Not Forgotten
Summary: Part of the 'Future Perfect' universe. Uncle Gibbs gets an email from one of the twins on November 11.
Disclaimer: Katie and Leigh are mine; the rest belong to other people.
A/N: This takes place in the 'Future Perfect' universe, featuring Katie and Leigh, the twin daughters of Tim and Abby. It builds on a larger plot arc.
Gibbs grinned and clicked on the email he found waiting for him. His goddaughter Katie was in her first semester of graduate school, and it had been a few days since he'd heard from her. He knew that Abby was upset about her daughter not keeping in touch as much as she had during her first weeks in the new programme, but he figured it was probably a good sign that she was settling in and making friends and was no longer homesick enough to want to spend hours on the phone with each of them every night. But that didn't mean he didn't look forward to her chatty emails a couple of times a week.
His smile grew bigger as he started reading, and realised that Katie had taken the time to attend a service of remembrance for Veterans Day. No, "Remembrance Day", he mentally corrected, reading Katie's description of her latest reminder that she was studying in a foreign country. She'd commented earlier in the week how surprised she was by how big a deal the day was in Canada, with almost everyone wearing a bright-red plastic poppy on their lapel or collar as a symbol of gratitude to those who had served. Once she'd figured out their significance, she'd cheerfully adapted to the custom, and had even emailed the rest of the family a photo of her poppy-adorned winter coat. And, apparently, some combination of her upbringing and an almost anthropological curiosity about local practices had actually tempted her away from the lab in the middle of the day.
She'd chosen a small ceremony on campus, having been convinced by one of her new friends to skip the bigger event downtown. The 'something special' she'd been promised had turned out to be a group of aboriginal drummers and a large bonfire. An elderly man wearing a heavily-beaded buckskin jacket had circled the crowd, fanning a smouldering bunch of sage with a large feather before throwing handfuls of loose tobacco into the flames. The ancient traditions had given way seamlessly to the more familiar bugle's dirge demanding a long moment of silence, ended by a less familiar tune that she assumed was the Canadian version of Reveille. Someone had recited the poem 'In Flanders Fields', most of the crowd silently mouthing the words along with him. To her astonishment, the short ritual had not ended with the bilingual anthem she'd only just become accustomed to, no longer surprised by a crowd's easy transition from one language to the next mid-verse. Instead, she'd discovered that Remembrance Day apparently warranted a rousing rendition of 'God Save the Queen'!
Gibbs chuckled, shaking his head. He'd worked with Canadian and British forces often enough to be familiar with the Commonwealth version of Reveille, and the continuing prevalence of royal symbolism in military contexts. Poor Katie... maybe he should have warned her.
Returning his attention to the computer screen, he read the rest of the email. As Katie turned away at the end of the ceremony, she'd noticed that the elderly aboriginal man standing behind her was wearing a US Marines baseball cap with a Vietnam vet's patch sewn on one side and an eagle feather sticking up at the back. She'd broken into a huge smile and thanked him for his service. His initial surprise, at what Gibbs assumed was the kind of overly enthusiastic bubbling that Katie had inherited from her mother, had dissipated when he caught sight of the American flag that she had pinned next to her poppy, and he'd returned the smile with a nod.
His finger hovering over the 'reply' button, he scanned the last sentence with a smile of his own. The crowd had jostled them apart before she could find out what the old Marine was doing on a university campus in Montreal, but for a brief moment, they'd both found a little piece of home.