TWO DECADES COME AND GO SINCE ‘91, filled with three failed marriages and a new career. unpacked boxes in an empty bedroom, glasses of bourbon in a basement with a sawdust floor. 

       soon after it happened (the crash, the chaplain, the coma, the ceremony) jethro picked through the pieces of his life left shattered by his late wife’s best intentions. all shannon wanted to do was help; all jethro (still) wants is to hold his girls again. his dad and shannon’s parents offered to go through their things ( “they were our girls too” ) but he turned them all away. 

                     (   “   when kate was taken from us,                               and director shepard, mike franks…                               their autopsies were all i had left of them.                               if i wasn’t willing to give up those last moments                               with them, i’m sure as hell not now.   ”                                             he’s always left the bodies to doctor mallard.                                          these autopsies are done on unpacked boxes;                                          he knows the method and the motive,                                          all he looks for now are memories.   )

       short of some new threat to national security, or god forbid, an agency emergency, team gibbs has the weekend off. all jethro’s packing is a box cutter and a steaming mug of coffee; baggy jeans and work boots topped with a fading USMC hoodie. the wooden stairs leading down into the basement creak beneath his weight (he’ll check ‘em later, maybe) before he makes his way to snag a couple boxes tucked behind the furnace. he’s gonna work from the bottom up on this one, try to prepare himself for the bedroom two floors above. 

       time passes. minutes, hours – he hardly notices. his mug’s long gone empty. 

       calloused fingers wrap carefully around a yellowing envelope and the world goes still – his tongue swipes out to wet his lips as his gaze slides to the right, the left, anywhere but the achingly familiar loops of shannon’s handwriting. these words, he memorized them YEARS AGO, a soundtrack left echoing in the background of his surreal dreams always read in her soft voice. 

       a cold gaze begins to water; his stoic expression slowly crumbles. his is the face of a BROKEN MAN, a widower with blood smeared across his past, staining both his hands. 

       jethro hasn’t said a word in HOURS, and hours more will pass before he speaks again. 

IT HAPPENS, AS ALWAYS, IN THE DESPERATE SPACE between one racing heartbeat and the next – when it all seems hopeless, like they’ve already lost. 

       “ not ‘til i get us out of here, ” he insists, a hiss through clenched teeth followed by a groan as jethro puts all his weight into the heavy, metal door. if they can’t force it open, this cell becomes their tomb (with rusted, filthy corners and grime sticking to their clothes, their skin.) 

       he doesn’t think himself a hero, doesn’t wanna be somebody’s role model. DON’T BE LIKE ME, he once told dinozzo. LEARN FROM IT. 

       the agent spares a laugh, dark and heavy like the sound of giving up. it makes his skin crawl, enough that he ignores the pain of his dislocated shoulder and two broken fingers. sewage water (or maybe it’s just muddy from the river) floods in through the cracks along the western wall until it seeps into their shoes. from there, it only rises. 

       “ c’mere, give me a hand. we can get this open, ” he orders, because hopeless people sometimes need a push or shove to motivate them. this damn door’s too heavy to move alone.