A/N: Like most of my best (or worst) fics, this was done late at night—it's like what... four in the morning now? Though I feel okay, I'm probably half asleep as I'm writing this, so I'm not sure if it's a good idea to expect much from this, but I hope you enjoy it. This relatively long (I think it's over five thousand words) oneshot was inspired by the great song by U2, also entitled "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own", and when you read it, it will become evident. I'm tossing around the idea of writing a followup story, since I was disappointed by my other serious McKate fic "Destiny". I usually don't do much for the site during the school year, since I can barely handle all my homework and crap. But now I'm out, so I should be able to get out a little more than usual. Anyway, there's definitely not a lot for this pairing on the 'net, so I might make a more lengthy sequel if everyone likes it. So, without any more of my babbling, enjoy this gritty and admittedly violent McKate oneshot.

It was getting late. Kaitlin Todd had no intentions on going to sleep, instead deciding to spend her night staking out the antiques shop in Arlington that her team at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service—NCIS—had learned was a front for an drug ring headed by a retired naval officer. Of course, Gibbs didn't know she was there by herself, otherwise he would have objected. No, she thought, he would have definitely objected, and if Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn't want you to do something, you weren't going to do it. So she'd lied and told him that her friend and coworker Timothy McGee was going with her. His name had been the first that had come to mind, and so she'd stuck with it. Besides, nobody would be hearing from him that night anyway. He had a date with someone he'd met online at a late-night coffee shop downtown. Her lie was perfectly believable and secure. If everything went right then nobody would even know.

What disappointed her the most, however, was that she'd had so little to do on a Saturday night that she'd lied in order to spend time working. A woman like her, as Anthony DiNozzo had so quaintly put it—on more than one occasion—, should have been on a date, or spending the night clubbing. What he found so hard to grasp was that she didn't want to do any of things. Kaitlin Todd wasn't a party girl, at least not anymore. Both of them knew that she'd been a little more... easygoing during her college days. But she was an adult now, a professional federal agent who had better things to do than spend the night in sleazy bars, only to end up going home with some asshole who wanted to get into her pants. And unfortunately, there appeared to be a lot more of them than she'd have hoped. Perhaps it was flattering from time to time, the heads that turned whenever she'd walked into the office, but it was something that got old quickly. She wanted a man who'd see her as a person instead of an object of sexual adoration.

She glanced down at her watch in the darkness, and cursed. She couldn't see the damned thing in the darkness of her car—the streetlight had ruined her eyes' natural night vision. So she reached up and pressed the switch on the overhead light for just a second without thinking. It was a quarter past midnight, and she was getting tired. What harm could come from dozing off for a few minutes. She'd set her phone's alarm to go off in say, ten minutes? All she'd needed was to rest her eyes, just for a little bit. Reaching down, she removed the nine millimeter Sig Sauer P226 from her service holster and placed it in the glove compartment. Leaning back in her car's leather seating, Kate closed her eyes and crossed her arms. She'd be awake in no time.

* * *

Tim McGee wanted to kill someone. He just wanted to reach out and strangle one of the leftist hippies that occupied the coffee shop his date had decided on. For one night he'd decided to throw caution to the wind and go out with someone he'd met online. Damn you E-Harmony. He raged silently sitting at the counter. He didn't even notice his knuckles go white as he gripped the tacky brown mug in his hands. What kind of stuck-up bitch would stand up someone she'd never even really met? Tony had joked that she wouldn't show up when he'd heard about Tim's date. He'd jabbed and pried, saying that she'd get there, see him, and leave. Asshole. Arrogant, perverted, completely accurate asshole! McGee blamed himself for not being more careful.

"Got stood up?" The clerk asked, wiping off the fake marble counter. He moved his mug to let her clean off the brown ring it had created.

"What gave it away?" He muttered, cutting his gaze sideways, out of humiliation.

"Well," she began. "you've been here since ten, and you've been cursing to yourself under your breath."

McGee's cheeks went a bit red at that. He hadn't even realized he'd been talking out loud. "Uh... yeah. I met someone online a few days ago, and we agreed to meet here. I'm not sure if she either blew me off, or saw me and left. Actually, I'm not sure which is worse."

