Fic: Unchained Memory (1/1)
Title: Unchained Memory
Author: ReplicantAngel
Rating: G
Pairing: Abby/Gibbs
Spoilers: Some vague references to the Mexico storyline
Summary: Being kidnapped and drugged is a good time to reevaluate where your life is going, right?
Written for Hada_purpura, who requested "how they got together, suspense and a character in peril". She didn't want "Deadbeat!Dad Gibbs, infidelity, other pairings for either one, rape or traumas of a similar nature." I hope this satisfies! And sorry for being late to the game - I decided the other fic I wrote missed the mark and wrote this one instead, because I'm totally neurotic like that. :P The title is a totally silly play off of the song Unchained Melody.
Unchained Memory
“Gibbs, I’m so sorry,” came the whisper through the vent.
He edged as close he could with his hands chained behind his back. “For what, Abbs?”
“You would have been... been safe in your basement if it weren’t for me,” she answered. “Me and my birthday.”
“Not your fault.” He shut his eyes for a long moment, trying to collect all of his thoughts. “If someone wants you this badly, they’re going to get you.”
“You mean, if they want to kidnap you and hold you hostage in a dis-disgusting room without even a toilet, they’ll get you,” Abby said. “Because if it was just ‘wanting’ someone...”
He strained to put his ear against the grate. “Abby?”
“Not that a toilet would matter,” she said after a pause. “I can’t even stand. My legs aren’t really working, Gibbs.”
He sighed, rolled onto his back and watched the light from the bare bulb overhead splinter and double. “We’ve been drugged.”
There was a rattle of chains as she moved. “Drugged? Or... or poisoned?” She sounded a bit more awake now, and he knew her hesitance came from her fear rather than the chemicals in their bodies.
“Drugged,” he affirmed, although he couldn’t be entirely sure. It didn’t compare with the pain and disorientation of the BZ he’d been dosed with by Sharif, but it wasn’t an entirely settling sort of sleepiness that arrested his limbs and speech. He was relaxed against his will and against his instinct, and he had the sneaking suspicion that he would tell the truth to whomever asked for it. And the flashes of crystal-clear memories were getting a little unnerving.
He walked into the lab to see two, slim legs sticking out from underneath the work bench. Putting a box of evidence on the table, he crouched down to hear a stream of muttered curses. “Problems?”
Wide, green eyes turned to him. “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” She scooted back until she could sit upright and held up a frayed wire. “The machines in this lab give a new meaning to the word ‘obsolete’, and it’s turning into more of a job than I thought to get things up and running properly. Especially in these clothes.” She scowled down at the suit skirt and button-up shirt she was wearing. “But anyway, what can I do for you, Agent...?”
“Gibbs.” He helped her to her feet before pointing out the box he’d brought in.
“No problem. I’ll get the samples running, although the fingerprints are going to take awhile with the computer basically imitating a very large paperweight right now,” she said, giving a once-over to the contents. She held out her hand. “I’m Abby, by the way.”
He felt unusually calm about the news that his evidence would take some time for processing - despite the tattoos he could see peeking out from under her clothes, she radiated confidence. A nice change from the last few forensic scientists. “Wear what you want.”
“Huh?” She arched a brow. “Aren’t you a Marine? I thought they were pretty strict about that sort of thing.”
“If it gets results faster, I could give a damn about the dress code.”
She smiled. “I think we’re going to get along beautifully, Agent Gibbs.”
Ah, well - at least they were good memories so far. At least he wasn’t having hallucinations.
“Gibbs? Is my cell full of bunnies?”
He shifted as much as he could. “No, Abbs.”
Her head lolled to the side, and he saw how glassy her eyes had become. “I didn’t think so,” she murmured with a sigh. “I really hope they don’t turn into giant, you know, velociraptors or something.”
“Velociraptors?”
“Ya know, the dinosaurs from ‘Jurassic Park’. Although, actually, it’s a real dinosaur too. Or it was. But... but not as big or something? I think it had feathers.” She was beginning to mumble. “Still, I don’t think you’d want to be in the same room as about, uh, fifty of them. Not when you’re tied up like a goat.” She snorted a little in laughter as she finished. “Get it? Like a goat? Like with the T-rex?”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “You okay, Abby?”
