a/n:

Damselfly: Chapter VII

Gibbs jerked away at 0500 sharp, his body cramped from sitting on the stool for so long, the battery life in the tape player having long since drained. He sat there for a moment, just remembering, before he stood and stretched out his kinked muscles with a groan. He swallowed down the cold cup of coffee from the night before and went up stairs. He changed his clothes, not bothering to shower before he drove to HQ.

It was still grey out and no light leaked through the bullpen sky-light. The man lights were off, no one was there, only the desk lights in his office were turned on, casting a glow. He spotted Tony and Tim, but not Kate.

"Hey, boss." Tony said at the of Gibbs, and the two Agents stood and watched him nervously.

"Where's Todd?" Was the first thing that Gibbs asked.

"Uh," Tim stammered.

Gibbs looked at him. "Spit it out, McGee." If he wasn't in a good mood before, what made them think he was now?

"We tried calling your cell, boss." Tim told him, not spitting it out in the least.

"Your father called us, Gibbs, when he couldn't get a hold of you." Tony jumped in after a glance at Tim, and Gibbs' stomach hardened with impending news. "Petty Officer Gibbs woke up an hour ago. Kate's on her way to the hospital- we were about to come and get you."

Gibbs gut softened. He wasn't sure how he felt about Kate going to the hospital, but he guessed it was for the best. "What did you and Kate get when you talked to the ex-wife?" He asked his Senior Agent, getting this out of the way do that he could get out of here and to the hospital to see his son.

"She said that the divorce was a long time coming; Reynolds was never home. She was surprised by the money in her daughter's account, and she told us where he moved to." Tony told him. "McGee and I were going to check out when you got in."

"Well?" Gibbs demanded when they didn't move. "What are you waiting for?"

"We are not here, boss." Tony was quick to say as he already had his gun on his belt and his bag in hand, already rushing to the elevator and leaving Tim behind. "Come on, McSlow!" He shouted as Tim was scrambling to get his things and not be left behind. The younger Agent barely made it through the closing door. "You tryin' to kill us?" Tony demanded. Tim glared back.

Gibbs wanted to get out of here and to St. James hospital, and nothing here was preventing him from doing so. If Abby had found anything on Shelby's things, she knew better than to hold it back, especially this last day, so he headed out. And he now had a good reason to drive fast, not that he never had one any other time.

He wasn't sure how he felt about his team meeting his family; his father and his son. But just Kate was a different story. Gibbs was friends with her like he was with Ducky, and he knew that she wouldn't screw this up. Her with Shelby was better than thinking him with DiNozzo.

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Kate wasn't sure how Gibbs was going to react to the fact that she was down here at the hospital. They had no other choice, the three Agents had to decide in the absence of Gibbs, that it would be better if she went - the reasons went unsaid but were easily known. They needed to treat this like any other case and question the witness- not alone, but when Gibbs got there.

She flashed her badge at the front desk and was led to Shelby's room. She was kind of nervous to what she was going to walk in on, this is Gibbs' son after all.

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Shelby had been awake for nearly four hours now, and was already feeling better. His grandfather was there when he came to, chocking on the tube that was down his throat. That wasn't a surprise, and neither was the fact that his father wasn't. While the fact still hurt, that was not the fore-most on his mind- but how he had ended up in the hospital, and the implications of that same event.

He had been having trouble remembering, and Jackson wasn't saying much on anything. But he had finally been able to convince the man to leave, Jackson wouldn't go home to Stillwater, but had instead gone and gotten a hotel room. It wasn't what Shelby had wanted, but it was better than the older man staying here all day.

He was halfway sitting up in the bed, the head up, his arm was still in the sling as he tried to process through it. His eye and ear were bandaged and at the knock at the door, he had to turn his head quite a bit to get a proper view. "Come in," He told them. He knew that it wasn't Jackson, his grandpa wouldn't knock and he knew that his father wouldn't either, the doctors and nurses didn't need to. And if any of them looked the way that this woman did, he would go insane. Shelby didn't know who she was yet, but she was beautiful.

"PO Gibbs?" She asked as she stepped into his room. "I'm Special Agent Kate Todd, I work at N.C.I.S." She showed him her badge.

Shelby nodded. "Do you work with my father?" He asked her, not able to tear his gaze away.

"I do." She told him. "I wanted to ask a couple of questions about what happened to you, PO. If that's okay?" Kate knew that she told herself she was going to wait until Gibbs was here, and he would probably be pissed when he got here, but there was a possible bomber out there, and she would get smacked if this was another case and she waited.

"Of course," He told her. "You can have a seat."

"Thanks," She gave him a gentle smile and took the chair that Jackson had claim, now making it hers. She settled and took her notebook out and crossed her ankles as she looked at him. She'd seen his service picture, but he looked totally different now. Him being Gibbs' son, she'd expected to have his eyes, but Shelby didn't. She licked her lips before she started. "I'm not sure if you've been told about Commander Reynolds, and I hate to be the one to have to tell you... but he was killed in the explosion." She told him as gently as she could.

