CHAPTER 7: TIME SPENT APART

"No," Gibbs said.

We all looked around at him, surprised. "No?" Theas said, sounding as though he was unsure he remembered the proper meaning of the word.

"No, I'm good. I'm staying here," Gibbs said.

"Why?" Theas asked.

Gibbs scoffed. "We've been going for a while, man," he said. "I'm tired. I'm going to take a nap. Let me know how it goes."

I tried to catch his eye, but he didn't even look in my direction as he stalked off to the housing area past the lab. Sarah and I looked at each other, neither of us sure what to make of this. Luca and Admiral McGee looked rather nonplussed about the situation, but Sloane was quite concerned as she watched Gibbs disappear down a hallway.

"Uh, okay," Theas said, doing his best to recover from this change of plans. "Well, it'll be a little bit more time consuming, but the job can still be done with just the two of you," he said to Sarah and I.

"Wait, what?" Sloane said. "Why can't they wait until someone else is available to help them?"

"No, it's fine," Sarah assured her. "It's cool, we'll do it."

I glanced at her, and while I wasn't sure what to make of her decision, I couldn't pretend to be disappointed.

Theas studied her for several seconds before nodding. "Alright," he said. He pressed a button on his watch and opened a portal. "Come with me, please."

Sarah and I followed him through the portal, and it was quite possibly the strangest sensation I had ever experienced. My stomach seemed to be breakdancing while my skin felt like it was constricting around my muscles. The experience only lasted for maybe a second, and when we came out of the portal, I looked around at our new surroundings. We were deep in a forest, clearly miles away from any form of civilization. Wildlife called out all around us, and Sarah slipped her hand into mine as we looked around.

"Where are we?" I asked Theas.

"Russia," he answered.

"Oh," Sarah replied. "I always wanted to go to Russia."

While this was indeed true, Sarah had expressed the desire to go to Russia many times, I assumed her ideal vacation consisted of Moscow, not the middle of the forest.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

Theas pointed directly overhead, and we looked up just before our faces fell. Populating the trees above us was a group of the strangest animals I had ever seen. They resembled slugs, yet they had six legs each, and they were bright green in color. Sarah and I watched as they nibbled the foliage with tiny mandibles. They didn't look particularly dangerous, but there were hundreds of them.

"They're beautiful," Sarah said breathlessly.

"What are they?" I asked.

"They're called Cadetises," Theas answered.

"I've never seen them before," Sarah commented.

"That's because they're not found in this universe," Theas informed us.

"What do we have to do?" I asked.

Theas typed on his watch, and a portal opened next to us. "This leads back to their own universe," he explained. "Round them up and send them back home."

"Why?" Sarah asked coldly. "They're not hurting anything. Why can't they just stay here?"

"Listen, I really get it," Theas conceded. "But a lot of things can happen by allowing an Anomaly to persist. The most common is that you're going to introduce pathogens to this universe that beings here aren't able to build a resistance against. Worst case, you're looking at an extinction event."

Sarah folded her arms indignantly. She still didn't like what we were about to do, but she had no further arguments to raise.

"How are we doing this?" I asked.

Theas walked forward to demonstrate. He pulled out a device that looked like a mix between a gun and a slingshot. Theas pulled the trigger on the mechanism, and out of the two prongs fired what looked like an energy net. The net shot straight up into the air, ensnaring four Cadetises at once. The net still had a line connected to Theas's device, and Theas reeled the net back in so the captured Cadetises hung off the end of the device. Theas walked over, and he pressed another button on the device that ejected the net into the portal.

"That was humane," Sarah said dryly. "So I guess we just hope someone's on the other side to free them?

Theas shook his head. "The net disappears a few seconds after it's ejected," he explained. "They'll be free as soon as they hit the other side."

I saw no further complications to this, and while Sarah still scowled, she raised no more arguments. Theas provided us both with those slingshot devices, which were known as Trappershots, and we were set to work. It was an easy enough operation, but even after the first few times of us capturing a bundle of Cadetises and returning them to their universe, there did not seem to be an end to them.

"I have to report in to my superiors," Theas told us. "I'll be back in two hours to check in on you and help you finish up, but if you need me before then, my number's in your phones. Just call me."

I looked around incredulously. "I don't think we have service out here."

