Author's note:

A little bit of angst today – to temper all the flapping in recent days.

Records indicate that this story was written on June 1st of 2009.

Italics indicate a flashback.

He hadn't touched her in ten years, and yet the memory of the kiss of her skin against his own was as crisp as the night air he'd just come in from. Tonight he ached for the nearness of someone who cared about him.

For the presence of the only woman who'd ever come close to providing any tangible comfort.

His soul hadn't been shrouded in darkness when Shannon was alive. She'd never had to deal with it, or him, like Jenny had – and on this cold bitter evening he craved her presence as he craved the burn of the bourbon on his work bench.

He smiled sadly as he looked into the past; taking a long draw from the bottle as he remembered a bleak day during their op in London. One of their British counterparts dead by his own hand when he realised that the bad intel he'd acquired had cost five people, including his partner, their lives.

"It's not your fault," she said as she lay down on the bed and joined him in staring at the ceiling.

But he felt it was. Something about the way the man had left the scene had worried his gut. He could have, should have, stopped him. Or followed him immediately. But he hadn't. He'd let him go. And when he eventually caught up with him in the alley he'd been a few minutes too late.

He struggled to find words, but Jen turned onto her side and looked straight at him.

"Sshhh," she said, placing her fingers against his lips. "I know."

She leaned across him and turned off the bedside lamp - pressing a kiss to the palm that had risen to caress her cheek before easing herself onto her back once more. Giving him space, but not leaving him alone. After a while he reached for her hand. Grazing her knuckles with his thumb until she shifted back onto her side and laid her head on his chest. As his fingers ran through her hair he felt her tighten her grip on him - and knew that whatever she was about to say was going to going to be hard to hear.

"They were lovers, Jethro," she said softly.

He hadn't known, but in retrospect it didn't surprise him. He'd watch them work as seamlessly together as he and Jen did, and he'd seen the look on the man's face as he'd taken in the sight of his partner's body. It had been a partnership built on trust and mutual respect that had developed into more somewhere along the line.

Just as his and Jen's had.

She inched a little closer, and the hitch in her breathing tore at him a little more than the pain he'd heard in her voice.

He knew without asking what she was thinking. Another time, another place it might just as easily be them.

He refused to dwell on how he would feel if the same thing happened to him. Choosing instead to drop a kiss to her head. She shifted slightly, almost as though she was planning to move away, and instinctively he wrapped his hand in her hair and pulled it downwards so that her face rose to meet his. Tracing the contours of her face with the fingers of his other hand. Memorizing them all over again.

Restraining himself slightly when he felt his touch border on possessiveness. He didn't fully comprehend how cold he was feeling until she stopped his hand at her lips and kissed each fingertip slowly.

Relief of a sort sluiced through him. Perhaps the recognition that he could let go; that he could let his guard down.

Releasing her hair, he pulled her into his side and held onto her as fiercely as she was holding onto him. He knew he was trembling as her warmth leached into him, but it didn't matter because the moment was tender and accommodating; suffused in gentle caresses and rhythmic breathing that grounded them both.

The smile faded as the unwelcome juxtaposition of recall and reality exploded in his head.

And with that came the persecution of all of his other failures. Shannon and Kelly, killed while he'd been off fighting someone else's battles. Chis Pacci, murdered because he hadn't given him the time of day. Kate, killed in cold blood because he hadn't taken a shot at Ari when he'd had the chance. And now Michele Lee. Dead because he'd spent too much damn time second-guessing himself.

He talked perpetually about protecting his team these days. Fully believed that he needed to. But it always brought him back to the question he'd been been torturing himself with for months.

Who'd protected her? From herself.

It sure as hell hadn't been him. If anything he'd enabled her at a time when she'd been vulnerable, instead of remaining faithful to his bulldog instincts and getting to the bottom of things.

He would never know now whether things might have been different had he tried harder.

Guilt wrapped itself around him again, threatening to suffocate him.

Semper Fi.

The words sounded hollow and tainted with bitterness. The feeling that he'd abandoned his creed, both his creeds in fact when it came to her, made him reach for the bottle again. She'd been his partner and his lover once – and he'd left her to her demons even when he'd seen them lurking around her.

His throat constricted viciously as he fought to keep his eyes from closing against the dull ache radiating up and across his hard palate. He clamped his teeth together as the pressure settled on his back molars – aware that his body was shaking from the effort of maintaining control. The visuals had stopped, but her name kept rising in his mind like a whisper. Taunting him. He suppressed the emotion ruthlessly; focusing on exhaling sharply through his nose every time a wave rose up and threatened to engulf him. The simple mechanical motion dispelling the grief that seemed intent on finding an outlet.

"Jethro .."

He turned towards the voice, grateful that there was no need to dissemble in this instance.

"I had the feeling you might need a friend tonight," Ducky said carefully, his eyes straying off to the right. "Although by the looks of it you need a doctor more."

Gibbs followed his gaze – only registering the pain when he saw the gouges on the work bench. He stood still as Ducky pried splinters from under his nails, and waited for the questions to come. He looked long and hard at his old friend when they didn't, but the medical examiner smiled.

"When one does not know what to say, it is a time to be silent," he said slowly as he placed the injured hand back on the bench. "Yul Brynner said that to Deborah Kerr in The king and I," he clarified.

Gibbs smiled slightly as he upturned two mason jars.

It escaped neither man that his hand had a slight tremor to it.

"You stayin'?" he asked as he started to pour out the bourbon.

"If you like."

Gibbs nodded and downed the contents of his jar before walking towards the boat.

"Talk to me, Duck" he said as he hefted a sander and went to work.

If the older man was surprised he didn't show it. Instead he asked, "about?"

"Just ... talk to me."

Ducky took a few steps towards him before raising his eyes to meet Gibbs'. As they stared at each other across the hull, Gibbs was under no illusion that the medical examiner knew exactly what – or who – tonight was about.

"Do you remember the time she commandeered a boat?" the older man began, a sad smile playing on his lips as he watched Gibbs respond by running a hand along the wood as tenderly as he had the body bag in autopsy months earlier. Ducky waited for a moment, and then he added "That is how she would want you to remember her, Jethro."

"I know, Duck," Gibbs replied as he picked up the sander again.

Letting emotion overwhelm him wasn't an option.

There were still things he had to do for her. And not simply because nobody else was going to.

When they were done he would grieve.

Author's note:

Of course he ended up doing nothing in the show – despite my predictions that he would. I considered changing the ending before I resposted – but I think it should stand as written. Hope springs eternal, after all.