NCIS

by madame.alexandra

In this very au finale, Jenny is the girl Gibbs meets in high school - his first love, until some unexpected teenage mistakes change their lives, and the paths they take, forever. Jibbs-oriented; Shannon friendly. 4th and final part in a 4 part series. This part features Gibbs & Jenny confronting their past after 14 years living separate lives with a daughter in common.

1. Run, Daddy Run

a/n: well, here we go: the final part. lazily titled "NCIS," i hope it's at least marginally satisfying to you!

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Washington, D.C. and Metro Area: 1999

Run, Daddy Run

---

The thing about the east coast was, it had these things called seasons. They weren't always appropriately defined and delineated – for example, some years, crisp Autumn started in September, when it was supposed to, while other years sweaty Summer lingered until late October – but they existed, quite obviously, and the whole concept of actually having to have a diverse wardrobe, because one couldn't wear the same clothes year-round in the expectation of static, perfect mid-California weather, was not a concept Natalie Gibbs was particularly sure she liked – yet.

She'd gotten used to it, maybe, having lived in the nation's capitol for about two years now, but that didn't necessarily mean she liked it. The are-seasons-enjoyable-or-a-hassle question always seemed to pop up in the transition months when the temperature was so unpredictable she couldn't for the life of her decide what to wear, and she dramatically lamented the loss of days when her mother had picked out her clothes for her.

This morning, though, she didn't have the energy for adolescent dramatics; she sacrificed modeling three different outfits for her mirror in favor of an extra half hour of sleep, and then, in modest leggings and a large, maybe-too-heavy sweater, she trudged downstairs to the kitchen of the Georgetown brownstone she now called home and sat down at the little Ikea table with a yawn.

She inhaled deeply.

"Coffee?"

Too awake, and too bright, her mother waved a mug in front of her nose.

"Caf-pow?" Natalie answered hopefully, lifting her chin.

"Coffee," her mother repeated, wiggling the mug a little.

Natalie sighed and took it, eyeing its contents.

"Caf-pow!," she lamented.

She looked up, and her mother's familiar green eyes met hers, narrowing slightly.

"Caf-pows! are terrible for you," she said, predictably.

Natalie had found a place on her route to school that sold the fruity, cold, energy concoction, and she was veritably as addicted to them as her maternal counterpart was to Colombian grounds.

She tilted her head.

"When you come up with an adequate explanation for why your ten cups of coffee a day are healthier than my one single Caf-pow! a day, I'll quit drinking them," Natalie said smartly.

"If that's a bet, I'll take it."

"Oh, you will?"

"I'm sure I could figure out how much caffeine is in a cup of Caf-pow! – and then somehow extrapolate that to see how much is in an average serving of coffee, and then calculate how much you're actually having – "

"You'd have to account for the fact that you drink highly caffeinated blends, and often different coffees from different places, so taking into account variables and outliers would take an extreme amount of effort – "

"But for your health, my darling – "

"—not to mention you're forgetting one key element of your planned coup concerning my caffeine habits."

"And what's that, young lady?"

"You'd have to have an ounce of aptitude for mathematical endeavors."

With a sharp swat administered to her daughter's shoulder, Jennifer Shepard turned and marched to the cabinet to pour her own coffee, heels clicking pointedly. She shook her head, red hair dancing down her back.

"Brat," she accused playfully. She arched a brow and poured her own cup, turning back to the little snark queen she'd raised. "And you think my skills are lacking – that my Master's in information systems involved no math – "

"Math a computer does for you isn't math," Natalie sang sweetly.

Jenny smirked and took a long sip of her coffee, shrugging her shoulders a bit.

"Nerd," she accused.

Natalie blew on her cup of coffee primly.

"Nerds run the world."

Jenny sat down at the table with her – two chairs, and only two; they'd never seen a need for anymore. The brownstone, an impossibly lucky find in the heart of Georgetown, had become theirs at a steal of a price – found for Jenny through some resources Hetty had given her, and paid for with the bulk of what Jasper Shepard's will had left his daughter – and was a cozy safe haven for a single mother and her sort of grown daughter making their way in the district.

Natalie took a deep sip of coffee, closed her eyes, and then set the mug down and put her head down. She pushed her hair back, gathering it in her hands and shaking it messily down her back, and pouted, looking up.

"I'm so tired," she whined.

"Ah, yet another benefit of abstaining from Caf-pow!," Jenny mused, winking. "You could sleep an extra hour and a half."

This little caffeine haven of Natalie's was near the Navy Yard; she'd discovered it while visiting Jenny at work one day. In the summers, and when she'd been going to a Georgetown middle school, it had been hardly an inconvenience to go – but her high school, the illustrious and competitive Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, was extremely out of the way of the Navy Yard, yet Natalie insisted on getting up frightfully early so she could get her staple drink before she took the metro, and then the bus, to her high school.

It was absurd, but it was not a quirk or a desire Jenny worried about nipping in the bud; Natalie chose to take public transport to school even though Jenny offered to get up and drive her, and at fourteen years old, Jenny allowed her that independence. The only reason they weren't living in Alexandria or Fairfax, close to the school, is because they'd both fallen so in love with the townhouse that they felt it was meant to be, and they hadn't been sure Natalie would be accepted to TJ, anyway.

But – she had been; after one year in D.C. public schools, she'd taken her tests and put in her application to go to the county school, and they'd taken her – and it made everything worth it: Jenny's request to be moved to the east coast NCIS offices, her quick liquidation of all her father's financial assets, her move away from Melanie and Max and all the connections she'd made in California – they were east coasters now, and Natalie – Natalie was thriving in it.

"I already slept an extra thirty minutes – that's why I look like a hobo," Natalie sniffed. She rubbed her nose. "My ears are still ringing; are your ears ringing?"

Jenny shook her head, leaning back coolly.

"My ears got accustomed to loud shrieking noises when you were a baby. You hysterically screaming the lyrics to Papa Don't Preach over the din of concert music is not much different."

"You mean my infantile crying was attuned to Papa Don't Preach two full years before it was released?" Natalie asked, feigning awe. "What genius! What marvel! By God, Mother, I'm owed royalties!"

Jenny smirked at her, and Natalie gave her a small grin, pushing her hair back again. She scrunched her mouth and poked at a point above her lip.

"Did I get the beauty mark off?" she asked.

Her mother nodded.

"Ha," Natalie gloated. She winked. "Yours is still smudgy," she teased.

Jenny put two fingers to the place she'd drawn the signature Madonna beauty mark – last night, in the middle of the week, and in a rare act of wildness, Jenny had taken Natalie to the Madonna concert in Baltimore – the tickets had been purchased months ago, as a reward for getting into the competitive fancy high school.

They had both dressed up in iconic pop queen outfits – one of the strange positive twists of having a daughter that you were barely sixteen years older than, and a mother who'd never had a real teenager-hood, was that things like Madonna concerts in the middle of the week happened occasionally.

Just occasionally.

As close as Jenny and Natalie were, Jenny was diligent about drawing a line that established the break between mother and daughter; she made it clear that when she needed to, she would come down on the parent side of the line and not the cool best friend side of the line, but with a child who both considered her inspiring and who was more interested in jet fuel and astrophysics than lipstick or sneaking out, Jenny rarely had to.

The worst Natalie had ever done was dye her hair black and – well, despite some snippiness, and some growly anger for a few days, Jenny had tried not to pick that battle – though even now, this morning, as she looked at Natalie's black locks over her coffee, she felt nettled by it – Natalie had always had such beautiful auburn-brunette-russet hair.

The Wednesday Addams Stunt, as she liked to mentally refer to it, had not been Jenny's favorite thing, but she swallowed it sourly and grit her teeth, because she'd rather not fight about it – and she knew, grudgingly, it had been done in a little act of defiance.

Black hair, Jenny decided, was preferable to drugs or a grandchild – and though she'd never, ever admit it out loud, with Natalie's icy blue eyes the black hair was arresting to say the least. Half of Jenny's problem with it wasn't the act of defiance – she understood the impetus for that - but the fact that it made Natalie look a lot older and a lot more desirable than Jenny was comfortable with a fourteen-year-old looking.

Luckily, all the boys Natalie went to school with at her geeky magnet school were the least threatening teenage males on the planet; none of them looked like the corn-fed, small-town all-American movie stars of Jenny's hometown, and none of them, thankfully, were as swoon-worthy as Jenny's own teenage love.

"Why are you up so early, anyway?" Natalie asked, still peering at her coffee as if it were not to be trusted. "Aren't you back at the Navy Yard for good now?"

Jenny sighed, and leaned forward dramatically.

"Natalie, I physically cannot sleep past seven a.m. anymore," she confided.

Natalie leaned back, putting her hand to her chest.

"Heavens, is that what it means to be old?"

"I thought we talked about that word."

"Well, from my perspective – "

"I'm still closer to your age than your friends' parents' ages!" whined Jenny, pursing her lips. She gestured playfully. "Look at me. My teenage body snapped right back. It's all where it's supposed to be, babe – I'm practically Stacy's mom."

"You're Natalie's mom," the teenager said dryly, "and Natalie would like you to stop."

Jenny grinned at her wickedly.

"I thought about setting my alarm later, but since we didn't get in until three a.m. and you sleep like a rock, I wanted to make sure you got up," she explained.

The thing was – up until this week – literally, this very day – Jenny had been up before Natalie, to the point where she'd often been leaving just as Natalie came down for a bowl of cereal or her pop tart. NCIS had been taken advantage of the Master's degree they'd paid for, and sent her to the most local field offices to get cyber units running – the worst had been Norfolk; that commute was absolute hell; then she'd been at Pax River for about three months, and just recently, she'd been at Quantico. She was finally, permanently, back at the Navy Yard: settled in her niche, extremely close with a metro commute, and able to stop spending a fortune on gasoline.

Natalie yawned pointedly.

"I'm up," she confirmed.

"You sure about that?"

"Caaaf-pooooow," she drawled, pouting.

Jenny laughed.

"Bug, if you want to go back up to bed, I'll call you in sick to school," she said, shrugging lightly. "You and I know it won't set you back for a second."

Natalie looked startled, and appalled.

"Mom – no, I can't just skip – I want to have perfect attendance, all four years."

Jenny put her elbow on the table, arching an eyebrow.

"And on that note," she began, catching Natalie's eye wryly – and half-seriously.

"Please don't start."

"Do you know what derails perfect attendance?"

"Mom, it is too early for this."

"Do you, Natalie?"

Natalie groaned, and closed her eyes.

"You got it, babe: teen pregnancy," Jenny announced, driving the point home.

Natalie opened her eyes and glared at her. Jenny nodded emphatically.

"One minute you're a perfect student, the next minute," Jenny snapped pointedly, "you can't go to calculus because your baby gets an ear infection – bam, you fail physical science because you need to make sure your baby's fever isn't the flu or meningitis," Jenny nodded again, mustering an extremely intimidating glare. "Not to mention, you never have time to paint your nails."

Natalie burst out laughing.

"Was that the worst of it, Mom?" she teased.

Jenny pretended to think.

"Well, one time you pulled an earring out of my ear. It bled. I felt that was extremely ungrateful."

Natalie cocked an eyebrow dryly.

"My sincerest apologies."

