Sorry for the Long period between updates. I've had the flu, Christmas stuff, and then my Internet went down. It's still not totally up and I'm having to do this at the library, so I probably won't be able to update till closer to New Year's. Sorry about that. But enjoy this part and have a very Merry Christmas!

Chapter 11: Team

Ziva cautiously let herself in the front door of Gibbs' home and looked warily around. "Gibbs?" There was no answer and she looked over at the basement door. She doubted he could have gotten down the stairs with his injury, but knowing him he was stubborn enough to try. Rolling her eyes, she walked across the room and reached for the knob, then pulled it open.

Sure enough, he was seated with his bad knee propped up on a sawhorse, sanding the side of the cabin-piece for all he was worth. The frenetic motion had stirred up a cloud of sawdust, causing him to stop and cough. When he was finished she leaned over the rail. "Are you all right?"

He looked up with a start, then groaned. "What are you doing here?"

She shrugged. "I wanted to see how you were doing," she answered honestly. He rolled his eyes.

"Well, now you've seen."

"That's not quite what I meant." She carefully eased her way down the stairs and then walked over to him. "I heard about what happened," she offered hesitantly.

Gibbs gave a bitter chuckle. "I'm sure you're not the only one."

Ziva tilted her head slightly. "If you're waiting for me to give you some sort of comforting platypus, you are going to be waiting a while."

He chuckled sincerely this time, and gave her a sideling glance. "Comforting platypus?" he repeated.

"You know. Those stupid things people tell each other when something bad happens because they want to comfort them, but what they are really thinking is that the person is the filling in a crap sandwich. And what they do say never comforts them anyway. 'Things happen for a reason.' 'There's always tomorrow.'" Ziva rolled her eyes. "Platypuses."

"Platitudes, Ziva," Gibbs corrected gently. "And so what you're telling me is that right now I'm the filling in a crap sandwich?"

Ziva blushed. "I didn't mean you personally..." she began, but he just shook his head.

"Don't worry about it."

"Look," she began. "It's a setback, but..."

"I thought you weren't going to give me any platitudes."

"Well, what am I supposed to say?" she cried in exasperation.

"How should I know? You're the one who came to me, remember?" he fired back. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know!" Ziva sighed. "I just thought that maybe...maybe I could do something."

"Such as?"

"Such as..." She bit her lip. "Such as what you did for me the day of the shooting. You were...you were there for me." She looked down at her feet. "And I never thanked you. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," he replied automatically. "It's..."

"Stop!" Ziva's yell caught them both off guard. "I don't want to hear about weakness. I'm not weak, okay? I am not weak!"

There was a moment of stunned silence and Ziva's mouth fell open, unable to believe what she had just done.

"Talk to me," Gibbs said quietly. Ziva looked at him in disbelief. "Talk to me," he said, his voice slightly louder.

Ziva slowly sat down on a second sawhorse, struggling to form the words. Finally, she said, "I made a mistake my first week of training with Mossad. I did not understand something, and so I asked a teammate for clarification. My father was supervising the class."

She took a deep breath. "When it was over, he lectured me for over an hour. He said that I could not allow myself to rely on anyone if I wanted to work as a Federal Agent, because there was nobody you could really count on. That only weak people relied on others to help them. At first I did not believe him." Her eyes drifted to a section of concrete to her right. "Then I heard Ari talking to you in your basement."

She looked back at Gibbs. "When I came to the US, I promised myself I would never rely on anyone again. I wouldn't show weakness. I wouldn't ask for help." Her voice shook. "I broke that one, didn't I?"

Gibbs bit his lip. "That phone call in Mexico last year." She nodded.

"Hardest thing I ever did. Until now." She blinked back tears. "Now all I'm ever doing is asking people for help."

"Oh, Ziva." Gibbs reached out his arms. "Come here." She came forward and he pulled her into a gentle hug, holding her for several seconds before drawing back.

"Remember what I told you about the rules when you first got here?" he asked softly.

She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You said there were fifty."

He nodded. "Rule 51: Never be afraid to ask for help." He hugged her again. "Never be afraid to ask for help."

He held her for several seconds before she finally pulled away, furiously brushing the tears back. Her eyes fell upon his injured knee. There was a new brace on, thicker than what he'd worn to physical therapy, along with several layers of white bandages. It looked almost as bad as when he'd first been shot.

Gibbs followed her gaze. "I really did it to myself this time, didn't I?" he tried to joke.

"You don't know that," she said quickly.

He gave her a rueful smile. "You're giving me a platypus."

She nodded. "All right, then. Rule 51."

Their eyes locked and he took a deep breath. "Ziva, I may not be coming back."

"Is that what the doctor told you?" she asked.

"Not in as many words." He sighed. "But the one after Kuwait did."

Ziva's eyes widened slightly. "And he was wrong."

Gibbs shook his head. "Ziva, I half-killed myself to get myself back into condition for the medical clearance the first time. And that was when I was fifteen years younger, didn't' have a setback like this, and was in a better position when I started."

"And when you didn't have the news about Amy not being able to return," Ziva added quietly. Gibbs stared at her for a second, then slowly nodded.

