Warnings have been added and the rating has been changed due to the contents of this chapter
In case you missed it - WARNING: Domestic Abuse Situation.
I do apologise for the delay in adding the warning.
Since this is the only chapter with the actual abuse depiction, I did not want it to color the rest of the story.
I apologise if I've offended anyone
No disrespect or belittlement was intended against anyone who's ever had to live or has a loved one who's had to endure with this tragic situation.
Monday morning found Tim still in a foul mood but at least attempting to shelve it in order to focus on work. After spending the remainder of yesterday locked in an ugly argument with his father over what Ziva had discovered about his sister's situation, Tim was more than ready to punch a wall or two. Having no such resources at his disposal, he'd chosen to go for a run instead, letting his feet pound the pavement and take the punishment of his anger driven strides.
When he'd gotten up out of bed this morning, it had been after somehow finding at least a couple of hours sleep, for which he was most grateful. He wanted no repeat of last week and in fact, he needed the distraction of work, not sleeplessness, to hold him back from finding Tom and beating him to a pulp. He hoped that he'd be able to control himself if and when he crossed paths with the sorry piece of work his sister had married. And he prayed that those news reports he still stayed up late to watch every night – would not bring him his sister's fate in the cruelest twist he feared was coming.
Gibbs took one look at his youngest agent and frowned. While the young man looked like he'd gotten some rest, the tired lines around his eyes left no doubt he wasn't getting a full eight hours of sleep. Still, work waited for no one and nothing pressing was happening so he let it go for now. Withdrawing two files from the stack on his desk, he slapped them down on Tim's without a word, knowing the silence would speak for itself.
Tim nodded. He knew Gibbs could tell he wasn't as rested as he should have been on a Monday morning after the weekend off; just as well as he knew he was now being chained to his desk until he got a grip on things and pulled himself together. Opening the first file, he got busy, almost immediately tuning out the rest of the squad room around him.
***NCIS***
The rest of the week passed without incident, as Tim slowly managed to catch up on his missing sleep while still carefully checking news stories for the one story he prayed he wouldn't find. By the time Thursday afternoon arrived, he finally felt like he was back on his feet, even though no fresh case had taken them away from the drudgery of cold cases.
When the boss's phone rang after lunch, interrupting the peace and quiet of a team working through cold cases, all heads came up from their work; they all stood when the boss did and prepared to head out for what they sensed was a fresh case.
Two hours later found the team returning to the squad room with little to go on to help them search for their missing Petty officer. After inputting everything he had to work with, Tim located and pulled up the missing man's information on his family, financial records and phone records. While Gibbs headed out for more coffee, Tim continued to dig, hoping to find more to go on. His desk phone rang unexpectedly, causing him to almost absently snag the receiver off the cradle and bring it to his ear, even as he kept working. "Agent McGee."
Suddenly Tim froze in place for a brief moment before jerkily getting to his feet, the phone still stuck to his ear and a look of horror settling on his face.
"McGee, what is it?" Ziva asked as she watched from across the room at her own desk.
Distracted by Ziva's question, Tony's eyes immediately came up off his own work and sought out his Probie. Seeing his teammate, his friend, standing there as if something horrible was reaching out to him through the phone in his ear, brought chills to Tony's spine. Instantly, he was up and at Tim's shoulder. "Probie, talk to us man."
When Tim remained frozen, Tony reached out and hit the speaker button on his phone, gently taking the receiver from his probie's hand and setting it down on the desk as the sounds that filled the room around them nearly sucked the air out of their lungs.
**smack**
"I told you not to let anyone see you until I was good and ready! Your family's always in our faces!" **smack** **smack** "You just couldn't listen! *smack* *smack*
**Ow! Ow!**
"Stop whining! Think your brother's gonna rescue you because you don't know how to be a proper wife? Hell, he's so scared of what I'll do to you if he does anything to help you – he won't even think of getting in my way now! And he damned sure won't interfere when it's your own fault! Looks like you're on your own, sweetheart!
"I thought you loved me. Why are do you treat me like this?" **Sob** Sob**
"Don't act all innocent with me, Sarah! You knew you'd be punished for your behavior! I warned you!: **smack** "But you just wouldn't listen." **smack** "No, you just had to keep refusing to sleep with me! Your wifely duty, damn it!" **smack** **smack** **smack** " I warned you my patience was running out. Didn't I? DIDN'T I?"**smack** **smack** **smack** "ANSWER ME, DAMN IT! YOU KNOW THIS IS YOUR FAULT, DON'T YOU?" *smack**smack*
Suddenly galvanized into action, Tim turned to his computer, immediately tracing the call while Ziva called the switchboard to ensure the call was being recorded and to get the tape of it brought to them as soon as the call was disconnected.
As Tim straightened up, the address of his sister's location now on the screen, he grabbed his gun, badge and id and scrambled to get out around his desk, around Tony who supported his obvious intentions wholeheartedly, standing by the phone still broadcasting the call. "Go, man! I'll man the call."
"Ziva, c'mon. Let's go." Gibbs unexpected voice sounded as he quickly walked to his desk and geared up to go with Tim. "Tony, get an ambulance over there!"
***NCIS****
With Ziva behind the wheel, they were at Sarah and Tom's house on the outskirts of D.C.'s suburbs in mere minutes. Both Gibbs and Tim catapulted from the car, almost before she'd put it in park. Nodding at Ziva to go around the back, Gibbs took the lead going to the front door, wanting Tim to calm down before stepping in to this volatile situation.
