A/N: Now this is where it gets a little AU-ish.
I hope you guys don't mind that I got the characters mixed up a bit … believe it or not, it was accidental at first. I guess my subconsciousness just couldn't resist the temptation to have yet another person worry about my dear Gibbs.
And I have to say that Morrow probably wouldn't have been very convincing in Jenny's stead here after all…
Bethellie, Trumpet Lover, Meg and Reni-Maniac: thank you a hundred times for your reviews!! You do make me happy, you know ;)
Memories
Jenny is sitting at her desk, noting something down with an elegant silver pen, when Ducky comes into her office.
The brightest things in the room are the two computer screens on her desk and the plasma TV on the wall, otherwise the lights are unusually low.
Ducky remembers how bright this office used to be when it was still Morrow behind that desk, and how uneasy that made most people feel.
The brightness had something very official about it, something grave, as if whatever you'd been summoned to talk about could only be bad news.
Then again, Morrow was a much more authoritative and altogether intimidating person than Jenny Shepard anyway. He'd probably have managed to make you feel uneasy in this comfortable atmosphere just as well.
Jenny looks up over the rim of her reading glasses and smiles. "Hello, Ducky", she greets him. "What can I do for you?"
Ducky shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and if Jenny didn't know better, she'd have said he's nervous about something. Sure enough, he seems to be keen on avoiding her question, instead asking in turn: "I hope I'm not disturbing you, Jennifer?"
She shakes her head, taking off her glasses. "Not at all. It's Friday evening, I'm usually occupied with pretty unimportant things at that time."
Ducky chuckles and nods, folding his hands behind his back. His gaze wanders over to the screen on the wall. "Dear me", he mutters, "will they ever stop blowing themselves up?"
Jenny looks over at the images of yet another suicide attack in Baghdad that flash over the monitor, occasionally interspersed with the face of a blonde CNN reporter. After a minute or so, however, she turns her attention to Ducky.
"You didn't want an answer to that, did you?"
The ME's head snaps round to her and he smiles apologetically. "No, I didn't", he says, superfluously.
"What is it, Ducky?"
Ducky draws a deep breath and looks at her through narrowed eyes, as if he were trying to gauge her trustworthiness.
Eventually, he shrugs, or maybe his shoulders just slump, and he explains: "The team decided it's time to let go."
Might be she's a little surprised, but she doesn't show it. She knows it shouldn't be a surprise in the first place, it had to come to this at some point.
Jenny also knows that Ducky has been waiting for it, waiting and dreading it at the same time
She folds her delicate hands on top of her files and looks down at the blue folders for a few moments, as though she finds something there immensely fascinating. Then, she softly concludes: "And now you've got no excuses left."
Ducky doesn't say anything, he just nods and starts pacing the office, his feet making no sound on the carpet.
"What will you do?"
He laughs quietly, and again doesn't answer. It's another one of those questions that don't expect a reply.
They are silent for minutes, Jenny just sitting there and Ducky slowly pacing. She watches him intently, because she's not perfectly sure why he came to her tonight. She has an idea, but she's still searching for proof.
For one, she can definitely see reluctance in Ducky. Understandable. But there's also something close to restlessness, like he wishes he could get it all over with as quickly as possible.
Eventually, the Director decides that, at some point, someone will have to start doing something. The team did their part, now it's their turn.
She locks her computer, rises and walks to the small wardrobe that's integrated in the wall beside the door. She puts on her coat and drops her cell and keys in her handbag. Then she links arms with Ducky. "Let's go", she quietly says, and so they do.
Half an hour later, as they walk down the light blue corridor, a doctor, whose name Jenny just fails to remember at the moment, catches sight of them and comes to meet them.
"Dr. Mallard", he greets Ducky, then to Jenny: "Director."
Jenny just nods, she hardly hears his words. Already her eyes are travelling over to the window that looks into Gibbs' room. Blinds don't grant her much more than a glimpse, however, a lot of white and rather vague shapes.
Ducky turns to her and says: "I'll be with Dr. Morris for a moment, Jenny."
