All right, the poll I held last week about which sequel you readers wanted to read first had a clear winner!

So it is with great pleasure I start posting this story, which I consider, along with "Gunny's Whore" my favorite NCIS story and one of my best works ever.

It was a hard story to write because I don't like to write about pain and suffering.

However, when I heard Paloma Reynosa mention torture in "Rule 51", I started wondering what could have happened had she decided to do it to Gibbs.

There was a lot of potential for a hurt/comfort story and frankly I'm surprised no other author (at least among the Tibbs-sters) used it.

WARNING: this story contains references to torture and violence, but they aren't overtly graphic.

Jethro's Love

By

Gunnery Sergeant

Sequel to "Gunny's Whore"

This story assumes that you have seen "Borderland", "Patriot Down", "Rule Fifty-One" and "The Spider And The Fly". These episodes happened in this AU exactly as they were depicted on screen, but for the plot changes I produced with the premise of this story (and, of course, with "Gunny's Whore").

Thanks to Finlaure, my wonderful friend and betareader!

Prologue

Somewhere near Baja, Mexico, mid-May 2010

The sight of what he had believed to be Mike Franks' mutilated body and the anguish caused by the awareness his old mentor had died because of him, just like Lara Macy, were some of the reasons J.P. Dean had been able to catch Leroy Jethro Gibbs unaware and press a gun against him before he could react.

Then, the news the corpse he had been staring at wasn't Mike's but Colonel Bell's, and thus the need to discover who was behind all of it, had stopped the NCIS agent from trying to overpower the other man.

Now, a few hours later after being knocked unconscious by a blow to his head, Gibbs stared at his surroundings as he waited for his fate to be decided, for there was little else he could do, weapon-less and surrounded by armed men as he was.

The villa where he was looked like an oasis in the desert. It was beautiful, but some of that beauty was lost to him, for he knew what had paid for it: drug money.

As for the woman serving him a glass of scotch, it didn't take a genius to guess who she was. McGee had told him in passing about his and Abby's encounter with the Reynosa cartel while they were in Mexico, and how a woman had given a shell case to them, the brass Gibbs had left on the ridge as signature after killing Pedro Hernandez and wondered how it had ended in Abby's hand.

"You know who I am?" she asked.

"Paloma Reynosa. Head of the Reynosa cartel," Gibbs answered, seeing no point in denying it.

"What else do you know?"

"That the drug trade is recession-proof," he commented sarcastic and trying to guess what the hell she wanted.

"Tennessee Williams said: 'We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins for life.'" Reynosa said, looking at the landscape around her. "Surrounded by men with guns, I think of this often. Beautiful, sad, but frank. Do you consider yourself a frank man?"

Gibbs didn't see the point to answer, so he didn't. He wasn't there to comment poetry.

"He also said all cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness. I would expect nothing less from the man who murdered my father," Paloma completed, staring hard at him.

Everything clicked in place. Now Gibbs knew why he and the people he cared for had been targeted. He also had a brutal reminder of why revenge was seldom a good idea. Because revenge breeds revenge, even twenty years later.

Gibbs never really regretted killing Pedro Hernandez. To him, the man got what he deserved, not only for what he did to Shannon and Kelly, but also to the NIS agent who died with them, and to the Marine whose murder his wife had witnessed.

However, sometimes, when he had to arrest people for having done the same thing he did, Gibbs found himself thinking that maybe, had he not let his pain and anger obfuscate his common sense, he could have dealt with Hernandez in a different way. Maybe, as the federal agent he had later become, he could have found a way to ensure justice for his girls and the other victims.

Sometime the awareness of what a kind of hypocrite he was when he accused people of being murderers was almost overwhelming, but he then remembered all the good he had done since that one mistake. He was a good agent, he had saved lives, and if it probably would never atone for what he did, he was determinate to keep doing his job until NCIS regulations about mandatory retirement would make him stop.

"I see you choose your words carefully, Agent Gibbs," Paloma Reynosa said, commenting his silence. "That is good. Your life depends on them."

"I don't usually drink scotch," he just said, gulping down the brown liquid.

His host smirked and sat down at the table as he looked at her intently, wondering what she was up to. If she wanted revenge, why hadn't she ordered Dean to shoot him? Or did she want do it herself?

"You solve crimes for a living," Reynosa began, as if she was discussing the weather, but her keen and unsettling eyes never stopped to observe him. Gibbs could only imagine what she was feeling at looking at her father's killer after so much time. "Is there such a thing as a perfect murder?"

"I've never seen one," he answered, sincere.

"But how would it work?"

"It's not the method, it's the victim," he explained, and added, but only in his mind. And even so everything can completely go wrong…your father's death is a perfect example of it.

"Kill someone no one will miss," Reynosa suggested.

Gibbs smirked and replied softly, "You don't need tips on how to kill me."

The young woman shook her head. "I am not opposed to killing when it suits my needs. That is part of my business. The late Colonel Bell wanted to prove he was a better man than you. He and his men made for a useful ally, but they were a means to an end. Namely you."

"I don't know what you're after, but you might as well put a bullet in my head right now, because you're not gonna get anything," Gibbs answered. His mind went to his father and Tony, and to the pain his death would cause them, but he was foremost a federal agent, a man who had always put his country and his duty to it above all, and that would do everything to ensure the US woulldn't be damaged in any way. He would never become a tool for Reynosa.

"I don't want to kill you," Paloma continued with that deceptively soft tone of hers. "I want to make you suffer as you made me suffer." Her face transformed in a mask of pure hate. "By the time I am done with you, you will regret ever being born, Agent Gibbs."

She nodded with her head and Dean stepped forward along with two other armed men. "Take him down to my playroom...I will join you soon."

Dean nodded and seized Gibbs by the arms and pulled him out of the chair, dragging him away.

"Now we will see how tough you are, Marine...If I were you, I would begin to pray your heart fails you soon..." he said with a malicious tone that made Gibbs shiver as for the first time in a long time, he felt fear crept along his body. Fear for himself and not for his people. Fear he would never see Tony again...

He could only imagine what Reynosa in had in store for him and with the little faith left inside him after Shannon and Kelly's death, he turned his eyes toward the sky and asked God to help him and to look after Tony and his father in case he should die under Paloma's tortures.

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So, here we go...it has started. Let me know what you think and remember reviews make me update faster!