Hey guys! This story was actually a short story I had to write for school once, and because I couldn't think of anything to write it on, I wrote this fanfiction, changing the names so that it would sound more original... Hopefully it didn't count as plagarism... So because this was supposed to be a short story, it's really short, and the plot isn't developed very well (given that I only had 5-10 pages to work with..) Anyway, I am working on something longer, but this will have to do for now... Also, sorry if the characters seem a little OOC...
Disclaimer: All characters belong are not mine. The only thing that belongs to me is this short story.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Today, she felt, would be a magical day, or at least that's what her gut said, and her gut was hardly ever wrong. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was intuition, but despite the negative thoughts that kept replaying in her mind, she was, for some reason, fairly confident that something good would happen today.
"Maybe I'll finally catch a break on the case I'm working on," Kelly Parker thought as she headed out the door of her apartment.
Just a few years prior, she had graduated from Quantico and had become a full-fledged FBI agent. Her first several months were rough, as she was only used to push papers and run errands for her superiors, but by and by, she was finally given the opportunity tag along on cases. Now, Kelly belonged to a team of elite FBI agents that worked cases together. At the moment, they were investigating the disappearance of a suspected local gang member, and she had been sent to talk to the witness, Lance Corporal Justin Langer.
Walking down the streets of Washington DC, Kelly's gaze wandered from the cloudless sky to the magnificent buildings that surrounded her to the energetic bustle of her fellow pedestrians, allowing her to feed off the energy of the busy city. Even the sound of traffic was enough to put her in a good mood today. She smiled. "Yes," she thought to herself, "Today is going to be a great day."
As time passed, Kelly eventually found herself standing in front of the café she was supposed to be meeting Langer at. Taking a seat at a nearby outdoor table, she quickly ordered a coffee to go before putting her shades on and trying to look inconspicuous.
Glancing around, she watched as people quickly passed by, all of them in too much of a hurry to soak in the beauty that surrounded them, and she wondered what would happen if they all slowed down for a moment to enjoy their surroundings. Although she reveled in taking time to breathe, she was still an FBI agent, and therefore carefully studied the area for any sign of a threat.
A few minutes later, she glanced at her watch for the tenth time since she'd sat down, and sighed. Scanning the streets one last time, she frowned and pulled out her phone. Just as she began to dial, gunshots sounded in a nearby alley. Faster than anyone could comprehend, Kelly was suddenly racing towards the source of the sound with gun in hand, weaving in and out of the panicking pedestrians that fled the scene.
"Out of the way!" she shouted, pushing someone out of her path, "Federal agent coming through!" The screams of terror only seemed to continue, and Kelly grunted in frustration as someone nearly knocked her off her feet. Pushing herself back up, she took off once more.
Finally, she managed to reach the alley from which the gunshot sound had come just in time to see a shadowy figure duck behind the nearby building. Chasing after them, Kelly rounded the corner with gun drawn, only to find the place deserted.
Throwing her hands up in frustration, she groaned and scanned the alley for any clues left behind. As her eyes wandered, her gaze fell upon the body of her now dead witness, and suddenly any thought of a good day vanished. Walking over to where the body of the Lance Corporal lay, Kelly knelt down beside him, gently placing two fingers on his neck to check for a pulse, and sighing when she felt none.
"Aw, crap," she muttered to herself before pulling out her phone and dialing. Putting it to her ear, she greeted, "Hey Fornell, it's Parker. We've got a situation."
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Sighing for the fiftieth time in the past hour, Kelly wiped the sweat from her forehead before returning back to the alley to scour for evidence. Other agents came and went in an attempt to process the scene, but none of them spoke a word to her, as if she was some sort of a disgrace. After all, what kind of agent would let their key witness be killed under their watch?
Once again, Kelly found herself stooping over the place where the witness had been shot, the only evidence remaining being the large and disturbing blood stain that painted the concrete. Suddenly, she felt a firm hand on her shoulder and turned to see Special Agent Tobias Fornell, her boss, gazing down at her with a hint of worry in his expression.
"You alright, Parker?" he asked, searching her face for some sort of answer. Kelly shrugged and stood up, giving one last glance to the blood stain.
"Yeah, I'll be fine," she responded, "After all, getting our primary witness killed is just part of life, right?"
