Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from the TV series NCIS.
A/N: This story is set during "Kill Ari Part 1".
He stood at the window and stared out into the darkness with empty eyes. It had been raining
for hours and he wondered if it ever would stop again. Somehow this dreary weather fit the
way he felt.
He had failed. He had let her down. He knew nobody would blame him. Nobody but himself.
Sure, she had been an agent…a damn good one too. She knew she had to put her life on the
line each day – she would be the first one to tell him, if she was still around.
And still, he had let her down. She'd been on that roof because of him, and he hadn't been
able to protect her. He should have been.
The boys were trying so hard to act normal. They couldn't fool him. He knew they were
hurting too. They were scared, lost and hurting, just like him. And, just like him they didn't
show it.
They brought in the evidence like they would have on any other case. But this was different.
Everything had changed.
When he had turned to Tony to tell him to go and put on dry clothes, and had seen him flinch
in expectation of a head-slap, that was when he realized that nothing would be the same ever
again. He never had wanted to hurt anyone of his team. He never had wanted one of them to
die.
He whished he could turn back time; He whished this was a bad dream, that he would wake
up and see her sit at her desk. It wouldn't happen. He had failed. He had brought pain to his
team, his family. Or at least, he hadn't been able to keep it away. And they all had to deal
with the consequences.
He would find and kill the bastard that did that. But he knew it wouldn't stop the hurting, it
wouldn't fill the emptiness, it wouldn't bring her back.
Standing at the window, he thought how appropriate this weather was.
He stared into the dark and let the sky do the crying….
The end…