There was silence as the information injected itself harshly into his brain, and everything else seemed to fall back into place. The Commander was dead. His Commanding Officer... His eye danced around her face, as he tried to process through this. It was probably his fault, too. He let out a breath and never took his sad gaze from her. "I couldn't disable to bomb properly." He told her in shame.

Kate looked into his green eyes; she wanted to say something comforting like: you can't blame yourself. But when had that ever helped anyone? Instead, she continued her line of questioning. "What were you doing out in that field, PO?"

Shelby swallowed before he answered. "We were doing a training exercise," He told her. "That was nothing new; we'd been doing them all week, but yesterday? There wasn't one scheduled that morning. It was last minute,"

"And you didn't question that?" She asked him.

"Why would I question that?" He asked her in confusion. "I was given an assignment."

"Okay," She nodded.

"If I questioned him," He said softly. "I would be dead, too." His voice cracked.

"I'm sorry," She told him with sincerity, and his shoulders sunk. "Had the Commander been acting odd lately?"

"No." Shelby shook his head as he answered her. "We didn't have contact outside of the base, but I knew that he got his divorce. And if anything had changed with him, it was that he seemed even more committed to his duty."

"Do you know if he had any enemies?"

"If Commander Reynolds did, he never told me about it."

"Okay. If you're ready," Kate asked him next, "Could you tell me what happened that morning?"

Shelby's single-eyed gaze looked her up and down; he knew that his father worked at N.C.I.S., knew that when he was unconscious he had come and visited (that was one thing that Jackson did tell him). "Are you sure that we shouldn't wait for my father?" He asked her.

"No. She was right to start without me."

Shelby closed his eye and gripped the sheet in his hand at Gibbs' sudden appearance. He hadn't heard or seen him coming. He had a ringing in his ear and because of his bandaged eye, his sight was cut in half. He was so focused on Kate that everything else seemed irrelevant. But now that his dad was here, it was different. His head twisted and his father appeared in his sight-line. At Gibbs' sudden appearance, he wasn't sure who seemed more tense, Kate or himself. "Dad?" Shelby voiced, almost awkwardly. He hadn't seen his Gibbs for a long time and now that he finally had, it was because he had landed in the hospital. But this awkwardness soon turned into something else, almost what he felt when Gibbs got back from tour. "You're here," He pushed himself more up-right.

Gibbs looked at his son and saw the way that Shelby was looking at him; his green eyes shinning. It reminded him of when Shelby was kid and the guilt in his gut kicked in. "Where's your grandpa?" He asked; this was delicate with Kate here.

"I convinced him to get some rest," Shelby told him with a little pride.

"He went back to Stillwater?" Gibbs asked in surprise, but Shelby shook his head.

"He wouldn't go home, and got a hotel room instead." He corrected.

"Huh," Gibbs smirked for a second before he shook his head, of course Jackson wouldn't go home, not while Shelby was still in the hospital. He looked back at his son after a glance at Kate. "How're you holding up, Shelby?" He asked as he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed by his son's knees.

"I'm okay," Shelby told him softly. "But Commander Reynolds was a good man; I would be dead if it wasn't for him. You have to find who did this, dad." He pleaded, if anyone could, it was his dad.

"Okay." Gibbs patted his leg through the blanket, finding that he didn't have to force the action. "Can you tell us what happened?"

Shelby nodded. "I've already told Agent Todd most of this, but... We weren't supposed to have an exercise that morning, but orders change. The Commander and myself got our gear and went to the field; there, we located the device. We were slow on approach, Reynolds was five feet behind and two paces to the left of myself. I arrived at the device when Reynolds communed to me that he had stepped on a secondary device underfoot; he gave me orders to proceed with disarming the primary bomb."

"Good," Gibbs nodded to his son, his hand still on his knee for comfort. "Can you describe the bomb?"

Shelby nodded, licking his lips as he closed his eye and remembered. "There were five blocks of C-4, stacked to make a square with the fifth block on the top. On the fifth block, there was a timer, next to that was a mercury switch, and emitting from those two objects were wires connected to the explosives." Gibbs nodded again and Kate was quick to write the description. "I cut the correct wire and the timer stopped. I started removing the electrodes from the clay, but..." He trailed off, trying to calm his breath as he looked at him father.

"But...?" Kate asked after a glance at Gibbs.