Fornell looked her straight in the eye. "Don't worry, we'll get whoever killed him," he promised, "Besides, I'd be willing to bet that whoever put a bullet in him has connections to the missing gang members."
"Yeah, you're probably right," she sighed, "As soon as we get all of this cleaned up, I'll head back to the office and see if I can find our killer on any of the local traffic cameras."
As soon as she finished speaking, a dark blue Charger and emergency vehicle pulled up in front of the alley. The emergency vehicle wasn't pulled up far enough to see the logo on the side, but from the groan and the angry mutter that came from her boss, she immediately knew: NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. NCIS wasn't inherently bad, it was just that they could be a real pain in the butt even on good days. Not wanting to be caught in a standoff between two brooding federal agents, Kelly wandered back to the crime scene, looking for anything she might have missed.
Meanwhile, Fornell stalked over the silver-haired NCIS agent that was climbing out of the dark blue Charger. Other agents climbed out of the charger and emergency vehicle, but Fornell payed little attention to them. The silver-haired agent strolled over to the annoyed FBI agent.
"Well if it isn't the great Leroy Jethro Gibbs," Fornell scoffed, folding his arms. The man in question chuckled.
"Hello, Tobias," he greeted with a small smile.
Again, Fornell groaned, rubbing the back of his balding head. "So what can I do for NCIS this fine day?" he asked, sarcasm dripping from every word, "Last time I checked, NCIS doesn't have any business sticking their noses into FBI investigations."
Another smirk passed over Gibbs's face. "I heard you have a dead marine on your hands. That makes it my business, FBI investigation or not," he replied in a no-nonsense tone.
What started as a mere smirk from Fornell turned into a full out laugh as he wheezed, trying to catch his breath. "So what? You're going to take away my investigation? I don't think so," he stated, still recovering from his hysterics.
Gibbs kept a straight face, not breaking eye contact once. "My director already talked to yours about it," he informed.
"Yeah? And what did they say?" Fornell asked.
"They were hoping we could figure it out like mature adults," Gibbs replied with a smirk, to which Fornell scoffed and shook his head. Gibbs sighed, hanging his head for a moment before looking back up. "Look," he said, "I'm not going to take away your investigation, I only want to find out who killed the Lance Corporal. After that, you can do whatever you want."
Fornell thought for a moment before answering. "Yeah, ok fine," he agreed, "but only on one condition: one of my agents assists you, acting as a liaison between NCIS and the FBI. They help you out with your case, and in return, they keep me in the loop."
Gibbs sighed again. "I'm not in the mood to babysit one of your agents, Tobias. Just hand over the crime scene and get out of here," he argued, getting less amused by the minute.
"You won't have to babysit anyone, Gibbs, I promise. Just give her a chance."
"Her?"
Fornell motioned over to Kelly who was scrutinizing a brick wall. "FBI Special Agent Kelly Parker, she was the agent I sent to ask Langer some questions. He was killed while she was sitting at the cafe down the street. She tried to chase after the killer, but she was too late," he explained, glancing at her with a concerned expression.
"It wasn't her fault. There's nothing she could've done to stop it," Gibbs insisted, doing a detailed double-take on the agent he'd so quickly dismissed earlier as just another agent. Now that he got a good look at her, he realized there was more to her than what lay above the surface.
"She knows, but she still feels an amount of responsibility for it. You know what she's going through, you've been through it before, too."
Gibbs sighed. He knew all too well what taking the blame for something completely out of one's hands felt like. He'd been through it over and over again, and even though he was a highly skilled and seasoned agent, he still hadn't learned his lesson. "I'm still not interested in babysitting your depressed agent, Tobias. Give her a good smack on the back of the head and tell her to snap out of it. That should straighten her out real quick," he muttered, before starting to wander back towards the NCIS van.
"So that's it then?" Fornell asked.
"So what's it then?" Gibbs called back, his back still turned against the FBI agent as he walked down the alley.
"So you're not going to do anything about it? You're just gonna walk away?"
Gibbs stopped dead in his tracks before spinning around. "What do you want me to do about it? If she's giving herself grief over it, then she probably deserves it," he protested, "Besides, since when was this about your depressed agent? I thought we were negotiating for the crime scene."
"We were, and I told you I'd give it to you if you take along my agent," Darnell stated.
"Tobi-"
"No, Gibbs, that's the deal. You can bring along my agent, or we can take this to the directors because we can't agree on a single thing. It's your choice. Take it or leave it."