"I see." She nodded understandingly. "I don't do the whole 'online dating' thing. I think it's more romantic to meet someone in person before you decide to start going out. Kinda like this."

Tim looked over immediately. The woman was innocently watching him under the fringe of her eyelashes, smiling in a way that wasn't exactly seductive, but warm and kind. Was she joking? Every experience he'd ever had with women told him she was, and that it was all going to end up being some kind of cruel prank. But she remained silent, and simply refocused herself on cleaning the counter.

"Well yeah, it's always better to interact with someone in person." He conceded. "But with my job, it was just easier to do it over the internet. You know?"

"What do you do?" She asked next. He'd almost anticipated it.

"I'm a special agent for NCIS." Then she gave him the look that most people did when they'd heard him say that. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service. We investigate any criminal activity that has to do with the Navy."

She nodded approvingly. "Wow. So you're like, a cop or something? Do you go out and catch bad guys?"

"Sometimes." He said, smiling back now. He was letting down his guard—she'd broken the ice. "Yeah me and my team are investigating a drug trafficking ring we suspect to be lead by a retired Lieutenant Commander."

"That sounds exciting. Are you sure you should be talking with me about this kind of stuff."

He frowned at that. Gibbs wouldn't exactly have approved of his divulging sensitive case info to some girl he was flirting with. Oh well, screw him. "Actually, I guess I shouldn't be talking about this. Well, I trust you."

"Isn't that a little haphazard?" She asked, surprised.

"I'm sitting in a near empty coffee shop at twelve thirty on a Saturday night." He chuckled. "You haven't already figured that out yet?"

They shared a quick laugh, and then she threw the rag she was using aside and leaned against the counter casually. "So what's your name Mr. Special Agent? Or should I just call you that?"

"Tim McGee." He replied, downing the rest of his decaf coffee. There was a snowball's chance in hell that he'd get any sleep that night, but he didn't care. Knowing the way his wrecked love life was going, he probably would have spent most of the night lying awake in bed out of excitement. Don't be an idiot Tim. The rational side of his mind instructed. You don't even know if this woman's interested in you. She might just be real friendly.

"Sharon Judd." She said, staring back at him until it became awkward. "So Special Agent Tim McGee, why don't I give you my number, and you can call me... I don't know, tomorrow? It's not like you'll have any other dates to worry about."

Tim, you're a fucking idiot when it comes to women. That same "rational" side reminded him. "Uh... sure."

She didn't both getting out a piece of paper, instead reaching out and taking his hand, writing the ten-digit phone number on his palm with a flawless script that surprised him, due to the fact that it was being scrawled out on his skin. Then she signed her name under it, lest he forget it during the caffeine rush he was sure to experience soon.

"Well, I guess I've got to get going." McGee told her, getting up and putting on his sports jacket. "I've uh, got a date tomorrow."

Sharon laughed heartily, watched him walk out of the coffee, waving when she saw him do so through the storefront glass. A moment later her boss came back and chastised her on what a lax job she'd done cleaning the far end of the corner, and asked for the umpteenth time if she'd been being 'friendly' with the customers again. And for the umpteenth time she told him "no" in her most polite voice, and went back to work, already wondering about what she'd wear on her date with the fed.

* * *

He didn't know what it was that made him take the long way home. Call it instinct, or a sign from God. But for some reason Tim McGee turned right where he'd usually gone straight, and took the scenic detour through Arlington. There wasn't much to see during the dead of night. The streetlights cast an eerie glow where the sun was usually bouncing off street signs and windows. He didn't even notice where he really was until he saw the hanging sign for the antiques shop, and wondered if he should have turned around. He figured that the drug runners they'd suspected of using the place to distribute cocaine wouldn't be there that late, and drove casually down the street. He became oddly aware of how long it would take him to draw his pistol from it's place inside the glove compartment.

Then he saw it. It was just like any other car he'd passed up to that point—an mass of color on the edge of his windshield that looked exactly like every other vehicle he'd seen that night. Until he looked at the federal plates on the rear bumper and recognized the Mustang as the new car that his coworker Kate Todd had purchased a week ago. What in the world is she doing here this late? He wondered silently. It didn't look like there was anyone inside either.

