Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Gibbs stood in the middle of the room, staring at the blood on his hands and wondering what he could've done differently, what he should have done that would have spared Leon from being shot so many times at close range. It was his fault wasn't it? Or was it Jenny's fault? This whole mess stemmed from her mistake, a mistake that could have been avoided if she had just spoken with him! He shook his head, he couldn't blame Jenny for Vance's actions or his own, and quite frankly it was cowardly to blame her for everything that had happened. He had made his own decisions, just like she had. A ghost of a smile graced his lips as the next thought came to his mind. I had to do what was best for me. He was rudely shaken from his reverie by Mike, who slapped him sharply on the back of the head.

"Wash your hands Probie; wearing his blood isn't going to improve his chances."

Gibbs nodded absently and moved to the long forgotten bowl of water by where Jenny's bed had been and began to rinse away the blood that was threatening to stain his hands. The sponge soaked up the blood and the water turned red accusingly, as if it was telling him that this could have all been avoided if he had just kept his gun in his hands while he had waited for Svetlana to meet him at Jenny's house. His old mentor took his elbow when he had finished and led him over to the bed that must've been brought in for Franks while he wasn't paying attention.

"Sit." Gibbs did as he was instructed and stared at the spot on the floor where Leon had laid, his blood pooling around him. "Don't look at it Probie." Jethro obediently diverted his gaze, looking at the hole in the wall from Svetlana's bullet, the one that had only just missed Jenny when he had grappled with her, pulling the gun up just in time. Guilt pervaded every cell in his body and he felt weighed down by it, the reminders were all around him and he felt choked. Any minute he expected to hear Kate's soft voice in his ear, whispering that it was his fault and that maybe, to save everyone else he should just kill himself.

*Whack!* Gibbs head shot forward as Mike slapped his head, this time with the hand that had the cast on, making a loud and satisfying clunk.

"Snap out of it probie! Wallowing in guilt and self pity is for the weak, and you are not weak." Mike told him off forcefully, hoping to pull him out of the funk he had dropped in to. "Pull yourself together; you've got work to do!" Gibbs nodded and flipped open his 'borrowed' phone.

"Special Agent Tony-"

"DiNozzo!"

"Yes Boss?"

"Tell Ducky to come to Bethesda, I need him to pick up a body, then take McGee, Ziva and Palmer to the Director's house, there are two bodies there that need to be taken back to NCIS, preferably before the press get all over it. Ziva can stay there; I'll need someone to look after the house until the door can be replaced… and maybe a window." Gibbs added thoughtfully, wondering just how much damage they had actually done to the house since they hadn't exactly stayed to find out. "Oh and DiNozzo, grab me a jacket from mine." He hung up before Tony could ask any questions and sighed. Mike glanced around the room and then stood up.

"Come on, we'll get some fresh air." Gibbs stood and they walked out of the room, both glaring at the ineffective security detail posted outside the door as they passed them and then they walked through the corridors to the entrance. Gibbs moved swiftly in the darkness over to Leon's car and opened one of the rear passenger doors, reaching inside to pull something out. "You left something in there?"

Gibbs nodded and then lifted the travel bag that he had packed for Jenny out of the car and returned to stand by Mike's side. They inhaled the crisp, cool air for a while and stood watching the twinkling stars and the occasional aeroplane fly overhead, neither bothering to keep track of the passage of time. Eventually, Mike shivered as the chill night air reached him through his thin medical gown and Gibbs decided to take him back inside.

"I'm not going back in until you feel better, Probie."

"Ducky will go straight to your room; I need to go wait for him there." Gibbs reasoned and Mike reluctantly agreed, so they slowly wandered back to the room to wait for news about Jenny and Leon, and for Ducky to join them. Gibbs resisted the urge to kick Svetlana's body as they re-entered the room, the action being too disrespectful for even him, but the thought made him feel better.