"In all seriousness, Natalie Winter," Jenny began, not batting an eyelid. "You're going to be fifteen soon – "

"Yeah, yeah, and fifteen is when you got pregnant," Natalie said, interrupting calmly. "I know, Mom," she said, her voice level. She tilted her head, hair falling in her face a little. "I had a dream once that you went a whole week without giving me your Scary Year Spiel."

That's what she called Jenny's constant teaching moments and speeches and maniacal obsession with sex talks and liberal communication – the Scary Year Spiel. Jenny had gotten pregnant when she was fifteen, and had a baby at sixteen; the fact that the product of her indiscretion was reaching that exact age sent her into fits of anxiety on almost a daily basis.

"Keep dreaming," Jenny replied dryly.

Natalie cupped her mug and took a long sip, finishing her coffee in three large gulps, so she couldn't really taste it, and she burned her tongue. She licked her lips.

"Besides, I'm saving myself for Palmer Joss," she murmured wickedly.

Jenny rolled her eyes half-heartedly, and still took a moment to look at her worriedly – but as much as she worried, and she did panic about it – deep down, she didn't think she had anything to worry about: Natalie was focused, she was smart, balanced, and ambitious – she didn't even have a boyfriend. She wasn't in the same opportunistic circumstance her mother had been.

Natalie checked her watch. She stood up.

"I have to book it – if I'm going to get my brain nectar and meet Jess to look over some of this stuff – "

Jenny eyed her intently – well, then again, there was Jess – but Natalie swore Jess was nothing but a friend.

"—and is it okay if Emily gives me a ride home?"

Jenny hesitated.

"Emily wants to drive into the city just to give you a ride home?" she asked warily.

Natalie shrugged.

"I mean, her boyfriend goes to Georgetown, so it's not an imposition."

"Ugh," Jenny said, barely hiding her distaste. "That girl's parents need a reality check – fine, I guess that's okay – how long has she been driving again?"

"Mom; it's fine," Natalie soothed – Emily Richards was the first female friend Natalie had made at her magnet school – she was a junior, and the only reason Jenny didn't think it was absurd she wanted to hang out with a freshman was for two reasons: Natalie had placed into the junior Physics class, and in the entire science and tech focused school, Natalie was one of four girls – total.

The pickin's were slim.

Jenny just didn't like that Emily Richards, sixteen, was dating someone who could legally drink alcohol.

Natalie stood there, a little wary by the look on her mother's face, and cleared her throat.

"Uh, if you're that uncomfortable with it, I can just – "

"No, it's okay," Jenny said firmly. "I trust you."

Natalie beamed, and pushed her hair back.

"What are you doing with Jess this morning?" Jenny asked.

"Oh – there's a science fair in January; I'm going to enter it," Natalie said, grabbing an apple from the counter. "I'm going to figure out how to synthesize sustainable jet fuel – it'll be fun, we'll light some stuff on fire in the tests," Natalie grinned cheekily. "'Bye, Mom," she sang, biting into the apple and disappearing into the study to gather her schools things.

Jenny got up with her coffee, listening to her daughter shuffle around, and she smiled to herself – every day, she felt so much pride in Natalie; every day, she wished Jasper Shepard could see her, that Stillwater could see them – every day she forgot a little more how disastrous a baby had seemed when she was fifteen-years-old.

She wouldn't choose it for Natalie, of course, but her own life – was not half as tragic as she'd oh-so-dramatically imagined it would be, back then.

She had a Master's degree from Georgetown, for God's sake; she was steadily and comfortably climbing up the ranks at NCIS, a veritable expert in computer forensics and cyber criminology.

Things could have been so much worse.

"MMmaaamm?"

Jenny looked up at the muffled sound, and arched her brows, amused.

Natalie paused at the door, backpack over her shoulder, apple clenched between her teeth, her faux-black hair tumbling down her back messily. She delicately shook the apple loose from her teeth, and blinked mildly, considering her mother.

"Yes?" Jenny asked simply.

Natalie shrugged.

"I'm still mad at you," she said matter-of-factly.

There was nothing malicious about it, nothing vindictive or cruel; she simple said it – as a casual reminder, as a warning – pointing out the one solitary estuary of discord that disrupted what was the calm river of their relationship.

Jenny pursed her lips, sighing heavily. She closed her eyes, opened them, and tilted her head.

"I know," she said dully, quietly – she was familiar with this; since their one tense fight – argument? – there had been a bit of a – struggle – between them.

Periodically, Natalie reminded her that her amicability did not mean she had forgotten.

"Have a good day at school, Bug," Jenny said simply.

Natalie, dog tags hanging down the front of her sweater in a slightly defiant manner, inclined her head in thanks, and turned on her heel – out the door for the walk to the metro, the trek to her precious Caf-Pow, and the long haul to school –

-and Jenny leaned her head heavily against the doorframe in the hall of the townhouse, groaning quietly to herself; if only Melanie hadn't sent that goddamn box.

---

There was one significant change at NCIS headquarters – at least, there was only one that was immediately visible to Jenny's eye, only one that had changed since she was last a permanent fixture in the office sometime last year –

"Orange?" she mused loudly, one eyebrow arched, as she stood at the railing on the catwalk with the assistant director and one of her favorite agents. "Orange – who decided to paint the walls orange?"

"We took a poll on paint colour," Assistant Director Morrow said.

"It got extremely heated," Special Agent Whitney Sharpe added solemnly.

"We feared blood would be drawn over whether the walls would be ecru or cerulean."

"Ecru or cerulean?" Jenny quoted, in disbelief.

"Oh, yeah, we had to define those to half the agency," Whitney snorted.

"Why didn't I get any of these e-mails?"

"You weren't at headquarters," Morrow said flatly.

"Okay – so, between beige and blue, how did orange – ?"

"Agent Franks threatened to paint the walls with goat's blood if we painted them ecru, and Agent Robichaux threatened to paint the walls with Frank's blood if we painted them cerulean," began Whitney, pausing so Morrow could finish.

"—so we painted them orange, because it was the one colour every single person hated," Morrow stated grandly.

"Ah," Jenny noted dryly. She nodded, looking over the bullpen from the catwalk. "Naturally – enrage everyone."

"Very astute, Shepard," Morrow said.

She sighed, and thrust her hand out.

"It's not even – a sunset orange or a burnt orange or an apricot orange – "

"Apricot?!"

"It's just – hideous…orange," Jenny lamented.

"A-pri-cot?" repeated Morrow incredulously.

Agent Sharpe held up her hands.

"The walls are an extremely offensive orange," she said matter-of-factly. "I know, I know – a dreadful shock," she sighed mockingly, giving Jenny a wry look – they did go way back, after all; Whitney had been no more than a probie agent when Jenny started as an intern, hoping to work in recruitment and special operations – and lo and behold; now she did.

It was a welcome surprise that she was in D.C. for a short while; usually she worked out of field offices, or in Europe.

"That is not the only thing that's changed around here, Jenny," Whitney said simply.

Jenny smiled a little, leaning on the railing – it did seem strange, to feel like an outsider; after all, her home office was technically the Navy yard, it's just that – a year here, they'd sent her to do work in Norfolk, kept her there for months, and then kept her at so many other local field offices that she really wasn't up to date on anything regarding headquarters.

She'd even missed the influx of the most recent class of agents – although she'd met two of the FLET-C class of ninety-nine at Quantico – decent men; no women came in with this class.

"Hey," she said, whipping her head to Whitney on that note. "What was with the FLET-C sausage fest this year?"

Morrow glared at her.

Whitney shrugged.

"Women don't apply," she said simply. "You had a perfectly good chance to take an agent slot this round – "

"No," Jenny said shortly. "Natalie is still in school."

She refused to even consider the position while her daughter still needed her; the risk was too high, and even then, she wasn't sure the agent route was for her. Though her choice to study information technology had been a practical one – knowing as she had that it would be an in-demand job – she found she enjoyed the work, and she thought maybe she'd like to move into an analyst-intelligence position when she could.

She had a good niche as the go-to Cyber girl, though, and she was comfortable where she was for the time being. She still had to think first about Natalie; Natalie had three and a half more years of high school before she started her independent life, and Jenny could maybe consider being more than just a mother.

Jenny turned her head, furrowing her brow lightly.

"Changes," she quoted. "Yeah – what has changed? What're you back for, Whit?"

Whitney tossed her head primly.

"I'm here to handle you."

"Handle me?" Jenny asked.

Whitney winked at her, and Morrow signed crisply.

"She means she's softening the – blow, or what I felt might be a blow."

Jenny arched a brow slightly and tilted her head.

"Am I being fired?" she asked conspiratorially.

"God, no," Morrow blustered. He set his jaw. "You're being given – "

"—an Intern!" Whitney burst out wickedly, wiggling her fingers. "I found him myself –he's an absolute genius, he'll be running Cyber crimes, one day, and I managed to wrangle him away from the CIA – "

"He'll be running cyber crimes? Gee, thanks Whitney," Jenny said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

Whitney's face fell a little.

"You don't want to be in info tech forever, you told me that!"

"I'm messing with you," Jenny soothed. She flashed a smile, to show she was – she was proud of her work, but she really didn't want to be a tech nerd for the rest of her life; that was Natalie, that was – well, these up-and-coming, younger…millennials. They'd be running the computer stuff; Jenny had already decided that once she had succeeded in getting Natalie raised and ready to go she was going to … take some time to figure her interests out.

"Well, he's an impeccable asset, and we're assigning him to you," Whitney said logically. "Consider it a vote of confidence – we're putting a new intern in your very impressive former-intern hands."

"What's wrong with him?" Jenny asked.

Morrow smirked slightly. Whitney cringed.

"Nothing's wrong with him – "

"Then why," Jenny said simply, nodding at Morrow, "did he have you come to soften the blow?"

Whitney hesitated.

"He's – ah, well, he's twitchy – but he's nervous, I mean, you know, think Anthony Michael Hall, Weird Science –that – poindexter type," Whitney began.

"He's young," Morrow stepped in, straightforward.

Jenny shrugged.

"I'm young," she reminded them both – sometimes her co-workers forgot, because she had a fourteen-year-old daughter, that she was barely in her thirties. She paused a moment. "Believe me, it's easier to give orders to someone younger than you; they don't hold such a grudge against it," she said dryly.

She ran into that problem a lot –being female, young, and knowledgeable in technology that older, dinosaur men did not yet understand, she got a lot of flak – for being a 'quota' hire, for being a tease – whatever the sexist overlords decided to throw at her.

She didn't care anymore. She was good at her job. Madeleine Albright was the Secretary of State. It was the turn of the century, and women were about to start ruling the world.

"He's younger than our usual hires," Whitney began diplomatically.

"Christ," Morrow said, rolling his eyes. "Jennifer, he's a seventeen-year-old MIT student."

Jenny's jaw dropped – and though jaw dropping was common in fiction, in her own life it had only actually happened two or three times.

Whitney glared at their colleague. He folded his arms.

"I don't have time for you to beat around the bush – his father is a Navy admiral, that's how we discovered him," Morrow said. "The father is not entirely pleased the son is so – soft, as he calls it – but he has unmistakable talent, and we need – "

"You hired a college freshman as an intern?" Jenny asked, still taken aback.

"That's the thing, Jenny," Whitney said quickly. "He's not a freshman – he's seventeen, and he's graduating MIT in December."

Jenny's jaw – well, it dropped again.

