Review please. One shot.
As soon as the two feeble words were scrawled onto the stationary she knew the letter would be scrapped in the end. Who was she kidding? Sighing she set the pen down and leaned back in her chair. She ran her tired hands down her face and stared at the beginnings of a confession. Why was she writing this letter? To remind him of all her failures and regrets? How will that help anyone? It wouldn't so what was the point of this letter? Why had she felt so compelled to start a letter she knew she would never finish?
Maybe because that's just how it was with Jethro. She loved him too much to cause him the pain that letter would bring. She loved him too much to confess everything. She loved him too much to taint his image of her. Writing this letter would expose her for who she truly was, a vulnerable woman. All that confidence was built up over years of learning from her mistakes, from hiding behind the mask she used to protect herself. Jethro was the one to solidify her mask. He was the one to finally nail it to her and keep it there until the day she would die.
Paris. Heaven and Hell wrapped into one vicious package. Jethro had kept things from her. He wasn't one to trust when it came to matters of the heart. He'd hurt her beyond repair. He had gotten wrapped up with the OP and barely paid any mind to her. Unless he was in bed with her. What she realized later was that Jethro wasn't truly in love with her. He was in love with the idea of them but it never really happened. When she left she thought it was for her to focus more on her career and less on her affair. But later after she became Director she found that she hadn't left, he made it impossible for her to stay.
He deserved answers didn't he? But she was just as much of a coward in life as she was in death. She couldn't say it to his face. She couldn't even write it. What good would it do anyway? It would just solidify her position as the truly broken one and Jethro as the one on top. The winner takes it all, right? He was selfish. He pinned himself as the broken one that needed mending by a beautiful red head that could fill the spot of Shannon. But nobody could replace Shannon. She was his pinnacle, his one and only. He made it clear that she had to just suck it up because nothing was as bad as what he was going through. Wrong. She was already fragile from her father's suicide. While she built Jethro higher, to the man he has become. He buried her deep and broke her fragile emotional state. He didn't realize what he did to her but she knew it and Ducky knew it. But he had been too engrossed in his ego to realize, he still was. So maybe this letter was a good thing? Make him see the light.
But she couldn't bring herself to write the rest of that letter. She was still too in love with him to hurt him like that. She laughed bitterly at her predicament. She was between a rock and a hard place. He had broken her, stolen her heart and never gave it back. She swallowed her small pride and picked up the pen. She would be gone by the time he read the letter so what did she care. She'd be looking down on him laughing mockingly. He had finally gotten what he deserved. Her final stand. But she was too in love to put that on him. But he deserved it didn't he? From all the vile things he did to her he deserved it. Yet still she couldn't do it. The man he had become from 1999 was so different. So much more understanding and maybe even sympathetic.
He thought that Paris was water under the bridge. Was it? Was it really? She was ashamed to say she still thought about it. Thought about the letter and all the things he did to her. All the steamy memories and all the furious ones too. She embraced them. It had molded her into the woman she was. And with that thought she pondered the possibility that she was the broken one by her own doing. Was it because she had held onto all those memories that she was still a little bitter towards him? Honestly she didn't think Paris could fully be just water under the bridge for them. It was something more. It was the year that had solidified both of their paths in the future. Every large decision they made would, in some degree, be tied with Paris. The memories would cross their minds almost involuntarily. Then the regrets would follow painfully. Sweet then sour.
Could she fix this? She asked herself that question more times than she liked to count. Every time she thought about it she would end up at Jethro's house. In her car wondering whether she should go in and talk to him. What would she say? He would be in his basement sanding his boat with a bottle of bourbon. Isn't that what he did every night? They had worked together. They had worked well together. If his past demons hadn't interfered with their OP in Paris where would they be now? She had wondered multiple times. In her fantasies she wanted them to be together. She wanted them to be happy. But too much had been buried and too much had been ignored to be brought up now, right?
It was selfish for her to start anything now. She was dying. Her relationship with Jethro was all but civil, underneath it all. So how could she even imagine fixing what they had? Then again if her last year on Earth was in his arms she would jump at the chance to fix it all.
She ended up outside of his house again. Yet again she sat in her cold car wondering if going in would be worth it. Would it be? She sighed and looked at the almost empty piece of stationary she had brought with her. Two feeble words scrawled at the top had sealed her fate: Dear Jethro. She picked up a stray pen lying on the dash and wrote her words carefully at the bottom: Yours Always, Jenny.