For a Moment
by Sammie

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. If I did, would Kate be dead? {bares fangs} The song is "100 Years" by Five for Fighting.
Rating: K+, T max.
Spoilers: "Yankee White" in the first part, and bits of episodes elsewhere.
Summary: A daughter recalls her parents' marriage. Character deaths up the wazoo. (Kate/Gibbs)

---

Elizabeth Moynihan wrapped her arms around herself a little tighter and tugged her black sweater closer around her, although the spring wind was light and warm.

They were burying her father today.



I'm 15 for a moment
Caught in between 10 and 20
And I'm just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are

Uncle Ducky, before he passed away, and Uncle Tony loved to tell the story about how her parents had met. They even still had photos of each of them sitting at the president's desk, and their account of the exploits, particularly when Uncle Tony told the story, made it sound like a story right out of a movie.

NCIS had managed to sneak their way onto Air Force One itself, and Uncle Ducky and Dad's ruse had gotten nearly all of the law enforcement officers off that plane, to boot. They had arrived late to the party but crashed it majorly. Just in another's day's work.

The elderly medical examiner would chuckle at this point. "Don't try to trick your mother," he'd say, and tell how his one slip of the tongue about seafood delicacies had cost NCIS a clean getaway. The medical examiner would tell, in his marvelous storytelling ways, how her mother had stomped back onto Air Force One, hand on her gun, and tore "Jethro"'s and his cover story apart. "You're no M.E. assistant and there's not a soft-shell crab within a thousand miles."

Dad, it seemed to Uncle Ducky, had unwisely considered this a small hold up. He had dismissed the Secret Service agent out of hand - she was young and without backup, and he had good reason to be there. Besides, that was often how he dealt with any issue when he had another goal in mind.

The crow's feet at the corners of Uncle Ducky's eyes would crinkle in amusement as he winked at them. "Your mother is not a woman to put off," he would say to the little faces watching him, mouths agape, eyes wide.

They all knew how the story went, but each time it just sounded so exciting.

Uncle Ducky would tell of how their parents debated over who was to be in charge, and how even at that moment he knew that Dad had met his match. Mom was a bit of a firebrand, saucier than most of the redheads Dad had married and been attracted to.

Uncle Tony would jump in then, telling how he just happened to come down the stairs then to see their parents: "Boss" (Dad was "boss" to Uncle Tony for the rest of his life, long after he'd left the team, just as Uncle Tim was "Probie" for the rest of his life) towering over that Secret Service agent, attempting to intimidate her into bowing to his wishes, and how she looked up at him with a little smirk on her face, refusing to budge. Uncle Tony always used to say how amused he was, and how much it was like watching TV.

Dad would always roll his eyes, and Mom would always shake her head at the photos, but Elizabeth couldn't help but think how utterly adventurous and romantic it all sounded.

---

I'm 22 for a moment
She feels better than ever
And we're on fire
Making our way back from Mars

Her parents worked on the same team for only two years - two years, she'd heard her father mumble once, "of pure torture" - of looking, but no touching.

Federal agencies had rules about supervising agents dating those under them. Plus, Dad had his own rules, and Mom had made a promise when she had joined NCIS. While with the Secret Service, she'd made a mistake of dating somebody she wasn't allowed to, and she'd promised Dad never to do it again. They were not going to break the rules. Senior agents in charge did not date junior agents. Period.

Thank God for Director Morrow.

It was a week to the day that Mom had joined NCIS when Director Morrow had called her into his office, telling her that he'd pulled her from Gibbs' team officially, sending her to the FBI profiling team in Quantico, Virginia, to be trained with the top profilers in the country. NCIS could use their own profilers, Morrow said, and he wanted Mom to go. She had more experience than the two others he was sending along with her, and he wanted her to head up the group.

Mom was shocked, but she hadn't taken much convincing. She loved her coworkers, and she didn't want to leave them, but the agency needed her to get trained. Besides, Mom reasoned, she would be able to see her friends in the off hours.

