He's always hated hospitals.
The fluorescent lights and smell of antiseptic gave him a headache. Save for the birth of Kelly, he's never been to a hospital for anything resembling good, and this was no exception.
They had told him the cut on Iris's forehead was superficial, not even deep enough to warrant any stitches and that the bruising around her wrists for her restraints would fade within a few days. The only real concern was infection of her cut from the less than clean conditions of her make shift holding cell, but the doctor assured him the chances of an infection spreading that rapidly were low since she was treated so quickly.
Ivy, ever the difficult of the two, was worse for wear. She suffered a severe ankle sprain that would more likely than not require physical therapy to correct it back to full strength when it was healed, but he supposed she was just lucky it hadn't been broken. Everything else had ranged from superficial bruises to a few mildly concerning cuts from the broken window they had been taken out of.
All things considered, Gibbs just felt infinitely lucky they were alive.
Jenny, who was now managing to talk to the local police and government officials they had brought in from the WPP, was virtually untouched. The only thing she was suffering from was shock, and he wasn't sure it had worn off yet despite the fact that she was in a right state of mind to talk to the authorities.
He was sitting in the room the doctors had moved Ivy and Iris too, citing that they had wanted to keep them for at least 24 hours to monitor their vitals on the off chance something had hit them hard enough to cause internal bleeding, though Gibbs had been assured the chances of that were slim to none.
They had both been asleep for the better part of an hour, and he had just began to doze off himself when the rustling of blankets roused him from his half asleep state.
He watches intently as Ivy's eye flutter open, blinking a few times to adjust to the bright lights of the room before trying to sit up.
"Hey," he said, getting up from where his seat was on the opposite side of the room and making his way towards her, "don't try and get up, you gotta take it easy for a few days. Ripping a wire out is a good way to stay here longer."
She slumped back against the pillow with a defeated groan, turning her head to the side and sighing into the pillow.
"What a day, huh?"
Despite himself, he lets out a breathy chuckle.
"Yeah kid, what a day."
Her eyes close once again, and the extended moment of silence leads him to believe she's about to drift off into a medicine induced sleep again, but she lets out a long sigh and opens her eyes once again, "Wheres my Mother?"
The word 'Mother' sounded so foreign coming from her lips, or maybe it was foreign to his ears. It makes his head spin either way.
"Talking to the police," he tells her, "she's okay. Shaken up from what happened to the two of you, but okay."
"And you? Are you okay?"
"Ain't laid up in a hospital bed, am I?"
She shakes her head, a delicate smirk playing at her lips, "Don't be daft," she says, "Either she told you, or you were smart enough to figure it out on your own. You know who we are to her and to you. You're allowed to not be
okay with it all."
"Oh."
It's a far cry from an answer that he's sure she was hoping for, but it's all he can muster at the moment.
"I know you're mad at her," she says in wake of his silence, "and, christ, I get it. You have every right to be. But I want you to understand Gibbs, and I don't actually know if it'll make a difference, but that wasn't a decision she carried lightly. I saw that weight on her shoulders for as long as I can remember. I'm not saying you have to forgive her for it, god knows it'll take time if you do, I'm just saying I hope you know why she did it. It wasn't because she didn't love you, or that she didn't want to have your kids, or that she didn't trust you. She thought she was doing what was best for us. I'm not saying it was the right choice, but we had a good life, all things considered."
He takes his time to absorb her words, a momentary silence beginning to settle amongst them while he considers his next words.
"I don't know if I'll truly ever understand why she made the choices she made," he finally says, "but I'm willing to try."
"She loves you," she says matter of factly, "very much so. You're the love of her life."
He takes a deep breath and leans back against his chair, "When my first wife and daughter died," he says, "I thought that was it. That they were it. I didn't even want to consider looking for someone else after them. But then your mother was put on my team and I was done for."
The soft grin she had been wearing blossoms into an all out smile at his words, "Go find her. Talk to her. You have so many things to sort out with each other. I'll be okay here."
He hesitates for just a moment, thinking maybe it would be best if he stayed by their bedside until someone else could come sit with him, but the look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. That he needed to go and find Jen.