She hummed. “Yeah. Just... it’s like I’m sleepy, but I can’t stop thinking about things, ya know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“What’re you thinking about?”
“First time we met.”
“First time you saved me,” she said. “Kinda wish we’d stuck to saving each other from mundane stuff like suits and exes.”
“Your exes aren’t so ‘mundane’, Abby.”
She laughed quietly. “Neither are yours.”
She pulled him out of the bullpen just in time.
“Is Gibbs around?” he heard Evelyn ask.
“Uh, no,” came Tony’s response. Gibbs could imagine the look of shock that must have been on Kate and Tony’s faces - considering the number of times they’d seen Evelyn pick him up at crime scenes, he knew they wondered who she was. She’d never even spoken to them before.
“Have you tried the lab? Or the morgue?” suggested Kate.
Gibbs glanced at Abby as they tucked themselves farther in the alcove behind the stairs. She nodded and signed, “Ducky called and said I should warn you she was coming up here. I thought you liked her. What happened?”
He drew her close and pressed a silent kiss to the crown of her head. “What always happens,” he signed back.
“You never did tell me what that was,” Abby said, slurring the words slightly.
“You want to examine why my relationships fail now?” he asked. His muddled brain is drawing implications that he’d rather not think about when he’s chained on a filthy floor and separated from her by 6 inches of concrete, save for the vent.
“No time like the present,” she replied, “especially when you don’t know if you’ve got... uh, a future.” Her voice was trembling again.
“We’ll get out of this, Abby,” he said, even as he fought to keep his eyes open. “DiNozzo and the others will find us soon.”
She sighed heavily. “They don’t know we’re gone. Or... or they won’t, until we don’t show up in the morning. Guess it’s not like they’ll think we stayed out too late or up too long or anything. Not like they’re going to think anything scandalous happened.”
It took him a minute to work through that. “You want them wondering if we slept together?”
“No.” The answer came a bit too quickly. “I just... Doesn’t it say something about us, Gibbs, that Tony is going to assume we’ve been kidnapped before he even considers that we could be sleeping together?”
He smiled. “Going with the odds, I guess.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she murmured. “We’re not kidnapped that often.”
He met her eyes again through the grating. “I was talking about the odds of someone like me ever being lucky enough to have you, Abbs.” It was far more than he would have said on any other day, but if it had anything to do with the drugs, he found that he didn’t care.
“Gibbs.” She gave him a teary smile. “You deserve a head-slap! I never... you never... Do you mean what I hope you mean? Or is it the velociraptor-bunnies all over again?”
“No bunnies. Or veloci-whatevers.”
“The bunnies would say that.”
He chuckled under his breath. “I’ll remind you later, if you want to hear it.”
“Every day, please,” she said, with another, happier sigh.
It was always going to be like this, he realized. Perhaps he’d imagined it with a few less chains and concrete walls between them, but Abby didn’t need dinner, roses and wine.
They sat on prow of the Kelly and clinked their beers together. “I can’t believe she’s going away,” Abby said, running her hand over the varnished wood. “Amira is so lucky.”
“No one should live on the beach without a boat.”
She grinned. “Of course not, but what’re you going to do now? Basement’s pretty empty.”
“I have a few projects in mind. Still thinking about building your own coffin?” he teased.
Only the fading light of the summer evening hid her blush. “How about a chair?”
“A chair?”
“For the basement. Sawhorses and stairs are all well and good, Gibbs, but if you want a girl to stay down there for any amount of time, she needs a chair.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Or is that exactly what you’ve been doing? Made it so that no one like me can sit and talk your ear off while you’re working?”
He wanted to kiss her right then, as she leaned back on her elbows with that challenging smirk on her lips. And he wished he’d gone through with it in the following months, when Paloma Reynosa and her brother showed up on the scene. At that moment though, he said, “A chair it is. Just for you, Abbs.”
