Author's Note: Good morning! Thursday is my day to post, so I present to you with this ficlet that I had, alas, so little time to plan and write, after Psycho Maddy went rogue with her Tuesday update. I still love you, Amanda, don't worry!

I hope you will enjoy this offering anyway, and if you haven't yet, go back and read Psycho Maddy's story. You won't regret it!


When all else fails, read the instructions.

"Jethro?"

The house was dark and eerily silent when Jenny Shepard walked in, the front door falling shut behind her. Her brown-haired, four-year-old daughter ran up ahead, towards the only source of light in the house.

"Daddy? We're hoooome!" Avery yelled, starting to run up the stairs while Jenny placed the take-out bags on the kitchen table.

"In here!" Gibbs yelled back from upstairs, and his answer was followed by a thud and a muttered curse.

Avery giggled, running into her bedroom and attacking her father with a bear hug, "Hi, daddy! Whatcha doin'?"

"Building a castle for my princess." Gibbs answered with a grin, hugging his girl tightly and kissing her forehead.

"Or trying to." Jenny murmured to herself and chuckled, stopping in the doorway.

And in fact, Gibbs didn't seem to have gotten very far, judging by the mess of tools and pieces of plastic littering the floor.

"Something is missing." He said, as though that was explanation enough.

Jenny smirked, "You think? How about instructions?"

"Don't trust them." Gibbs walked over to her, Avery still safely held in his arms, and gave Jenny a chaste kiss on the lips.

"It's my castle, mommy!" The little girl said, her voice betraying her excitement at the idea of having a castle in her room; no matter the size or material it was made of.

"It will be, yes. But now your dad needs to take a break, before dinner gets cold."

"Yeah, go wash your hands, kiddo. And after dinner you can help me in here." Gibbs put Avery back down on the ground and patted her bum, sending her off to the bathroom to wash up.

Jenny smiled, watching her daughter run away and, when Avery was out of sight, she stepped closer to Gibbs to greet him with a proper kiss.

"Too much trouble with it?" She whispered when they broke apart.

"Nope, everything's good." Was Gibbs' quick - too quick - answer, but Jenny kept from calling him out on that and just dropped the subject, smirking knowingly for a moment before she moved away from him to walk downstairs, "Go wash up too, dinner's waiting."


"I'm ready, daddy!"

When the young, high-pitched voice announced Avery's appearance, Gibbs turned towards the door and was unable to hold back a laugh at the sight of his daughter's improbable outfit: purple Daisy Duck pyjamas, lilac bunny slippers and a hot pink toy helmet on her pretty little head.

Her big green eyes sparkled with excitement and she was almost jumping up and down as she eyed her father's tools on the floor. "What can I do?"

Gibbs smiled, "Hold this up like this." He said, pointing at a piece of plastic almost twice Avery's size.

The girl set to carry out the task with a most determined look in her eyes - which suddenly looked even more like Jenny's, Gibbs thought -, and he just had to grin at her before his face scrunched up into a frown while he stared at the plastic with two bolts in his hand.

After twenty minutes, only one wall of the miniature castle had been erected, and it appeared to be leaning dangerously on one side, the pieces awkwardly stuck together.

By the time Gibbs was trying to figure out how to make the wall stand upright - and thinking that he would have rather built himself a wooden castle for his daughter - Avery had surrendered to boredom and tiredness and was lounging on the carpet, fiddling with tools and bolts and singing off-key not so quietly.

"Daddy?" She called after a while, after a seemingly forgotten piece of paper caught her attention, effectively stopping her mid-song.

Gibbs didn't look up from his work right away, moving the pieces and observing the change in the angle and side of inclination as he tried to fit another couple of segments in the already awkward structure, "What?"

"What is this?"

He finally looked up at the question, and immediately glowered at the single sheet of paper in his daughter's little hand, "Instructions, kid." He answered vaguely.

"Oh." A pause, as Avery pondered his answer, grasping the meaning of the word he'd used as she observed the drawings on the paper. "Oh!" She repeated then, looking up again once everything was finally clear to her.

"Daddy… I think it's faster if you do it like it says here." She stated solemnly, nodding her head for emphasis.

Gibbs sighed in defeat.

Sometimes, hearing his little girl state the obvious could be such a hard blow to his pride.


THE END