She didn't feel – threatened, per se, but the memory of how startled she'd been to be recruited from California State, when Berkeley and CalTech and MIT and Harvard were turning out such geniuses, was strong, and she felt a little – well, perhaps she was jealous, perhaps just in disbelief.

"If he's – how am I supposed to teach someone who is clearly more intelligent – "

Whitney was shaking her head.

"No, no, no – listen to me – he's got innovative ideas, and he's very skilled with computers, but he needs to be taught to interact with people, to work with the agents – he isn't being brought in to usurp you; he needs you," she said.

Jenny put her hand to her cheek.

"I understand that he's young, but – I'm wondering if there's something else that makes you think I'd balk," she began warily, looking between them both.

Whitney shrugged. Morrow shook his head.

"No, it was his youth," he said simply. "I thought – erroneously, perhaps – that you'd consider the idea to be – ah, that we were essentially asking you to babysit."

Jenny laughed a little.

Morrow gave her a wry smile.

"I had qualms about asking you to take an intern who was young enough to be your daughter – well, son, in this case."

"Tom," Jenny said, in a rare familiar use of his name, "I was sixteen when Natalie was born. Not fourteen," she said crisply. "And Natalie is only fourteen herself." She thought about it a moment.

A seventeen-year-old MIT senior to be her intern…well, it was surprising, but not altogether unwelcome. It was one of those odd moments where she realized that, naturally, people thought of her as someone old enough to mother, to mentor, to guide people, when really she'd been a mother for almost exactly fifty percent of her entire life, at this point, and sometimes, just sometimes, she still felt like she was just a little girl.

Still, she didn't abhor the idea.

"Well," she said simply, "like I said – it's much less troublesome to have an intern who is younger than me than to be saddled with men older than me who think I know absolutely nothing."

She stopped, and smirked a little.

"At least maybe this one won't think I'm just a trollop trying to sleep her way through the agency," she said bluntly.

Morrow looked slightly pained, but Whitney laughed smugly.

"No, he'd be much too timid to even glance over you in admiration – but I would keep him away from Natalie, you know – he went to Thomas Jefferson for a year, before he tested into MIT – "

Jenny groaned.

"Thanks for that warning – Natalie's already making noise about skipping to a higher grade – "

Morrow cleared his throat, cutting her off.

"Agent Sharpe?" he asked.

She sprung into action, shaking herself.

"Right – well, Mr. MIT is here; he's down in your lab area waiting, we just wanted to brief you first – I'll take you down there."

Jenny pushed off the railing and, with a parting word to Morrow, followed Whitney down the stairs.

"Is Franks around?" Jenny asked, as they cut through the middle of the bullpen where the growly agent in question usually sat.

Whitney shrugged.

"Haven't seen him. He's working on a task force with McClane, now – McClane's here."

"Aw, really?" Jenny asked – McClane was the agent who'd originally taken her on in Los Angeles.

Whitney nodded.

"And they each have a probie – "

"McClane isn't with Vance anymore?"

"No, Vance was overseas for a while – Paris – and now he's back on the West Coast – his wife had a second baby, though, they named him Jared," Whitney said abruptly. "No – McClane and Franks both have a new probie, from the recent FLET-C class – sort of – "

"Sort of?"

"Well, McClane's came from the FLET-C class, Franks' probie only went down there for testing – military background, he didn't need the training."

Jenny nodded, as they got on the elevator and headed for the level that held the forensics lab, and the budding technology offices.

"I wish they'd saddled Franks with a girl; he could use one," snorted Jenny.

"His new punching bag is hot," Whitney said bluntly.

"What's the agent's name?" Jenny asked.

Whitney started to answer, and then frowned, staring hard at the elevator doors until they opened.

"Whit?" Jenny prompted.

"I don't know," Whitney said, exiting with Jenny.

"You don't – ?"

"It just occurred to me that I've only ever heard Franks call him 'Probie.'"

"Oh, so you weren't involved in his recruitment?"

"No," Whitney said simply. "I've been working more specialized recruitment lately, not agents – and besides, something about that guy is weird; I think he was dishonorably discharged from the military."

Jenny's brows went up.

"No way he got a clearance."

"Well, he's there," Whitney said. "Lookin' all, cute and wounded all the time," she added vaguely, gesturing for Jenny to follow her. "Hey, here's a treat – you got a new office," she said, throwing open a door.

Jenny stepped in the door, and grinned – it was a nice new office, too. She wasn't surprised; she'd known she would be coming back to the Navy Yard with a more official home for herself, some more equipment, more space to deal with the fledgling department they were creating – but the meager furnishings that had been put in were a clear indication of how much she was appreciated, and she reveled in that.

Grand mahogany desk, a shiny new filing cabinet, a regal looking leather chair – even a coffee table, and a coffee machine sitting on it –

"That's from Abby Sciuto," Whitney said, as Jenny picked up a little card.

She smiled as she took in the gothic calligraphy, and made a mental note to go see Abby as soon as she made the acquaintance of this MIT student. She planned on spending this day to – essentially just settle in, take stock of everything, and get ready to hit the ground running tomorrow.

She'd have to ingratiate herself back into the flow of headquarters operations, and find a way to meet all the new personnel and establish herself and her expertise in their minds.

"Just a minute, Jenny," Whitney said.

Jenny sat on the edge of her new desk, immediately thinking of what she'd need to do to decorate it – just outside the office was the small maze of computer areas and technology storage she was familiar with, and she was just down the hall from Abby's lab – a welcome kingdom to thrive in, really.

She needed a corkboard, and plenty of pictures of Natalie – she'd have to take everything out of that cubicle she'd always been in upstairs, and move it down here – despite the responsibility she'd had in the field offices lately, it was nice to have a more permanent space.

"In here – calm down, kid – Jenny, this is Timothy McGee, the MIT student," Whitney said, nudging a slender young man forward. "Tim, this is Jennifer Shepard – she's officially an investigative assistant, but she heads up our cyber and information technology efforts in the area."

He was an earnest looking kid – nice haircut, clearly military-influenced, and a nice, put-together outfit. He wore khaki slacks and a crisp oxford shirt with a sweater over it, but no pocket protector – so only half as nerdy as she'd imagined.

She smiled, and extended her hand.

Whitney poked Timothy McGee.

"Shake her hand, Timothy," she hissed.

Timothy McGee seemed to snap into action. He grasped her hand with a surprising amount of firmness – probably the Admiral father had taught him how to shake hands – and put on a hasty smile.

"Hello – good morning, Mrs. Shepard, I – I'm excited to – be here."

"Miss," she said, as she often did. "I'm not married. I'd prefer to be called Shepard."

"Just – Shepard?"

"Just Shepard," she reiterated. "As you, Timothy, will be just McGee."

"Okay, Mrs. Shepard. Miss. Shepard. I'm…sorry. I'm nervous," he stammered.

Jenny laughed, and shrugged.

"You've every right to be nervous," she said matter-of-factly. "I won't hold it against you. Now, there are two other people who often work with me – us – one is an agent, and one is an analyst; have you met them?"

"I met one," McGee offered. "The night shift one, he was leaving this morning."

"That's Kirk," Jenny said. "Kirk is very weird, but he means well. That leaves Agent Charleston. Charleston is good at what he does, but he's extremely angry to answer to a woman and he won't be happy that someone so young was sought out. Ignore his attitude; listen to his expertise," she said quickly.

McGee stared at her, hooked on her every word – so, while she had him, she continued.

"To my knowledge, NCIS still doesn't pay their interns, but we work you like regular employees and if you can handle that, it almost guarantees you get picked up for employment – and I doubt they'll let some MIT savant get away. I'll make sure we use what you can do – never be afraid to make suggestions – and if you like, I'll make sure you get a week with the special agents – they did that for me when I was an intern," she said, and winked at Whitney, "and it was quite eventful."

In other words, the special agents were the best hazers on the planet.

McGee nodded. He blinked, swallowed, and turned to look at Whitney. Whitney beamed at him blithely.

"I told you she was amazing," she said.

"Sharpe," Jenny asked, deciding to show a little more professionalism than usual, for Tim's sake. "You still running orientation with him?"

"Yes, I'm taking him to HR for credentials next," she said.

"Good, do that. McGee, if you don't have plans, I'll take you out to lunch later and send you off early to rest – or do homework, or whatever it is you do in your free time. I need to get my bearings here before I focus on acclimating you."

He began to nod.

"Definitely, I understand – yes, Mrs – ugh, Shepard, that's fine," he stammered. "I'm –" he started. He took a deep breath. "I'm really happy to be here," he said, suddenly fierce. "The Admiral – er, my dad – he never thought I'd do anything, with my computer skills and, uh, well," McGee smiled a little proudly. "His own Navy thought different."

Jenny smiled at the boy – once he got some confidence, he'd be quite the charming, confident force. He started to leave, and she stepped forward.

"McGee," she said. "I heard – you attended Thomas Jefferson High School?"

"For a year," he said quickly. "I graduated when I was 15."

Jenny paused.

"I'm not unfamiliar with the kind of intelligence that comes out of that school," she said lightly. "My daughter is a freshman there."

"You have a freshman daughter - ?"

"Come on now, Tim," Whitney said loudly, diverting the conversation. "I'll tell you everything you need to know in order to keep your foot out of your mouth."

Jenny grinned, watching Whitney lead him towards the elevator to take him up to human resources, and after a cursory glance around her new office, she exited it, heading down the hall to say hello to Abby.

The lab was as loud and vivacious as usual, and as she entered, she silently thanked God that NCIS had hired someone as bombastic and vivacious as Abby – not that they'd had a choice; she was the premier forensic scientist in the region, and in an effort to outshine the FBI, NCIS had snatched her up.

"Jenny!" squealed the Goth, whirling towards her and giving her a warm hug. "Back from Quantico for good?"

"For good."

"Hallelujah," Abby sighed, clasping her hands. "The balance is back – Franks has been ripping Kirk and Charleston to shreds which, while amusing, is harmful to us all."

"I can handle Franks," Jenny laughed. "Now, my new intern – "

"Cute little thing," Abby trilled, winking.

"Come to lunch with us," Jenny offered brightly. "You can help me give him the NCIS 411."

"Done deal," Abby retorted smoothly. "I'll make sure I get something concrete up to the bullpen so no one tries to persuade me to catch baddies during my break."

Jenny smiled, and leaned against a metal table.

"Abs? I hate to barge in asking favors right away, but I've got one."

"I'll entertain a motion," Abby said primly.

"Natalie is doing some sort of science fair project, and she was wondering if you could provide some – "

"Materials, and a testing location? She called me this morning, from her school," Abby said wryly. "I agreed. I can't let her take anything out of the building, but I can supervise experiments, and she said – "

"She can request materials from school with proper justification," Jenny acknowledged. She nodded – Abby was such a blessing, always encouraging Natalie and helping her with her more physically scientific ideas and projects.

Abby swept up her Caf-pow! and took a long, thoughtful sip, eyeing her friend.

"How are things with Natalie?" she asked.

Jenny sighed, well aware of what Abby was referring to. She shrugged, and spread out her hands.

"Fragile impasse?" she tried. She sighed heavily again. "I think she understands that I'm trying to get my bearings – and at the very least, she gets that I'm – well, even if I get into her father with her, there's nothing I can really do about it."

