The moment Jack closed the door to Rick's house behind her, the beautiful sunny day turned dark quickly and she felt a rush of pain and anxiety flood throughout her body. The last few moments replayed in her mind and she turned her head to look at the door over her shoulder one more time, suddenly remembering how angry Rick must be now that she punched him in his own living room. The realization of what she had just done washed over her and she quickly rushed to her car, getting in the driver's seat and speeding away just as she saw Rick step outside with blood on his lip, watching her leave his neighborhood with shock in his eyes.
Jack's hands were shaking against the steering wheel and her anxiety attack had begun to take its toll on her, causing her to swerve in the middle of the road, almost hitting the oncoming car as her tears blinded her and she quickly swerved again to avoid hitting said vehicle, her own going off the road and within seconds, Jack felt her body jolting with the car as it came to a sudden halt, the tears in her eyes preventing her from seeing the tree that her car just barely missed and the ditch that she dipped into, stalling the car in the tall grass surrounding its tires.
Her grip on the steering wheel was so tight that her knuckles turned white and her fingers began to cramp up, but she refused to let go as her breathing grew irregular and her heart pounded harder than the pounding in her head. After she sat there, frozen for what seemed like an hour, though it had only been about fifty seconds, Jack finally let go and she began to sob hard. Her tears landed on her swollen knuckles gripping the steering wheel still and they stung, causing her to finally notice that punching that horrible man had caused her own fist to bleed and the numbness she felt from the moment she found his address subsided and she felt everything.
All the pain.
The pain in her hand from the punch, in her other hand from holding the steering wheel so tight, the pain in her neck from the whiplash as the car had jerked her forward in the crash, the pain in her heart as she was certain she was having a heart attack along with her present panic attack and most of all….the pain in her past.
The emotional pain. The psychological pain. Everything she had stopped herself from feeling once that night happened when she was nineteen. At first, she had told herself that she went into the military to get an education….to help the country….to help other soldiers. But deep down, she knew the truth. She had joined to get as far away from Rick as possible and to learn how to better defend herself. She had tried that night. She had. But he was still so much stronger than her small and meek self. The Army would bulk her up and teach her ways to stop men from doing that to her or anyone else around her ever again. She had also joined the military to feel more honorable after having given up her daughter for adoption. She wanted to be someone that little girl would be proud of even if she never met her.
Once she was finally allowing herself to feel everything, she let go of the steering wheel, almost having to rip her fingers away from it and she picked up her cell phone. Her eyes were still blurred from her tears, but she managed to go into her contacts to find his name. The only person she could think of right now and she pressed the call button. Her hands were still shaking as she held the phone to her ear. The sounds of the phone ringing on the other end seemed to last forever before she finally heard his voice.
"Jack?" Gibbs' voice sounded almost confused as to why she would be calling him in the middle of the day. He thought she was still up in her office at NCIS.
For some reason even she couldn't explain, Jack immediately hung up the phone without a word and she began to cry even more. She threw her phone into the passenger seat beside her before taking her face in both of her hands. She knew that to tell Gibbs what she did to Rick and the fact that she even went to see him would be a mistake and they would have another argument like they had that morning leaving her office after Gibbs had asked for Rick's name.
She debated on whether or not she should call Leon to come pick her up but changed her mind, picking up her phone again and she called Triple A instead.
About an hour later, Jack arrived back at the office, going straight to her own without even looking at the others and, much to her chagrin, Gibbs was already in her office as she stepped in, throwing some darts at her dartboard with a lollipop in his mouth.
"Gibbs." She said, trying to sound as chipper as she could.
He threw the last dart, hitting the right side of the bullseye and he turned to look at her. "Jack. Where you been?" He let his eyes quickly examine her and his gut already began to tell him things. Just like clock work. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. What's wrong with you? It's not like you to come see me unless something's really wrong." She forced out a chuckle. "Agent Gibbs coming to see the Forensic Psychologist for help? Unless on a case, it's very rare."
