Work Text:
Lies of my Father
Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS; it is the property of its respective creators.
The sky looked so clear; there was not a storm cloud in sight. The stars were shining brightly, like twinkling lights. The moon was pulsating its pure glow, illuminating her foe’s face. The dock was surrounded by murky, dark water, the boats swaying slightly, almost giving the illusion they were being gently rocked to sleep.
How things could look so serene right before she was going to eliminate this embodiment of evil, Jenny Shepard didn’t know. While she was getting ready for the kill she had been waiting ten years for, she was finally going to rid herself of the last remaining link to her father’s failures. La Grenouille was the bastard who killed her father, he deserved everything he got, and she would give him all that and more.
She was going to have, oh, so much fun, getting her revenge. Revenge for all she had suffered through, the putdowns, the jokes, and the disrespect. Disrespect she didn’t deserve, all because her father had “allegedly” taken a bribe.
Her father had been a good, honest, and proud man. He hadn’t deserved the lies spread about him, lies that ruined his career, and ultimately his life. She refused to believe that those lies had ruined his life to the point that he ended it, though. She had known her father; he wasn’t that type of person. He had been determined to clear his name, to set the record straight on these lies.
Renee Benoit, alias La Grenouille, had been the thorn in her side for all these long, painful years, since the day her father’s murder had been ruled a “suicide.” She knew that wasn’t true, that La Grenouille had killed him and made it look like a suicide. Suicide had been the ultimate sin in her father’s eyes, the reason she knew he hadn’t done it. La Grenouille had made it look like suicide to humiliate her father, so even in death he would not be granted redemption.
Jenny Shepard gathered all her hatred, pain, humiliation, every torturous moment of the past twelve years, going even farther back than when La Grenouille pulled the trigger on her father, going back to when her father got involved with this son of a bitch, and she herself cocked her gun, ready to end this for once and for all.
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Renee Benoit, a man of many other names, had had more then his fair share of guns pulled on him in his life. He himself had pulled more then a fair share of guns on others, or been the seller of guns that were used in some poor soul’s death, or at least what he hoped was their death. To live trapped in a body, unable to move or even move on to the next life, was a horrible fate.
He could honestly say, of all the guns pulled on him, this was the only one that had made him feel anything resembling fear. Though, that probably had more to do with who was pointing it at him. The owner of this gun had a hatred for him that was like no one else’s, such an obsession for revenge, to right the sins of her father that she had taken on her shoulders. Such sins she had taken on, that they had driven her to commit her own.
He knew he should feel a lot more fear than he did, that he should be begging for his life, but he had come to terms with the fact his life would most likely have a violent end a long time ago. That was one of the prices of being in his profession, among many; you had countless people waiting for you to slip up, so they could put a bullet in your head, at any moment.
And of all the people wanting to put a bullet in his head, Jennifer Shepard, director of NCIS, daughter to Jasper Shepard, had more reason than most, or at least she thought she did. Whether or not he agreed with her was insignificant, seeing as he was not the one with the gun aimed and ready to end his life, though that would be poetic justice, being in which the way Jasper Shepard died.
Ah, Jasper, his old… acquaintance as it was. Would he have still taken the money he had offered him if he knew all the heartache it would cause his only child? He knew Jennifer adamantly did not think so, then again she did not think he had done it in the first place. He himself could not be so sure that Jasper would not have done it; he had been a power-hungry man, much like his daughter.
He had done everything he could to make sure his daughter never found out about what he did for a living, to protect her or himself he did not know. All that work however, would soon go down the drain with his death, and it would shatter Jeanne, he had no doubt. He would pay for his sins in the next life; he just hoped his daughter did not pay for them as well.
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The moon shone down on the duo as they had a long over due conversation.
“Why? Why did you do it? Why did you kill him? Was framing him not enough? You owe me an answer; after all you put me through.”
All she received at first was a wry chuckle. “I owe you? If my eyes are not deceiving me, you have a gun pointed at my head and I owe you? My dear, you put yourself through all that pain and humiliation, or more accurately, your father did by agreeing to what started all this.”
“How dare you…” was the furious response as the trigger was gripped even tighter.
“How dare I what? Ruin your little illusion that Daddy Dearest was a god, that he could do no wrong? Well, Jennifer, your father was no saint; he enjoyed what I had him do. He liked the rewards he got from betraying his country, the feeling of being invincible. But he was not invincible, and I know that because, yes, I killed him! You were right all along. And now I guess this is the point where you give some self serving speech, to atone for this sin you are about to commit."
"You’re a smart woman, Jennifer. You have so much potential. You just need to stop being blinded by your emotions. I think you and I both know that killing me is only a temporary distraction. That the hatred you feel is not really meant for me, I’m just a convenient target because you will not admit who you really feel all this hatred for. I’ll tell Daddy hello for you.”
Jennifer Shepard raised her gun, and with a scream of rage, shot down Renee Benoit, La Grenouille, arms dealer, father to Jeanne Benoit, the man who had haunted her waking and sleeping dreams for the past ten years, and simply watched as the bullet went into his left temple, then walked up to the dying man, squeezed his palm hard, therefore making his death look like a suicide, just like her father’s.
As she looked at this man, who finally lay dead after all these years, she realized he was right; she had been blaming the wrong person all along. The only person to blame for her unhappiness anymore was herself.