WARNINGS: This story includes borderline adult material (though nothing explicit). TRIGGER WARNINGS include DISCUSSION of child rape and child abuse as well as stalking, psychological torture and offscreen death of original characters. PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS STORY if you believe such discussion will be offensive or harmful to you.
Author's note: At the request of reader NCIS-McGee-Lover, I have brought this story in an edited form from LiveJournal to this site. In its original form, this story is rated NC-17 and contains graphic depictions of sexual behavior between consenting adults. If you are over the legal age for possession/use of erotic materials in your locality, you are welcome to read the original unedited version of the story at my LiveJournal. I will place the URL for the story index at the bottom of this page.
Sitting at home one night in her pajamas, watching Grey's Anatomy and eating leftover Italian, Kate Todd took a look at her life and suddenly wondered where everything had gone so completely sideways. By twenty-nine years old, she had expected to be married with a couple of kids, two-story house in a suburb somewhere and the ubiquitous minivan… instead, she was still single with no kids, living in an apartment in the city – admittedly, a trendy and well-decorated apartment, but the point still stood – and driving a foreign sedan.
Something was wrong with this picture.
She stood, wandering into the kitchen to wash up her dishes, and continued examining the problem from all angles. Not married; well, the problem there could definitely have something to do with the fact that she didn't date much (for values of much that equal atall). No kids; definitely attached to the not married part of the problem, and the former must be solved before the latter, because the other way around simply would not do. The minivan would be unnecessary until the kids problem was solved. The house bit, though… that was something she could do something about.
Cup of coffee in hand, Kate wandered toward the window, and almost unconsciously stopped and wandered away from it again. She had developed a tendency to stay away from places where she could be sniped from a distance. That, according to the agency headshrinker, was probably directly tied to the fact that she'd just recently survived a sniper's attempt on her life. She didn't really care what it was due to; all she really cared about was making the shrink happy so she could get back to work.
Back to work. Yes, that was definitely an occasion to look forward to – after an enforced two month vacation since Ari Haswari's attempt on her life (six weeks for the bullet wound and another two from the headshrinker) she was finally going back to work Monday. Not, of course, that there weren't five days between now and Monday, but still, Monday would definitely be a red-letter day, and it would also be a red jacket day, because she'd just been out that very afternoon and bought such an article of clothing for the particular purpose of wearing it on Monday when she went back to work.
"I need sleep," Kate said to her dog. "I'm rambling to myself."
The scruffy little mutt cocked her head, staring back at Kate wordlessly. Kate sighed, took her coffee back in the kitchen to dump it into the sink, and started back through the apartment, flipping lights off and turning off the television as she went. She was almost to her bedroom when the doorbell rang. She jumped in surprise, her heart triphammering in her chest, and turned toward the door. "Who is it?"
"It's me, Kate," responded a familiar voice, and she sighed slightly as she recognized her partner's voice. "Lemme in."
Flipping the living room light back on, she started toward the door, pulling the chain and unlocking both the deadbolts – the old one and the new one – before pulling the door open. "Hey, Tony," she greeted him, smiling up at him. "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"
"Brought you something," he replied. He was standing with his hands behind his back, and she grinned, stepping back from the door.
"Well, come on in and give it to me. I love presents."
"Oh, I can give it to you from here," he replied. Then he brought his hands around, and she had just enough time to register the muzzle of his gun before he pulled the trigger. She fell backward onto the floor, barely dodging the bullet, and tried to scrabble backward with one injured shoulder, conscious in the back of her mind of her dog going nuts, barking and growling at this sudden, noisy intrusion. He strode forward, aiming the gun at her and grinning at her with eyes that were suddenly flat and black and snakelike. "Ari wanted to give you this himself, but he couldn't be here, so I brought it for him." Then he pulled the trigger again, and this time the pain exploded in her left shoulder, and all she could do was scream.