He's up and making his way towards the door without another word, but freezes just as he goes to leave when he hears his name.
"Hey Gibbs?"
He glances over his shoulder, hand resting on the door handle, "Yeah, kid?"
"Thanks for saving my life."
It takes him a bit to track her down. The hospital seemed to be a never ending maze of waiting rooms and hallways that makes him dizzy as he tries to navigate his way, but he manages to stumbled Tony and Ziva eventually, who tell him Jenny had finished talking to the police on a few minutes before he arrived. He considers the possibility that she was headed towards the girls room, but he's positive they would have crossed paths if that was her end destination.
He's headed out the main doors of the building with the intention to call her when he spots her.
She's sitting alone on one of the metal benches along the main walkway to the front doors, one hand raised to her mouth while she absentmindedly chews on her nails. It's a long-standing habit of hers when she's worried.
When he first makes his way over to her, she either doesn't realize he's there or is choosing to not acknowledge his presence, and only turns to look at him when he sits on the opposite side of the bench.
He extends his fresh cup of coffee out to her, and watches as she reaches to grab it, only to freeze mid way. There's a look in her eye he doesn't recognize, and it scares him. Still, she finally reaches all the way and accepts the cup from him before taking a long sip.
"This is horrible." She notes.
"Yup." He agrees. It had tasted water with a hint of coffee, and the aftertaste it left in his mouth was unpleasant, but caffeine was caffeine at the moment.
They settle into a comfortable silence, watching as a rainbow of cars make their way in and out of the parking lot. He wonders just how many of them are leaving with the loss of a loved one, or a new soul born into the world.
Hospitals, he decides, are a cesspool of life and death.
The sky darkens with every passing minute, an army of grey clouds rolling in to hide the California sunshine away. It brought with it a looming threat of rain, though she made no move to go inside, and he made no move to leave her alone.
"Now what?"
Perhaps the simplicity of the question should have caught him off guard, or maybe it's open ended nature. After all, there were a million things she could have been referring too, but he knew what the implication to her words was. If there was one thing that still made sense in his mess of a world, it was his uncanny ability to read Jenny Shepherd.
"Talked to Leon," he tells her, "He's gonna make headway on the investigation, told me not to worry about the semantics at the moment. He's coordinating an investigation with the WPP, and you know I don't work well with others."
She smirks, somewhat sadly he notes, at the last part of his sentence. Of course she knows, she had been the one to make him play nice.
"I suppose when this is all over they'll relocate me again."
There is was, the proverbial elephant in the room that they had been avoiding addressing for so long now.
"They can't make you stay, you know."
"What?"
"They can't make you stay," he repeats, "there's no threat anymore. The people from that part of our lives are erased, and they can't make you stay. You're not mandated to be in the program for your safety anymore. More people leave witness protection than people stay. They like to go back to who they were."
He waits for her to reply, but she looks to stunned to respond at the moment, and so he continues.
"They'll make that happen. You can stay in hiding, if it's what you think is best, but you don't have to be running from a threat anymore. You can go home to DC, or wherever you want. Leon said it wont be easy, something about the technicalities of bringing you back to the world, but it can be done. But it's your choice, Jen."
"I can come back?" She says, eyes widening in disbelief, as if she thinks he would joke about something so serious. He understood the sentiment all to well. If Vance hadn't been the one to tell him he would have thought it was all a sick lie.
"Ball is in your court Jen," he continues, "People have been telling you who you were going to be and where you were going to go long enough. You call the shots now."
She knocks the cup of coffee straight over from its place on the bench and onto the pavement below her, it's contents pouring out onto the asphalt, but she doesn't seem to mind one bit. Neither does he. She's more than preoccupied with pulling him towards her with - admittedly - more strength than strictly necessary and pressing her lips to his.
They're both a little breathless when she pulls away, but he decides it was beyond worth it when he sees her smile, and he realizes it may be the first time he's seen her without a worry since she had came back from the dead.
"Yes," she says, "Home. I want to come home. For good. For real."