[Sarah]

You wanted to complain about going in to work, and about leaving the comfort of him and his bed. The words died on your tongue and you dressed in the clothes he handed you in silence. He was staring at you like you were some puzzle he was trying to solve. You chose to ignore the look and once you were dressed you headed out of the room and back downstairs. If he had something, he wanted to ask you all he had to do was ask.

[Sarah]

“Talk to me,” he called after you as he followed you down the stairs.

“What do you want me to say?” you asked, turning on him, “That my cover was blown before I even touched down and the moment I exited the plane a bag was over my head and for the next, what I’ve been told was, two years I was tortured?” You could hear your voice rising as you spoke, but you could not force it to remain level. One of the last things you wanted to do was shout at Gibbs, but clearly that didn’t matter as much to you as you’d thought it should. Gibbs looked past you his expression a mask. You weren’t allowed to know what he was thinking.

[Sarah]

You’d felt the two agents enter. You spun on them now but stopped short when you saw who was in Gibbs’ landing. Trent Kort stood next to an awkward looking Tony DiNozzo. “Hello love,” Trent said pleasantly. Your expression was steely as you passed the two men. Trent knew better than to stop you in front of Gibbs.

Trent grabbed your arm harshly. Apparently, he didn’t know better. “You think I’ve forgotten what good friends we are love?” he asked you, leaning in, but Gibbs and Tony could still hear him clearly.

[Sarah]

“Let her go,” Tony said. His voice was measured but you could hear the warning in his tone. You might not have had friends, but you did know a few morally straight people. Trent hesitated only a moment, showing his own power, before releasing you. He turned and left, and you didn’t follow him.

“He took his own car, right?” Gibbs was asking Tony.

“Yeah boss,” Tony replied. His eyes lingered on you.

“Good.” Gibbs word was clipped. He walked to you and linked his arm with yours. When he pulled forward you went with him. You’d gotten by on two years of hope. When you’d returned you had hoped Gibbs would accept you into his life again as eagerly as he’d done years before. Of course things couldn’t be the same. Two years was too long.

[Sarah]

Gibbs led you to a familiar looking car and when he opened the back seat for you to enter you hesitated. You almost voiced your insecurities. Almost. Instead you ducked your head and got into the vehicle. Something pressed against you and you saw Gibbs made to sit next to you. You moved over to the other seat and rubbed your hands over your face. Today was going to be a long day.

“You’re awfully quiet El,” DiNozzo commented from the driver’s seat. Gibbs had reached over to hold your hand when he’d sat with you and you squeezed it. Unwelcome tears welled to your eyes and you bid them not to fall.

[Sarah]

“Sorry Noze,” you said softly so your voice wouldn’t break. “I’ve picked up a few habits since I’ve been gone,” you excused.

“Don’t lie to spare our feelings,” Gibbs said. Your head twitched, flinched, at his words. He hadn’t said them harshly… Another ‘habit’ you’d picked up.

“Who’s in charge of the debrief?” you asked. It should have been your handler in the CIA, but if you saw them again, you’d kill them, and they knew it. Trent Kort was the obvious stand-in.

[Sarah]

“Whoever you want,” Gibbs answered. His tone remained even and kind. You imagined part of it was your own skittishness, or potential for being skittish. Another part of it must’ve been the history. Gibbs had never raised his voice at you in all the years you’d been together. You looked at him. He hadn’t fully taken his eyes off you since he’d seen you in his doorway. At your eye contact he raised a questioning brow.

“Things have changed, haven’t they?” you dared to ask.

[Sarah]

You watched Gibbs frown, but the expression only crossed his features for a heartbeat. “Yeah,” Gibbs said. His free hand came up to cup your cheek. “You’re my wife El. I never stopped looking for you, and I will always love you,” he said. You nodded sharply. You wouldn’t make him say it again.