Kate sat straight up, gasping, and stared into the face of the man whose hand was gripping her right arm, shaking her hard. She blinked, shook her head, and took several deep breaths, willing her heartbeat to slow. "I'm okay," she said to her boss, pushing a trembling hand through her hair and taking another deep breath. "I'm okay. I'm awake. I'm okay."
"You sure?"
She nodded, looking up into those blue eyes, so full of concern, and tried to smile. "Really. I'm okay. It was just a nightmare."
He sat down on the side of the bed, letting go of her shoulder, and studied her. "Must have been one hell of a nightmare," he said casually. "You're shaking like a leaf and you're covered in cold sweat."
She took another deep breath, feeling her pulse finally beginning to slow. "Yet another Christmas at my parents'," she lied. "I told my cousin Maureen that if I had to hear another 'So Kate, when are you going to give me some grandchildren' I'd scream." She tried to smile.
"You're a lousy liar," he said bluntly.
"So I've been told since I was about six," she replied, pushing the covers back. "Any coffee left downstairs?"
"The last thing you need is coffee. I'll make you some hot chocolate if you want it."
She stuck her tongue out at him as he stood. "I really want some coffee, though," she wheedled, pulling on a pair of fuzzy socks over her bare feet.
"Doc said no coffee," he replied laconically, heading out into the hallway. "Want the chocolate or not?"
"Yes," she said quickly before he could change his mind. She debated pulling on a pair of flannel pants over her boxer shorts, but settled for adding a sweatshirt over her tank top, moving slowly to avoid jarring the bullet wound in her left shoulder – the one left by Ari Haswari's attempt on her life. She followed him downstairs into his kitchen, perching on one of the chairs at his kitchen table while he got out a pair of mugs and the chocolate.
"So, what was the nightmare about?" he asked casually.
She sighed, leaning back against the wall. "Getting shot, Gibbs. What else?"
He nodded, pouring milk into a saucepan. "Who was it this time?"
"What?"
He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Who pulled the trigger?"
She pulled her knees up to her chest and studied them. "Tony."
He nodded. "I thought so; I heard you say his name before you started screaming." When she narrowed her eyes at him, he gestured to his own pajama-clad body. "I was coming back from the bathroom, Kate, not listening at your door."
"Oh." She blushed slightly, looking down at her knees again. "Sorry. I'm just…"
"Jumpy. I know." He poured up the chocolate into two mugs and handed her one of them, dropping the pan into the sink before picking up the other and moving to sit across the table from her. "Why do you think I told you to come stay here for a few days instead of going home? You almost died three days ago, Kate. If you were at home by yourself right now, you'd be on the couch with your dog and a gun pointed at the door. At least if you're here, you can get some sleep."
She sipped at her chocolate. "I can't help it." She sighed, rolling her shoulder and wincing slightly as the stitches pulled. "I guess it could be worse. At least I'm alive to have nightmares."
He nodded, looking down into his own mug. "There is that," he said softly.
They finished their chocolate in silence, then Gibbs rinsed the mugs and left them in the drainboard. She followed him back up the stairs and paused in the doorway of his guest room, reaching across the narrow hall with her uninjured arm to lay a hand on his shoulder. "Gibbs?"
"Yeah?"
She smiled shakily up at him. "Thanks. For everything."
He gave her a very slight smile in return. "Don't mention it."
She snorted indelicately as she returned to her borrowed bed, knowing full well that he meant just exactly that. Don't mention it Kate, really, because thanks and apologies and other sorts of words that indicate people have emotions make me really, really uncomfortable, and we've already had the closest thing to a heart-to-heart that you and I are ever going to have, so do us both a favor and stop bringing it up.
She climbed back between the sheets, curling up on her uninjured side and pulling the comforter up to her chin. The last thought she had before slipping off to sleep was, who ever would have thought Gibbs would be the one to save her from herself?
