A/n Tim and Ellie are the same age it's the current time frame just suspend your disbelief of ages please. Because I want you to consider both Tim and Ellie to be in their early 30's. and I want Gibbs time line not to change. Also in this story Jake's last name is Bishop

Sixteen year old Timothy McGee stared out the window of his brand new car. Flashing red hair and laughing blue eyes haunted his every memory. Dead, Kelly was dead. He took a shuddering breath on that deserted road in his brand new car. Hair the color of sunshine eyes as blue as the ocean. Ellie, Ellie had ran away, not able to take the devastation of losing her mother and twin sister. He had no way of finding her. No way of contacting her, he didn't know where she went. The car sped up and he let go crashing himself hoping to be taken from the world not wanting to live in a world where Kelly didn't live. Not wanting to live in a world where Ellie disappeared.

Eleanor Gibbs sat on a bus bound for anywhere but where she was. Her mother dead, her twin sister dead, her father off in Mexico haunting for Vengeance. The emancipation slip in her purse. It hadn't been hard to get him to sign it. Not with him so deep in despair over Kelly and mom. She shook her head. She wasn't even sure he could see her. The only thing she felt bad about as she left her childhood town was that she was leaving behind Tim. Tim the one rock she'd had but it was hard for to see Tim the boy she loved but who was always Kelly's. Now Kelly was gone. She'd never walk down the aisle or take the last name McGee like she'd planned since she was 14, and Ellie felt sick with herself for all the times she'd envied her sisters perfect love.

She wondered if her dad even knew about Tim, considered Tim. His father had been gone for so long now and Kelly was so private. She figured maybe her mother had said something in a letter but she couldn't be sure. She looked out the window at the passing land scape. World here she came, if only to outrun the ghost that were still chasing her.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs heard the crack of the gun shot. He'd hit his mark. The man responsible for Shannon and Kelly's Death was no more. It was time to go home and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Except he didn't know how. Shannon and Kelly were dead. Ellie had left, he allowed her to be emancipated. He wanted her with him but at the same time knew he was in no place to care for his precious girl. He figured she'd go to her grandfather, to Stillwater to the past. Jackson would be better for her anyway. She was the strong one his Ellie. Always the first to do something the dare devil. Kelly was more quite more reserved. He didn't know how he could ever look at Ellie without seeing Kelly. He didn't know how Kelly could go on without her other half. It had always been Kelly and Ellie now it was just Ellie.

Three people crushed and broken tried to find their way in the messed up world. Or in the case of one tried to find his way out of the messed up world. Three people connected by death whose paths would diverge only to come together again in ways no one could see coming.

….

Tim lived he hadn't wanted to but he had, the car was totaled and he had months upon months of surgery's and therapy but he was alive. "Kelly." He whispered. Wanting to be with her where ever she was. His fingers itched to call Ellie but he couldn't one because he didn't know where she was and two because he didn't want to burden her. No he survived he didn't know why he had and she hadn't but it was what was. He'd go on he'd try to live a life without the light that was Kelly.

Ellie found herself in Stillwater briefly but she felt stifled by the small time life. She graduated from the same high school her father had decades earlier but as soon as the diploma was In her hand she kissed her grandfather and she was running again. Trying to out run the ghost of her past again. Kelly's laugh. The whispered secrets they shared. She wanted to call Tim let him know she was okay but when she did his number was disconnected and she felt a little bit more of herself die. She would survive though. She'd survive on her own. She was strong she'd do it. She had to. She had to live for Kelly who never got the chance.

Jethro Gibbs stood in the back of the Stillwater high school gym and watched his daughter graduate before slipping out. He knew she didn't want to see him. They'd only had minimal contact since she'd left two years before. He feared she'd never forgive him for running off to Mexico. He got into his truck and headed back towards DC and NCIS. He'd lost his girls. Two of them to death and the other to grief his and hers but he'd found another thing to live for his job. The one thing he could get lost in to forget all the ghost of his past.

A/N so next up we'll be at present time where the Team will meet Ellie and of course Ellie and Tim and Ellie and Gibbs will come face to face.