A/N: So, went to post this Monday, but decided at the last minute that I didn't like it. So I went over it, fixed it, and went to post it Wednesday... and decided I liked it even less than before...
...and I'm still not sure I like it now, but I decided you'd all waited long enough, and so here it is :P
Thanks to all the wonderful someones who've been along with this one since the start, and to all who've dropped in since – nothing is more encouraging and inspiring than the feedback and awesome support you've all been giving :)
And now for a few responses to anonymous reviewers:
To kitt: Glad that it was worth the wait before – hope this latest addition falls under the same category xP Thanks so much for the terrific review, and hope your vacation rocked!
To : Hehe – LOVE that that little twist earned the epic double-take! – And not to worry, all shall be revealed here today… Or, rather, almost all. :)
To Ink11: Thank you, thank you, thank you! :D That's wonderful of you to say – man oh man, I wish I could do that! … And I'd apologize for the cliffie... but the new one coming up ain't gonna be any more gentle :} Mua-ha.
Anyways, looking forward to hearing what you all think of of this one – it's the beginning of the end folks... read, review, and enjoy!
Abby Sciuto, Forensic Scientist Extraordinaire, had never before been so glad to accept an invitation to come and get pampered at Casa DiNozzo. All week had been nothing but compounded hours of head-cold-induced misery that she'd had to keep working through since, of course, almost every other tech in the place was sick at home with a variation of the same thing... and dammit, forensics waited for no cold bug!
...no matter how god-awful said bug had turned out to be.
So she'd stayed all week, and had been thoroughly regretting it until Tony had come downstairs, dressed and ready for the big times in his tac gear, having been about to say something, but stopping himself to give her a intent once-over and saying instead: "Go lie down. As soon as I get back, you're coming back to my place with me for the weekend – lots of goodies, lots of drugs, and no arguments about either." And with that he'd grinned, kissed her quickly on the cheek, ushered her towards her cot in the next room, and had sprinted back out the door.
Too tired and stuffy to protest even to an empty room, she'd shuffled off to do as she was told, and had nearly dosed off until, little more than half-an-hour later, her cell phone had rung, and she'd picked it up almost immediately, thinking in her haze that it was Tony calling to let her know he was on his way back. Of course, she couldn't have realized that barely enough time had gone by for them to actually get where they were going, never mind doing their thing and coming home the victors.
As it turns out, it was an epically terrible time to not check her caller I.D.
Instead of Tony, it was Leonard, a recent goth-convert friend of hers who'd come in town to visit and catch a concert with her the previous weekend, had stayed at her place to save on a hotel room, and had proceeded to leave his house keys behind somewhere in her apartment when leaving for the airport that morning. Her mission now, whether or not she chose to accept it (and she really didn't want to): meet him at her place ASAP, let him in to get his keys, and get back to NCIS afterward, all while feeling as though her head were filled with an alternately super-heated and sub-zero-temperature mercury/lead compound, and having her nose run like a leaky faucet. No problem.
One thing was for sure, there was no way she would be driving herself. And so, after calling up to the front security desk and asking them to call her a cab, and leaving a note for Tony on her lab's door in case he beat her back, she spent the next fifteen minutes struggling to get herself mobile and into the elevator. By the time she reached the lobby, she was ready to quit and go back downstairs, but thoughts of the VIP treatment that awaited her this weekend kept her resolve strong and her feet moving. Of course, that didn't keep those feet from tripping and sprawling her into the startled arms of a young Arabic man in a suit who was at that moment coming in as she was going out. He seemed quite upset about the accident even after she righted herself and apologized, though too busy fussing over the satchel he carried to even look at her again, so she shook it off (very carefully), and carried on tiredly to where her cab was parked and waiting for her by the curb.
The cab driver definitely earned himself a tip both from being able to decipher her muffled cold-speak correctly, and for having a full box of tissues available for her indiscriminate use for the entirety of the trip that got them across town just ahead of the worst of the end of the day rush. Leonard was already there when she pulled up and got the cabbie to park as close to the front door as semi-legally possible, and when she let him in, he rushed ahead of her, rambling about having already missed his flight twice as he raced around flipping cushions and riffling under papers.
While waiting for him, she figured she might as well go to her bedroom and pack a small bag for while she was at Tony's, and by the time she'd finished, he was running back out to his rental car, calling thanks and goodbyes over his shoulder. She didn't really hear him, or particularly care, as every ounce of her concentration was on managing the latest sneezing-spree without letting vertigo send her tumbling head over heels down the stairs on her way out the door.