"Jack, I talk to you all the time about personal stuff." Gibbs pointed out, proving that he could tell she was trying way too hard to make jokes and seem fine when the small cut on her forehead told him differently. "What's going on?"
Jack's strong demeanor dissipated and she went to the chair behind her desk, plopping down into it before putting her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands, thus bringing attention to her wrapped hand.
"Did you get into a fight or something?" Gibbs chuckled a little, though when she didn't answer him, he grew concerned and said her name more forcefully this time. "Jack!"
"No, Gibbs. Alright? I didn't get into a fight. It was just an accident." She brought her hands down from her face.
"Are you okay?" He asked immediately.
"I'm fine. My car needs a whole new transmission now, but I'm just peachy." She said that last word a bit too enthusiastically. "Any news on the case?"
"No." Gibbs answered. "Do you need help with the car?"
"Help?"
"Yeah. Paying for it or fixing it? Anything?" He shrugged.
"Nope. It's allll good." She emphasized the "L," something she seemed to do a lot when she was only half telling the truth.
Gibbs had no idea what to say next nor did he want to continue standing there in an awkward silence so he picked up her little bowl of lollipops and held it out to her to take one. She looked at it in his hand for a while before shaking her head. "Not really in a lollipop kinda mood." She admitted.
"Uh oh. What does that mean?" Gibbs tried to joke, his eyes falling to her wrapped hand again. He told himself that she was definitely not telling him something and it had to do with Faith's father. He just knew it. Setting the bowl of lollipops down, he tried to bring it up again. "What happened? Did you get mad at the car and punch a window or something?"
She looked at him with a hint of annoyance in her expression and her tone as she responded. "Yes, actually. I got annoyed and punched out a window."
Her attitude threw him off a bit. He was used to her giving attitude every now and then, but he had never heard that tone coming from her. The one telling him that he was annoying her right now. "Did you see a doctor at least?"
"Don't need one. It's just a little flesh wound, Leroy." She continued to speak in that annoyed tone and Gibbs took a step back from her desk.
"You called me Leroy." A part of him kind of liked it, the other part of him did not like the tone in which she had said it.
"Can I have a minute alone, please?" Her voice was a bit softer now and almost exhausted. She really wanted to tell him everything that happened, but she really wasn't in the mood for an argument or for him to look at her the way he did this morning when she told him how Faith was conceived in the first place.
"Of course" He said as if it were no big deal and he left her office though she continued to be his main thought for the rest of the day.
In the bullpen, he had picked up his baseball bat, listening to more details the team had found out about the case, though he didn't listen thoroughly. He tightened his grip around the handle of his bat the more he thought about Faith's father and he went through every scenario in his head about what could have happened to Jack when she was gone for lunch.
"Hey, McGee." He interrupted something Ellie was saying about the case.
"Uh, yeah, Boss?" Tim said with a hint of confusion when Gibbs interrupted Ellie.
"I need you to do something for me."
"What's that?"
Gibbs went over to his senior field agent's desk, leaning over him behind his chair to look at his computer screen. "I need you to find out where Sloane's car is."
"Sloane's car?" Nick overheard from his own desk.
"What about it?" Ellie wondered.
"Just find out where it is." Gibbs said as if he were the one who was annoyed now.
"On it." McGee agreed with no arguments and he looked through Jack's information in the NCIS database, soon finding her license plate numbers and searching for their location. "This says that it was taken into Maury's Auto Shop about an hour ago."
"Thanks, McGee." Gibbs went to his desk, setting his bat down before grabbing his wallet and coat and he headed for the elevator.
"Can I help you?" The short stubby man at the desk in the auto shop asked Gibbs once he had arrived.
"Yeah. My friend's car was brought in earlier. She said that she may have dropped her cell phone outside where it happened. We can't find it anywhere. Could you please find out exactly where the car was picked up so I can go look for it on the side of the road, please?" Gibbs lied, sending the man a kind smile.
"Um…" The little guy hesitated.