Theas scoffed. "That's funny." He pressed a button on his watch before walking through the portal, leaving Sarah and I alone with the Cadetises. We looked around at them all, and I then spotted Sarah looking at me. I took aim with my Trappershot, firing and capturing half a dozen Cadetises. As I sent them home through the portal, I said, "What's up?"

She shook her head, trapping another group of five. "I just wanted to talk. Away from everybody else."

"You act like if you dared to have some intimacy between us, someone might try to kill us," I stated with a dry smile.

"Yeah, something like that," she replied. We continued gathering Cadetises while we worked. "Look, I just want to know how you're doing," she stated.

I shrugged. "That's a loaded question."

"I know," she assured me. "This is a lot, Jack. It's really a lot."

I nodded. "Yeah, I just wonder what it's going to turn into."

"How much worse it's going to get?" Sarah clarified. I nodded again, and she gave me a look that quite plainly expressed her agreement. "What are we going to do about Algaltha and his cronies?" she asked me.

I let out a deep, anxious breath. "Unfortunately I don't think there's a whole lot we can do about them. It's going to be up to Gibbs and the others."

Sarah developed a certain expression on her face that I couldn't place. "I don't know how I feel about him," she stated.

I couldn't help but smile. "You know, it's amazing how much he is exactly the same as how he's portrayed on the show," I pondered.

"Well, that's all fine and dandy," she stated. "I just don't like how he thinks he's better than everyone else, you know?"

"Yeah, I get it," I agreed. "He's pretty cocky, but I guess that's his character flaw, if you will. If you had watched more of the show, you'd know he is genuinely out to do some good."

"I don't doubt that," she conceded. "It just irritates me how he looks down on us, especially you."

This statement caused me to raise an eyebrow. "I don't know about all that."

"Really?" she said. "Remember what he said about you having to learn to shoot? I guess he was a soldier, so that makes him the leading authority on how to fight monsters. He's as in over his head as any of us, and yet he won't admit it."

I hadn't really thought about it like this. Sure, the comment from him had maintained a presence in the back of my mind, but I had put it up to just his age. "Well," I replied, "maybe I just need to prove to him that he's wrong."

Sarah gave me a shrewd expression. "That'll either be really good, or really bad."

"Look, if this war is as bad as Theas says it is, I don't see a way for us to avoid it," I told her.

"Well, I think avoiding it is pretty much out of the question," she informed me.

I looked at her. "What do you mean?"

Sarah shrugged, avoiding eye contact. "We already have four of them staying in our house, and it doesn't seem like they're going anywhere anytime soon. If we've got more of them on the way and no clue how to get them home, it seems like we're in this for the long haul."

I watched her as she ejected a bundle of Cadetises through the portal. I could tell she had a lot of opinions on the matter which she wasn't sharing. She was not someone who appreciated drama in any capacity, much less a massive war across universes. I had to imagine her patience with this would not last long.

"What do you think caused all this?" I asked her.

"I don't have any idea," she answered, a note of anxiety in her tone. "I really hope we find it soon, though."

I didn't want to voice to her that I somehow doubted very much that the cause would be discovered at any point in the near future. We continued to work in relative silence, focusing on getting this task finished.

IN THE EYES OF THE MULTIVERSE:

Gibbs finished cleaning his Colt, and he put it back together and placed it in the small black safe that sat on his dresser. He looked around at the room he was designated to rack in. It was larger than his living room back home. It had an enormous, queen size bed which Gibbs was hesitant to lay in. He had a desk on one side of the room and a television on the other side. Gibbs observed all of this, still having trouble processing all of it. A knock came at the door, and Gibbs looked around with his eyes narrowed suspiciously. It was a brief moment that he considered getting his pistol back out of the safe, but he strolled over to the door.

He turned the handle and pulled the door open just wide enough for him to peer out.

"Hey," Sloane said with a halfhearted smile.

Gibbs couldn't help but smile, and he opened the door to allow her inside. Sloane stepped in and looked around at Gibbs's room, observing the layout. "This sure is...you," Sloane stated.

Gibbs watched her with a bemused grin, and he said, "Still analyzing me, are you, Jack?"

She gave him a shrewd smile but didn't respond. She spotted the safe with the pistol and the cabinet in the corner that contained his sniper rifle along with several hundred rounds of ammunition. She spent several more seconds in siltn analysis, and she then turned to face him. "What's going on?" she asked.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"How come you didn't go with Jack and Sarah?" Sloane asked.

