Special Agent Timothy McGee was exhausted. Their last case began fifty-nine hours ago and they haven't had a break since. A Navy admiral's grandson, whom the Admiral and his wife had custody of, had been kidnapped from the local park where he was playing with his friends. NCIS was called in at request of the Admiral and it was fortunate because when the kidnapper called for a ransom, it was in the form of classified naval information rather than money. They were able to rescue the child when they made the ransom drop but unfortunately the kidnapper escaped with the flash drive containing fake information. It took them thirty-seven hours to find the kidnapper and arrest him by tracing the fake intel he was given.
The elevator dinged (he was much too tired to climb three flights of stairs) and McGee exited the lift. He turned towards his apartment, eager to flop into bed and not get up until dinner time when he saw something in front of his door. Because of his lack of sleep, it took his brain a moment to realize that the something in from of his door was a person with their knees pulled to their chest and their head down. It took him another moment to realize that that person was his sister.
The young NCIS agent was now very worried. The last time Sarah had shown up at his door in the middle of the night, she had been drugged and the prime suspect in the murder of a Marine. He dreaded what brought her here this time.
"Sarah!" Tim called quietly as he walked quickly towards his door.
She lifted her head from its resting place on her bent knees. It was dark in the hallway but there was enough illumination for Tim to see the tell-tale glint of tears on her cheeks that meant she had been crying.
"Can I stay with you tonight, Tim?" Sarah McGee asked her brother in a weak and tearful voice.
Tim ignored the question, although not intentionally. His mind was moving at a million miles a second, trying to come up with possible scenarios that could end up with a crying Sarah at his door at two a.m. None of them were good.
"What happened? Why are you crying?" he asked urgently, once he managed to get his mouth to work again.
"Please, Timmy?" Sarah all but whimpered.
The use of his childhood nickname along with the tearfulness he heard in his baby sister's voice was enough to snap him out of his inner ramblings. He slid the key into his lock and pushed open the door, thinking back to the last time he'd heard Sarah had come to him with that voice.
Dad was home from assignment again and he and Mom were fighting. Like always. It seemed like that was all they did when he came home. Tim wished that Dad didn't have to come home.
The front door slammed and a car engine cranked, signaling the end of that night's fight. There was a moment of silence before he heard his bedroom door creak open and a shaft of light fell across his bed. Tim snapped his eyes closed, hoping that his mother wouldn't come in if she thought he was asleep.
"Timmy?" the high pitched whisper of a four year old came. "Timmy, are you awake?"
"Go back to sleep, Sarah," the twelve year old whispered back to his sister.
"Can we stay here tonight, Timmy?" Sarah asked, more than a hint of tears in her usually happy, childlike voice. "Hoppy's scared of the yelling."
The preteen rolled his eyes at his baby sister's mention of her stuffed frog. For the past year or so, whenever "Hoppy" had a problem, Sarah came to him, asking him to fix it.
"They quit yelling, Hoppy," Tim said, playing into Sarah's…whatever it was.
"Hoppy says that he's still scared and only Timmy make the scary go 'way," the four year old whimpered slightly.
The elder McGee child sighed. He didn't really want to let his sister sleep with him. She always moved around and more than once, he'd woken up with bruises on his shins from where her small heels had made their mark.
He was all set to say no when her little mouth opened to say one more thing:
"Please, Timmy?"
Tim's trip down memory lane ended when he pushed the door closed behind him with a click. His hand automatically went to the light switch and the room was instantly bathed in the slightly yellow glow or artificial light. With the light on, he could see a splotch on the back of Sarah's denim skirt.
"You've got a stain on you skirt, Sarah," Tim informed his sister.
It took his sleep deprived brain a few seconds to process that the stain was red. Blood red.
"Sarah," he said shakily, suddenly unable to speak normally as his mouth went dry and his stomach dropped out, "why is there blood on your skirt?"
Terror filled her eyes and she opened and closed her mouth several times as she tried to come up with an explanation.
