To everyone that reviewed, thank you so very much. I still don't own anything to do with NCIS. And yes, Pandora of Ithilien was correct.
Jennifer Shepard sat quietly in the hard plastic chair that was positioned beside the small hospital bed. Four pristine, white walls surrounded her and the sergeant who lay on the bed. There was no sound or motion in the room except for the tiny beeping of the heart monitor and the slow rise and fall of the unconscious man's chest as air rattled faintly through the breathing tube. The nurses had convinced his hysteric wife to go home for a few, brief hours of sleep only after Jenny had promised that she wouldn't leave the sergeant's side.
She would have welcomed the break to sit and relax there herself but was reluctantly filling out the never-ending stream of paperwork that came into her possession. After another few minutes, though, she set down her pen. She took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with her fingers, and slumped back to find whatever comfort that the rigid plastic chair provided. Even as the door clicked softly open behind her, she did not bother to move.
Light footsteps crossed the floor and stopped beside the bed. She stiffened as she realized that it was him. Anyone else would have said something by now. And to be honest, she'd been expecting him for hours. His angry slamming of her office door the previous day had foretold a protracted, furious argument that would last for days, if not weeks. Not that she needed her door to tell her that, though. She swallowed once and lifted her head.
Gibbs stood there, turned away from her and watching the figure on the bed. As she stared at him, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. The blue eyes were tinged with accusation. She had to say something, anything.
"You're overdoing this, Jethro," she said softly.
"Overdoing this?" he demanded, "Jen, you sacrificed a man for a fancy computer!"
"It was a programming system, one that we need very badly. Our people, spread out over the entire world, are dying because we can't get air support into battle zones! It was our only copy. We need this," she stopped when she realized that she was repeating herself.
"They could have made another," he spat, "but that's not the point. The problem is that you don't care about your people anymore. You've changed. You don't care how many people die, what happens to them, or who you have to use to help your precious agency's standing!"
Never one to back down from a confrontation, she stood up so quickly that the chair nearly tipped over backwards. "That's not true!" fire snapped in her eyes and voice, "You know me better than that!"
He cut her off, his face livid, "DiNozzo? La Grenouille?" he asked sarcastically, "And I'm even starting to wonder if you care about NCIS. Maybe you just like the prestige that comes with being the director!"
He paused to take a breath. Her expression was stricken, her eyes hard and furious.
He stepped back several steps and turned to slip out the door. "Long live the queen," he whispered, meeting her gaze one last time before the door slipped closed.
She twisted her head back to face forward. With slow and careful precision, she picked up her pen and began to sign off again on the pile of paperwork in front of her. Holding herself perfectly still, she read silently as hot tears crept in to blur her vision. She flicked her hand across her eyes and rubbed them dry. She was not going to cry. Why did it matter what he thought? She shrieked silently to herself. He wasn't right! He wasn't, she knew her own mind, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong... He was wrong, wasn't he?
Gibbs' car squealed to a stop in front of his house. He yanked the keys from the ignition, slamming the car door shut as he got out and stalked up to his front door, his footsteps silent in the unbroken snow that covered the ground. Slamming the front door as well, he tossed his keys onto his counter and began to pace around the kitchen. His thoughts buzzed around his head, anger and confusion competing with fury and the urge to hit something. Sometime after his sixty-seventh track around the kitchen, he became aware of someones eyes on him.
His hand went instantly to the SIG on his hip. He carefully surveyed the entire room before pulling his weapon from its holster and checking the whole house from top to bottom. No one was there. He shook himself; this was almost Christmas, not Halloween. He should never have allowed Hollis to drag him to that horror movie several months before. Not that he was scared by the movie, or anything so foolish, but it put him on edge to remember how easily the lunatic serial killer had entered the house and waited for its inhabitants to go to sleep.
Gibbs returned to the kitchen. He rarely let his emotions control him, but he was not ready to make himself calm yet. If he worked on the boat, in his present anger, he would likely destroy it. He felt the eerie sensation of someones eyes on him again. This time he did not hesitate, but immediately grasped his SIG and put his back to the refrigerator. Again, there was no one there, but he was not ready to discount his gut a second time. He waited and was rewarded but a tiny flicker of movement in front of the oven. A flash of red, a glimpse of a figure... And then, the stunning recognition. Shannon.
Two full minutes later, he hadn't moved or lowered his weapon. He could not trust his eyes, because she was there, standing before him and smiling indulgently, as if he were a naughty child. His heart ached. After longing for this moment for so long, he did not believe what he saw.
"Jethro," she murmured in her musical voice, "why are you pointing a gun at me?"
He stared at the weapon in his eyes as though he was surprised to see it there. Lowering the SIG, he still did not release the tight grip that he held on it.
"Shannon?" he asked hoarsely.
She smiled more brightly at him as she stepped closer, motioning for him to put his weapon away. He obeyed as though in a trance. Her vibrant red hair was tucked back behind her ear, and her eyes sparkled as they met his.
"You look tired," she whispered. He put out his hand to touch her face but felt nothing. He could see his hand touching her cheek, but his fingers brushed only air. "I'm not here," she said gently.
"What?" was all that his tired and stunned brain could come up with.
Shannon laughed, "Always so articulate. I'm sorry, Jethro" she sobered slightly, "but I'm really not here. I'm dead."
"So this is my imagination?" he asked, still in a shell-shocked tone.
"Of course not. Well, not exactly. Kind of."
Now he was really confused.
"I am here, as in I'm talking to you and this isn't your imagination. Think of me as... here to help. I wish that I could stay here longer with you and explain more, but I really only have time to warn you. Some... spirits, for want of a better word, are going to come to you. You need to listen to them. Yes, they are real, because you aren't making them up, but they aren't exactly people either. Listen to them, Jethro, please. If not for yourself, then for everyone else."
She took a step backward but he went with her. "Don't go, please don't leave," he begged.
Shannon leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. He could not feel it, but his eyes misted all the same. "Please!"
"I have to go back. You should stop beating yourself up about our deaths, while I have the time to say this. It was our time to leave; there was nothing you could have done. And it's beautiful up there, just beautiful. Kelly says hi. We love you." Shannon faded into nothing even as she finished speaking. Her departing words seemed to hang on the stillness of the air, the kitchen lifeless in her absence.
The redhead watched him for a moment more, invisibly. She inhaled deeply, and then let the air out as a sigh. He had made such a mess that she wasn't sure how it could possibly be fixed. But this was Jethro. He was honorable. Mostly. She still wasn't thrilled about all the flings and ex-wives and girlfriends that had followed her death. It had been almost two decades now, and it was time for him to grow up. But fixing all the mistakes, some his and some belonging to others, wouldn't be easy. But she knew that he could do it, if he only listened carefully to the ones that would follow her. She brushed her fingers along his unseeing face and then slipped through the window and into the pale sunlight that glinted off the snow.