Dad didn't take it well, and that was putting it mildly. Elizabeth could see why - he kept his personal and his job life quite separate. If it weren't for Mom constantly inviting his team and her team over to the Gibbs home, Elizabeth doubted Dad would see his team on the weekends. He had always been a loner and a homebody. As for Mom - well, losing Mom from his team would have meant losing her permanently, and it was little wonder he balked. "Balked" as an understatement.

Uncle Tony joked once, "Boss looked like he would kill the Director," if her father ever had any inclination to disobey Director Morrow.

There were days when Elizabeth wondered what would have happened if Director Morrow hadn't done what he did: whether her parents would have gotten together anyhow; whether or not they would have tried to hide a relationship; whether they could lie to their closest, dearest friends; whether those friends would have been able to keep silent with rules being broken; and whether her parents would have felt guilty for putting their friends between themselves and the agency's rules. Whether or not her parents would have ever been able to look their director, a man they both respected deeply, in the eye. Or whether they would have been able to look their friends and family in the eye.

Most of all, how that would have jived with their 'd-mnable' sense of honor.

Mom had always told her that one of the things so attractive about her father was his sense of honor, his sense of duty and responsibility, and his adherence to the truth. She had quoted Richard Lovelace. Mom had always said that it was because Dad took his responsibilities seriously and valued faithfulness and loyalty that she knew he would always come home, even if they were on the outs. She trusted him with her heart, Mom had said, because she knew that he had made a vow and Leroy Jethro Gibbs did not break his promises.

Although Dad never said it, Elizabeth knew that he valued the same about Mom. He had had three failed marriages and suffered constant abandonment by women he had loved. Mom had demonstrated to him that she might make mistakes, but she was a woman of her word, a woman of integrity. She wouldn't cheat on him, she wouldn't throw him out, she wouldn't betray his trust - even in the days when he pissed her off royally. It was little wonder that Dad had such difficulty resisting her.

---

I'm 33 for a moment
Still the man, but you see I'm a they
A kid on the way
A family on my mind

Elizabeth was the oldest, born two years after her parents had married. She'd gotten presents from everyone: her father's team, her mother's former teammates, showered her with gifts; her mother's new teammates; old friends; random NCIS and Secret Service agents and Marines. She still had the hobby horse Stan Burley had given her, and the wooden toy boat that her father's Desert Storm commanding officer, Col. Will Ryan, had carved. Marcy, one of her mother's Secret Service friends, had given her a model Air Force One and her own copy of a picture of her mother with the president she had protected.

'Lizzie' had been followed by a boy, Robert Jethro, two and a half years later, and twin boys, Todd Ryan and James Donald, after that.

Growing up Gibbs was an adventure, with a former Secret Service mother and a top dog NCIS agent father. They played Manhunt in the yard with their father, then went inside for their mother's hugs and homemade cookies; they attempted to capture the flag their mother protected, then all snuggled in their father's lap that night for their bedtime story.

She knew her parents often felt as if they weren't home enough - her mother in particular - but the one thing that Elizabeth remembered was the phone limits. Dinner was truly a non-phone affair all the way until high school. Only God, Director Morrow, and Grandma could interrupt, and none of them were inclined to break up family time. She remembered once or twice feeling as though NCIS took up too much of her parents' time, but even on the days she wanted to be mad at her parents - if she were fair - she couldn't.

Elizabeth has a wealth of memories.

She has a mental image of herself, arms securely around her father's leg, watching him warm a bottle of milk at six AM on a Saturday for any of her baby brothers. Then they'd all climb onto the big rocking chair; she remembers leaning against her father, watching as he did the feeding. She remembered dressing up in her mother's clothes; most specifically, she remembered the maroon satin dress that she always thought was so pretty, and she remembered waking up on her seventh birthday to find a similar, small maroon satin dress just for her.

Elizabeth barely remembers - but is reminded often at the most embarrassing of times - of Special Agent Paula Cassidy's visit. She'd come with Uncle Tony and had cooed over Robby and how he cute he was, joking about taking him home with her. Lizzie was barely three, and upon hearing this, promptly burst into tears. She'd run into the kitchen, wrapping arms around her shocked mother's legs, sobbing into her mother's jeans, blubbering incoherently in toddler's talk that they were taking Robby away. A horrified Paula had come running to explain to her puzzled mother what was happening.

