Unbreak My Heart
Chapter 11
It was dark, Tobias and Jethro turned on some lights. They were the only one out there on middle of the icy lake: sitting on each chair and fishing, in the dark. There was a silence that Tobias felt awkward with. He decided to break the silence between them.
"…So are you gonna tell me what's been bothering you? Couldn't possibly be when I saw you two…"
"No!" Jethro cut in.
"No? Then what?" Jethro didn't answer, and he didn't have to, Tobias saw it right through the expression on his face. "Thought you guys were fine"
Jethro glanced over to Fornell, knowing that his friend knew what it was. "How did you know?" Tobias narrowed his eyes at Jethro, and it was clear to him how Fornell knew what was bothering him. "That obvious huh" Gibbs let out a small laugh.
"Well ya, we are, just a couple of things to sort out…" Jethro explained and that's all Tobias needed to hear, and the both of them continued to fish.
Dr. Handsome's office…
The silence fell upon Jenny and Jethro, as they were sitting on each side of the couch and with the doctor right in front of them. There was this awkward silence between them. And of course the doctor thought that Jenny and Jethro would open up to one another, since it went pretty good the last time they were here.
"Okay, we've been sitting here for awhile now, and since you two stepped inside this room, none of you would look in to each other's eyes" Dr. Handsome exclaimed. "And I presume that something happened during the week"
Jenny sat nervously, didn't know what was going on with Jethro. She felt something since that night he and Fornell were going fishing. He was quite, more than usually. She wanted to ask him, but he wouldn't even be in the same room as she. It was getting so ridiculous that she stopped trying.
Jethro didn't even want to come here in the first place. But Jenny had to make him come. Of course he wanted to try and fix this, but everything constantly come between them and make them stepping down from reaching their goal. And this time it's her. She was the one not telling the truth, again. Jethro was tired of all the secrecies, he didn't want to have to think or worry about every little secret she has. She obviously didn't trust him enough to tell him about it.
"Okay, I think we've been sitting here for some time now, and the silence is really killing me…slowly" Dr. Handsome cut in., then turned his head to Jenny. "Jenny why don't you tell me how you feel right now, what happened during this week between you and Jethro?"
Jenny didn't want to be the one to speak first, but decided to just let it out. "I'm confused. Sometimes I just don't get him!" "He's just so damn stubborn!"
"The real word you're looking for is bastard Jen!" Jethro stepped in, breaking his own silence.
"Oh now you decided to open your mouth huh?!" "And besides I was trying to be nice…" Jenny said that last sentence with a little bit of sarcasm.
"Well don't…" Jethro stopped it there when he realized Dr. Handsome was smiling. "What are you smiling about?!" He asked irritated.
"Nothing, just glad that you both finally have a conversation" Jethro rolled his eyes and sighted.
"Are you even a real doctor?!"
"Jethro! Of course he's a real doctor, God!" Jenny said, a bit embarrassed, once again Jethro rolled his eyes. He couldn't believe Jenny just took the doctors side.
"Is anyone gonna tell me what happened, because we don't have much time left here" The doctor took a look at his watch. "Jethro why don't you continue"
"Fine! You wanna know why we're here, why we have all this problems?!" He started to raise his voice higher and higher. "The only one reason is because she's keeping secrets from me!" He pointed at Jenny, who was just chocked.
"You're blaming me for this!?" "It is as much your fault that is mine!" Now it was time for her to defend herself. They starred at each other, waiting for the other one to break down and admit their faults, but neither of them would.
Jenny took a pause before she continued again. "What secret did I keep from you this time?!" She did gestures with her hands.
"…I found the photo…in your drawer, next to your bedside" He didn't hesitate to answer that question.
Jenny couldn't believe it, he found it. He found the one thing she was afraid of telling him about. It was much worse than the Patrick situation. She didn't know what to tell him, let alone where to start. She didn't want him to know. She would rather die before he could find out about it; she didn't want to open up those old wounds again.
"Cat got your tongue Jen…, what's on that photo?" He asked her. When she didn't answer, he rubbed his face roughly and stood up. Took one last look at her and the doctor, then turned on his heels and walked away, with one unanswered question.
