Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Jenny Shepard goes down in a hail of bullets.

It is a violent death. A perfect punctuation on a violent life. Her mistakes came back to bite her, and she doesn’t flinch away from that hard truth.

Between one agonising breath and another she finds herself in world of darkness, suspended without senses; no smell, no touch, no sight, no sound, nothing…

There is nothing to anchor her and fear creeps in. Is this all that is left? The dark? Nothingness?

Is this to be her afterlife?

If it is, is she honestly surprised, Jenny muses regretfully. She’s made a lot of mistakes. Her life seems to be a patchwork of one lie stitched together with another.

She cannot remember the last time there was honesty.

Before her father died, perhaps. Her childhood and her teenage years feel like halcyon days; love and laughter, the comfort of a mother when she was hurt, a protective father as a shield. She feels like she spent her twenties in a bubble, a blur of college, of studying law and international politics; happy to be close to her parents in Washington D.C. and making a life for herself with their steady presence woven into the background.

But had any of that been honest? Had she fooled herself into believing in her father’s honour and her mother’s happiness?

She hadn’t seen anything amiss before her father’s death; before her mother sank into a cycle of depression and anti-depressants; never surfacing for too long before going under until the inevitable end.

At the time, her grandparents had done their best to support Jenny, but their gentle care hadn’t been what she had needed.

She’d been furious, angry at the world, at her mother, at her father…

She’d been blind to the truth in a different way after than before. If she’d viewed reality through rose-tinted glasses before her father’s death, after, she had been determined to paint her own reality in strokes of vengeance as much as her mother had numbed hers to oblivion with every pill.

The trajectory of her life had been sown in her fervent denial that her beloved Daddy would ever have chosen to leave them. She had needed someone else to blame. Searching for that someone had led her to NCIS. Once she’d uncovered the role of Rene Benoit, had jumped to believing he had murdered her father, she had spent the rest of her career planning and plotting to bring about his demise.

An eye for an eye.

A life for a life.

She hadn’t minded or cared about any of the damage she’d done in her wake. It wasn’t just the direct damage, Jenny thinks, but the indirect, the collateral damage.

She’d run NCIS in a way that best suited her mission, but had that truly served the people she had sworn to protect? Had it benefited the men and women under her command?

In hindsight, Jenny knows she was wrong. What was the saying, she thinks wearily; she had been wrong at the top of her voice.

She knows it is not the life her father wanted for her. He had dreamed of her being a lawyer, putting criminals away, a District Attorney, a Federal Judge, maybe even the Supreme Court one day…

“You have the ambition and drive to do great things, Jenny.”

But then he’d died and torn down that possible future for her.

Jenny feels as though she should be sobbing, but she lacks a body to breathe, to cry, to hit things with her fists…

Hasn’t she done enough of that in the life she had lived, Jenny wonders sadly.

Shooting Rene Benoit hadn’t been the cure for her inner fury. It had been a moment’s fleeting satisfaction before the reality that her anger still burned in her took her back under.

She wonders how much of that fury had been the brain disease; how much had been her anger towards her father for leaving her; how much had been her own toxic need to lose herself in vengeance rather than face the truth that her father hadn’t much cared in the end what his suicide meant for Jenny and her mother.

If he had meant it to be redemption, he had been wrong. His last act wasn’t honourable. It didn’t mend his oath-breaking. It only compounded his poor judgement. She’s almost surprised that with clarity of thought, free from her disease and obsession, she has little sympathy for her father.

Perhaps she has some empathy because hadn’t she made the same poor judgements of compromising her morals and ethics for expediency to get information? Hadn’t she broken her own oaths? Hadn’t she in the end taken the same decision to end her life rather than fight for it? Her weapon had been the assassins determined to kill her anyway instead of a single gun in her own hand (or an endless supply of bottles of pills).

Her only relief is that she had managed to find a way to keep Tony and Ziva out of the firefight.

It wasn’t supposed to have been them on the protection detail. Someone had changed the assignments. She suspects it was Jethro, giving her the best protection he had to hand because he couldn’t go with her himself.

