I do not own NCIS; no infringement is intended.
I realize the premiere is in no time at all. This story will be done. There is going to be one more chapter that I'm posting either late Monday or super early on Tuesday. I can't leave this unfinished before the start of the next season.
As per usual, thank you so much for reading! I am overwhelmingly grateful for each and every response I get. Thank you and please review!
The next morning did indeed begin with Mcgee being discharged from the hospital. When he had woken up that morning Abby had been gone. It wasn't terribly unexpected. She never had been one to stay when she was avoiding something, but she typically had been while he was still an inpatient. In a move nobody was entirely comfortable with Ziva had received the honor of being responsible for carting him back to his apartment.
Apparently they were closing in on Dearing and she was the one not technically supposed to be there yet anyway. Abby had tried to convince the higher-ups to let her go, but without him there, she was the only one trusted to finish the work. Gibbs had spoken. Or Vance. He wasn't really sure. There was an agreement in place stating that Ziva had to obey all traffic laws and not attempt to work her way closer to the vehicular manslaughter charges everyone still suspected were at some point in her future.
He would be eternally grateful to the whatever doctor had made the executive decision for him to leave with all sorts of medicinal cocktails. Though he didn't really intend to take them once he was home, they made the drive much less stressful. Ziva kept up a distracting chatter about all that they had been doing to find Dearing. Mcgee's job had been taken over by Abby once Tony had proven exactly how inept he was when it came to the complicated computer business. That part was almost done. It was down to the finally trappings and legwork.
Looked like Gibbs would be getting his wish. He would more than likely go down in history as the one who found and dealt with Harper Dearing. Not that the public would ever know that. But Gibbs would be more than satisfied being the only one who ever knew if he could work out a way to keep it that private. Glory had never been his thing.
Ziva did make an extraordinary attempt to get him home safely. The fuzz inducing meds told him that she did anyway. That was what really counted. She could have run over small children and furry animals for all he knew. She stayed with him awhile and made sure he had what he needed. Then he had found out that she intended to stay until someone else arrived. At that point, for both their sanity, he kicked her out. When enticed, Ziva could hover just as badly as Abby. Something had to give or he'd be forced to try and stop her, which of course wouldn't end well for himself. By some good grace, he convinced her to believe that he could handle himself for the time being. Secretly he suspected she really wanted to return to the Dearing action but no matter what made her go along with his decision, he'd take it.
Staring at the door and walls of his apartment was less intriguing than the hospital had been. Less effective too, as nobody was walking about casting shadows. Still, the freedom was nice. The solitude hadn't lasted very long, probably the exact amount of time it took for Ziva to make it back to the temporary headquarters, everyone else to figure out he was alone, and a return trip to be made. He was an adult. Maybe they had forgotten. Then again, he'd been staring at his door the entire time since his return so who was he to judge their motives?
The ringing bell didn't surprise him. Subconsciously, he must have always known they'd never actually leave him alone. The complete lack of shock at who stood on the other side was comforting. "What are you doing here?" Abby wasn't going for the happy go lucky view of the world at the moment. "We talked about normal. Staying with you was at the hospital. And it used to be here too. So I'm going to stay. Unless you don't want me to. Plus, you probably shouldn't be alone for awhile anyway. You get loopy on drugs."
He could accept that. Except for the absurd notion that she'd leave if he didn't want her there. None the less, he was more than fine with it. Honestly, he wasn't totally sure he would be good at being in his apartment alone. Not the first night at least. In the hospital he had constantly been surrounded by people. Strangers or not, you got used to it, the movement and constant noise of other humans coexisting with you. If she hadn't have shown up he hated to admit that he probably would have ended up calling her. Didn't hurt that he genuinely wanted her there either. But then again, he usually always wanted her there.
Mcgee moved out front of the door to let her in. Before very long, she was bouncing around arranging her things wherever she deemed they needed to go. Without warning her, before he could stop himself, he yielded to her own personal style of fix-all and grabbed her into hug. "Thank You, Abby." He meant it to be all encompassing, to thank her for being there, that night and all the times before, for not leaving him, for being herself. Hopefully she knew. "Thank you, Tim." "For what?" "For not dying." It was probably the most sincere thing she'd ever said to him. Her level of seriousness rattled him.
