a/n: i don't like this chapter, but i want to write a fic on this part of their lives so i hesitated to use actual deep material i may want to use later.

Czech Republic

Franks, exhibiting and endless knack for carelessness, came up on the ocean-side cabin with a shout, hardly bothering to check and see if his houseguest was using some sort of dangerous, sharp tool.

Startled, and balanced precariously on a ladder against the side of the house, Gibbs swore violently and, in an effort to keep himself from plummeting off the ladder, threw himself forward onto the roof and suffered a nasty, deep cut on his forearm from the saw in his hands. He abandoned the tool and slid down the ladder, storming into the house cursing. He swiped a rag and started to stem the copious blood flow. Franks – naturally – whistled and the sight and laughed.

"Damn, Probie, you got to get rid of that jumpy nature!" he mocked – Gibbs had been less aware of his surroundings since the May coma; less able to pick up on an approaching person, friend or foe.

"Here," growled Franks, yanking Gibbs out onto the front porch. He jerked the towel away and looked critically at the gash.

"Bleedin's not gonna stop," Gibbs said dully.

"Lemme get my lighter," Franks said, resigned – he'd have to cauterize it.

He came back out with a bottle of vodka and a cigarette lighter, and handed Gibbs the bottle.

"Drink while I burn," he snorted. "Unless you wanna go into the city?"

Gibbs waved his hand – he was fine with home treatment; it wasn't like he hadn't experienced worse in the military, or in the jungles of Colombia. He tipped the vodka back into his mouth – it tasted cold, and unforgiving, like - Eastern Europe - ?

Franks lit the flame against his wound and he sucked in his breath hard – that felt like Eastern Europe, too –

The most chilling part about the disastrous result of the meet was the lack of sirens: no sound broke the frigid, biting night air of the city, no flashing lights or indication that help was coming –

It was just him, alone, in the icy, deep snow, waiting for back up from another agent, trying to tourniquet a bad bullet wound with a ripped up scarf.

When Callen got there, Gibbs had his thumb between her teeth, forcing her to bite down, trying to keep her quiet and awake all at once.

"Where?" Callen asked.

"I told you, the thigh," snapped Gibbs, standing. Callen was quick to help him get their female partner off the ground, both of them huddling together. "Doctor?"

"I got into contact with one of the other anti-Soviets in the area," Callen hissed. He hesitated. "He's Mossad and I've never met him, but – "

Gibbs shrugged; it didn't matter.

It felt like they walked for days, trying to move quickly and cover up a bright red, horrifying blood trail, and when Callen dragged them into a small apartment on the outskirts of a rich area, a door was locked quickly and a dark-skinned man seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Gibbs sat down at the head of the bed, her head in his lap, helping the doctor to undress her.

He saw hands moving quickly, and then he got up to help, knelt down at eye-level with his Probie, and took her hand. She looked unconscious – the doctor lit something, shoved something hot and burning into her leg, and Jenny screamed, twisting violently to the side.

Gibbs leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers.

Her eyes closed tightly and she moaned hoarsely.

"I think I'm dying," she managed, coughing, her voice raw. "What happened?"

"You're hit," he murmured, trying to jolt her memory – shock must be hiding it from her.

"The guy?"

"Gibbs shot him," Callen piped up. "Hold still, Shepard, he's got to cauterize again."

Callen was blunt, and didn't count for her. Gibbs reached forward and wrapped on arm tightly and securely around her shoulders, anchoring her to him so she wouldn't twist around or squirm, and her fingers moved weakly against his shirt.

She cried out again, dissolving into a weak sob.

"Pain meds?" Gibbs demanded harshly.

Instead, they threw him a bottle of vodka.

He tipped some into her mouth, and she coughed, her lips pressed together, her eyes red.

"I think I'm dying," she said again, her breath catching painfully.

He shook his head, put the bottle down, and spilled it. He moved closer, ignoring what Callen and the doctor were doing at her groin, his lips on hers, then on her jaw, then close to her ear.

"You can't, Jen," he said, half-heartedly, trying to be light-hearted. "What would I do then?"

She moved closer to him, trying to shy away from the pain, and he tightened his grip – he pretended it was a joke, but it wasn't; he knew it wasn't –

-he knew suddenly and abruptly that at that point in their partnership, so long ago and so lost in a haze of repressed heartache and lost time, it hadn't been a joke at all, that he'd come to think he couldn't live without her.

Had they been in Russia? Vodka was Russian –

-but no, they'd been in the Czech Republic; he remembered more now, because NCIS kept calling it the former Czech Republic, and Jenny had raged that politically, that never made sense – they'd been in a suburb of Prague, when for three days she'd lingered on the threshold of life and death.

"You goin' female on me, Probie?" snapped Franks, slapping the back of his head. "Little blood makin' you queasy, can't hold your vodka?" he laughed.

Gibbs shook his head, tried to clear away his thoughts – he didn't want that memory back; he didn't want that fear and terror back, he didn't want to remember that he'd resigned himself to watching Jenny die just when he'd accepted that she might save him like no other woman since Shannon had –

Maybe that's why, he thought to himself – maybe that place, that night, that bullet wound – was why he found it so hard to remember, why something had happened to break them up, to put them where they were now – .

He remembered the Czech Republic, and he remembered why he'd tried to mitigate her, and who she was to him.

Czech Republic

-alexandra