a/n:

Damselfly: Chapter VI

Gibbs sent everyone home. There was nothing else that could be done. It was late, everyone was stressed, he was stressed. And it wasn't long before he went home as well, but not to bed like he should have, and instead found himself down in his basement at 0200. That was nothing new, but for the fact that he wasn't working on his boat, and instead going through old boxes.

After Shannon and Kelly died, Gibbs had packed everything up. He didn't keep but a few boxes down under his basement stairs, and the rest went to storage. He hadn't touched them in 15 years- until now. The sudden re-entry of his son was bringing up past memories.

He opened the top flap on the box, it covered in a thick layer of dust. Anyone who wasn't Gibbs would have thought that the contents in this box are just junk, but to him, even though he had not interacted with these objects personally, he had a deep connection with those who did.

First was a tin lunch box, pink and with flowers, inside was a doll; this had been his precious little girl's. But that wasn't the only thing; at the bottom, he found the tape. It only took a second before he dumped the box to the floor and was out of the stool, thrashing through the drawers in his desk for a tape player. He slipped the tape in and pressed play.

At first, there was the light fuzz and Gibbs thought that it was at the end of the tape, but then there was a few pops and a voice came through the attached speaker; it was a voice he could recognize since he was eighteen- Shannon. He let her voice wash over him like a warm wave. His shoulders were relaxing as Kelly's giggling voice was afraid to jump in over her mother. It didn't matter what they were saying, just to hear the sound of their voices again, even if pre-recorded, was nearly enough- running over him like the padded-feet of a rabbit. To just hear his girls again, talking and giggling. He found his eyes closing, he stayed that way even after his two favourite voices faded and he got the fuzz as the tape continued to roll.

His eyes snapped open soon after, though, when there was a few more pops and another voice came over the speaker. This one was familiar, too, but it wasn't either Shannon or Kelly's. The two of them always made a tape for him when he went on tour; Shelby would slip in and say "hi," and then send letters the rest of the time- something that seemed surprising for someone who had been so yabba-yabba when he was a kid. But not this time, because here was Shelby was, talking away.

This must've been a tape that Shannon wasn't able to send out to him before she and Kelly were killed.

This time, Gibbs listened to what his some was saying and he couldn't believe. Shelby was talking about how Shannon wasn't telling him everything about the case and how she was going to testify so that Kelly didn't have to. How he would stay with them and keep them safe until Gibbs could get back and do it- promised, swore. Gibbs found tears pricking his eyes for a moment as Shelby's finishing line was: "I love you, dad. I'll make you proud."

Gibbs rewound it before he played it again, listening to the last part of the tape; Shelby telling him he loved him and would make him proud. Gibbs knew that when he got back from Panama with the news of Shannon and Kelly deaths on his shoulders, he could have been the father that he needed to be, to Shelby. That he should have been to his son. And this, hearing his 12 year-old son telling him that he loved him and would do everything to make him proud- it finally hit home what Jackson had been trying to tell him for years.

He had two children- not just Kelly. So, instead of the revenge mission that he had gone on, he should have been thinking of Shelby, who was going through the same thing that he was. Gibbs thought about how guilty he felt- how he still felt- he promised Shannon and Kelly that it would be the last time he would go away like that, and it had been, so he realized with the voice of his son, that they had been aboard the same ship longer than he realized.

He played the tape again, and again, letting the 12 year-old's voice slam over him like a tanker as dozed off soaked in guilt.

chapter VI end-