Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or anything assoicated with it.
A/N: Just something that I churned out after watching 6x04 Heartland. I really loved the episode and afterwards thought about Gibbs and the losses in his life.
Memories of the summer of '76 are faded around the edges, tinged with the gap of years between then and now. Their starting to show their age with their tears on the edges and creases down the middle their representation of an old man's mind, of a man whose had too much heart ache in his life
Her mouth remains in focus while the words they formed become fuzzy and soft sounding as though she's speaking from the victorla my father kept in the attic from a bygone era. The smooth lines that graced her features become crow's feet and laugh lines.
She stands torn between two moments in time. When I first met her and when I last saw her.
My heart will always ache for her. Wish she was near.
Different decades intertwine in my mind and I don't bother to separate them anymore. Her laugh morphs seamlessly into another departed red head's laugh. Summer of '76 becomes fall of '99. The scenery changes but the feeling is the same, the unmistakable feeling of falling in love.
Both still linger on the outer most parts of memory, taunting me and daring me to try and catch them. I ignore them not wanting to sift though the pain.
There were shades of both women in each other, tenacity, intelligence, unshakeable courage and that twinkle in the eye when they had gotten the best of me. But the one common thread they have between them is I loved them and I lost them.
Philosophers will say that it's better to have love lost than to not have loved at all. Some days I wonder if that's true, or if those old men are just talking out of their asses. Do those men know what it's like to loose the woman you'd give your life for given half a chance?
When I close my eyes all I can see are their faces. They vary from blue eyes with no crinkles staring at me, trying to get the answers for her burning questions, or another pair of blue eyes who always had a bit of mystery swirling in them. Either way I'm a hunted man who will die in a sea of memories.
I loved them and lost them, and now all I have is bourbon and faded memories.