She showed up at work on Monday morning, five days after being shot, three days after being released from the hospital and a day after finally going home from Gibbs's house, despite technically still being on medical leave. She was dressed casually in khakis and a tee shirt, her left arm in its sling and the bulky bandages still visible under the neck of her top. Gibbs wasn't at his desk when she got there, but Tim and Tony were, and they both raised their eyebrows slightly at the sight of her rounding the corner into their little cubicled area.
"You do realize you're only going to get sent home again," Tony pointed out as she sat down.
She shrugged. "He can try, but he can't make me go."
"I can always fire you," Gibbs pointed out from behind her.
She looked up at him and smiled. "But you won't." She turned her computer on and watched as her inbox began to fill with messages from people she hadn't heard from in years, mostly with subject lines full of shock and awe. She rolled her eyes. "And look: now that I've been on television, suddenly everybody wants to know me."
Gibbs raised an eyebrow as he sat down at his own desk, fresh coffee in hand. "Lot of email?"
Kate waved an expressive hand. "There's email here from girls I hated in high school. I'm gonna have to talk to my mother about giving out my work address." She began deleting messages without reading them, one after another. "So, do we have a case?"
"Not yet," McGee replied. "We've been taking advantage of the lull to get paperwork done."
She made a face. "I don't want to do paperwork. I want to solve crimes. Tim, go find me a crime to solve!"
McGee laughed at her imperious tone. "I'll get right on that, Kate."
She grinned at him, then turned her attention back to her inbox – and her jaw dropped. "What the hell?"
Tony raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"
She pointed at the screen, her expression still one of shock, and then suddenly her brows drew together and she shot a killing glare across the bullpen at both Tim and Tony. "Very funny, you two."
McGee's eyebrows drew together in consternation. "What?"
"You couldn't just leave well enough alone? You've gotta send me prank emails? Well, it's not funny." She turned away from them, slapping the delete button viciously. "I don't know how you found out about him, but I don't appreciate the reminder. Not in the least."
She sat there in angry silence for a long moment, while Tim and Tony stared at one another in confusion, and then she sniffled hard, stood up and stalked off to the bathroom. Tim caught a glimpse of the tears running down her face as she walked away. He turned to Tony before the words could even make it out of Gibbs's mouth. "Did you send her something?"
Tony shook his head. "I haven't even looked at my email since Friday. You didn't either?"
"No." Tim stood and moved across the bullpen, heedless of the danger to his person if she caught him looking at her email, and pulled up her deleted items folder.
From: Neil Davenport
Date: Sunday, May 29, 2005 6:38 PM
To: Kate Todd .mil
Subject: Hey there, sweet thing
Saw you on the news. Sorry to hear you got hurt. I'll come by to check on you and make sure you're okay. Looking forward to seeing you again.
Neil
P.S. Do you still taste like cotton candy?
"Who the heck is Neil Davenport?" Tony asked.
"No idea," Tim replied. He moved back to his own desk, beginning a search without Gibbs having to ask. What he found chilled him. "Neil Davenport was a twenty-nine year old pizza delivery guy in a suburb of Indianapolis. In 1984 he…" Tim paused, swallowed hard, and spoke again. "He was convicted of abducting three girls from a slumber party at gunpoint, holding them for a week, raping them all, and killing two of them before the cops found him. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994."
"Jesus Christ," Tony whispered.
"How old were the girls?" Gibbs asked, his voice low.
"Eleven."
"Are you done dissecting my childhood now?" Kate's voice vibrated with fury as it crossed into the bullpen. "Or do you want to hear stories about it? Want me to tell you what it was like down in that basement for a week, eating moldy bread and begging him to stop hurting us? How he killed Gina and Nikki and left their bodies there for me to look at? Or maybe you want to hear about the nightmares and the shrink visits and the month in a psych ward when I was fifteen and I tried to kill myself. That ought to be a barrel of laughs, don't you think?"
"Kate, we didn't send that!" Tony stood and moved to stand directly in front of her. "We didn't. I swear it. Come on, Kate, you have to know that's not the kind of thing we'd think was funny."
