Revenge Is Sweet
- Chapter 6: Shocks and Heartache -
Gibbs releases his grip on Leanna and she steps back sniffing, tears still trickling down her cheeks, 'We'll find your mom, do you think you can trust me?' the little girl nods tucking her red hair behind her ears, 'My mom trusts you so I trust you,' he forces back the smile playing on his lips. He stands up and takes her hand, 'there's someone I want you to meet.' She holds his hand tightly and sticks close to his side as they walk towards the elevator gaining attention as they pass agents.
The elevator doors open and Gibbs leads Leanna down the corridor to the lab, Abby jumps around grinning, 'Gibbs! How'd it go, oh,' Abby looks down at the teddy poking out from behind Gibbs, she leans sideways until she sees the large blue eyes and red hair, 'double oh,' 'Abby this is Leanna, Leanna this is Abby, don't worry about her jumping around, she does that a lot,' he adds from the side of this mouth, earning himself a small smile.
'Is she who I think she is?' Abby asked staring at Leanna, her eyes travelling over the wavy red hair pulled into a pony tail complete with a fringe and a very familiar stare developing. 'If you think she is the directors daughter, they yeah Abby, she is,' Abby nodded and pulled her oh so innocent waiting for direction face. 'Abs, do you think you could show us how you work out who people are from their finger prints?' Abby grins 'sure, you wanna have a go with my digital scanner?' She holds the device up and Leanna nods jumping forwards, 'lets do Gibbs first, pop your finger on the scanner and press down,' she points to the screen, 'now its looking through all the fingerprints to find one that matches Gibbs, aaaaand hey presto, here he is, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, wow is that really how old you are?' 'Abby!' 'Okay, so we found Gibbs, lets see what happens if we scan your finger.'
Leanna holds out her finger and Abby presses it onto the scanner bed, 'So my name will come up now?' 'Only if you've committed a crime, and I doubt that, or' the machine dinged and Abby turned to look at the screen, 'your mom had you added to the system as a baby. Very clever.' 'She is; what if you didn't have our fingerprints Abs? What then?' Gibbs asks her seriously, Leanna nods her eyes wide with intrigue.
Abby smiles seeing where Gibbs is heading, 'then we look for DNA it's a special code that is totally unique to you, everyone has their own special code, open up Gibbs,' she lunges forward with a swab and sticks it into Gibbs mouth and rubs around his cheeks and tongue. 'There we go, and Leanna,' she opened her mouth wide and Abby swabbed her mouth. 'I'll use my friends to analyse these and hopefully in a couple of hours I'll know who you both are.'
Leanna nods, she looks up at Gibbs with her eyes wide, the picture of innocence, 'Where am I gonna stay till you find mommy?' Gibbs strokes her hair gently, 'tonight you're gonna stay here, then if you need to you're gonna stay with me.' She nods and leans into him, 'come on, let's get you settled in upstairs.' He leads Leanna towards the door and turns his head back to Abby, he gives her a meaningful look and then looks at the swab samples, she nods showing her understanding. She points at her eye then makes a phone gesture with her hand and finally, points at Gibbs then the screen. He nods and mouths 'thank you' to her before leaving the room with Leanna.
Gibbs led Leanna back to the elevator, 'we just need to take a quick detour downstairs, there's someone else I want you to meet,' Leanna nodded and skipped beside him stretching her head to try to peer through the doors as they opened. He led the excitable Leanna down the corridor to Autopsy, he reached the door and stopped, 'I'm going to check its safe for you to come in,' he walked inside and left Leanna at the door, she looked around her before slipping between the closing doors and ducked down behind the stainless steel cabinet. 'Hey Duck,' 'Jethro, what can I do for you? I hear you have Leanna in the building,' 'Yep, just checking you didn't have a body out before I let her in,' 'oooooh dead bodies,' and a clatter made him turn around.
'ooops,' a small hand picked up the instruments from the floor and Leanna stood up behind the autopsy table, she had her hands behind her back and was pretending to whistle whilst looking up into the air. 'Are you trying to destroy my Autopsy suite young lady?' Ducky asked chuckling, She shook her head and bit her bottom lip cheekily, 'no, it was an accident,' Ducky nodded smiling whilst Jethro rolled his eyes at her, 'your inquisitive nature and Jenny's clumsiness by the looks of it, that could be a bad combination,' 'you remember Jenny's idea f stealthy, when she first joined,' Ducky nodded laughing, 'she learnt quickly though, managed to control that clumsy streak.' 'Yeah, the times I had to dig your mom out of a hole because she fell over thin air and alerted the perps to our presence,' he shook his head smiling at the memories looking over at Leanna.