Abby nodded – Abby was the only person Jenny had told about the issue – about the disruptive box that Melanie Shepard, whether purposefully or in a Melly-ish turn of scatterbrained ignorance, had sent to Natalie and Jenny that brought up all kinds of – questions.

Specifically, the box full of things, including Gibbs' early letters to baby Natalie, that Jenny had conveniently forgotten to pack up and bring first when she moved out of Melly's, and then when she moved to the east coast.

"I just don't know what to tell her," Jenny said, tired.

"Is he really so bad?" Abby asked, lips puckering.

Jenny looked at her, and blinked.

"No," she said, and shook her head. "No, no," she repeated. "He's not terrible, he – well, Abby," she began frankly. "Have you ever dug yourself a hole so deep you can't climb out of it?"

Abby started to reply, but before she could, what appeared to be a dog bounded out of her office and rushed up to her legs, turning quickly and giving a sharp, excitable bark when it saw a new person.

Jenny's brows shot up. Abby reached down to rub the dog's ears – he, or she, was a gorgeous, seemingly pure-bred German shepherd, with a dirty, frayed blue collar and perked up ears. Abby beamed at him.

"She's kind of our new mascot," Abby said, as if she were sharing some private joke.

The dog came to Jenny and nudged her knees, sniffing at her eagerly. Delighted, she took a closer look, and the dog whined at her happily.

"Oh, hello there," she greeted softly. "And what's your name?" she asked, crouching down. She let the dog sniff her curiously, and then reached out to pet it affectionately – she liked dogs, and Natalie had always wanted one, despite Jenny insisting two people who were always busy and away from home did not need one.

"Bugsy," Abby supplied the dog's name brightly.

Jenny laughed, and looked up. The dog licked her jaw.

"That's – ha, that's what I call Natalie; she'll love it – whose dog is this?" Jenny asked, bemused. "Is she part of some case?" Impulsively, she kissed the animal's snout. Her fingers caught on something cold wrapped around the dog's collar – dog tags, she recognized immediately.

Abby started to answer, and Jenny started to explore the tags more, but a much more pressing matter interrupted – sort of.

"Mrs. Shepard!" Tim McGee burst out, bolting into the lab, forgetting what she'd told him, and in an absolute panic. "I came back down to wait for my credentials and I was – exploring – I did something weird to the computers – "

Abby, laughing, called Bugsy to her as Jenny got up to go with McGee. It was probably nothing more than some prank of Kirk's – he liked to booby-trap new recruits' computers.

She was leading him down the hall when she heard the elevator go off, and then, unmistakably, the sound of Franks' voice as it burst into the corridor –

"What the hell is that mangy animal doing in here? I told him not to – so help me – where the hell is Probie – ?"

Jenny laughed silently at Franks' blustering, but with her own probie to attend to, she didn't go to watch the angry show; she ushered McGee into the computer room to work things out with him, and tried to shake off her brief conversation with Abby – as well as the little micro-aggression reminder Natalie had given her this morning concerning the elephants they had to address.

---

Natalie had dog tags clenched between her teeth as she lazily studied some of the finer points of the twelfth-grade physics book she'd borrowed from one of her classmates. It was slightly more challenging than usual, but she was finding it easy to understand – which was good; it meant she'd have more reason to persuade her mother, and the school, that she could totally handle jumping ahead a grade or two.

She knew her mother had turned town Brent Langer when he'd suggested bumping her up in elementary school, and Jenny had fully explained why. Her mistake had been suggesting that it could be re-visited when Natalie was old enough to discuss all the upsides and downsides.

Well, Natalie felt, at this point, she was – she just wanted to make sure her mother understood that she wasn't trying to move quickly because she wanted to get out of the house, or live at college, or be more mature than her age – she just liked learning, and she wanted to do as much of it as she could without wasting time on things she already comprehended.

Natalie did, however, understand her mother's qualms – and shared some, herself – so she prepared herself for the possibility, but she wasn't fighting too hard just yet.

She clicked her teeth against the dog tags, pointing her nail at a line of text; someone's backpack thumped against the table next to her, and she looked over as someone pulled a chair out.

Jess Hayden swung the chair around, straddled it, and scooted it against the table, mimicking her dog-tag-chewing habit but smacking his gum. She snapped her book shut, using a yellowed, folded piece of paper as a bookmark.

"Took you long enough," she said, looking her best friend up and down. "Where were you?"

"Detention."

"Detention ended at 3:30," Natalie pointed out.

Jess shrugged, and smirked wickedly.

"I got extra detention," he bragged.

She rolled her eyes.

"Right, what did you do again?" she asked.

"Blurred the lines between scientific pyrotechnics and arson."

Natalie rolled her eyes harder, and he put on a mock pouting face.

"Hey, Gnat, have mercy – I'm just a poor kid with daddy abandonment issues," he simpered mockingly.

She leaned back and folded her arms, twisting her fingers in her dog tags.

"Not all of us want to wreck our own lives just to get attention from absent fathers," she said primly, grinning a little.

Jess Hayden was an interesting student – he'd been kicked out of three schools for acting out – for all kinds of misbehavior that was harmless, technically, but disruptive – and one keen judge tasked with putting him in alternative school had realized it might be Jess's overwhelming boredom with curriculum that was contributing to his delinquency, so he'd mandated he be tested for admission to Thomas Jefferson.

To an extent, it worked; Jess was still some sort of prankster, hoodlum wannabe, but he was a genius in the physics lab, and with more to keep him occupied, and people who actually tried to cultivate his talent despite all the leather he wore and his devil-may-care appearance, he was actually – shaping up.

Sort of.

"What's the book?"

"Something Emily leant me," Natalie answered, tapping the cover. She shrugged. "You know, the usual. Quantum stuff."

"You ever watch that Quantum Leap show?" Jess asked.

"No," she said quickly, leaning in. "But did you see The X-Files last week?"

"Shit – yes," Jess began, in a rare show of an emotion that wasn't patently aloof. He started to ask her opinion on part of the episode, but before he could, someone leaned across the table.

"Natalie, hi – "

"Hey," Jess snapped at him immediately. "You're interrupting."

Natalie closed her eyes lightly, as the other guy retorted:

"I think Natalie can decide if I'm interrupting," he said loftily.

Natalie opened her eyes slowly, and tilted her head.

"You did literally interrupt, Dean," she said carefully.

Frowning only a little, Dean Forrester leaned across the table a little more, completely ignoring Jess and focusing on Natalie. He was in the same class as Jess and Natalie and had developed a crush on Natalie – it wasn't exactly a rare occurrence, since she was one of four females in the school – but the problem was, Dean seemed to think that, just by virtue of being nice, he deserved Natalie.

Dean seemed to gloss over her statement.

"You entering the science fair?" Dean asked.

Natalie nodded.

"Got to rack up that scholarship money early, huh?" Dean said, giving her an awkward wink.

"No, I think I'm going to do ROTC in college," she said blithely. "Besides, I have a single mother, I'll get plenty of scholarships – I want the internship with NASA."

"You aren't guaranteed an internship –"

"I know. But every science fair winner has gone on to get one."

Dean nodded.

"Well – need a partner?"

Natalie smiled at him gently.

"I told you last week I was working with Jess," she said, tilting her head.

Next to her, Jess flashed Dean a smug grin, and leaned back in his chair. Dean gave him an annoyed look, and then shifted his body, looking at Natalie seriously.

"Why do you hang out with him, anyway?" he asked bluntly. "Delinquent genius," snorted Dean. "What's his aspiration – the next Unabomber?"

"Dean," Natalie demurred gently. "I like Jess."

Dean frowned. He took a breath, and then switched gears.

"You doing anything Friday night?"

Natalie gave him a slightly sympathetic look.

"No, Dean," was all she said – though she was answering his unspoken request for a date, rather than his actual question.

Frowning again, Dean sighed, shrugged, and trudged off – leaving Jess and Natalie to their studying. Jess gave Natalie an annoyed look.

"Why don't you be meaner to him?" he demanded. "He's a dick."

"He's not hurting me," Natalie said. "He's got an ego, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be a bully."

"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't bully someone who looks like one of those Columbine guys," Jess remarked shortly.

"Jess," Natalie snapped. "That wasn't funny."

She shuddered – the brutal school shooting in Colorado had happened in April, and it was still making news everywhere as the country tried to make sense of what had happened. After it had happened, Natalie's mother had dragged Natalie to NCIS six days in a row so the agents could train her on how to kick a gun out of someone's hand, or how to escape from a chokehold.

Then she bought her own handgun, which Natalie thought was a slightly absurd reaction to gun violence - but then, Jenny worked for an armed agency, so she was conditioned to see guns as good things in the hands of good guys.

Natalie gave Jess a prim look, just for good measure.

"You look like a criminal, anyway," she told him bluntly.

He popped his leather collar.

"Ladies love that," he drawled.

Natalie snorted derisively. She tapped her fingers on her book.

"You want to discuss our project or – "

"Speaking of ladies," Jess started.

"Guess not," Natalie muttered to herself, and then arched an eyebrow at him.

"Did you talk to your friend?" Jess asked, barreling on.

Natalie feigned innocence.

"What friend?"

"Your Jewish friend."

"I have two Jewish friends."

"Gnat," he growled. She laughed at him, and leaned forward, hugging her book towards her a bit. She arched an eyebrow.

"Why don't you talk to Tali yourself?" she asked wryly.

Jess rolled his eyes stubbornly.

"Look, I know how you girls work – I just need you to hint that I'm decent – "

"Decent? You're – "

"You know what I mean," he said hastily. He flashed a charming smirk. "You know I'm getting my shit together," he added in a slow drawl.

That much was true; old delinquent habits were hard to break, but the new challenging environment – and Natalie's friendship – had been good for Jess, and he knew it. He arched a brow.

"I just need a nice girl to put the finishing touch on my reform – "

"Okay, okay – Jess? I'll invite you over the next time Tali's at my house – but you can't do her dirty, you got it? I've been friends with her longer than I've known you."

Jess had met Natalie's friend Tali David when Tali and Ziva, her older sister, had picked Natalie up from school one day. He was – for lack of a better word – smitten with the sweet Israeli-American, and he kept pestering Natalie to set them up. Naturally, Natalie was afraid of the effects on her friendship with both if that should go sour.

"Now that we've gotten that out of the way," Natalie began again, smacking her book. "Science project – jet fuel," she said bluntly.

"I put in the request for materials, and the proposal," Jess said lazily. "But as for trials – "

"Yeah, I got that covered, I'm going to use a forensics lab at my mom's work, and once we get closer to fair time, I'll see if I can get you a pass to come with me. Until then, you do the theoretical right ups, and I'll work on practical application."

Jess shrugged, and popped some gum.

"Sounds good."

Natalie narrowed her eyes at him warily.

"Why are you chewing bubble gum?" she asked suddenly.

"So I don't smoke a cigarette," Jess retorted, with a cringe.

Natalie grinned at him – he certainly was shedding street cred quicker by the minute. She pushed her hair back, and chewed on her lower lip.

"Want to study for that English test together?" she asked. She glanced at her watch. "Ooh, tomorrow though – Emily's taking me home in like twenty minutes."

Jess shrugged.

"Eh, maybe. I have some walls to graffiti."

"Jess."

"Kidding – I'm gonna spray paint a Care Bear on Dean's locker."

"You're incorrigible."

