Sitting there, in Jenny's study, away from his job for the first time, Gibbs finally let reality wash over him.
Jenny was dead.
For a time, that thought consumed him. Jenny, so full of life and love and laughter, was now a cold corpse. Before, in autopsy, he'd had the chance to see her one last time. But he wanted his memories of her to be only of how she was in life: warm, vibrant, beautiful.
Ah, Jenny. He couldn't help but whisper his pain as a new wave of it swamped his heart. The world will be a darker place without you to light it up. And I will be a darker person.
It was like losing Shannon and Kelly all over again. It shouldn't be; Jethro never would have guessed that Jen meant so much to him. But she did. And it hurt.
And this time, there would be no vengeance to assuage the fury building inside him. Jenny's killers were already dead, thanks to her and Mike. This was the only option left; he had to find the woman who ordered the hit. It was the only thing that would make him feel better right now, the only thing that might help to alleviate some of the pain of what was left of his heart dying.
Heart break. That was too clean a term for this kind of agony. His heart was being shattered, ripped apart, torn into shreds, individual jagged pieces that burned with the loss of not just Jenny, but Shannon and Kelly as well.
How could loss could one man endure? The grief was not added. It was multiplied, compounded, exponential to the point where all he wanted was an end to the constant pain. How long would it take before he went completely insane?
Gibbs was not even sure who he was grieving for now; the past and the present were all jumbled together.
He sighed, and looked down at the desk. Jenny would never sit at this desk again. He picked up the papers she had left on the surface, sifting through them until he found a piece of stationary. A letter.
Jenny's crisp handwriting had written only one word at the top. Jethro, the letter read, then stopped.
This was infuriating. To know that there was one final thing that Jen was trying to tell him, one thing she never got to say. To know that whatever it was, he would never know it now.
He got up and walked over to the window, peering outside. A single star winked back at him from the velvet sky. Gibbs smiled sadly, recalling a rhyme that Kelly had always loved.
"'Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have this wish I wish tonight.'
Come on, Daddy! Make a wish!"
And he did. He wished for a moment. Just one more moment, to see Jenny, talk to Jenny. Ask her one more question, give her one more kiss. Tell her one more thing, something he should have said to her years ago. Something that might have made her stay with him forever. I love you. He wished for a chance to say to her all the things he had kept inside all this time.
But she was gone. Forever. He would never again see her smile, hear her laugh. He walked back over to the desk and picked up the unfinished letter again, studying Jenny's perfect handwriting through tear-blurred eyes. For the first time in years, Gibbs was actually crying. That was how much she meant to him.
Oh, Jenny. I wish you were here with me.