She nods again and smiles. "Of course", and watches the two men disappear into a room a little further down the hall.
While she's standing there alone, her grip on her handbag tightens, as though it was something solid and reliable that could ground her and keep her emotions in check.
She nearly has to laugh when she realizes what she's doing. How silly, she thinks. It's just a piece of absurdly expensive leather, stitched together by some poor Filipino girl and branded Prada, then filled with a multitude of meaningless things like a lipstick, a pocket mirror, handkerchiefs, money. There's nothing solid about it, really.
Jenny takes a breath and finally pushes the handle of the heavy blue door, but pauses in the doorway.
She leans her head against the metal frame, finding the coolness of it soothing against her skin.
The room is so quiet and calm, with the lights turned low for the night, nothing moves and nothing makes a sound (except for the ECG and the respirator, but she ignores them deliberately). It reminds her of something.
Her eyes sweep over the countless drawings on the walls, and she has to smile. It borders on a miracle that no one ordered the team to take them off and stop papering everything new. Then again, they aren't doing any harm, are they?
Jenny closes her eyes, and when she opens them again they are glancing at Gibbs. "Sorry it's been so long", she whispers. "You know how mad it can get when everybody's got a hot case and they start tripping over each other because they're all in a hurry." She laughs quietly, but looks to the floor at the same time. "The truth is", she continues, solemnly again, "that I just couldn't come anymore." She releases the door and finally steps in. Slowly, she walks over to the bed, scattering her things over various chairs, until she's standing there beside him without her bag, her coat, her jacket and her gloves.
"Your team are handling this admirably well, you see? I'm having more trouble. And it's all the more difficult because I thought I was tougher."
She smiles wistfully and slips her fingers beneath his, slowly and carefully enclosing his hand with both of hers. "Perhaps I shouldn't have slept with you after all? Then, maybe, this wouldn't be so hard on me?"
She's begun to draw small circles on the back of his hand with her thumb, subconsciously or maybe even out of some habit, but suddenly, growing aware, she frowns.
His hand feels strange in hers, somehow it's neither warm nor really cool, and so lifeless it almost feels insubstantial to her touch. It feels frail and weightless, as if all that was left were the skin, a surface, with a failing strength beneath.
It doesn't feel right at all.
Because Jenny knows his hands. They held hers more often than she can recall since they met ten years ago, she knows the texture of his skin by heart because she's caressed his hands, kissed his fingers, and felt them on her own skin. She knows the way they feel on every part of her body, she knows their taste. She knows the way he writes, elegant and forceful, not feeble at all, and the way he holds a gun. There've been scratches and cuts, she's watched him dismantle a bomb with his hands and sand down his boat, she knows how they hold his coffee cups and how gently they touch a child's head. She's seen him sign with Abby, fluid, graceful movements.
He could never keep his hands still. He gestures a lot. He used to trail patterns on her bare skin in Paris.
This doesn't feel right.
She sighs heavily and sits down, never letting go or looking away from him.
"I remember France", she says into the muted silence of the room, and it sounds like the beginning of a story. But then something seems to distract her thoughts, and she leaves the sentence hanging in the air like a memory that only just came back to her after years and years of not thinking about it.
"I remember Positano, when you were shot right before my eyes. It wasn't even that bad, hardly more than a flesh wound. But God, those few moments when I couldn't see a thing because of all the smoke in that hall and because of all the blood on your shirt, and I didn't know how bad it really was, they scared me to death." She pauses and smiles. "I was in love with you at the time."
Jenny laughs, the kind of laughter that's on the verge of slipping into tears, and you can never tell if it's tears of sadness, amusement, happiness, or just everything and they just fall because it's all getting too much to keep inside.
She rests her chin in one hand and closes her eyes, shaking her head. "My gosh, you were stubborn", she whispers. "You didn't want to leave it to us to finish the case because you thought it'd have blown our cover if you'd just disappeared. You cut across me every time I mentioned a hospital. We had Johnston with us, you kept saying he knew enough about medicine to bandage your arm." She shrugs lightly, as if to say No idea. "Looking back it probably was the right thing to do, with regards to the op." Her head tilted to one side, she pauses, then goes on with a faint smile. "You slept through the better part of the next two days in that hotel. I can't help thinking about that each time I come into this room. If I ignore all those … things – tubes and stuff - it's just like walking into the bedroom of that nice suite from the bath or our little headquarters in the sitting room."