Gibbs shrugged, turning to his dresser and opening the drawers. As he started organizing the clothes inside, Sloane continued to watch him. "What's going on in your head, Jethro?" she asked, no longer masking her concern.

"I don't know, Jack," Gibbs said under his breath. He avoided looking at her for a moment while he finished his distraction, and he closed the dresser drawer to look at her. "I'm just lost."

"Yeah?" Sloane said, taking a step towards him. "What are you lost on?"

"This whole thing!" Gibbs said, becoming angry. "Jack, we're just entertainment to these people! Our whole lives are open to them. I guarantee they know about Wingos."

Sloane was taken aback by this. She stared at Gibbs and said, "What do you mean?"

"Cate," Gibbs stated in a low voice.

Sloane's brain worked furiously to process this, and her eyes then widened. "Oh."

Gibbs then retold the story of when they went after Admiral McGee and when Jack Fosse showed Gibbs the depiction of Special Agent Caitlin Todd being shot down by a sniper in a confrontation on mission. By the time he finished, Sloane's mouth was hanging half open. Her eyes looked between his, and Gibbs held her stare for a moment before looking down. Sloane's eyes closed in a mixture of pain and exasperation, and she opened them and continued watching Gibbs. She took another moment to compile her thoughts, and she asked, "So, what is your emotional response to that?"
"I don't know," he answered. He looked around, and Sloane could see the anguish in his eyes.

"You know, you've only spoken to me briefly about your experiences with Cate," Sloane observed. "Anytime I've tried to press you on it, you've shut me out."

"Jack, it's not anything worth discussing," Gibbs stated firmly.

"Well, maybe it is if it's impacting you to this degree," Sloane countered. "So, let's see. Are you angry at Jack for exploiting your trauma? Or are you disoriented at being universally displaced? Or are you anxious because you don't know what the best next move is?"

"I don't know," Gibbs said. "All of it?"

Sloane nodded, watching him closely. "Well," she said, "I can't condone the means. But I think Jack's actions probably saved you all from a lot of trouble."

"Yeah, I know that," Gibbs confirmed.

Sloane stepped closer to him, and she raised her hand to his cheek. Gibbs held eye contact with her, feeling her hand caressing his cheek. "I'm sorry you had to relive that," she said to him.

"Yeah, and now I don't know what to think," Gibbs said.

"What's that feel like to you?" Sloane asked in a soft voice.

"It makes me feel like a damn zoo animal," Gibbs answered. "I feel like I'm on display for Jack and Sarah, and everybody else in this universe."

"I get it," Sloane assured him. "Honestly I'm really struggling to come to terms with all of this too."

"And then," Gibbs started, but then he trailed off. He shook his head, staring down at the bed. Sloane put a hand on his shoulder, silently encouraging him to continue. Finally, Gibbs said, "It's not even so much about being away from home. I've done that, I can deal with that. It's the fact that they know everything about us. They know our whole lives. Things our best friends don't even know."

"Yeah," Sloane breathed, giving him a deep look. "But is that Jack's fault?"

Gibbs finally managed to look at her again. "No," he finally decided. "No, it isn't. And what he did...probably saved all of us."

Sloane nodded in agreement. "It sucks," she said. "Having our emotions used against us, used as a means to an end, it's awful. It's a horrible feeling."

Gibbs stared at her, as though seeing her through a new lens. "I guess you would know."

Sloane gave him a wry smile. "I think," she said, pondering, "I think we've got a long road ahead of us. But maybe we're not with the worst group of people to do it with."

They held eye contact for a moment, and Gibbs said, "Maybe you're right, Jack."

Sloane nodded, and without warning, without thinking about it, Gibbs kissed her. Sloane missed nothing. She put her hand on his chest and kissed him back with all of her passion. In that moment, they felt many of their worries dissipate, the full weight of their reunion having finally landed.

It seemed like entirely too soon that Gibbs pulled away. Sloane was smiling widely. Gibbs couldn't help but return it. "I'll be back for more of those," Sloane stated.

Gibbs's smile widened in amusement, and he watched as she turned around and walked away. She gave him one last playful look as she disappeared out of the room, closing the door behind her.