Disclaimer: This story is just a work of fanfiction that purpose is for me to expand on my writing skills, and to share with others who might enjoy giving it a read. I do not own NCIS or MI5 Spooks, or any related characters to those shows. All I own are my imagination and the original characters that I come up with on occasion.

Pairing: Lucas/Evelyn, Gibbs/Shepard

Warnings and Tags: Drama, Family Drama, Romance, Hurt and Comfort, Crimes and Criminals, Implied Past Abuse, Torture, Canon Typical Violence, Mentions of Non-Con

I want to thank AllisonShepardGibbs, Chaz746, MyNameisAngel, TheDragonFace, ljcolic, and marikemaus for favoriting the story! I want to also thank everyone who followed it. :D

Author's Note: This is a complete rewrite of "The Girl in Memory: Spooks Edition".

Author's Note 2: I only post my stories on AO3 and FFnet. I do not have a Wattapad, DeviantArt or a GoodReads account.

one

with hesitant roots, we grow

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22nd August 2011

Quantico, Virginia

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Sun-warmed drops fell from storm clouds speckled across the sky onto the litter-strewn drainage ditch, lazy and indolent, while Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs crouched in ankle deep water over a body, blue eyes intent and narrowed. A seasoned investigator of nineteen years, his cold and standoffish approach to crime scenes had perturbed others or ruffled a few feathers here and there; he worked hard to separate his personal feelings from his job, and while he did not always succeed, he did his best to see that the victims got justice.

Rain slid off the brim of his hat and with an evidence bag in hand, he surveyed the broken and bruised body of a young woman wrapped in a threadbare blue tarp, milky eyes turned skyward. Her blond hair was mattered to her face, skin was grey and bloated, and throat sliced wide open. Agony twisted a once beautiful face into a macabre effigy of her final moments on this earth.

This crime scene set him completely on edge and gnawed a raw spot in his mind. He couldn't put his finger on what made gave him this gut feeling, only that he needed to keep his eyes open and ears to the ground. "What are your initial thoughts here, Duck?" he asked quietly.

Across from him, knelt on the other side of the body was the medical examiner. Donald Mallard, or Ducky as he was so fondly referred to by friends, was an elderly man in his late seventies, with short brown hair and discerning blue eyes. His rapport wit and stories made him a good friend. His knowledge of medicine and psychology made him an invaluable asset to NCIS.

"A lot of the wounds appear superficial. Cuts, punctures, bruising, but then if you look closer…" Ducky lifted the tarp delicately to reveal the slim wrist that an abrasion, the unmistakable abrading from a rope. "Bound and gagged—she was tortured for quite some time. The slice across the throat is what ended her life, I am almost certain but will do a further analysis at the time of autopsy. What an undignified state you have been left in, poor girl," he added, caringly to the corpse.

"Her fingertips were burnt badly. Someone did not want to risk her prints to be ran through the database." The murder was a clash of meticulous and reckless, as if two dividing forces were steering a single wheel and that just put a bad taste in his mouth. He could only hope that the autopsy and gathering evidence would shed light on this. "Time of death?"

"I can use the liver temperature to give me a baseline for the time of death, but I fear that it will not be so easy ascertaining just when our Jane Doe died. The storms that we had and the unseasonable warm weather—the environmental factors can make determining the time of death difficult even in favorable circumstances as you well know," Ducky chided, half-heartedly. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and took the foggy spectacles from his face to wipe clean; it was more out of habit than any real hope of cleaning the rain off them. "It will take time, Jethro."

Gibbs drummed his fingers restlessly on his knee. "Time is the one thing I don't have enough of to spare, Duck."

"Patience is a virtue, and a rewarding on at that." The medical examiner turned a gimlet eye on his assistant that struggled to bring the gurney down the hill without disturbing the many evidence markers already placed. "Mr. Palmer, if you would hurry! We must get our Jane Doe back to the morgue, and preferably before this summer shower turns into an outright deluge."

Palmer turned beet red, flustered. "I promise that I am not moving slow on purpose! Ju—just having some technical difficulties is all!"