Agent Cassidy never embarrassed her again with that story, something for which Elizabeth was forever grateful to her about, but Uncle Tony always got chuckles out of it and thus told it to everyone - even to Elizabeth's husband.

There were half-creepy, crazy times, too - like when she walked in on her parents for the first and (her parents made utterly sure of it) the only time. She was five, and the excitement from having ice cream cake and presents at her mother's birthday still hadn't worn off. It had to be almost midnight, and she still was having trouble sleeping. She could hear her parents downstairs - her father's low chuckle, and her mother's soft, laughing sigh, and she'd started to head downstairs. That sigh quickly turned into a horrified semi-shriek when she called in her little, girlish voice, "Whatcha doin'?"

Her mother had moments of speechlessness - generally following something her father said just to tease her. But that was honestly the only time Elizabeth had seen a genuine look of shock on her father's face, for that instant the both of her parents looked up and realized their little sweet innocent girl was at the top of the stairwell, hugging her toy bunny and beaming down at her parents who had been about to do something not so sweet or innocent. She'd never seen her parents move so fast, buttoning up shirts and separating.

There was the time Robby had knocked himself out when they were playing in the yard and wasn't breathing - and she'd run crying into the house for her parents, screaming at the top of her lungs to fix him. Elizabeth's throat still constricts when she remembers her brother lying on the ground, and how soft and floppy he was when their father picked him up. She was ten years old, but she'd felt like she was two as she sat in the corner of the waiting room with their mother and her youngest brothers, waiting for the doctor to tell them he was all right.

She remembered when she'd gone on her first date, and Dad had pulled such a good Agent Gibbs on the boy that he really went in his pants. (Mom had truly chewed Dad out on that one.) She remembered joking to the boyfriends - those who lasted through a visit home to her parents (specifically, to her dad) - that they were keepers.



Growing up, of all the aunts and uncles they had - they loved them all - her and Robby's and Todd's and Jamie's favorites had been Uncle Ducky and Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby. Uncle Ducky always had lots of interesting stories.

Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby were the funnest pair ever. Every child needed an uncle and an aunt like those two.

Uncle Tony always entered the house with a blustery, "Heeeere's Tony!" which caused her and her brothers to drop everything and to come running. Every child needed a fun uncle, and because Mom's brothers had married and had children before she had, Uncle Tony happily filled the role of the fun-loving, marginally responsible uncle out for a good time. "Without me," he used to tell Mom and Dad - to headwhacks and eye rolls - "your children would be BOOORING."

Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby still ate cotton candy and loved blue Slurpees for the very reason that they made blue tongues. They went on stomach-turning rides at the amusement park, and they were as unafraid to go on the giant elephant rides as the Gibbs children. The twins' friends had long ago declared Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby "the best", duly impressed by Uncle Tony's ability to win race car video games and by Aunt Abby's "gross" job.

As she and the boys grew older, it was Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby whom they went to first with the "we don't talk to Mom and Dad about this" questions. Uncle Tony and Aunt Abby were always candid - sometimes frighteningly so. But Elizabeth knew they always had their best interests at heart.



Things were never easy at home - she and and her brothers had developed a fear of the phone, and particularly of the kindly Director Morrow - since a phone call generally meant something bad had happened to their parents or to their aunts and uncles. She'd seen her parents' will by age thirteen, and her parents had signed guardianship of all of her brothers over to her as soon as she had hit eighteen.

Yet, Elizabeth would never trade her childhood for anyone else's.

---

I'm 45 for a moment
The sea is high
And I'm heading into a crisis
Chasing the years of my life

Elizabeth wasn't sure exactly what mid-life crises consisted of, and with good reason.

Women didn't seem to have full-blown crises, and if Mom had insecurities, she didn't show it much. Mom at forty-five could have passed for thirty-five; her face was a little thinner, less round. But she was still fit, still slim, and her hair was still full, even if the brown was graying.

Growing up as Kate Gibbs' daughter was no easy task - Elizabeth still remembered the slightly stunned but appreciative looks on her male friends' faces in high school. She remembered she and Robby, defending the twins on their college spring break; apparently Todd and Jamey had gotten into a fight defending Mom when the school loser had made comments about Mom being "hot" after her parents had made an appearance at an in-school assembly. She still turned quite a few heads for being an older woman, even if she never seemed to realize it.

