She read the letter again. After five years, her hatred had burned away. The man she knew from his letters, that man did not jibe with the cold, hard killer who had taken Kate from them. She was torn between the image of Ari that everyone had, versus the image of the man she knew from his letters.
"You saw something more in him, Kate. Didn't you?" Abby pulled open her desk drawer to rummage in her bag. She pulled out Ari's letters. He had kind eyes, Kate said. Kind eyes and yet he killed her.
She had no real idea when she had started to keep his letters tied in a neat bundle with a black ribbon. It had just evolved that way. The first year, she put those letters in a box, and hid them away in the back of her wardrobe. There were only a few from that time.
There were more in the second year. She found herself corresponding with him regularly. They would talk about all sorts of things, medical, forensic, scientific; anything but what was on both their minds.
It was in the third year that she finally found the courage to talk about Kate. To stir up old memories, some of them painful. By now they were writing every month.
Ari would talk to her about scientific things, and questions about what being a Goth meant, and things about her friendship with Kate. She would talk about Habitat For Humanity, and bowling with nuns, and sleeping in a coffin, and ask him about medical and scientific things, and Kate. Without even meaning to Abby mentioned Kate's art.
That was when the drawings started. Tiny little sketches, at the end of each letter, detailed, attractive. He had a good eye, she decided; the letters and the sketches grew to be one of her pleasures.
The more she thought about it, the more unanswered questions there were. As time went on, Abby wanted answers. What had started as an attempt at closure became her secret obsession.
An obsession that she would have to keep to herself. Who could she tell? Gibbs? He believed Ari was guilty. Tony and McGee hated Ari for taking Kate from them, Ducky, who had been held hostage by Ari?
Ziva? Ari's sister, forced on their father's orders to shoot to kill to protect Gibbs. It had taken Abby a while to accept Ziva. But they were friends, and Abby understood the pain that the incident in the Gibbs' basement had inflicted upon Ziva. At the moment of firing, Ziva's hand had trembled, and it was that which had saved Ari's life.
Her shot had creased his skull, knocking him cold, and laying him out for two days. But he survived; to be imprisoned as the result of some kind of deal.
To bring the subject up would be cruel, Ziva had a hard enough thing to face, returning to Israel had nearly led to her death.
So Abby was alone with this.
She wanted to see him. Wanted to look into his eyes, read his soul. According to Gibbs the eyes would lie. But Abby was convinced she could read him.
It had taken a long time to get permission. But eventually, she had managed to get it, a pass to see him. She would have an hour. An hour alone with Ari Haswari.
She was shown to a small bare room, with a table and two chairs. She couldn't just sit there passively waiting for him, so she hovered, uncertainly. The door opened and she turned to face him.
Abby had known that they were unlikely to allow him free movement while he was with her, but it still came as a shock when she saw him. Hands cuffed in front, restrained to his waist by a leather belt buckled behind.
"Ari?" Without thinking, Abby stepped forward to take his hands in hers.
His fingers trembled in hers, he seemed a world away from the proud, confident and arrogant man who played with Kate, who taunted Gibbs.
"Abigail." His voice waivered a little, and Abby's fingers squeezed his gently, as she guided him to a chair. He sat, and she pulled the other chair round the table. She was probably violating a dozen rules, but she couldn't care about that; Gibbs' rules and her own code of justice were the ones that mattered.
They talked for a little while, as Abby tried to put him at ease. Finally, she could bear it no longer.
"Ari... did you kill Kate?" she blurted out.
He looked startled. As though this was the last question he expected.
"What do you think?" A flash of the old, cocky Ari...
The eyes can lie, she reminded herself, but these were not lying. The calm, slightly arrogant tilt of his head, the suggestion of a smile on his lips, the too casual posture of his body, despite the handcuffs and body belt - those were the lies. His eyes were full of pain.
"You didn't kill Kate." Abby's voice fairly hummed with satisfaction.