Aside from the recent injuries and whole terrorist attack thing, their night was relatively normal. They ordered dinner and fought about the same stupid things they had been fighting about for years. Normal was a wondrous experience. Especially when you thought nothing would ever be normal again. Mcgee was still on his early to sleep schedule so he had wandered off to bed long before he normally would have. A few hours later he found himself awake again. Something wasn't right. Something beyond what he already could confirm wasn't currently right in their lives.
Abby had insisted she wasn't tired. She had said that she was going to watch something on his computer. When he had left, she had been okay. He had no reason to assume it still held true. Then he had heard her. Once he made it to the living room he couldn't get her to wake up fast enough. Of course she was hiding it from them all. It wasn't like she actually slept much normally. This was different, beyond the usual issues. He was pretty sure he never remembered her sobbing in her sleep. After he had shaken her awake she watched him guiltily. He didn't need to deal with the mess she had become. Not when he was supposed to be healing himself. "When's the last time you actually slept?" Her shrug was telling. At least she didn't try to deny what he'd seen. "Come lay down." There was no fighting just acceptance.
It was dark and quiet. The exact opposite of that now infamous day which had been far too bright and loud. They had started out on opposite sides of the bed. Then she had begun inching over. When she finally made it to him, she was still shaking. "Who else knows?" "Nobody. There's so much going on, nobody needs anything else to worry about. I'm fine." She was trying to kill him. Doing a pretty good job of it actually. He had never been able to stand it when she was crying.
"Abby, you don't have to show it outside to be hurt inside. You can drop the act. I know you're not okay. I think I have for awhile and I'd rather you told me what's really going on instead of torturing yourself. There's nothing wrong with that. We were all there. You can't have come out of that perfectly fine. I can't read you mind this time. What's inside your head?"
The half worries that she wouldn't answer him quickly dissipated. "All of a sudden I just feel so afraid. I don't even know what I'm scared of most of the time. Something just takes over and I can't do anything about it. I don't know whether I'm dreaming or remembering while I'm asleep. I don't want what I'm seeing to be real… I don't want to remember it. I don't ever want to remember. You're all gone… I'm so alone. I can't ever do that again. And I can't stop seeing you lying there… Not just when I'm asleep... I try everything but you never wake up. I thought you were dead… I can't stop seeing you dead. Tim, I'm sorry. I am so sorry."
He decided to interrupt her before her current acceleration got to a place where he couldn't stop her, had to surrender her to her own thoughts. "Hey, you don't have anything to be sorry for Abby. I'm okay and Dearing is the only one who gets to be sorry. Gibbs will make sure that he is." He doubted she was really listening to him. But she did slow down a bit. There was nothing he could do erase what was going on in her mind. If there was he'd have done it in a heartbeat.
When she started back up again, her voice still had the distant quality that he now associated with things only she could see. "Do you have any idea how devastating it was to think I was never going to see you again? That you were never coming back? I can't do this without you anymore." Flashes of stalkers and guns pointed at her head popped into mind. Now he could add the imagined vision of her in the lab post bomb, minus Gibbs. Not exactly pleasant, more bloodcurdling.
"I know exactly what that feels like. When I woke up. I thought everyone else was there. But not you. You were the only one I cared about seeing and I thought you were gone. That maybe you couldn't be there. It's always been like that Abs. I look for you first. I can't imagine thinking what you did for hours or days, because a few seconds almost ended me." The quiet took back over the room. There was nothing else he could do except keep holding on until the last of the tears finally fell away. How did you fight against what you couldn't see?
An hour after they had finally managed to fall asleep, they were wrenched back awake by the repeated ringing of their cell phones. She was quicker to respond. Abby had wrestled Mcgee's off the charger to answer before he could even move. It was the call they had all been waiting for. Tony did not waste time. "Gibbs found Dearing."
Such a short message yet it was almost over. It wasn't really relief that came from knowing he had been found. Instead, it was something more akin to resolution. The live fire round of their game was almost complete, the falling action. They had always known that he would, eventually, track him down. Their boss didn't leave any stone unturned when he was on a war path. Dearing should have known that he would never be able to hide. He had been taken by the fatal flaw of all those who went up against Gibbs, they never understood that they shouldn't even start.