Disclaimer: Anyone you recognize, I do not own unfortunately. They are all owned by Donald Bellisario.
A/N: Thanks to my beta JibbsGal1 for giving me the encouragement I needed to try and write this. It won't be updated as frequently as In Your Arms, but I will try and keep up with this as well. Oh and for this fic, I'm changing Kelly's age a little bit to fit my story better.
****NCIS****
1998
"Daddy, pleeeease let me go to work with you today," a 12-year-old Kelly Gibbs whined, following her dad around in their basement. "Decker and Pacci told me that you guys have a new forensic girl and that she wears these really weird clothes, but that she's super nice. I just want to see her."
"Kelly, no," Gibbs said, mentally vowing to give Decker and Pacci severe head slaps today.
"I don't want to go over to Maddie's; she's sick and it won't be any fun."
"Fine, I will let you come with me. Just don't make me regret it, young lady," he grumbled, knowing he didn't need a sick child on his hands. It seemed like Kelly and Maddie shared everything, including colds.
"Thanks Daddy," she smiled, hugging him tightly before running upstairs to grab some things to take with her that day.
****NCIS****
Around 9:30 that morning, Kelly walked into the squad room with Gibbs, smirking lightly when she saw Stan Burley trying to hit on her dad's newest Probie, a pretty red-head named Jenny Shepard. Before Stan could try and ask her in another failed attempt for a date, Gibbs smacked the back of his head. "Watch it Burley," he grumbled, walking over to his desk.
"Daddy, can Jenny take me down to meet the new science girl?" Kelly asked, having taken a liking to the newest agent.
"Yeah, that's fine. Just remember to behave," he said, not really knowing why he said it, as he never had any trouble out of Kelly before-but he said it nevertheless.
"Duh Dad," she said, rolling her eyes playfully before grabbing Jenny's arm and pulling her to the back elevators to go to the forensics lab.
"So how did you talk your dad into bringing you today?" Jenny asked, looking down at the young girl.
"Maddie's got a cold, and I really don't want to get sick during my summer vacation-so I had no place else to go today."
"Does your mom work too?" she asked, not knowing about her boss' wife's fate.
"She died when I was a little girl," Kelly mumbled, as they got onto the elevator. "When Daddy got sent to Kuwait the last time, he got stationed at Camp Pendleton so Mom wanted to follow him out there. After he left, she saw a Marine get killed by a drug guy. She was supposed to testify at the trial, and NIS was sent to protect us. The agent driving our van got shot and killed and then we wrecked. Mom died in the accident; I ended up with a broken arm and some cuts."
"Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry," Jenny said, feeling bad for upsetting the young girl.
"It's okay; it doesn't bother me as much as it used to."
"Okay," she replied, hugging Kelly to her side.
Before anything else was said, the elevator stopped and they got out and heard loud death metal music coming from inside the lab. Looking up at Jenny questioningly, Kelly couldn't help but ask, "Are the guys sure she's really nice?"
Chuckling softly, Jenny shook her head lightly at her. "Yes, Kelly, she's really nice. She just has a, quirky, personality."
"Okay."
Walking into the lab, Jenny had to yell to be heard over the music. "Abby!"
"Oh hi, Agent Shepard. What brings you down here? You guys don't have a case yet," Abby Scuito asked, looking at her questioningly.
"This is Agent Gibbs' daughter, Kelly," she replied, gesturing to the girl beside her. "Decker and Chris told her a little bit about you, so she wanted to meet you for herself."
"Do you ever fall in those shoes?" Kelly asked, before her brain could really kick in. "Oops, sorry."
"It's okay, kid, I get asked weird questions all the time," Abby laughed, not taking her question to heart. "Answering it though, I've not fallen yet."
"So are you like a happy Goth?" she asked, looking at her quizzically. "Cause my friend Sarah, her brother is into Goth, but he never smiles or talks really."
"Oh, I'm not a Goth," she answered, shaking her head and making her pigtails move.