"It is just a hill, Mr. Palmer, not a cliffside! If you think this is difficult, let me tell you of a time that I…" Ducky rambled on about a case that he had years ago in Louisiana that required him to traverse through a mile of swamp to get to a body, in sweltering heat. Palmer just looked like he wished the earth split open and swallowed him whole.

Gibbs released a breath, blowing out his nostrils in a mist. He rose to his feet and took of his cap, running his fingers through his grey hair to wring the rainwater out. The damp, chill only further soured his inhospitable disposition, internally preparing for all the paperwork and hoops that would have to be jumped through for a joint investigation with the county police.

He tugged his cap back on and made his way over to his team that was canvasing the crime scene. His team was relatively small and tightknit compared to most of the units at NCIS, but he had been a man that prioritized quality of quantity. It may only be a team of three, but he trusted each one of them, wholly and without hesitation.

Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo was the senior agent on his team. He was sarcastic and a bit of a womanizer, so most people brushed the man off as simply brawn and no brains. But Tony was streetwise and had a mind for strategy went put to the task. He had gotten his start at the Baltimore Police Department, but when Tony had gone against the grain to expose dirty cops, there hadn't been a future left for him there. He joined NCIS under Gibbs' recommendation and had been a valued agent ever since. He stood with the camera in hand, getting as many forensic photos as possible.

Timothy McGee had been a mild mannered if a bit meek when he first arrived at NCIS. He was one of the youngest agents on the job and baby-faced, and the target of light-hearted teasing, but he found that shiny, steel spine of his in time. Computers and technology were his specialty, but he was one of the most competent field agents that he had ever seen. He was on his third trip back from the truck with more evidence markers in his hands.

And finally there was Ziva David. The Israeli woman had overcome many hurtles to prover herself and had been initially aloof and wary given the circumstances of just how she became a part of his squad. She had worked as a liaison with NCIS for several years now but had made the decision to become a full-fledged agent.

Ziva eyed the cars being directed away from the area marked off by yellow crime scene tap and released a deep sigh through her nose. "Must we mark and bag every piece of trash in this ditch?" she asked.

"Unfortunately." Timothy McGee looked green in the face, placing down markers on food wrappers, broken glass and more. "Anything washed down with the body could be evidence."

"This will be like finding a pin in a haystack!" she grumbled.

Hunkered back on his heels, Tony took photo of the debris closest to the body. "That is finding a needle in a haystack, Ziva."

"Needle—pin! It does not matter." The dark hair woman had her honeyed eyes narrowed into slits at Tony, the only person that managed to provoke her ire daily. "A pin would be just as hard to find. Abby and Kasie are going to have an aneurysm sorting through all this junk."

"I am curious as to why we were called to investigate. Other than proximity to the marine barracks, there is not anything that this would fall under NCIS jurisdiction," McGee pondered, wiping the water off his face with the back of his hand.

"It falls in our jurisdiction because someone left a CAC in the throat of our Jane Doe, McGee," Gibbs interjected sharply.

There was an immediate shift in the team dynamic when Gibbs entered the fray; a visible, ripple effect that made them all snap to attention, and three pairs of wide eyes swiveled towards him in a split second. The playful banter was swept underneath the rug, and quickly the trio adopted a serious mask to appear as if they had been hard at work instead of chitchatting.

Ziva's brow furrowed. "CAC? What is a CAC?"

"Common Access Card—it the standard identification for active-duty military personal, civilian employees, and contractors," McGee rattled off an explanation from memory alone, "and grants access to any military installation that doesn't require special access among other things."

"It can also grant access to the Department of Defense networks and systems if you have high enough clearance. It is not something that you want to misplace unless you want to land in some hot water," Tony speculated, eyes narrowed.

"It was found on a dead woman," Ziva pointed out, caustically. "Sounds like whoever this card belongs to might already be in hot water."