The gunshots broke him out of his memory. On the other side of the wall, he could hear Abby struggling to right herself. “Is it them? Do you hear anyone?”
He didn’t need to strain his hearing for too long. Soon, he heard footsteps drawing closer. “Boss?” came Tony’s voice. “Abby?”
“Here! Here we are!” she shouted before rolling over to look at him through the vent one last time. “Never had a doubt they’d come, Gibbs.”
“Me either, Abbs,” he said, as he listened to the calls of his team as they gathered.
“But you won’t forget?”
He shook his head. “Not gonna let that happen.”
Soon, the doors were swinging open. “Tony!” Abby cried. “Are you alright?”
Gibbs heard DiNozzo’s relieved laugh. “Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that?”
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He appeared in her doorway almost as soon as the doctor left. “Hey, Abbs. How’re you feeling?”
“Sleepy, but okay,” she said, scooting over and patting the edge of the bed, despite the chair that sat in the corner. “I’m surprised you’re still here. I expected you to be making a break for it.”
Gibbs sat down beside her. “Might go to the Navy Yard for a couple hours to write my report, but I’ll be back to pick you up in the morning.” He took her hand in his, frowning at how cold her fingers were. “The doctor say something?”
She shook her head. “Just that I got slightly more of that tranquilizer than you. I guess a kidnapper isn’t going to be as careful with dosages as I’d like. Who was it?”
“Lieutenant Simmons, from that double murder we solved a few years ago. He’s been sent to death row at Leavenworth, and his brother hired a couple mercenaries to use us as ransom.”
Abby leaned back against her pillows. “Guess I’ll always be dating Spiderman.”
He laced his fingers through hers. “Never been called that before.”
She laughed for a moment, but the amusement soon faded. “And now that the drugs are out...”
“I haven’t changed my mind,” he said.
The smile returned. “I might not completely believe this in the morning. You might have to remind me again.”
He leaned in for a gentle kiss that had just enough heat as a promise of things to come. “Every day, Abbs.”
Author: ReplicantAngel
Rating: G
Pairing: Abby/Gibbs
Spoilers: Some vague references to the Mexico storyline
Summary: Being kidnapped and drugged is a good time to reevaluate where your life is going, right?
Written for Hada_purpura, who requested "how they got together, suspense and a character in peril". She didn't want "Deadbeat!Dad Gibbs, infidelity, other pairings for either one, rape or traumas of a similar nature." I hope this satisfies! And sorry for being late to the game - I decided the other fic I wrote missed the mark and wrote this one instead, because I'm totally neurotic like that. :P The title is a totally silly play off of the song Unchained Melody.
Unchained Memory
“Gibbs, I’m so sorry,” came the whisper through the vent.
He edged as close he could with his hands chained behind his back. “For what, Abbs?”
“You would have been... been safe in your basement if it weren’t for me,” she answered. “Me and my birthday.”
“Not your fault.” He shut his eyes for a long moment, trying to collect all of his thoughts. “If someone wants you this badly, they’re going to get you.”
“You mean, if they want to kidnap you and hold you hostage in a dis-disgusting room without even a toilet, they’ll get you,” Abby said. “Because if it was just ‘wanting’ someone...”
He strained to put his ear against the grate. “Abby?”
“Not that a toilet would matter,” she said after a pause. “I can’t even stand. My legs aren’t really working, Gibbs.”
He sighed, rolled onto his back and watched the light from the bare bulb overhead splinter and double. “We’ve been drugged.”
There was a rattle of chains as she moved. “Drugged? Or... or poisoned?” She sounded a bit more awake now, and he knew her hesitance came from her fear rather than the chemicals in their bodies.
“Drugged,” he affirmed, although he couldn’t be entirely sure. It didn’t compare with the pain and disorientation of the BZ he’d been dosed with by Sharif, but it wasn’t an entirely settling sort of sleepiness that arrested his limbs and speech. He was relaxed against his will and against his instinct, and he had the sneaking suspicion that he would tell the truth to whomever asked for it. And the flashes of crystal-clear memories were getting a little unnerving.