She studied him for a long moment, and suddenly all the righteous anger went out of her with a whoosh. He reached out, not sure if she would let him touch her, but she sagged into his arms and laid her forehead on his shoulder. "You're right, Tony," she said, her voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," he said softly, patting her back gently. "You were thrown pretty hard. It's understandable."
"Why would someone do that?" she asked softly.
"I don't know," Tony said softly.
"But we're gonna find out," Gibbs finished. "McGee. Get on it."
"Already working on it, Boss."
Tony gave Kate a last gentle squeeze and let her go, smiling down at her softly. "There. See? McGeek's on the case. This jerk doesn't stand a chance."
Kate nodded once, then gave him a shaky smile back. "Thanks, Tony," she said softly. She moved back to her desk then, sitting down and staring blankly at an innocuous email message from a Secret Service buddy.
After quite possibly the longest day of her adult life, Kate went home again, followed by McGee, who was assigned to protection detail. Kate had protested that she didn't need a bodyguard in her own apartment; after all, she was in possession of more than one gun of her own, but Gibbs had insisted, punctuating his argument by the simple expedient of reaching out and grabbing her left shoulder. The pain of his light grip had buckled her knees immediately, and after he helped her get over the loss of breath and nausea, she admitted that he had a point. Then she threatened to eviscerate him if he ever did anything like that to her again.
After changing into lounging pants and a tank top, Kate moved around the kitchen, attempting to put dinner together one-handed. McGee came to help her, and between the two of them they put together a decent chicken Caesar salad. They sat on the sofa to eat and he told funny stories on himself from school to try and get her mind off her worries. Around eight-thirty, she yawned hugely and then smiled at him, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Sorry… it's not the company, I swear."
He grinned. "I know. Don't worry about it. Get some sleep."
She shook her head, glancing toward her bedroom. "I don't know if I can sleep."
He reached up and pulled the afghan off the back of the sofa, dropping it into her lap. "Then sleep here." He stood, crossing the room and pulling a book at random off her bookshelf, then took a seat in her big comfy chair, pointedly opening the book and fastening his eyes to the first page in a show of fascination.
A few minutes later, she snorted. "You're not reading," she accused as she settled down with her head on the arm of the sofa.
"I am, too," he replied.
"No, you're not."
"How do you know?"
"Well, for one thing, it's upside down," she pointed out. "And for another, I'm having trouble believing you could possibly be that interested in Cosmo's Complete Break-Up Survival Handbook."
His face flushed bright red as he flipped the book over, examined the cover with something akin to horror, and stood, heading back over to the bookshelf to replace it and select something with a little more care this time. "Go to sleep," he ordered her, reaching down absently to brush her hair back from her face as he passed on his way back to his chair.
She smiled slightly, recognizing the well-worn cover of one of her favorite mystery novels, and closed her eyes. "Yes, sir," she replied and, grinning, drifted off to sleep.
The only sound she could hear was dripping water and her own breathing; the only sight she could see was complete darkness. The lamp had burned out hours ago, leaving her alone in the dark with her two companions. Not that they were very good company; Gina had been dead for three days now, and Nikki since yesterday. She and Nikki had watched their captor choke Gina to death while he was lying on top of her; he had whacked Nikki on the head with a pipe when she started screaming again.
Now Katie was alone, huddled in a corner of the basement, praying desperately. "Our Father," she whispered, "who art in Heaven," or sometimes, "Hail Mary, full of Grace." Not that it did any good; she prayed over and over again that the next time the basement door opened, it would be a policeman come to rescue her. It never was.
The door opened again; Katie winced back from the yellow light that streamed down, covering eyes grown sensitive during the long period of darkness. Behind his familiar silhouette she could see the avocado-green refrigerator and the side of a cabinet covered in striped contact paper. Then he switched on his flashlight and stepped forward, pulling the door shut behind him. She heard the lock click, watched the light play around the basement as he descended the stairs, and felt the tears begin to well up in her eyes.
