a/n: obviously, this is not very cheery or Christmas-y, but it is a Christmas present (by request) for a friend of mine. a companion piece of sorts to 'the ruins of jenny shepard' so, as already stated, it might make more sense if you've read my story The Sixth.
this story actually directly picks up from a part of the epilogue of that story, so a refresher might be worth it.
"And will you never say that you love me
just to put it in my face?"
Blue October; 'Hate Me' [playlist]
There was some kind of melodramatic horror that touched her soul, when she found herself fighting with him in a dimly lit hallway, in some safe house in Paris, for all the world to hear – and even though the world was no one but Decker, it almost felt worse, when he came barging in and interrupted –
The door she was leaning against opened, and Jennifer Shepard stumbled back; she turned and flinched, her cheeks flushing – how loud had they been, or had only the shattering of the glass she'd thrown woken him? – she opened her mouth to say something, and then flew forward, seizing Decker's shoulders, briefly soothed by his presence – he was like her brother; her best friend.
"I didn't ruin his marriage," she sobbed uncertainly, shoving her head into his chest. "I didn't!" she repeated, violently, and more firmly.
"Jesus," she heard Decker grumble under his breath – he backed up, pulling her with him; she felt the tenseness in his muscles – but she didn't want to run away; she yanked away and spun around.
"I wasn't even the other woman! Not really!" she yelled viciously, her eyes meeting Gibbs' combatively. She ran her hand through her hair. "I feel like her – now I know what Diane felt like!"
It was a low blow; a ruthless one – no matter what her thoughts these days, she never mentioned their past, never brought up his marriage or the destructive part she'd played in it.
"Cool it," Decker barked – and it startled her, because in seconds she'd almost forgotten he was there – he grabbed her arm and dragged her back, his face tired, "calm down and shut up; I'm tryin' to sleep," he snapped – she recognized the tone he used when he was trying to knock sense into her, take her mind off of it.
She turned towards him with red eyes, about to tell him to back off, stay out of it – but Gibbs moved more quickly; he stormed forward and shot Decker a violent look – silently warning him to remove himself – Gibbs took Jenny's arm gently and pulled her back towards the kitchen.
He put his hand on her neck and put himself between her and Decker, his fingers heavy against her skin, warm – pressed against the furious beating of her pulse.
"'M sorry, Jen," he said gruffly – boldly, and unexpectedly – right there, in front of Decker.
Her eyes stung and welled up again – she suddenly felt like sinking to her knees instead of fighting – maybe because he didn't seem to care that Decker could hear him, he seemed to care about her.
She touched his hands.
"You don't have to make people hurt like you do, Jethro!" she burst out hoarsely, desperate to make him understand.
Decker made a noise of disbelief; he thrust his hands up in annoyance, stormed away swearing. She heard his heavy, fed-up footsteps, and she heard his door slam, and then she slipped away from Gibbs and she found her way to a metal kitchen chair – a sparse, uncomfortable piece of furniture in this empty and unwelcoming Parisian safe house – and she sat down heavily.
She turned and laid her head on the table, covering herself with her hands protectively.
She started to cry.
She didn't even remember what had started the fight – something about Prague, something about Positano, something about her leaving, back when they worked together in D.C. – something; it was always something.
She had known it would be like this; she had known if there wasn't something tangible forcing them to keep their deepest darkest selves distant – something like a wife – that they wouldn't work, and she was angry now not only at him, for the bullshit he'd said, but because his ex-wife had been so infuriatingly right –
-and when they had started this thing again in Paris, Jenny had had the misguided nerve to dare think she was better, that she could win where Diane had not.
Gibbs knelt in front of her; she sensed it rather than felt it – he knelt; he didn't crouch, like he did when he saw to the brutal gunshot wound on her thigh – he knelt: like a genuflection, like a prayer.
"Jen," he said quietly.
His palms fell heavily on her knees, and he pressed his hands into her.
"Jenny," he said, his voice softening.
She lifted her head with effort, using one shaky hand to shove all of the tangled red hair out of her face, to hold it back, and look at him, exhausted. It was all so exhausting – being his Probie had been exhausting, being his mistress had been exhausting, trying to move on had been exhausting – and this was just as exhausting, somehow, being with him without the – ironic – protection of him being married was draining her.
"What?" she asked hoarsely – what did he want; did he want to keep fighting – mock her again?
