It didn't take long for her to wake and, frankly, he wasn't entirely sure she'd really been asleep. Maybe she'd just closed her eyes awhile, slacked back in the chair she'd turned sideways beside the hospital bed. One of her legs hand stretched along the edge of the thin mattress, near his but not daring to touch. The other leg was awkwardly tucked underneath her, the curl of her body all on her right side as her left hand reached and soothed the inside of his palm with slowly circling touches.

So, she hadn't really been asleep.

Just pretending to be somewhere, in the middle of something almost normal (normal to them, anyhow).

"How did you get in here?" Ducky asked gently, keeping his words barely above murmuring as she met his eyes.

He doubted she was sleeping at all, actually.

She was very much a creature of predatory instinct in moments like these – very much similar to the man she was so stubbornly sitting sentry beside.

"Magic," she whispered dryly, closing her fingers around Jethro's with a slow curling of a surprisingly steady hand.

"Caitlin."

"One of the nurses." She turned her head toward him with eyes dark enough that he thought a moment he could see his own reflection. That was, at least, until she blinked them closed and let her head slack back into the chair wearily.

"Has he been coherent at all?"

"In and out," the response was murmured quietly, eyes still closed and hand still tucked around the prone man's palm. "He has no idea what's going on. He's relatively calm, though."

Ducky nodded as he finally approached her, letting his shoes shush just enough on the floor that she'd register the movement but it would otherwise disturb nothing in the room. "Due to the sedation. The chest cavity is a negative space. Directly after he'd been shot you sealed the vacuum created by...?"

Kate's eyes were still darkened black as she looked up at him, her head tipped back and pale as she watched him lean along the chair and closer. "I used my ID. Over the wound. Put pressure on it."

And in a moment of weakness he could help but wipe limp dark hair back on her head, palm crowning the top of her head as he exhaled some unmitigated pride. "Anthony said as much. Darling, you're brilliant."

"Secret Service training." It was just a mulish excuse of an explanation, no pride in it for herself. "When they told us that I thought it was such a ridiculous solution but..."

"The other wound is primarily superficial. Mostly external damage." Her head seemed to nudge closer into his hand, as though searching for a scrap of comfort or attention. "It's that lung that's our main concern."

She just nodded with no apparent response. Only acceptance of certain reality.

"Your sister is at your apartment, getting some rest."

"I gave her my keys," Kate responded blankly into it, her head turning back to where Gibbs was still laying still. "Ducky... I've behaved... poorly."

"The severity of your response was understood fairly quickly, Caitlin." He forced her attention back when he brought his hands to her face like a father to a child, an extremely upset (or unruly) child. "Though, none of us quite understand why you felt you needed to hide what was going on. None of us are the Director."

And there was a blind numbness to the back and forth shifting to her head, seeming thoughtful and thoughtless at once. "I don't think it was a conscious decision. We just... did."

"Abigail knew anyhow." Ducky's smile was indulgently warm.

"I figured," Kate's tone was lukewarm as she said it, nearing back to normal but still hazing dismal. "You knew it too."

He chuckled sardonically toward her, eyes brightening as his thumbs rubbed her cheekbones and his head dipped closer. "Did you really think either of you could hide something so..."

"Wrong?" she asked the interruption as though it was an expected truth.

And he just smiled wider, shaking his head ruefully with a whisper of loving. "Inevitable."

Abby fussed a lot.

And especially when it was in regards to Gibbs.

"You could get in trouble for this." The technician was tucking her fingers up into the sleeve of Kate's shirt, the both of them scanning the hallway as they leaned closer to his door.

But her fussing seemed stalled, her fingers clenched into fabric as she hovered at Kate's shoulder.

She turned a half smile toward her friend, feeling too tired to fake much else. "See if I care."

"Should I talk to him, or - "

"Don't wake him up, Abs." Her voice was quieter than even she'd expected as she swayed the door, open, turning her eyes over his stillness as she shifted enough to let Abby pass. "Just be there."

"Kate..."

She had to start making reparations somewhere.

And maybe Abby was the easiest way back to forgiveness.

Because, in general, Abby was forgiveness, as a whole.

