A/N: This is my first attempt at writing anything for NCIS, so I hope I managed to capture the voices and characters well enough. With any luck, there will be more to come.

You'd have to really look, be allowed past or lucky enough to see the all too tired slip of his unmovable wall, to realize Gibbs wasn't the sort of man to be intentionally living in his memories. No, that had just happened, without his permission.

The news of their deaths, well the voice that had breathed it out might as well have been made of an inferno, because it had consumed him. Even his revenge, even years and the sort of love he allowed himself to feel hadn't been able to do more than cause it to flicker with its all too valiant and all too weak attempts.

He was always burning, for a time he couldn't get back, for years he hadn't thought he was wasting. Now, though, well he couldn't see with any confidence that he had lived every moment that he had with them. It would always tug on him, a pit he couldn't quite escape from.

He didn't tell the others, the ones that he did love as fiercely as he was capable of, any of this. Not really. It wouldn't be fair, wouldn't do to let them know that he was half in the past at any moment, outside of the freedom of a case.

Was it a wonder he worked so hard?

In his arms, now, Kate shifted. It brought him back to the present ` sharply with an irrational fear that she would somehow know what he was thinking, where he was lingering, yet again. He pushed it away, tilting his head slightly to look at her. Gibbs, well, he didn't do irrational. At least that's what he told himself-another lie in an immeasurable pile of lies.

Kate's breath exhaled, hot and close to his bare chest. She trailed her nose against him, sleep still clinging heavily to her as she tilted her head up to look at him.

"Gibbs?" she whispered into the darkness.

He looked down at her, swallowing in a way he hoped she wouldn't see. She always read him, in the daylight, could tear him down if she ever got the inclination to do so. In the night, after he had lulled her into such a need for sleep, he had the room to hide.

"Sleep, Kate," Gibbs murmured, brushing his hand down the back of her head, before gently tucking her back into his body, his heart. "Still early."

She obeyed, too sleepy to show a stubborn streak a worldwide, this time of night. He waited until her breathing evened, and reached a hand up to scrub at his face.

Damn if he wasn't trying, but it still happened. His name, spoken from lips of the present, sounded all too often with a voice from the past. And he'd never tell the others, would never ever tell Kate, but it was a fact he couldn't deny to himself.

Instead of dwelling, he drew her closer, and she snuggled in until there was no more room between them. Gibbs looked down to her, running the lightest of touches into the softness of her hair, and over her skin. He wasn't one for sentimental, but there was something here, something in her that he wanted to keep. Forever, if she might just allow it.

She deserved better than him, this, no matter what she thought. Oh, he could play tender, in the right moments. He could be strong and solid for her, but she would never get soft and movable. He didn't think he knew how anymore.

Gibbs was waiting, always waiting. Until she left, like everyone left, until her sights were on something bigger, better-hell, even just attainable.

Gibbs though, well he was far too selfish, far too needy to let her go a moment before she decided to call it quits. He'd let her into her bed, had no chance of keeping her from his heart, and now that both had been breached, he was holding on like she was the last raft in a great big ocean.

Maybe she was.

Gibbs didn't know that he believed in last chances, but he thought she might be his.

He'd cling a little tighter, try a little harder to show her enough of who he was, if that meant maybe she'd never go away.

He was trying, after all. That never counted for much, but for Kate, he thought it might. And he could never tell her that sometimes it wasn't her voice he heard, when it was leaned in to his space, soft and full of a love he couldn't earn, but he would never need to.

He would show her, or try to show her that wasn't all there was anymore. That more than it used to be, it was only him and her in his house, in his bed, and sometimes, even in his head.