"So then why do you dress like that?" Kelly inquired, leaving Jenny no doubt in her mind that Kelly would probably grow up to be an NCIS agent as well, using her own father's interrogation techniques.
"I just like it."
"Okay."
'Dodged a bullet on that one,' Jenny thought to herself, knowing Gibbs had mentioned before just how inquisitive his daughter could get.
Before anyone could say anything else, Gibbs appeared almost out of thin air as far as Abby was concerned. "Jenny, let's go. We've got a dead Marine at Rock Creek Park," he said, looking at the red head. "Kelly, Uncle Tom said you could sit up in his office till I get back."
"Can't I stay down here with Abby, Daddy?" she asked, batting her blue eyes at him hopefully.
"It's okay with me, Gibbs."
"All right, but don't get in her way; she'll have work to do when we get back."
"Thanks Daddy," Kelly said, smiling at him brightly. Once Gibbs and Jenny had left, the young girl turned to her new friend. "How good are you at scheming, Abby?"
"Why? What do you want to do?"
"Get my dad away from the evil step monster, Diane, and get him to see that he and Jenny would be perfect for each other."
"I don't know, kid. That sounds like something that could essentially backfire on us," she replied hesitantly, not knowing the gruff special agent well enough to butt into his personal life just yet. "I'd love to live to see the Brain Matter concert I got tickets for next month."
"Come on, Abby, pleeeeease," Kelly begged, knowing that she and Maddie wouldn't be able to pull it off on their own. "He doesn't really love Diane. I'm not even sure WHY he married her. Can you just find out if they're going to get divorced? She hasn't been home for like the last two weeks."
"All right, I'll think of something to ask him. I can pretend I don't know he's married, figure out some questions to ask him."
"Thanks Abby, you're awesome."
****NCIS****
Later on that night, Gibbs and Kelly were on their way home after stopping to pick up some pizza for dinner, when she popped off with an unusual question. "Can you let Jenny take me shopping for school clothes this year?"
"Um, sure. Why?"
"Well, I like her better than I like Diane. We have fun hanging out and laughing about you," she replied, smiling at him innocently. "Besides, I don't think going shopping with Diane would be in my best interests."
"It can't be all that bad, can it?" he asked, not knowing about the debacle that happened when Diane took her shopping for new summer clothes.
"She said just about everything I tried on looked slutty," she said, changing the words around a little bit, hoping to get him to see that Diane wasn't really as nice to Kelly as the 'evil step monster' let on.
"She said what?" he exclaimed, swerving the car a bit on the road, when he heard what his wife had said to his daughter.
"Yeah, said that the shorts I tried on were something that only a whore would wear and that the tank tops practically screamed easy," she replied, smirking mentally at how easy this was. Diane had really said that the clothes Kelly had picked out were slutty, but Kelly was adding a few extra things here and there, knowing her dad would believe her before he believed Diane.
"Fine, you can ask Jenny if she will take you," he growled, fully intending on strangling Diane when he saw her again. "If not, see if Mrs. Tyler will take you when she takes Maddie."
"Great, thanks Daddy."
"Welcome sweetie."
****NCIS****
The next few weeks went by without much incident. Of course Diane vehemently denied saying anything like that to Kelly about her clothes, but Gibbs could tell that she was lying to an extent. He also knew that Kelly may have embellished the story a bit, but he wasn't going to get onto her about it. Kelly had spent a lot of her free time down in Abby's lab, with the pretense toward Gibbs of being interested in the forensics of the cases, but really they were just working and plotting 'Operation Get Rid of Diane.'
Of course Kelly being Gibbs' daughter, she had everything plotted and written down in a notebook, nothing too malicious or could actually cause her to get hurt but Kelly just wanted her gone. She knew in her heart that Jenny would be the perfect fit into their little family. It was only a matter of time, she deemed, before her dad and Jenny realized the same thing. She hoped that when Jenny took her shopping the next week, that she could talk her into staying for dinner with them and maybe getting her dad to see that they could both benefit from having the red headed agent in their lives.