Ok. The response to this has been overwhelming. I am glad that almost everyone likes it. I would like to thank everyone who has read this even if you haven't reviewed. Special thanks go to those who reviewed: Gottahavemyncis, Junee, missyAN,sally, Maudlin Mush, and very special thanks to Debthebee77. Yes , that is the saying, only I couldn't remember it to save my life. Thanks!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own ncis.
NCIS
Tim breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned back against the closed door of his apartment. It had been a tense few days and quite frankly, he was glad to be home.
"Bad day?" A lilting voice asked from the doorway of his kitchen.
Tim opened his eyes to see his chestnut –haired , doe eyed younger sister standing there with a plate of hot food and a cold drink in her hands. Tim smiled. "Bad life." He replied, pushing his self off the door and going to stand in front of his sister. "Hey, sis." He said, bending his over six foot frame down to kiss her cheek. "Thanks for coming."
Sarah looked into her brother's grass green eyes, so different from her doe colored ones, searching. "Cryptic phone calls late at night tend to make you drop everything." She said, still searching her brother's eyes.
A twinge of guilt twisted inside him when he realized he had worried his little sister. "Sorry about that."
"It's ok, Tim." She said. What she saw in her brother's face worried her. Not so much the exhaustion, although that was cause for concern, but there was an underlining fear in his eyes, on his face, that she hadn't seen there for a very long time. "I made you something for supper, Tim." She said, holding up her offerings. "Where do you want to eat?" She asked, deciding to wait for answers, knowing her brother would talk to her when he was ready. He would tell her, too. Of that she had no doubt. Tim and her were extremely close, closer than most brothers and sisters, mainly because Tim was so much older than she was, and his having raised her completely his self since he was sixteen, when he had left for college, a young Sarah in tow. There had been no protest from their flighty, absent minded artist mother or their violent, uncaring chronically unemployed step father. They had been relieved to see the back of both of them, if the truth was known.
"Oh, thanks, Sis. You didn't have to do that." Tim said, stepping around his sister and moving into his small kitchen to sit at the oak table, leaving her to follow.
"I didn't mind." Sarah said, sitting the plate of spaghetti and garlic bread in front of him and the glass of iced tea to the side. She took a seat on his right side and watched as he ate silently for a few long minutes.
"This is really good, Sarah." He said after taking a long sip of his iced tea. "Just what I needed. Thanks."
Sarah sighed. He was always so surprised when someone did something nice for him, even though he went out of his way all the time for people. She smiled affectionately at him. "It's not really a big deal , besides, I like taking care of you. I don't get to do it nearly enough." Tim had always been the strong one. The one to shoulder all the burdens. He had never needed looking after, not even as a child, according to their mother. Sarah suspected that Tim had never been taken care of, that was why he was so good at standing on his two feet.
"It's not your job to take care of me, Sarah." He quietly admonished. "It's my job to take care of you."
Sarah smiled. "How about we just take care of each other?" She said, giving the reply she had given many times before in this same conversation.
Tim laughed, as she knew he would, and a burst of happiness filled her. It was not a sound that she heard very often, not a real laugh anyway. There just was not a lot in Tim's life to laugh about.
"Ok, little sister." He said, reaching over and ruffling her chestnut colored hair. "Ok." Tim picked up his fork and began to eat again.
Sarah smiled and started a rambling conversation about her classes, professors, coursework and dorm mate, while her brother finished eating.
After he was done, he got up before she could and took his dishes to the sink.
When he just stood there, unmoving, his back to her, shoulders slumped, she became even more concerned then she had been when she first saw the exhaustion etched on her brother's face and the haunted, fearful look in his grass green eyes.
"What's wrong, Tim?" Sarah asked gently after a few minutes of silence.
"Everything's falling apart, Sarah. " Tim said in an almost silent, pain filled voice. "It's all starting to unravel at the seams and I don't know what to do to stop it. I don't know if there is any way to stop it."
"I…I don't understand, Tim." Sarah said, fear beginning to fill her.
Tim gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. "Abby knows, Sarah. She knows."
Sarah slumped back in her chair. There was only one thing that Abby could know that would cause such a fearful reaction in brother. "HOW!" She breathed out.
"A game!" He said angrily. "A stupid, stupid, game." Tim brought his fist down, hard, punctuating each word."It's something she's done before. Hell, it's something we've both done before. Something, I thought , we always did together . Something I made her promise never to do to the team. Something she did anyway."
"What? What did she do, Tim?"
"She ran my DNA, Sarah!" He exclaimed , exasperated. "She ran my DNA!"
"That still doesn't explain how she knows that you're Gibbs' -" She started, confused.
"She ran it against Gibbs' DNA! She compared the two!" Tim spun around, throwing his iced tea glass against the opposite wall. "Damnit! A fucking game!
Sarah jumped up, startled. "Tim!" She exclaimed with wide, frightened eyes. She had never seen her older brother like this. He didn't use that kind of language or give into anger. Tim was always,always, the voice of calm, cold reason. Always.
"Shit! I'm sorry, Sarah. " Tim said, running a hand tiredly over his face. "I didn't mean to frighten you." Tim felt bad for scaring his sister, knowing that his outburst brought back memories of their brutal, violent step father.
"I know you would never hurt me,Tim." She denied swiftly, even though she had, for just a moment, been afraid of her big brother. Something she had never been before.
Tim laughed bitterly as he heard another woman he loved deny that he would hurt them. He made a promise to his self right then and there. He would be the cause of that fearful look in anyone's eyes that he cared about again.
Tim walked his kitchen closet and got out his broom and dust pan, moving to clean up the shattered glass. He gave Sarah plenty of room as he walked by, not wanting to spook her.
"I don't understand, Tim. " Sarah said after watching him sweep for a minute. "Why would she do that?"
Tim sighed as he swept the glass into the dustpan. "It was just a game, Sarah." He said picking up the dustpan and walking over to the trashcan in the corner of his kitchen and emptying it. "When we didn't have a case, Abby would walk around, observing people, picking discarded items up to run tests on." Tim put his stuff away and sat back down at the kitchen table. "You know," he said when he noticed the confused look on her beautiful face. " Coffee cups and soda cans for DNA tests and fingerprints. Sometimes she would 'find' or 'borrow' a hair brush or comb to get hair for tox screens. Sometimes she would find someone that had gotten hurt and she would be able to get a bandage or tissue to run a full blood panel."
"And you knew about this? Were a part of it?" Sarah asked incredulously. "Oh, Tim, why didn't you stop her?"
NCIS
OK. I SO WANTED TO CONTINUE THIS. I HAVE MORE WRITTEN BUT I AM TIRED AND HAVE TO GET UP EARLY FOR WORK TOMORROW. I AM AFRAID THAT I WON'T BE ABLE TO POST AGAIN UNTIL AT LEAST THURSDAY. I WORK 12 HOUR SHIFTS(SOMETIMES 16 HOUR ONES) AND I WILL BE WIPED OUT WHEN I GET HOME.
HOPE THIS CHAPTER DOESN'T DISAPPOINT!