And if her efforts to leave Tony and Ziva behind only end up hurting them?

The thought whispers through her head insidiously.

Images flicker around her breaking the dark: Jethro surrounded by a new team, Leon Vance looming over them from the balcony; Ziva singing in a club undercover and back in the life she’d been trying to leave behind; and, Tony…

Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo abandoned at sea, miserable and alone, blaming himself…knowing others blamed him too; Vance, Gibbs, too many people who didn’t know or care that she’d ordered him and Ziva to leave her and only saw that she’d died on his watch.

Even her attempt to protect Tony has failed him, Jenny realises; it has damaged his relationship with his mentor, his reputation, his own self-worth. It is another wound that she has inflicted upon him. She sees the beginning of an unspoken schism between him and Gibbs which will never truly be mended, another crack in their relationship to add to the one she’d already caused with the Jeanne Benoit op.

She’d hurt Tony again.

She wishes she could close her eyes to his pain even as it continues to play out in front of her as he returns to the team.

Without the press of her disease, her own guilt and remorse bubbles up inside her. 

The images fade away leaving her in darkness again.

Of all of her regrets, Tony is at the top of the pile. She’d used him and his talents without a care for the hurt and harm it would do to him in her pursuit of Rene Benoit.

Tony had always wanted to do the right thing for the victims; had always had his moral compass pointed in the right direction no matter how much of the grey crept in to challenge it.

Jethro had called him the best investigator, the best agent that he had ever worked with. That had stung Jenny’s pride a bit, she can admit that now.

Maybe, Jenny muses, her jealousy had played a part in her actions too; allowed her to ignore the harm she was inflicting; to be smug that Gibbs’ self-proclaimed best investigator was blind to her machinations.

Not blind, Jenny realises with the benefit of more hindsight, just trapped.

She’d purposefully isolated him when Jethro had left for Mexico; purposefully undermined his position as the team lead of the Major Case Response Team by insisting McGee be Senior Field Agent and by placing Michelle Lee on the team; by talking him out of the disciplinary measures he should have taken with McGee and Ziva who had in their own separate ways taken advantage of him in his struggle to find his feet; by doing nothing herself to sort out Abby’s and Ducky’s poor behaviour. She’d manipulated him into the undercover work, manipulated him to get close to Jeanne even as he had raised valid concerns. She hadn’t cared if he’d gotten hurt, hadn’t cared that he’d gotten more hurt by hurting Jeanne…

Oh, she’d had a momentary pang of remorse and self-hatred when his car had exploded and they’d thought he’d been killed, but that had disappeared like smoke when he’d lived.

Jenny knows that in her muddled brain, she had thought talking with Jeanne and getting the younger woman to admit that she had falsely accused Tony of murdering her father was enough to make amends, but now…

She has enough clarity to know that she was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

She was wrong to use him for her own gain; wrong to ignore the hurt she’d caused him with her decisions.

She wishes she could go back and change things. If she had truly been focused on doing the right thing as Director of NCIS, then she should have focused on nurturing Tony.

Was that what she would do differently?

The question drifts into her mind, not insidiously like the other, but curious, seeking…

Yes, Jenny thinks decisively, grateful that her thoughts lack the stranglehold of her illness, are clear and sharp. If she had her time over, she would nurture Tony and she would be the NCIS Director she should have been…

So be it.

The words chime like a million bells are being rung and…

Jenny wakes up with a gasp and a thudding heart.

o-O-o

May 2005

Jenny knows there hadn’t been a moment to consider when she would have preferred to have landed back in the past, but the day of her appointment as the NCIS Director is not the one she would have chosen.

She’s not sure what moment she would have chosen, but waking up and realising the date had been like taking an ice bucket of water to the face.

She takes a breath as she makes her way into the Navy Yard, noting the increased security because Ari has fired on the forensics lab already that morning.

She’s due to meet with Tom Morrow and SecNav in MTAC to do the handover. There is a mission to take down a terrorist that is due to be executed. Her last mission as an operative, and her first as the incoming Director of NCIS.