He walked into the lab to see two, slim legs sticking out from underneath the work bench. Putting a box of evidence on the table, he crouched down to hear a stream of muttered curses. “Problems?”
Wide, green eyes turned to him. “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” She scooted back until she could sit upright and held up a frayed wire. “The machines in this lab give a new meaning to the word ‘obsolete’, and it’s turning into more of a job than I thought to get things up and running properly. Especially in these clothes.” She scowled down at the suit skirt and button-up shirt she was wearing. “But anyway, what can I do for you, Agent...?”
“Gibbs.” He helped her to her feet before pointing out the box he’d brought in.
“No problem. I’ll get the samples running, although the fingerprints are going to take awhile with the computer basically imitating a very large paperweight right now,” she said, giving a once-over to the contents. She held out her hand. “I’m Abby, by the way.”
He felt unusually calm about the news that his evidence would take some time for processing - despite the tattoos he could see peeking out from under her clothes, she radiated confidence. A nice change from the last few forensic scientists. “Wear what you want.”
“Huh?” She arched a brow. “Aren’t you a Marine? I thought they were pretty strict about that sort of thing.”
“If it gets results faster, I could give a damn about the dress code.”
She smiled. “I think we’re going to get along beautifully, Agent Gibbs.”
Ah, well - at least they were good memories so far. At least he wasn’t having hallucinations.
“Gibbs? Is my cell full of bunnies?”
He shifted as much as he could. “No, Abbs.”
Her head lolled to the side, and he saw how glassy her eyes had become. “I didn’t think so,” she murmured with a sigh. “I really hope they don’t turn into giant, you know, velociraptors or something.”
“Velociraptors?”
“Ya know, the dinosaurs from ‘Jurassic Park’. Although, actually, it’s a real dinosaur too. Or it was. But... but not as big or something? I think it had feathers.” She was beginning to mumble. “Still, I don’t think you’d want to be in the same room as about, uh, fifty of them. Not when you’re tied up like a goat.” She snorted a little in laughter as she finished. “Get it? Like a goat? Like with the T-rex?”
He had no idea what she was talking about. “You okay, Abby?”
She hummed. “Yeah. Just... it’s like I’m sleepy, but I can’t stop thinking about things, ya know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“What’re you thinking about?”
“First time we met.”
“First time you saved me,” she said. “Kinda wish we’d stuck to saving each other from mundane stuff like suits and exes.”
“Your exes aren’t so ‘mundane’, Abby.”
She laughed quietly. “Neither are yours.”
She pulled him out of the bullpen just in time.
“Is Gibbs around?” he heard Evelyn ask.
“Uh, no,” came Tony’s response. Gibbs could imagine the look of shock that must have been on Kate and Tony’s faces - considering the number of times they’d seen Evelyn pick him up at crime scenes, he knew they wondered who she was. She’d never even spoken to them before.
“Have you tried the lab? Or the morgue?” suggested Kate.
Gibbs glanced at Abby as they tucked themselves farther in the alcove behind the stairs. She nodded and signed, “Ducky called and said I should warn you she was coming up here. I thought you liked her. What happened?”
He drew her close and pressed a silent kiss to the crown of her head. “What always happens,” he signed back.
“You never did tell me what that was,” Abby said, slurring the words slightly.
“You want to examine why my relationships fail now?” he asked. His muddled brain is drawing implications that he’d rather not think about when he’s chained on a filthy floor and separated from her by 6 inches of concrete, save for the vent.
“No time like the present,” she replied, “especially when you don’t know if you’ve got... uh, a future.” Her voice was trembling again.
“We’ll get out of this, Abby,” he said, even as he fought to keep his eyes open. “DiNozzo and the others will find us soon.”
She sighed heavily. “They don’t know we’re gone. Or... or they won’t, until we don’t show up in the morning. Guess it’s not like they’ll think we stayed out too late or up too long or anything. Not like they’re going to think anything scandalous happened.”
It took him a minute to work through that. “You want them wondering if we slept together?”
