Title: The One She Could Count On
Author: Tearsofamiko
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Riddle me this, Batman: if I owned them, would I really be posting here?
Spoilers: Hiatus (even though I haven't seen it...but I've read recaps, so yeah...)
Summary: She thought she could always count on him. Until she couldn't anymore.
A/N: Truly this is only a father/daughter Gabby. I'm afraid I think any other kind of Gabby paring is kinda...creepy?
Abby had always thought she'd be able to count on him. After all, he'd always been there, badgering her for answers, saving her from any remote idea of boredom, and always, always there simply to hug her when she needed it. He was supposed to always be there.
And then he wasn't.
One horrible mishap and she ceased to exist for him. His face was blank when she'd seen him, holding nothing of the affection or recognition she'd expected. And the biggest difference? His eyes. Though the same pale, piercing blue, she swore they were younger. They weren't the tired, strained, almost fragile blue she'd seen daily for the last seven years. They weren't shadowed with the loss and guilt she'd never realized was there, till it was gone. Along with the man she needed to be able to count on.
In a second, fifteen years had disappeared for the man who meant so much to her.
And in a second, his unspoken, unknown past came spilling out.
"Kelly," he'd called, as she stood in the hallway, trying to convince herself to go back in. "I want to see my daughter."
He pleaded, almost childlike, for a name nobody recognized, for two women no one had ever heard of. And no one knew what to do. The doctors talked in low voices, saying, "He's too agitated, he needs to calm down." And Abby was lost, unable to stomach the thought of him no longer there, desperately needing a hug she knew might never come again.
She visited daily, but never alone and never for long. She couldn't stand to be there long, to look in his face and not find the man she'd always counted on. So she stopped in long enough to say hello, usually with McGee, sometimes with Tony, then hid herself in her lab with Bert and her music and a picture of him. There was never any real change to the pattern. Until the day he showed up.
Abby could see where Gibbs got it, the gruffness and the attitude, kinda like she could sometimes see Gibbs in Tony. Strangely he comforted her, mostly because his take charge, no nonsense manner was so like the man she'd grown to need. In the same efficient way she knew from long experience, the pieces started falling into place. But the man she needed still didn't appear and Abby began to lose hope that he would.
Time passed, not much but apparently enough. She kept busy at work and refused to listen for his confident step outside her door. She tried to accept that the closest thing to his support was Tony's and the few days that passed seemed to gradually plateau. So, when he did step through her door offering a hesitant goodbye, it didn't seem to hurt as much as she thought it would.
More time passed, and she grew used to feeling adrift. The weight of Tony, McGee, and Ziva's love held her at NCIS, but the lack of him removed the security she needed in her life. So she floated along, leading her life, but not really living it. Her smile came back, though missing something. She talked more, joked a little. But everyone could see the changes. She'd lost the one she really counted on; her supports removed, she became a very fragile soul.
She heard of the adventures the team shared when he came back occasionally. He returned to save Ziva, to help clear her name. He came back to help save Tobias' daughter. But he never came back to save her. With his brief visits, she didn't allow herself to hope. She simply worked the way she had since the accident and tried to cope with the loss of him.
So, when Tony went down to her lab one day to tell her that the old team was back together, Abby believed him, but couldn't quite accept it. Her unshakable belief in immovable things had been shaken. After all, if he left her once, he could leave her again. Even the return of his confident step outside her door failed to assure her.
But when a familiar hand placed a Caf-Pow! in front of her and she turned to gaze up into familiar blue eyes, the old eyes she remembered from before, she knew: he really was back to stay.
And maybe, this time, if he could count on her, she could count on him.