After that…

That’s when she and Jethro meet again.

Jenny stops the elevator and takes a breath. She takes another. She can feel the oppressive pressure of her illness already itching in her mind, but it feels like it is secured behind plexiglass. There and evident but with enough of a barrier from her thoughts that she can make sense of things which she had ignored before in her quest to destroy Benoit.   

She’s committed to doing things differently, to making things right. Perhaps that begins right then.

She has already fielded a call from Ziva that morning asking for help and trying to lay doubt about the Ari situation. Jenny hates that she had fallen for it the last time. She figures that the intel Ziva found on the terrorist and that whole operation has been neatly timed to get Ziva into Washington at the same time as Ari.

She’d spent a lot of time cultivating Ziva as a contact to get Mossad’s intel on Benoit. In her self-congratulation, she’d missed that Ziva and Eli David were cultivating her at the same time.

And Jethro, Jenny realises.

The whole mess of Ari culminates with Ziva shooting him in Jethro’s basement to save Jethro’s life. Yet, if Jenny looks at the situation objectively, Ziva’s action consolidates her position with Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs. He would never have her on his team otherwise, even if Jenny orders it. Ziva has helped Ari. She’s profiled the team for him using intel Jenny had given Mossad on the MCRT as a quid pro quo for intel on Benoit.

Hot shame churns in her belly and bile rises in her throat. She’s as complicit as Ziva in the fate of Caitlin Todd, Jenny realises. Certainly most of the information she had provided had been data that Mossad could have collated without her, she thinks as she tries to comfort herself, standard profiles that they could have gotten from observation and Ari himself, but she had given them information nonetheless.

She takes a breath and restarts the elevator.

She cannot undo what has already been done and set in motion, Jenny thinks. She can only do what she committed to do in the dark place; to be a better NCIS Director and to nurture Tony instead of harming him.    

Ziva killing Ari is the first wedge between Jethro and Tony, she realises suddenly.

She doesn’t doubt that Tony surmised the truth of it in her last life. Ziva herself had complained about how he’d been suspicious of her for months after her appointment to the team. In Jethro using Ziva for his back-up, in keeping the secret from Tony, the infallible Special Agent Gibbs had actually created the first crack in his partnership with his Senior Field Agent.

No wonder the universe or higher power that dropped her back into her life to make things right, dropped her back on that particular day.

Maybe it is too late for her to save Caitlin Todd, maybe it was Todd’s fate, but it is the beginning of her time as Director and the beginning of her relationship with Tony.

She and Ziva had both written him off as a rich misogynistic playboy acting at cops and robbers. Jenny had revised her opinion. Jethro’s own endorsement of Tony and Tony’s own actions eventually forced her to take a closer look and see Tony’s contributions and skills much more clearly.

Back then, it had simply led her to consider how she could use him to get Benoit.

Jenny takes another deep breath as she steps out of the elevator and heads for MTAC. She doesn’t let her eyes stray to the bullpen and the MCRT area. She’ll play the beginning of this the way she had done the last time.

She’ll run the op and get the terrorist. She’ll meet with Jethro again in MTAC.

But after that she’ll change the script.

Maybe she’ll welcome Ziva to Washington, play along with Mossad and keep them thinking she’s in their corner, but her corner is going to be Tony’s corner.

Maybe that’s all to the good, Jenny thinks wryly, since Tony’s corner tends to be focused on Justice which should be her corner.

She’d forgotten that the last time.

She won’t forget it now.

o-O-o

May 2006

“How is he?” asks Tony.

“Still out,” Jenny says with a sigh. “Your team?”

“On their way back to the Yard,” Tony reports briskly. “Ana lost the coin toss.”

Jenny hums. Jethro had picked Ana Wei as the fourth member of the team a month after Todd’s death, coming across her on a shared case in San Diego that Jenny had not remembered. A former Naval lieutenant, Wei’s a smart cookie and a good agent. She’s settled into the MCRT well.  

