Chapter 1: What Really Matters

Tony walked into the bullpen at NCIS, humming a Frank Sinatra tune. His noticeable smile and the swagger to his walk caused Mcgee to glance up from his computer.

"Big night, Tony?"

Tony smirks. "I never kiss and tell, Probie." He powers up his computer and leans back in his chair while putting his feet up on his desk like he doesn't have a care in the world.

Ziva snorts as she hears the conversation. "You, Tony? You always tell."

Tony grins. "No I don't, Ziva. Besides, you probably don't have anything to tell."

Ziva throws her pencil at him right as Gibbs walks into the bullpen. The pencil lands on the bulletin board behind Tony's head, barely missing the mark.

"David! How many times do I have to tell you not to impale Dinozzo?"

"Sorry, Gibbs." She smirks at Tony, who's definitely more scared than before, before turning back to her work.

The phone rang just as Gibbs sat down at his desk.

He sighs. "Gibbs..." He listens for a moment and then hangs up. "Gear up! Dead marine near an abandoned warehouse."

Tony groans. He is so close to beating his high score on phone Tetris. Everyone races after Gibbs, who was already almost to the elevator, and Tony is last. Again.

"Hey Ziva! Maybe on the way there I can tell you about what I did last night. It was a pretty amazing performance..." He waggles his eyebrows at her until he feels a sharp pain to the back of his head as Gibbs head-slaps him.

"Sorry boss."

Everything changed that day. It was "funny" how he had worried earlier about winning phone Tetris, when now nothing mattered except this. Maybe this was all that had really mattered, but he just couldn't see it until now.

He hadn't realized it when they were about to break into the abandoned warehouse.

He hadn't realized it as he teased both Ziva and Mcgee about their lack of love lives right before they walked through the warehouse doors, with their guns at the ready.

He hadn't realized it on the way there, as he stared silently (for once) out the window as he tried to remember the name of a movie he watched earlier this year.

But he finally realized it when it happened. After that, nothing else mattered.

All these thoughts were racing through his mind as his legs carried him through the hospital at top speed.

At that moment, the only thing that mattered, that had ever mattered, was on his mind.

"Ziva", he whispered as he neared the emergency ward.