TITLE: A SECOND CHANCE
SUMMARY: Judgment Day AU. A second chance for Jenny and Gibbs. Can they take advantage of it while they have the opportunity? my first NCIS fic
DISCLAIMER: If I owned them...there'd be a few changes.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So this is my first dip into the world of NCIS. I resisted seeing Judgment Day for as long as possible, and then saw a hole that would allow this AU to be born. There are a few plot changes, the most obvious being that Jenny isn't dead by the time Tony and Ziva get to the diner. Also, there's no cover-up about her death. This is definitely a Jibbs fic, with a little Tiva mixed in. There's a happy ending eventually, although I don't claim it's a perfect ending (when is life ever perfect?) Hope you enjoy.
The red Mustang slowed to a halt outside of the dusty green diner. "There it is," Ziva told Tony. She then noticed that their car wasn't the only one parked on the road. "Look, I have seen that SUV before."
Tony also stared at it for a moment, trying to place where. "Gas station," he realized and they both got out of the convertible.
"You still believe the director is on one of your 'booty calls'?" Ziva asked as they started walking toward the abandoned restaurant.
He shot her a Look. "Well, if there's a sock on the doorknob, you're knocking."
She was about to make some comment about that, when they both realized that something was amiss. Bullet-holes riddled one section of the front door and multiple windows had been shattered, the glass littering the ground outside. They drew their guns and quietly moved forward. Tony could see a bloody body on the ground through the barely-open door.
"Go ahead," he whispered to Ziva, getting in position to cover her as she went inside. As their eyes adjusted to the darkened diner, they could see other bodies around the room – and then Ziva recognized the form slumped by the counter.
"Tony," she quietly called, and he joined her, both of them staring in shock. Tears pricked his eyes as he slowly knelt and felt for a pulse on their director's neck. He swallowed a sob when he actually felt something.
"She's alive," he told Ziva, and she instantly pulled out her phone to call for an ambulance.
They'd been seriously concerned that Jenny would die before the EMTs could get there. The blood loss from no less than three bullet wounds was extensive and they didn't know how long she'd been there like that. Their second phone call had been to Gibbs; they'd drawn straws for who got that job and who got to make the third call – SecNav.
The investigation was already beginning, with Leon Vance taking control, and Gibbs didn't feel that that was really where his presence was required. He instead headed back down the dusty desert roads toward the nearest town with a hospital that had a prayer of being able to deal with Jenny's injuries. It was a long drive, and he couldn't help but wonder at every moment if he was passing the place where she had died. Since everyone else was back at the scene, no one knew if she'd even made it to the hospital.
He flashed his badge at the nurse at the desk, "I need information on the condition of Jennifer Shepard." She looked briefly at the clipboard beside her before looking back up – although her eyes didn't meet his.
"If you'll have a seat, Sir, the doctor will be out to speak with you momentarily."
"I don't want to talk to your doctor! I want you to tell me how she's doing!"
At that moment, the aforementioned doctor approached. "It's okay, Maggie," he told the nurse before pulling Gibbs aside. "I'm Dr. Arnold; I was on-call when Ms. Shepard was brought in. Are you kin?" He again pulled out his badge. "I see. You weren't contacted by your superiors?"
"She IS my superior," he shot back. There was only one question he really wanted an answer to at the moment: "Is she alive?"
The other man looked down. "I'm sorry. Her injuries were extensive. We tried everything we could, but by the time she got here…it was too late."
"C-can I see her?" was the only other question that seemed significant.
The doctor frowned. "There was probably some mix-up in communication. I received orders from the Navy about an hour ago to prepare the body for transport to Washington DC. It's already gone."
From there on out, Gibbs was running on autopilot. If he stopped for a minute to think about what had actually happened, he was pretty sure he was going to be useless to everyone around him. Jenny deserved more than that.
Ziva and Tony made a miserable twosome. They'd been tasked with protecting their director – their friend – and had completely failed. Solving the case wasn't going to balm that wound. They'd be forced to deal with it for the rest of their lives.
With the assassin dealt with, the case was closed and all there was left to do was figure out some way to adapt to this strange new reality where their lives would never be the same. In his darkened basement, Jethro pulled out a bottle of bourbon and two glasses. He filled them both, and clinked his glass against the second before finishing off the contents in two gulps. It was going to take a lot of alcohol to drown this one.
His cell phone chirped, indicating that he'd gotten a text message, and he at first ignored it. The only people who would be calling him were his team (whom he didn't want to deal with) or someone above him in the chain of command (whom he REALLY didn't want to deal with). He forgot all about the device until his bottle was empty and decided to stumble his way upstairs to get some sleep. It fell from the workbench when he drunkenly bumped into it and he reached for it to make sure it wasn't broken. The screen lit up when he flipped it open, and the reminder about his message was displayed. The number was unidentified, and words that appeared made his heart race.
I'M SAFE. I LOVE YOU.
TBC...
I love feedback, so feel free to leave me some :-)