A/N: After watching this weeks episode Life Before His Eyes I was interested in the implication that somehow if Kate had lived, Abby and Tim would have stayed together. This is a quick and dirty reaction to that interest...there may or may not be other chapters, I'd like to explore the idea more though...


In a weird way we can trace it all the way back to the beginning. The day of Kate's funeral everything begins to fall apart. Of course it takes a while for the full impact to become clear, and hindsight being what it is he knows there's no way they could have seen then what was happening. But sometimes…when he's tired and feeling lonely late at night he wonders what it might have happened if things had been different.

They are all fundamentally shaken by the loss. There are days when he knows deep in his soul that Kate was the glue that held them all together and now that she's gone this team he's come to love so dearly will crumble and blow away in the wind. Gibbs was unnervingly quiet and Tim half expected him to announce his retirement. Tony's anger and frustration had boiled constantly under the surface, and even though he'd tried to hide it, he sent interns and seasoned agents alike scurrying for the door whenever he approached. Now that he looks back on it Tim can see that his first response had been to cling, to his work, to his routine, but mostly to Abby. Which might have been OK had her chosen method of dealing hadn't been to push anything even remotely resembling a permanent relationship as far away as possible. When he looks back on it he understands, can see just how much pain she was in, how afraid she was of letting anyone close enough to hurt her like that again. At the time it had wounded him far more than he let on, he needed her desperately, and even though she felt the same, after the first few weeks she began to get twitchy and irritable, she began to pull away which only made him hold tighter, in turn making her more anxious. They have the worst fight of their relationship three days after the one month anniversary the shooting. They say terrible things, Abby's wit can cut deeper than knives and if it's one thing McGees are good at its holding onto grudgers for just such an occasion. Honestly it's a mercy they didn't kill one another let alone manage, somehow, to hold on to each other despite themselves.

They work through it, and in a strange way it's those fights that have forged this band of steel that is their friendship now. He is confident, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Abby Sciuto will always be there for him. She will have his back, she will say the things he needs to hear even when they're hard, she will believe in him no matter what. In ways he knows her better now than he could have ever hoped for then, he can be anything with her, he can say anything to her…except that he's in love with her, that he always has been and always will be until the day he dies…because even though she's his best friend things have shifted and there are some places they can never go, something in them died with Kate and he's beginning to believe it's never going to grow back. She loves him, she's never going to marry him, but she loves him.

Most of the time it's enough. Sometimes it isn't. Tonight he isn't sure. He pours himself a glass of wine and settles down to read through the details of the promotion Vance is offering him. It's a great job, it would mean moving up the ladder in ways he never dreamed possible. It also means giving up a lot, but he's not sure that's such a bad thing. Sometimes he thinks he should have given up years ago. He wonders what Kate would have told him to do.