Can't tell you that

Title: "Can't tell you that"

Author: AbbyGibbs

Disclaimers: Well, I do not own them and that is pretty unfair – they again belong to DPB! Why does he always have to own the best shows and the best characters? Could someone explain that to me? His characters are always suffering too much. So I have decided to borrow them for a little while, the length of a story, but I promise to give them back though I really wish I could keep them for myself.

Classification: Abby/Gibbs angst, romance.

Rating: T (+13 as always to be on the safe side, isn't it?)

Spoilers: "Borderland"

Summary: Just tell me that I'm like a daughter to you...

Author's note: It popped in my head this morning while I was still half asleep in my bed. We watched the episode last night and had the idea for a little something and my muse won't leave me alone so I know what this means. I better write it down.

Gibbs isn't sanding anything, but I made this little modification on purpose.

I hope you'll like it. And if you do please drop me a review.

Special thanks to Laci who believes in me no matter what and thank you to my readers.

Feedbacks: well, I'd love them, of course – who wouldn't? But please, only if you respect my work because it takes a lot of time and energy to get a story together. I love writing; I wouldn't allow anyone to discourage me from doing so, never. I don't have any problems at all with readers who choose not to go for this, but I decidedly do with those who write disrespectful mails just because they didn't get the ending they would have wanted. If you want to tell me what I might have done better within the story I made up, you're always very welcome to let me know. But if your only concern is to rant about it, then please, do it in private, okay? Thank you.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
Stendhal (Henri Beyle)

"I want you to tell me how much I've been like a daughter to you. How much you love me."

"Will that help?" Gibbs asked her.

"No. What I really need to know, Gibbs is if you're gonna love me no matter what..." Abby asked him in a broken and panicked voice.

Gibbs was speechless and just looked at her incredulously. So that's what she thought. Abby thought he was only seeing a daughter in her - God was she wrong.

Abby was looking back at him, her eyes full of doubt, pain, and panic, but also something else, something that overwhelmed all the other feelings he could decipher in her eyes, though he was too shocked by what he was seeing to tell her something right away. He knew he had made her world shatter just like the image she had of him, but there was no reason to try to hide the truth behind the assassination of Pedro Hernandez anymore. She knew what he had done, she had evidence to prove it, but she wouldn't. No, Abby could not accept it.

This was impossible. This was Gibbs. The Gibbs she knew would never do that, or would he?

"Please, Gibbs, tell me, I'm wrong, that the forensic evidences are wrong."

It was time for the truth to come out.

Gibbs scratched his forehead lightly and sighed.

"Can't tell you that, Abby," He told her continuing to sand a piece of wood absently.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and her voice was broken when she asked him why he had done what he had so many years ago.

"I know they were your daughter and wife, but this... this..."

"I know."

"I so wish I didn't match that bullet with your sniper-rifle. You killed him, Gibbs."

"I know."

"I know it most have been horrible and traumatizing, but..."

Gibbs looked at her then, his eyes sad and cold, something Abby hadn't ever seen in his eyes before and it scared her.

"Do, you? Do you really think that you know what it feels like when you learn you've lost your reason to live?" Gibbs asked her dryly.

Abby looked at him unable to say a word as her eyes were full of unshed tears. Gibbs had never spoken to her in than tone of voice before. She wanted to say something, but the words were refusing to come out. They were stuck in her throat.

"When the only thing you're able to feel is pain, believe me, you are not rational anymore and you don't really think about what's good and what's not. When you feel pain like I felt all you want is for it to go away, and you want revenge; you don't bloody damn care about killing and go about asking yourself if it's good or bad, you just do it and hope that when you've done it you'll feel better. Problem is you don't. The only thing you have is the satisfaction of the guy being dead and the certitude that he'll never kill anybody ever again. But that all you bloody have for having murdered the killer of your family, I didn't achieve anything with that. The only thing I've manage to do is hurt you, and making you doubt me. The pain is still there even after all these years." He said in a hoarse voice full of chagrin and pain.

The tears in Abby's eyes had found her way down her cheeks.

Running toward him, she threw herself at him.

"No... No... No... Gibbs, I never doubted you." She affirmed him shaken her negatively.

Gibbs held her tightly against him, and tears rolled down his own cheeks now.

"I was just surprised and shocked, that's all." She told him in a shaky voice before her lips came in contact with his cheek.

Gibbs pulled back a little and looked her watery shining eyes where he saw that indeed there was no doubt and no angriness or anything, just sadness and... The strongest feeling of all. Love.

His eyes then lowered to watch her lips and then came to look in her eyes and then it happened, he lowered his head towards her and captured her lips. To his surprise Abby didn't hesitate at all to kiss him back, it didn't take long for it to intensify and deepen.

Both losing themselves in the kiss and forgetting everything else: their pain, their past lives, forgetting everything and anything that wasn't now, losing themselves into the sensation and the warmth the kiss provided them.

The kiss only broken when the need of air became life threatening and the first words that came out were Gibbs's as his breathing had slowed down enough to speak.

"I can't tell you... I can't tell you that you're like a daughter to me, Abbs, I can't tell you that because you never were."

"I think I got that now." Abby smiles. "It took you damn long enough to say that to me"

"Sorry, about that."

"Never apologize it's a sign of weakness."

"Not to the ones you love."

Abby's smiled widened, and her eyes were sparkling now.

They'll have to face their future soon enough, and what it will throw at them would be hard enough, but for now it didn't matter. What mattered now was what they were feeling for one another, and they both knew no matter what they would have each other's back.

THE END