Jess rolled his eyes, and then leaned forward, very carefully tugging on the edge of the folded letter she used as a bookmark. Before she could protest, he yanked it out, opened it, examined it, and then peered at her over it with intent eyes.

"How come you keep re-reading this?" he asked brusquely. "You think it's gonna change somethin'?"

Natalie glared at him mildly.

"Wouldn't you re-read your dad's letters if that's all you had?"

"Old man never wrote me letters," Jess answered bitterly.

Natalie held her hand out, and Jess ignored it.

"Bug," he read aloud. "I've counted six ladybugs since Tuesday. Even saw some cicadas. They're loud, but it's nice to fall asleep to…." Jess trailed off, and held out the letter to Natalie. He laughed.

"That's a different one," he snorted. "Your old man some kind of idiot?" he joked. "Dear-Bug-lady-bug-pretty," he imitated, mimicking a caveman.

Natalie lunged forward and slapped Jess violently in the back of the head, trying not to show him she laughed.

"He wrote it to me when I was three, dumbass," she hissed.

She folded the letter neatly, and carefully placed it back in her book at a random spot, pressing it – this particular one was from Easter, nineteen eighty-eight, not long after she and her mother had moved from Stillwater to California. She had other ones –

"What's going on with that, anyway?" Jess asked blithely – he gave the impression of being cavalier, but Natalie knew he genuinely was interested in her and what she was going through, just like she cared about him.

Hell, maybe they were friends because they both knew what it was like to have an absent father.

Natalie sighed, frowning a moment as she looked down at the letter. She shrugged.

"I suppose we're at an impasse," she murmured finally.

Just before school started, a box had shown up on the doorstep of Jenny and Natalie's Georgetown brownstone. Sent by Melly, it had seemed harmless enough, and since it had been addressed to Natalie and Jenny, Natalie had opened it when she found it – on one of those days when Jenny was commuting back from Quantico.

In it had been a note - explaining that this was stuff Jenny had packed away and left at Melly's old apartment, the one they'd lived in and shared a room in when Natalie was a toddler. Melly was finally selling that apartment, and she felt it was best the things be returned.

But more than the note, Natalie had found much more important things – pictures of her father, that had disappeared after the move out of Melly's and never turned up again; pictures of him, holding her, playing with her, being present in Stillwater – and there were also letters, birthday letters, Christmas letters, random yearly letters – they tapered off until they finally stopped at some point in ninety-one – after Desert Storm, Natalie figured out – but the real kicker was that –

There was one Christmas card, from just ninety-seven, that had his phone number on it – and even more important, there was a small post card from November ninety-eight, the month of her fourteenth birthday – it was a post card from Paris, and it wished her a happy birthday, and it had a phone number again.

Needless to say, when Jenny had gotten home, Natalie had a thousand questions and her mother – blindsided, apparently, by the appearance of the things, had reacted so negatively that sometimes the fight still stung.

"Has she talked to you about it yet?" Jess prompted.

"No," Natalie muttered. She chewed her lip. "No, she always says the same thing – that she's trying to figure out how to explain it, or that she can't talk about it – I mean, what kind of awful thing must have happened?" she mused, almost to herself. "She always tells me he was a good father, but since she won't tell me about him – and now it's – well it's obvious she was – I don't know, hiding me from him, I guess – there must be something he did – "

"Maybe he used to beat her."

Natalie shook her head.

"She would have told me that," she murmured. "She wouldn't protect his memory if he was abusive," she mused, sure of that. She grit her teeth, sighing, and tilting her head at Jess. "She swears she didn't know about any postcards or letters after Desert Storm, because she said the last time she talked to him was after Desert Storm, but that's what pisses me off – isn't that her fault, though?" Natalie demanded. "I mean, we moved, and she never told him, and she never asked my grandmother to forward mail, so she just…orchestrated a way to make it seem like she lost touch," Natalie trailed off.

Truth be told, she didn't know what the hell was going on, or what her mother's intentions had been – she only knew that during the confrontation, and Natalie's emotionally-charged explosion about the box, her mother had seemed genuinely miserable, and perhaps even fearful, and she'd deflected, deflected - deflected.

"You should push her harder," Jess suggested tensely. "You have a right to know."

"I know," Natalie said. "She thinks there's no point in getting into it because there's nothing – because she can't contact him, so it's just – " Natalie paused. "It's bullshit though," she said dully, shrugging. "I know how she could contact him – it's shady, but it would work; he hasn't paid child support in twelve years, all she'd have to do was make a complaint to the courts and they'd find him," she paused again.

Jess whistled, amused.

"Yeah," Natalie snorted quietly, agreeing with the whistle. "Yeah, I mean – I see why she doesn't want to do that."

Natalie had thrown that suggestion at Jenny, and Jenny had point-blank refused to make accusations in court; she told Natalie flat-out that she had refused child support payments, but Natalie just thought that was another way she could make a clean break – for whatever reason she'd decided to make a break at all.

Natalie pushed her hair back, and then lifted her father's dog tags and chewed on them for a minute. She let them fall, the taste of metal strange in her mouth, and swallowed.

"None of it makes any sense," she muttered, slightly hostile. "All of his letters are so sweet, I have – well, my memories are blurry, but they're all really good memories, and I think I missed him a lot when we moved away," she said – though her mother said she was making that part up.

"How come you're not giving your mom the silent treatment?" Jess asked simply. "I'd give mine hell if she was being that shady."

"She's making it very hard to be mad at her," Natalie said dryly.

"Is she?" Jess retorted, skeptical – his tone said it all; he couldn't believe Natalie would have any qualms about being mad at her mother. From his point of view, Jenny Shepard was being an evasive liar, not that he'd ever badmouth someone's mother to their face.

Natalie nodded serenely.

"She's being very – logical about the whole thing. As if she knows I'm allowed to be mad at her and still love her at the same time – well, really, it's as if she knows I have a right," Natalie worked out, tilting her head, "so, then I get angry, because if she's acknowledging I have a right to be angry, then what is she hiding? What do I not know? Did she kidnap me or something? Have we been on the lam? Or is it just that she thinks teenagers can be mad and she'd rather not tell me about him and let me think it was her? It's like…she acts like I have her blessing to be angry! But her being so…blasé? No – contrite or accepting is…it's making me feel bad about the anger," Natalie confessed, wondering if she was making any sense at all.

Every time Natalie reminded Jenny she was mad – mad that the box had been packed away and, most likely, deliberately forgotten, mad that Leroy Jethro Gibbs was a blacklisted topic, mad that there was a pattern of secrecy around the whole thing – Jenny just bowed her head, accepted it, and expected Natalie to continue to wait.

That's what Jenny had said, as their original fight died down – wait, Natalie. Just wait. I'm trying to decide – what to do.

"Maybe she's psychologically manipulating you," Jess said cynically.

"No," Natalie said softly. "My mom isn't like that. She's very adamant about women having their own minds."

She didn't say it out loud, but a small part of Natalie knew that her mother's issues with the subject had more to do with Jenny herself than with Natalie or her father. She didn't know how she knew it; she just did.

"Ha," Jess snorted sarcastically. "My mother doesn't have her own mind," he drawled dully.

Natalie blinked, still thoughtful.

"I don't know," she sighed quietly. "I wouldn't know how to contact him, anyway," she said. "I think that's – Mom's unsure of what the point would be if I know everything and can't – find him, or maybe she knows he doesn't have any interest," she went on haltingly. "He has another kid. She told me my grandfather told her that."

Jess was silent.

"He never answered any of the phone calls?"

Natalie shook her head.

"Disconnected," she said.

She'd tried every phone number he'd ever included, from most recent to oldest – all disconnected, or assigned to different people.

"Bastard," Jess said, unhelpfully.

Natalie rolled her eyes at him, chewing on the edge of her dog tags again – she really was at an impasse with her mother about it, and she had no idea what was going on in her mother's head. She wanted to know why they had broken up, why he had faded from her life, why Jenny hadn't given her the letters, or let her grow up with them, or – she wanted answers, and Jenny just kept saying she wasn't ready yet.

And Natalie didn't know if it was self-preservation, or something darker.

Left to her imagination, she envisioned all kinds of macabre reasons why her father wasn't involved – despite Jenny's vague insistence that Gibbs was a good father, she wondered if there was something about him that just being a good father couldn't cancel out.

But then, desperately, she asked herself – how bad could a nineteen-year-old Marine possibly have been?

Grandpa Jasper had always referred her to her mother, so had Grandpa Jackson, and – somewhat less willingly – Melly – and Jenny had never, ever tried to marry anyone else; she kept men at arm's length; was that all for Natalie's sake?

Natalie shrugged to herself – a little confused irritation flared, and she swallowed it back down; she didn't want to let it start simmering again, because she didn't want to bring it up tonight – not when it was her mother's first week adjusting back at the Navy Yard.

She'd just let it sit. She was going to just let it – continue to simmer, like her mother had, until either Jenny finally sat her down and talked to her about it, or she had to start wearing down Melly to get anything she could –

Whichever came first.

---

It was dark outside – every year, Jenny hated the time change; it took her a month to adjust to the end of Daylight's Savings Time, and even as she sat on the phone with her mother, staring at a clock that clearly told her it was only six p.m., she felt like it was midnight.

"I still don't know," Jenny answered Melly. "You can always come visit us, Mom," she reminded her mother – Christmas, they were discussing Christmas plans

She rolled her eyes when Melly whined about Christmas on the cold east coast.

"Well, I want to come see you, but there's no way in hell we're going to – what, Tahiti? No. No, Mom," Jenny reiterated. She paused. "No, definitely not Thanksgiving," she paused. "Actually, Natalie wants me to take her to Stillwater," she admitted grudgingly.

Melanie made a mysterious, whistling noise.

"And where did that come from?" she asked her daughter.

"Where did – it came from you, Mom, you and your – meddling," growled Jenny, sitting forward – annoyed. She'd only talked to Melanie once since The Box Incident, and one of those times was to leave an angry voicemail and hang up.

"I was not meddling," Melanie maintained simply. "I sent things to you that belonged to you – "

"She would not have opened that if her name had not been on it," Jenny snapped. "You wanted her to open it." Jenny broke off, gritting her teeth. "I don't know what you thought was going to come of it, Mom," she said edgily. "Now we're just living with a damn elephant – she named it, even. Natalie named the elephant in the room."

"Named it?" Melly laughed. "It already has a name – Leroy Jethro – "

"Actually," Jenny interrupted, kind of amused for a moment, "she named it Buffy."

"After the cheerleader?"

"After the father-less vampire slayer," Jenny said dryly.

Melanie made a prim noise, and Jenny ignored it; she grit her teeth again.

"Well, Jenny, I told you years ago this was going to blow up in your face."

"You don't even know what this is," Jenny said tiredly.

Melanie hesitated.

"You always say that, darling," she said finally. "You'd say it to me, to Brent, your father – now, to Natalie – you don't talk about it. How are any of us supposed to know?"

"If you don't know about something, why would you stick your nose in?" Jenny demanded, deflecting.

In a rare show of irritation, Melanie snapped:

"There was nothing harmful to Natalie in that box, Jennifer," she said tensely. "If you think that girl won't understand why you left Stillwater, and why you chose to leave Leroy, then that has everything to do with your own guilt – not me, not him, not anyone else."

Mollified, Jenny fell silent. She sometimes forgot, because her mother was so carefree and childlike, that Melanie had a sage side to her that could almost never be argued with.