"Yeah, and in the neck where—" Tony mimed his throat being slit open by drawing a finger across his neck, and then his eyes darted to Gibbs, almost nervously. His insensitivity—most times unintentional—had earned him many smacks upside the head over the years. "Where the victim neck was cut open. That screams that this is something personal, Boss."

"We won't assume anything until we have more evidence to go by," Gibbs stated firmly.

Gibbs couldn't deny that DiNozzo had a point. Everything about the violence inflicted upon the Jane Doe screamed that this was very personal, but he had learned a long time ago that appearances could be deceiving. He glanced down at the bloody identification badge in the evidence bag that he held in his hand, and then stated, "I am going to call into headquarter and get someone to follow up on ID. I expect you all to have all this bagged and tagged within the hour."

"Uh, boss, I think we are going to need more hands-on deck to get that done," McGee replied, haltingly.

Gibbs arched a brow and leveled a flat look at him.

McGee withered underneath the stare. "Or we could just do it all ourselves and not complain?"

"The police are not just here to direct traffic, but to help secure the crime scene," Gibbs responded. "If you have need of them, point them in the right direction."

Tony did not need to be told twice and sprang up from where he was crouched to march up the hill to ask for help for said before Gibbs decided to have a change of heart. His senior field agent's relief was mirrored by his teammates who acted like a weight had been lifted off their shoulders.

It wasn't often that Gibbs allowed outside help. He preferred to run a tight ship and help maintain transparency in the chain of evidence. That 'need to know' basis had saved them sabotage and accidents before, but today allowed for an exception. Time, and the brewing foul weather above, seemed set against them.

His blue eyes stared down the long road, where the traffic flowed unimpeded by the death of a single woman, and there was a part of him that quietly resented that. How the world could just churn on forward, mechanically, and steamroll right over those caught in loss and grief.

Gibbs fished his cellphone out of his breast pocket. There was a lot of mocking and teasing about his flip phone—a product of the stone age, so he had been told. He flicked the phone open and was confronted by the date glaring at him in pixelated, blue numbers and letters.

An ice-cold numbness trickled down his spine, slow and haunting; his next breath sawed through his lungs and left his mouth in a low rasp. The yearly messages of concern and condolences flooded in like clockwork, serving as an unwelcomed reminder of a painful day. It had been over twenty years now, and yet grief lingered like a noose around his throat. It waited for that day the chair would be kicked out from under him.

He snapped the phone shut, and scrubbed a hand down his face, giving him the space of a couple of seconds to clamp down on his emotions. You're still here. The chair teeters, but doesn't break, a voice that sounded painfully like Shannon whispered against the shell of his ear. Take away the noose and climb down.

If only grief were that easy to let go, he'd whisper back, in his mind.

He reopened the phone and placed the call to NCIS. The world did not slow for him nor his grief, and he learned to keep moving to avoid being crushed underfoot as it spun onward.

23rd August 2011

Belle Haven, Virginia

Main Street

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who are you? what do you want to be?

Wind blew through the Belle Haven streets, cool and crisp—and Evelyn Carter tugged her scarf up around her chin, her teeth chattering together lightly. The storms had come and gone, with only damp sidewalks, dripping roofs and fallen tree limbs as evidence it had been here at all. The summer had gone by too fast, and the chill of autumn crept in, though she had always enjoyed the fall. The turning of the leaves into colors of yellow, red, and oranges, with the mild weather to enjoy a good cup of tea and hearty soups made it the most perfect time of year in her opinion.

There afternoon sun blanketed the idle town in rays of gold and amber, giving it a dream-like quality that had her tempted to pinch herself once or twice. For a primarily residential area, it did not lack in the wonders of the countryside; there was no shortage of grassy knolls, winding roads, and enough lakes to make any fisherman happy. Luxury homes, stately manors, and cottages—the majority built during the urban expansion in the 1920s and each street was lined with trees and carefully kept greenery.

There was a serenity here in this little corner of the world that she so desperately wanted to make hers. Easy for her to find a niche, and settle there, out of sight and out of mind.

