"You look like hell." Her voice made him jump, his boots clattering loudly against the stainless steel tray he'd stretched out on. Kate was smirking at him when he twisted over onto one hip, his lanked form drawing tighter with the movement. Her eyes traced the bunched muscle in his forearm, following it up through the press of his shoulder.
"Long day." She could tell he'd been sleeping by the gloss in his eyes, the way his forehead was pinched as he tried to pull himself from hot tangled dreams and back to the cool and soothing darkness of autopsy. "Bad case."
"Been more of those lately." The snap of her heels on the tile echoed off the walls as she crossed from the doors to the table he had chosen. "Haven't there?"
"Seems that way." Gibbs offered, shoving himself up, fingers wiping across the clean white of the tee shirt he'd stripped down to. "What're you doing here, Kate?" She found it amusing that he had discarded polo and suit jacket but kept his boots and his gun.
"Just checking in before I head out." She chose the table beside his, sliding her shoes off before lifting herself up onto it and smoothing at her skirt. Gibbs blinked, still half past exhausted, and watched her bare feet swing. They were farther from the floor than his heavy boots. A lot farther, and it reminded him of how small she really was. "You'd sleep better at home."
"Doubt it." He let his fingers catch against the gutters that ran the side of the table. Kate smirked at his movements, aware that she'd made him uncomfortable, shied him somehow. She took pride in his inability to match her eyes and used the lack of scrutiny to examine the way the muscles of his shoulders and chest shifted under brilliant white.
"How long has it been since you slept in a bed Gibbs? With sheets and pillows and enough space to just stretch out?" She matched words to action, primly swinging her legs up onto the autopsy table and laying back along it. "These things have to be horrible for your back."
"You'd know." He whispered, the words barely audible as he forced himself to look at her, really look at her. Her features were pale but composed in the gloom, her lips a silent blue, the bullet hole in her forehead a glaring void that stopped his breath and ached through his entire body.
"Whose fault is that?" Her eyes were black, the whiskeyed brown of them just a memory in the back of his head. "Huh, Gibbs?"
"Mine." His voice cracked and bile burned at the back of his throat. "I'm sorry, Kate." And when he blinked, she was gone.
***NCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS***
"Uh, boss?" Tony did his best to be a statue, his entire body a tensed jolt of forced and frantic stillness as he stared down the barrel of the other man's pistol. "Think of the paperwork." He had to focus on the barrel, was convinced that the second he looked away the black emptiness of it would be filled with a bullet and then not filled with a bullet and he'd end up bleeding out in autopsy. "I know you hate paperwork."
"DiNozzo." And just like that the gun was gone. A quick move of long fingers, square palms, shaking hands and Gibbs had the weapon out of sight. The older man's body was still completely prone, legs splayed as far as the narrow confines of the autopsy table allowed but the gun was gone and his eyes were open. Blank and sky blue, but open. With his pale face and bruised eyelids he looked dead. "What?" Tony laughed, a quick and broken sound that was not at all intended as he dropped his hands, his entire body unclenching in slow motion. Adrenaline spiked behind his eyes with his pulse, leading the edge of the headache that had been lingering for the last twelve hours even closer.
"Just letting you know that Bird's in custody. LEOs picked him up about twenty minutes ago." There was no moisture in his mouth, none at all, his throat clicked when he swallowed. There was plenty of moisture at his hairline, a quick wash of cold sweat that prickled on his skin as he watched Gibbs force himself to focus, to bring himself back from wherever had him hair fingered on the trigger.
"Okay." Gibbs lifted both hands and ran them over his face, callused palms scruffing audibly against stubble. "You and McGee go home."
"Yeah, boss." He watched the other man, focused on the way his hands pressed into his cheeks, pressure whitening against his skin even more. "So, uh, you gonna head out too, or-"
"G'home, Tony."
***NCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCISNCIS***
For the second time in less than two hours he had his gun pointed at someone he knew. Gibbs blew out a harsh breath. It seemed like his entire body was shaking, except for his hand. And Kate was grinning at him like she'd just pulled some kind of monumental joke over on him.
"You gonna shoot me, Gibbs?" She reached for the barrel of the gun and he let it drop, his shoulders slumping. "Because that'd be pretty redundant, wouldn't it?" She twiddled her fingers between them, the turn of her wrist, the fine boned bend of it, drawing his attention even in the dim light of the basement. Small hands. Capable as hell, but small, so damn close to dainty. "Or are you just gonna stare at me?" She was dead and he couldn't stop looking at the arch of her knuckles, the bend of her wrist. The way her fingers lifted and wiped at his shirt without even the ghost of sensation.
Moving slowly, Gibbs backed away from the non touch, his eyes still on her hands, on her neatly trimmed nails. Kate rolled her eyes at the retreat, huffing a breath and following. He could smell her perfume. It was the known scent of her particular haunting and he knew he'd never mistake or forget it. He unloaded the gun, slipping the clip into his pocket before stashing the weapon in a drawer of the workbench. "You not talking to me tonight, Gibbs?" Kate leaned into his side and he almost convinced himself that he could feel her. That her shoulder was pressing warmth into his chest. Almost. "Not nice."
"You're dead, Kate." His hand waved through where she was standing, eyes pinned on hers.
"And yet you keep bringing me back, Gibbs." The snap of her voice was so normal, so very Kate, that he couldn't help the smirk that turned up one side of his mouth. Irritated and aimed directly at him, the source of her annoyance. God, he'd agitated her over and over again just to get that snap. Goaded her just to watch the way her eyes sparked as she worked towards good and pissed. "Like I wanna spend my afterlife in the Gibbs Museum of Ship Building and Dead Women?" If she had really been there, the punch she aimed for the center of his chest would have stolen his breath. "I'm not here because I wanna be."
"You're not here at all." But she was. Even if he couldn't feel her, couldn't touch her. "You're buried in Indiana." He was haunted.
"Then why am I standing here?"
"I dunno." She haunted him. They all did.
"You do, you absolutely do. Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the Great and Powerful!" He had to watch her speak, there was no other option. He'd spent two years doing it surreptitiously but now he was free to stare. To study the way her lips quirked higher the louder she got and how the apples of her cheeks blushed red. "Abby used to say you were magic."
"I never pretended to be that, Kate." He shook his head slowly, eyes fixed steady on hers. Gibbs noticed for the first time that her forehead was whole, unmarred. "Never pretended to be anything I wasn't."
"You pretend all the time, Gibbs." She spun away from his workbench, both arms tucking up around her chest like she was cold. He didn't doubt she was. Death had that effect. "You're just the humbug behind the curtain with his gun in his mouth, aren't you?" Everything they'd been through and he didn't think he'd ever seen this level of disgust in her eyes. "And all I had to do to figure it out was get shot in the head."
"I'm sorry, Kate." He'd gotten used to apologizing to her.