She pushed her hair back and leaned forward on her desk, eyes on the front door. Natalie should be home soon, and she didn't want to be caught talking about this – might make for a tense night.

"I just think it was subversive for you to open that can of worms," Jenny said hollowly. "I can't – I don't want to get into this with her, because my hands are tied. I can't magically contact him if she hears it all and decides she wants to pursue him. It will just hang over our heads – "

"You should have kept tabs on him, then, if you ever really intended to give her the right to reach out when she asked," Melanie said bluntly.

Jenny closed her eyes; she had no comeback. She didn't know why her mother had become so – concerned –about Natalie's father lately, but she didn't want to start in on that, either.

"You always have the court option," Melly reminded her – Jenny had, in disbelief, confided in Melanie what Natalie had suggested.

"My first contact with Gibbs in over six years is not going to be a goddamn subpoena," Jenny growled.

She was not going to abuse the courts like that, and she sure as hell did not want to set the tone of reconnection with a legal ploy that she – oops! – dropped as soon as she got his attention.

She paused – she'd thought about it, what she'd do if she had to; but the idea of reaching out terrified her. She didn't want to have to meet Gibbs' perfect wife, and his perfect new daughter, and hear about how his life had gone exactly as he'd told her it was going to go; she was scared of what any of it would mean for her, her relationship with Natalie and – she just – she knew her decisions hadn't been perfect, but there had been such a peaceful equilibrium before Melanie sent that box.

"I figure if it got down to the wire, I could manage to get access to military records through NCIS, and find out where he's stationed," she muttered – that was if Gibbs was even still in the service, and if she was willing to abuse her power and possibly be written up for it.

Melanie sighed softly.

"He might slam the door in your face, Jenny, but he won't slam it in Natalie's," she said gently.

"I know that," Jenny said simply.

Her mother paused, and Jenny imagined her thoughtfully pursing her lips.

"I don't know what to say to her, Mom," Jenny sighed finally. She closed her eyes lightly. "I just don't know how to explain it."

Melanie murmured in understanding.

"Well, you can't lie to her," she began logically.

"There's so many blanks I can't fill in," Jenny said, strained. "And the more I explain that, the more I have to explain that it's my fault, and she's just going to be so angry – "

"What happened to my bold daughter who was so confident in her decision?" Melanie pried sincerely. "Why do you suddenly think you're despicable for all this when you always very firmly believed you were doing the right thing – don't you think that you can tell the story fairly, and Natalie will understand - ?"

"No, I don't," Jenny said edgily, her voice cracking just slightly. "No, because the older I get, the more – the more mature I get, and maybe, this box, just seeing Natalie's eyes as she looks at this stuff and just – misses him without knowing what she's missing – the more I don't even believe what I was telling myself," she said.

It was difficult to get the words out, but it was true – as the years went on, her fears for Natalie, her stress over raising Natalie right, and making sure nothing was unstable in Natalie's life, had turned into fears that she'd fooled herself in thinking she and Gibbs couldn't work something out because – because it was all so much easier on Jenny that way –

Hell, she hated to admit it, but she half-hoped, a year and half ago, when she'd told Natalie Gibbs had a wife and daughter, that it would turn Natalie off to him; perhaps make her think he was just out of the picture for good. She felt awful about it – and she was getting too old to maintain the youthful selfishness that had justified all of her decisions back then.

Melanie sighed.

"You knew this day would come - your father knew this day would come," she added gently, knowing how much it still hurt Jenny that Jasper was gone.

Jenny winced, squeezing her eyes shut – she wished she had her father; she wished so badly that he hadn't been taken right as their relationship was mending; it was so cruel. It had the effect of making her think – so differently about her part in keeping Gibbs absent from Natalie's life – to miss out on the love of a father, when she had one who had – who had tried his best—

Jenny rubbed at her jaw, and opened her eyes. She took a deep breath.

"Natalie's not going to put up with this shit much longer," she said bluntly. "I wouldn't – I don't want her to; I didn't raise her to put up with people's shit," she said.

Melanie laughed.

"I just wonder – how badly it's going to damage her, finding out I'm the one whose been giving her shit – "

"Darling," Melanie interrupted, laughing musically. "You need to get back in the mindset you had all those years ago – at least explain where you were then, when you talk to her. Look, Jennifer – I see how you could be worried about this if you'd left Gibbs and then everything went completely wrong, but Natalie has had a brilliant life. And regardless of how Leroy's life turned out with this other woman – that doesn't mean it would have worked with you. You two were just – "

"Yeah, yeah," Jenny interrupted – too young, too foolish, too – too everything, and not enough anything.

She licked her lips.

"She won't let me read the letters," Jenny said thoughtfully. "I want – before I sit her down for this, I want to – I want to read what he wrote her, all those years."

"I know why you want to," Melanie said warmly. "But they aren't your letters."

Jenny accepted that grudgingly, which was why even when Natalie left them in the box under her bed, she didn't go looking; she had left them sealed when Jethro sent them, and she would leave them for Natalie now.

"It feels like it's been a thousand years," Jenny whispered.

She felt so old – and maybe, despite her fears, she was tired of this thing hanging over her head all the time.

But still - something held her back. And now – now it was that she didn't want to go there, because she was at a dead end with him – with Jethro.

Melanie took a deep breath.

"Well, the reason I called – other than to talk to you, darling, you know I love that," Melly drawled. "I was doing a final check in of the apartment today and – ah, there was a final postcard."

Jenny pursed her lips.

"What?"

Melanie cleared her throat.

"Yes – it's from him – and I didn't…well, I thought I'd run it by you before I sent it," she said dryly, "since you were very abusive to my answering machine over my last – what was it? Subversive maneuver?"

Jenny flushed, and rubbed her jaw again.

"From him," she murmured, half-ignoring her mother.

There had been a recent – ish – post card n the box, too – what had changed; why was he – and she knew it was him, because suddenly, the cards Natalie had showed her in the box, the postcard – it was Gibbs' handwriting. It wasn't his new wife's.

"The postcard has a picture of butterflies," Melanie said. "It says," she began, and then paused for effect: "Natalie –This is the only address I got for you, Bug. Can't figure what to say." There's a couple things marked out, Jenny – and a number," she said.

Jenny rubbed her lips together.

"What's the number?" she asked, her thoughts crashing together. Melanie read off the number, and Jenny shook her head. "What? No, read that again," she said. Melanie complied.

"That's," she paused. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Jenny, what on – "

"That's a northern Virginia area code," Jenny said warily.

Melanie was silent a moment.

"Darling – Fate is a bitch."

"Karma," Jenny corrected hoarsely. "Karma's the bitch."

"I think Fate is a much more poignant word," Melly remarked.

Jenny swallowed hard. She was on the verge of taking a brave step, and asking her to repeat the number, when Natalie barged through the front door.

"Mom," she said decisively. "Yes – send that one to Natalie," she decided – and then after a swift goodbye, she hung up the phone. She got up, pushing aside the chair, and went into the hall.

"How was school?"

"Peachy keen," Natalie crooned, locking the door behind her. She tossed her long black hair back, and Jenny took a moment to give at a glare – the hair was because of the box – Natalie's one huge, dramatic defiance – she'd had Ziva David dye it for her, come home, and when Jenny freaked out, she'd looked straight at her, and said:

"What are you going to do? Wait until my father gets home?"

Jenny had shouted at her for five minutes for insolence, sent her to her room, cried for half an hour, and by the time they were up the next morning for work, neither of them mentioned it and their easy truce had started.

"Abby says you can come by her lab on Friday," Jenny said. "She's got court that morning, so she'll want some fun – and hey, there's a dog hanging around NCIS now," she added brightly.

"Aww, puppy," squealed Natalie. She crinkled her nose, and then started towards the stairs. "Okay, I have homework before I watch Buffy – Chinese take-out for dinner?"

Jenny nodded, chewing the inside of her lip. She smiled. Natalie paused on the stairs, and she looked at Jenny intently.

"Mom?" she asked, sensing something was up.

Jenny arched her brows.

"Chinese takeout," she agreed absently.

"Mom," Natalie repeated, stepping back. "You – are you ready to talk?" she asked clearly.

Jenny focused on her, and tilted her head. Very slowly, she shook it.

"No, Natalie," she said, a little huskily. "I'm – I'm getting there, Bug."

She willed her to be patient, be understanding, but she didn't exactly hold it against her when Natalie said:

"I don't believe you."

She said it very calmly, and very thoughtfully – and then she sighed, and shrugged. She didn't tell her mother she planned on calling both Melly and Jackson this weekend and bullying something out of them – even if she had to lie about Jenny telling her she could – because she felt like she was going to reach the breaking point before her mother did.

Natalie pushed her hair back, and pursed her lips; Jenny folded her arms, and hugged herself a little – she told herself if she could just get settled, just get through this week of work, she'd sit down and try to find the courage to – talk.

---

Special Agent Mike Franks was being driven half-insane by the presence of two probies in his bullpen – granted, one was McLane's responsibility, but the New Orleans native, with his constantly-sly sounding drawl, was annoying – and Franks' own probie, with his silence and his cold, blank eyes and his big, goddamn dog, were getting on his last nerve. Having no kids of his own – that he knew of – disciplining probies often reminded Franks why he had no interest in the practice of parenting.

Not that he'd bring that up or make any comparisons like that to probationary Agent Gibbs, since the whole reason Franks had agreed to take him on had a lot to do with the recent murders of his wife and child, and some slightly unsavory, possibly career-ending events that had occurred after.

Franks, however, spent a lot of time not walking on eggshells around Gibbs, and pointedly treating him like any other agent – because he sensed Gibbs was that type of guy – which was why he was currently berating Gibbs in the elevator again for bringing that goddamn animal to work.

Gibbs, for one, was glaring blankly at his boss, waiting for an opportune moment.

"—not a blasted zoo, Probie, it's a federal office building – damn dog tripped Charlene yesterday 'cause Pride was playin' fetch with 'im – and it ate my lunch on Tuesday – "

Franks continued, and Gibbs glanced down at Bugsy, who sat serenely next to him, her tongue lolling out. She thumped her tail affectionately when she saw him looking at her, and she cocked on ear up thoughtfully. Gibbs smiled at her a little – he'd told Franks, firmly and succinctly, several times: Bugsy went where Gibbs went.

Crime scenes and such were generally excepted, but Gibbs refused to leave the dog alone in that huge Alexandria house all day. Not to mention Bugsy was – comforting.

" – turn the place into a goddamn circus – and the hair just contaminates the lab, but Sciuto's on your side – what the hell is that?"

Franks broke off, glaring.

Gibbs had decided now was the opportune moment; he pulled a neatly creased note from his pocket, his features schooled, and handed it silently to Franks. His boss snatched it, opened it, read it quickly, and then lifted a truly magnificent glare to Gibbs.

"You got to be kiddin' me, Probie," he growled.

Gibbs blinked seriously, and then shook his head.

Franks read the note again.

"Therapy dog?" he quoted skeptically. "Probationary Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs is entitled to the presence of his therapy dog during work hours," he read, eyes narrowing on the signature at the bottom. Samantha Ryan – well, that was legit; she was the in-house NCIS psychologist.

Franks squinted menacingly at Gibbs.

"Didn't peg you for the type to wear the therapy badge loud and proud," he spat sarcastically.

