Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or NCIS or any of their characters. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOT give permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.
A/N: I really don't hate Abby though I didn't like her behaviour in this episode. I was re-watching Dog Tags to get the details right for "The Last Straw" this alternative came to me.
"Hey, McGee" Abby greeted him cheerfully before turning and seeing his injuries as he climbed out of the car. "Oh, my God! What happened to you?" She asked concerned.
"I was attacked by a vicious dog" Tim said.
"Are you okay?" she rushed over to hug him.
"Careful, careful" Tim backed up not feeling well enough for one of her super exuberant hugs
"Sorry. Did you provoke it?" Abby asked.
Tim rolled his eyes. "If you consider serving a warrant provoking" he said sarcastically.
"What happened to the dog?" Abby asked.
"He was shot" Tim replied stupidly not seeing the danger, even Ziva had felt sorry for the dog being injured, though she had seen the need for Tim to defend himself.
"What?! McGee! - Poor thing" Abby said going to pet the dog
"Abby. Abby, careful, that is one vicious dog" Tim warned worried about his friend.
Abby refused to listen to him. "Yeah, McGee. It's really vicious" she said snidely.
"Well, Ducky and Jimmy sedated him" Tim retorted. "We're hoping you can get some evidence off of him."
"There, that's better" Abby crooned to the dog taking off his muzzle. "Who would shoot this cute little dog? Look at you" she said hugging the dog.
"It was self-defence. It it was self-defence!" Tim protested shakily. He was really afraid of the dog who Abby had set loose though it was still barely able to walk from the after effects of the sedation Jimmy had given it earlier
"You shot that cute little dog?!" Abby glared furiously at Tim
"He's not cute and little. He's he's vicious and large" Tim argued.
"How could you shoot an innocent animal, McGee?" Abby accused him.
"Abby, that dog is not innocent, he killed someone" Tim said afraid of the dog and worried about his friend even if she wasn't being much of a friend at the moment.
"Dogs don't kill people. People kill people" Abby declared stubbornly.
"People with dogs that kill people kill people" Tim retorted.
"You didn't kill anybody, did you? No" Abby said indignantly to the dog. Taking Tim's jacket which she'd helped him off with earlier to attend to his wounds and wrapping it around the dog unnecessarily.
"That's my Hugo Boss" Tim protested, seriously upset that after ignoring the fact the dog had injured him she wilfully gave his new jacket to the dog. "Don't you think that you're compromising the evidence with my $500 jacket?"
"If you think that I can't distinguish the fibres on your stupid jacket from the evidence on the dog, you don't know me, McGee" Abby said angrily. "And right now I don't want to know you"
"Good dog. Bad McGee!" Abby snapped, chasing Tim out of the lab and patting the dog again.
Tim left, upset that his friend could treat him like that. He was still in quite a lot of pain and emotionally traumatised from the dog attack and being told that defending himself made him a bad person had him almost in tears. He pushed the emergency stop button on the elevator to give himself time to pull himself together. He went back to the bullpen and continued his search on the financials of the victim, widening his search to the other dog handlers at Pax River. He didn't believe for a moment that Butch hadn't been the dog to bite his owner but if Abby was determined to try to prove it wasn't the other drug dogs were the most likely suspects and he wanted to rule their handlers out of the situation before Abby decided their dogs were the killer.
She decided that she really didn't like the name Butch, in her opinion it didn't suit the dog at all and chose to rename him Jethro.
"You don't look much like a Butch and I bet you don't like having a name like that. I'm going to call you Jethro, after my Silver Fox. It's a nice strong name you can be proud of Jethro" she chattered away to the dog, barely noticing his reactions. She rarely cared about other people's reactions to her chatter and actions unless they interfered with her getting what she wanted.
The dog looked at her confused, he really wasn't used to people chatting with him. He was used to being given orders but this woman didn't seem to know that. Butch decided that if she wasn't giving him the right orders then she wasn't in charge. That made him slightly uneasy he wasn't used to not having someone in charge of him when there were people about. And after the death of his master what he really wanted and needed was the familiar environment and routine of the dog handlers' kennels at Pax River. He couldn't understand why he was brought to this cold funny smelling room. He was also vaguely aware of the bullet injury and on edge about being around the man who had hurt him and this woman who was clearly not only part of that man's pack but in charge of the man.
What Abby didn't realise was that her sympathy was not only counterproductive to her safety by making the dog believe she was inferior to him but also wasted, the dog wasn't really feeling the pain of the bullet at the moment. Between the cocaine he'd ingested earlier and the tail end of the sedative Jimmy Palmer had given him at the scene, Butch had reached the mellowed-out stage of his drug high and in a few hours, would be starting to go into withdrawal. She left him out of the cage and he happily settled onto her futon while she continued working. She collected the evidence samples from his fur but ignored Tim's warnings and didn't think she needed to lock him up again afterwards. Lunch time came and ignoring the fact that Navy dogs were strictly only fed kibble, she happily shared her lunch with him. Of course, half a beef sandwich wasn't anywhere near enough for the German Shepherd and he almost bit her hand takin her half of the sandwich out of it as she was about to put it in her mouth.