“No.” The answer came a bit too quickly. “I just... Doesn’t it say something about us, Gibbs, that Tony is going to assume we’ve been kidnapped before he even considers that we could be sleeping together?”
He smiled. “Going with the odds, I guess.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she murmured. “We’re not kidnapped that often.”
He met her eyes again through the grating. “I was talking about the odds of someone like me ever being lucky enough to have you, Abbs.” It was far more than he would have said on any other day, but if it had anything to do with the drugs, he found that he didn’t care.
“Gibbs.” She gave him a teary smile. “You deserve a head-slap! I never... you never... Do you mean what I hope you mean? Or is it the velociraptor-bunnies all over again?”
“No bunnies. Or veloci-whatevers.”
“The bunnies would say that.”
He chuckled under his breath. “I’ll remind you later, if you want to hear it.”
“Every day, please,” she said, with another, happier sigh.
It was always going to be like this, he realized. Perhaps he’d imagined it with a few less chains and concrete walls between them, but Abby didn’t need dinner, roses and wine.
They sat on prow of the Kelly and clinked their beers together. “I can’t believe she’s going away,” Abby said, running her hand over the varnished wood. “Amira is so lucky.”
“No one should live on the beach without a boat.”
She grinned. “Of course not, but what’re you going to do now? Basement’s pretty empty.”
“I have a few projects in mind. Still thinking about building your own coffin?” he teased.
Only the fading light of the summer evening hid her blush. “How about a chair?”
“A chair?”
“For the basement. Sawhorses and stairs are all well and good, Gibbs, but if you want a girl to stay down there for any amount of time, she needs a chair.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Or is that exactly what you’ve been doing? Made it so that no one like me can sit and talk your ear off while you’re working?”
He wanted to kiss her right then, as she leaned back on her elbows with that challenging smirk on her lips. And he wished he’d gone through with it in the following months, when Paloma Reynosa and her brother showed up on the scene. At that moment though, he said, “A chair it is. Just for you, Abbs.”
The gunshots broke him out of his memory. On the other side of the wall, he could hear Abby struggling to right herself. “Is it them? Do you hear anyone?”
He didn’t need to strain his hearing for too long. Soon, he heard footsteps drawing closer. “Boss?” came Tony’s voice. “Abby?”
“Here! Here we are!” she shouted before rolling over to look at him through the vent one last time. “Never had a doubt they’d come, Gibbs.”
“Me either, Abbs,” he said, as he listened to the calls of his team as they gathered.
“But you won’t forget?”
He shook his head. “Not gonna let that happen.”
Soon, the doors were swinging open. “Tony!” Abby cried. “Are you alright?”
Gibbs heard DiNozzo’s relieved laugh. “Aren’t I supposed to be asking you that?”
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He appeared in her doorway almost as soon as the doctor left. “Hey, Abbs. How’re you feeling?”
“Sleepy, but okay,” she said, scooting over and patting the edge of the bed, despite the chair that sat in the corner. “I’m surprised you’re still here. I expected you to be making a break for it.”
Gibbs sat down beside her. “Might go to the Navy Yard for a couple hours to write my report, but I’ll be back to pick you up in the morning.” He took her hand in his, frowning at how cold her fingers were. “The doctor say something?”
She shook her head. “Just that I got slightly more of that tranquilizer than you. I guess a kidnapper isn’t going to be as careful with dosages as I’d like. Who was it?”
“Lieutenant Simmons, from that double murder we solved a few years ago. He’s been sent to death row at Leavenworth, and his brother hired a couple mercenaries to use us as ransom.”
Abby leaned back against her pillows. “Guess I’ll always be dating Spiderman.”
He laced his fingers through hers. “Never been called that before.”
She laughed for a moment, but the amusement soon faded. “And now that the drugs are out...”
“I haven’t changed my mind,” he said.
The smile returned. “I might not completely believe this in the morning. You might have to remind me again.”
He leaned in for a gentle kiss that had just enough heat as a promise of things to come. “Every day, Abbs.”