Did Gibbs really expect him to believe he was following his therapy regimen like he was supposed to? That was farfetched at best – Franks and Gibbs were kindred spirits, in some respects – hell, that was why Franks had agreed to take him in the first place.

Franks shook the paper aggressively.

"You're tellin' me you let Ryan shrink your head for a week just so you could get a note that sticks it to me about the goddamn dog," he growled.

Gibbs blinked at him in that slightly insolent way again.

"Yup."

Franks glared at him, and then after a moment, crumpled the note, and grinned a smug sort of grudging smile that bespoke respect. He shoved the note in his pocket and then looked down at Bugsy for a long time. He looked back up at Gibbs seriously.

"You're on thin ice, Gibbs," he said roughly. "You know why I said I'd take you, Probie?" he asked.

Gibbs shook his head – he knew very little about how he'd ended up at NCIS, truth be told. He'd thought, for half a second in Paris, that he was headed to Leavenworth, but Agent McAlister had stepped in, the Corps had brushed some things under the rug, and with a solid word from Leon Vance, Gibbs had been sent to a FLET-C training refresher course and posted to the Washington Navy Yard as a probationary special agent.

"'Cause I respect a man who doles out justice, even if it ain't quite on the right side of the law," Franks said stiffly. "Ain't many men like me'n'you left, boy," he said intently. "We're a dyin' breed, us who don't give a damn about the rights of criminals."

Gibbs listened, reaching down to place his hand on Bugsy's head. He gave a short nod – Franks didn't think he was unstable or out of control; Franks just thought he'd done what he needed to – which was more than could be said for a lot of others. If it weren't for one compassionate female MP who'd solidly placed herself in his corner six months ago, he might well be in Leavenworth instead of attempting to rebuild his life.

Franks turned on the elevator, and nodded curtly at the dog.

"Keep 'im away from me," he groused, a stern look falling over his face.

"Her," Gibbs grunted.

"What's that, Probie?"

"Bugsy's a her," Gibbs said.

As the elevator doors opened, Franks smacked Gibbs upside the back of the head with a menacing glare.

"What's it matter?" he growled. "Keep your bitch tame."

Gibbs followed Franks out of the elevator, Bugsy at his heels, and went to his desk. Franks smacked Pride's feet off his desk as he passed the other new agent, and then snapped at him.

"Get up, your Majesty, we're goin' the interview those rape victims at Pax River," he snapped.

Ever since Dwayne Cassius Pride had made the lighthearted mistake of telling Franks and McLane that he went by the nickname 'King,' they had relentless mocked him with increasingly grandiose titles.

"Is Gibbs' goin'?"

"No," Franks said easily. "He's scared of women," he joked. "'Cept that one," he added, pointing at Bugsy.

Gibbs lazily moved his hand in a signal, and Bugsy crouched, flattening her ears and baring her teeth at Franks. Franks gave him a look, and Gibbs made another hand motion; Bugsy relaxed and wagged her tail, happy again. Gibbs had spent a lot of time with Bugsy in the past months – training her impeccably, almost to the level of bona fide Marine dog.

He planned on never telling her she was a Marine dog reject.

"You," Franks ordered, pointing at Gibbs. "Hold down the fort. McLane's in a classified meeting in MTAC."

Gibbs shrugged, and leaned back.

"And get that dolphin off your desk," Franks added, storming out with Agent Pride at his heels.

Gibbs put his hands behind his head and looked steadily at the glass-blown dolphin that was seated right next to his phone. As per usual, he ignored Franks – Franks referred to the figuring as 'that sissy thing' most of the time, and seemed to have taken personal offense to it.

Gibbs had found it in the airport in London when he'd been flying back to the U.S. for his court martial.

It reminded him of Kelly. It had the same soft blue hue her eyes had sparkled with, and it had a gentle little smile carved into its face. It was something he'd never have been caught dead with on his desk when he was a young, brash Marine back in the day – but things were different now; he held tightly to anything that helped him feel closer to his family.

Gibbs rubbed his wrist, where the frayed, braided red-and-pink yarn bracelet Shannon had made him before they were married still was, loose and worn, and often rubbing his skin dry and raw. He'd leave it there until they day he died, or until it fell off – if it fell off, he'd tie it to Bugsy's collar, like he had his last set of dog tags, the ones that had been with Kelly when she –

He closed his eyes tightly, his ears ringing, and opened them again.

He'd rather be out in the field. It was too quiet in the bull pen when everyone was out – quiet meant he started to think, to dwell, and no matter how much two psychologists had encouraged him to confront his grief and to – to feel it - he dreaded that crushing feeling that struck him when the world around him slowed down, and he avoided it.

It had been more than a year since their deaths in Paris, and it still felt like it was yesterday – fresh, raw.

Dr. Ryan had advised him to sell the house; she said it was making him worse – but he couldn't sell that house; it was Shannon's dream house. The psychologist the corps had provided after the murders – and to transition him to civilian life – kept telling him to keep in contact with the Fieldings, to share the burden of grief – but all he wanted to do was be alone, was –

He wanted to feel whole again.

He did things for them, every day. He thought about them, every day. He went through daily swathed in a thin coating of normalcy, putting up a stony, composed front, but everything, everything was really too fresh.

In manic bursts, he became obsessed with Natalie, with finding some way to contact her, but he couldn't bring himself to ask his father for help, and his hesitant attempts to reach out just seem to hit dead ends. When the manic bursts were over, he tended to recoil, afraid of contacting her, afraid he only wanted her because he'd lost Kelly – afraid he'd hurt her.

Bugsy licked her chops and lay down next to his desk, thumping her tail in a lazy, sleepy rhythm. Gibbs' eyes moved from the glass dolphin, to the wanted photos on the wall, to the clock, uneasy thoughts searching for something to settle on.

The whole last year was such a blur – such a blur.

A young intern ran through the bullpen. Without looking at Gibbs, he suddenly turned around and ran back, looking harassed.

"McGee!" someone yelled, exasperated.

Gibbs turned his head as the kid disappeared around a corner. Up on the catwalk, the assistant director was having a conversation with Agent Whitney Sharpe; she was leaving soon, returning to her home post on Los Angeles, with Vance. Gibbs had made a stop at the Vance's house on his way back from Europe.

He'd asked Jackie if she thought he should be reaching out to Natalie. Jackie asked him what he thought Shannon would say about it.

That was the thing: Shannon had always wanted it. She had always, always wanted him to fight for Natalie.

He wasn't afraid of betraying Shannon or Kelly in that respect, he was just back to where he started: on his own, everything ripped away.

Gibbs blinked.

The phone on his desk rang, and he leaned forward to pick it up, holding it loosely to his ear.

"Gibbs," he grunted.

"Uh, Gibbs? Yeah, is uh, McLane there, or someone?" a voice responded, sounding exasperated.

"No," Gibbs answered bluntly. "I'm here."

"Yeah – actually, yeah, you'll do," the guy said, and Gibbs narrowed his eyes, annoyed. "Yeah – wouldn't want to bother Franks with this," he added, as an afterthought. "Got a problem. Need an agent. You got a minute to come down to intake?"

"Who is this?" Gibbs asked. The voice had yet to identify itself.

"Corporal Strobe, at the main entrance."

"What's the problem?"

"Uh, there's a girl here with explosives."

Gibbs hesitated, taken aback – on one hand, explosives at the gate were a big deal; on the other hand, Strobe didn't sound exactly – worried. Just perturbed and slightly – confused.

"What kind of explosives?"

"The kind that haven't been put together yet," Strobe answered dully. "Look, I can't let her go anywhere without an escort, and I can't leave post," he explained. "She swears Sciuto knows her, but her bag alerted the dogs – "

"Yeah," Gibbs muttered.

He rubbed his jaw.

"On my way," he said gruffly – here he was, decorated Marine, federal agent, going down to the lobby to babysit.

He thought about putting in a call to Abby first, but he figured the guard had already done that. He gave Bugsy a signal to stay, and stay quietly, and then he took the stairs down to the first floor, vaguely curious about what exactly could be going on.

When he exited the security doors and strolled into the metal detector area where the guards were, there was tense argument going on – Strobe was looking through the contents of a bag, which he'd spilled onto a table.

"It doesn't make any sense that I would bring materials to assemble a bomb, get into the building, and then start building it. That logic is completely lacking – and, I'd need an incendiary, which as you can see – "

"Look, Miss? Explaining to me why the bomb isn't assembled is not helping your case."

"It's not a bomb! It's a science project – seriously where is Corporal Shaunnessy?"

Gibbs, sliding his hands into his pockets, approached, his eyes on the long black hair of the woman currently arguing pointedly with Strobe. He came to a silent stop, and stood there for a moment; then he cleared his throat.

Strobe looked up, and looked relieved.

"Agent Gibbs," he said gruffly. "Here's what I've got – two aerosol cans, some label chemical canisters – "

"I have the check-out slips from my school!"

The woman turned around, and Gibbs immediately downgraded her from woman to girl – she was clearly a teenager, and nothing more. He felt slightly amused for a moment, and then caught sight of her blue eyes, and the feeling was gone – they looked so like Kelly's, so very like hers.

But – all blue eyes were starting to look like Kelly's now.

"She doesn't have an I.D. on her, either," Strobe said.

"I'm not even fifteen years old," snapped the teenager. "I don't have a permit for a few weeks –look, Abby knows I'm coming to do a science project here, and if you'd just call my mother – "

Gibbs broke in.

"Your mother works here?" he asked.

She turned to him again. She put a hand on her hip, and pushed her long black hair back, and then she stopped, blinking at him for a moment. She tilted her head, and Gibbs waited, turning and arching an eyebrow briefly at Strobe before he turned back.

Natalie Gibbs, for one, was suddenly struck by the eerie, irrational notion that she – that she knew this person. But – no, she was just used to looking at old pictures, so used to it, that with every second glance she thought she saw her father – besides, her father had dark auburn hair, not silver –

"Did they send you down here to bond with me?" she asked brazenly, gathering herself – she didn't want to lose her stride; see, she'd counted on Corporal Shaunnessy being the guard – he loved her; he always just waved her through.

Gibbs lifted his shoulder silently.

"Bond?" he repeated neutrally.

She sighed a little tersely.

"My last name is Gibbs, too," she muttered.

Gibbs started suddenly, looking at her more closely. He didn't say anything for a long time, and then he turned to Strobe.

"Put her stuff in the bag. I'll escort her upstairs," he said.

"You have to sign – "

"I'll sign for her. I'll park her at my desk and won't let her out of my sight," he said firmly.

She turned her head to watch him while Strobe packed up her things, and handed Gibbs the visitor's log so he could do the appropriate things to register her with him.

"Gibbs, I really shouldn't let her take that bag – "

"Strobe, c'mon, you think she came to blow up a building her mother works in?"

Strobe blinked stubbornly.

"Dunno, some people hate their mothers."

"You hate your mother?" Gibbs asked her directly.

"No," she answered, in an odd sort of hush.

She clutched her backpack to her tightly, her lips parting slightly. She seemed – uncertain suddenly; afraid of him. Gibbs flicked his hand towards the door, beckoning to her. She hesitated, and followed him. He took her to the elevator, and put his hand on the door, extending his hand to let her on first.

"I'm not going to hurt you, kid," he told her.

She turned around, standing in the elevator, looking at him intently.

