155TI: A Winter-Seeming Summer's Night (Part 10/11)
AU: SnoopMaryMar
DI: Not mine.
RA: T+
SU: The sequel to SO FAR IN BLOOD THAT SIN WILL PLUCK ON SIN. Gibbs' decision to not share information with his team in a misguided effort to protect them has horrific consequences.
AN: Yes. I killed Abby. Suck it up already!
Gibbs felt pain spear behind his right eye as consciousness slowly returned. He stiffened as with consciousness came the realization that he was tied to a chair.
His mind flipped images of the black SUV driving his car off the road as he raced towards Bethesda and being dragged from his wrecked charger past him. Twisting his wrists, he ignored the stinging feeling of tissue-paper-thin layers of skins slowly being rubbed away by the coarse, scratchy fibres of rope as he tried to make his escape.
He froze in a flash as a voice echoed out of his blind spot.
"Hello, Gibbs."
Ducky slumped into the chair opposite Ziva and Timothy silently, having delivered Vance's message and orders. He watched weakly as Mr. Palmer pressed fruit juices and cellophane-wrapped sandwiches on the shell-shocked couple while a protection detail guarded the doors to the operating theatre and the room with a fervent intensity.
He had had just about enough of this awful waiting room.
Yet again, he was awaiting word on Tony. Yet again, he sat watching Ziva and Timothy struggle to retain some faint semblance of their composure in the face of such an unwarranted, vicious, unnecessary attack.
Swallowing hard, Ducky tried to not acknowledge what would never happen again in this room. There were no words that would not have been razors on already-wounded hearts. The room felt empty; it was as if a vacuum had sucked all the colour from the world. This was a grief that no man could ever hope to master. For what joy was left to be found in a world without the clomping, the frantic breathing after a babbled, panicked rant from a young woman entirely too kind for this world?
He had reluctantly identified Abigail in Jethro's absence, knowing he could not ask it of anyone else. Signing the paperwork to transfer her remains to NCIS had nearly driven him to his knees. He had never prepared himself, as he had for Tony or Jethro, to be Abby's escort on this final journey to the Navy Yard.
Ducky took some small comfort in knowing that she had not gone easily. It was blatantly obvious their Abigail had fought like a warrior queen. She had marked the men he lusted to dissect, done enough damage to them that had Ziva and Timothy not put them in their graves, the injuries she had inflicted would have made it impossible to hide or conceal what they had done from any investigator.
It was a cold comfort, though. Should Anthony survive the night, Ducky did not know how the broken man would endure the knowledge that her life had bought him his.
There were no words of comfort that could be offered. No explanation that would ever make the sheer callousness of the act into something that could be understood. Nothing, not even the knowledge that those who had taken her had been sent to hell, could assuage the hate that surely threatened to devour them all.
His audience could not have cared that Jethro was missing, his car wrecked. They had nothing left to fight with; they had accepted his loss with a fatalistic sense of inevitability. Grief had broken them upon its rocky shoals and fear was slowly devouring what remained of the strong, steely warriors before him. Their only care, concern was saved for the man surgeons were once more piecing back together just down the hallway from them.
Leon sighed as he shut the door to his office behind him. Agent Penholdt from Pensacola had agreed to go with an interpreter to break the news of their daughter's death to the Scuitos. Leon cleared his throat, struggling to absorb the heresy of a lab without Abby Scuito.
He still hadn't been able to reach DiNozzo's father, though that didn't surprise him in the slightest. Didn't really matter, anyways. The man's family was already at the hospital.
The vibration on his hip drew his attention away from the glass of scotch he'd apparently poured himself while lost in thought. He swore softly before dismissing the text; Fornell still had no leads on Gibbs.
He picked up the message his assistant had left on his desk for him. Ducky had called in - Tony had survived the surgery but the next twenty-four hours were crucial. Vance slumped into his chair, tossing the pad onto his blotter.
