Moving On

by Sammie

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. If I did, would Kate be dead? (bares fangs) Meg Dowley and Sara I made up. And some things might parallel other stories...I am most definitely influenced by the fics I read. The better the story, the more the influence.
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Season 1 and Season 2, especially "Twilight." Brief reference to another fic of mine, "The Mile High City Affair," but nothing that requires knowledge of that story (and those characters don't belong to me, either)

Summary: Gibbs, several years after Kate's death. Kate-Gibbs

A/N: Considering that "NCIS" will go on, with Gibbs there (and not forever grouchy), I tried to harmonize that with Kate's death. So this is how I see (kind of) Gibbs in the years following. I have NEVER written a story like this; all of them have been episodic plots, so we shall see how it goes. Please send feedback!

He hears the soft humming and heads down to his basement where his boat is. His boat got a lot of work on it in those days after...afterwards, and he found that, much to his horror, it was almost done.
He remembered Ducky rambling about a story...Odysseus or something. He vaguely remembered the tale from high school. Odysseus was gone for twenty years; the latter ten he was supposed to have come home. His wife had waited for him, weaving a shroud and burial clothes for her deceased father-in-law...she'd weave in the morning and take it apart at night.

There was an immediate reason for it, to stave off disrespectful suitors, but in those rare moments when Gibbs actually thinks over Ducky's stories, he wonders if there wasn't anything more. That finishing those clothes meant burying her husband more than it even meant burying his father, and that THAT was the real reason Penelope unraveled her weaving every night.

So one night he took apart his entire, nearly-finished boat.

He hears the soft, dark, and rich voice humming again and the sound of a file. Someone is working on his boat, and it infuriates him beyond belief for some reason. He runs down the stairs blindly to pull the bastard off his boat, and then stops.

"Hi Gibbs," Kate greets him. "I - " She pauses as she sees his expression, and quickly drops the file. It hurts him to see the nervousness in her eyes; is she still afraid of him, even now? "I'm sorry, I won't work on - "

"No, go right ahead," he replies softly. For some reason, he is both thoroughly confused by and thoroughly comfortable with the fact that Kate is in his basement, working on his boat.

The only thing that registers clearly is that Kate is wearing a suit, and that's no way to work in his basement. "You ought to change," he replies, and tosses her his NIS sweatshirt and a pair of shorts he keeps in a small chest downstairs. They'll be too big for her, his mind reasons, but they're clean workclothes and he doesn't want her to get her suit dirty.

o - o - o - o - o

He reaches for her and pulls her by him, just to hold her. "If I'd known there'd only be two years, I would have acted differently," he says quietly. It sounds strange coming out of his mouth. He is not the sentimental type.

And this two years business? What does he mean by 'only two years'? She's here, isn't she?

"Gibbs," she says reasonably. "You love NCIS, and it couldn't work that way. And you've been married three times. Your hesitation is understandable."

She was always the reasonable one. Even when Ari was here, and when the man made him crazy, Kate was reasonable. But for some odd feeling in his gut, he knows this time he is right, and she is not.

He pulls her tighter. "Katie."

Sara Gibbs wakes as her husband wraps his arms around her more tightly. He is so deeply asleep he probably doesn't realize what he just said, and she has no intention of telling him. He is not the cruel type, and at least not to her, and telling him what he said will only give him more guilt, open more old wounds, and force her to relive it.

o - o - o - o - o

She had met Jethro Gibbs at a bar downtown. Bourbon, and alone. She had said hello, he had smiled at her briefly, and that was it.

She learned from the bartender that he came often, always on a Tuesday, a pattern which started just a year before she met him. Took bourbon. Oh, he used to come in before that, said the bartender; he came often enough, but not regularly. Then, he had always asked for scotch; when asked why, he said it could make one feel warm inside...and scotch was a far better way to feel warm inside than a woman's way, which was fixing things that didn't need fixing. He had smiled in amusement, his eyes soft at the corners.

Had to have been a woman, the bartender concluded expertly. And then the man's penchant for storytelling kicked in. Jethro Gibbs had suddenly disappeared without a trace for a few months, the bartender said. And when he returned, he wasn't the same man. In fact, he only looked like Agent Jethro Gibbs, but he was another man entirely.

(Sara Gibbs, nee Sanders, had thought that was a stupidly melodramatic comment. Then.)

That first day Gibbs had come in since disappearing, he looked exhausted, his hands hard and the knuckles split open but looking clean - or, cleaned.