Relief at making it back to the cab and at them turning around to get her back to work was short-lived; after fighting for almost an hour against the usual quitting-time traffic jam, they were confronted with an even bigger one when they reached the halfway mark and ended up stuck along with everyone else behind the mayhem of an accident involving cars from both directions. It took them almost three hours to inch their way through, and the rest of the way to the office, which was a test of wills and the strength of her stomach as cars played far dirtier than average in an effort to make up for lost time in getting where they were going.
One thing was for sure: it was a good thing she'd left that note – the team had to have gotten back by now, and the last thing she would want would be to make Tony worry, thinking she'd gone and disappeared, and feeling like she did. For all his bravado and apparent cavalier attitude most days, she knew how protective he could get over any one of them.
Then again, if they'd gotten back to the office before her, and he'd found her note, he would've called by now to check on her and see how much longer she'd be... which had to mean they'd gotten held up even longer than she did, getting their suspects into custody and cleaning up afterward. So apparently, it wouldn't have mattered, one way or the other.
After all the complications of the normally simple trip involved with going and coming back, she couldn't really wrap her stuffed and muggy head around what she was seeing through the windshield as the cabbie finally pulled to the side to let her out, apologetically saying that he couldn't take her beyond this point. She paid her fare with a mumbled thanks before climbing out and staring blankly at the police road block and countless emergency vehicles that had the entire three blocks between her and NCIS completely shut down. A thick crowd of reporters and angry pedestrians milled about in front of it, and the sound of heavy machinery being operated could be heard far off down the street.
What. The. Hell.
She was almost able to forget how sick she was as she elbowed her way through and stomped up to a few of the patrolmen manning the road block, cursing as her fierceness was interrupted with another violent sneeze, but not letting it faze her otherwise. "What's going on? What's happened?"
"Stand back, Miss," said the oldest of the two, gesturing her back a few steps while his partner seemed to leave to chase after a camera man who'd slipped by. "Emergency personnel only from here on in. The immediate area around ground zero won't be cleared for access to civilians until at least tomorrow night."
She froze, her mind going blank as she gaped openly at the man. "What do you mean... ground zero."
"There were explosions in the NCIS building a couple of hours ago – the building was destroyed," he said slowly, caught off guard by her obvious reaction. Until of course she wordlessly showed him her ID badge, and then his expression radiated nothing but sympathy as he looked from it back to her. "You have friends in there?"
"Yes... maybe... I don't know, they might not have gotten back yet, when..." She trailed off, biting her lip to hold back tears as she stared over his shoulder, down the street in the direction of the place she'd left only hours ago, her second home... and now possibly the scene of a loss she knew she would never recover from.
A hand was on her arm, guiding her around to the other side of the road block, but all she could do was look ahead as they moved, terrifyingly closer to the center of the chaos with every step. The officer spoke to her, saying something about not worrying too much, promising they'd find out if her friends were among those who'd been evacuated in time, if maybe they were on the list of those who'd been the first group to be sent to the hospital, but she couldn't answer, couldn't even so much as nod to show that she'd heard.
The further they walked, the closer they came to her worst nightmare, and it was all of it too much; the dust in the air that wouldn't settle, the debris scattered as far as the street, the flashing lights, the smell of burnt metal, the fire trucks, the ambulances coming and going, the dull roar of machinery and yelled conversations, piles of bloodied gauze dotting the ground... too much, too much, too much.
Her mind was racing, her eyes stinging from the acrid air while darting from one horror to the next, her breath hitching, and the further they walked, the more she felt herself diving headlong into a panic...
And then she heard McGee's voice yelling to Ziva – so close, only a handful of steps in front and a little to the side of her, and how could she not have noticed him until now? Even from behind, and covered in dust and dirt smears indicative of having been thrown to the ground, she instantly recognized him, and felt herself overwhelmed now for an entirely different reason.
McGee's call had Ziva was running towards them, and Abby felt a smile explode across her face at the sight of her, though she inwardly cringed at the sight of her hand, which had to be broken to look that awful. But then Ziva's gaze landed on her and she stumbled and stopped, staring at her with a confusing level of shock, even disbelief, which was exactly mirrored on McGee's face as he followed Ziva's gaze, and stood there open mouthed, looking as though he'd seen a ghost.
