I'm just going to apologise now, this is another short chapter, but the next few are considerably longer and also get into the actual meat of the story, but the first two are needed to set the story. Enjoy :)

Several weeks later, Jethro was sat at his desk, attempting to clear his inbox of the large number of unopened emails. Sighing heavily, Jethro looked up and his gaze fell across the photographs on his desk. Abby had updated the collage frame to include Mike in recent weeks, and so the images now showed Mike, Kelly, Shannon and Jenny.

It was on Jenny's face that Jethro's eyes lingered, as it had many times in the past few years. Although not prone to what ifs, Jethro couldn't help but wonder if she would still have been around if he'd gone with her on her final trip rather than Ziva and Tony. He wondered what may have happened if he hadn't accepted her insistence that there would be no 'off the job'. He wondered what could have happened if she hadn't left him the 'Dear John' letter as she left him behind after Paris.

But now, at this particular moment, he wondered if she was really as dead as he had always believed. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but after going through the list of women that he had told Mike Franks about in the past who were dead, he came up with a list of 5.

Diane and Kate he knew were gone; he had been there as both had been shot by a sniper through the forehead. Which left Shannon, Kelly and Jenny. But, as much as he wished with all of his heart for his daughter to still be alive, he had also seen her body in the morgue, lying peacefully alongside her mother.

Which left him with Jenny.

And, now that he thought about it, the scenario seemed more plausible by the day. he had never seen her body, only a black body bag. Ducky had not performed the autopsy, being too personally attached to Jenny to contemplate performing the procedures. How was Jethro to know that it was really Jenny in that bag? He hadn't even seen her at the crime scene, none of them had, except for Leon. So no-one could truly set his mind to rest that she was gone, unless they were to exhume her body and that was one possibility that Gibbs was not even willing to contemplate. Instead, the thoughts continued to run in cycles around his head, appearing most often as he worked in the basement on his boat.

Shaking his head, Gibbs tried to finally return his attention to his emails. He only managed another four messages before a ping rung out from his computer.

"McGee, what was that? I didn't do anything."

McGee came around the desk behind Gibbs, standing over his shoulder as he explained

"It's OK boss, that wasn't you, that was a message coming in to the inbox. See, the one in bold at the top... hang on... boss, this one says it's important, open it first before you go clearing it out."

Gibbs rolled his eyes before clicking on the message. However, his hand froze as the message loaded.

"Holy shit... is that? How?"

"McGee, what you wittering on about now?" asked Tony, "Who is it? One of the exes?"

"Tony, shut up." The ice in McGee's voice grabbed both Tony and Ziva's attention and they quickly came behind the screen.

"Is that...?" Tony and Ziva shared a look of horror and confusion.

"Jenny."