Disclaimer; Still not owning NCIS. :(

Note; This chapter was actually not written by me. It was written by my lovely Headslapdiva. My favorite Gibbs :P And if I may say so myself, she did a mighty fine job with this. It's Gibbs' reaction to her being dead. It's between Judgment Day and Last Man Standing. Right after the team leaves after Jen 'died'. Just thought we'd throw in a bonus chapter now and then. Let me know what you think. ;) I'll be continuing the main running story again soon.

The rating is also going to go to M in the next chapter. Letting this one slide as T is even extreme. It will definitely be going up to M soon.

The absolute only thing I did in this chapter was Jen's dialogue.
Anyway- To Headslapdiva, for her awesome, awesome writing!

First Jenny, then his team. Could he be whole again?

Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn't feel at all like himself. He kept sanding the boat, mulling over the experiences of the past week. It had been one of the hardest and longest weeks of his life, one he hoped never to relive again. First he had lost Jenny Shepard in that dusty diner in the middle of the California desert. Then his team had been split up by Leon – Director Vance. He couldn't help but sneer when he thought of the man. It should have been Jenny in that office still, making the decisions on how to run NCIS. Not that rat bastard. He had never trusted Leon when they had worked together on Mike Franks' team. Why should he trust him now?

He almost jumped when he heard loud coughing upstairs, realizing Mike had woken up from his nap. He put the sanding block down and went upstairs. His mentor was on the couch, fiddling with a pack of cigarettes. "Damn it, Mike. Wish you'd quit smoking."

Mike looked up with a glare, putting another cigarette to his lips and reaching out for his lighter on the end table. "Don't lecture me from your high horse, Probie. Just 'cause you managed to kick the habit doesn't mean I have to." He lit the cigarette, and Gibbs winced at the memories the smell of smoke and nicotine brought back. Memories from a small, cramped apartment in the south of France, with her.

"Aw hell," he grumbled, reaching for the pack on the table. It had been years since he smoked last, and he prayed it wouldn't be like his very first time. He snatched the lighter from Mike's weathered hands and lit up, coughing hard after the first inhale. "God, how did I do this?" he wheezed between coughs, finally catching his breath after a few more coughing fits.

"Gotta remember, it's a lot like the tequila Jesus served at the cantina. Burns like hell with the first shot. Then it's smooth sailing the rest of the evening." Mike laughed and sat up. "You still thinkin' about Jenny?" It pained him to lie to his former partner. If his thinking was correct, and it usually was, Jenny was recovering from surgery to remove whatever was trying to kill her. He didn't want to get into the particulars with Dr. Mallard. It was all way over his head. Always had been.

Gibbs shook his head and took another drag from his cigarette, looking around for an ashtray. He found an empty Bud Light can from dinner the night before, and tapped the ash into the opening. "Trying not to." It was too painful. His hands had been on the body bag, he had almost opened it. But something stopped him. He didn't want to remember her like that, as one of Ducky's "patients" lying on a steel slab. He couldn't even bring himself to look at the crime scene photos. "Thanks for staying," he said, getting the sudden urge to drink. Why did smoking always do that to him? He ran downstairs and returned with a bottle of bourbon and retrieved two glasses from the kitchen. He wanted to forget everything that had happened; Jen's illness, her death, Leon as Director, his team gone.

Mike shook his head when he saw the bourbon. "That's not gonna help you forget, Probie." He rummaged around his bag and pulled out a bottle of tequila – best moonshine in all of Baja. "Jesus sends his regards, by the way." He poured, filling the two glasses halfway. No need for pansy shots. Probie needed more than a few shots to forget what happened. He nudged one glass over to the younger man and took the second in one hand. "To Jenny," he said softly, thinking of an old psalm from his youth for the sick, praying for her speedy recovery.

Gibbs tapped his glass against Mike's and downed half of his glass in one go. It burned like hell, but the pain felt good. It was far too easy to lose himself in the burn of the tequila as it settled in his stomach. "You know," he said, voice raspy from the cigarette and tequila, "something about all of this isn't sitting right with me. It doesn't feel like she's dead."

Mike looked over at him. It was times like these where he wondered if Probie was psychic or something. "If she did survive what happened, you really think she's out there, running around? She's got no home to return to. Besides, I saw her body when I finished off her assassins. She was dead." Perhaps Probie needed this, to forget about her so she could go and live her life the way she wanted to. "Let her go, or you'll end up in the same place you were in when I found you seventeen years ago." When he had tracked down Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs to that little nook at the beach, empty bottle of bourbon at his feet and gun to his temple. "Don't think I got it in me to pull the gun away this time. You know me these days. I'm just a second too slow."