“Okay,” you said out loud after a few minutes had passed. Gibbs had drawn you nearer and your penchant for not wearing a seatbelt allowed for the physical closeness you craved from him. “If you want, Jethro, I’d like you to debrief me,” you said, “but no one else is allowed in the room.” You weren’t sure you could take seeing the CIA or a stranger hearing your torture first-hand.

[Sarah]

Gibbs brought you in through the back while Tony was sent up as a distraction. Cleverly no one but the director knew you were coming in today. Being a captive for two years had had you wondering if Gibbs had ever really known you, and if you’d ever really known him. It seemed he at least knew to bring someone in quietly after a trauma. You took the elevator straight up to the Director’s floor and Gibbs walked you into the familiar conference room.

[Sarah]

A man you did not recognize sat at the end of the long table.

You looked to Gibbs. For the first time that morning he wasn’t looking at you. “Leon,” he said slowly. “Meet my wife, El,” he introduced. You looked back to the man behind the desk. Gibbs seemed very relaxed around him, so they probably had a history beyond the stranger’s new station. Leon. That’s right Gibbs had said his name.

“Nice to meet you.” The pleasantry left your mouth unconsciously. Leon gave you a small smile. It was the kind that told you he had an inkling of information about you. More precisely about what had happened to you.

[Hunt Recorded]

[Sarah]

“I’m glad you’re back in safe hands,” Leon said, “I’d like to be a part of the interview if you don’t mind.”

Gibbs gestured to the table and you sat. “We’ll do this on your time,” Gibbs said. “What was the nature of Operation Crossroad?” he asked – straight to business then.

“I don’t know. I was never read into the file,” you said. The interview would be easier if you made yourself far away. Gibbs wouldn’t hedge around the hard questions and you had to be ready to spill every bloody detail from the last two years of your life.

[Sarah]

“Walk me through what happened,”

“My plane touched down at zero eight hundred hours in Dhatra. I exited the plane and two men grabbed me before I saw them and shoved a thick bag over my head. They bound my arms and legs and I heard them kill the rest of the crew. I never found out why they chose to take me,”

“I did know, upon being shoved into a large SUV that my cover had been blown so wide open I’ll be a useless undercover asset for the next thousand years. They knew my name, my lineage, my connections. Everything there was to know about me they knew. I think a few of them had my details memorized. Anyway. The drive was at least four hours. I couldn’t gauge how fast we were going, but at the time I could’ve worked my way back to the airport from our final destination. I escaped once, a few hundred days in. I walked for two days in the desert and they caught up to me before I found even a hint of civilization.”

[Sarah]

“What was the final destination?” Gibbs asked.

“A compound in the middle of the desert. Not one of ours, but it wasn’t one of theirs either. It was big, and whoever owned it was wealthy because it was pristine too. Once we were within the walls, they took the bag off my head. I thought I saw him once, my handler, but I’d been dehydrated for days and I’d had a bad infection…” you trailed off, but Gibbs did not immediately bring you back on track. You stared at your hands – unwilling to meet his gaze.

[Sarah]

“They talked a lot about breaking me down and remaking me. That first day they stripped me bare in the courtyard of the compound and left me to bake in the sun. It stayed that way until I nearly died from my burns. They knocked me out until I was healed and then they moved on to something else. Water, I think. Again, I almost died from it, again they brought me back to health. They found a new torture every time. I think I don’t have many scars more from their medical care than luck.” You didn’t want to go too deeply into the details of your torture. Even now your voice sounded too emotionless to your ears. You pressed on.

[Sarah]

“It took them a couple of times before they learned they could not break me down by bringing me to the brink of death over and over,” you said with a shrug, like what you went through was nothing. “Once from exposure, once from standing water in my lungs, twice they bled me, once from starvation,” you listed. “I only remember because when they became more creative, I relived my deaths to escape.”

“Stop.” Gibbs cut you off. He stood sharply and you looked up from your hands to see his eyes were glistening. Oh. You’d been selfish when you’d asked him to be the one to interview you. He took a deep breath to steady himself before he looked at you again. “Did they succeed?” he asked.