Tony is wearing the same jeans and casual top combination that he had the last time they had stood in the same hospital in the same room watching over a comatose Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Sometimes she wonders at how the universe works. For all the differences, things can unfold in remarkably similar ways.

In the year she’s relived, Jenny has learned that she just cannot seem to alter the trajectory of some things, no matter how hard she tries. Jethro getting blown up and losing his memory seems to be one of those things. She stares through the glass doors into the hospital room where he lies attached to too much machinery. 

She’d gotten the call in the middle of the White House dinner once again. This time there had been real shock that Jethro had been hurt because she’d assigned another team. Gibbs and the MCRT had been recalled to step in when Agent Donovan had been overcome with food sickness. The MCRT had been recalled.

She recognises the doctor who has taken over the case, the doctor who will recognise Jethro. The truth about Shannon and Kelly Gibbs is about to tumble out. She knows one thing: she isn’t calling Mike Franks to come to the hospital.

There is an outside chance that Jethro will wake up without missing fifteen years of his life.

She can hope.

“He’ll be fine,” Tony says beside her. “He’s Gibbs.”

Jenny knows that he’s reassuring himself more than her. The two men are impossibly close, closer than their previous relationship.

Ziva hasn’t been in the mix to poison the well.

It hadn’t been difficult in the end to get the Todds to delay Kate’s funeral; to manoeuvre Jethro into having his team as his back-up in the basement; for Jenny herself to sit on Ziva.

Tony had injured Ari not killed him, despite his talk of wanting the man dead. He’d arrested him.

Jenny wasn’t surprised when Ari had died from complications in the hospital while they were all at Todd’s funeral. She was certain it was Eli David cleaning up his mess, probably using Ziva again. Jenny had let her go with a warning not to help her brother, but Ziva had stayed in the States. She had ended up escorting her brother’s body home as she had done before.

Ziva had still reached out to ask for a new start using the excuse once again that she needed help escaping her father’s dominion, but Jenny had not agreed to the liaison role. She’d insisted if Ziva wanted a fresh start then she was to become an American citizen and join NCIS as a probationary agent after doing all the required training at FLETC.

It wasn’t very surprising that after a short period of resistance and argument against it that Ziva had capitulated and agreed. Mossad and Eli were clearly keen to have her positioned within the agency.

Jenny has a feeling Eli David is more impressed with her since she hasn’t rolled over and made it easy for them to plant Ziva in the heart of NCIS.

Jenny figures that Ziva is working up to asking for a better placement than Agent Barrow’s team which is where she’d been placed after the Academy. She’s likely going to see this situation as an opportunity. Rightly, because they’re going to need someone with the right language skills to press on the Turkish captain.

“I should get back,” Tony says, brushing a hand over his spiky hair. “I’ll call as soon as I have an update on the investigation.”

“I’ll call as soon as I have an update on Gibbs,” Jenny promises.

He simply nods, accepting her at her word.

She’s done a lot in the year they’ve worked together to build a good working relationship with the MCRT and with Tony in particular. It has helped, Jenny muses, that while she had taken him to task about his frat boy mask, she’s dropped her own jealousy which had made her snarky and bitchy with him – at least until she’d started to shift tactics to use him for her pursuit of Benoit.

She watches as Tony takes a final long look at Gibbs before he leaves.

The next few days unfold very much in the same way as they had done, creating a weird sense of déjà vu that leaves Jenny a little bit disoriented.

Jethro wakes up with his memory in pieces.

Mike Franks shows up, called by Ducky of all people.

Ziva does help out and is even helpful. Jenny puts that down to her seizing the opportunity as expected.

Unsurprisingly, even though they put things together faster and without Jethro, the Freighter is still destroyed, and Jethro decides to leave in the same overly dramatic fashion handing off his creds and the team to Tony in the bullpen.

Jenny talks him into a medical leave instead of retirement. He still disappears to Mexico.

Bloody Franks.

Maybe, Jenny muses, she’d been subconsciously trying to get Franks shot too when she’d called him in as her own back-up at the end of her previous life.