"Sometimes he opens his eyes and he wants to talk but he can't so, just be there." Kate forced the smile complete, felt the warmth in the way the other woman mimicked the movement instantaneously. "Keep him calm."

"You're not staying?"

"I'll be back," Kate regarded her quietly in response, nodding once as though she were making an immutable statement to anyone and everyone at once. "You'll take care of him."

She had absolutely no doubt that she looked horrible, a mess and a half of puffy eyed, pale faced, emotionally unstable woman. She also had no doubt, as she huddled the jacket Abby had brought closer around herself, that every silently awed stare she'd gotten so far had been less about how she looked and more about the fact that, by now, everyone knew.

Everyone knew that she'd reflexively sunken her hands into blood and begged it to stop flowing. Everyone knew that despite the fact it kept going, so did their love affair. Because she hadn't been able to keep from telling secrets to an audience as they waited for an ambulance. And they all knew that him saying her full first name that way meant more than just delirium or shock or blood loss. They all knew that her climbing into the ambulance after him and slapping Tony's hand away with a hiss had been the first prowling swipe of her public tenure as protector, guardian, warden.

They all knew, even as she watched the elevator numbers change and bring her closer to what was supposed to be home, that the very strength of her vitriol had signaled how suddenly serious this really was. They knew it was a moment of change – because it had suddenly created in her something so righteously vicious, so protective and fierce and angry.

Slapping DiNozzo wasn't something out of the ordinary, not really.

Accusing him of selfish betrayal (especially in regards to Jethro Gibbs) had been the aberration.

And as the doors opened to that damn garish orangey paint, she hoped he'd understand somehow.

That she'd had to do it.

That, to be so nakedly found out, she'd had no option but to bare her teeth.

"I'm sorry."

He studied how she'd crouched into the front of his desk, her body looking so especially small as her arms cradled on the edge of it and her chin rested into them. "For what?"

Kate let her head angle as though she was waiting for him to catch up, voice quieting, "For all of it."

He knew that the entire squad room had taken a paused breath, holding still from the moment she'd stepped out of the elevator right up until she'd intentionally bent into a crouch that held him higher than her. In actuality, it seemed they'd been holding their breath for far longer. And he peripherally wondered how long all of them could last. Because they'd pooled the capacity of their lungs - but nothing could outbreathe the emptiness of a vacuum, nothing could outlast the void the combined vacancy of their two desks created.

(Maybe if it had been just one and not the other... maybe.

If one was gone the other would still stay true, somehow.)

"Rule Six," Tony murmured quietly, letting his fingers reach far enough across the desk just to tap a fingertip affectionately against the end of her nose.

Kate nodded agreement into his negation of their feelings, complicit with the fact that, all in all, neither of them wanted to feel much more than they already did.

Her jaw lifted somewhat, nodding once before she set her chin back against her arm and gave him a winsome but weary smile. "He opened his eyes. Keeps waking up."

"That's good." Seeing a smile on her was more than enough to make the movement infectious, his lips twitching as he saw some sort of cognizant hope in her eyes for the first time in days.

"I think he remembers more every time but... what do I know?" The shrug that accompanied the words lowered her eyes and dug her chin deeper against her arm, making her seem extremely young. "He looks scared."

Tony let his fingers spread against her arm, noticed that she didn't flinch at the movement, found it as a comfort that her internal defenses seemed to have regarded him as welcome once again. "You should get back there then."

"Abby's with him."

"Abby's not you, Kate." DiNozzo gave her another smile, this time as boyishly charming as he could muster while she still stayed so small before him. "Abby needs him. He needs you."

She looked at him quixotically, as though she weren't entirely sure he was being serious.

Or, rather, that he was correct in that particular statement.

"Rule Six." He wasn't sure she even knew what she was (not) apologizing for anymore but he had the idea it included this, and that, and everything she could possibly think of in a short span of time. Which, even he would admit, was quite a bit. Her brain had a tendency to over-drive itself double time.

He just nodded before he swayed his hands back toward his keyboard, shrugging it off like they were just teasing each other again and their whole world wasn't watching. "Apology accepted. Now get back to work."