Warnings: Spoilers for anything in Season 11 up to "Double Back", McGee/Delilah, Tony/OC

Disclaimers: I do not own NCIS or its characters. Those belong to the show creators and CBS, sadly. I'm just borrowing them.

A/N: Before we get started here, I want to make it clear that this is my interpretation of the way I see things going on the show. Please, do not ask me to bring Ziva back. It doesn't feel right to me at this point.

I am doing my best to keep the characters as true to form as to what we are seeing on screen this season. That being said, I will admit I am struggling with Bishop because of the small sample size. And, I like her so I want to write her correctly. With all this being said, constructive feedback is always welcome. Enjoy!

Unconditionally

Benham Parsa's latest attack had left a somber mood around NCIS. Tony DiNozzo noticed it right away when he stepped off the elevator that bitterly cold morning, coffee cup clutched in his right hand, backpack slung over his left shoulder.

Despite the palpable tension in the air, there was still work to be done, and he was not surprised to find a stack of files on his desk. He flipped the first one open and instantly a groan left his lips and filled the bullpen.

"What's the matter, DiNozzo? Don't feel like doing supply forms today?" Gibbs said, softly from his desk.

"Not particularly," Tony sighed as he slipped off his coat. He stored his gear and plopped down into his chair. "Any chance we'll get the Bat Signal?"

Gibbs shook his head. "Nope. McGee's still out on leave and Bishop's at the NSA to be debriefed about the Parsa case—it's just you and me kid."

Tony couldn't help the small grin that cracked his face thanks to the nostalgic tone to the lead agent's voice. There had been a time when it had just been the two of them, and, for the most part, it had gone smoothly. He'd lost count of how many agents rotated in and out of the team those first few months that he was with NCIS. In fact, none of them lasted for long and just didn't fit. Until Kate had come along and demanded to be apart of their investigation on Air Force One—after that Tony wasn't surprised that his boss had offered her a job. "Kind of like old times, eh boss?"

"Yeah. Just don't regress," Gibbs snapped, "We've all spent years working on you. I don't want to have to start slapping you again."

"No worries, boss," Tony said, clicking his pen to life to get working, "Don't plan on regressing. All about moving forward now."

Gibbs eyed his SFA across the squad room. Even from his seat Tony could tell that he had the boss' interests peaked. "You gunning for my job, DiNozzo?"

Tony laughed, nervously. "No, boss. I'm not ready for it yet. I think I still have a lot to learn."

It didn't surprise Gibbs that after all these years that Tony still didn't have the self-confidence to lead. Perhaps Gibbs hadn't been the best foster for that self-confidence. He knew that he was going to have to do better. But after this brief exchange they fell into a comfortable, familiar silence. In that time Tony got a lot of work done. It was true that he did miss some of the friendly chatting with Bishop—she hated silence, especially awkward silence he was learning. It was also true that he missed having McGee around, but he understood that his probie had to be with Delilah in her difficult time of adjusting to being paralyzed. Working in silence was peanuts compared to the mountains that she was facing.

"Agent Gibbs," Leon Vance's tense voice broke the pair's concentration as well as the silence, "A word with you?"

Tony's green eyes followed his boss out of the bullpen and then up the stairs towards the Director's office. His gut tightened. Something was up. Perhaps, this awful nightmare that was Parsa was finally coming to an end, maybe Homeland had found him and dealt with him. Like they dealt with Bodnar, a snarky retort came back in his head.

Well, now that wasn't very fair, now was it, Tony argued with him self. No one knew the CIA's endgame. Damn spies.

He briefly began to wonder if perhaps Bishop was doing more at the NSA than just debriefing them about their involvement in the Parsa case. After all, this bore a striking resemblance to what they had been faced with last year—a manhunt for a killer, terrorist. And no matter how many times Tom Morrow had shown up here, demanding that NCIS back off and let Homeland deal with it—Ziva had gone behind their backs, with Vance and Gibbs' silent blessing apparently—and Tony, well, he'd just followed along because he foolishly believed that they were not going to get caught. When his badge had been reinstated he'd prayed that they had all learned something from their horrendous spring.

Tony glanced at the empty bullpen. Parsa had been personal from the get-go. He'd targeted each member of the team, coming after Gibbs and Tony—McGee had been scooped up by the FBI before he'd been reached, and Ziva's Mossad's skills had saved her in Israel. Now, not only did Parsa have Clayton Jarvis on his list of victims with personal connections to the team and NCIS, but he had Delilah Fielding.