She sits down at her desk and waits for Tony to arrive.

It is the day after the night before.

Last time, Jenny had used this first meeting with him to push her own agenda, to begin the subtle art of undermining him, of isolating him.

Different script, Jenny reminds herself.

The sharp knock on her door has her taking a breath before calling out for Tony to enter.

Tony is hiding his tiredness well. He’s dressed in jeans, but he has it teamed with a white button-down.

Jenny waves him into a chair. “How are you doing, Tony?”

He attempts a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve had better starts to my week.”

“Me too,” Jenny says. “At least I managed to talk him into medical leave rather than retirement.”

Tony nods. “You really think he’ll be back?”

“You really think he won’t?” Jenny shoots back.

He cracks a genuine smile at that. The incline of his head acknowledges her point.

“To that very likely end,” Jenny continues, “I cannot appoint someone to the team lead position except as a temporary assignment.”

Tony nods. “Did you have someone in mind?”

Jenny looks pointedly at him.

Tony’s eyebrows rise a touch. “Isn’t there a requirement for a team lead to have spent time afloat?”

“Exceptions can be made, especially if this is temporary,” Jenny says smoothly. She lifts a hand from the desk. “Gibbs is clearly grooming you to take over from him as he took over from Franks. He very deliberately put his team in your hands when he walked out the door. I’d like to honour that.”

Tony nods slowly.

“You’re also an exceptional investigator,” Jenny adds, gaining herself a sharp look. “You have the makings of an exceptional team lead, but some of your more colourful methods to lighten the atmosphere and keep your teammates amused are not appropriate leadership behaviour.”

Tony nods again. “Drop the frat boy?”

Jenny nods. “Drop the frat boy.” She picks up a piece of paper and hands it over the desk.

Tony leans forward and takes it, frowning at the cell number scrawled on the note.

“Dwayne Pride,” Jenny explains. “I’ve asked him to act as a mentor during your assignment. He’s expecting your call.”

Tony’s expression flickers with awe for a second because Pride has a sterling reputation and, if she guesses correctly, Tony is aware that Pride is one of Gibbs’ oldest friends.

Jenny sits forward, clasping her hands on her desk. “I’m sure the other team leads here will also be available to you for advice and support. My door will always be open.”

“Thank you, Director,” Tony says, seriously. “I appreciate your confidence in me, and I won’t let you down.”

Jenny hears the sincerity and is relieved they’re on the same page. “The next question is who your Senior Field Agent will be.”

“Wei has the years of service and is actively looking for positions,” Tony states crisply. “She has the Naval background to balance my civilian. I’d like to give her the opportunity to step up.”

“Agreed,” Jenny says easily. It was what she had expected. “Which leaves you with an open spot.” She sits back. “Agent David has requested a transfer from Agent Barrow’s team. She worked with you on breaking the captain. How would you feel about her joining as your fourth?”

To his credit, Tony takes his time to consider it before he shakes his head.

“She did a good job with the captain, but I don’t think she would be a good fit with the team right now,” Tony says diplomatically. “I’m going to be getting my bearings as a new team lead, Ana as a Senior Field Agent. Adding someone who is still a probationary officer to the mix…” he shakes his head again. “I’d prefer an experienced agent who is more familiar with our laws and NCIS procedures. Training someone else on top of adjusting to the new formation would be difficult.”

Jenny agrees with him even if she knows Ziva isn’t going to be happy. Tony’s right. He’d made the same argument when he’d protested against Michelle Lee. It isn’t the right time to introduce a probationary agent to the MCRT. Of course, that was exactly why she’d overloaded him not only with Lee but in also promoting McGee to Senior Field Agent when she’d wanted to use him.

He doesn’t mention Ziva’s link to Ari and how that also makes her assignment to the MCRT problematic, but she figures that he’s voiced the objection in his own mind if not aloud.

She sits back and nods decisively. “I’ll have HR pull some options for you. You’ll have the files by lunchtime, I’d like a decision by the end of the week. You’ll be off rotation and on cold cases until then.”