"I guess you're still hungry, hey Jethro" Abby said ignoring the fact she'd nearly been bitten. "I'll go get you something else to eat."
Butch was restlessly roaming around the lab, growling and barking at the chemical storage shelves.
"I'll be back soon" she promised the agitated dog before locking him in the lab. She ran down to the local deli they got a lot of their lunches from and explained the situation. They generously gave her the bones from that day's roasts and she returned to her lab cheerfully. She unlocked the lab and opened the door. Butch leapt at her the same way he'd leapt at Timothy McGee earlier that day. The difference was that Abby wasn't armed or trained in unarmed combat and was unable to protect herself. She got her arms up in front of her face and Butch bit down on her forearm tearing the skin and breaking the bone.
Abby screamed but it took a moment for the other people working on that floor to realise it wasn't just her music turning on and call for help. None of them were armed and or brave enough to risk being mauled themselves trying to pull the dog off Abby. One of them had the idea of turning the fire hose onto the dog but it didn't have the effect they hoped for. They stood watching horrified as the dog continued to maul the forensic scientist. By the time the guards got there and shot the vicious dog, this time fatally, it was too late. Ducky and Jimmy attempted to stem the bleeding until the paramedics arrived and were able to confirm Abby's blood type so they could start the transfusions as soon as they got there but Abby went into hypovolemic shock and bled out on the floor in the doorway to her lab before they could stabilize her for transport.
Tim, still alone in his team's section of the bullpen responded as per protocol when the alarm klaxons had gone off through the building, taking his gun and moving up to his allocated position on the mezzanine level to protect the entrance to MTAC and the Director's office. As such he wasn't aware of what happened to Abby until after the paramedics had left and one of the other technicians ran up to inform the director.
He was in shock at the news, grieving for his friend, but also feeling incredibly relieved that he'd been able to fight off the killer dog and save himself. The true fear from his earlier altercation with the dog which had been pushed down when the rest of the team hadn't seemed to treat it seriously returned and he rushed to the men's room to empty his stomach. Coughing up bile he heard Gibbs yelling and was glad that he hadn't been the one to tell his team leader of the tragedy.
"Why didn't ya tell her to keep that damn dog in its cage?" Gibbs demanded when he returned shakily to his desk.
"I did Boss" Tim exclaimed indignantly.
"Then why didn't she. You should have told her the dog was dangerous" Gibbs shouted.
"I did Boss I told her he'd bitten me and even tried to show her the bites but as soon as I said if had to shoot him to get him off me she got all upset about the poor innocent dog being shot and wouldn't listen when I told her he was vicious and that the sedative Jimmy gave him would wear off" Tim replied, upset that once again he was being blamed for Abby's actions.
"You should have made her listen!" Gibbs shouted.
"I've never once succeeded in making Abby listen to what she doesn't want to hear, nor has Tony, or Ziva or Ducky. You're the only one she's ever listened to Tim yelled back.
"That's no excuse! You shouldn't have left her alone with the dangerous animal" Gibbs roared. He was vaguely aware that he was being unfair but too upset to care.
"Even if she didn't think the dog was dangerous she should have followed protocol to keep him locked up. Whether he was dangerous or not he could have been harmed by the chemicals in Abby's lab. She should never have left him out of the cage while she went to lunch. And do you want to know why she didn't?" he asked furiously, then continued without waiting for an answer.
"Because she never does follow protocol. Because she thought that she didn't have to because you would always ride in like the cavalry and take her side no matter how wrong she is and save her from the consequences of her actions!"
"I don't" Gibbs protested. Taken aback by Tim's anger and grief. Too late he realised that the man he'd just attacked was hurting just as much as he was. That though their relationship had been over for years and she frequently treated him poorly, Tim had still loved Abby
"Who smoothed things out with the director so she doesn't have to follow the dress code everyone else does, who explained things so she doesn't have to work with an assistant even though we know it would speed up the processing of evidence and lead to more timely arrests. Most of these things should have had nothing to do with you. You're not even in her chain of command which she totally ignores in favour of asking you to fight her battles for her. Everyone in the building knows that if they upset Abby you're going to come down on them like a tonne of bricks" Tim replied. "She counts on that and uses it to manipulate everyone into doing whatever she wants them to do. Whether it's volunteering to spend your only free Saturday in months at Habitat for Humanity, hijacking MTAC so a child of a friend of hers can talk to his Mommy on one of the carriers at Christmas or just providing transport while her car's in the shop.
"If you knew those things then it was even more important that she realised that the dog had to be locked up" Tony put in.
"Then you shouldn't have sent me to do it. She never listened to me. And you know how she is with animals. When we arrived here the dog was still semi sedated and placid. Abby had that muzzle off and her arms around the dog in seconds and it didn't so much as attempt to bite her or growl at her. After that she believed everything I said was a lie to justify shooting the dog. She wouldn't believe that Butch could be dangerous. I warned her that he was sedated and that it would wear off soon but she didn't listen.
A/N: This is completed, I have no desire to ever continue it. Please do not ask me to.