TOO LATE
By
Ashleigh Anpilova
Jenny realizes she is in love.
A pre-het story.
Written: February 2010. Word count: 500.
Love.
Such a simple word.
Four letters. One syllable.
So easy to say. So hard to mean. And even harder to understand.
She'd always thought, believed, she'd been in love. Now she knows she hadn't been. Not really. She hadn't known what love was.
Now she knows what love is. Now she really knows what love is. Now she knows what it's like to love and be in love. Except she's found out too late, far, far too late.
It's ironic really. Finally, she has it all.
She's not just the director of NCIS, now she's the respected director of NCIS. Respected by her fellow directors and by Jethro and his team.
Her mortal enemy, the man she blames for the death of her father, is dead.
She has more money than she could ever spend; gets invited to dinner at the White House, to the theater; gets to buy new dresses, whatever she wants.
And she's in love. She's truly, deeply, honestly, lastingly in love.
She's a success. Well almost.
There's just one thing wrong with the scenario.
She's dying. She only has months left.
Oh, and on top of that, she hasn't told the man with whom she is so deeply, so desperately, in love how she feels.
And she never will.
Because that's another part of the irony. She's in love with the 'enemy'; except he isn't the enemy really; he was just doing his job, just as she does hers.
Trent Kort, the man whom at one point she thought she hated almost as much as La Grenouille. He is the man she no longer hates. The man she hasn't hated for quite some time. The man she wonders if she ever truly hated. Or maybe she did.
But whether she did or not, it no longer matters. Because now when she thinks of him it's with love, and she thinks of him a great deal, far more than she should do. She finds his face appears in front of her when she should be reading reports; his voice sounds in her ear when she should be listening to Cynthia. She feels his breath on her cheek when she brushes back her hair.
She recalls that moment in the cab in Paris. They'd been so close, so physically close, his lips had almost caressed her cheek, if she'd turned her head just a little, they would have met her lips - she wishes she'd made the move.
But she hadn't.
She hadn't let him see, let him know, how she'd felt. And she never will. No, she never can. Why tell him now? What would be the point? Yet it would be easy to do so, all she has to do is pick up the phone and - But she won't.
It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to him. It wouldn't be fair to her.
She'll live out the remaining few months with the irony that finally she had it all. But it came too late.
Feedback is always appreciated
Go to NCIS
General Series Het Fiction Page