----

Ducky walked through the hospital, smiling at the doctors and nurses that he passed on the way, recognising some of them from his other visits. He walked apprehensively towards the security detail; nervous about whom he was here to collect. Tony hadn't told him what had happened and he suspected that Jethro hadn't divulged that information to him. He took a deep breath to try and steel himself for what was to come and walked through the door, gasping in shock as he took in the scene. Blood was all over the floor in the middle of the room and smeared across to where he assumed the person had been lifted and taken away. A blonde female lay just to the side, her head at an odd angle and her eyes open wide and unseeing. Neither Jennifer nor Vance was anywhere to be seen. He turned to the only people in the room and walked quickly to them, taking in the blood soaked sleeves of the jacket that his friend was wearing and the cast on Franks' hand that hadn't been there the last time he had been here.

"Jennifer?" He asked Jethro, almost afraid to hear the answer. Gibbs looked down at his shirt and shook his head awkwardly, in what Ducky could only assume was guilty contentment.

"Leon." Ducky was shocked to say the least, the Assistant Director had never really been what he would describe as a friend, in fact, how he had acted in the small amount of time that he had been here had failed to endear him to the ME. He knew he shouldn't have judged him before he had gotten to know him, but he couldn't see the man putting himself in the firing line for someone else. "What happened here, Jethro?"

Ducky listened intently as Jethro and Mike each told their versions of the story, and he was stunned to hear about all of the damage the dead woman had caused before they had managed to kill her. He wasn't surprised to hear about her last stand and how capable she had become, people with nothing to lose and only one goal tended to use everything they had in them to try to complete their objective. This sometimes gave the appearance of super-human strength and it had obviously thrown them off.

"I'll try and find out what is going on, you just stay here." Ducky put his medical bag down and then walked swiftly out of the room and over to the nurses' station. She wasn't busy with anyone else so he walked straight up to her and introduced himself. "Hello my dear, I'm Dr. Donald Mallard. I'd like to speak to the doctor that is looking after Leon Vance and Jennifer Shepard." The nurse smiled at him and checked the computer to see which doctor was with which patient.

"Both patients share the same doctor; however he is in surgery at the moment. I'm afraid it may take some time before he is done but I'm sure he will come straight to you once he's out." Ducky nodded his thanks and then thought of something else.

"Could I request a gurney and a clean up in the Directors room? There is rather a lot of blood on the floor…"

"Of course Dr. Mallard, I'll put in the call right away."

"Thank you." Ducky walked back to Jethro and Mike and told them that he couldn't get any information until the patients were out of surgery, then he walked over to the body of the blonde female, who he assumed to be the Svetlana woman that Tony had told him of. She was beautiful, and apparently she was passionate about her work, given that she had taken on a new identity and become a successful business woman in just a few years. It was a shame that she had decided to throw away her life on a doomed crusade for revenge. He found it worrying that she had come to this; he could see now how much like Jennifer she was and he found it ironic that she should be hunting someone she resembled so much in personality. Jennifer had gotten her man. If Svetlana had succeeded, would she have carried on with her business under her new name like Jennifer had after Rene? Or would she have disappeared again? They would never know now, and he couldn't help but be glad.

A cleaner walked in and started to wash the blood off the floor and sanitise it and a nurse appeared at the door with a gurney. He thanked her for it and brought it next to the body, and then he lowered it to the ground and unzipped the body bag on top of it. He pulled his medical bag closer to him and then reached inside it for his liver probe. He pushed it in to her body and read the digital temperature that appeared and then worked out her time of death before removing the instrument and cleaning it down. It was merely a formality since he doubted anyone would care when she died, but he knew he needed to do it. You can't pick and choose your dead; so you treat them all with respect. He rearranged Svetlana's body and then looked up at Jethro.

"Could you help me get her in the bag, please?"

"With pleasure."

"Don't drop her, Jethro." Ducky admonished gently, hoping that the thought hadn't crossed his mind, and then sighing when Jethro seemed to lose his enthusiasm for helping when he heard him. They lifted her body and quickly put her in the bag, zipping it up and pulling the gurney back to standing position.

"I'll get her to autopsy as soon as Mr Palmer returns with the van."

"I don't care what you do with her, Duck; just get her out of my sight." Ducky shared an exasperated look with Mike and then looked at his phone to see if he had any of those text messages that Jimmy sometimes sends him. His inbox said he had one new message so he opened it up and rolled his eyes. It was in that text language that the young people seemed to like using nowadays and he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Gt d bods 2 autop. Bringin van 2u. Cya l8r" Ducky looked at the message in dismay and tried to decipher it by saying it out loud to himself, giving up after identifying 'bodies' and 'bringing'. He looked at his companions and realised his chances of getting them to read it to him where slim so he walked out in to the corridor to ask one of the young nurses if they could help him. He walked up to the lady he had spoken with earlier.