"It's, um, it's my period," she finally came up with.
"No, it isn't," Tim called her out gently. "You had it last week."
Sarah's fear was momentarily replaced by a mixture of confusion and creeped-outedness. She couldn't help but ask, "Wha- why- how the heck do you know when I have my period?"
"When I was over at your apartment last weekend, there was Midol on the counter and you took some right before the second movie started," Tim said, blushing slightly, although his embarrassment was greatly dwarfed by his growing fear and anxiety.
"That's kind of creepy, Tim," the younger sister told her older brother with a half-hearted sniffle, "but I guess that's what happens when your brother is an investigator."
"I guess."
There was what seemed like an endless silence between brother and sister, punctuated only by Jethro's snores. After what seemed like an eternity, Tim looked right into Sarah's eyes and asked a question he had prayed never to have to ask of his baby sister.
"Were you raped, Sarah?"
Tim saw a mask of defiance come over Sarah's face for a split second as if she was preparing to deny her brother's assumption before the mask crumpled into pain and despair.
One stride was all it took for the tall NCIS agent to reach his younger sister. He wrapped his long arms around her, one hand smoothing her long, dark hair while the other squeezed her to him as if he was afraid she would disappear at any moment.
It took only seconds for Sarah McGee to begin sobbing into her brother's shirt. She clung to him for all her worth, taking comfort from his strong, solid presence.
They stood in the middle of the kitchen for a very long time. Tim could feel the tears soaking through his shirt and the tremors that wracked his sister's smaller frame. In his mind, he knew that there was probably nothing he could say to his sister to comfort her right now but he couldn't try. He alternated between making a low "Shh"ing noise and telling her that he loved her and that he wasn't going anywhere.
When Sarah's tears slowed almost to a stop, she pulled away and wiped her face on the sleeve of her jacket.
"We need to go to the hospital," Tim said after about a minute of awkward silence. "They'll, um, they'll need to collect evidence for the police."
Sarah nodded mutely.
"Just let me go grab you something to change into for when we come home," he said softly. "They'll need your clothes to check for hairs and, uh, DNA samples to figure out who did this."
"I know who did it," whispered the violated young woman. "I was on a date with him. I know his name and his phone number. They can have the clothes though; I'm never going to wear them again."
White hot anger burst up from the pit of his stomach. He desperately wanted to find this…this piece of vermin and make him suffer for what he did to Sarah, his sometimes sweet and often spunky little sister, but he knew that now was not the time for vengeance. Maybe, as a professional courtesy, he could get the Metro Police to give him some alone time with whoever hurt Sarah when they caught him.
"I'll be right back," he assured her before heading to his bedroom.
"Change your shirt," she called softly after him. "I got make-up all over that one."
Tim looked down and only then noticed the smears of blue, black, and tan from her eye liner, mascara, and foundation. He quickly changed from his work clothes that he'd been wearing for the past day and a half into an NCIS sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and tennis shoes.
Once he was changed, he began rooting around, trying to find something for his sister to wear. None of his pants would fit her petite frame so it was lucky when he found a pair of flannel pajama pants that Sarah had left at his apartment the last time she had spent the night. The only option for a shirt was one of his, so another sweatshirt came out of his closet although this one advertised MIT on the front. It would be too big and the sleeves too long but there wasn't much choice so it would have to do.
"Ok, Sarah," Tim said softly as he left the bedroom, "I've got some stuff for you to wear. Let's go."
Sarah silently nodded and moved to follow her brother out of the small apartment and towards the elevator. The door shut with a snap and the siblings made their way down the hallway. The elevator quickly came and they stepped into the small, depressing space.
As Tim pressed the button for the first floor and the doors began to slide shut, Sarah whispered, with tears gathering in her eyes, "I wish I didn't have to do this."
His own eyes began filling with hot, anguished tears as Tim wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He pressed a kiss to her dark brown hair before whispering back, "I wish that, too."