Gibbs sighed and hung his head. Finally, after a moment of contemplating, he straitened up. "Fine, but if she gets in my way even once, I will have her out the door so fast, she won't know what hit her. Deal?" he asked, sticking out his hand.
Fornell smiled, taking the outstretched hand. "Deal," he confirmed, "Trust me, she's a lot smarter than you give her credit for."
"She better be," Gibbs muttered under his breath.
With Gibbs following behind him, Fornell casually strolled over to Kelly, who was so unaware of his presence that she didn't notice him or his associate until their shadows blocked her sunlight. Glancing up, her breath hitched and her face paled at the sight of the silver-haired NCIS agent. His face was one she knew all too well, despite the fact that he looked a lot older than the last time she'd seen him. The only reason she stared dumbfounded was because he had supposedly died years ago, and yet here he was in all his familiar charm gazing at her without a hint of recognition for her, his daughter, the light of his eye that he had lost so very long ago.
Reining in her emotions, Parker stood promptly, trying not to show the great amount of surprise she had all of a sudden been overwhelmed with. Reaching for Gibbs' outstretched hand, she shook it, being extremely cautious about making eye contact. Tibbs noticed but didn't say anything, too caught up in his own emotions, although he was much better at suppressing it. Something about her seemed familiar, or so his infamous gut spared little time in telling him, but no name came to mind, so he shrugged it off, ignoring the instinct that told him he knew her.
Interpreting Parker's shock as something more out of intimidation than actual surprise, Fornell chuckled before introducing the two. "Parker, this is Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs with NCIS; Gibbs, this is Special Agent Kelly Parker, she's one of my brightest agents and also the one I've been telling you about," Fornell explained, ignoring Parker's raised eyebrow at his last comment.
"How do you do?" Gibbs greeted, keeping his eyes focused on her the entire time. Again, Kelly was at a loss for words, as she was successful enough for not staring at him.
Suddenly, one of the other NCIS agents that had accompanied Gibbs approached the group. "Boss, we've got a situation," the light-brown haired man said, ignoring the two extra pairs of eyes that had turned on him.
"What is it, DiNozzo?" Gibbs questioned, turning to look at his senior field agent.
DiNozzo hesitated, scratching the back of his head. "There's a man here to speak to you. He says he's the one that killed our Lance Corporal."
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Back at NCIS headquarters, Gibbs interrogated Juan Hernandez, a member of the local mafia.
"Why'd you kill Lance Corporal Justin Langer?" Gibbs questioned, gazing so intently at the suspect that he would've been able to drill a hole through his head. Juan shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Juan cleared his throat nervously. "I did what my boss told me ordered me to do," he responded, avoiding eye contact as Gibbs continued to stare at him.
"Who's your boss?"
Juan was hesitant before responding. "Julian Marcello," he responded, "He's the guy Langer was going to testify against. I was tying up the loose ends."
Gibbs glared at him. "You think my Lance Corporal was merely a loose end?"
"No, No! Marcello thought that. That's why he had me kill him."
"So then why turn yourself in? Why not hide behind Marcello's army of lawyers?" Gibbs asked curiously.
Juan sighed and rubbed the back of his head. "Because, I'm tired of hurting people, of killing them. I've been at this game for so long, and I just want it to be over. Plus, my father died recently, and I promised that I would right all my wrongs… For him," he explained.
Gibbs got up from his seat. "Good luck doing that while you're in prison," he started, coming around to the other side of the table before yanking him up and slapping a pair of handcuffs on him.
Meanwhile, Parker stood in the observation room watching the spectacle through the one-way glass with DiNozzo standing a few feet behind her.
"Do all your cases wrap up this fast?" she asked, turning to look at him.
Tony DiNozzo shook his head. "No, in fact they usually last much, much longer. I guess somebody put a limit on how many pages long this case could be, so we had to make it short and sweet. Crazy, right?"
Parker chuckled. "Yeah, something like that," she responded. After a slight pause, she asked, "So what about Gibbs?"
DiNozzo didn't look up from picking at his fingernails. "What about him?" he replied nonchalantly.
"Is he always so rough? Doesn't he ever smile and laugh?"