"Kaaaatie," he sang out, his voice obscenely caressing her name as he moved toward her. She bit her lip, feeling the first sob fighting to escape her throat at the sound of his zipper.
"Please," she whispered as the beam of the flashlight caught her full in the face. "Please don't hurt me any more."
His hand descended into her hair, dragging her out of the corner, and his black eyes burned into hers just before he turned her head and licked the side of her face. "Caitlin," Ari's voice whispered, and she screamed.
She woke up fighting, and it was only the pain in her shoulder when she pulled a stitch that stopped her from giving Tim McGee a black eye. She fell back onto the couch, gagging, and he finally loosened his grip on her, moving into the kitchen and bringing her back a glass of ice water and a damp towel. He sat down on the coffee table and patted her face with the towel gently, wiping away her sweat and the tracks of her tears, before wrapping her good hand firmly around the glass of water.
"You okay?" he asked softly after she'd taken a few sips.
She nodded shakily and stared into the glass, unable to meet his kind, concerned eyes.
He studied her. "Want to talk about it?" he asked gently.
She stood, stepping over the tangled afghan where it now lay on the floor and walked away from him, moving to stare out the window. "Not really," she said softly. She put the glass down on the windowsill when her hand began to shake too hard to hold it properly, and looked up in surprise when his warm hand came to lay gently on her right shoulder. She could see his reflection in the glass, and his face was compassionate and gentle.
"I've never been through anything like what you've been through," he said, his voice low and soft, "but the fact that you made it through and came out on the other side as strong as you are just makes me respect you even more than I already did. And if you need somebody to talk to, somebody that can just listen without judging you… I can do that for you, Kate. And I won't tell anyone."
She sighed, leaning back against him. He was warm and solid behind her, strong where she could not bring herself to be, just now. "It was the same old dream," she finally confessed. "The same one I used to have all the time. I'm back in that basement again, and it's dark because the lamp burned out, and Gina and Nikki are dead. Then the kitchen door opens up and he comes down and… and hurts me. Only this time, it wasn't him. This time it was Ari."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. "Ari can't hurt you any more, Kate," he said softly. "He's dead."
"I know," she answered, her own voice just as soft. "So is Neil." Then she looked up at him. "But somebody wants me to think he's not."
"I've got a couple of leads," Tim said, picking up her glass and drawing her back to the couch. He put the glass on a coaster on the coffee table and picked up the afghan, tucking it around her legs. "I'm not really ready to say for sure. But I'm checking." He took her hands. "I will find whoever it is, Kate. I promise."
She gave him a wan little smile. "I know you will, Tim."
He sat down on the coffee table again. "Let me see your shoulder."
She turned, letting him work the bandages off with gentle, competent fingers, and he made a thoughtful noise as he studied the wound. "First aid kit?"
"Under the bathroom sink."
He retrieved the kit, washed his hands, and came back to her side again. He worked gently, disinfecting the area around the wound and then applying a butterfly bandage to the place where the stitch had pulled loose. "In the morning," he said in a firm but gentle tone, "let me check it again. If it's not holding, we'll need to swing by the E.R. before we go in."
She nodded, watching as he disposed of the trash, and then shifted to the side, touching the sofa cushions gently with her right hand. "Will you come sit with me?" she asked him when he returned.
"Sure," he replied, retrieving his book and coming to sit at her side. She curled her legs up and leaned on his shoulder, and he looked down at her. "Think you can sleep some?"
She shrugged slightly. "Doubt it." But she closed her eyes anyway, and when she opened them again, it was morning.
As promised, the URL for the original and unedited version of this story: xdawnfirex-fic [dot] livejournal [dot] com [slash] 67159 [dot] html
You are advised that if you are under the legal age for possession/use of erotic materials in your locality, the unedited version of this story IS NOT FOR YOU. Please don't make me regret posting this.