"I'm scared, Ziva." He swallowed hard. "I'm really scared."

Ziva walked over to him and leaned over, holding him in a tight hug. "Me too," she whispered honestly. "Me, too."

0

"I thought the Director gave you a curfew."

Tony looked up to see Abby leaning on the door jam. He smiled wryly. "Rule 18."

"Easier to ask forgiveness than permission." She grinned before walking over to sit on his desk. "Another MOAS?"

He shot her a look. "In the Cold Cases?"

Abby smiled gently and shook her head. "I meant with why you've been working all these hours." She cocked her head. "You going to tell me now, or do I have to get you drunk, first?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Nice try, but you already told me what happens when you start talking about your MOAS, so I think I'll pass."

"Yeah, but I never told you about what happens when you don't talk about it."

Tony snorted. "Great."

"I'll tell you what." She looked him in the eye. "I'll go first. And if you don't think it's as bad as yours, I won't bring it up again."

Tony sat back and folded his arms over his chest. "Deal."

"Three years ago, I should have been killed instead of Kate."

There was such matter-of-factness in her voice that Tony dropped his arms to his sides.

"It's true. Ari developed a fixation on Kate when he took her prisoner in Autopsy. That's why he killed her. But I was the one who was supposed to take the evidence down that day."

She looked down at her feet. "I had a nightmare about a month before Ari took everyone hostage where I'd been cut open on the Autopsy table. Freaked me out so bad I wouldn't go downstairs."

Tony stood up and moved so that he was leaning against the desk next to her. "I never knew that," he said quietly.

Abby chuckled mirthlessly. "I felt so stupid about it I didn't tell anyone, other than Gibbs and Ducky because I had to. I was just going to get Gibbs to take it down, but he was meeting with the Director, so I had to tell Kate." Her voice shook slightly. "After she died, I had that nightmare for almost a month."

Tony stared straight ahead. "I wanted to sleep in," he said finally. "We'd worked four all-nighters in a row the days before the shooting and I figured I'd earned it. All we were going to be doing the next day was paperwork — what was a couple extra hours of sleep, right?"

His voice was barely audible. "That day in the hospital waiting room I prayed for the first time in years. Told God I'd work as hard as I could to never be late or try and skip out early again if He'd just let Ziva, Gibbs, and McGee live." His voice broke. "I'd even work all the overtime without saying anything if they'd just live. If I could just have one more chance."

Abby didn't say anything for several minutes. Finally she replied, "A couple months after Kate died, my mom and I got into a fight. We both said some stuff and then I finally blurted out that she was lucky to still have me, because I shouldn't even be alive anymore. I had to tell her the whole story, and when I was done she asked me I remembered a paper on death I'd done in Religion class in grade school."

She sighed. "I'd said that it didn't matter what happened — the day and time we'd die was already planned. And when it was your time it didn't matter what you did — you could be home and a roof would fall in. But you'd never go before that. And that was why things happened like Gibbs living through the ship explosion, and everyone here — it wasn't their time."

Tony snorted. "But like you said, Abby, it wasn't their time. And obviously, it wasn't my time, because I'm still here." His voice was wry and sarcastic and he stared at a point on the wall. "That doesn't mean I still shouldn't have been there."

Abby stared at him for a long moment, then stood up. "There's something you need to see in my lab." Without waiting for an answer, she turned and left the room. Tony hesitated, then followed her.

When they arrived downstairs, Abby went straight over to her computer. "I had to do a virtual re-creation of the shooting for the investigators, based on the security tapes," she explained, clicking on a screen. Tony started to back away.

"I don't think I want to watch this, Abby," he began, but she quickly grabbed his arm.

"Tony, trust me, this is something you need to know."

He drew a ragged breath. "Okay."

"Other than the first few people hit, most of Martak's victims that were hit at their desks were standing, probably reacting to the initial gunfire. This is what happened when Martak shot Robyn Johnson at the photocopier." Tony watched silently as the shooter fired from next to the row of Intelligence desks, wincing as the figure representing Robyn crumpled to the floor. A pair of red trajectory lines tracing the bullet's path appeared onscreen and Tony swallowed."

"All right. What's your point?"

"Watch what happens when I put you into it." She typed a few keys and another figure appeared, seated at Tony's desk. "Now you would have been seated during the initial shots."

Onscreen the figure of Tony jumped at the sound, then quickly stood as the shooter whipped around and fired towards the agent at the photocopier — and Tony's head. Tony felt his legs buckle and he groped for the chair behind him. Abby froze the image with the trajectory lines, showing the bullet passing through the center of Tony's skull. Then she turned to face him.

"If you'd been here the day of the shooting, you'd be dead."

Tony's body shook convulsively with sobs and he couldn't answer. He didn't think he could even breathe. His eyes remained riveted on the screen in front of him as his torso toppled forward.

"I've got you." Abby grabbed him under the arms and lowered him into a kneeling position, hugging him tightly against herself. "You were where you were supposed to be, Tony," she whispered, gently stroking his hair. "You were where you were supposed to be."