Hiatus - 3
Jenny Shepard choked on the water that she was sipping. She had received a phone call from Ducky just moments before. He had been at the hospital, taking over the watch for her, when Jethro had suddenly woken from his coma.
He was coherent, and could speak.
But he had no idea who Ducky was.
And if he had no idea who Ducky was, he would never know her, or Tony or Ziva or McGee or Abby or Palmer or Kate or – she felt a stinging in her eyes – Kaye. There was no way that he would remember Kaye.
"So what is the full situation, Doctor?"
"His doctor seems to believe it is some sort of trauma-induced, dissociative amnesia. There are no signs in his CAT scans of any abnormalities. However, the last thing that he remembers is the explosion that placed him in a nineteen-day coma in Kuwait in 1991."
"So, what, Jethro is blocking out the past fifteen years? Is this permanent, Ducky? Because there is a lot riding on this, not just for NCIS or for the team. There is a little girl who is sitting in school right now who knows nothing about what has been going on and is counting on her father figure to come home to her. He is the only real family that she has. And frankly, I'm starting to get deeply concerned about the situation."
Ducky let his head hang to his chest. He had been very concerned, himself, for how Kaye would take all of the news, but none of them ever could have imagined that Jethro just wouldn't remember them. It was a horrible mess.
"I don't know what to tell you beyond that, Jennifer. It will be a waiting game of sorts. We will have to continue the investigation and pray that his mind can clear itself up."
Jenny swallowed a lump in her throat. "Thank you, Ducky. I will inform the team."
"Of course, Director."
With that, Jenny clicked her cell phone shut and forced herself to rein in her emotions. Jethro not remembering them may be killing her, but she had an agency to run and a team of people who looked up to Gibbs that she needed to rally together and encourage. Her own fears would have to wait. Straightening her suit jacket, she left her office and prepared herself for a difficult conversation.
NCISNCISNCIS
Jenny pulled up Gibbs' personnel file from the NCIS database. It had always been there, and she could have accessed it years before. But something had always stopped her. She didn't know why exactly, but she felt that it would be too deep an invasion of his privacy, and though they had had their difficulties, he was still someone that she respected greatly. But now Jethro was stuck in 1991. That was a big blank that she needed to fill in.
She began with the more recent history. Special Agent Caitlin Todd. Ari Haswari. Things that she knew about, but hadn't looked for in his file. She slowly went backwards in time. Tony joining the team, Stephanie, his third ex-wife. Their time undercover.
Rebecca, the second ex-wife. Gibbs quickly becoming the spectacular agent that he was today. Diane. The first ex-wife that eventually also married and divorced Tobias Fornell. She smirked. Oh, the stories she had heard.
Jethro's early days as an agent. His Probie years. Jethro joining NIS under Special Agent Michael Franks.
And that was when she stopped. Looking back on the moment, she probably held her breath. There was an NCIS case file that involved him. As she opened it, she began to read intensely, and she could almost feel the color drain from her cheeks.
There was another wife. Shannon. And – tears filled her eyes, making it difficult to read – a daughter. Kelly. Good Lord. She had been eight years old. Just – just like Kaye. Her stomach clenched. She thought about how much she loved Kaye, and the little girl wasn't even her own daughter. She thought about how terrified she would be if the girl was hurt, let alone…
It took her awhile to get her head around the news. Jethro Gibbs had had a wife and daughter who were senselessly murdered. A little girl the exact same age as Kaye. No wonder he had been so eager…
No wonder he was such a natural with her.
Tears that she hadn't even noticed hit the desk in front of her. Suddenly she had such a deeper understanding of the man that she had loved. He wasn't just a cold bastard. He didn't just push people away because he hated them.
He had lost everything once, and was terrified of it happening again.
Oh, Jethro.
After allowing herself a few minutes to attempt to process the information, she forced herself to continue reading. She needed to speak with Ducky.
NCISNCISNCIS
Kaye was staring out the window during her science class when Ms. Carpenter walked in and asked for her to gather her things and follow her to the office. Kaye's stomach dropped as she hurriedly stuffed her binder and pencil case into her backpack, not even bothering to zip it up as she bolted to the door.
She was certain that she was being sent to school in the midst of whatever to keep her out of it all. Class had only resumed after lunch fifteen minutes ago. So if someone was coming to pick her up this early, there had been a change.
Ms. Carpenter guided Kaye by the shoulder gently down the hallway.
"What's this all about, Ms. Carpenter?" Kaye asked quietly.
