Hey, everyone! This story is dedicated to NaughtyAngelBrat, who's comments on "The Valentine's Chronicles" inspired this story. This story is based about a year before the Valentine story and explains why Abby's parties are viewed with suspicion by Gibbs and why she is not allowed to have glitter at NCIS. This will probably only be about five chapters long, but who knows? I just hope everyone enjoys!

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Abby Scuito had a lot of leeway at her workplace, NCIS. She ignored the dress code, played loud electronic music, and ingested more caffeine in a day than most coffee houses served in a week. She decorated her lab with crime scene photos and strange candles, making it into a dwelling place for gothic dolls, a farting hippo stuffed animal, and who knows what else. But there was one thing that she was not allowed to have at work and it was a bitter barb in her soul.

Glitter.

Gibbs had been first to inexorably ban it, even going so far as to ask the security guards at the entrance if packets of the craft supply were discernible with the scanners. Gibbs' decree was quickly seconded by Director Shepard. Tony, Tim, and Ziva had celebrated, their delight shared by Jimmy Palmer. Even kindhearted Ducky sided with the rest against Abby's pleas, and the glitter was gone.

That brought them to today. The last week had been full of gory images, bloody evidence, and long days and even longer nights of hard, gut-wrenching work. Abby had worked as hard as any agent and now her body was trying to remind her of that fact.

Unfortunately, Abby was not too eager to listen to the demands of her body. If she relaxed, she would have time to reflect and think. Somewhere, deeply hidden under the symptoms of tiredness, was an uneasy, "yucky" feeling. She had felt it before, but always fought it off as hard as she could. Because Miss Abigail Scuito knew that feeling, knew what it meant - and she wanted nothing to do with it.

That horrible stew of emotions had been close to bubbling at 7:00 this morning after she awoke from three hours of sleep after closing the case at 2:00 in the morning. Unable to fall back asleep and fooling herself into thinking that she could distract herself with work once again, Abby dressed and decided to stop by the store on her way back to her lab. In desperation to avoid the bad feeling and to brighten her day, she purchased a bag of glitter. It was only a tiny package. Gibbs would not care - would he?

Apparently, he did.

"So what? You'll make a law that I can't have glitter?" Abby demanded, stamping her heavily-studded boot as Gibbs threw yet another package of the sparkly contraband into his trash can.

"If I have to," he had responded calmly. "No more, Abs."

She had spun on her heel and stomped over to the elevator without another word, choosing to ignore the snickers of her co-workers.

"Not fair," she had muttered to herself in the privacy of the elevator. It really wasn't her fault that her Valentine party got a little out of hand and Ducky's autopsy got so sparkly, a bane for both Ducky and Palmer. It really wasn't her fault that Ziva had gotten glitter in her eyes and Tony and Tim got it all through their hair, right before being called to a murder scene. It really wasn't her fault that Jen could not get the sparkles off her face before having to video call a sexist military leader in MTAC, leading to some derogative comment about females in positions of power. It really wasn't her fault that it took the janitors an entire month to rid the building of the annoying particles.

Really, none of it was her fault. Yet here she was, glitterless, working among grumps.

It was not fair.

How was she going to throw parties? How was she going to make special get well cards? How was she going to cheer kids in protective custody? How was she going to add shine to cloudy days?

And how would she distract herself from these uncontrollable emotions?

She couldn't, not without glitter.

None of her petitions over the last three months had worked well. Everyone was still as dead set against glitter as they had been during the middle of the fiasco on Valentine's. Hadn't they every heard of "forgive and forget" or "leave the past in the past"? Apparently not, if today's confiscation was any sign.

If they would not listen to reason, she would just have to go for revenge.