He walked past them all and to his desk. Sure he could stand there and be greeted and congratulated for a job well down. Sure he could tell them it was just another day in the office, but this time it was different. Everything about this was different. He watched as they all greeted her, and she stood there unsure of what to say. After all it had been months since they had seen her and she seen them. Not too long ago they all had believed she was died and now here she was standing in the bullpen once again. It almost seemed like a dream or an illusion. Maybe he was still back in the desert and dreaming of what he wished things could be like now. He knows this is real, that they really did bring her home. Home that is where they were now. She was home, they were home and this was home. The place where everyone cares about you and doesn't care who you are or what you have done. A place that only cares about who you are now and who you will become. A place where they will stand behind you no matter what, they were a team, they are a family.
As he watched her with Abby he couldn't help but remember when Gibbs had told them 'the Damocles went down in a storm 28th of May, off the coast of Somalia. There were no survivors'. It felt like a part of him was ripped out and for weeks and months it was like he was missing a piece of himself. Weeks after he was told he couldn't stop dreaming about the last time he had saw her and dreams of her in trouble and him unable to save her. He had soon became unable to really be productive at work, it was just get up go solve the case and move on. There was no rhyme or reason; it just didn't make sense anymore. He knew things couldn't go on this way; he wasn't going to let this all be for nothing. She was on that mission for a reason, and it was soon going to be a mission they needed to finish.
When they had gone on the mission he never expected to see her, but at the same time he was happy, shocked to see her. When he first heard the news she was gone he wanted so badly for this to happen, that he'd see her alive. He just never expected to her see alive and here. Maybe a part of him hoped for this, that he come all this way and she'd be here and he could save her. Something he knew he could never do in his dreams. Now they were here, when she asked why he was here he answered 'I couldn't live without you, I guess', when he his mind was saying I don't want to live without you, and my world doesn't make sense without you in it.
As he watched her, he couldn't help but think how everyone would now be asking him all about it. How the rescue mission came to be? How they were able to make it out alive? And most importantly they would be asking him why he did it, why'd he risk his life to go after someone that had no connection to anything they were doing. He'd just simple answer 'because it's my job, it's who I am'; when in reality the answer was 'I did it… for her.'