DiNozzo's leg injury was now a permanent disability and any chance of his return to a field position was gone. From the information Ducky had been given, the man was facing a lifetime of pain from the damaged leg. No replacement surgery could fix it, no amount of physio would get the former athlete anything beyond 70% mobility. Hell, he'd be lucky to be able to walk without a cane!
Vance didn't know what to do beyond wait. He already had two funerals to go to. The question was how many more before this nightmare was over.
Tim shuddered as he looked at himself in the mirror, his fingers biting into the porcelain of the sink.
The small men's room off the lounge by the ICU had become his refuge. He knew it was cowardly, but he just couldn't front up to sit with Tony right now. He couldn't listen to the hushing of the respirator keeping Tony with them. He couldn't look at the mangled limb, or the stab wounds, or the bruises. And he definitely couldn't stand by and watch Ziva sitting vigil over Tony, cleaning her gun over and over again like some twisted version of the Lady of Shalott.
Because Abby was gone.
When Tim thought about what Balboa had told him, how easily the bastards had gotten into the hospital, he wanted to shoot somebody. The security had been lackadaisical at best; sign-in procedures weren't followed, blind-eyes turned to time-card check-ins and shift-swapping without notice.
No marines anywhere on the floor. Just one agent on a twelve-hour night shift when he and Ziva were at home trying to sleep.
It had been wholly and criminally inadequate.
When Gibbs had been comatose and unresponsive and a target, Tony and Director Sheppard had put everything but a Sherman tank between Gibbs and the world. Armed marines at the unit doors, background checks on staff, solid sign-in and sign-out protocols. And an armed agent, be they visitor or guard, inside the room with Gibbs at all times.
What did Tony have? An overworked, overtired junior agent, two traumatized teammates and a forensic scientist with a purse!
Abby was gone.
Tim knew that if he told himself that enough times, he'd maybe stop looking for her outside the ICU. He'd not expect her to be asleep in the chair beside Tony's bed when he finally went in to spell Ziva. He'd stop searching for her perfume in the air, stop listening for the emptying slurp of a straw.
Because Abby was gone.
Tim shuddered as he looked at himself in the mirror, his fingers biting into the porcelain of the sink.
Ziva was very good at not thinking.
She did not think about what was happening to Gibbs.
She did not think about how McGee was crumbling to pieces in front of her eyes.
She did not think about Abby lying in a locker in the morgue.
She did not think about what would happen when she had to tell Tony that Abby was dead.
She did not think about how close she had come to nearly losing Tony again.
Ziva thought about the beach Tony had taken her to in the Outer Banks years earlier on their way back from a case. The wild horses roaming throughout the dunes and the wildness of the ocean. She thought of the dinner they had enjoyed at the restaurant by the dock and the way the setting of the sun had peeled back one of Tony's many layers to reveal a less frenetic, more contemplative man willing to share some of his secrets with her.
Ziva thought she would like him to take her there again.
"What purpose would it serve if after going to all this trouble, it was all a ruse? Frankly, I have better things to do with my time. But either way, you have your final warning. You've definitely lost the girl. You might still lose the boy. The question remains - how many more will you have to lose before you learn to be still?"
Gibbs jerked against his ropes, shaking his head. "I don't believe you." He would know. He would *know* if he'd lost them. Of all the people in the world, Jethro Gibbs would know if they had been taken from him.
"I don't care. You'll have to believe it eventually, but for now, this is enough. Because you may not believe me now, but eventually you will have to live with the knowledge that I've taken everything from you, Gibbs. Your daughter. Your son. Your family. I've already won." Bell stood, picking up his topcoat and tossing it over his arm. "Just like you, Gibbs, grief is a proud beast. Difference is, this beast is going to make you stoop under its weight. You were helpless to do anything to keep them safe. Once again, you were useless when your family was counting on you."
Gibbs snarled, rearing to his feet, chair and all, to look Bell in the eye. "I. Am. Going. To. Get. You."
"But will it be worth the cost?" Bell smirked coolly, casually knocking him aside. "Goodbye, Agent Gibbs. The FBI should be here soon."