A/N - So, things you need to know - well, the music is Sarah McLachlan - Dirty Little Secret. I am not sure the flashbacks exactly qualify - but hopefully you'll forgive me. Also, well - I always wondered what Jen did after Bury Your Dead.

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Ashes

She'd forgotten how the snow changed the quality of silence – gave it depth and timbre. Or perhaps it had been easier not to remember; there were a lot of things in her life like that. She pulled her coat tighter around her – glad of its warmth; since despite the glare of the sun on the frozen snow it was cold. She reached for the hot chocolate she'd brought out to the deck with her, wrapping her hands round the mug, soaking up the warmth. Knowing it was more than likely that she'd brought the chill with her.

She hadn't been here in years – wasn't sure she'd ever intended to return, though she'd been no more able to sell the cabin in the woods than she had the house in DC; and the memories in the house were far worse. But the last time she'd been here she'd been weak, her body suffering from the injuries her journey back from Cairo had exacerbated, her mind not yet ready to deal with the ramifications of a mission gone very wrong. She'd come here to come to terms with that narrow escape and her body had healed – though perhaps more slowly than she'd liked.

She almost smiled when she remembered how she had assured the Doctors in Cairo that she was going home to be taken care of by her family, how readily they had believed that she had a family to go home to. Ziva had known differently of course, but at the time she'd had problems of her own to deal with and had let her leave, trusting that she knew what she was doing.

Now, over four years later when she'd needed a place to retreat to – even for a couple of days, she'd returned.

She wasn't going anywhere near the slopes, her detail had protested enough at the news that she intended to spend her 2 day vacation in a cabin in New Hampshire where there was no space for them to stay. They'd found a way around it – of course, because that was their job. She was sure they were less than delighted to find themselves parked at the bottom of the path to the cabin and sleeping in an inn in the village. But on the list of the people she'd pissed off lately her security detail came well below the CIA, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his team.

She wasn't ready to think about Jethro – though she knew she would have to; she'd come here to face her demons and he loomed large amongst them. But not yet, the sun hadn't set on the day yet – and she needed there to be shadows and darkness to face what haunted her.

But the day slipped away, as days have a tendency to do and before she was ready the darkness and the cold drove her indoors. She poured herself a glass of wine and paused, knowing she was delaying the inevitable.

The fire crackled in the grate, casing flickering shadows across the room. The shadows that she'd sought, that she understood. The darkness wrapped around her like a blanket, comforting at times, stifling on occasion. But she knew she couldn't escape from it; it had become part of her long ago.

She fiddled with her ipod – looking for some music that fitted her mood and then succeeding just a little to well as Sarah McLachlan slipped through the cracks in the silence – whispering across the room.

She let the words wash over her, hating herself for being affected by the sadness of the lyrics – knowing she should find something angry and loud to play instead – but not able to turn it off.

Their telling secrets that should never be revealed

There's nothing to be gained from this

But disaster…

Well, that was appropriate – her latest adventure had almost ended in disaster. She made herself think back to the moment in MTAC when she'd watched Tony's car explode and told herself, 'no more'. She'd come here to end this and that was exactly what she was going to do.

The file was waiting for her – she'd been carrying around for a while, not able to let it out of her sight. She curled into the corner of the couch – willing herself to go through with this.

I've been up all night drinking

To drown my sorrow down

Nothing seems to help me since you went away

I'm so tired of this town.

It was easy at first; feeding papers into the fire – letting the flames devour them. She knew that there would be an electronic trace, that she was by no means covering her tracks – that wasn't exactly the point. What she was doing her was more symbolic – a letting go of the past.

Every page was evidence of her obsession, parts of a jigsaw she had put together in her pursuit of a man that had brought her to the edge of disaster. He'd almost destroyed her – still she didn't understand why Gibbs had stopped her from killing him. She knew he'd been angry with her for involving DiNozzo in her undercover operation. He could have just left well alone – let her do whatever she had to, she would have faced the consequences of her actions.

Her fingers strayed over the faces of her parents, smiling broadly for the camera as though they didn't have a worry in the world. Perhaps they didn't – then. One last touch and then she dropped the picture into the flames; letting it burn with the rest.

She could see him in her study – pointing out her tell, a glass of bourbon in his hand and her father's scotch on the desk behind them. And then later, after the explosion – the pain of his expression when they'd thought Tony was dead. Her doing.

The team would get DiNozzo through, she knew she'd have to find her own way – she was good at that.

She looked down at a photograph of her father, taken the year before he died. People said she looked like her mother, they'd whispered it after her mother's death – as though the knowledge would be too painful for her to bear, or perhaps they had worried that drawing attention to the resemblance would upset him too much. But as she'd grown older she'd realised that it meant very little which parent she looked like – because it was clear that she was her father's daughter. Still, the photograph slipped through her fingers – into the fire.

If she burnt them they couldn't hurt her.

The last items were the hardest. She poured herself another glass of wine, glad that she wasn't drinking bourbon – she'd drunk too much bourbon lately.

Two pictures remained; one taken in Paris, the other she'd stolen - a lifetime ago. Both were of the same man. In the first Leroy Jethro Gibbs squinted for the camera – Pont Neuf and the Seine visible over his shoulder. She wished she could say that she'd carried the photograph half way around the world with her, or kept it with her throughout all of the missions she'd undertaken without him. But the truth was less poetic – she'd taken it with her when she'd left him in Paris but she'd sent it back to DC, along with her other possessions because she hadn't been able to stand having it with her, hadn't been able to forget what it reminded her of.

It didn't matter now. She cast it to the flames along with other memories – because whatever she wanted, whatever she'd believed at the time, he hadn't loved her. He hadn't ever loved her.

Over a year ago now he'd woken from a coma and called her another woman's name – that terrible secret tearing down everything she thought she knew about him. She wasn't surprised that he'd married Stephanie so soon after her departure all those years before, she understood now. She didn't want to think that he might have told his ex wives about Shannon and Kelly – but she knew he had, knew that she never even been as important to him as the women he had married – after Shannon.

Tears glistened in her eyes – the way they had all those months ago when she'd realised just little she'd mattered to him and she looked down at the last photograph. Jethro, in uniform, years before he'd known her, when he'd been married to Shannon – although she

hadn't known that when she'd stolen the photograph from him.

She let her eyes slide shut – letting the kaleidoscope of images play before her eyes – a stifling hot attic where they'd made love for hours during the day and then watched the freighter all night. A farmhouse in Serbia where she'd slept in his arms – letting him make her feel safe. Countless squad rooms and more than a few hospitals until finally there had been a hotel room in Paris, where their desperation for each other had consumed them.

She had to let this go – let it all go. She could be his boss, his former partner – perhaps one day she could even be his friend; but not with this between them. She could make it go away, she was good at that, let the image slip into the flames and turn to ashes before her very eyes; as she should have done years ago. But she was tenacious, her worst enemy could attest to that - if he was still alive. Some things, some things she held onto – even when she shouldn't.

Her fingers tightened on the image – for a moment she thought about keeping it as a reminder, or a warning. But she saw his eyes following Colonel Mann across a room, remembered his soft smile as he looked at the woman in his life now and knew she didn't need a photograph to remind her of what had never been hers.

The End