All the pent of up frustrations he felt regarding this case began to surface. He'd done his best to take the advise of his men's group, sometimes it was easier said than done, but one guy, he'd offered up some of the most simplest of advice—reach out more when you need it.

Just a few nights ago Tony had reached out, to Ziva. She had not answered the phone but he'd left her a message that had been freeing in a way. Now, he found himself needing to reach out in a different way. As the urge rushed to the surface, Gibbs rushed back into the bullpen. "Grab your gear."

"Huh? I thought we were off rotation?"

"Thought wrong—both of us did."

Confused, Tony dug out his weapon and badge, threw his coat back on and snatched up his backpack. "So, what's the case?"

Gibbs, ice blue eyes cold, solemn, simply said, "Metro pulled Jennifer Evans' body from the Potomac this morning."

Tony's shoulders tensed. "Are they sure?"

"Oh yeah. Found her with her dog tags. Metro called us immediately."

Son of a bitch, Tony thought, furiously. "Eight months, boss—we worked that case for eight months and got nothing."

Gibbs simply nodded. When the young woman had turned up missing the team had turned over every stone looking for her, but yielded no results. It was like she had disappeared off the face of the Earth. The only clue they had was a fuzzy video of her leaving a bar with a unidentified man. Probably the one who had killed her. Everyone had his or her theories of course as to what happened and in the end the team had just resolved to the fact that perhaps Evans had just wanted to start over.

Apparently that wasn't the case.

Tony dug the keys out for the sedan and stalked towards the elevator. Gibbs knew this case had hit Tony hard. No one liked to inform a family that they did not know what happened to their loved one. And Gibbs had not been present when Tony and Ziva went to visit the Evans' family to let them know that the case went cold. It was months later, and Ziva that had told Gibbs that the mother had lashed out at Tony, screaming and yelling and accusing of him of not doing his job. She had even struck him when Tony tried to offer his condolences. It was not going to be a pleasant reunion by far.

Still, as the two agents made their way to the car and sped off towards the crime scene, they had a job and no one said it was glamorous, or glorious. Sometimes it was downright cruel and unfair.

His own team was living testament to this. Right now, McGee was off helping Delilah cope with her condition all because they had failed at their job. Tony clutched the steering wheel tightly. Failed. Again. How many more failures could he possibly take before everything fell apart? Before he fell apart?

"DiNozzo," Gibbs chided him softly, "I didn't let you drive so you could kill us. Watch the road."

"Sorry, boss," Tony said, snapping back to life and directing the sedan back into their lane of traffic.

"Jennifer wasn't your fault, DiNozzo."

"Doesn't matter. I should have looked harder, deeper. Her killer has been walking free for four years while she's been rotting at the bottom of the river."

Gibbs shifted in his seat. "We should have looked harder, DiNozzo. Team effort, remember?"

Tony pressed down harder on the gas. The sedan shot forward at an alarming pace. Team effort my ass. You should practice what you preach, boss. You of all people shut us out the most, he accused, silently. He let out a frustrated breath of air. "You weren't there when Mrs. Evans accused me of not doing my job—you didn't see her, you didn't have to listen to her—you didn't have to be stripped down to nothing. And what hurt the most was, she was right. I didn't do my job. I didn't find Jennifer. I didn't find who killed her. I let them down."

Sometimes it amazed Gibbs how much Tony and Tim could sound alike but be so different. Parsa was my job. He sighed and reached out, giving Tony's shoulder a squeeze. "I should have been there with you, DiNozzo. While Ziva was a good partner to you, we both know that she was always very sensitive towards you." He saw his SFA's shoulders tense even more and wondered if he had perhaps touched on another sore spot. "She say something to you after Mrs. Evans outburst?"

"Doesn't matter now, boss, Ziva's gone," Tony said quietly. "Let's just sweep it under the rug and be done with it."

"Is that what your men's health group would say? Sweep it under the rug and forget about it?"

"No. But it's kind of hard to confront the person on it when she isn't here."

And that answered his question. Gibbs knew that Tony had been bothered by the case going cold. He just always figured that it was because justice had not been served. It was starting to look like that there was more underneath the surface. "Talk."