"I know," she said.

She sounded more confident than she felt.

Gibbs got on, and chose the floor for the bullpen – to his surprise, she'd already reached out to do the same, and she snatched her hand back. She rubbed her collarbone, and then grasped a necklace. He turned to look at her, trying to ease her discomfort – she must – she must think she was in huge trouble –

"What happened to all that hell you were givin' Strobe?" he asked. He tried to give her a soft look, but she was pointedly looking forward. "You're not going to go to jail," he said, conspiratorial.

She didn't say anything for a moment.

"I know that – none of these materials actually make a bomb; they make a flammable liquid, and I don't have a lighter," she said quietly.

"You know how to make something flammable?"

"Yes, but I wasn't going to light it here; just at school."

She paused, and then suddenly turned to him, her eyes very wide.

"I understand how terrible that sounded and I want you to know that it's for a science fair," she said – almost squeaked.

The doors opened, and he smiled a little.

"You must be a smart," he remarked.

She stepped off the elevator, chewing on her necklace, and stopped short. He almost ran into her.

"Ew," she breathed. "Why are the walls orange?"

"Been orange since I got here," Gibbs said, beckoning her towards the bullpen.

The teenager turned up her nose.

"You been here before?" he went on.

"It wasn't exactly a lie when I told that guy my mother works here," she said dryly.

Bugsy got up when she saw Gibbs approaching, and trotted forward. Unsurprisingly, she spotted the newcomer and let out a sharp, happy bark.

"She doesn't bite," Gibbs said, without adding that Bugsy only attacked if he gave a very specific order.

The teenager dropped her bag and crouched down.

"Oh, look at you," she crooned. "Mom said NCIS had a new mascot – look at you," she said again, scratching Bugsy's ears. She looked up, and then stood, folding her arms.

She looked at him uncertainly, and glanced around.

"Where's – Franks, and – McLane and … King?" she asked slowly.

Gibbs gave her an intent look.

"Out," he said shortly. "You know everyone here?" he asked, a little dryly.

Her eyes met his sharply.

"Well, I don't know you," she said edgily. Her eyes narrowed, scrutinizing him. She started to say something, and then she reached up to pull at her necklace again.

That was the exact moment Gibbs realized it wasn't a necklace, it was a pair of dog tags on a bland chain.

He swallowed, his mouth dry. His gut twisted, but he just – he shook his head a little; this was absurd, he really was going crazy - there was no way –

She flinched, suddenly, as Bugsy literally jumped on her, putting his paws on her elbow. Impressively, she didn't move away, just flinched, and looked at the dog a little balefully.

"Get down, please," she said quietly.

"Bug," Gibbs barked, snapping sharply.

The girl leaned forward, and planted her hands on his desk.

"What did you call that dog?" she demanded.

He didn't answer her. Instead, distracted, he reached out and grabbed the dog tag that hung from her neck – gently, so as not to pull it. He didn't even have to read the whole thing.

Gibbs, Leroy Jeth –

He looked up at her.

He held it for a silent moment, and then he dropped it like he'd been burned.

Feeling like he'd been clubbed over the head, he tried to clear his throat.

"What's – who's – who's your mother?" he asked hoarsely. "Why don't I try calling her extension – "

"Her name is Jennifer Shepard," the girl said intently, her eyes on him, "and I'm pretty sure she's about to have the worst day of her life."

Gibbs reached for the phone, dropping it once before he got it into his hand – but it wasn't necessary; wasn't necessary at all.

"Natalie! Jesus Christ, Natalie – explosive materials? I thought you were making jet fuel, not a bomb – "

The girl – Natalie, Natalie Winter Gibbs – turned, pushing her hair back. She took a few steps forward, meeting her mother in the middle of the bullpen, and she shook her head, holding up her hands.

"Flammable, not explosive," she said, her voice shaking.

Jenny took her hands, squeezing them. She faltered suddenly.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Natalie, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"You tell me," Natalie said.

Exasperated, Jenny squeezed her hands, and sighed tensely.

"Honey, look, you're not actually going to get in trouble – I don't think – where's the agent they called – "

Gibbs placed the phone he'd been holding down gently, looking down at his desk. A thousand thoughts collided in his head as he tried to envision how this was going to go, how he was going to handle it – he'd look up, and he'd see her for the first time in – in years, and he just didn't know how that was going to hit him –

He looked up, and cleared his throat.

"That'd be me," he said, forcing the sentence out calmly.

In the silence that followed, Bugsy traipsed over to Jenny and sat at her feet. She barked.

Jenny was silent – a look of confusion crossed her face, then uncertainty, then dawning recognition – he supposed that was fair; he did look different – older – than when she'd last seen him. She shook her head a little, and then furrowed her brow in shock.

"Jethro?" she asked finally, pronouncing the name delicately, as if it weren't real.

"It is him?" Natalie demanded, looking between them. Her hair whipped around her shoulders.

Jenny couldn't think of anything to say – her mouth felt dry, her tongue felt like lead – never in a thousand years had she expected this – she ignored Natalie and she – she blurted –

"What happened to your hair?"

Gibbs, his expression fixed, blinked a little, and reached up to touch it.

Natalie turned slowly to Jenny.

"Seriously – are you serious, Mom?" she asked, appalled.

Jenny flushed, her hand rising to her jaw shakily. She touched her cheek, covering her mouth a moment, and then rubbed one of her palms against her slacks. She just – couldn't stop staring at him – his hair was so different though, Natalie would never understand – the silver, or grey, whatever it was polite to call it.

Natalie flew forward, standing earnestly near Gibbs, her hand on his desk.

"I knew it," she said firmly. "I thought you – you looked familiar, you – well, I've been looking at old pictures lately, and your hair is – but it just seemed ridiculous that it would be you but – it is?" She picked up her dog tags, and rattled them. "You're Leroy Jethro Gibbs? USMC – are you?"

Gibbs looked at her for a moment, and clenched his jaw, inclining his head forward.

"Yeah," he answered gruffly.

She opened her mouth, catching her breath.

"I," she started. She reached out and touched his arm gently, her fingertips pressing into his jacket. "I still have Beary Smiles."

That – and why wasn't he surprised? – that seemed to snap Jenny out of her monumental shock coma, and she took a step forward, a wary, anxious, and upset look on her face.

"Natalie," she said, controlling her voice. "Back off a little, give him some space," she said, tense. "Nat – "

Gibbs shrugged.

"I don't need any space," he said, a little sharply.

He saw a look of smug triumph flit across Natalie's face, though, and he immediately regretted it; the way to handle this was not by spitting in Jenny's face or stepping on her toes – not right now, not at first; he didn't – God, he didn't want an adversary, he just wanted to step one foot closer and hug Natalie so tightly that she felt ten years of him missing her –

But he couldn't move; he couldn't do anything.

This was Natalie, but this wasn't – but he didn't know her.

The Natalie he knew was…five-years-old.

Bugsy trotted over, wagging her tail, and licked Natalie's hand.

"Her name is – Bug? Is it after me?" She faltered a little, uncertain of how she felt – had she been replaced by an – an animal –

"Stop," Jenny spoke up, raising her voice. She stepped forward and took Natalie's arm, gently pulling her out from behind the desk. "Natalie," she said, looking at her authoritatively. "Abby is busier than she thought. I want you to go home."

Natalie yanked her arm away.

"You knew about this, didn't you?" she asked. "You knew he was working – "

"I did not know," Jenny said sharply. "Nat, I am not messing around, I want you to go to Georgetown – "

"I don't want to," she snarled. "I'll stay right here," she said, pointing to the ground. "I'll stay with him until you're done with work – "

"You absolutely will not. This is my workplace and it is Jeth – Agent – it's his workplace, and you are not going to harass – "

"Harass? You think I'm – Mom, I just came face-to-face with my father for the first time since I was – I was – I don't even remember and you want me to just – go home," Natalie shouted, "that may work for you and your stubborn promise to not give a damn – "

"Hey," barked Jenny, interrupting. "Hey," she said sharply. She paused a moment, letting the tone get under her daughter's skin. She took a deep breath. "Now? Here? Not the time, or the place," she said succinctly.

The only thing she was concerned with right now as protecting her privacy as well as Natalie's – was diffusing the situation and controlling the chaos of emotions so she could finish the day without dissolving into tears or hysterics or – or something worse she couldn't even fathom.

Natalie looked like she was about to start screaming.

Gibbs cleared his throat.

"Hey," he said, echoing Jenny. "Natalie," he said – God, her name felt so strange on his lips, even stranger to be saying it here, to her face. "S'okay. Listen to your mother."

She looked at him in shock, taken aback – clearly, she'd thought he'd take her side, and when he didn't – he realized she looked crushed, uncertain – confused. He hoped she didn't think – that he wanted her to go, it was just that he couldn't – this wasn't a good time, a good place, and he had never been good at gathering his thoughts or at anything emotional –

Natalie turned to Jenny again.

"You just want me to go home?" she asked, lost.

Jenny placed a hand on her shoulder.

"What the hell is goin' on in here?"

"Ayyy, Jenny, how's it – "

King and Franks strolled back into the bullpen, and at that inopportune moment, McLane came jogging down the stairs, sparing a vague glance for Jenny.

"Hey Shepard," he greeted. "Nat," he added, with a familiarity that both confused and irritated Gibbs.

Jenny's face paled, and she pleaded silently with Natalie.

"It's just a few hours, Natalie. I'll be home in a few hours," she promised.

Natalie put her hands on her mother's shoulders for a moment.

"Are we going to talk?" she asked.

"Nat," Jenny said, through gritted teeth. "I'm going to – we're going to – something's going to happen," she said heavily – no promise, no – she couldn't promise anything, not until she knew what was going on – what she was dealing with.

Natalie gave her a hard look, and turned away. She yanked her backpack off the floor, jerked it onto her shoulder, and she left, without a second look at Jenny, or Franks, or any of the agents she knew – but with one look spared for her – for Gibbs.

Jenny watched her leave, wincing as Natalie chose the stairs over the elevator and slammed the door. She put a hand to her mouth and tried not to look at the others – Franks, who she'd known since Kate Todd had been murdered; McLane, who'd first hired her with NCIS – those two, who must be putting the pieces together –

McLane was the first to break.

"You're – Gibbs, you're Natalie's father?" he asked, clearly having put the pieces together simply from the tension and the identical surnames.

Franks kicked his chair back, muttering a few choice swear words.

"So help me God, I leave this office for an hour and the whole damn place turns into The Jerry Springer Show – "

Agent Pride could do nothing but stare in small confusion, and Jenny turned her back on them all – her ears were ringing, and her head was almost spinning, and she only found some kind of odd equilibrium by staring at Gibbs, her eyes on his, until she heard only silence, and she didn't feel like the room was tilting.

With Natalie gone, and the word blocked out, she pursed her lips.

"Jethro?" she asked again – that same delicate, hesitant pronunciation – no wild observation about his gone-silver hair now, just startled dread, or disbelief or – he didn't know what he saw in her eyes, but he knew, yet again, that a cataclysmic moment had just occurred in his life.

So he said –

"Should we skip the 'you haven't changed a bit' bull?"

---

"Oh, how I've dreaded
this godforsaken day."
-Miranda Lambert ft. The Pistol Annies; Run, Daddy Run

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feedback appreciated !
-alexandra

story #269