She organized fertilizers, clay pots and toolbox crammed into the back of Ol' Faithful—her 1990s Ford Truck that had she had gotten for a steal, excited to start renovations on the Windmill House. It was a big undertaking to restore it livable conditions, and it had been written off as a lost cause a couple of decades ago. But where others saw a problem, she saw potential. The house was bare to the bones—good strong bones—that sat a blank canvas, waiting on the right painter to craft and create, and a spigot of tentative joy flowed through her at the thought of rooms with bright, vivid, and welcoming colors.

Anything to replace the cold, pale rooms that created a chasm of monotony in her memories; rooms without character, buildings that housed her but weren't homes.

Jumping down, her feet smacked into the pavement with enough force to rattle her jaw and for a split second, she struggled to find her center of gravity. The world would shift, feel askew, poorly accustomed to the lighthearted ease that now enveloped her life; such a feeling had not been there for years.

There was a part of that did not know what to do with happiness. It wasn't common in her life and fragile, and she felt a trickle of apprehension when things were going too well. She hopped down from the back of the truck and shut the tailgate, antsy eyes flickered up and down the street. There was a part of her that envied the people that walked through the town, caught up in their own normal lives and worries.

All blissfully unaware of how easily their lives could unravel from the white picket fence dream into the bloodiest of nightmares, all in the span of hours.

who are you? what do you want to be?

The thought burrowed deep, gouging out piece of her heart in a way that was becoming an all too frequent occurrence, and she hovered on the edge of a panic attack. Her hands grew clammy, and she struggled briefly to tug open the driver door. Jamming the key into ignition, she led the truck out of town as fast as she could without earning a speeding ticket. Her hands flexed nervously on the steering wheel, concentrating on the weather report that came through the static of the old radio. It was like white noise, and a poor attempt to drown out her thoughts.

The guilt lingered, chasing her on the drive back to the house. It was a relatively short but peaceful drive that brought back sun-soaked memories and lazy afternoon drives where she held her hand out the rolled down window of the backseat, trying to capture the wind. The silhouette of her parents in the front seat, set against the blazing sunset and the faint laughter played on loop like a song, until it melted like a film burnt black by a faulty projector.

The truck turned down a gravel road, passing by the old stone wall that had crumbled to beneath time and that stood only now as a marker to the property line. The driveway was shielded by red oaks on each side, and at the end of the road sat a cottage built of mortar and red brick. Built in the late 1600s, the veneer of the idyllic cottage retained much of its original character while the insides of the house had been gutted down to the studs, time and time again; the house had been at the mercy of changing times and technology, until it was abandoned for decades to languish in neglect. Rumors of ghosts and phantoms had spared the house from vandalism and squatters for the most part.

Atop of the highest hill, there was a windmill that had stood there proudly since the 1700s. It was surrounded by patchwork farmland and an endless green forest to the south no longer obscured by the early morning mist. It was looked like those pictures that get put on the front of postcards.

It was a big undertaking to restore it livable conditions, and it had been written off as a lost cause ever since. Evelyn didn't see a problem, but instead saw the potential. The house was bare to the bones, a blank canvas that waited for her to craft and create, and she wanted the house to be painted in warm hues. Brightness and color, vividly splashed on the wall that was a contrast to the cold, pale rooms that had created a chasm of monotony in her memories; rooms without character, buildings that housed her but weren't homes.

This place would be a home, Evelyn decided, a determination brewing in her heart. It would take time and effort, but she would have a place in this world that was associated with pain or blood. There was a serenity here in this little corner of the world that she so desperately wanted to make hers.

Evelyn slowed the vehicle to a crawl pace until she pulled in right in front of the collapsed garage. She put the gear into park and killed the engine. For a moment, she sat there staring sightlessly out her window shield and then released the breath that sat heavily upon her chest.

who are you? what do you want to be?

A wet drop slowly slid down the plane of glass, and then plonk! Followed by another and another until a steady drizzle fell from the overcast. She leaned forward over the steering wheel to peer up at the sky and watched the darkening clouds heralded in by a swift wind.