The secretary looked down at the young girl. She knew little of the situation, but had been informed that Kaye's guardian, Agent Gibbs, had been injured a day and a half ago and that Kaye knew nothing of it. She had been expressly asked by Jennifer Shepard, one of Kaye's emergency contacts and the Director of NCIS, not to speak with Kaye about his condition.
"I'm not really sure about all of it, Kaye. But there is a Donald Mallard here to pick you up early. Or, as he asked me to call him, Ducky?"
Kaye smiled slightly. All adults reacted that way when Ducky asked to be called Ducky. To her, he had never been anything else. The day they met, he was Ducky, as he was every day since.
The two walked in silence until they arrived at the main office, where she broke out in a run and rushed over to a familiar face. Ducky was waiting, arms open, to catch the girl in a hug. After all, he could use one probably as much as she.
"Well, young lady, are you ready to leave for the day?"
Kaye studied the older man's face. Ducky had quickly become a grandfather figure to her when she became part of the NCIS family. She adored him. Unlike others, she could never get enough of his long, drawn out stories, and found his voice soothing in any situation.
Jenny knew all of that, which was why she had sent Ducky on this particular mission.
"Are you going to finally tell me what's been going on that everyone's been hiding from me?"
Ducky smiled fondly at the girl. She was intelligent. Not that Abby's outburst, or Tony's subpar avoidance techniques, or Tobias's refusal to speak more than absolutely necessary had been helpful in hiding the escalating situation.
"Yes, I believe that it is time for one of us to tell you what has happened, my dear girl."
At that, Kaye felt her stomach knot, her chest clench, her throat tighten, her face flush, and her eyes sting. It was finally time for her to know what everyone had been hiding from her, and now she wasn't even sure that she wanted to know.
Ducky could sense her fears and gently placed his arm around her shoulders. "Come, my dear. We have much to talk about."
Kaye allowed him to guide her to the car.
NCISNCISNCIS
The drive had been silent, but not uncomfortable. Ducky quietly piloted them to a little ice cream parlor near the river. They got out of the car without a word and sat in their favorite booth by the window. It was a regular place for the two of them. Any time that Ducky was watching Kaye, he would bring her either here, or during the colder months, to a café a few blocks away that had the best white chocolate hot chocolate in the area.
Ducky told her to order anything she wanted, as per usual, and they waited quietly for their orders to arrive.
The waitress placed their usual orders in front of them. Ducky took a small bite of his hot fudge sundae with peanuts, while Kaye ate an unusually little spoonful of her kids' sized banana split. Typically, she would dig right in. But she knew that she was about to receive some sort of bad news, so she wanted to pace herself.
"The first thing that I have been asked to tell you, from the whole team, is that they held back on telling you anything because they love you very much and wanted to have a better handle on the situation before they brought you into it."
Kaye stared at him, not speaking.
"On the last night that you saw Gibbs, you knew that he was going on a mission for NCIS, right?"
Kaye just nodded.
"Something went terribly wrong during the mission. Anthony and the rest of the team are working tirelessly to try and figure out just what it was, why it happened, and who was behind it."
Kaye was sure she wouldn't like the next part, so she turned her head to stare out at the trees blowing gently in the wind. Ducky continued.
"There was an explosion on the ship that Jethro was on. He was injured."
Kaye felt her breathing become erratic and her eyes welled up with tears. Normally, in a situation like this, her mind would run 1000 miles per minute, trying to think of every possible story of what could have happened, with every possible outcome. But for once, her intelligent little brain was quiet. She couldn't think at all. She just waited for Ducky's next words.
"Jethro fell into a coma after he was injured. Physically, he is going to be just fine. He was unconscious until earlier today."
A tear rolled down her cheek. Two outcomes. Gibbs is dead. Or Gibbs is fine.
"There has been a bit of a complication."
A silent sob wracked her body, and Ducky eased himself out of his own side of the table and came to join her on hers. She hadn't wanted to look at him for fear of him seeing her tears, but as soon as she felt his weight on the bench next to her, she turned into him and buried her face in his side.
"Jethro is awake, Kaye. But there is a problem. He has amnesia of sorts. Do you know what amnesia is?"
Kaye tilted her head back long enough to reply. "It's when you forget things. It usually happens if you hit your head or you go through something really bad."
Ducky was amazed, as per usual, at her intellect.
"Yes, exactly. Right now, Gibbs is having trouble remembering a large span of time in his life. The doctor has high hopes that it will work itself out and that he will remember in time."
Kaye whispered. "He doesn't remember me."