She had made such a crucial mistake – she still had a bad taste in her mouth over it, she felt slimy, exposed – and it wasn't supposed to feel like that, loving someone – telling someone you loved them.
His hands moved lightly over her legs and he shifted forward, rising up a little, kneeling between her knees. He took her hands, turned her towards him, forced her to face him.
She bent forward.
"You mean what you said?" he asked, his voice low, near a whisper.
Her brow knit slightly; her mouth felt dry – but they had said so many things to each other; they had been so cruel and unfair – and yet out of all of it, she knew what he meant, when he asked.
What had Diane said to her, what had she - ?
If you aren't Shannon, you won't last.
- and she had so haughtily, with such experienced, warned –
Don't fall in love with him. Don't let him do that to you.
- and then his ex-wife had sat before her, smirking, understanding that Jenny already had, and Jenny had never, ever denied it – not to herself, not to Decker, and now – well, she was tired of pretending now; maybe if she was honest with him, even now, when she'd just moments ago screamed at him that he was pathetic, weak – maybe it would do some good.
"Yes," she answered, licking her lower lip slowly, swallowing salty tears. "I meant it," she said emphatically. She compressed her lips, and lifted her shoulders helplessly. "Don't you understand – that's why it's so hard, Jethro," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
You just had to go and fall in love with my husband, Diane had said.
For a moment, Jenny hated herself for it as much as Diane did.
He was staring at her, staring at her so intently, in such absorption, that she was scared he was going to say it back.
But he said –
"Why?"
- and he sounded so startled, so uncertain, so confused; and that look in his eye no longer seemed like adoration to her, but a true petrified, deer-in-the-headlights fear, and she felt more like she was in that coffee shop with his ex-wife than in this cold dark kitchen with him -
Diane had said he loved her; she swore she knew it – and with that hard fact, had delivered the blow to Jenny's security that still resonated –
He can't say it. He doesn't even know how to feel it anymore.
She looked at him, this man kneeling at her feet, and she saw that in his eyes; the impediment, the utter lack of ability – but the difference was, then she'd truly been skeptical of the idea that he loved her, and now, now she was frustrated, angry, because she thought he did – and she wanted Diane to be wrong so badly –
"Why?" she repeated.
Gibbs swallowed.
"I never did you any good," he said hoarsely.
She put her knuckles against his jaw, and leaned forward.
"You could," she said sincerely.
She lowered her forehead, pressing it to his. She blinked her eyes, and wiped at her cheeks, laying her arms over his shoulders.
"I do love you, Jethro," she admitted tiredly – the second time she said it, it seamed more real, more decided, and he didn't throw some laughing sneer back in her face. She took a deep breath. "I've never loved anyone before."
She hoped he understood what she meant; she had loved pets and she had loved friends and she had loved her father, but she had never loved anyone; not like this.
She licked her lips.
"I know you loved her," she began – and he knew she didn't mean Diane; he knew she didn't mean his elusive first wife; she meant Shannon. "I wouldn't ask you to forget," she said, catching her breath hard, "but Jethro, why does it have to be her or no one?"
He lowered his head, so slowly that his hair brushed her nose and cheeks; his jaw tightened, and he was staring down at her lap, eyes fixated on her shorts, the place where the cotton barely covered the grotesque wound on her thigh.
It paralyzed him, the thought that he might lose her. And if she hadn't been shot, if she hadn't nearly died on an operating room table, he might have gone on for years with her; he might have been convinced he could live again – but she had been, and he was almost catatonic, with the need to never suffer like he had suffered once before.
She wondered if she should tell him Diane had told her; she knew about Kelly, and she didn't care – she didn't want to make him talk, she just wanted to make him better.
He seemed to collapse, his shoulders slumped; he laid his head on her knee, and he knelt on the floor, using her for support – and he didn't look back up, and he didn't say anything.
She rested her hands in his hair, and leaned back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. It felt like hours that she sat there and listened to him breathe, and felt his heart beat against her knee – it might have been hours.
He got up finally, and he went to the cabinet and he got a box of medical supplies down, and he pulled up a chair to tend to that ominous Czech souvenir. He did so with care, with the firm but knowing touch that only he had, and when he pressed his lips to the bandage, she ran her fingers through his hair almost protectively, and she tried to muster the strength to fight for this, for him – for what they could have – but Diane was in her head, always would be, and she said, in echoes –
If you think you can change it, or fix him, you're stupid; you can't.