Behind them, the news report blared: federal agents had taken out a suspected Columbian drug ring, and one major drug dealer had been found dead in his apartment, his face beaten to almost non-recognition before being shot. Drug dealers, the bartender had said out loud. As if there weren't enough of them around. The agent had snorted mirthlessly. "Suspected drug dealers. Wonder whose idea that was."

The bartender hadn't asked him about it, but poured a scotch, just as he always had. This time, Agent Gibbs had only looked at it. "Bourbon."

The bartender had been surprised. "Not scotch?"

"BOURBON."

He never poured the NCIS agent another scotch.

o - o - o - o - o

He wore an aura of quiet sadness around him like he wore that long brown coat. Sara had begun coming on Tuesdays, just to watch him, and it was as the bartender said.

She had offered to buy him a drink, and he declined, but he had allowed her to sit nearby.

He was gentle, and that was good enough with her. She had thought that she could help him, help him recover from whatever it was that made him look so...whatever. She wasn't even sure how they ended up married; she thinks he knows even less.

He had warned her that he had been married three times already, all failures. She had heard from others that there was violence and a lot of hurt: one had most likely cheated on him; one had sent him a 'Dear John'. #2 had gone after him with a golf club, had cleaned out his bank account - probably took his house.

#3, according to Ducky, had hit him with a baseball bat, and called him repeatedly on their anniversary - at least, she used to. Some years ago, on their anniversary in fall 2005, he had blown up at her, changed his number, and got a restraining order. It sounded unlike the Jethro she knew, she had commented; Ducky had quietly replied, "Jethro was...different at that time."

She'd heard that all his ex-wives were redheads, with sharp green eyes. She was safe, she thought. She was a brunette, with long, half-curly waves that dropped just past her shoulders and big brown eyes. Yes, she was pretty; however, if he found redheads attractive but married a brunette, didn't that mean he'd moved beyond a redhead obsession, finally married for something besides initial attraction?

HE had moved beyond the red hair, married for something else. She just wished she had been the object of that 'something else.'

Agent Tobias Fornell, FBI, had met her in the bar once. He'd come to talk business with Gibbs, and met her there. For a brief moment the FBI agent's eyes had flashed surprise, and then disturbed understanding.

When he'd seen the engagement announcement in the paper, he'd called her privately. Warned her not to go through with it. Told her it was best for her, that Gibbs wasn't thinking right, something about not letting go of the past. It wasn't that she didn't believe in how powerful memory could be, even after faces and voices started fading. But she had thought, since no one on his team had said anything, then did it matter?

It was only after she married him did she realize the team was still reeling too wildly to say anything.

o - o - o - o - o

She realized, after they were married, she didn't know that much about him.

So she had asked Ducky; the medical examiner had been the friendliest, in her opinion. The Gibbs he described was so different from the one she knew now. Intense - at some points, almost insanely so. The Gibbs he described, the one who had tracked down a child molester, sounded unlike the man she had married.

Not that Jethro was irresponsible, but that sense of...intensity was gone, almost as if it had been spent. Built up, exploded, and then disappeared, like a supernova. He was still protective, still precise, but it...it seemed different. He smiled sometimes, but it seemed a little distant, and always sad, and it never seemed to reach his eyes.

When she asked, the medical examiner fell quiet, and she didn't press anymore.

o - o - o - o - o

She went up to their attic to look. He had been called into work that morning, and she had the day off, so she had gone exploring up there.

His previous wives must have cleaned him out good. Most of the boxes are old wood tools, and some of his childhood doodlings. There are some of his things from when he was a Marine.

In one box, tossed on top, is a picture of a sharp, whip-cord thin blond man and a beautiful blonde woman with him. There is a small boy sitting in front of them, a wide smile on his face, and the picture Christmas card is written in a woman's hand. On the side of the page, in a child's handwriting, is a short note to Gibbs. It was the Christmas of 2005, the Christmas after the bartender said that Gibbs had reappeared after his short absence.

She notices that the next cards from the family never have family pictures. They are written in a man's hand, strong and short, all business. They speak of his wife, and the little boy - but briefly. They are all signed 'Chris,' and his name alone is on the return address - and the return address is stamped with a Denver ATF headquarters address, not a home address.

She is not stupid. In this Chris' writing is deep sympathy and understanding, even if it never bleeds through clearly enough. She doesn't know Larabee's story, but he obviously understands Jethro. She wonders if that's the reason why there are no more family photos. This Chris probably made that decision.

She is sure that Jethro appreciates it.

o - o - o - o - o

Jethro has few pictures of his ex-wives, beyond the wedding photos, which he has all stuck into one slim album whose back pages are all blank, unfilled.

