Goodbye, my love….
The parade had been a wild success, the only blaring noise muffled by the symbols and a rhythmic booming making way across a humbled First Street. Confetti, lights, and the putrid smell of dulled butter on hard crunchy popcorn, crushed under a hundred feet and heat baked ketchup over a smothered corn dog, mixed the air.
Jethro had watched the celebration from afar almost as if he feared he may receive a feeling of cheer or even the slightest joy or envy toward the many pairs of people interlocking hands almost protectively in the crowd as if to lose the one they loved…
Shannon would have loved the parade… even the wily kids screaming for more; demanding, he would have been hesitant but would give in to her eyes, he always gave into her eyes...
It had only been a month now – if numbers mattered to Jethro, he counted them like after a while she would return from a trip, but he tried to know better, he demanded to know better…and his only relief was to still be grieving Shannon and not yet even comprehending the loss of his daughter…. relieved he did not grieve both – he could not take it - , even now he could not take it, and so he watched, his face sallow and his thoughts beyond the street caressed now in strings of cheep colored paper and hard candies…
Across the way came a large brass tuba led barely by an overwhelmed boy who's cheeks had grown bright red, as he passed, almost straying from a perfect line, came a brave girl weaving between the lines like a rhythmic dancer.
From a view she seemed to put a near damper on the parade, though Jethro could care less now only watching the parade only to envision Shannon's opinion, her giggle at baby Kelly's face smelling the unique air around them.
The figure was spry and almost agile, and it would be a lie to say for a second the wounds of loss did not disappear, because for a second they did…
That brunet hair whipped through the crowd, even though it was not to Jethro's taste, something about her cut an incision in Jethro's mind of Shannon, one of his only visions of Shannon without tears in her eyes and crying out in pain – a dream that had been forcefully cast into Jethro's burning heart, his heart wanting answers and licking away like a fire at every memory until the good ones were charred to a crisp and the bad ones perfectly relive able…
Her name was McKenzie, the name after years had dragged so easily off of Jethro's tongue he could say it with little meaning to him;
She was not Shannon and the thing that kept her close at heart was the closure, not the kind he could reconcile with a sniper avenging the ones he loved and lived for but a closure with every time McKenzie touched him and giggled, there was no Shannon, it was selfish and quite cruel but her eyes were a hot fire that seemed to melt him, she was agile and she was smart, she countered Jethro completely and when she smiled and when he saw her…she would get angry with him if his hello was not sincere enough and he would come behind her and grab her playfully singing her favorite song into her ear … it was a feeling he had felt with Shannon, but it had been duller then, even though he still loved her with all his heart –
Much around the time of twenty years later….
Gibbs was older now and the mane of grey across his head had in fact presented itself nicely, he was stronger, wiser and most defiantly on his account older.
Gibbs was what they called him now, but no matter what part of his name they chose his grieving sentence was not over and his trust for people had well dwindled very thin.
He stood over a sky light for a two story building, the surroundings desolate and highly gang ridden, signs of decay and where in the buildings near defiantly showed.
The sun cast down a large cast of Gibbs, his figure not as spry as once held and his voice not as hollow with fear and loss…
two bodies lay rigid almost on the dry cement below, and Dinozzo and Ziva contemplated the scene before them,
they are growing up, Gibbs could almost think to himself, a thought he would reserve until the next movie reference…
The phone rang a designated theme that showed none of Gibbs' personality but he reluctantly answered its constant shrill ring…
And in two seconds he heard a voice he had not heard in years, but still as young and beautiful as he concluded the speaker herself would be; and still to that day as the grieving had begin to sew itself up over many years and time, the voice still itself hundreds of miles away made everything inside him heal for just a moment…and she said, "Jethro…?... we need to talk… I know its been a long time;…its about our son"