"It's really important that we find her phone. It has her mom's number in it and her baby sister's….who's pregnant by the way and she is just about ready to pop. My friend is the godmother and she's supposed to be there for the birth. If she doesn't have her phone, then she won't get that call and she'll miss the birth of her first godchild. You don't want that, do you?"
"I'm sorry, sir. But it doesn't really matter to me. Why doesn't she just get a new phone?" He suggested as nicely as possible.
Gibbs sighed to himself before pulling out his wallet. "Why don't you just…" he showed the man his badge, "...tell me where your guy picked up her car and we won't have any legal trouble?"
The little man looked at the badge and gulped a little before looking at his computer as he found the driver's last stop and then he wrote down the coordinates on a little piece of paper, handing it to Gibbs,
Gibbs took the paper and left the front room, going over to the back of the building outside to get a look at Jack's car. He examined its exterior, seeing that the only damage to it from the outside was a minor dent in the front bumper and then he looked inside, seeing that the airbags had not gone off so he concluded that the crash may not have been as bad as he was imagining and he was relieved. Though a part of him still felt as though Jack's reaction was still a bit more severe than it should have been for an accident this minor.
He looked at the paper in his hand once more before going back to his car. He pulled a map out of his glove compartment to find the road that Jack had been on when she crashed and he furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Why would Jack be in that part of town?
He suddenly had a hunch and he shook his head a little before driving over there himself.
He drove around for a while, looking at the mailboxes in front of all the multi-million dollar homes until he saw a name that he recognized immediately. Martel.
Gibbs parked his car on the side of the road by the house with that mailbox and he let out a long sigh. After his conversation with Jack that morning, he had taken the liberty of finding out the devil's name himself. Gibbs has his ways. He found it quickly.
After a long minute of sitting on the side of the road, staring at Rick's house, contemplating going up to the door, Gibbs soon decided to just leave it alone...for now. He started up his car and went back to headquarters.
The moment he stepped inside, he contemplated whether or not he should tell Jack that he knew what she had been up to earlier that day, but instead, he went straight to the bullpen and continued to work on their current case.
As Ellie, Nick, and McGee told him that the school their victim had been attending was suddenly cleaned out and completely disappeared when they went there for more information, Gibbs tried a bit too hard to listen so he wouldn't picture whatever happened between Rick and Jack when she went to his house.
He knew Jack could take care of herself now, but still...the thought of her being there alone made his own mind and emotions go crazy as he felt it in his bones that it was his job to protect her no matter what. It wasn't a damsel in distress thing….it wasn't even a macho guy thing. He had gotten to know Jack the passed few years and upon getting to know her, he had learned that Jack never had anyone to look out for her. And if he wouldn't, who would?
Just as he was beginning to think about Jack again, Kasie stepped into the bullpen, snapping Gibbs out of his thoughts and he followed her down to the lab as she continued to explain to him how the school was run by con-artists who take students' money and skip town when the time is right. He got a name and headed out to interrogate the man responsible.
Later on, when he returned to NCIS from seeing that man, he was surprised to run into Jack near the elevator as if she had left the office again and just returned.
"Hey." He said to her.
"Hey." She said back.
"Sooo…"
"What?" She waited for him to say something.
Gibbs looked at her new outfit, just now realizing she had changed from her Navy blue jacket, white shirt, and khaki colored pants into an all powder blue suit. "You look nice." He pointed out as if to let her know that he knew she must be going somewhere with someone.
"Thanks. I'm having coffee with Faith later. After she-" She stopped talking and the elevator doors opened. Jack stepped on and pressed the right button for them to go upstairs.
Gibbs nodded and stepped onto the elevator with her to go up to the bullpen.
It was silent for a while before he finally spoke to her. "Wanna drop by after coffee for a bite?"
"Your house?" Jack asked to confirm what he meant.
"Sure."
"I'll think about it." She admitted, unsure of how she would feel after the meeting with Faith.