Hearing her words, he stopped dead before looking up at her, wandering away from the wall he'd been leaning against. "He does, it's very rare, though, and it takes a special someone to get him to laugh," DiNozzo explained," You see, Gibbs has been through a lot over the years, way more than anyone should go through in their entire lifetime. Because of it, he tends to a be a little rough around the edges. Don't worry, though, he's not so bad when you get to know him."
Parker nodded. Timidly, she asked, "What kind of things has he gone through?"
Again, DiNozzo hesitated before answering. "There have been a lot of things, but I think the one thing that affected him the most was losing his wife and eight year old daughter in a car crash years ago. His wife was suppose to testify against a drug lord, and he was away on deployment as a marine. His wife, his daughter, and the NIS agent assigned to protect them were on their way to his daughter dance recital when the NIS agent was shot in the head while driving the car. The car then wrapped itself around a pole, killing both his wife and daughter. There wasn't anything Gibbs could've done to stop it, but he blames himself for it everyday."
His words tore at her heart in so many different ways she didn't think possible. After all this time, he had blamed himself for their deaths, when in reality, their deaths had been faked to throw the drug lord off their trail. Why they never reunited was because they had been misinformed that Gibbs had been killed while on deployment. So after all these years, they lived without each other, not knowing that the other was alive.
A silent tear rolled down her cheek, but she wiped it away quickly. Clearing her throat, she asked, "What were their names?"
DiNozzo once again looked up at her. "Shannon and Kelly."
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Just as Kelly stepped onto the elevator headed for the lobby, a tall figure slipped in just before the doors closed. Taking a deep breath, she tried to control her fidgeting as her father stood beside her, not sparing her a glance. Suddenly, he reached out and flipped the emergency switch, bringing the elevator to a complete stop. Surprised, Kelly stumbled, grabbing onto the hand rails for support. Gibbs turned and gazed at her, making her shift uncomfortably.
Not able to withstand the silence, Kelly spoke up. "Look, there's something I need to tell you. I haven't been completely honest about who I am," she explained. She expected some sort of scolding or disappointed reproval, but what Gibbs said next surprised her.
"I know," he responded, "You don't have to tell me. I already know."
She stared at him wide-eyed. "You do?"
"I do," he confirmed with a small smile, pulling her into a warm embrace while carefully stroking the back of her head. She sobbed, releasing all the bottled up pain and anguish she'd hidden away over the years. Continuing to comfort her, he whispered, "I thought I'd lost you." Too overcome with grief, Kelly didn't answer, clinging on to him for fear of him being ripped away from her again.
After holding onto him for a little longer, she let go, stepping back to wipe the tears from her face. "Sorry," she muttered with a small laugh, smiling up at him. Tears were in his eyes as well, but he was grinning wider than a child on Christmas morning.
"Don't be," he answered, wiping a stray tear off her cheek, "You did nothing wrong. I'm just glad you're ok."
"Yeah, me too," she agreed, tilting her head in a playful manner, reminding him of when she was a toddler. He chuckled, wrapping one arm around her.
Tibbs flipped the emergency switch once more, bringing the elevator to life again. "So, you hungry?" he asked before a quick nod and a smile. "Good," he said, "I know this quaint little diner I think you'll like."
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Two Months Later
The past couple months had been crazy for Kelly. Soon after being reunited with her dad, she had changed her last name back to Gibbs and requested an agency transfer so she could work with her dad. Along with that, her parents were also reunited, and after the second date, Leroy Jethro Gibbs proposed for the second time to his true love, and just like last time, the answer was the same. In the midst of planning a wedding, Kelly had moved some of her stuff back to her dad's house for the times when she wanted to stay the night. After a long day at the office, Kelly lay in bed looking around the room she had grown up in all those years before.
Gazing up at the ceiling, she smiled. Slowly letting her eyes softly close, she inhaled the familiar scent of her home, her heart fluttering once more because of this surreal dream she found herself living in. And then, when she was at her happiest, her mind drifted off and her thoughts faded into subconsciousness, allowing her to fall into a peaceful sleep.
All the while, Leroy Jethro Gibbs stood outside her door watching as she slept on. With a heavy sigh, he gently closed the door and smiled. His little girl was home.
The End
Author's Note: Hey, so I hope you guys liked it. Hopefully it wasn't too cheesy... idk, maybe it was... Also, I'm not one to beg, but if you guys leave a comment, it would absolutely make my day :) Anyway, thanks so much for taking time to read this! Hopefully it was worth your while :)