This time he knew it was something telling him to pull over on the side of the one-way road he'd been on. He did so, and parked the Porsche between an old Plymouth and a Mitsubishi. Right before he got out, McGee popped the glove compartment and pulled out his Sig Sauer handgun, and it's fifteen round magazine. Opening the door, he stepped out and slid the magazine into the port inside the synthetic grip, and racked the slide against the window frame, shutting it behind him as he approached the curb. Taking a look up and down the street, he moved his shooting hand into the sports jacket with the gun in it.

He crossed the street when he was sure there was no one around, and approached the driver's side window carefully. At three feet, he was positive the car was empty, but peered in through the glass just to be sure. The inside was pitch black, though he caught something odd out of the corner of his eye. Standing upright, he looked over the hood and saw that the passenger's side door was ajar. Suddenly alert, he ran around to the opposite side and looked again. The passenger's seat was covered in glass shards, and the window from the door was missing. Removing the handgun from the inside of his coat, he gripped it, muzzle down, in both hands and looked behind him at the storefront of the antiques shop.

The front door was locked, but he wouldn't have taken it anyway. All the lights inside were shut off, and he saw no movement through the grimy windows. Then a grim thought had occurred to him, and he went back to Kate's car. Reaching through the broken passenger's side window, he opened the glove compartment. He saw the black frame of her pistol, but noted the fact that it's magazine was missing, and the slide was locked in place. Whoever had come at her was smart: they'd left the gun, but made sure it was empty before leaving. He should have expect that. Lieutenant Commander Andrew Burke, the retired naval officer the team had linked to the drug traffickers, had served as a Navy SEAL before retiring to take care of his wife who had Alzheimer's.

Walking to a nearby alleyway, McGee was carefully to keep his gun at a ready low. Moving down through the darkness, keeping his shoulder to the wall, he approached an emergency exit that was on the other side of a dumpster. Walking up the meager two steps to the door frame, he gripped the doorknob—it was unlocked. Turning it slowly to avoid any noise that might give away his presence, Tim entered the shop as quietly as he could, bringing up his nine millimeter up in his right hand while he held the doorknob in his left.

He heard voices once inside, and was careful to shut the door behind him. Moving over the tiled floor as fast as he could without making noise, he approached a door behind the sales counter. Pressing his ear up against it, he was disappointed to hear that the voices were still as low as they'd been seconds before. Opening the door, he looked inside to see that it was merely a small storage closet, pitch black and cluttered with vases and other aged niceties. There was another door directly to his right. Moving to it next, he put his left hand over the doorknob and repeated the process of trying to listen through the chipped wood. Still nothing, but when he opened this door, he was met with a small stairway that went down into a basement, where he saw light. The voices, though indistinct, were louder and more present. He shut the door behind him and trained his pistol downwards at the foot of the stairs, beginning to traverse them step by step. The voices—three men talking amongst themselves—gradually became easier to listen to.

"What the hell are we going to do with her man?" The first one asked. This one was the young voice of a black male, likely in his early to mid twenties. "If we let her go, she'll bring all her friends down, and then it's over!"

"We're not letting her go." A much calmer, more wise voice responded. Burke maybe? McGee asked himself. Do I know his voice off the top of my head?

"You can't mean to tell me we're going to kill her." Another voice, around the same age as the second one, interrupted. "She's a federal agent Burke! If we kill her, people are going to notice it! It's not like we're capping some young goofball on the streets! This is something we need to be careful about!"

Crouching on the stairs, McGee moved his head down to survey the scene. There were four individuals in the dimly lit basement. Three conversing with each other, the fourth sitting in a rusty folding chair in front of a computer screen. Two of them wore stained white sleeveless shirts and khaki shorts. Another had a hoodie on, with a pair of frayed blue jeans. The last man, around fifty or so, wore a blue polo shirt with tan trousers. On his hip was a holster with a Beretta 92fs inside—standard issue sidearm of the United States Armed Forces. Burke. Definitely Burke. But who are his friends?

