Disclaimer: So, none of it is mine. If it was, I'd have either made Sasha stay, or I'd have given Kate a good send off... and the opening paragraph is almost entirely from the actual show.
Author's Notes: Idea's been around for... at least six months... ever since I saw The Good Wives Club. However, I've had to take a bit of poetic license with this. We know that Gibbs has been NCIS for 19 years. I've had to fiddle with Kate and Gibbs' ages slightly (okay, so more than slightly) to get this to work as a Kibbs fic as opposed to a simply Kate-centred one, cause it kept heading that way.
"Classic Stockholm Syndrome. She formed an emotional attachment with her captor. It will take her time but she'll recover." Kate paused. "I know I did."
Three heads whipped in her direction. Two of the faces were shocked, unbelieving. The third was more amazed than shocked. Gibbs wasn't sure that the subject would ever come up again.
Tony managed to recover himself before McGee. "I thought the shrink cleared you." A stunned face greeted his remark. "After both of the incidents with Ari."
Kate had to resist the urge to laugh. He was so clueless sometimes. Like a small puppy that you just wanted to pick up and… well, that wasn't ever going to happen. Maybe in his wildest dreams, but only her nightmares.
Gibbs was also amused. He had thought that with all the snooping Tony did that he'd have found out before now what had occurred. He was smug about the fact he knew something the younger agent did.
Not because she'd confided in him though.
The subject hadn't come up in recent years… In the last 19, come to think of it…
It'd been one of his first cases when he first joined NIS. She'd been in her teens and in a new town. Her father had been transferred and she'd begun at the local, higher-end-of-town Catholic school, with its knee-high socks and its short skirts. On her way home one day, the smart, sassy and cheeky girl had disappeared, leaving no trace.
Her parents, or more specifically, the housekeeper who originally had been her nanny, didn't notice until she was about three hours late. The general alarm had raised the concerns of her three brothers, each very concerned because (despite their outwardly macho-attitude) they loved her dearly, and would soundly kick whomever's butt it was that had hurt their baby sister.
The NIS team (as it was when he joined) worked through the night. Luckily for Kate, the kidnapper was as sharp as a marble. His trail hadn't been hard to follow and they'd discovered her the next morning.
The girl who had emerged from the dingy basement was changed. For months, she was withdrawn, irritable and angry at the world. The psychologist that her parents first sent her to was… well, to say rubbish would be giving him a compliment.
Gibbs never did learn how she got herself out of that fink. She occasionally visited him in the first year after her abduction. The last time she came, he'd sensed a change in her, and had been happy that she might finally be all right after the "incident" as her parents always quietly referred to it on the brief occasions it came up.
By the time he'd seen her again in Air Force One, he'd almost not recognised her, and only years of training herself to hide emotions had enabled her to hide whatever her views had been at the time.
When he'd offered her the job, she wasn't sure whether it was on her own merits or whether it had something to do with the incident and it's aftermath. She hadn't wanted to ask, he hadn't told, and it stayed at that.
Back in the present, Tony still sat there, gapping and McGee wasn't doing much better.
"I'm sorry, why is that funny?"
This, strangely enough, caused Kate to laugh.
The sound was music to Gibbs' ears. He hadn't been sure that this was the best case to put Kate on, but Ducky had used his normal Jethro insight, and reassured the man that "Caitlin is a big girl" and could handle herself well. He did, however, suggest that the two of them keep a close eye on the woman, moving her to Abby's lab if need be.
Kate herself never thought that she'd be in the position of being the seeker, not the hidden. In her new line of work, she should have considered it she supposed, but fact that there were two kidnappings in such close succession had hit home harder. First, there was Sandy (the young girl reminded Kate so much of herself when she was younger- except for the whole blind thing), and then to have the next case end with a kidnapped, brainwashed victim was disconcerting.
Ducky, with that knack he possessed, turned up at that moment. "I think it's about time you tell them Caitlin."
She was initially surprised that he knew, but on second thought, decided it shouldn't have done so. The two men were close, and Ducky was more insightful than most people gave him credit for.
"I was kidnapped when I was younger." She ran a hand through her hair as the two younger men gasped. "I was new to town, and walking home from school…" she outlined, briefly explaining the dingy room she was kept in, the mental battering she went through and her eventual rescue. "That's when I first met Gibbs."
"Why didn't anyone tell me this?" Tim hadn't noticed the shocked look on Tony's face, and so assumed that this was another thing they hadn't told him. He hoped that one day soon they'd get over his initiation and start treating him like an equal.
"It's okay Probie, she didn't tell me either."
"It was just…" she struggled for the right word. "Difficult. Hard. Upsetting. And above all, still a tender subject."
"Shouldn't we have known?" Tony was upset more than even he reasoned he should have been. "I mean, it could have caused you to freeze in the field."
Kate sat down dejectedly. "I thought about it. Anytime that it might have come up, you'd do something stupid or say something immature and I reasoned that McGee had probably hacked my files and found out. Plus, Gibbs knew, and I figured that meant Ducky did." They looked at her, stunned. "Well, it's true, isn't it?"
An hour later, Kate was walking towards her car when the phone on her belt went off.
"Caitlin Todd."
"Well done today Katie." There was un-Gibbs-like uneasiness in the voice. "You know you got the job on your own merit, don't you?" He said, answering her earlier, unspoken question.
She opened the driver's door before answering. "So, it had nothing to do with my childhood crush?"
There was a pause as Gibbs managed to stop his coughing.
"You can't tell me you didn't know."
"Yes, I knew." He leaned back in his chair. "I never did find out, how'd you eventually put it behind you? I mean, one week you were still jumpy and scared, the next you weren't."
She should have known this'd come up. "One of my friends was in an accident… she ended up in hospital, and we thought we'd lost her." She blinked, the memory still bringing tears. "I realised that it was okay for me to be weak sometimes, but I had to be strong for her. That's about the same time I started going to church again."
There was a long silence on Gibbs' end. "What happened?"
"She ended up with a limp, three kids, husband and a law degree… she was touch and go for a long time though."
"You're jealous?"
"Surprisingly, no. She worked hard to overcome her demons. I don't think she has every been totally comfortable with cars since, but she's okay."
"I'm glad."
Sometimes the profiler within Kate just didn't let up. "Are you? Or are you just glad for my sake?"
He grumbled. "Should have known better than to recommend to you that you do psychology."
"And to hire a profiler..."
"That too."
She had one more thing to say before hanging up and it was now or never. "You know, I never entirely got over you."
0When she pulled into her garage, she received a text message. It only had consisted of eight characters, but they meant all they were worth.
"I'm Glad"
Maybe there was hope for them after all.
Thanks for the previous reviews, especially:
Allhart- wonderful, wonderful double review on When.
Emerson- It's that he thinks there is something going on between them... and he doesn't think she's cheating... well not exactly, there wasn't anything going on between them til the end.
Little Lunar Wolf- Well, you were meant to wander that way...
Navy Babe- I thought that ending was approprriate... and as to tates- THEY WILL NEVER WIN! NEVER! (we have Beka, Shannon and lots of other people who I can't think of atm)
jtbwriter- I was sick of angst too... it's all sucky and not happy... and I usually wanna read happy fics.