3 Days later…
Squadroom, noon
"McGee! Need you to do something" Gibbs asked him.
"Sure thing boss" Tim replied.
"Get me everything about this woman from '98 to '99" He handed McGee an old photo of a woman. At first Tim didn't realize who it was, but even with the long curled hair, he saw it.
"Eehhmm boss?" Gibbs looked up at him.
"What?"
"Isn't this…"
"…Uhuh…" Gibbs interrupted him. "Any more questions?" Gibbs narrowed his eyes at McGee, and he nodded and started his task from the boss.
Gibbs watched as his agent worked, doing something both of them felt uncomfortable with, but at the same time he felt that he needed to do this, there were too many unanswered questions. And the only person who knew them was not going to tell him.
Ziva and Tony were walking out of the elevator and heading to the squadroom, as usual, they have arguments. As soon as they saw McGee working his ass off, they're attention turned to him.
"Probie! What're you working on? We don't have a case, or do we?"
"No we don't Tony, it's something for Gibbs" McGee answered him without looking away from his computer.
"Something we missed McGee?" Ziva asked him, but he kept quiet. Ziva and Tony slowly approached McGee, that's when they saw the small photo of someone they know. The photo was old and the woman looked younger, but still, they knew very well who she was.
Tony looked from the photo to McGee with confusing eyes. "Why would you a picture of the Director?"
At first, he didn't want to answer Tony's question, but he felt like he couldn't get away with a lie, not this one. It took a while before he answered the question that was asked. "Gibbs asked me to look into her, from the last 10-15 years ago…" McGee finally said.
Tony and Ziva shared another confusing look. "But why would he want to do that McGee?" It was Ziva's turn to ask.
"I don't know, he just gave me the photo and the instructions"
"You don't think something's up right?" Tony was the one to ask both Ziva and McGee. But before any of them could open their mouth, they heard Gibbs from behind.
"McGee!? Did I say you could stop?" Gibbs asked him, at the same time as he was walking towards them with two cups of coffee in his hands, when he reached McGee's desk, he gave the other one to McGee.
"Thanks boss" McGee awkwardly took it.
"Find anything?" Gibbs asked him from behind.
"Not much boss, but it looks like there's more around that time"
"Something you want us to help you with boss?" Tony asked as he walked over to them, following by Ziva.
Gibbs looked at them, hesitating a little, then replied: "I'll let you know" And with that he left the squadroom.
"You were right Tony, something is definitely up" Ziva said looking at Tony.
The Director's office…
Ducky and Jenny were discussing different cases Ducky was about to perform, when Gibbs went in unannounced, disturbing them and of course they were not surprised about it.
By the look on Jethro's face, Ducky knew that he wanted to talk to Jenny. The both friends looked at each other, which was a signal for Ducky to leave.
"I believe that we could take this another time Director, as I have a lunch meeting coming up any minute now" Ducky excused himself.
"What?" Jenny asked him rather quickly. Instead of answering her, he just took a walk around her office, to clear his mind thinking about what he was about to say to her, after all he didn't want it to come out in the wrong way.
"Tell me you love me…" It just came out of his mouth. He was right across the room, facing her, looking deep into her green eyes.
"Jethro what is going on?" She was feeling a bit scared, her voice stumbling. "What are you doing?" She asked him a lot of questions, but never gave him a chance to answer any of them.
He finally stopped at the conference table, putting both of his hands on top of it, sighing and grumbling. "I…I just…want you to tell me that you love and trust me…"
"I…I do..." Now she was not sure what he wanted with this conversation. "Jethro you're scaring me here, could you please tell me what the hell is going on!"
"It's getting to messy Jen"
"Agreed!" "Any suggestions?" Jenny asked a concern Gibbs.
"We can't seem to find any solutions for this"
"As I said before: It could take months or years to repair this, and it's only been what? A couple of weeks…" She said kind of disappointing at him. "Are you already giving up on us?"
He let out a small laugh, hoping that she wouldn't hear, but she did, thinking that all of this was just a joke to him. "I don't know where we stand. It's not clear to me"
"Well that's no different from saying you've giving up on us" She stated.
