Chapter 2
Three years ago, NCIS and Gibbs' team had disbanded because the NCIS headquarters had moved south, to New Orleans and the team hadn't wanted to move their lives away from Washington, D.C. Since then Gibbs had married ex-Director, Jenny Shepard and their metaphorical 'children' (the other members of Gibbs' team) had gone off and got married and had children of their own.
Even Jimmy, the autopsy gremlin or the dysfunctional cousin of the team, and his wife Breena had children; a beautiful set of twins called James and Jasmine. Tony and Kate (who had only been injured in Ari Haswari's attack) were married with two sons- Anthony Jr and Jethro. Abby and her beloved Timothy McGee too were married and had a beautiful, dark haired baby girl called Rosemarie Caitlin. This little angel was Gibbs' pride and joy. She looked like his favourite member of the team and had McGee's kind heart. Abby had been right when she had said that hugs must run in her family- Rose, as she was called, just adored hugs off everyone, just like her mother.
Ducky Mallard, everyone's favourite ME and Gibbs' lifelong friend, had remained on his own and had quite happily adopted himself into the grandfather figure to all of the children. Even though the older ones like James, Jasmine and Anthony called him 'Uncle Ducky'. Little Rose had not yet begun to speak but she gurgled at Ducky most of the time and giggled when he pulled funny faces and told her old Scottish sayings. Unlike when her 'uncle Tony' pulled funny faces at her and she screamed in fear. This always made McGee laugh, perhaps that's why was glad that hopefully, when Rose grew up, she would avoid anyone like Tony like the plague. Which unfortunately, was a very unfunny pun, considering Tony had actually suffered with a genetically modified strand of bubonic plague when they had first started working together at NCIS.
To Gibbs these were reasons to live. His family, however dysfunctional. He had yet to meet Rose and he and Jenny had arranged to meet up with the team for lunch after Gibbs' morning run. It was at his pit-stop- an old cable car which had been turned into a diner- that he found himself face to face with a gunman and it was there, in its original state, Gibbs now had to make the decision to live and see his family or die and see his enemies and lost loved ones again like Mike Franks, his mother Anne, his first wife Shannon and their daughter Kelly.