The third man moved towards Burke, and then McGee saw her. Kate was sitting in a cruddy wooden chair, her hands bound behind it with nylon rope. In her mouth was a gag that wrapped around her head, and she didn't appear to be conscious. A trail of blood traced down from the side of her lip and down her neck to the collar of his shirt, where it stained the fabric. Her temple was bruised, an obvious target of the vicious blow that had knocked her out. It infuriated Tim to see her like that, a good and kind person like her treated like garbage by ignorant little drug running pukes. And a naval officer! Someone who had served his nation, not unlike her, who had so brutally ordered her to be held captive in a cesspit like that. How dare they! The only thing that kept Timothy McGee from rushing down into the basement with his gun blazing was the last strand of logic in his mind that told him it was four against one, with him losing.

"Don't worry about it." Burke told his companions. "The mafia in New York City used to dispose of bodies by dumping them in fishing nest in the Hudson river, where the corpses were devoured by marine life. The Potomac has a nice population of crabs who've been hungry for a while. Once we get rid of this bitch, nobody will have anything on us. We can send her car down with her too. Do any of you know how hard it is to prosecute homicide in this country without a body? Very."

"So that's it?" The first man, the black male wearing the sleeveless shirt, asked.

"That's it." Burke confirmed. "Now, who wants to do the honors?"

The hell with this! McGee thought. They're going to kill her Tim! Now go down there and blow those fucks into the next time zone damnit! Otherwise Kate is a goner, and if you let her die, you'll never be able to live with yourself! But it was still a losing battle. Unless... Burke was the only one who was directly armed. The kid at the computer had a pistol—a Desert Eagle .357 magnum—on the desk near his hand, but it would take a second or two for him to draw it. That was valuable time that would cost him his life, McGee decided. He was doing it.

Moving down the stairs carefully, Tim held his P226 in the two-handed weaver stance and raised it. He waited until Burke's head moved right into the iron sights atop his pistol to fire.

* * *

Lieutenant Commander Andrew Burke, USN, hadn't even had a chance to react. He'd barely looked over when he saw the flash, and the nine millimeter bullet struck just above his right eye. The round drove through the thickest part of his skull. It past a few inches further, before it toppled over inside his head, tearing his brain tissue to oatmeal-like mush which exploded out the opposite side of his head, spraying across the face of the dark-skinned twenty-one year old behind him. A second round left McGee's pistol, which struck Burke square in the chest, sending his already dead corpse tumbling backwards. Both shots were within two tenths of a second from each other.

Time had slowed to a snail like crawl for Tim, who watched the slide on his nine millimeter rocket back and forth with each shot. Immediately when he saw life leave Andrew Burke, he swiveled his weapon to the left and saw the young man at the computer reaching for the magnum. His fingers hadn't touched the grip of the weapon when McGee fired three rounds at the back of his head. The very first one pierced his skull and severed his brain stem where it connected to the spinal column, resulting in instantaneous death for the man. His body slumped forward after the third round burst out of his face, destroying the fragile computer monitor with a display of sparks.

A bullet drove into the wall two inches to the right and behind of Tim's torso, and he swung his pistol with ten rounds remaining to the right, where he centered the sights over the chest of the third man, in the hoodie, who was now pointing a Glock 19 handgun at him. McGee pulled the trigger three times again, and felt the weapon jump like a wild buck in his hands, while his wrist absorbed the recoil All three shots struck the man in his chest, and McGee watched his body jerk as though hit with a surge of electricity before going limp and collapsing.

Tim was already at the bottom of the stairs by then, moving across the floor towards the last one, the black kid in his twenties, with Burke's brains on his face. McGee's P226 was pointed straight at him, his aim perfect and steady. The special agent glanced down for a split second and saw another Glock in the last kid's hand, pointed right at Kate's head, with a finger ready to pull the trigger. The young man's face told a different story, his eyes staring back at McGee with pure terror, as if he was the Reaper himself. He was clearly mentally unstable as a result of trauma from having the contents of the naval officer's wrecked head smeared across his petrified visage. He was a threat to Kate's life.

"Put the gun down!" Tim roared, louder than the report of his weapon. "Put the fucking gun down now!"

The frozen kid swallowed hard and looked down at Kate, his index finger tensed to move as he stared at the woman. McGee didn't wait. His finger depressed on the trigger seven times, until the pistol sounded with a click and told him it was empty. The slide locked into place exposing the foremost area of the still warm barrel, smoking from the passage of the last round fired. McGee stared down. All seven shots had struck his target at near point blank range, ravaging his head in a gray and pink mist that the NCIS special agent found oddly surreal. It struck him as something in a movie, not something real. The young man had never been a living being to him, and now never would be.