Tony heads out and Jenny takes a moment to congratulate herself.

Tony is on the way to having a good team around him; he has the support that she’d denied him the last time. She’s going to keep her commitment and make certain he has the best opportunity to succeed.

o-O-o

May 2007

Time is ticking down.

Jenny can feel it in her bones.

Her illness is contained behind the plexiglass, but she knows it is there, already burrowing further into her brain and there is nothing that can be done.

She’s tried to contain the situation with Svetlana Chernitskaya but the other woman is in the wind. She has a feeling Chernitskaya will not surface until it is time for Jenny herself to die.

All she can do, Jenny thinks to herself, is see through her second chance and complete her mission to be the best NCIS Director she can be and watch over Tony.

Yet, at that moment, watching Tony’s classic car blow up again on the large MTAC screen, she wonders if that is even a possibility; if the universe is determined to target Tony anyway.

It’s just as devastating and shocking as it was the first time.

More, Jenny tells herself, her breath catching in her throat. Last time, she truly hadn’t cared so much as she’d been panicked that she had missed her chance with Benoit. The horror of losing Tony to such a shocking horrific death had been an afterthought. Something she had only considered when her gaze had landed on Jethro.

Jethro looks just as bleakly devastated standing beside her once more as he did then. At least he’d left the rest of the team in the bullpen this time.

She battles with her own shock and horror. She sincerely hopes that history is repeating itself and Tony wasn’t in the car.

Jenny’s hand flutters to her head where her disease presses against the thin barrier there like a monster on a window, shapeless and formless but scarily feeling like it is going to break through. There is an increasing pain arrowing down the back of her left ear, too familiar – she isn’t certain whether it is real or just remembered.

Things are different, Jenny forces herself to think. Things are different. Tony is not undercover; he’s not romancing Jeanne Benoit.

Tony had been missing that morning. Jethro had come into MTAC because Metro had given him a heads up that he’d been involved with shutting down a drug dealer at the hospital. They claimed to have lost sight of him after taking his statement. Unable to get him on the phone, Jethro had wanted to get eyes on Tony’s car to confirm he was on his way to the Yard and Jenny had indulged him.

There’s a vague memory lurking in Jenny’s head from her first life. Hadn’t Tony’s report had detailed a confrontation between Jeanne Benoit and a drug dealer in the morgue at the hospital? Had Tony gotten caught up in that again even though he wasn’t with Benoit?  

Jethro whirls and strides away to the door, yanking Jenny’s attention back to the present.

Jenny follows after him. “Jethro, wait!”

He doesn’t slow down.

“Agent Gibbs!” Jenny snaps at him furiously as she catches up with him on the landing outside of the MTAC entrance.

“Don’t tell me to stand down!” Jethro begins even as his cell phone vibrates loudly demanded to be answered. He glances at it and glares before his eyes widen suddenly. He answers it before Jenny can ask questions. His voice is rich with the gruffness he descends into when blindsided with unexpected emotion.

“DiNozzo?” Jethro snaps. “Where are you?!”

Jenny closes her eyes briefly in relief.  Tony wasn’t in the car. She opens them to Jethro pressing his lips together, brow furrowed as he listens to Tony’s report.

“Agreed,” Jethro states gruffly. “Contact me when you’re safe.”

Jenny opens her mouth to object, to insist that Tony gets back to the safety of the Yard itself, but Jethro is already ending the call, snapping his phone shut decisively.

“What’s his status?” Jenny asks sharply.

Jethro grimaces. He turns and shoves his face in front of the scanner for MTAC. He leads her back into the secure space and orders the technicians out.

Jenny nods as they look to her. She waits impatiently until they’re finally alone.

“Gibbs…”

“DiNozzo saved the life of a doctor last night, was going to take her for breakfast when her Dad showed up,” Jethro begins. “Turns out she’s Le Grenouille’s daughter. They think she was the target of the explosion. Benoit had gotten threats, why he was there. Benoit insisted on Tony riding with them to breakfast in his limo. His man drove Tony’s car.”