Their wedding album is downstairs; she put it together. The ceremony was small, simple. He didn't have many people on his side; oddly, it was Agent Balboa who stood up with him. Director Morrow was there, as was Dr. Mallard and Agent McGee. Agent DiNozzo left midway through, and Abby Sciuto had smiled at her apologetically when it happened and hurried out after him.

The whispers were that Tony and his boss had gotten into a fight the week before, something that shocked the entire headquarters because DiNozzo had idolized Gibbs. Rumor was that the fight was something personal, and that DiNozzo had been in the right: about the marriage not being fair to her, not when Gibbs couldn't let go, and did he want to ruin another beautiful brunette's life? The potshot had horrified their fellow agents.

Tony has always been so gentle and kind to her. The common raunchiness he throws at others is never directed at her, and she had assumed it was because she was with Gibbs.

She knows better now. She sees what Fornell had meant, that the FBI agent had said what Tony couldn't, and what Tony had confronted Gibbs about. Tony had pitied her, not in the condescending way - just pain that this was happening to someone and he couldn't stop it.

o - o - o - o - o

She found a small wood box, hidden below piles of boxes. It was delicately carved, and it had the name of Jethro's mother on it. It was the only feminine thing in the house she hadn't brought with her.

She had opened it to find nothing of value - at least, nothing so valuable that it warranted being put in the chest.

There was a PDA in there, carefully tucked into its case and unused. Strange. Moreover, Jethro could never figure those things out, anyway, so she knew it wasn't his. In a small corner of cloth, she found a thin chain and a cross on it, still tinged red. Underneath was a piece of heavy drawing paper, neatly folded. She picked it up, laid it out flat, and her breath caught.

It was him, done beautifully in pencil. Some features weren't right on - the nose was a little off - but there was no mistaking who it was or that it was well done. And it was more than the physical features, and not the expression, either, but just...it was him. Whoever did it knows her husband well - or maybe knew her husband well. The paper was yellowing at the corners, and from the looks of it, he had been trying to save it, somehow, before it disappeared.

She had considered taking it to a photo shop and having it touched up, maybe laminated, to preserve it. Whoever did it had done it with gentleness and care. She had decided against it; she had a feeling Jethro would be angry she had even gone through the box at all.

The following, a photo, wasn't very flattering. It was the same style as the NCIS photo IDs, and it took Sara a second take to understood why he had kept it.

She was beautiful, even in that crappy photo, and she looked like Sara, with her shoulder-length brown hair and big brown eyes. 'Caitlin Todd.' And Sara was beginning to understand.

o - o - o - o - o

In a brown folder underneath the delicate wood box were a few torn newspaper pages - all articles about a drug bust and the discovery of a drug dealer who had been beaten before he was shot in the forehead. A personal vendetta, one article proclaimed; not a deal gone bad. Oddly enough, Fornell was quoted inside refuting it. The paper printed a correction.

He was protecting Jethro, said the tiny voice in her head.

There was one more thing there in the folder, a photo of a man smiling, dressed in doctor's greens, pointing a handgun up at the camera; there were shots riddling the photo.

The newspapers were dated for fall of 2005.

o - o - o - o - o

She had put everything back; she didn't want anything missing. She knew asking Jethro was useless; he rarely talked about his colleagues as it was, and he had a feeling Caitlin Todd would be a permanent non-topic with him.

She had gone to NCIS headquarters a few days later. She'd told Jethro, who had the day off and was in the basement working on his boat - she never understood how he could be down there so long and never seem to accomplish anything on it - she was going out for a little while. He'd just nodded.

When she'd showed up, McGee and Tony were there, acting up like brothers, as they usually did, and poking at each other. Their newest team member and colleague, Meg Dowley, was sitting there rolling her eyes at her desk as she tried to work. A blonde was sitting in Jethro's desk, and she heard Tony call her 'Paula.'

They greeted her warmly, as they always did, and were very accomodating when she asked if she could speak with them. When she asked about Caitlin Todd, though, McGee flinched visibly and Tony sucked in his breath. Meg bit her lip, her eyes darting nervously between McGee and Tony, and her file suddenly became far more interesting than it was ten seconds before.

It was the blonde who acted first. She stood and came around from behind the desk, took her arm, and led her away. "Hi, I'm Special Agent Paula Cassidy," she said gently.

"Sara. Sara Gibbs," she'd replied. There was brief flash of shock in the agent's face, and then a slightly scrutinizing look, and Cassidy swallowed hard, still speechless. "I'm Jethro Gibbs' wife."