As for Dad - Dad was a rational man. Getting older was just a part of life, even if he didn't like it, and he just did what he had to do. With an attitude like that, there wasn't much going through a mid-life crisis, and he'd just chugged on, Uncle Tony had said. If he'd had any doubts, he kept them to himself. She'd never suspect that her father would have a mid-life crisis. He'd most likely declare it illogical.

Dad didn't futz around and he didn't have much time for melodrama, and he certainly hadn't married a woman who was prone to them. Lizzie just couldn't see her parents going through that phase.



Elizabeth, then, hadn't realized these "mid-life crises" were the normal thing until just a few days before her sixteenth birthday. Uncle Tony, Uncle Tim, and Aunt Abby had taken her, four of her friends, and her brothers out the weekend after her birthday for their "present" to her - laser tag. When one of her friends' fathers showed up in a new sports car to pick her friend up, though, she began to wonder.

Uncle Tony went out to talk to him about the car, and Laurie had just rolled her eyes in typical teenager fashion. Elizabeth couldn't figure out how buying a tiny car which only had two doors could solve a mid-life crisis.

When they arrived at home, Dad was outside, mowing the lawn, and Mom was sweeping out the garage. Once inside, Mom had them munching on fruit and cookies, and that's when Elizabeth paused and asked her uncle Tony whether or not he'd ever had a mid-life crisis.

Aunt Abby and Uncle Tim burst out laughing at that point - obviously Uncle Tony wasn't a huge fan of being called old enough to have one. Mom snarked that he had only the emotional age of a fifteen-year-old...and thus wasn't old enough to have a mid-life crisis. Aunt Abby and Uncle Tim laughed even harder then.

So Elizabeth asked if Dad had ever had one.

Mom turned thougtful at her question, and Elizabeth could see her sifting through all the different possibilities. "You know, I don't think I've seen your father have a real one." Elizabeth was satisfied. She didn't think so, either. The closest thing to Laurie's dad's mid-life-crisis car was Dad's boat, and he'd been building those since he was a young man.

"Oh that's a load of cr-p," Uncle Tony declared as Aunt Abby just laughed. "Gibbs not have a mid-life crisis. Kid," Uncle Tony replied, his mouth full of cookie, "You're lookin' at it." He waved at Mom.

When he did that, Mom looked just as shocked as Lizzie.

Apparently Dad used to wear huge, chunky plastic frames glasses for his weakening eyes, and was rather oblivious - or just didn't care - that he was older. Older was older, and although he didn't appreciate the stiff joints (especially his knee) as he aged, he wasn't bothered emotionally by it.

"Your ma shows up," Uncle Tony continued, "and your father goes into full-blown age crisis."

The crisis was so subtle, Uncle Tony continued (with Aunt Abby nodding in agreement) that neither noticed until almost a month after Mom had come. Uncle Tony first noticed that "Boss" had suddenly decided to stop wearing glasses, and he finally decided to test his suspicions when he saw Dad holding a file at a distance, squinting, trying to read it.

He commented that everyone's eyes deteriorate after forty, then made a comment about a younger agent, and Dad got "all huffy," declaring that he was not "'significantly older' than 37." It was also the first time, Uncle Tony pointed out, that he got bopped on the head for commenting about Dad's age. Boss'd never been bothered much by it before, Uncle Tony had explained, and so there was no use teasing him about it.

Until Special Agent Kate Todd had shown up.

Uncle Tony snickered as he told of Dad's face when Mom finally told him he needed glasses. Dad had been right in what he saw, but even so, that look.... Wouldn't you know, Uncle Tony said - just a few weeks later, 'Boss' had a new pair of stylish, "schnazzy" barely there lenses without the chunky bifocal lines in the lens.

Dad had become well aware of his age, sitting alongside Mom. And while he'd had young female agents before and never had a problem with the signs that he was slowing, he hated showing this one his age.

Elizabeth watched the amusement and the relish with which Uncle Tony told the story. "So how did Dad get over it?"