"Holy shit." She blinked at words that so rarely, if ever, came from McGee's mouth, and felt her confusion grow to new heights at what Ziva radioed to Gibbs, and at the way they continued to stare even then.
"What?" she asked abruptly when it started to get unnerving. The question seemed to snap them both out of whatever was wrong with them, and McGee was the first to speak.
"Abby... where the hell have you been?" She was again startled by his coarseness, so unlike his usual geeky and unassuming persona that it took her a moment to be able to respond.
"A friend, my friend, that was staying over while he was in town, he called me after you guys left, he needed me to go across town to let him back into my place to find his keys, so I took a cab, 'cause I still feel completely horrible, and I would've been back sooner, but there was an accident, and I got stuck in traffic, and I..."
She trailed off, for the first time seeing all of what was written across their faces: exhaustion and pain, of course, since it looked like they'd barely made it out before the building came down, but also strain, weariness, and a deeply embedded fear...
"You thought I was inside," she said as it came to her, and they nodded, then exchanged a quick, unreadable look. She realized then that the fear wasn't going away, around the same time that she noticed that she had yet to see Tony or Gibbs mingling in with the rest of the crews on site, and she frowned, looking around them, craning her neck to try spotting them. "Where's Gibbs? Where's Tony? I know they're probably busy, but I want to..." She trailed off yet again as their expressions grew more strained, and the relief she'd felt before twisted inside her stomach and tied itself into a tight, painful knot. She had a terrible thought that she already knew the answer before she quietly asked her question.
"Where are they?"
Gibbs couldn't rightly decide what he was feeling right then... couldn't really put a name to it. Somewhere in between trying his best to prepare for the very real possibility of loosing Abby and suddenly being able to assume she'd somehow turned up on the surface after all this time, he was confronted with a stranger instead of a friend, and now felt at odds with the simultaneous relief and guilt at that relief, looking down on this woman.
The darkness of her hair and the shape of her eyes and face easily identified her as being of Middle-Eastern decent, likely Arabic or Persian, and in spite of her wounds and her pallid skin, he could tell that she was young, even beautiful. His gut told him she hadn't played a part in this destruction as much as her eyes did, their blue a stunning sapphire and filled with such gentle sadness in spite of the obvious magnitude of her pain that he couldn't even entertain the thought of looking away. She wasn't his Abby, but she was still an innocent, and from the look and sound of things, there was little to no chance she would be able to hold on long enough for the rest of the cavalry to show up.
In the end, her dying was no less terrible – she may not be his tragedy, but that didn't stop her from being someone else's. And that knowledge was no easier to bear now than it ever was with any of the victims he'd encountered over the years in this job.
With a heavy heart he looked down at her still, and his eyes were drawn then to the ID badge clipped to the pocket of the sweater she wore. He looked to it for a name, but saw that it was only a visitor's badge, and so met her gaze once more.
"Can you tell me your name?" he asked gently.
"H... Hoori...ya," she whispered, her face twisting in a grimace, and Gibbs could see that it was getting more difficult by the second for her to breathe, and that her skin was now ashen underneath the blood. He knew then that she had even less time left than he'd originally thought, but dug out some confidence anyway, hoping to bring at least a small measure of comfort to her suffering. At this point, it certainly couldn't make things any worse.
"You'll be all right, Hooriya, we'll have you outta here in no time," he reassured, but she was shaking her head minutely, her gaze never leaving his.
She was silent a moment as she struggled for the air to speak, body jerking and trembling as it began to shut down, little by little. He gripped her hand tightly in his own, and she smiled tremulously at the contact, a tear slipping out to carve a path through dust and drying blood to fall silently to the rubble beneath her.
"Tell... him... thank... you..." she rasped, somehow knowing that he would know who she was referring to. Her eyes squeezed shut a moment as she bit her lip in a bid for control, and when she opened them to again find his, their radiance was startlingly pronounced, just a moment before their light began to dim. With a strength that astounded him, she found the will to speak a final time. "... and... th... that... I... am... sor... ry... I... could... n-not stop... my... bro... ther." The implications of her words floored him, but he swallowed the immediate conclusions wanting to be confirmed, and the questions bubbling up to be asked, and simply gave an astute nod.
"I will," he promised firmly, and could see that she believed him in the gratitude and relief that shone for just a second before the life in those beautiful eyes flickered, and then was gone.