Evelyn let out a muted sigh and gathered her purse and keys, and then hopped out of her vehicle. There was whimsical part of her soul that wished the rain weren't so cold, so that she may stand outside and enjoy it, but it pelted her skin like tiny knives and caused her to flinch.

A sharp gust of wind caused tears to prickle at the corner of her eyes, and she continued across the drive onto the cobblestone path. There, parked in the yard underneath the shade of a great oak, was a recreational vehicle that served as her temporary home until the house was in a livable state.

She unlocked the door and rushed inside, eager to get out of the storm. Her purse and keys dropped onto the counter, and she began to thoroughly the vehicle front to back to appease the paranoia etched deep into her bones.

The RV was spacious on the inside, providing all the amenities for her day to day needs and then some; a full kitchen with granite countertops, a farmhouse sink, and a fridge that was blended into the ashen colored cabinets. It was a pity that she hadn't gotten around to stocking it properly, only surviving on microwave meals and snacks. The dinette was built with comfort in mind with the booth centered around the table, and the upholstery was plush and a light blue.

There was a lounge upon to the right of the dining area, adjacent from the entertainment system cleverly designed to hide the small pantry behind it. Her spare time had been spent curled with a good book or watching an old movie, though her worn, secondhanded collection of books and movies left a lot to be desired.

The three-piece bathroom was a dry bath, with a toilet that had its own place, a stainless-steel vanity, and a shower with lightning and curved glass doors; the tankless water heater was a godsend. The bedroom suit was the in the very back of the biggest part of the vehicle, with a queen-sized bed, closet, and dresser. There had been many nights that it had been hard to go to sleep. Not because the bed was uncomfortable, but it had been too comfortable.

Satisfied with her search, Evelyn got a bottle of water from the fridge at the kicked back at the dining table where there had covered in rugged computer setup that looked like it belonged more at a military base than in her RV. A few clicks of her keyboard pulled up her email, checking over her correspondence with the local zoning department to make sure all her t's were crossed and i's were dotted when something strange caught her eye.

An email that, at first glance, appeared junk mail in between a supposed miracle skin cure and a lottery scam with flashy letters.

%$&laws(*are%&()silent* #in#$times^&*of(*! war(*%^

Everything went cold. Her mind, her blood, her very breath, everything all the way down to her fingertips. There were several heartbeats where she sat there, staring blinkingly at the screen.

Words were just words, until they weren't.

who are you? what do you want to be?

And she shut the laptop with more force than necessary.

Drogheda, Ireland

Dún Glás

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Blood splatter and broken glass were scattered across the bar, like burning rubies and dying stars underneath the harsh glows of the pendant lights. Smoke lazily wafted through the air, underscored by the pungency of cheap alcohol and piss and a sharp, coppery odor. There were no swaying bodies, laughing chatter or clinking of glasses, only the lonely jukebox playing, "Now in the street there is violence, And…and a lot of work to be done," until the music dissolved, the record skipped and screeched before it finally died out with a murmur.

A sallow-faced man with his back braced against the bar, with pure terror etched into his face and the word "monster" scrawled on his forehead. His chest heaved with labored breaths, eyes locked onto the barrel of the silencer leveled at him with a steady and sure hand. "Ple…please…" the incoherent please dribbled out of his mouth, and then pop! His head snapped backwards, and his body collapsed to the floor with a thud, knocking over a bar stool in the process.

He was one of many pub patrons, strewn about the room like broken dolls; all blood soaked and lifeless. Panic and fear were their death masks, and they, too, had words scrawled onto their foreheads.

Thief. Murder. Monster.

The assailant was dressed head to toe in black, with a hood drawn up over the head and an orinasal mask over the jaw and nose. A pair goggle with a lens that concealed the eyes but gave each victim a perfect reflection of their last moments. Wiping the nozzle of the silence with a handkerchief, they surveyed the room and took great pleasure in the chaos that they had wrought.

It would be hours before the bodies were discovered, and by then, the assailant will have vanished like a ghost as the community and police scrambled for answers.

end of chapter

Thank you for reading!