Jenny frowned. "I have a meeting with SECNAV about an OP any minute, I think we should take this conversation another time" She said packing her stuff and headed to MTAC, leaving Gibbs frustrated and angry about this whole situation.
The next morning…
Gibbs was in his basement, working on his boat. Hoping to clear his head a little bit after yesterday's talk with Jen. Then his phone started ringing. "Yea Gibbs"
"Boss, dead marine a civilian" It was Tony, telling him they've got a case.
"Be right there!" And with that Gibbs hung up.
At the crime scene…
By the time Gibbs arrived to the scene, his team was already there, including some local cops and civilians.
"DiNozzo, McGee, David! What'd we got?" He asked his team.
"A commander Norman" Tony was the one to be the first to ID the dead marine.
"The civilian?" Gibbs asked, but none of the three field agents seem to want to answer his very simple question. When Gibbs was about to have it, Tim spoke up.
"Uh the civilian's named is Sarah Harold boss, but when I ran her ID, I found something else…" McGee stopped. When Gibbs gave him the stare to continue, he spoke up again. "She was also an ATF agent, so that means they are gonna wanna have a joint investigation, which means you'll have to…"
"Corporate with my ex-wife, again" Gibbs said with a grumpy voice, wishing Fornell was there with him.
Back at the NCIS building…
The first thing Jethro did when he arrived back at the building was to go straight to Jen's office, hoping to talk to her before she gets to meet Diane.
And of course he didn't bother knocking; besides Cynthia wasn't there anyway.
He found her going over some papers on her desk; she obviously seemed to be busy and didn't want to be disturbed. But he didn't care about that either.
"Director? Need to talk to you" He asked her, standing right above her.
"Can this wait agent Gibbs, as you might see I'm very busy at the moment" She said, without even so looking at him. She was obviously still emotionally heart about what happened at the therapy section and the talk at her office yesterday.
"Not really, it's about our current case…"
That caught her attention. She was hoping to postpone their personal talk till further notice, so she was glad to hear that he wanted to talk about something else than their issues.
"What about it?"
Jethro glanced over to her. "We have a joint investigation with another agency"
Jenny waited for him to keep talking, but no sound came out of that gorgeous mouth of his. "So are you gonna tell me which agency it is?!"
"It's an ATF agent, found dead next to our marine" He avoided saying his ex-wife's name in that sentence.
"And?" She asked him, knowing what he meant, but she was of course only teasing him a little.
He narrowed his eyes at her hard, for teasing him, making him say her name, starring at her, with devils in his eyes, knowing that this will definitely amuse her.
"You know damn well what comes next!"
"Oh you mean you'll gonna have to work with your ex-wife…" She said, with an amusing voice, which made Gibbs even more irritated, but Jenny wouldn't think of stopping just right here, she was gonna have some fun with this case.
"You think this is funny do you?" Jenny raised her eyebrows at him, as her answer. Jethro knew that this was amusing to her. You could see her face was full of joy.
And before both Jen and Jethro could take their little conversation any further, a phone rang; it was her assistant, Cynthia. She must have been back from her break.
"Director? There is an ATF agent here to see you ma'am" Cynthia informed her through the phone. Both Jenny and Jethro looked at each other. They were both kind of afraid of what's gonna happen next. Because they all know how Diane think of Jenny and what she accused Jethro and Jenny of.
"Let her in Cynthia!"
The door opened and in came the ex-wife from hell, Diane.
"Jethro, Director" She greeted Jethro and Jenny with devil eyes. With her presents, it made everyone very uncomfortable.
"Agent Sterling, glad you could make it" Jenny greeted her back, and everyone knew that that sentence was nothing but sarcastic. Even Jethro narrowed his eyebrows at her for a second. "Agent Sterling, you will be working under Agent Gibbs. Is there going to be any problem?" Jenny continued to inform them about the situation.
"Course, no problem, Jethro usually is on top of everything" Diane stabbed her words right in to Jenny's face. But Jenny just smiled and answered her back.