"I am afraid not, my dear. He doesn't remember any of us."
Kaye hesitated a moment. How far back did his memory loss go? Did he remember working at NCIS? Did he remember being a Marine? And that was when the big one hit her. Did it have to do with Shannon and Kelly? She quickly tried to figure out how to word her question in such a way that it wouldn't give anything away to Ducky that he didn't already know.
Ducky immediately noticed the change in Kaye's face. Though she still looked distraught, she was also clearly thinking hard about something. "Ducky, how far back has he forgotten?"
"Well, it appears that when he awoke, he believed that it was sometime in 1991."
Kaye quickly did the math in her head. Kelly died when she was "about her age". Kelly was born in 1984. She knew that much from the birth certificate that she had come across in one of the photo albums that Gibbs had let her see after he told her about them. It would make sense.
"Ducky…um, was there anything important that happened that year? Like, something really really sad?"
Ducky schooled his features. He didn't want to give anything away to the girl that Jethro hadn't already told her. But as he searched her face, he began to think that maybe she did know more than she was letting on.
"Jenny did come across something rather tragic. Do you know what it is?"
Kaye just nodded. "Do you?"
Ducky smiled gently, before motioning for Kaye to continue.
"Shannon and Kelly."
"So he told you."
"Yeah. There was this night, right before Christmas. I was really sad and missing my mom. I asked him if he missed anyone at Christmastime. And then he told me about them. He said Abby was the only other one who knew and she found out by accident a long time ago."
Ducky closed his eyes, taking in the information. Of course. If anyone would know, it would be Abigail. She and Jethro had a relationship that nobody could ever quite understand. She had become quite like a daughter to Gibbs in such a short amount of time after they met. And now he understood why Jethro was so protective of Abby and the close familial friendship that they had. She was the closest thing that he had had to a daughter since Kelly had been killed. And of course, this was why the two of them had instantly become so close with Kaye.
Kaye thought for a moment and felt a whole new ache fill her chest. "If the last thing he remembers is 1991, then one of the last thing he remembers is them dying. It's all fresh for him. He must be so sad and so scared, Ducky!"
Ducky just looked at the girl. "I imagine so, yes."
"M-maybe if I just went there…maybe he would remember me and I could cheer him up. Maybe if I told him who I was he would feel better and he would start to remember and he would want to come home and take care of me again!"
Ducky closed his eyes for a moment. The poor girl. He knew she was smart enough to understand that it wasn't that simple, and yet she still had that childlike innocence that made her want to believe in the impossible.
When he opened them, he went to speak, but was cut off.
"I know that probably wouldn't work." Kaye spoke softly. "I just-I want him to feel better. Gibbs is never really scared of anything. It's not fair that this happened to…" her voice cracked, "to him. It's just not fair!"
Suddenly her tears had made a reappearance. Ducky wrapped her back in a hug and let her cry it out. After a few minutes had passed with concerned looks from the regular waiters that they always saw, Kaye pulled back with a look of terror on her face.
"What if he doesn't remember ever? What will happen to me? If he doesn't remember the team, will he even want to work at NCIS? He won't remember Mom! He won't remember that they were friends and that he wanted me." She broke into heart-wrenching sobs. "He won't remember skating after Christmas! Or taking me horseback riding in March! He won't remember our bedtime routines or how much I love daisies! He won't know that I need Bertha to sleep or that when Abby sleeps over, she has to be in my bed! He-he won't remember that he loves me!"
At that she began sobbing too hard to continue speaking. The manager, who had known Ducky for years, came over to see if she could do anything. Ducky just shook his head sadly and the woman whispered to him to take whatever time they needed.
"I – I love him, Ducky. He's the only dad I've ever had…" She whispered it so quietly he almost wasn't sure that he heard it at first.
Dear Kaye. Poor sweet girl. I had no idea you two had grown so close.
Ducky clutched the girl to him until her sobs subsided into hiccups and deep breaths. He was supposed to take her to Gibbs' house to pack things that she may need for the next few days and then watch her there until Jenny could decide what to do with her, but decided instead that the poor thing needed to see the other most important people in her life. She may not be able to have the Gibbs that she knew and loved, but she could have the rest of the team. So after a quick stop at Gibbs' place, where the girl slept in the locked car while Ducky ran in to grab Bertha, some art supplies and her typewriter and journal, a few favorite toys, her scrapbook, toiletries, and enough clothes for about a week, they headed to their home away from home.
A/N: So Kaye knows. Everyone is upset and nervous. Thank you for the reviews. I hope you continue to enjoy it.