A/N I'm not dead, even if I currently feel like it. I finally have a computer up and running again thanks to my father and I hope my muse finally stopped hiding. Seriously I couldn't get anything done besides silly oneshots. I think I have at least fifteen different versions of the next chapter for A different Bete Noir. I hope with this one I'm done and can get back to write the multichapter stories I'm working on, so please don't shoot me, new chapters will hopefully follow soon, discovered muse is awfully addicted to cinnamon scented breakfast cereals, how strange is that?
As for this fic, I think I must have been high on caffeine when I had the idea. It's the usual Kibbs but it has past Jibbs, minor Kari and one pairing I'm not sure anybody has ever thought of before, at least I have yet to find another fic. And I should probably mention that it's enterely from Jenn's POV, I kinda like her, blame Picket Fences but I absolutely adore Lauren Holly.
Disclaimer is in my profile. Reviews are appreciated, flames will either be deleted or mocked mercilessly, depending on my current mood.
Now enjoy!
There are days she feels like blaming Ziva.
It was the brunette Mossad agent who introduced them after all. Back then when the world buzzed with excitement anxiously awaiting the new millennium. She'd just gotten her re-assignment to the States still licking her wounds from the ill fated and yet so intense affair she had with one Jethro Gibbs.
To her it's the ultimate cliché, falling for your partner in the city of love, the dangerous assignments, the thrill of constant danger…
God, there are days she feels as if everything she had experienced was nothing but a mere dream, woven by some twisted part of her subconscious mind that desperately wanted to experience something straight from a James Bond movie.
She's not sure what attracted her to him. He was drop dead gorgeous wearing a tux and that kick off smile that's a given but she has never been that kind of girl that falls for the bad boy and he was, a bad boy, oh yeah.
Not to mention the fact that she was almost ten years his senior.
She remembers his voice, smooth like that special kind of scotch her father used to drink, the shiver he send down her spine when he said her name with only the slightest accent left.
She offered her hand and instead of shaking it, he dropped a kiss on her delicate skin, his soft lips lingering just that little bit too long to still be appropriate.
She lost herself in his dark piercing eyes that evening and they lost themselves in each other that night.
She wonders sometimes how they could keep it quiet for so many years.
Keeping something like that a secret would have been difficult in a normal world but in theirs, where secrets and betrayal wait behind every corner it should have been downright impossible.
It wasn't.
She remembers Ziva mentioning concern once, he seemed happier somehow, less troubled by his duties and she likes to think that she was the one responsible for the change.
They didn't have much time together. Whenever they could snatch some time together between assignments they spent it with each other.
They spent blissful times of sweet ignorance yet again in Paris. He had a small apartment there, barely furnished, not that they had needed much aside from a full fridge and a huge and solid- build bed.
Other times they met in London or Berlin in an expensive hotel room, she never asked how he managed to arrange their meetings and he never told her.
Never once did they meet in his or her home country, knowing perfectly well that it would have been too dangerous to even try.
They had a close call, once, after a particular stressing week her impatience had gotten the better of her and she hadn't remembered to take the usual precautions before their meeting but luckily Ziva didn't spot them sitting in that little café next to Trafalgar Square.
Did she love him?
Sometimes she thought she might. This tender feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she thought of him. The frantic need she felt every time they met again. She didn't believe that he loved her, most times she doubted he was capable of loving another person next to his sister especially after his mother's death and he sure as hell didn't love his father.
She should have known it couldn't last forever; this little bubble they had created where nothing existed but two lost souls yearning for the soothing touch of another human being.
A few years into their little thing she noticed it for the first time. He always had the aura of a man who lived in the darkness, a life between the shadows and the darkness weight heavily on his mind. But the distraction he showed this time, the lack of attention worried her, it was so unlike him and she remembers the day as if it had been yesterday.
Tired from their work they fell into each other's arms as soon as the door to the apartment closed. Frantic kissing, nimble fingers working on renitent clothes they fell into bed, a tangled heap of limbs trying to ease away the images of dead and blood that seemed to follow them even into their deepest dreams.
Afterwards they lay together, tired and sated and he was tracing idle patterns on the bare skin of her arm.
"I met your Jethro, today" his voice broke the comfortable silence.
"What do you mean?" she asked confused but he kept silent and so she turned around and met his eyes.
"Ari? Tell me what happened," she demanded searching in his eyes for something she didn't know.
"Shhh," he pressed an index finger to her lips, silencing her "it's nothing, don't worry" and he pressed his lips to hers again.
In moments like that she cursed the macho behaviour he had cultivated, a treat he definitely shared with Jethro Gibbs but she quickly lost herself in the delicious heat he so expertly knew to ignite in a woman and everything else was forgotten.
Later she got the whole story from a source in D.C and a tiny bit of worry started to make her feel slightly uneasy.
A few months later she was awoken by a frantic phone call from Ziva, telling her that Ari's cover with the NCIS team was blown and they had taken him into custody. She spent the whole morning on the phone trying to keep the damage to a minimum. She groaned upon hearing that Jethro had shot Ari that was just so him, she should have expected it.
After that things between them changed.
The sex was still great but he was more distant than ever. He started to mention "her Jethro" more and more, sometimes teasingly and sometimes with the intention to hurt but then he didn't hold her heart so he couldn't really hurt her and they both knew that.
Almost a year passed in a daze before it happened for the first time, they were busy satisfying each other in every way possible when she heard it, instead of the familiar whisper of her name another woman replaced her that night at least in his mind.
Caitlin
That was the moment she started to worry.
She only knew of one Caitlin, Ari had had contact with and that was Special Agent Caitlin Todd, the woman he'd already taken hostage twice.
Did something like reverse Stockholm Syndrome even exist?
She started to pay attention to the little things. His phone calls that weren't scheduled, notes he left, she knew he trusted her to a certain extend, visitors he met with in the middle of the night while believing her to be asleep.
Slowly piece by piece fell into place and she really didn't like the picture that presented itself.
Then she found the photos.
It must have been hundreds of them, Jethro's whole team, the Goth that worked in the lab, Ducky. But the last few really got her attention, only Jethro and his female agent in them. Various situations, from daily work in the bullpen over fieldwork and one that looked like a snapshot from an after work drink.
Briefly she felt a rush of compassion, she could understand obsession harbouring a pretty big one herself for years now but that quickly passed.
And when the last piece of the puzzle neatly fell into its place she knew what she had to do.
She remembers the look in those gorgeous brown eyes of his, the moment he noticed the cold steel in her right hand, the look of confusion and betrayal and at the end understanding.
He died with a strange kind of peace, maybe he had wanted her to find out, maybe that had been the reason why he'd gotten so careless around her the last months of his life.
It's strange, she thinks, shouldn't she mourn a lover she had for over five years, a man that had such a huge impact on her life and yet it was an affair that would never be acknowledged, none of the people she currently surveyed at their desks would ever know how close they'd come to loosing one of their own.
And when she looks at them, still unnoticed by the team, waiting for the opportunity to introduce herself as their new director and sees her former lover gently laying a hand on the small of Caitlin Todd's back and guiding her to the elevator, probably for a coffee break, while he smiles the smile he reserves for the woman that holds his heart, she thinks that maybe something good did come from the whole mess.
And then she straightens her back, brushes some imaginary dirt from her suit and begins to step down the stairs, one by one, ready to face the unknown.
She doesn't look back.
Sooo...liked it, hated it? Think I'm completely nuts?( I am but that's so totally not the point here)