"Well I don't about you Mrs. Sterling, but usually Jethro is under me, and I'm the one on top, doing all the work" Jenny fired back with a big smirk on her face, which made both Jethro and Diane stunned by her words. "I want this case over and done with as soon as possible, understand?" Jenny changed to a serious matter and the both agents nodded in understanding. But Diane had to open her mouth one last time.
"Why, so you can get rid of me?" She said with sarcasm in her voice.
But Jenny just smiled and replied back. "Something like that…" was the last thing she said before she signaled them to get out of her office. Diane was the first one to go out; Jethro still had his eyes on his lover who sat in her big leather chair, amusing herself.
"We'll talk about this later" Jethro said to Jenny and walked out of the door.
Down at the squad-room…
Tony, Ziva and Tim were sitting at their desks, gossiping about their joint investigation with Gibbs' ex-wife.
"Oh here they come!" Tony whispered. "They already look like they had a fight already" Tony frowned.
"It's gonna be a long one guys" Tim pouted.
"Don't say that McGoo! It's bad luck!" Ziva and Tim just looked at him like he was out of his mind.
"Would you two just zip it up! They are coming this way" Ziva said to them, and the three of them went back to their positions.
Gibbs was walking towards the bullpen with Diane by his side, not that he enjoyed it though.
"What'd we got on the victims?" He said and stood by in front of the big screen and of course still with Diane by his side.
"I'm surprised Jethro" Diane said to him, and he just gave her an irritating and questioning look. "Never accured to me that you like to be bossing around with" Diane said with a smirk, referring to Jenny of course. "You know considering you never did what I told you when we were married" She continued to speculate. "She must be very special" That last one she said with a sarcastic voice, never really meant it, what she really thought was that slut, had an affair with her then husband. And now they seem to be back together in bed, typical.
Jethro almost had it with this women, he looked deep in her eyes and said three powerful words. "Yes she is!" And with that he turned to observe the screen. Jethro's words to Diane stunned everyone, even his own team, whom was gloating and smiling.
Jethro turned around, gave them a stare when they didn't gave him any information when asked. And they got it right away.
"Hum right, uh the victims" Tony coughed. "Our commander Norman has been stationed on USS Tripoli. No wife, kid or any alive family members, all dead. He's on leave right now, since two days ago" Tony said, and then Gibbs' eyes turned to Agent Sterling, signaled to her that it was her turn to start talk.
"Right, guess its mine turn. This is Agent Sarah Harold. She's been working for us for about 5 years now and it's very talented, some of the men are even a bit terrified by her presents" Diane informed them.
"McGee! Give me anything about any connections between these two. DiNozzo, David! You two go talk to their neighbors, any information is important right now" Gibbs informed each and every one of them their instructions.
"No, I'll go talk with Sarah's family and friends, they know who I am" Diane made her statement. At first Gibbs glanced at her, but realized that maybe she was right about this.
"Fine" Was all that he said, before heading up those stairs.
"He's not seriously gonna talk to her when we have an important case going on here right?" Diane said, kind of annoyed by the fact that they can't separate work and personal matters.
"Maybe he just miss her and want to give her a kiss" Tony said, playfully, knowing that it might annoy her out. But in return Diane just stared at him, and Tony got really terrified by it. And with that settled the three agents plus Diane got to work.
Jenny's Office…
"I guess the reason you're here is because our talk?" Jenny asked him, and he nodded lightly. "Right, never thought that your 'Later' would be so soon"
"You still want therapy?" He asked her.
"Well…It's seemed to help the first time; maybe we need to try harder, like I said earlier, it's only been a couple of weeks" She said before taking a breath, and then continued again. "And that's not exactly trying hard now is it?"
Gibbs just stood there, listening to what she had to say. "I know that you don't fancy the word 'Patience' much, but honestly Gibbs, anyone could figure it out, that this sort of things needs a lot of time to resolve".
"Well…as you just said yourself, patience is not my strongest side" He growled.
Jenny moved closer and closer to him, putting her hands on his chest and looked deeply in to his ocean blue eyes. "Do you trust me? And love me?"
He hesitated a little by the first one, and Jenny could almost see it, but then he decided to answer her. "Yes" It later became easily for him to answer, realizing that, overall he trusted her with his life.