He didn't bother to check their weapons. Instead, Tim McGee dropped to his knees in front of Kate's limp form. The only sign that she was alive was the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. The toll of his four second assault was just now catching up to him, and McGee was breathing heavily. "Kate?" He murmured. "Kate wake up! Please!"

Moving quickly, he stepped over the body of the man in the hoodie and undid the binds on her hands. They were tight enough that it took him a few moments, revealing her reddened wrists. Moving around to her front he stared at her. She was oddly serene sitting in the chair, until she slumped forward from being released from the rope binding her hands, which dropped lifelessly at her side.

"Alright." Tim moved to her side and snaked his arm under her knees, holding her around her upper torso gentle as he lifted her up bridal-style. He took a moment to listen to his surroundings carefully. He was near certain there was nobody left upstairs. If not, they were in trouble. His empty P226 was now held awkwardly in his right hand that supported the unconscious feminine figure in his arms, and he didn't have another magazine.

As fast as he could, McGee ascended the stairs to the dusty blackness of the sales floor. The police would be there soon, no doubt. Arlington wasn't a bad neighborhood at all, and somebody had certainly heard their exchange of pistol fire. As he walked out through the emergency exit and into the alleyway, the caffeine that fueled his assault was now waning down and leaving him exhausted. Running across the street to the driver's side door of his Porsche, he set Kate's feet on the ground, and opened the car with his left hand. Thank God I left it open. He realized, as he slid his knocked out coworker into the seat of his car, shutting the door halfway.

With that, Tim McGee breathed an extremely heavy sigh of relief and leaned against the the hood of his car, letting his lost rationality return slowly. He'd just killed four people, and saved Kate Todd's life—single-handedly. He'd participated in the rapid destruction of human life, and like he always did right after he'd killed someone on-duty, he wondered if he'd ever forgive himself. Because weather or not he men he'd killed were the most viral scum on the face of the earth, the conscience of the human heart punished someone for walking away from a situation life. Your mind forever reminded you that you walked away living and breathing, while someone else was dead, and it was your fault. And that was something that wasn't in the job description. After a moment of recuperation, McGee went into his car and got his cell phone, dialing a number from heart.

"Boss? Yeah, it's McGee. Something happened."

* * *

Monday morning, Tim McGee was in for work like usual. It had been a little over a day since the incident at the antiques shop, and his regret over the death of Andrew Burke and the drug runners was gone. He'd saved a life that day, and that was more important to him that the world's loss of a corrupt naval officer and his pushers. If anything, he felt worse for Burke's Alzheimer's wife, who he'd heard would end up in a home.

Gibbs hadn't wasted any time giving Kate a lecture on not going on stakeouts alone, and of course lying to him. After he'd calmed down a few seconds later, he'd offered to give her Monday off, which of course, she refused. Because Kaitlin Todd was a trooper, and an over-achiever. She'd promised to show up early Monday morning to get a jump start, not wanting anyone to think that she was really effected by her ordeal, most of which had been spent asleep. The police had combed the area carefully, and had taken a moment to get the whole story. Tony, who'd had nothing to do that night either, showed up at the site as soon as he'd heard from Gibbs.

"Shit." Was all he'd been able to manage when he saw the scene downstairs. It was evident enough that McGee hadn't missed a shot when he'd moved on Burke and his cronies. The last man, who'd tried to shoot Kate with his Glock, had taken a lot of abuse. His head had burst like a melon from the nine millimeter rounds that had struck it at sonic speeds. It was completely open in the back, the bullets creating a bloody hole that was about two inches in diameter. "Probie did this?"

Kate had been the most surprised, unable to utter a word when she'd seen the lengths her hero had gone to save her. Ducky surmised that all of them had died immediately or very quickly. None of them had suffered much at all, he'd concluded briskly. It didn't take away from the graphic nature of the scene. It was soon decided that McGee would face no ramifications for his actions. Evidence had surfaced that positively linked Burke to the drug ring, and Kate's story that she'd been assaulted held up by the condition of her car, which she realized, would need a new window.