She tried to ignore it; why listen? She had broken commandments – weren't the deadly sins her right, too? This avarice and this lust she had for what she wanted with him – she didn't have to repent of it; she had sowed it, shouldn't she be prepared for what she reaped?
His lips pressed to her bandaged wound again, and she closed her eyes.
It was futile.
He hadn't been hers when she started, and he would never be hers now.
It was a blessing that she had been prescribed pain medication; he knew, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, that the injury hurt like hell – it kept her up, and it added to nightmares that had long plagued her, and he liked how she slept when she took the pills.
Gibbs watched her sleep, his eyes narrowed, tracing the contours of her face. It had been a bad fight, even by their standards, and Christ were they good at fighting. It almost felt good, fighting with her; she dragged more out of him emotionally than any woman had been able to since he'd lost his family and now, he watched her, and he was confused – what had she meant, what had upset her so badly?
It wasn't really that he didn't know – he'd said awful things, ruthless things – but she had come back viciously, with perceptive, deep stuff that seemed almost scarily relevant to what he'd lost – but he hadn't told her about Kelly; she only knew about Shannon.
He shouldn't have reproached her for leaving him, not when he wasn't prepared to tell her why it had hurt him so badly. He shouldn't have told her he had a perfectly good marriage before she showed up, because he hadn't had a good marriage since nineteen ninety-one. It wasn't true that it was her fault, and they both knew he didn't mean it, but he hadn't expected her to take his words so seriously – he hadn't expected her to tell him she loved him.
It had felt like a slap to the face, like a reproach, even; he remembered how Diane had thought that the worst of it, the whole affair –
You made her fall in love with you – like I fell in love with you. It's your fault.
And what else had she said, that plagued him now, that made him feel wary, and guilty, and made him want to save Jen from himself – and from herself, for being so daring?
I deserve better, Diane had said, and so – so does she.
Diane had known; Diane had seen to his soul: Diane had lived with his depression and his struggle, his sorrow – Diane had been dragged into the abyss he was still trapped in. She had asked –
Leroy, are you in love with her?
- and he hadn't known, hadn't been able to answer, and it seemed that was because he was, and it was the single most earthshattering thing that had happened to him since he lost Shannon, because he never thought he could feel that again – and he didn't want to, because it had ended last time, and the end had never stopped hurting; the end was ruining him now.
To hear her ask of him – why couldn't he do it; why did she have to be second to a ghost – to see him reflected in her eyes, knowing he was poised on the brink of hurting her like he had Diane – he wanted to run, to piss her off, to chase her away, make her realize somehow that she had been right in leaving the first time, and she should leave again.
Because the grand tragedy of his life had ruined him, and he didn't know if he'd ever rebuild himself – but somehow he knew, that he couldn't rely on someone else to do it for him.
He reached over and touched her shoulder, shaking her away – out of a groggy pain-killer induced slumber, he had to check on her, to care for the concussion that had come with the gunshot wound, and though the danger of that was now gone, he was sill meticulous, still prone to worry.
She rolled over hazily and blinked at him strongly to show she was fine, she wasn't losing consciousness or life in her dreams, and she snuggled into him heavily, forgiving him, because his apology had been sincere, and his touch gentle, and maybe she was resigned to how broken he was, and maybe she'd be the one who could hang on just long enough for him –
- to make it up to her, to see her smile again, to bring the light – what little light there had ever been – back into their relationship.
Maybe – find some way to tell her – what Diane had already told him, what she'd accused him of; maybe he could tell her that the thing that had hurt Diane the most was that he was in love with Jenny Shepard, in a way he hadn't been since he'd lost the first woman he'd ever loved and come crashing into rubble and ruin – maybe –
It was futile.
She had left him to save herself two years ago, and if she was as smart as he knew she was, she'd leave him to save herself this time – and he couldn't blame her, like he couldn't blame Diane, or anyone else –
He was the problem.
It was his fault, and realizing that was a step he took years too late.
"Falling into ruin was a bit like falling love:
both descents stripped you bare and left you
as you were at your core.
And both endings are equally painful.
J.R. Ward; Lover Unbound
this actually literally came out WAY heavier than I expected or meant, honestly. i was originally just going to write a slightly angstier moment for them ... but this took over.
-alexandra
story #232