The elevator stopped on their floor and Gibbs allowed her to step off first before he got out and went to his desk while Jack headed for the stairs to go up to her office to spend the rest of the day cooped up in there till she had to go meet Faith.
The rest of the day was quiet once NCIS had caught the murderer and exposed the people responsible for the phony school. Gibbs stayed at his desk to finish up some paperwork and he nodded goodbye to Jack as she walked by the bullpen to head out for her meeting with Faith. She sent Gibbs a weak smile and continued on her way out of the building.
As she stepped onto the elevator, she felt her anxiety from that afternoon in the car beginning to build up in her body once more. Her hands shook down in front of her as she wondered how this would go. She imagined Faith standing her up or showing up just to tell her that she never wanted to see her again for keeping her "wonderful" father from her. Every possible scenario that could end in heartbreak ran through Jack's mind and she took slow deep breaths all the way down to the ground floor. Stepping off the elevator, she went to the exit and hailed a cab to take her to the coffee shop.
Later that night, Gibbs was standing by the fireplace in his living room, watching the steaks he had on the pan over it. He went back and forth between the living room and the kitchen to keep an eye on the steaks and the veggies he was making in the oven. He took a seat on his couch right as he heard a loud crash of thunder outside and the rain that fell upon his roof overhead. He smiled a bit to himself, the sounds soothing him as the flashes of lightning brightened up his house through the windows.
He wanted to text or call Jack to make sure she was okay or to see if she was on her way, but he didn't want to push her. The tone she had used with him earlier that day, the tone of annoyance and irritation, ran through his mind every now and then and he decided to leave her alone. If she wanted to see him tonight, then she would make the decision on her own and arrive when she was ready.
After a few more minutes, Gibbs stood to flip the steaks on the fire and he went back to the kitchen to see if the asparagus in the oven was soft yet and then returned to the living room to sit down and continue to listen to the sound of the rain and the thunder outside. It didn't take long before he thought of Jack once again, the storm outside reminding him of the first night that they met. During the hurricane. Hurricane Molly. He chuckled a bit to himself, realizing that that night, it was Hurricane Jack that impacted his life more than that weak hurricane outside. He remembered their first conversation and softly laughed to himself, shaking his head at the memory of Jack calling him a cowboy after having known him for only about ten minutes.
Soon he could see a car pull up in front of his house, stopping on the side of the road and he squinted his eyes to get a better look at it. He recognized it as a cab right away and saw the back door open as Jack got out and ran through the rain up to his porch. Before she even had time to knock or ring the doorbell, Gibbs was opening the door for her to quickly step inside, out of the storm. He closed the door and softly laughed.
"What? You find me caught in the rain amusing?" Jack asked him.
"No. But having deja vu this strong is." He smirked at her.
She looked a bit confused at first before she realized he was talking about the first time they met and she weakly chuckled. "Oh. Yeah. Ironic, huh?"
"Do you want some coffee to warm up?" Gibbs asked her.
"Got any bourbon instead?" She half joked. "God knows I need it right now."
Gibbs didn't even hesitate to go into the kitchen to get her a glass of his good bourbon and he brought it back to the living room for her. "Sit." He demanded while she took the glass from him.
"Dinner smells nice." Jack said before taking a big gulp of the bourbon and having a seat where Gibbs was just sitting, but he let her take his spot.
"It's almost done." He sat beside her, watching her drink more of the bourbon quite enthusiastically. "What happened?" He spoke, looking at the glass so Jack would know that he knew something was up.
She let out a long sigh, fiddling with the glass in her hands as she looked down into it and spoke. "I...told her everything." She held a hint of regret in her voice. "I didn't want to. But I did." She took another sip of her drink and then looked down at the flames of the fire. She always appreciated the fact that Gibbs wouldn't ask questions. He sat in silence, always allowing her to lead the conversation and to speak whenever she was ready. "She figured it out." She looked at Gibbs, her eyes tearing up, though Gibbs could swear a tear had already fallen but he wasn't sure as she was still wet from the rain outside, so he pretended not to notice her sadness. "I tried to hide it from her and she figured it out. Caught me right in the lie." Gibbs wanted to protest that it wasn't a lie and just a shield of protection for Faith, but again, he kept quiet and allowed her to talk. "I….went to see him." She finally admitted and looked at him to see some type of reaction but when there wasn't one, she sat up a bit straighter. "You knew."
