SCENARIO
Jethro looked down at the cup of coffee. "Smells good," he commented.
His mother smiled. "Hot and strong-I figured you needed it."
Jethro blinked at her. Something wasn't right. He'd been here before, when he was shot…but this time, the diner was different. He saw the other customers' faces. Some of them looked vaguely familiar; one was a senator that he recognized. The others were, he realized, agents and personnel from NCIS. They didn't seem to know he was there. They were too busy watching a news report on a TV screen, where a visibly shaken news anchor was attempting to describe not one, but two, explosions that had taken place. One was the car bomb that Cole had tried to defuse. The other had resulted in a mushroom cloud over the Navy Yard.
"Mom, what happened? I was going back to get Abby…"
His mother looked sadly at him, and turned away.
"You tried, Jethro, but there were two bombs." Mike Franks was sitting next to him holding a beer. "That SOB Dearing wanted revenge, in the biggest way possible. The second was in a warehouse. It was triggered to go off when the first one did."
Jethro stared at him, then at the TV screen. Rescue workers wearing radiation suits were climbing through a field of still-smoking rubble.
"Abby?" Jethro asked, his voice hoarse. "Tony, Ziva, McGee…"
"We're here, Boss," Tony said. Ziva stood at his side.
"We were in the elevator when the building got hit," she added. "After that…I am not certain." She looked around. "So, is this your afterlife?"
"I don't know." Jethro shook his head; he needed to think. Looking around, he saw McGee and Abs sitting at one of the booths, eating cheeseburgers. Abby gave him a small smile and a wave.
"What about Samantha?" Jethro asked. He didn't see her, or Parker, in the diner.
"They're all right," Mike replied. "They're in Pennsylvania, with your dad. He's okay, too, but…"
Jethro looked at Mike with sudden realization. "Ducky?"
"He had a heart attack," Mike said quietly. "He's in a hospital right now down in Florida with Palmer…I can't say if he'll be here or not."
"What about Dearing?"
"They got him," Vance replied. He'd apparently been sitting in one of the booths for awhile. "He was the most wanted man in the country after this, and they were able to trace his phone call records in spite of all the madness."
Jethro looked down at his coffee. "Still didn't stop what happened," he said.
"But he was stopped," Cole replied. He'd been sitting at the diner's counter for a while, judging from the empty plate in front of him. "It wasn't in vain."
Jethro shook his head. "This still doesn't make sense. If the second bomb went off right after the first one…I don't remember that happening."
"You've got to make a choice here, probie," Mike said. "Cole wanted to stay and try and defuse the bomb. He didn't make it in one scenario. In the other one you convinced him to leave and he did, but only to live long enough to see the Navy Yard and a hell of a lot of D.C. turn into a fireball."
Gibbs looked at him, and at Cole. "If I go back, I have to leave you behind…"
"The second bomb would have been triggered by a phone call confirming that the first hadn't gone off in time," McGee added.
"If you go back, Cole will still die, but the second bomb will not go off and can be disarmed," Ziva said.
"And we can work on nailing Dearing once and for all," Tony finished.
"And it won't be like the end of the world," Abby looked hopefully at Jethro. "I mean, we'll still be hurt, but…no doomsday."
Jethro looked at Cole. "I wish it didn't have to be that way-for you."
Cole smiled. "It's the danger, remember?"
Jethro looked at Cole. The diner was gone; they were sitting in Vance's car.
"Go get her," Cole said.
Jethro looked over at Abby, and made his decision.
THE END