"Yes," Cassidy recovered. "Yes, of course."

They had gone down to the cafeteria, where they had gotten coffee and sat in a quiet corner, and did the requisite small talk first, about the weather, how Paula had joined NCIS. They graduated to what Paula could tell her about the Gibbs she had known.

The Gibbs Paula had described - with the caveat that she hadn't known him that well - had paralleled Ducky's. The intense workaholic. The first time Paula had met him, that's what he was.

The second time, Paula said, was the next year. He was lighter. Less intense. Smiled more. Tony had said the same.

And now?

Paula had winced, not answering. She had played with her coffee cup for awhile, and then she began to talk about Caitlin Todd.

Paula had first met Caitlin in Gitmo, when Tony, Jethro, and 'Kate' had investigated her. Paula and Tony had hit it off, but Tony had been affected by Jethro's detachment during the investigation. Although she had only heard it from him, so it was secondhand at best, Paula knew Kate had stood up to Jethro twice, defending Tony concerning her.

She had always known Tony better, but she had felt a sort of friendly kinship with Kate as one of the few women working for NCIS, and she was sure the feeling was mutual.

When had Kate joined NCIS, Sara had suddenly asked. Paula was sure the team - minus McGee - had met Kate sometime in September of 2003, and she had joined the team around then.

Two years. She had been at NCIS about two years. Jethro had known Kate a shade under two years.

o - o - o - o - o

When Sara described the shot up photo, Paula winced. She knew who it was, but she didn't elaborate. All she would supply was that, according to Tony, he had kidnapped Kate twice and he had been the one to kill her: bullet through her forehead. She didn't know the details, except that Kate had saved Jethro's life; he was supposed to be the target. The details - there was evidence of two bullets - she wasn't clear about.

Her ship had just come in to port that day - May 24, 2005, and she'd stepped off expecting to spend a fun weekend with Tony. Instead she had arrived to find a red-eyed Abby Sciuto in the bullpen, still crying, and Tony and Agent Tim McGee looking shocked. The director had asked her to stay, TAD, for awhile. He had pulled her aside and explained that it wasn't so much for manpower - but since she knew the team, he needed her there as a stabilizer, as much as she could. She had met Stan Burley, one of Gibbs' former team members, for the same reason; the director had asked him personally to come in.

Tom Morrow was preparing for a storm.

Sara listened as Paula described her husband in those days following - unbearable, impossible to be around. She had seen him throw things, which she'd never seen before, and which apparently the rest of the bullpen hadn't either. Even Paula had been frightened for her own safety, and she had worked at Gitmo.

It had all ended one late night. He had returned, looking terrible; she, Stan, Tony, and McGee had been worrying all day, going out two by two to try to find him, to no avail. He hadn't said anything to them, had gone to take a shower, and left. Sara waited for details, but Paula just swallowed and shook her head, and shivered slightly. She then shook herself out of it and smiled at Sara Gibbs. Not to worry, Paula had reassured her. The man who killed Kate was dead. "Gibbs saw to it."

Guilt, Sara had thought then. Guilt over being unable to protect his team. When she'd voiced it, Paula Cassidy had only smiled sadly at her and said nothing. She'd let her think that.

It was only later that Sara realized that wasn't the half of it.

o - o - o - o - o

It was stupid, and she never knew why she did it, but she did: she found where Kate was buried and went. If Sara had anything in common with her husband, it was a thorough, precise nature.

There was a set of fresh flowers there. The florist was Martha's Garden, and since Jethro never got her flowers from there, she wondered if they were from someone else. Any flowers he brought for her were from Phoebe's. And she knew he didn't even like flowers: he didn't like presents that required thought.

"Pretty, aren't they?"

She saw a tired looking older couple behind her, and she was thus introduced to Kate's parents. They don't live around here anymore - too many memories, so they had to move. They only get to come up here when they can.

She told them she was just a passing acquaintance of Kate's.

They smiled, and Sara can still hear the tears in their voices as they talked about their daughter. How she had grown up with all her brothers...with only her already tomboyish sister as a feminine influence. It was a miracle that their adventurous daughter had always been able to keep her Catholic school uniform neat and pressed, one of the girly traits she had retained. She loved the adrenaline rush - that's why she hated and dropped out of law school. And while she was rarely naive (but sometimes, yes), she had been lively, had a healthy love of life, and she had loved NCIS.

