A.N Yes, another First Story... Please be nice but any help would be lovely.
If I told you I loved you...
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The rain came in short, light gusts blowing across the windscreen as the weary travellers drove the last mile up to the hillside cemetery. Their friend was buried there; in an grey unmarked tomb which only stated the year of his death in chiseled numbers at the top, devoid of the proclamation of a hero that they only now achingly realised he deserved.
As they scrambled to get out, and amid the yawning and stretching that followed every long car journey the oppressive "energy" (as Abby would have called it, if she was in any mood other than white-faced-tears-in-eyes-shock that she was in now) that had grown in the tense, confined space faded ever so slightly. Yet as they turned up towards the graves, grouped by families – grandchildren by grandparents, brother next to sister, walked through the generations till they reached a single, plain tomb, secluded (as it could be in the small plot) the reality came flooding in.
Tears blended with rain; emotions that would not be spoken of again bubbled to the surface. The weight, it seemed, of a life cut short and left waxy and chill, weighed heavy on the shoulders of all. Minds if not so numb would (and later would) would fill with guilt – they should have seen, choices could be changed: and maybe they would be back in DC (not realising the narrow miss like they had done before) content, no – ecstatic with what they had achieved. That contentment was more than numbed.
All eyes lay riveted on the ground where the cold body of Antony DiNozzo lay, six feet under the turf. A date his only medal, his send-off a couple of nurses and a doctor. No flowers strewn as the coffin slid into the ground, covered with a headstone without a name: crowned by a dark yew.
Later the only sign of the strangers was footmarks fast disappearing as the mud turned to soup and a still wrapped bouquet of black roses resting against the tombstone: slowly getting splattered with mud.
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In the FBI office Fornell answered his office phone. His mouth started to form the refusal that he had been repeating over and over again on the phone to his ex-wife for the past hour about the custody of their children; she had fought over the house above them – in fact she had put everything above them – he was the parent to them than her; and then snapped shut.
The words from the phone confirmed his hopes: they had believed the cover. Putting down the phone he had to repress a flash of regret (or was it guilt...) – Gibbs was a friend after all, and seemed to consider his agents as his family. It could not be helped, orders were orders – even surprising ones like helping Witness Protection and a mysterious agent (who must have been one of the "A's" from that atitude) set up a cover up to fool even NCIS. Even that did not ease his conscience.
Looking down at the open case file he was leaning on he was struck by the simplicity: DiNozzo hit by a car while on a well earned holiday, a FBI doctor did an "autopsy" and an empty coffin buried as a "John Doe". Fornell slowly shuffled the papers into order, the regret growing ever stronger. Yet, he reasoned to himself, even from a person with no all the facts about the last months (sadly like himself) would agree hands down that it had been a necessity: even his boss had agreed that if they did not fake it would happen out of their control.
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