Hi Guys

I have been a massive fan of this website and after 5 years of enjoying all your work I have finally gotten the courage to post my very first ever story.

I hope to receive some feedback, all constructive of course and hope you will go easy on me. This is new to me and I am very nervous as to how this will be received. I am hoping that I am not deluded and that I should continue to write this as I must say that this was an extremely enjoyable endeavour.

Disclaimer:

And of course I do not own NCIS but if I did hoo boy...

Chapter 1 - Sickening Sunrise

He couldn't tell if he was shaking from the cold night air or if he was still in shock, most likely a mixture of both,
but one thing he did know, as he strode from the building, he dare not look back, his legs mercifully bringing him forward
while his traitorous brain kept shouting : go back, they'll understand, don't run away, not again.

But instinct, self preservation, call it what you will drove him forward. His eyes moist from the stinging night air he told himself.
The lump in his throat growing larger with each step he took towards his car.

Just get in the car and go, if you don't hurry, they'll realize your gone and come looking, this thought tinged with sadness as he realized that it would be out of concern and not out of any willingness to do him harm.

This was something that he had come to appreciate deeply and something that had not come easy.
He had finally learned to trust and what had this done for him? made him soft?

No he argued with himself ,it made him part of a family, sadly though a luxury he could ill afford,
a luxury he had allowed himself to have in the mistaken belief that maybe, just maybe this time it could be different.

He should have known this would have happened and sooner or later his selfishness could cause them harm.

He was a lot of things, he was all too aware of his faults, they had been catalogued by himself mainly over many hard years. They were pointed out to him more than once, by friend and foe alike.
Sometimes it was done with a vicious tongue by one person or another and sometimes with the gentleness only a friendship would allow for another person to point out such a delicate thing.
He argued that he was doing this to protect the ones he loved, but he couldn't deny the aftertaste of relief he now had in the back of his throat.
The lump that resided there earlier almost cutting off his airway was now almost bearable but still a small reminder that he was doing the right thing.

It always hurt when he left, but it was for the best he told himself as it had been before, this time was no different, was it?

"Ziver, where'd he go"? snapped Gibbs, " he was here only a moment ago, photographing the kitchen, do you want me to go find him Gibbs"? "no damn it, you stay here with the body, i'll go, bad enough I'm one man down".

Gibbs dialed his agents number and was enraged to hear it go straight to voicemail,
"not okay" he ground out angrily "damn it" he spat.
He was tired although he would never admit to this, even under the worst of torture, coffee only went so far, even for him.
His reliance on the liquid legendary in the annals of NCIS.

They had all been working longer hours than usual the past couple of weeks, he himself even starting to feel fatigue setting in,
but the bodies were piling up and they had bupkiss, "they were the MCRT they had a responsibility to close this case as quickly and efficiently as others in the past" . Those were Vance's words not his.

He couldn't give a damn about statistics or any of that crap, he just wanted to bring this to a close in order to save lives and hopefully closure to the ever increasing line of devastated families that were now looking to him for answers.
Answers that he simply didn't have. He suddenly felt his age and that didn't happen every day and to top it all off his agents were going walkabout on him when he needed them more than ever to do their jobs.

He was shaking now, adrenaline, anger, self loathing, too many things to process.

He just repeated the mantra he had started 20 minutes ago when he had photographed the kitchen wall,
blood spray against a sickly yellow shade of sunset. For a moment being only that – blood on a wall,
a not uncommon sight in his line of work, then something familiar had made itself known.

He's back, he's back and if he knows I'm here he will not just stop at the mess he left behind in that kitchen, that mess being at one time a young marine, his whole future ahead of him,
not that a thought such as that would even come anywhere near entering such a twisted mind. He was doing it again.

He was trying desperately to apply even the tiniest bit of rationality to the completely irrational and horrific, it hadn't worked in the past why would it now?

The scariest thing being that there was absolutely no reason for this horror now as there was none then. This was no misguided, deluded attempt by a broken mind for a certain type of justice, nothing remotely logical. How do you fight something like that?
Something without form or reason, something that fed on anarchy, destruction, misery.

For no apparent reason other than it was a form of recreation for a mind firmly housed in the lowest level of hell.
There was nothing that could be said or done to even try and 'reason' with something so evil.
People believe that they see evil everyday but he envied them some of their experiences,
for he had truly stared into the flinty grey orbs of something worse than evil, a nothingness an absence of soul and humanity and had survived, not unscathed and only by accident, something he knew, he was literally lucky to be alive.

He realized that he was now gripping the steering wheel so hard that the palms of his hands were starting to burn
and that his inner monologue had cost him precious minutes he could not afford.

If he was to get out of here as quickly as possible without being noticed he could ponder the where's and why's later on, right now, his life and the lives of everyone he loved, family by blood and family by fate, not to mention future victims, of that he was sure beyond any doubt there would be, rested on him getting the hell out of here.

He pulled away from the curb not yet switching on his lights until he was sure that he was far enough down the street so as not to attract attention.

He took one last look at the house he had just left and realized that this would not be the last crime scene created by the devils henchman.
He was not abandoning his team, he momentarily regretted that was what he would have appeared to have done, and Gibbs, well Gibbs would be pissed.

It was not in his nature to abandon anyone in trouble, that part of his character , thankfully remaining unchanged.
It would most definitely be easier if he didn't care but taking the easy way out didn't always mean an easy life, proof positive of this was his current predicament.

He switched on his lights, straightened himself up, blinked away his uncertainty and put his foot on the gas. He could figure something, anything out, lives depended on it.

Timothy McGee was a survivor in the past he prayed for everyone's sake he could be again.