Jenny studies his face thoughtfully. "You woke up the next morning and we finished the op. You were a little tired perhaps, but everything went smoothly and everything was fine." She looks at him as though she expects him to do just the same again, just wake up and be fine, now that she reminded him.
Footsteps approach outside in the corridor, and she half expects them to be Ducky's, but then whoever it is walks by, and all that comes to possibly distract her is the frozen rain that begins drizzling down, pattering softly as the wind blows it against the window.
It's not exactly helping her very much, though. It rained a lot back then, in Paris.
Jenny sighs and briefly massages her temple.
It's been a long day, and this is not the way she likes long days to end. It's not the way she wants any day to end. With a friend talking to a doctor about ending another friend's life.
She sits in silence, just watching his face, she isn't sure for how long, and finds herself thinking how his lips look chapped. Impulsively, she reaches up and brushes the tips of her fingers over his lips. The skin is dry and thus a little rough, but she has to smile.
The winter air in Marseille always gave him dry lips, she remembers countless times when she kissed him to take away the salt that the wind brought with it from the sea, so it wouldn't burn so much.
Jenny leans in and places a gentle kiss on the corner of his mouth. There's no salt now of course, but maybe it'll help a bit all the same.
Slowly, she sinks back into her chair, and falls silent for a long while. She listens to the sounds outside the room again, and begins a game of guessing what activities they belong to. Given her training and years of experience, however, that's not hard and she ends up wondering what on earth she's doing. The last time she did something of this sort – trying to identify sounds, trying to keep her eyes shut exactly one minute, and then open them again at always the next number on her bedside table clock – she still was a girl.
The things long days and sorrow can do to you.
She looks at Gibbs again and releases a deep sigh. "I didn't think something like this would ever happen", she tells him, and after a long pause goes on: "We've been through a few things together, haven't we? You taught me a lot. We worked together … we slept together. We relied on each other because we had to and we knew we could." She subconsciously bites her lip. "You lied for me. We laughed a lot and fought a couple of times." A smirk tugs at the corners of her mouth. "Pretty hot arguments that I quite enjoyed, you know? We did a few stupid things together and a few damn clever ones. I trust you. I loved you once." Jenny swallows and holds his hand a little tighter. "I don't want an end like this one, Jethro. I prefer happy endings."
She falls silent and bites back her tears when she finally hears the door open behind her and close again. Ducky walks to the other side of the bed, heavily sitting down in a chair.
He isn't looking at her, so the slight redness of her eyes has time enough to vanish again. When she's certain that there isn't a trace left, at least none that would be detectable in this vague light, she looks over at a mute, unmoving Ducky.
The Director watches him across the bed, trying to read something in his expression, but there's only weariness and frustration, things she's grown used to encountering around Gibbs' team lately.
The ME just sits there, staring at something on the floor that seems to capture his attention, but is invisible to her eyes.
For a few minutes, they both remain completely silent, Ducky obviously far away, and Jenny not quite able to muster the courage to start the inevitable conversation.
Eventually, however, she can't stand the tension any longer.
"Ducky?" It's very tentative and quiet, but it's enough to make him look at her.
He returns her gaze steadily, but with an expression that seems to ask back Hm?, like he had no idea what she could probably be waiting for.
"Well?"
Ducky sighs and runs a hand over his eyes. "I told Dr. Morris", he says tiredly, "and he showed me the results of a routine check they did just this afternoon. They were better in comparison to the ones before. He wants to wait."
It takes her a moment to realize what he said, that it's actually good news, the first good news since it all began, and for a moment she just want to laugh. But then she starts to wonder why Ducky's voice is sounding so flat, and why he looks so downcast.