Jenny’s heart is beating a rapid tattoo in her chest. All of her scheming the last time and Benoit just drops into her lap.

She paces away a few steps from Jethro’s intent blue gaze. “Where are they?”

“Tony’s getting them safe,” Jethro states crisply. “He’ll contact me when he’s done. We should give him cover.”

Jenny folds her arms and nods. “Take the team and investigate his car being blown up. If anyone is watching that’s what they’d expect you to do.”

Jethro is out of the door before she’s barely finished speaking.

A sharp pain darts through her head.

She takes it for the warning it is. Her obsession led her down a path once before and she’s refusing to follow it again.

She’d had her vengeance and it hadn’t given her any kind of peace, Jenny reminds herself briskly as the technicians start to filter back inside MTAC.

She heads for the door and her office.

Her priority is getting Tony safe.

She has confidence that with everything else that hasn’t changed, the universe will not change Rene Benoit’s death. It won’t be by her hand, this time, Jenny muses, and it doesn’t have to be. It’s enough that she can imagine him in the darkness contemplating his mistakes.

She’s going to keep focused on correcting her own.

o-O-o

May 2008

The large meeting room buzzes with the bubbly sound of people talking, the clinking of glasses, and the merriment of a happy gathering.

Jenny collects a second glass of champagne from the table and takes a moment to watch as the people she’s led for the past five years attend her retirement celebration. It is a medical retirement because there had been no other way to explain her departure. This time she had planned it.

Across the room, Tony is engaged in a spirited conversation with Abby, Jimmy, McGee, and his own investigative team. He’s three months into being lead. Wei had requested to transfer to be his Senior Field Agent. Surprisingly, Tony has rounded out his team with the surprise picks of Nikki Jardine, and an agent from Cyber Crimes, Daniel Keating. They’re already proving to be an excellent team with a great solve rate.

Jethro had been grumpy about Tony’s promotion but Jenny had quoted rule five at him. Tony was too good to be wasted languishing as Jethro’s trusted second until such time as Jethro decided to retire himself. Jethro had conceded the point.

Fortunately, he and Tony have retained their friendship outside of work. Jenny knows Tony goes over once a week for steaks and beers. She’s seen Jethro stop by Tony’s desk and offer encouragement. She’s agreed when Jethro had asked for Tony’s team to assist on a case.

The MCRT has struggled to find its footing with the changes. Jethro had tapped Simon Cade as his Senior Field Agent, something which has thrown McGee for all he still does not meet the mandatory requirements. Jethro had also accepted Jenny’s request to take on Ziva. Jenny isn’t certain how long that will last. She figures if Ziva does last it will be because she will have actually left behind her father’s orders and embraced her chance to do so.

Jenny believes she has made the most of her own second chance. She can leave knowing with certainty that she has completed her mission to nurture Tony; to be the best Director she could be.

This time, Kort had killed Benoit on CIA orders since they had no use for an arms dealer who wanted out of the business to protect his daughter.

Tony hadn’t had the opportunity to get truly entangled with Jeanne Benoit, although he had been protecting her when Kort had struck. The doctor has followed her own destiny, going abroad with Doctors Without Borders once again.

Jenny sips her champagne. Tony’s heart is intact this time and that’s also a win in her book.          

Ducky sidles up to her and picks up a glass of orange juice. “Quite a turnout, Director.”

“Not your Director anymore, Ducky,” Jenny says softly.

Ducky offers her a sad smile. He, more than anyone else in the room, knows the details behind her retirement. “You’re doing a brave thing, Jennifer.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Jenny says. She suddenly feels incredibly tired. Her head aches in an all too familiar way.   

Former Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden, the retired Judge Advocate General of the Navy and the new Director of NCIS, calls for order from his place at the front of the room. The room quietens.

His eyes meet Jenny’s warmly as he begins a short speech praising Jenny’s tenure and celebrating her achievements.

“I hope to do justice to the legacy you’re leaving behind,” Chegwidden finishes. He raises his glass. “To Jennifer Shepard; fair winds and following seas.”