"I did." He spoke nonchalantly.
"Why didn't you say anything? Or stop me?" She wondered.
"I found out after the fact and I didn't say anything, because I had a feeling that you'd tell when you were ready." He looked down at her free hand, the one not holding the glass, and wanted to take it. They had held hands before. But for some reason, right now….he was frozen, his eyes fixated on the wrap around her injured fist and he told himself that he couldn't take her hand as he looked up into her eyes. "Did he hurt you?" He asked very seriously, actually dreading the answer.
"No." She admitted. "But I hurt him."
Gibbs was quiet a bit longer before he spoke again. "What did Faith say?"
Jack let out a shaky breath at his question, looking down at her glass again. "She said she was sorry and that she would never see him again."
"That's good, right?"
"Yeah...Yeah, it is. But...I never wanted her to know that she came into this world from of an act of…." She let out another shaky breath, shaking her head as she tried her best to fight back the tears again.
Gibbs had no idea what to say, but he hated seeing her in so much pain before gently placing a hand on her back to rub it a little, hopefully comforting her. "Jack, what happened to the car?" He tried to get the whole story.
"I was such a mess when I left his place." She looked up at the ceiling to force the tears to stay. "I couldn't stop shaking and almost hit an oncoming car, but I swerved out of the way and landed in a ditch."
Gibbs nodded, glad to know what really happened now. "You should see a doctor. To make sure you don't have a concussion."
"I don't have a concussion, Gibbs. Just some whiplash and a little cut. And maybe a wounded pride, but that's it."
"Why did you go see him?" He finally asked the biggest question he had for her.
"To tell him that Faith was going to see him and to let him know that he was not allowed to be a part of her life after today." She shook her head, looking down at her hands that were beginning to shake again. "He didn't like that I said that….and when he tried to tell me that he would see her if he wanted to, that's when I hit him….and I-I left."
He nodded again, still rubbing her back a little. "That was very brave, Jack."
She looked at him beside her, furrowing her eyebrows a bit. "But…?" She could hear a lecture coming.
"But...What if he hurt you again? What if he presses charges for what you did?"
She looked at him for a moment, her expression unreadable for a moment before she scoffed and pulled away from him a bit so his hand slid off her back. "What I did?"
"I'm just trying to be rational here-"
Jack quickly stood up, setting the glass down on the coffee table with frustration and she looked down at him with resentment. "Why don't you try rationalizing what he did to me instead?"
"Jack, I'm not-" He sighed and stood up, walking around her to take the steak off the fire because he could smell that it was done.
"Not what?" Jack raised her voice. "Not about to lecture me about how I shouldn't have gone over there today? About how I'm not allowed to be angry with him for-"
"I'm not telling you that you can't be angry, Jack." Gibbs interrupted her, beginning to raise his own voice a bit now. He brought the pan of steaks to the kitchen and Jack followed him while he tried to explain himself. "I'm just saying that if he were to press charges on you, he would win. This power he has over you is proving that what he did to you thirty years ago is still taking its toll on you." He set the pan down on the counter.
"Of course it is!" Jack's tears finally fell. "It always will and there's nothing I can do about it." Her voice shook. Gibbs pulled the asparagus out of the oven and turned it off before sighing and turning around to look at her. "I feel like I'm losing my mind, Gibbs." She lowered her voice again, desperation in it this time.
He felt a stinging in his chest and went to her, carefully pulling her in for a hug like she had done for him when Phineas ran away. "You're right, I'm sorry….I'm sorry." He said quietly as he held her.