'You mean my mom was clumsy?' Leanna asked incredulously her attention falling on the shear like tool used to cut through the rib cage of cadavers, 'ooooh,' she picked them up and snapped them together. Gibbs jumped behind her and took them from her, 'past experience tells me that's not a good idea, if I send you back to your mom missing a finger or a toe or worse a limb or an eye she'll kill me, I'd also quite like to stay in one piece and I'm sure Ducky here is also rather attached to his limbs. So we'll put that back where it came from,' he took the shears and laid them on the autopsy table watching Leanna from the corner of his eye.
Her eyes widened as she spotted the scalpel and picked that up and started making cutting motions in the air, 'Leanna I don't think that is a good idea either,' she pouted at him and put the scalpel back her eyes resting on a saw and a ladle like object which she instantly picked up again, 'what's this for?' 'Scooping out the contents of the stomach of a corpse,' Ducky answered, Jethro frowned at him giving his friend a 'don't encourage her' look.
She continued to pick up each item from the table and inspect it thoroughly before turning her attention to the rows of doors on the wall behind Ducky, 'what's in those?' 'erm, something you really shouldn't see at the tender age of eight my dear,' Ducky replied, Leanna gripped the handle of one of the doors and tried to turn it, Gibbs jumped to attention and removed her hand quickly. 'You can't look inside Leanna,' 'why?' 'because you shouldn't see it?' 'why?' 'your mom would kill me,' 'why,' 'because she wouldn't want you to see it,' 'why,' she asked again a determined expression on her face, not unfamiliar to an expression Jethro had seen many times on her mother's face.
'because,' Leanna frowned, 'that's not a real answer,' 'because I said so.' She folded her arms and pouted, 'why?' Jethro could feel his temper rising, his mind drifted back to a memorable conversation he had had with Jenny in
Leanna rubbed her arms trembling, she was frightened and ran away quickly into the corridor, she jumped into the elevator and pushed all the buttons begging the doors to close and stop the man in the corridor from reaching her. She was breathing heavily as the doors reopened, she found herself in an orange corridor and ran away from the elevator. She spotted the clear doors and pushed them open, tears running down her cheeks she threw her arms around the waist of the nice lady with black hair she had met earlier.
'Hey Leanna, what's wrong?' She asked bending down to make her head level with the child's; she wrapped her arms around the small shoulders and rubbed the shaking back. 'What happened?' she asked as small arms wrapped themselves around her shoulders, she stroked the red hair as the child sniffed into her ear. 'He hurt me,' she cried, 'who hurt you,' 'G G Gibbs and he shouted at me,' Abby held her tightly, 'I'm sure he didn't mean to,' 'yes he did, he grabbed my arm and hurt me and shouted 'why can't you just do as you're told?' I only wanted to see a dead body, that's not a bad thing is it?'
I like this kid, Abby thought to herself whilst trying to find a way to answer the child's question, 'well, no not if you're an adult and an investigator or forensic specialist or ME, but it's probably not a good idea for a little girl who is missing her mommy to look at dead people, is it?' Leanna shook her head clinging onto Abby, 'I just wanted to see them, then he got real angry,' she sniffed again, 'he's just really worried about your mom, he wants to get her home safe,' Leanna nodded, 'I want her home safe too, but I don't wanna stay with him, not now not ever, he scares me.'
'Okay, I'll see if you can stay with me instead, Ziva or Tony or Tim might have to stay with us too, but I'll try,' Leanna smiled a little and pulled back from the hug, 'thank you,' she whispered before looking at Abby's neck with great interest. 'What's that?' 'That is a tattoo,' Abby replied grinning. She heard a ding and looked up at her computer screen, 'result – match' she stood up and Leanna stretched up beside her. She clicked on the result and images jumped up onto the screen, 'oh my god, Jenny Shepard is most definitely your mother Leanna, how amazing is that,' Leanna laughed a beautiful soft laugh, 'you're silly, but I like you.'
Gibbs stood in the shadow of the doorway watching Leanna wipe away her tears and stare in awe at the lab around her, He saw the third image on the screen and the name beside the dna profile, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, positive match, he was her father. He was her father and he had caused those tears, he had made her run away in fear. His little girl had said she didn't want to stay with him, not now, not ever, those words rang around in his head making him feel sick to his stomach. Not now not ever, he scares me. He turned and left the room and headed towards the elevator, he decided he would send Ziva, Tony and McGee to Abby's to watch over Leanna. He wanted her to be safe, but most of all he wanted her to be happy and if that mean being in the care of someone else so be it.