“Fair winds and following seas!” The room chimes in.

Jenny delivers her own speech. It’s short and another sip of champagne later, it is over. There is a flurry of goodbyes and well wishes starting with Ducky.

Tony slips into the elevator with her. “You really should have an escort, Director.”

She arches a groomed eyebrow as she adjusts her outer coat.

“Jenny,” he corrects with a dimpled grin. He fidgets for a moment before his eyes meet hers. “I, uh, I also wanted to thank you. I’ve appreciated all the support you’ve given me and I know you created the opportunity for me to lead my own team.”

“You deserve it,” Jenny says. He always had. “Jethro was right about you. You’re an exceptional agent; the best he’s worked with.”

His dimples flash as he grins. “He really said that about me?”

Jenny nods, smiling. “One of these days, he’ll tell you himself.”

Tony cocks his head. “I think he already did.”

Their eyes meet.

“Rule five!”

Their voices echo in unison in the elevator.

The chime signals the elevator ride is over and they step out.

Tony smiles at her. “Fair winds and following seas, Jenny.”

“I thought you were going to escort me to my car, Tony,” Jenny says, a touch confused.

Tony jerks his head in the direction of the corner. “I think someone else wants to do the honours.”

Jethro materialises out of the shadows. He’s in his ubiquitous jacket and polo shirt combination. His grey Marine cut shimmies silver as he walks into the light.

Tony smiles at her, offers her a cheeky salute, and steps back into the elevator with a nod to Jethro.

Jenny starts to complete her walk out of the building and Jethro falls into step beside her. He says nothing as they make their way through security and out into the open air.

Her car waits at the entrance with the driver who will also act as her security protection. They stop beside the back door of the sedan and Jethro opens the door ready for her to slide inside.

Instead, Jenny raises her face to the evening sunshine enjoying the warmth on her skin.

“You missed my party,” Jenny murmurs.

“I was cleaning something up,” Jethro says with a shrug.

Jenny searches his expression. “Franks told you.” She’s not really surprised. She’d called Franks to forewarn him about the threat to Jethro since she hadn’t been able to find Svetlana.

“Franks told me,” Jethro agrees. He reaches out and tugs at the lapel of her coat. “You should have told me.”

Jenny hums. He has a point.

“You don’t have to worry about her anymore,” Jethro says.

Jenny cocks her head. “Still protecting my six, Jethro?”

“Never stopped,” Jethro says quietly.

Jenny steps into his space and he welcomes her. His embrace feels real and familiar; she feels safe in the circle of his arms. They inch back and they’re kissing. It’s sweet and hot and…and a goodbye.

She eases back and looks at him, for the first time without regret. She sees a flicker in his gaze and…

“You know,” Jenny says. She’s not sure how he’d have found out about her illness, but she can see the knowledge of it in the icy blue depths that she’d always loved.

“I know,” Jethro concedes. “Ducky says you have a clinic lined up.”

Jenny nods, although she’s pretty certain that she won’t get there.

“I could come with,” Jethro offers.

“But you won’t,” Jenny says firmly. She kisses him again and steps out of his arms. She turns for the car and pauses with a hand on the door. “You’re a good man, Jethro. Always remember that.”

“Semper fi, Jenny,” Jethro says.

Jenny grins and gets into the car.

He shuts the door.

The driver sets off, the car pulling away smoothly, leaving the building behind them. She looks out of the back window. Jethro stands where she’d left him, watching.

The drive feels exhausting.

Jenny is relieved to be inside her home. She dismisses the maid and the guard, pours herself a whiskey. She sits in the large leather chair in her study. She settles back into it, getting comfortable despite her aching body.

She can almost feel the moment the barrier falls inside her mind, the rush of her illness overtaking her thoughts again, dragging her into a soup of fog and fatigue.

But that’s OK, Jenny thinks wearily. She’s done.

She’s done.

She tastes the whiskey and Jethro on her lips.

She closes her eyes.

She takes one last breath.

One last beat of her heart.

Jenny’s mission is over.

fin.

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