Gibbs sat there a long moment beside her crushed body before he was able to bring himself to let go of her cold hand to place it on her chest and gently brush her eyelids closed, swallowing hard around the knot in his throat. The picture of what had to have happened tonight was slowly coming clear, and he knew that he had just witnessed the death of a woman easily as brave as any Marine he'd fought with.
In some ways, she'd been braver still; exactly the way Tony had run back into a building moments from destruction to save a friend that could not reasonably be saved, this woman, Hooriya, whose brother it would seem was the one behind this horrible night, had stayed in that very same building, sentencing herself to death trying to stop an attack that in the end she had no hope of stopping.
Looking down at her once more as he prepared to leave, he decided that he didn't need to have known her beforehand – the tragedy of her death would be his to share in, regardless.
By the time he'd returned to the veritable wall that stood between him and Tony, he'd carefully tucked Hooriya into the corner of his mind and was refocused on the problem at hand: saving the one that could still be saved, and sorting everything else out when they were both on the surface and could leave this place, this night, behind them.
Lost to his planning, and his worrying, Gibbs sat for a long moment in silence, until suddenly Tony spoke.
"So... I guess... that's it then," Tony said quietly when Gibbs didn't say anything at first upon his return. He hadn't been gone long at all, and had come back much slower than he'd left – it could only mean one thing, and even the mere beginning of his grief threatened to strangle him with it's intensity as he said what Gibbs apparently would not. "Abby's... dead... I let... her die."
Saying it out loud brought the full, crushing weight of it down on him and he found he couldn't keep silent, no matter how he tried; he bit his already bloodied lip, even clenched his hand over where it had returned to resting over his wound (he hadn't the strength to apply any real pressure any more), but he barely felt either action, and what began as a low moan grew in volume and in strength beyond his shattered control.
Abby was dead. She was dead. There was nothing that could be done to change that, no level of forgiveness that would ever negate his part in it, or make whatever Gibbs now felt towards him unjustified. He would deserve it, whatever Gibbs would say or do, and now he lay there, waiting for the guillotine to drop as surely as he was waiting for his body to simply give up fighting against the cold, against the unconsciousness that he knew he would not wake up from when it came.
In every way, he was spent, through and through, waiting tiredly to die.
Shocked first by Tony's assumption, and left heartbroken and shaken to his very core by the moaning wail that said louder than any words that Tony had finally reached the point beyond what he could endure, Gibbs forced his hand back through the opening and latched onto Tony's shoulder once more, his words almost shouted in their urgency to be heard.
"Tony, hey! She's not dead, Abby's not dead! She wasn't even there." A response was a long time in coming, and sounded more than a little sluggish and confused when it did.
"But... she... I heard..."
Gibbs forced down his worry, and tightened his grip. "It wasn't her, Tony... I don't know how, but she's up top. There was a woman down here with you, but it wasn't her." The next question came quicker, but was still worryingly slurred, and utterly toneless.
"She didn't... make it, did... she?"
He sighed, and wished to hell he could bring himself to lie. "No."
Tony could hear the regret in the one word, and felt the same sentiment churning in his gut, and fought unsuccessfully to tamp it down and reorient himself, now that the situation had just done a completely unexpected turn in the opposite direction. He wanted to take reassurance from the fact that Abby was alive and safe, but knew on the other hand that a woman had still died, he'd still been unable to get to her; he wanted to be relieved that Gibbs was here, and to believe that everything would be all right like it always had seemed to be when the man charged in to save the day, but he could feel his strength draining from him with each passing second, like sand through a fisted hand, and he was too wrung out to fight any more.
With all that he wanted to feel, that regret was the only thing that stood out like a tangible thing as he felt Gibbs' hand leave and listened to his boss begin to fight to get to him. The longer he listened, and the more he slipped away, the more he felt the slightest bit of hysteria mix in with the regret; he thought of tonight as a whole, of all that could have been, all he'd tried and failed to do, or never even needed to, and finally he couldn't help the low, grating laugh that scraped through his raw throat and filled the air. Everything that had transpired to bring them to this moment was an example of Chaos Theory in dazzling action – a series of individual unrelated events, all conspiring to create an unforeseen and, in such a case as this, devastating finale.
This night, everything that had happened leading up to it and everything before and during, had conspired to accomplish a feat that so many had failed in – kidnappings, serial killers, plagues, gunfights, car bombs... they'd all fallen short of their seemingly inevitable conclusions. But this night, it seemed, with its many mistakes and misfortunes, would be the one to see things through to the end.
