Again, I'm just going through the old fics I never published before, before I start on some new stuff and update WAHP. I hope you like it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts...


Fornell stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed, as a breeze floated across the cemetery – graveyard sounded so distasteful and haunting – and the flag, hanging limp on its stand behind the priest at the head of the coffin, fluttered slightly. It was just the wind, just a breeze shifting a flag, just as it was doing to the hundreds and thousands of those self-same flags that hung from doorways and rooftops across the city, but to Fornell it looked like something else. It looked to Fornell like it was shuddering, struggling, as if the Stars and Stripes themselves didn't quite have it in them to go on as strongly now that this man was no longer there to defend them.

His team were there, opposite Fornell, sitting in the front row by his coffin.

Agent DiNozzo. His back straight and his head high, his eyes dry. His suit was pressed and his tie was straight, his hair combed neatly, and he looked somehow older than Fornell had ever seen him look. Weary and tired and deadly, deadly serious.

Agent Todd, to his right. Trying desperately hard to be brave, her shoulders back, her fists clenched, and a look of cold fury in her eyes that Fornell mistakenly thought was aimed at him until he realised she was simply staring at the space in front of her and wouldn't register if Jesus himself was standing where Fornell was.

Agent McGee, to the other side of DiNozzo. He hadn't quite mastered the art of hard, determined grief like his two counterparts, and every now and then he raised a hand to rub a tear away from his face. His eyes and nose were red and puffy and he'd obviously wept before arriving at the funeral, but if anyone sitting there thought any less of him for it they didn't show it.

To McGee's left was Abby, dressed much the same as Fornell had seen her in the past but looking somehow more sombre about it this time, slumped in her seat and twirling a black parasol sadly in her hands while her black-painted bottom lip trembled like a child's. And, of course, Ducky. Sitting beside Agent Todd, watching the flag-wrapped coffin, hands clasped and head lowered – in prayer or sadness, Fornell couldn't tell.

They'd all spoken, at the church service. Each and every one of them. Tony had given the shadow of a smile and held the sides of the pulpit as if he couldn't quite keep himself there without support, and had told how Gibbs was their leader but he had to take over now, and he hoped he could do half as good a job as his mentor. Kate had followed, one hand clasped around the crucifix at her neck and her eyes on the floor up until the end, when her eyes met Tony's and she announced to the assembled masses that she believed he would fill Gibbs' shoes just fine. McGee, deathly uncomfortable and trying to hide his pain, fidgeted and sniffed his way through his acknowledgement that Gibbs was honourable and good and the team had been lucky to have him. Abby murmured, nodding and biting her lip as if she was talking more to herself than a church full of mourners, and Ducky prattled, but there was a sadness to his voice and a slowness to his movement that Fornell had never encountered in him before.

They were dazed, all of them, reeling from the sudden, harsh loss of their leader. And, no doubt, shaken by the cruel reminder of their own mortality. Because if this man, their indestructible rock, who had saved each and every one of their lives more times than they'd care to count, could be taken from them, then what the hell kind of chance did any of the rest of them have?