"Hello again my dear. I have a rather embarrassing problem. My assistant sent me a message but I can't read it. I was wondering if you could understand it any better than I." The young lady smiled at him and took the phone to look at the message.

"It says; 'got the bodies to autopsy. Bringing the van to you. See you later.'" She handed him back his phone and he chuckled in relief.

"I don't know why he didn't just say that. Thank you for your time."

"It's quite alright, Dr. Mallard." Ducky turned to go back in to the room when he saw Tony disappear in to it with a plastic bag. He shook his head a little and started towards the door when some doctors and nurses rounded the corner, wheeling a bed through the corridor to Mike and Jennifer's room. He apprehensively watched as they entered, wondering which had come out of surgery. He didn't wonder long as he saw Jethro rush over to the bed and touch the occupant. Obviously it was Jennifer. He had just decided to give them a moment before joining them when he heard a commotion in the waiting room.

-

Gibbs glanced up as he heard someone walk through the door. He looked up and saw Tony holding up a plastic bag and giving him a small smile as he looked around the room for Jenny, only to see Mike, Gibbs and a gurney. He saw Tony shoot a worried look between it and him and Gibbs decided to set him straight.

"Jenny and Leon are in surgery, that-" he indicated the body bag with a dismissive wave of his hand "-is Svetlana."

"Got it boss. Brought you a clean suit, I thought just picking up a jacket would throw off your colour coordination." He grinned cheekily and held out the bag. Gibbs snatched it from his hands and gave him a mock-glare, and then put the bag on the bed, thinking he may as well get changed when Jenny and Leon got back from surgery. There was no way he was going to be absent when the doctor came by; he wanted to speak with him.

Jethro looked up quickly as he heard a bed being pushed in to the room. The red hair splayed across the pillows told him that it was Jenny, and while Tony dodged out of the way by going to stand by the gurney, he stood allowing them to place the bed back where it had been, before rushing over to it to touch her. He calmed instantly, relief flooding his body when he felt the warm skin of her hand under his finger tips and he felt light headed. He had been thinking the worst since she had been taken to surgery, but he should've known that she would survive; she was too stubborn to die. He looked at the doctor, who smiled at him.

"Miss Shepard is going to be fine. We repaired the wound in her stomach and re-stitched it. Hopefully she will be staying still from now on though; otherwise we will be unnecessarily creating more scar tissue by sewing her up time after time."

"Oh she'll be staying still, I can guarantee you that." He grinned happily and then sobered as he thought about Leon. He turned to the doctor again and straightened to speak to him eye to eye. "Leon Vance?" The doctor looked down for a second and in that moment Jethro's stomach plummeted, he knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Vance didn't survive. The damage the bullets did to his lung and to his arteries was too extensive and severe to repair. We were only just able to bring him back a few times after he crashed on the table and his heart gave out after arresting for the third time. I'm very sorry. Is there a next of kin that needs to be informed?"

"He has a wife… and two children over in San Diego."Gibbs swallowed hard at the thought of informing Leon's wife and children that he was dead. That they would never see him again and he wouldn't ever be coming home. He felt the resurgence of guilt in his chest and he sat down heavily on to the edge of Jenny's bed. Leon had died to save them, he was so proud of him to have come so far, from the awkward geek to the competent investigator and leader, willing to die for his Agents. Gibbs shook his head slowly; he was disgusted with himself because all he could think about was how glad he was that Jenny hadn't left him. Ducky walked in a few moments later.

"The doctor told me. How are you Jethro?" Gibbs could only shrug and shake his head. "Well I didn't want to tell you but the press is congregating in the waiting room, apparently someone told them about the gun shots and that we were here. What do you want to do?"

"Give them a story." Jethro quickly changed his clothes to the blood free ones that Tony had brought him and squared his shoulders, walking out the door and down the corridor towards the rabble of reporters in the waiting room, hungry for information. He would give Leon the best send off he could, he owed him that at least.