At first she wouldn't hug him back but the way he held her felt so good that she couldn't resist letting her arms wrap around him as her head rested on his chest and she tried to take deep breaths again. She suddenly realized that Gibbs had broken rule number six: never apologize, and she couldn't hold back anymore as she began to sob, holding him tighter.
"I just want this feeling to go away." She said through her sobs.
"What feeling?" He asked, putting a hand on the back of her head for comfort.
"The hate I have for him. The feeling that I'll never be able to forget what happened."
"It's alright, Jack….It's okay."
"No, it's not. It'll never be okay." She cried more, her fingers clinging to the fabric of the back of his sweater.
He thought for a bit, still just holding her with no clue what to say before the right thing finally came to him. "I will make it okay." She looked up at him, a bit confused about what he meant. He looked down into her eyes, suddenly feeling his nerves all over the place. "Whatever you need...I will try."
They stood there for what felt like hours, just holding each other and looking into each other's eyes before Jack finally unfroze and she kissed him, pouring her heart out into it until Gibbs pulled away, breaking the kiss.
"What are you doing?" He asked her as if that were the most outrageous thing she could have done.
"What I need is you." She admitted for the first time out loud.
"You don't need me, Jack." He protested.
"No….But I want you. And you want me too. It's time we stopped lying." She moved her hands up to gently hold his face, her fingers just softly grazing his cheekbones.
The desperation and love Gibbs saw in her eyes began to frighten him and he pulled away, his face slipping out of her hands. "We can't." He said. "I can't….Rule twelve is impor-"
Jack pulled away from him as she interrupted. "I get it. Your rules are more important than your happiness." She patted his chest as if to tell him good for you and she headed toward the living room.
Gibbs watched her go for a minute before he realized she was passing the couch and going straight for the door. "Jack…..Jack!" He called to her, following and stopping by the doorframe in the living room to watch as Jack opened the door, stepping outside in the rain again. He immediately followed behind her. "Jack, where you going?" He had to yell over the rain and the thunder.
She stopped on the sidewalk, turning to look at him as she yelled over the wind and cars driving by, splashing puddles in the road. "I'm going home!"
"You don't have a car!"
"I'll walk home!"
"Jack, don't be ridiculous! It's pouring outside. Look at this!" He looked around as the lightning struck once more. "Come on, this is getting dangerous now! Just come back inside! I'll get you a cab! Or let me drive you home!"
"I don't need you to take care of me! And clearly, you don't want to!" The pain shown through her voice as she shivered, standing there, soaked in the rain.
"Jack, did you even listen to a word I just said in there?" Gibbs tried to step closer to her and she took a step back.
"Yes! And you'd rather be alone...so I'm leaving. I'm done bothering you from now on. All you had to do was ask."
"Jack, I-" He tried to step toward her again, but she, once again, took a step away from him. Gibbs was not having that before he grabbed her hands to pull her to him. "Stop! Stop doing that!" He demanded.
"Doing what?!" She yelled, the rain pouring down her cheeks with her tears.
"Being so difficult!" He said before pulling her even closer to him and their lips and bodies crashed into each other as he initiated the kiss this time.
Jack kissed him back with a soft whimper before she broke the kiss, pushing him away. "No! You're confusing me! You have to make up your mind. It's me or your wife!"
"What?" He asked her.
"I know that's why you're scared. But Gibbs, I'm not going anywhere." She promised.
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do…..I do. I think I love you too much to let anything happen to us." She put her right hand up on his cheek.
He let out a breath as she said those words to him and his fear only grew worse, but he didn't care anymore. The love in her eyes told him that it was time to try again. Time to try with the actual love of his life. In that moment, he noticed...she was the only one to fight for them. They weren't even together yet and she was fighting hard for them. All of his exes just left when things got hard. Even Hollis Mann, whom he never thought would hurt him had disappeared when she found out about Shannon and Kelly. But not Jack. Jack fought to get him here and he knew she was a hurricane of a fighter who would stay.
He gave in. Kissing her again, this time allowing himself to feel how happy he was with her without fear of losing her.