast and constant, for each other, for him, for the promise of her, for their family.

They name her Kailani, for the ocean that sustains them and the sky that is hers to conquer.