"Shelby licked his lips again. "The clock restarted. There was a secondary connection that I missed!" He almost said in confusion because he didn't understand, him disarming it the first time must have activated the second trigger. "We tried our radios and got static. I wanted to try and disarm it; what would be the harm? It was a dummy bomb, right? I would learn something new, no harm, but it was like Reynolds knew that something wasn't right." Shelby was upset now, as he continued, closing in on the event. Both Gibbs and Kate were quiet as Shelby continued to recount the story. "He ordered me to run, and-and I-I questioned him, dad! But then I ran, I ran away and the bomb exploded! I could feel the heat on my back, dirt being thrown everywhere as I was thrown into the air. And then the secondary device went off and I could hear Reynolds scream as I hit the ground-" He choked to a halt. His eye was now filled with tears ready to spill over as he looked at his father in desperation. "If I had stayed, I could have disarmed it. He would still be alive if I wasn't a coward and ran!" Shelby cried.

Gibbs took his son in his arms, and Shelby buried his injured head in his father's shoulder; the last time they had hugged was when Shannon and Kelly died. "You did nothing wrong, Shelby." He told his son, his voice rough. "If you had stayed, then I would have lost you too." Kate discreetly made her exit, then. And Gibbs couldn't believe that it had taken him this long to realize that he could have lost Shelby when Shannon and Kelly died, and he could still loose him now.

"I want you to be proud of me, dad." Shelby sobbed into the material of his shirt. "I don't want you to think me a coward."

Gibbs leaned back and looked his son in his puffy, wet, green eye. "I could never think of you as a coward, son. And I've been proud of you since the day you were born and nothing has changed that."

That made Shelby cry even more and he hugged Gibbs hard with his good arm. He'd been waiting so long for a moment like this; 15 years. It didn't matter that he had to almost blow up for it to happen; he'd go through this again and again if it meant he got his father back.

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Things had calmed down and Shelby sat back, his eye red, the bandage over his left eye damp.

"We're going to catch the bastard who did this, Shelby." Gibbs promised, something that he never breaks.

"I know you will, dad." Shelby agreed, proud of his father.

Gibbs looked at his son and let out a breath. "I want you to stay at home with me when you get out of the hospital." Gibbs decided as he wiped his thumb across Shelby's cheek.

"Home?" Shelby repeated; he hadn't been home in years. Of course, after his mom and sister died, Stillwater had become his home, but before that, it was that house. "What about grandpa?" He asked.

"I think that he would agree." Gibbs told him in a tone that suggested he knew something that the younger man didn't.

But Shelby looked troubled. "I don't want to be any trouble, dad. You have a job to do," He protested.

"I am doing my job, Shelby." Gibbs said. "We still don't know who set that bomb out there, or who the real target was, and until we do, you're in danger." He growled angrily.

Shelby's eyes darted across Gibbs' face as he licked his lips. "If that's what you want." He said with a small smile touching his lips.

Gibbs sighed and rolled his eyes a little, he knew that Shelby wanted him to say it, and he would. "It is." Shelby tried hard now not to smile big. "When are they discharging you?" He changed the subject.

"My left eardrum was ruptured," He touched the bandage. "The doctors didn't want to do surgery to repair it while I was unconscious, so they're going to do it later today."

Gibbs nodded. "And your eye?" His tone was a little more worried.

Shelby could understand why, and of course he was too; if his sight was anyway impaired, he'd get medically discharge from the Marine Corps. And while being a sniper had not been his first choice when he turned 18, things change when you're 12. "They said that explosive particles got into my retina; there's nothing they can do about that. Either it clears up or it doesn't." He bit his lips for a moment. "They earliest I can leave is tomorrow."

This time, Gibbs was the that licked his lips as he felt butterflies in his gut. He took his hand from his son's cheek and squeezed his good hand as he looked in to the puffy, mirror image of Shannon's eyes. Everything is going to be fine, Shelby. You hear me?" He demanded. "Don't make me repeat myself." He growled with father-like protection and fear. "I'm going to leave Agent Todd with you while I'm gone, okay."

Shelby furrowed his brows. "You just said I was okay!" He protested, but he didn't know why. He kinda liked Agent Todd. Gibbs gave him his patent stare, one that suggest his son might just get a head-slap despite the concussion. Shelby was quick to go meek despite him being a fearless Marine, this was his dad! "There's still the possibility of a bomber out there," He read his father's gaze.

"You're learning." Gibbs praised and Shelby couldn't help the smile. "You'll be fine with Todd, she's a good Agent and friend." He said as he finally stood from the bed. "She was even with the Secret Service before she joined N.C.I.S." He snuck in there for assurance before he left the room to find Todd who wasn't that far away. He collected her notes before he left back to HQ, and sent her back to her new charge.

"Looks like I'm going to be sticking around for a while." Kate told Shelby with a smile as she walked into the room and claimed the chair once more as her own.

Shelby smiled back. "You protected the President?" He asked as he watched her. It was a conversation started and he was keen to know more about her.

She grinned back at him and Shelby could swear that she even blushed at little as she gazed at him. "I did, Petty Officer."

"Please, Shelby." He may have flirted a tad.

"Kate," She returned in the same matter.

chapter VII end-

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