Genre: Hurt / Comfort, Family
Characters: Gibbs & Tim
Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS…wish I did then college payments would be easier!
Comments; Can be left below…they are welcome and cherished
….
I'm jolted awake by the sound of crying, something that hasn't filled my home in years. To tell you the truth someone else's presence hasn't filled my home since before I deployed.
Since before I got word that Shannon and Kelly had been taken from me, before we ever got to really live our lives as a family.
After Shannon died I went from one red head to another, one bottle of bourbon to another, just trying desperately to wash away their memories that seemed to be forever etched into my mind and heart.
Every time I heard a child laughing I looked around to see where Kelly was, every time I saw a couple laughing I looked to see what joke Shannon was telling.
I didn't really want to move on. I felt as though moving on meant forgetting and replacing what I'd lost.
How could one replace what was perfect?
That was until I met him.
Tim McGee. He changed me, opened my eyes. The gentle man let me in on a little secret—moving on didn't symbolize forgetting, rather it symbolized letting their memories live on.
For such a young man he could be rather poetic.
Timothy McGee accepted me despite my faults—believe me I have tons what with boat building and drunken stupors—yet Tim never left.
He'd wash away my tears when I got too wrapped up in a memory. On some anniversaries of their deaths he'd wash the vomit from my face that was caused by too much alcohol and too little food.
Yes he accepted me. And by doing that I began to accept my new life.
I began engaging more with life, my father even.
That was until the explosion.
The explosion that took Tim McGee's sight.
He was now totally blind.
He recently came home after spending time in a rehab facility. He came home to a place where he could no longer see…God what must that feel like?
So on this night I woke up to hear him crying. My instinct was to scoop him into my arms and hold him and tell him that everything would be okay.
But would things be okay?
"Hey baby what's wrong?"
"I-I-I can't remember your face."
It broke my heart to hear him stammer out those words.
I did the first thing that came to my mind.
I took his hands in mine and I let his fingers run over my eyes, going over every crevice, allowing those hands to commit every line to memory. Then the fingers lingered over my nose, that place where he used to nibble with his mouth, and then the fingers traveled down to my lips where he used to passionately make his. I let the fingers linger long enough to commit everything to memory.
As I did this I saw Tim's face light up, from what I'll never know, and for the first time I uttered the words, "Everything will be okay" and I meant it.