There was a pause in the sound of Gibbs working, and words were spilling out before he thought to stop them.
"Well...looks like...I've...finally...run out...Boss," he gasped quietly in the direction of the small opening. Out of things to say, out of luck, out time to change how this night will end...
"And what is it you've run out of DiNozzo?" The gruff voice sounded just that bit scared, and rightly so; all other bridges had been reduced to ash over the course of these final hours, all the usual avenues for survival failing or useless, while there was one that had sustained him so often these past few years that it had held strong until the last... until now.
Tony smiled grimly, and put a name to this, his final bridge to burn. "Al...mosts."
That one word was all it took.
Little more thought went to planning and assessing and working it through before acting – the second he heard that word, and everything unspoken that came with it, the precarious hold on Gibbs' calm snapped, and he blinked, and found himself attacking the wall that kept him from Tony with his crowbar with all the force of the pent-up helplessness of all these hours. He could hear himself yelling, but couldn't tell if there were any words as he hacked and stabbed and clawed his way through, pieces of the barrier falling everywhere around him and on him as he savagely pummeled through it.
His world narrowed to this task, to the man who lay on the other side who he knew now was giving up, that had said in fewer words that he wouldn't be holding on any longer, until he was tearing away the last of it with a final heave... and felt his world begin to crumble at what he found directly in front of him.
It was everything that he'd feared it would be, made all the more worse for the fact that there was no longer any room for hoping for the best, pretending that the best was possible. On the ground in front of his knees lay his senior field agent, horribly still aside from wheezing, whisper-quiet breaths that barely expanded his chest and sporadic tremors that were akin to spasms. From where he knelt, he stared at the iron rod that held Tony in place, at the blood that had coated the small portion that Tony had managed to pull out, and the hand, drenched in red, that lay limp over a saturated shred of sleeve that was wrapped around the point of entry. Dull green eyes met his when Gibbs managed to drag his gaze up to a blood-smeared face that, to his rising horror, was the exact same shade of sickly gray that he'd seen not ten minutes ago on the corpse of a woman who'd died almost as soon as he'd found her.
Not going to be Tony... no way in hell.
And then he was moving, crawling around to Tony's right side and swallowing the threatening nausea as he hurriedly pushed handfuls of debris back under him to take the weight off of the wound that had left the ground below it stained in a pool of muddy red. Gibbs threw down his gloves and crowbar and whipped off his pack, diving into the the medical kit he'd been given and starting an IV in a frantic bid to compensate for at least some of the copious amount of blood-loss, hanging the bag of a jutting piece of metal by his face before turning his attention to the wound itself.
As gently as he could in his urgency, he pulled Tony's hand away and set it on the ground, proceeding to pull off the sodden bandage and cut away the tac vest it bits and pieces until the entirety of the damage was visible. Refusing to linger on the gruesome stain that covered the majority of the previously light-colored sweater, or the horrific way that the wound had been torn wider around the steel, its edges jagged, Gibbs spent the next few minutes packing whole rolls of gauze all around it, keeping it tight around the metal and pressed firmly into Tony's stomach.
While he worked he didn't let himself think about how Tony made not a sound throughout ministrations that should have left him in agony, nor had his eyes stopped their flat studying of him, which he realized when at last he looked back at that ghostly face. Knowing that what he would need to do next might well be more than either could handle, he figured some explanation was warranted.
"If we're going to be able to move you, I'm going to have to cut out a section of the rod to give us enough leeway to pull you out of here," he said in a calm tone that bellied the twisting in his chest. "It's... it's going to hurt pretty bad, and your blood pressure's so low from how much blood you've already lost that I can't risk giving you any morphine, or I could stop your heart."
He swallowed hard and waited a moment – for an answer, a reaction of any type, for permission, for forgiveness of the pain he was going to have to put him in... he couldn't be sure. Finally though, Tony blinked up at him, seeming drawn from a haze as he breathed as deep as he could, tightened his jaw, and nodded, just once, before squeezing his eyes shut in preparation. The only way Gibbs could go through with this was to not give himself time to think about it, to not hesitate. So he didn't.