For lack of anything else to say, and because she's getting the impression that her companion won't be saying much without being prompted tonight, she asks: "Isn't that something good?"
Ducky doesn't even seem to hear her. He rises from his chair and steps up to the bedside.
"I don't know if there's any good in waiting", he says quietly, and Jenny doesn't object because Ducky seems to be really talking to Gibbs. "Can I do this to you, my friend?", he asks.
Jenny can clearly see the ME debate with himself. She doesn't envy him for being the one to take the final decision. It isn't hard to see how he wants to wait, probably forever, but she knows he also wants to spare Gibbs another three months or God know how long, of going through whatever he might be going through right now. She can't blame him for letting himself be influenced by the rest of the team until today. She can't blame him, now that the decision is taken, for wanting to finally bring this to an end, either.
Jenny closes her eyes. She felt quite strong and determined back in her office, when she decided to support Ducky in this. The whole thing naturally became a completely different matter as soon as she entered this room, she could have known that before.
She isn't so strong now, and not even so unselfish. What Ducky told her about his conversation with Dr. Morris, sounded like hope to her, real hope. Medically justified. That's good enough for her.
Carefully, she rests her head on Gibbs' shoulder. "Say yes", she whispers, "say we'll wait." Ducky can't tell whom she is actually addressing.
He studies her silently for a few moments, her dark green eyes looking down at her fingers, interlaced with Gibbs'.
"Well", he says at last, "who could refuse such a beautiful woman?", and Jenny smiles. She won't blame him for letting her influence him, either.
"How long?"
Ducky shakes his head. "I don't know, Jennifer."
She sighs and nods. "Fair enough", she says tiredly. "For now."
The older man lingers there beside the bed for a few more minutes, then he returns to the chair he's been occupying earlier, and sits down.
And hour later, he is fast asleep, his hands folded on top of his belly, and Jenny's eyes are drooping. A loud sound from the corridor startles her into a more conscious state again, or maybe the sound just was loud in her sleepy ears.
She straightens up in a feeble attempt to shake off some of the heavy tiredness that's wrapped itself around her like a blanket, and casts a glimpse at Ducky.
Briefly, she contemplates waking him and suggesting to go home (that chair can't be too good for his back, can it, not at his age…) and catch some sleep before they've got to get back to Headquarters anyway, but then she suddenly thinks So what? and without any further ado slides off her pumps.
Carefully, she slips onto the bed until she's lying right next to Gibbs, still clasping his hand, and stares up at the ceiling, originally white but painted a pale, warm yellow by the dim lamps in the room. She vaguely thinks that the first night nurse that comes by, will probably kick her out for this, but to tell the truth she's tired enough to be way beyond caring.
It takes no more than a few minutes before she's fallen asleep as well.
A few hours later, a gentle hand on her shoulder wakes her.
"Good morning, Jennifer", she hears Ducky voice say, and, judging from how well rested it sounds, it must obviously be true and older people don't need as much sleep. One reason for looking forward to my next birthday.
"Morning, Ducky."
She shifts a bit and realizes that she ended up curled up beside Gibbs, one arm draped over his chest. She smiles faintly. A little too much reminiscing last night, it seems.
Jenny carefully sits up, and then stands on her bare feet on the cool linoleum floor, suppressing a yawn.
"Bloody hell", she mumbles as she tries to tug her clothes back into shape and put some order into her stubborn hair. "If my people see me like this …"
Ducky chuckles. "Oh, don't worry, Jennifer. Caitlin and Abigail have looked pretty much the way you do now innumerable times since October."
"Mhm, but I'm the Director", she mutters in return, "I'm not supposed to be spending my nights in one of my agents' beds." She instantly frowns and makes an odd, impatient gesture with one hand. "Hospital bed."
"Of course", Ducky says, smiling rather cheekily.
Just when Jenny considers herself presentable again, Dr. Morris comes into the room with a smile and a Good morning that's even brighter than Ducky's.
He stands next to Ducky and shows him a chart. "Glad we decided to wait now?"
Ducky smiles tiredly, but genuinely, and nods.
TBC
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