McGee walked in that morning to see no one in the bullpen. The first thing he did was check his email, wondering if Kate had sent him anything at all about the incident. She hadn't, and he'd decided that she had moved on and was ready to go on with her life as usual.

It wasn't until she walked out of the elevator ten minutes after his arrival that he'd thought otherwise. She looked fine, not unlike every other day, and she followed her usual routine of going to her computer and logging in. Overall she spent maybe two minutes at it, until she stood up and stretched, obviously still half asleep—she usually came in a half hour later.

"Tim?" She called from her seat. He looked away from his computer monitor instantly.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going downstairs to get a coffee. You want to come?" She asked innocently enough.

He thought about it for a second. "Sure. I need one anyway." Standing up, he logged out from his computer and came up alongside Kate as she walked the short distance to the elevator. Once inside, she pressed the button for the ground floor with the cafeteria.

Five seconds into the ride she hit Gibbs' beloved "stop" button and let the elevator lurch to a halt, surprising McGee, who hadn't been paying attention to the usual movement he'd become accustomed to. When he looked over a second later, he noticed her face was devoid of any emotion at all.

"Tim..." She began, her voice weak. "I never got a chance to thank you. For what you did. For saving my life. I owe you after that, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to pay you back."

He stared at her, almost skeptical of her seriousness. But when she remained silent, he realized that she wasn't joking. "Kate, don't worry about it. You're my friend, and you were in danger. I'm sure you would have done the same thing if it was me who'd been taken."

"But you could have waited. You could have called Gibbs or Tony, and you could have gotten help." She explained. "Instead you went down there alone, where you could have gotten hurt. And you just... killed them all. Why did you do it alone? Why didn't you get help?"

McGee had to think about it for a moment. "I guess because I wasn't really thinking about that at the moment. All I was thinking about was 'here are these people, and they're going to kill her'. And I knew that I wasn't going to let that happen, no matter what. I'd never let anything happen to you."

Looking at him, Kate realized something momentous. She realized that all the men who'd treated her like an object, men like Tony DiNozzo, couldn't compare to the noble man that she saw in front of her. Tim was strong, caring, and loyal. He was the kind of man she wanted to be with, and wanted to love. Right in the elevator that day, she decided that she was done with the assholes and that she was done with the bullshit. Never again would she be any man's one night stand.

"Listen, Tim... I don't know if this is going to sound weird or not, but do you want to go out sometime?" She asked carefully. What would he say?

"Do I want to... oh shit!" McGee suddenly remembered what he'd forgotten the day before, and realized that he'd stood up Sharon. How had he forgotten that? Her number had been on his hand when he'd killed Kate's captors, and it had been there when he'd gone home afterwards. Immediately becoming furious with himself for having been so inadvertently rude, he made a note to call her and apologize.

"What's wrong?" Kate asked him.

"I uh..." He looked at her confused face and wondered what to say. Would she still offer to go out with him if he told her that he'd had a date the day before? "Nothing, I just forgot to do something that's all. Sure Kate, I'd love to go out sometime."

She smiled and nodded approvingly. "Okay, great. Well I guess you have my number, so just call... whenever."

"How about tonight?" He ventured as she hit the button to resume the elevator ride. He felt the vertigo feeling hit him abruptly and unexpectedly, forcing him to take hold of the rail on the wall. "After work. Just the two of us?"

"Sure thing." Kate replied, a smile on her face that hadn't been there when they'd gotten on the elevator. Both of them were grinning when the door opened to revealed Gibbs standing there, dumbfounded for the first time they'd ever seen. In his hand was his morning coffee, like every day before, as he climbed in after them. For the rest of the day nothing was suspected by anyone else at work, and at seven that night, both Kate Todd and Tim McGee went on the best date either of them had ever had.

A/N: I really love these two together, and though I haven't been watching the series that much recently, I still hate the fact that they killed off Kate so early. I would have loved to see these two with each other on the show. Oh well, it's fun to dream about. So, I hope you all liked it, and if you want more just say so in the review. Remember, R&R. The button's right there, so don't hesitate. And if any of you get a chance, check out the U2 song of the same title. It's a great little piece, inspired me to come up with the basic story. Because these two would make such a great team as well as couple! Anyway, peace!