They are still grateful for the people who were in their daughter's last two years. They've met Ducky and Abby, and Tony and McGee, not just at the memorial service but seeing them here over the years after Kate had died.

Oddly, they did not include meeting Jethro at Kate's grave, and hadn't he been her boss?

They, unknowing, took it as a criticism of Jethro and quickly defended him in glowing words. Sara discovered that this is where her husband disappears to the fourth Tuesday of every month, when he leaves the house early for work. They had found out from the groundskeeper, they said; although the grounds-people took care of the grounds, he always came to trim the grass right around the stone, which the mower couldn't reach, and to clean up anything else that didn't fit his Marine-strict standards of order. And he always left the flowers.

Sara gave up then.

o - o - o - o - o

She understands now why Jethro lights the second candle when they go to church. And why he can't leave NCIS, and why he continues to try to live out his life. No doubt it is in part because, Sara is sure, Kate would be angry with him if he went about in an angry haze. From what she has learned of Kate, she is sure the petite beauty would be infuriated if Jethro did something stupid and died any way but naturally, in his sleep.

Meg Dowley once said, in a hushed voice, that she has never seen Jethro fight about putting on a Kevlar vest - something that now, years later, still surprises the older agents (including Tony and McGee). "You can live with it," her husband says to anyone who balks. "That's kind of the idea."

She wonders what kind of hold Kate Todd had on her husband when she was alive, if this is how she affects him now that she's gone.

She doesn't think Jethro regrets being left behind. She remembers his smile of amusement and pride when Tony, despite the sexual harassment complaints on his file, cracked open a huge case two years ago and was named the agent of the year. She sees his satisfied expression when McGee and Abby's names are in the paper for helping the FBI crack a major hacking circle. She knows he is glad to be able to help Ducky with his mother in the last years of dementia, before she goes.

Kate would have liked to do the same, Sara guesses. Maybe that's why Jethro acts the way he does now.

Last year, Tony was promoted to a supervising agent position, and is now building his own team. It's one of the rare times Jethro tells her how he feels about it - he doesn't like to do it, and it takes effort on his part. It's time Tony is out on his own, he said then, and since Tony has taken McGee with him, he has a good base to work from. There was relief and sadness in his tone, and Sara wonders if it doesn't have something to do with the fact that the last of Kate is gone from his team: relief from the constant reminder that she is gone, but sadness that those reminders are gone.

o - o - o - o - o

As for their marriage, she knows Jethro doesn't mean it, and she can't in all honesty, in all rationality, hold it against a dead woman. By all accounts, Kate was never anything more to Jethro than a friend and a coworker - officially, anyway. Jethro wants to keep her locked safely away, away from his current life, and she won't fight it.

She's given up her illusions of her own ability to do anything. The Jethro she has married she didn't tame. The fact that he isn't so wrapped up in his work, that he has quieted, that he tries to please her with flowers and the like - she knows now that it's not necessarily because of her. For a man driven by loyalty, and here, devotion, he isn't doing it for his fourth and his first non-redheaded wife, but out of his reverence for a dead woman, to his memory of what she was. He probably doesn't even realize it.

She was frustrated at first, but in a strange sense, Kate has taken her husband from her just as she has given her husband back, simultaneously. Sara has outlasted any of the redheads, and she has no inclination to go after Jethro with a bat, because he really has never angered her or frustrated her. He's a gentler, more careful husband than he ever was, even if he subconsciously does it because Kate would want him to. Sara can't count Kate as an enemy, even a bygone one.

So Sara learns to live with the woman she has never met.

Ducky was worried that the deep sleeping was some sign of depression, because Jethro was always a light sleeper before Kate died. Now, he always sleeps a dead sleep. He's gone in a different world in which his wife has little part.

Fornell had warned her; even the padre who reluctantly married them had gently advised her. As she looks back on it, there was warning in everything else that had happened leading up; she had just wanted to ignore it. Looking back, now, she should have kept her eyes wide-open then and half-closed now. She doesn't believe in divorce except for cheating or for abuse, and Jethro has done neither. He cares for her in his own way, she doesn't doubt it. He actually puts in effort, and she cares too much to leave him.

She gets up and goes downstairs to make some coffee. They both drink strong coffee; he takes his black, but she adds stuff to her own. Sometimes she wonders if he simply married her because she could make good coffee.

That, and because she has Kate's brown hair and brown eyes.

They've been married several years now, and oddly enough, he still puts milk and sweetner in her coffee when he brings it to her. He tries, and so she doesn't have the heart to tell him she takes her coffee with cream, not milk.

END