And when he took hold of the end of the rod closest to Tony's stomach and used his other hand to start the saw and hold it to the iron half a dozen inches higher, he knew he had no choice but to ignore the trembling and jerking that were accompanied by hoarse screams that their owner could do nothing to silence. But for all his outward steadiness, inside he was quaking, the father in him crying out with the man he had no choice but to hurt, and hating himself for every second that went by that he hadn't yet finished. When he'd finally cut away enough of a chunk in the middle to free him, his hands started shaking so badly that he dropped the saw when he went to put it down, but he didn't hesitate to turn his attention instead to pressing down against the thickly layered gauze that was already spotted red.
It was only then that he looked back to Tony's face, and felt simultaneously relieved and absolutely terrified at the fact that the cries had tapered away, and while still looking worn to the bone, his features had gone almost entirely lax, as though after the sheer overload of pain, his body had given up on transmitting the signals for it. This was a sure sign of just how tenuously he was holding onto life, and his mind was scrambling to come up with anything else he could possibly do at this juncture when suddenly Tony's radio came loudly to life, startling Gibbs and making Tony flinch at its volume, which was just loud enough for Gibbs to be able to make out the voice coming through.
"Tony? Are you there?" It was Abby. Gibbs watched the last of the tension in Tony's body melt away as the sheer relief he himself felt was mirrored in every line on the younger man's face.
"I'm here... Abbs... it's damn good... to hear... your voice."
"Ditto," came the quieter answer, and Gibbs could hear the anxiety in her voice even from where he sat when she continued. "Tony, you big dummy... why'd you have to go back in there? Why'd you have to go and do something so stupid, huh?"
Tony laughed a little, then stifled a cough with a tired grimace. "Because... you were here... Abbs... or so... I thought before... your... disappearing... act." He paused, then switched abruptly to a solemnity that scared Gibbs in the exact same way as what he'd said before had, and he quickly realized why. "Thanks... by the... way."
"For what?" came the confused question. He watched Tony smile genuinely, but oh so tiredly.
"For... disappearing... can't... tell ya... how... glad I am... you're not down... here... with me... Love you Abbs... you know that... right?" Apparently Abby felt the same dread from everything about that sentence, because she came back sounding more angry and more terrified than Gibbs thought he'd ever heard from her.
"Don't you start in on your goodbyes Anthony DiNozzo, you're not going to die down there! Do you hear me? Don't you dare –"
A long, high-pitched whine cut through whatever else was said, and when it finally subsided, only white noise remained, and Gibbs knew what that meant: McGee's equipment, pushed to its absolute max, had finally given way under the pressure. He tried to activate his own radio, and knew even before he heard the same white noise that the prevalence of metal in this area of the rubble would block any regular radio signal from making it through. And there was no damn way he would leave Tony on his own and take pressure off of his wound long enough to put through a transmission outside the space.
They were alone.
After a few seconds, Gibbs reached over and deactivated the comm, leaving them in silence that was only broken by a drawn-out series of groans and spine-tingling screeches from the structure above them, and then from all around them. And even when the worst of it died down, there were other sounds of grinding and shifting that made themselves known, and they were growing louder by the second.
Looking back to Tony, Gibbs knew from the expression on his face exactly what he was thinking, and what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, and so headed him off with a preemptive answer.
"No." Of course, Tony being the naturally stubborn ass he was, went ahead and suggested it anyway.
"You should... go back... the... way... you came... while you still... can..."
"I'm not leaving you here DiNozzo, so just forget it," he bit out, eyes narrowed and every bit as stubborn, almost daring him to try and disagree with him. Which, of course, he did, with a minute, sad shake of his head, and dammit, but he looked so exhausted, so drawn... and utterly resigned, apparently having already signed his own death certificate.
"Go... back... Boss... there's... no reason..."
"There damn well is a reason, Tony," Gibbs interrupted angrily. The sounds had grown to a dull roar now, but he ignored them, held Tony's gaze and took hold of the words that needed to be said, determined to say them before their time could finally, at long last, run out. "After all the bullshit we've gotten through, and that I've put you through all these years, there is nothing you could do or say to move me out of this spot. You are my agent, my friend, and sure as hell the closest thing to family I've got left. I will not leave you here. Do you hear me? Is that understood?"
The noise was almost overpowering by now, and the ground shook beneath them, but Gibbs' attention was solely on Tony, who watched him through glazed, half-lidded eyes, filled now with a different sadness and quiet gratitude as he nodded. "Understood... Gibbs."
The air was split by a final roaring screech, deafening and terrible, and Gibbs had only seconds to drape himself as a shield over Tony's upper body before the delicately balanced rubble and debris above their heads shifted, then came apart.