Missing Scenes, "Yankee White" and "Hung Out to Dry"

by Sammie

Disclaimer and all other notes in Part 1.

The phone rang again, and Kate grabbed her pillow and covered her head with it. It was a Monday, and if that wasn't bad enough, it was the first day she'd finally have to face up to her unemployment; she wasn't made of money, she had to look for a job. The stupid caller could have at least allowed her a couple more minutes of sleeping in on a Monday, a luxury she hadn't had recently.

The answering machine picked up, and Kate felt a pang at hearing Tim's voice on the machine: "Leave a message." She had been trained well enough to know not to leave her name or her number on machine, and as an extra precaution, she generally had her father or her brothers do the recording; after a freak blackout (and the digital phone didn't save the recording), Tim had done the recording for her.

The phone beeped, and she the click of a hangup. Good. Maybe the person thought she wasn't home. Stupid caller.

The phone began ringing again.

"Aaaaarrrggghhh," Kate groaned, and finally snatched up the receiver without looking at the caller ID. "WHAT."

"So you are home," came the familiar voice, lightly.

Gibbs. Change 'stupid caller' to 'complete bastard.' Kate wondered snippily if she could get that registered in her caller ID. "Agent Gibbs," Kate replied as diplomatically as she could, but she was not in the mood to deal with him. "May I politely ask what the h-ll you want?"

"Why aren't you in work?"

"I quit the Secret Service, in case you forgot."

"I offered you a job at NCIS, in case you forgot."

Kate stopped short, and after the initial surprise, she softened. She had thought over that offer many times since, but since she had never received any other confirmation of it - she hadn't even gotten a response from him that night when she asked him if it was a job offer - she had assumed it was some kind of joke, or an offhand offer that he made and later regretted...and thus hadn't contacted her. She was not a groveller - she had made a mistake, but she still was a good agent, and she was not about to go crawling to and begging for a job from someone.

Especially from Jethro Gibbs.

"I don't make offers I don't mean," he said.

Kate suddenly had a horrible thought: had she said all of this out loud? She turned it over quickly in her head - no, she was sure she hadn't, so how did he know what she had been thinking? It was a little creepy. "I just assumed you weren't serious when I didn't hear anything else afterwards," she replied finally, having recovered.

"I thought you would want some time...alone," came the voice over the line, softly. "You took off pretty quickly after Major Kerry's funeral."

Kate winced and was silent.

Thursday afternoon she stood next to her former supervisor, Agent Baur, as they quietly delivered Cmdr. Trapp's body to his parents and his girlfriend. Dr. Mallard had done a fine, gentle job of cleaning up the body and making it presentable, but it was no easier for them. They were taking him home to bury him.

Friday morning she stood alone at Tim's funeral. It had been well-attended by many in the Secret Service, and although she had gotten some greetings from her former coworkers, she had felt awkward there. It wasn't as though they had known about her relationship with Tim, but she still felt out of place. Agent Baur had given her shoulder a fatherly, understanding squeeze. He had told her, not long after she resigned, that he was proud of the work she had done with the Secret Service; what was left unspoken was the fact that she had broken the rules. She had made the decision much easier for him by resigning, and his encouragement even then had been welcome.

She had noticed Agent Gibbs at Tim's funeral, and for a brief moment wondered why he was there - it would be crazy to attend the funeral of every victim whose case he had solved, after all. It then felt almost mean to be thinking about someone else at Tim's funeral (she tried to reassure herself it was purely platonic curiosity), and set the thought aside.

Afterwards, she had tried to make it out as fast as she could; she had only stopped to talk to Marcy and to Deb, Rick's wife - and only briefly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Gibbs speed up just slightly as he headed toward her, apparently realizing she was leaving. Unluckily for him - but luckily for her - he was cut short by Baur, who stopped him to talk. She was almost grateful for the reprieve, stealing the chance to slip away. She could feel Gibbs' eyes still on her as she disappeared into the crowd and out to the parking lot.

She had gotten no calls on any of those days, and since he hadn't even given her an affirmative answer when she had asked that night, Kate had decided he didn't want her at NCIS. That was fine, and she was ready to hit the wanted ads.

But here she was now.

"Kate?" Gibbs' voice over the line brought her out of her thoughts, and she thought he sounded guardedly concerned.

"Yeah," Kate replied.

"Would you still want to work this job?"

For a moment, Kate was positive she was imagining it, but it sounded almost...uncertain. She hadn't had profiling training for nothing, and while most would just hear the usual, nonchalant question, the slight hesitation nearly blew her away. She hadn't known that Gibbs could be uncertain - she had assumed he didn't know what it even meant.

She set aside the thought. There would be more time to think about that once she got to know her boss better.

Kate sat up, shocked at that thought. When had she decided that Gibbs was going to be her boss? Had she already decided she wanted the job? "Yes. I'll be there in an hour."

"Good." Kate dismissed what sounded like slight relief over the line. "Otherwise DiNozzo would whine about having to clean off your new desk for nothing."

Kate laughed a little at that, and it felt good to do that after the week she'd had. "I'll have to thank him."

"Don't egg him on. He took over both empty desks - the one next to his and the one next to me. The one next to his - Viv left him some of her things, and he assumes he can have the desk, too. It's his own fault." Kate hears a brief protest on the other end, and then a distant WHAP and DiNozzo whining. "You need the clean desk to file your paperwork to get your badge and ID. I'm not doing it."

Kate made a face. It was supposed to be his paperwork. Leave it to Gibbs to be a bastard.

"Are you coming?" he asked again.

"Yes, I'm coming."

END