Gibbs nodded. "I know, Mike, and I trust you." He finished his glass and poured himself another, feeling Mike's dark eyes on him the whole time. "You don't have to baby-sit me, Mike, I'm not your Probie anymore." He downed the second glass like it was water, then found himself regretting that decision. He winced and coughed when the burn caught up with him. "What did Jesus put in this batch?"

"Oh, little of this, little of that." Mike shrugged and finished his first glass, watching as Probie poured himself a third. "He claimed that this batch would let 'el bebedor ve Dios' or somethin'." He poured a second glass, but only filled it a third of the way full. Unlike Probie, who was pouring full glasses every time he went back to the bottle. "Might want to take it easy, Probie. Stuff's stronger than you think."

Gibbs waved him off, wondering when he would feel the drink hit him. He had one last glass, barely glancing back at the bottle, which was over half empty. "I think I should go work on the boat." He let the cigarette butt fall into the empty beer can and stood, shaking his head when the tequila started to affect him. By the time he made it down to the basement, the world was spinning. It wasn't long before he passed out on the floor, curled slightly as he lay on his side.

***

"Jethro..."

He flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder. But it wasn't a warm hand. It was icy cold, and he tried to move away from the touch that was perversely comforting. He knew that touch intimately.

"Wake up."

He knew that voice. That husky, sexy, purr that somehow always got him hard, and that hard, demanding tone that he resented seemed to meld into one. He opened one eye blearily, expecting a major headache from all of the tequila he had the night before, and saw the one thing he wanted and feared the most.

There she stood, in the outfit she had been wearing the day she died. Bloody, eyes vacant, with one gunshot wound in her shoulder, another in her stomach. Blood matted her beautiful hair, staining it a darker shade of red. She gave him that look, the half-disappointed half-angry look she had given him during her Frog hunt. ""Wake up, Jethro." She growled, easing herself down slightly to be more near his eye level. "You don't have a right to sleep. I'm dead, and you're passed out drunk on your basement floor? What happened to you? When Kate got killed you chased Ari to hell and back. What? I'm not good enough? Because I said 'no'? I'm not enough that you would go and fix this? Give me a reason to move on?"

He sat up and tried to move away from her. "Jen, we took care of her." He couldn't tear his eyes away from hers; the life was gone, but still such anger radiated from them. "Svetlana, I lured her to your home and Mike finished her." He stopped when he felt his back hit the lower shelf of his workbench. "I want you to move on. Quit haunting me and move on!"

"How can I move on when all you do is wallow about how you didn't make a move! How you never tried hard enough!?" She shouted, "Look at me! I did this to save you! I was the one who fucked up, and then I saved your ass! And this is what I got for it?! How is that fair, Jethro!? Tell me how that's fair!"

"Just. Forget about me. Move on! Quit trying to keep me here! You made it clear that I was never going to have you and then you insisted on rubbing it my face! If I couldn't have you even though I tried why the hell won't you let me go?" The blood spread a little more, it seemed like she lost more blood the more angry she got. "Damn it Jethro, What more do you want from me?!"

"I loved you!" he shouted, recoiling slightly when he saw her bleed more. "I loved you, Jen," he growled, calming slightly when it came out. "I can't forget you. I never will." He wasn't going to let this image of Jen haunt him. "What do I have to do to show that to you?" He reached for the revolver he kept under one of the benches for home defense purposes. It felt so real in his hands, this entire nightmare did. At least, he hoped it was a nightmare.

"What are you going to do? Shoot me? You think that will get rid of me? I hate to break it to you, Jethro, but I'm already dead!" She shouted, realizing he had other intentions for the gun. "You don't want to shoot me... You want to kill yourself." She said slowly, realization clouding her vacant eyes. "Maybe you should do it, Jethro. If you love me so much, maybe you should kill yourself. Maybe I'll be able to move on if you're there with me..." Her voice had grown colder.

He nodded slowly and loaded the gun. "What would I gain with shooting you?" He looked up at her and put the revolver to his temple. "I'd rather shoot myself and be with you." He looked into those vacant eyes one last time. "I can't do this alone anymore." He closed his eyes and his finger tensed on the trigger...