Uncle Tony just snickered, winking at Uncle Tim and Aunt Abby. "He married 'it' and knocked her up."

"TONY!" (Mom was never happy about some of the things Uncle Tony said around them.)

"C'mon, kid, you know what 'knock up' means, right?" Uncle Tony asked Elizabeth, who snickered and nodded.

"I don't know why I let you around my children," Mom had grumbled.

---

Half time goes by
Suddenly you’re wise
Another blink of an eye
67 is gone
The sun is getting high
We're moving on...

Elizabeth had finally managed to find a man Dad approved of. Wes Moynihan hadn't just passed the "toleration" test - Dad genuinely liked him.

It was just a month or so into their engagement when she had finally ended up on the topic of marriage with her mother. Elizabeth had fought with Wes before, but this time, it was a major fight, and she was beginning to wonder if marrying him was wise.

If anyone ought to be asked about the wisdom of marrying somebody, it was her mother. Mrs. Gibbs #4 had succeeded where the first three had not, and Elizabeth was somewhat curious as to how. Her father certainly wasn't a commitment phobe; he committed fine. It was his wives who had left him, finding life with him unbearable.

So what was it about Caitlin Todd...?

Her mother had always joked that she had never considered divorce. Divorce? No. Murder? Yes. Her eyes would twinkle, and it was well evident that she knew how difficult Leroy Jethro Gibbs was. There were no silly notions that he would suddenly do a 180 degree change because they were together, and there were no silly notions that he would suddenly be an excellent husband simply because he had married her. They were both grown adults, set in their ways, and if there was any changing to do, it would be slow and painful.

Elizabeth was shocked to discover that in the first five years of their marriage, her parents had gone to monthly counseling with their priest, Father Klein. It was a preemptive strike.

She knew that marriage certainly wasn't rolling in rose petals, but she'd never expected her mother's next statement: "Hon, you fight, and you think there's something wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with fighting." Families fought, Mom had pointed out; they fought every day in high school. Yet - Mom chuckled - hadn't Robby had it out with one of the boys who had stood Lizzie up on a date? And hadn't the twins coasted through freshman year because the school was well aware that messing with the Gibbs twins meant going through Robby Gibbs - if they could ever make it past their angry sister first?

It was the same with husbands, Mom had said. Families fought.

Elizabeth had sat there, mouth agape, as her mother had sipped her coffee nonchalantly. "Do you regret marrying Dad?" she'd asked, almost fearful of the response.

"Only sometimes," her mother had replied, and if it hadn't been for that mischievous twinkle in her mother's eye, Elizabeth would have feared for her parents' marriage, even after all these years.

At that point, her mother had looked at her, her eyes full of love and wisdom, and began to explain, and Elizabeth now learned the secret to her parents' success. There were days, her mother said, she'd wake up, look across at her husband, and wonder what grand mistake she'd made; wonder what she'd chained herself to for the rest of her life. Then other days she felt so full of love for him that she felt like a newlywed. Her father had admitted to the same range of feelings.

But feelings - loving and not - pass, her mother had told her. In those days Jethro Gibbs bugged the h-ll out of her, her mother had merely gritted her teeth and went on. She had long ago, as a young woman, decided that she wouldn't get married until she was very sure and she wouldn't leave her husband unless he was abusive or had had an affair.

"I didn't always feel loving," her mother had admitted. "But I chose to love him at those times. And Elizabeth - " Mom only ever called her by her full name if something was wrong or if she was very serious " - feelings pass. That annoyance at falling into a toliet because your father left the seat up - " Elizabeth smiled " - that passes. Disagreements about money, about how to raise you four - we worked through them. And each time that happens, I love your father more. I love him more now than I ever did, and it's partly because I choose to love him. And he does the same for me."

She paused, thinking over what she had said, and then finished: "Love is an action, Lizzie. It's not a feeling."

It's a lesson Elizabeth has never forgotten.

---

I'm 99 for a moment
Dying for just another moment
And I'm just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are

Dad was not the same ever again after Mom died.

Both her parents, Elizabeth learned later, had always assumed that her father would go first. He was almost twenty years older than Mom, drove like a maniac, and had made a long string of enemies. They had insurance out on the both of them, but they had always prepared for Dad going first. It was just logical. It was the wise thing to do - to prepare. Morbid, but wise.