Tony took a deep breath and shook his head to clear his thoughts. The Evans' case had strained all of their relationships. They had been at each other's throats. In the aftermath of Mrs. Evans outburst at him in her living room, Tony had already been beaten down. On the car ride back to the office Ziva had lit into him and he'd just silently taken it. After all, she was the one that was still dealing with what had happened to her in Somalia. It wasn't her fault that she was this angry because she knew that if NCIS had not been looking for her she would have died out there. "She told me I was giving up, that I gave up—a lot. I gave up Rota, I gave up on Jeanne—Wendy. It didn't matter that for a whole summer I never gave up looking for Saleem to avenge her death. It just…it just hurt."

Gibbs cursed. Lord, that had been a tricky time. They had just rescued Ziva from Somalia when Jennifer Evans had gone missing and they had worked around the clock for several days, all leads exhausted, but kept the case open. From time to time something else would pop up and the team would investigate, leading to more dead ends. It was obvious that a missing woman hit close to home for Ziva. Wasn't she missing when they had rescued her in Africa?

"Like I said, it doesn't matter now," Tony quipped, pulling the car into a space at the docks. He shut it down and got out, effectively ending the conversation.

"Hey," Gibbs said, getting out of the car. He slammed his door shut. "It does matter and you can make it right now."

Tony nodded, pain clearly etched in his green eyes. He grabbed his gear, slipping his NCIS cap on over his messy hair. Silently he took in the scene before him. Metro had roped off the area with crime scene tape, red and blue lights flashed and bounced off the concrete walls of the warehouse buildings surrounding this part of the docks and a young, twenty-something cop stood watch. Some days he really had to wrack his brain to remember what it was like being a young cop. So eager and wanting to rid the whole world of bad guys—it was the cases like Jennifer Evans that brought young cops crashing back to reality.

Gibbs took the lead, keeping a watchful eye on his senior field agent. He pulled out his credentials and showed them to the young cop. "NCIS, Special Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo. Metro says you found a body that belongs to us?"

"Yeah. Divers pulled her remains about an hour ago," the rookie cop said, gesturing over his shoulder. "Rumor has it that she's been missing for a long time."

"Four years," Tony snapped. "Can we get through?"

"Uh…sure," the young man said, lifting the tape. "You'll find Detective Sportelli over there."

Tony and Gibbs walked a brisk pace, stride for stride towards the veteran detective. Sportelli was waiting for them, arms crossed, eyes somber. On a black tarp in the middle of the dock there were the bones of human remains, dog tags clearly hanging around her neck. DNA was going to have to be done to prove it, but Tony knew in his gut that this was Jennifer. Four years of wondering if he had missed something coming to and end. And just days after Parsa had blown everything apart at the Conrad gala. When it rained, it poured.

Gibbs nodded at the detective. "What have you got for me, Sportelli?"

"Female human remains," Sportelli said in his gruff voice. "Divers found her at the bottom of the river, weights around her ankles. Killer wanted to make sure she wasn't found."

"So, how did you find her?" Gibbs questioned, snapping on some latex gloves. "Looking for another body?"

"Inmate. Dying of lung cancer. Went to a confessional with a priest and told the priest about killing Jennifer Evans," Sportelli replied. "Priest called us."

Tony swallowed the bile in his throat. "What was he in for?" he asked, fearing the answer. If it was some dumb misdemeanor he was going to lose it.

Sportelli turned towards him and shook his head, "Murdering his brother. Guy had a violent streak in him."

"Well, at least then, he was in jail with the proper punishment," the familiar voice of the NCIS ME said. "Some justice was served for this poor girl."

"Ducky how long until we can get DNA confirmation that this is Jennifer Evans?" Gibbs asked, eyeing his old friend. "I'd like to get some closure for her family."

"Twenty-four hours," Ducky replied, gazing down at the body. "Mister Palmer, get the gurney so we can get Miss Evans home."

As Tony watched Ducky and Jimmy work that urge to reach out crept up again. Last time they had been working this case he had kept everything inside, like he always did, and it had cost him, it had strained his relationship with Ziva, maybe to the point of no return—he may never be certain when that had happened exactly, but, he did know that this case had changed them, in so many ways. This time, he didn't want to be left hurting and wondering. This time, he was going to find someone to lean on.