DISCLAIMER: I do not own NCIS.


"1973" – James Blunt

Lonely nights when he didn't want to reach for his 'Kelly and Shannon' bourbon had him thinking of her and regrets.

These thoughts had hit him before, but he guessed that three years of working together after God-knew how many years of no contact (sometimes he wondered if it wasn't time to hand over the reins to DiNozzo) left her as more of a presence in his mind. Not to forget her death, of course. The fault of which he could be attributed.

He could see the next years rolling by and he could see her sticking to his mind still. Every bitter word he wanted to take back, every prideful action he wished hadn't even entered his mind in the first place, ran, back and forth, back and forth, in his mind.

So they had Paris, and not (much) else. He liked to think that, sometimes, they had also had a look or a touch or a particularly (and purposeful and pointed) insinuating comment or a private code forged in late nights when they were alone.

It had seemed like a cycle (and a vicious one, at that). They couldn't break free but they couldn't (or maybe they didn't exactly want to) get out either. So maybe it was more of a circumference. The main point was that it was immutable. And the only thing that ever changed about it was the perspective.

Gibbs knew himself well enough to know that this was nostalgia, and that he was particularly prone to it. He thought of all of them, not just Jenny, but he couldn't do all at once, because God forbid. But today it was her. And tomorrow he didn't know. Tomorrow was still tomorrow, until it would be yesterday and it would be over, and that's how Gibbs made it all less painful.

He had enough mistakes in his past for them to be able to pop up daily.

He wished them all back (sometimes and in different doses) so that he could make them right, even if sometimes he thought that wrong was right and he just ought to keep still. Jenny, Shannon and Kelly were the only ones that he never had a doubt about – they were his doubtlessly wrong mistakes. Or rather, their fates were. Besides being his fault, of course.

Those were the things he wanted to make right, and Jenny was clearly the most glaring fault. With his daughter, one could argue that he had no way of knowing they'd witness a murder, but Jenny had knowingly walked to her own death meaning to protect him. There was no doubt there.

He missed their innuendo wars and back-and-forth comments that left him with a smile on his face, because she was funny. His hand had hovered one last time over the face of his partner he'd once (and more than once) been in love with, and he recalled that, at that moment, his thoughts had strayed to Tony and Ziva. But he'd balked, because he hadn't wanted to give himself an even bigger headache.

And he knew that she and they and everyone he'd managed to fail were going to stay with him. They were always going to be his ghosts, some more literally than others.

And he'd see them. Every time he walked into a memory.

Ghosts, dancing around in more oblivious times.