As the ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, coming closer, the Team Leader tried the front door handle, finding it locked, he used his shoulder to break through the door, immediately readying his weapon as he and Tim worked together to quickly clear room after room on their way to rescuing Sarah.
Rounding the corner where the back door met the stairwell going up, Ziva led the way, already inside. With every step they took, the cries and the sounds of a continued beating got louder and louder, spurring them on with mounting anger. Years of training took hold and Gibbs firmly nodded his youngest agent in the direction of the other rooms on the second floor, wanting them cleared, leaving nothing to chance as he and Ziva prepared to deal with the ongoing situation.
Tim stared Gibbs down mutinously, trying like hell to silently argue his way into the room where his sister was being beaten by her husband. While the two male agents squared off, Ziva had no such difficulties, storming the room and loudly making her presence known.
"NCIS! Step away from her, right now!"
At the muffled cry of pain, the sound of a body hitting the floor, and an ensuing scuffle, both Gibbs and Tim rushed into the room. They came face to face with Ziva holding a surprisingly silent and nearly fully dressed Tom Richardson pinned to the ground, cuffing him, and the crumpled body of Sarah McGee sprawled on the floor, where her husband had just ruthlessly shoved her off the bed.
Wasting no effort or attention on anyone but his sister, Tim was at her side in an instant, horrified at her blackened eyes and beaten, almost naked body, every square inch of it littered with darkened ugly bruises or welts. With tears in his eyes, he fought with himself for a split second, wanting desperately to scoop her up and hold her close. Instead he gently knelt down beside her, his hand ghosting over her face, the words just tumbling out of his mouth, "Sarah, you're safe now, we'll get you to the hospital. Sarah, I'm here, I love you, Sis. Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Don't you worry, I'll make sure he doesn't get away with this! You have to stay strong, now, alright? Don't you leave me! You hang on."
Next to him, Gibbs wordlessly draped a blanket over the scarily inert woman for both the shock she had to be in as well as her modesty before reaching down to find a pulse on her a breath of relief, he expressed what they needed to hear. "She's alive."
With a brief supportive clamp of his hand to his youngest agent's shoulder, the Team Leader left Tim to look after his sister and turned to haul the still silent sorry excuse for a man up off the floor, nodding at Ziva to process the crime scene. Pulling out her phone, Ziva hit a button to call Tony, only to end the call as the man himself silently appeared alongside the paramedics wheeling a gurney into the room.
When Tim reluctantly moved out of the way so the paramedics could get to Sarah, Tony got a glimpse of her swollen and bruised face. "Oh my God!" The Senior Field Agent and former cop, who'd seen much in his law enforcement career, breathed out. Turning his attention to the responsible person, Tony found his path blocked by the Team Leader.
Taking note of his Senior Field Agent's clenched fists and the look of absolute fury in his eyes, Gibbs verbally reached out to bring him back down. They did not need him to lose his temper and cause this situation to spiral out of control. "DiNozzo."
Tony blinked and looked at the man who'd spoken to him. "Boss."
"Go with Tim." Gibbs' quiet instruction and the use of the probie's given name had its intended impact: refocusing Tony's attention onto the anguished younger man as Tim was now forced to stand by while Ziva made quick work of photographing as many of the younger woman's injuries as she could. Sarah's breathing had become even more shallow and irregular and the paramedics worked frantically to stabilize her with an iv and an oxygen mask.
Together, Team Leader and Senior Field Agent silently watched the paramedics work to save their youngest team member's little sister, not missing the look of utter devastation and pain strewn across Tim's face.
"I don't get it, Boss. He's been so angry about this possibility. Where's that anger now?" Tony broke the silence with his need to understand what was possibly going on in his teammate's head in the midst of this crisis.
"Simmering underneath his concern for his sister. It'll come. Just as soon as the shock wears off, it'll come. Stay with him, Tony." His eyes still on his stricken agent across the room, Gibbs' quiet, compassionate words were barely heard.
The rare show of emotions in the boss's voice struck a chord in Tony and his reply was equally quiet as his own emotions nearly got the best of him. "I will, Boss."
***NCIS***
The ride to the hospital was a blur of noise as the siren blared and the medic kept in radio contact with both the driver and the hospital staff. Tim made his own panic-driven efforts to comfort his little sister who wasn't aware of anything going on around her. .He was vaguely aware of Tony following behind in the agency sedan he'd driven to the house. Tim barely remembered that before he'd been helped up into the ambulance after they'd loaded Sarah into it, Gibbs had once more clamped a comforting hand down on his shoulder and quietly told him to stay strong and remember that his sister was a fighter.
Now he watched her struggle to breathe. Seeing all the damage so recently done to her made him so sick to his stomach, he literally remained on the verge of throwing up. He sat beside her, with one hand stroking the hair back from her face and the other holding the one hand of hers that didn't have an iv in it, loosely but with determination. Tim felt his heart breaking into tiny shards and he couldn't stop the tears as they slid down his face or the words that came from his heart before they escaped from his lips." I'm so sorry that I was right about him. Don't you worry; I promise you he won't get away with this."
As the paramedic riding in the back with him kept an eye on the patient, he noticed the change in her breathing and immediately moved to take care of the problem. "Sir, you have to move back. Now!"
Tim quickly let go of Sarah's hand and moved out of the way as the medic shouted toward the front of the vehicle, STEP ON IT, We're losing her!"
Tim watched in horror as his baby sister stopped breathing.