Her mother was doing what her father always taught his agents and his children to do: anticipate. The only reason Dad had been willing to take that final step and to marry Mom was because he knew she could handle things if he died. He knew she could manage the family, earn the money, keep them all together. She was strong enough. He could depend on her. He was strong, but in those rare days he couldn't be, he could rest assured the world would never come crashing down around them. She was strong enough to hold it up.

It was perhaps the most shocking for Dad when Mom went first.

She had discovered the breast cancer too late. Her yearly mammograms hadn't caught it, and although Mom was healthy and had started chemotherapy right away, it hadn't been enough.

When Dad had said "in sickness and in health," he had meant it. He took her to the hospital; he held her when the chemotherapy made her throw up; he covered her head when she lost her hair and got cold. He learned quickly to cook the healthy meals she'd always made. As she deteriorated, Dad quietly and patiently bathed her, cleaned bed sores, and gave her as much independence as he could without her getting hurt.

Mom had gone down fighting, her mind lucid and sharp to the end. She was determined to ensure that things went fine after she died. It wasn't that she didn't trust Dad, but Dad had never been good with household details. 'Lizzie' and her brothers, in those last months, had gotten used to getting phone calls from Mom about last minute matters.

Mom had called her to her bedside for only one thing. She had asked Elizabeth to watch out for her father, and to make one promise: always to stay close to her brothers. They were family, Mom had said, and after people got married, siblings drifted apart. She didn't want that to happen.



After the funeral, things seemed to return to normal. Dad was building another boat, and he kept working on it. He still took out their family dog, and he still answered his former agents' phone calls for help. He kept the same house and kept it the way Mom had. He even cooked himself the same healthy meals his wife always did, although Elizabeth suspected it was more because they reminded him of Mom than for his own health.

It just wasn't the same.

Elizabeth had always thought of her father as the strong one, but now she realized how much her father depended on her mother. Mom had inexplicable ways of getting Dad to talk - developed after years of trial and error, she'd laugh.

It was as though Dad had just become content to wait until he died. There was no more fight, unlike when she was in middle school and he'd been shot and the doctors hadn't given him a good chance of recovery. He'd fought to return to his family. Now - he wasn't looking for death, but he apparently wouldn't have a single problem with it when it came. His children were grown, married, and settled, and his wife was gone.

In retrospect, Elizabeth really wasn't that surprised when her father died peacefully in his sleep just a year and half after Mom passed. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't surprising.

He'd just been counting the days back to Mom.

"You know, I miss Mom still," Elizabeth had tried just a few months ago, trying to remember how she'd watched her mother draw her father out, get him to talk to her. She smiled, trying to blink back the tears as she thought of her mother. "Some days, I still pick up the phone to call her about some kind of thing I bought at the store, and...." Elizabeth trailed off.

Her father looked at her, kindly, fatherly. He hugged her, wrapping his strong arms around her, and Elizabeth felt safe there, like she had as a little girl. "I miss her too," he murmured, the first thing he'd said about Mom since she had died.

Elizabeth nodded, waiting.

He got a far away look. "She wasn't supposed to go first. I never anticipated having to live without her."

---

15 there's still time for you
22 I feel her too
33 you’re on your way
Every day's a new day...

Theirs was never the fairy tale marriage - it couldn't be, with the possibility of dying on the job any time they went to work. It couldn't be, with Dad so much older, and both of them having to prepare for that. It couldn't be, with both of them having to work so hard at making this marriage work when Dad had failed three times.

But it worked, and worked well, and Lizzie had to admit she always compared each of her relationships to her parents', seeing if it would measure up, seeing if it would work out the way her parents' had.



"Lizzie."

Elizabeth looked up to see her husband standing there, looking at her with concerned eyes. "Are you ready to go?"

Elizabeth nodded, then took one last look at the stone marker over both graves.

LEROY JETHRO GIBBS AND CAITILIN TODD GIBBS



15 there's still time for you
Time to buy and time to choose
Hey 15, there's never a wish better than this
When you only got 100 years to live

END