"Good" She gave him a passionate kiss on the mouth. It didn't take long before he gave in to her powers. "You willing to wait for that?" She said, seductively.
Jethro never had this feeling before, but now he was officially sexual frustrated by his boss. "What time do you finish today?" He mumbled between kisses.
"Why? You have somewhere you need to be special agent Gibbs?"
"Yea, a romantic evening with my lady tonight"
"Well, I guess she'll have to wait for you, because I can't let you go just yet…"
"No problem…" And with that they took the kiss further and further. The next thing they know, they were lying on the couch, with Gibbs's hands all over her body.
It didn't take long for the both of them to start undressing one another.
"You made it easy for my today" He whispered, looking down on her mini skirt. Jenny let out a laugh.
Down at in the bullpen…
"Where's Gibbs, shouldn't he be back already?" Diane wondered, with no patience. She looked at the three agents; each and every one of them didn't seem to wonder.
"Maybe he still talking to the Director" Tony stated.
"That long? I don't think so" Diane said with raised eyebrows. "Jethro's man with a few words. A conversation with him is like two seconds…literally"
Tony, Ziva and McGee didn't answer, they knew that she was right, but they also knew that he and the director are together, and what do people do when they are in love and staying alone together in a room with a couch, there could only be doing two things. One, they could be fighting over something or they're having sex. Considering there was no loud noises coming out from there it must be the second option (hahahaha). And they all thought about it, especially Tony.
"When is he gonna come back, someone needs to get him down here, we actually have a lot of work to do!" Diane complained.
Before Tony or anyone could answer her, they saw him walking down the stairs.
"Here he comes" Ziva said, noticing the smile on his face. She slowly walked to Tony. "You were right Tony, for once" She said, knowing that Tony was right when he thought about what might have happened up there, of course, it wasn't hard for a ninja chic to figure that out, as it was glowing all over his face.
"Had a nice talk Jethro?" Diane asked him, annoyed by his look on his face. But all Gibbs did was smile.
"Tony, Ziver! Find anything?" Gibbs got serious.
"His neighbors didn't exactly say anything boss. Just that he was mostly alone, wasn't really a chatty person, you know…kinda like you boss" Tony said playfully, trying to lighten up the atmosphere.
Gibbs gave him a stare and that certainly shut him up. "Sorry boss"
"They also noticed that commander Norman usually kept for himself, did not talk to anyone. They also said that there were a woman who often goes to his house, usually not going home until the next day" Ziva took over and informed Gibbs and the other.
"Sarah's friends and family said the same thing, she was never home, always gone somewhere else" Diane said.
"McGee! Find any connections between these two?" Everybody turned their heads towards McGee.
"Just a minute boss…" McGee said, as he was still typing the words with his keyboard. "Got it!" He stood up, took the remote and pointed it towards the screen. "I found these pictures, taking by the traffic cameras" Everyone was listening carefully as McGee talked. "I've got a bunch of pictures with them holding hands and kissing each other. It's obvious that they were lovers boss!" He said, gloating, rewarding himself for finding this helpful information for Gibbs, and everybody knows that Gibbs loves information that could help solve the case.
"Good job McGee" And with those words said, Tim smiled.
"Wait boss! I have more"
"Well…what are you waiting for…elf lord" You could hear giggling behind Gibbs's back.
"Hum right…I checked Commander Norman's calls. And it seems to be from a woman named Claire Monroe. And they shared a lot of calls that usually last for hours. And they seemed to talk almost every day"
"Any idea who she might be McGee?" Ziva asked him.
It took him awhile before answering. "Claire Monroe works for the FBI!"
Everyone sighed and frowned.
"Great, now the other ex-husband is involved too…" Diane frowned.
But Gibbs just thought that this was a good thing. Now Fornell can share his awkwardness with Diane. He smiled to himself. And of course Diane saw it.
"What are you smiling about?" She said, and that made his smile fade away. She was definitely not looking forward to this, considering how it went last time the three of them had a joint investigation. It was gonna be interesting to see how it turns out, if they even survive this case.
TBC…