Chapter 1: Zombie

That Empty Feeling of Being Full

AN: This story requires some explanation. As it turns out, I tend to like to write stories that people wouldn't chose to read at first glance; the supernatural genre, for one. Though, if you chose not to read this story, you will be missing out. This story is much the same. First of all, only three canon characters show up, in context anyway. Secondly, most of the cast of this story are of my own creation. I like them; however, you are entitled to your own opinion. If you haven't been deterred already, then I will give a few details that you need to know beforehand, and then we will get to the main feature.

The setting is about ten years into the future. McGee is the main character. He now has his own team, consisting of three new characters, and he sits in Gibbs' old desk. Ziva also has her own team, consisting of three new characters, one of which is added at the beginning of the story, and they are situated in the space that E.J.'s team resided, for however short a period. Now this is the sad part, but don't fret, by the end, I hope to work you through it; both Gibbs and Ducky have died years prior to the beginning of this story. Tony and Abby have moved on and moved away. Palmer is still around as the resident M.E.

Also, I named the chapters after songs which I think are appropriate. If you chose to listen to them while reading, it may enhance the experience, but it is not necessary.

This story is about learning how to let go of the past and embrace the here and now; for, really, what else do we really have.

Chapter One: Zombie

Zombie – The Cranberries

You can't hold onto the past forever
But the past can hold onto you as long as it wants to.

McGee

Tim McGee had a feeling that Ziva was about to lose it.

It was her third probie in a month. The director had recently decided that it was time for her to have a fourth person on her team and had been assigning them like wildfire. The first two had only lasted a week before being scared off—the second one, a former Marine, almost twice Ziva's size, had actually cried. But then again, Ziva had never been good with new people.

Tim sat at his desk with his hands behind his head, trying not to laugh as Ziva threatened the new kid with her letter opener. Angela de Luca—a.k.a. Angel—was not as good at holding in a snicker. She sat on the shelf beside him twirling a pencil between her fingers. Angel was tall, with long curly blonde hair, and had a thing about wearing pant suits. Ziva turned around and narrowed her eyes at Angel from where she stood by the windows. Without looking, Tim reached up and gave his Senior Field Agent a hard headslap.

"Sorry, Boss," she said, rubbing at the back of her head.

"What part of 'don't apologize' do you still not understand?" he said, giving her an exasperated look.

"Right. Won't happen again."

"You're damn straight. Don't you have paperwork to do?"

"Finished it last night." She scratched her nose with the tip of the pencil.

Tim narrowed his eyes. "I thought you went home before I did?"

"I did. Couldn't sleep."

"Uh huh." Tim turned to his computer, giving Ziva one last glance. She appeared to have calmed down slightly, the brand new addition to her team apparently having come to his senses and apologized for calling her ma'am. Poor kid. Looked like he was straight out of college.

After a minute, Tim turned back to Angel. "Hey," he said forcefully.

"Yeah, Boss?" she smiled.

"Go away."

She jumped up quickly and went back to her own desk—right where Tim used to sit and Tony before him. "Have you heard from Matt or Shauna?" Angel called.

Tim didn't look up. "They still have twenty minutes before the day starts."

"Sure, sure," she said, putting her feet up on the desk.

Tim glared at her until they fell back to the floor and her hands went to the keyboard. He sighed and ran his hand thought his hair. Even after eight years with Angel, she was still a pain in the ass. The higher up in the ranks she got, the more obnoxious she became. An ex-Sacramento cop, she joined NCIS for the guns and the babes—as in girl babes. At first, Tony thought it was hot, but he soon figured out that she was just more competition for him to deal with. Gibbs, of course, thought it was hilarious that she was basically a female version of Tony, and that was one of the reasons he assigned her to his team when Ziva got her promotion.

It was two years after Angel joined up that Gibbs took a bullet to the chest. It was nothing like the movies, there was no hail of gunfire, no slow-motion exchange of bullets, just some stupid kid who didn't know when to back down. He bled out very quickly—there was no time to say goodbye. That day had haunted Tim for years after the fact. It wasn't long after that that Ducky went, leaving Palmer with his title and a broken heart. At least he went peacefully.

A loud slap brought Tim out of his reverie. He looked up to see that Angel had wandered off near the elevators. She was trying to look hurt as Maxine Forrester, junior agent on Ziva's team, stalked over to her desk in the area on the other side of the wall behind Tim, where E. J. Barret's team used to reside, shaking her dark Navajo hair and angrily began slamming things around.

Ziva was nowhere to be found, thank God. The first and last time Angel had tried to hit on her had resulted in a broken rib and a bruised ego. Tim stood up and pointed at Angel and then to her desk. She bowed her head and lumbered back over.

Right at that moment, the elevator dinged and a tall woman with long red hair in a high ponytail and cowboy boots stepped out of the elevator. Sarah Winchester, Senior Field Agent on Ziva's team, and basically Scarlett O'Hara with a gun. She looked scary happy, as usual. She waved to Tim as he sat back down and went over to place her backpack on the ground and let her curls out of the band.

"Hey, Maxie. What's wrong?" she asked her coworker with that Texan twang of hers, when she saw Maxine seething in front of her computer.

"Angel," she growled, giving said agent a glare of death.

Angel, at least, had the common decency not to look up.

Tim rolled his eyes and focused back on his computer, when his phone rang. "McGee," he answered. Dispatch gave him a location. "We'll be right there."

Tim stood. "Dead Petty Officer at Rock Creek Park. Call Shauna and Matt. I'm not gonna wait long."

Angel was tripping over herself the second his phone hit the base. She pulled out her cell and hit speed dial, hightailing it to the elevator. Tim took his time, and went for the stairs instead. Ziva rushed past him with the new kid in tow, he had his head down and was looking sheepish.

Remind you of anyone? Said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Tony.

"Grab your gear!" he heard Ziva yell as he opened the door to the stairs, followed by shuffling and a loud "Umph!" likely as something was shoved into the probie's stomach. Maxine had clearly found a way to take out her anger about Angel.

Tim smiled as he descended. He wondered if this one could hack it better than his predecessors. Ziva had had the same team all eight years after she moved to Paris, and the director seemed to think that now would be a good idea to change it up. Tim was starting to think that Vance was just doing it for the kick of it. In a team of only women, every single one of the new additions had been men.

Poor, poor kid.

His team was already assembled beside a crime scene van. Angel and Matt Jericho were making a bet on how long Ziva's new Probie would make it before he cried: two hours or three hours. Matt was a former CIA operative who specialized in Afghanistan, that Tony added to the team after Gibbs passed. He was Pakistani, but a third generation American citizen raised in Brooklyn. He was the chameleon of the team and was great at undercover work, but was also very quiet and broody and bad a dealing with personal feelings, typically acting out of anger rather than dealing with problems through words.

Shauna St. Clair was grinning at them as she loaded their bags into the back of the van. She was from Arizona, and had dark brown hair and a fair complexion and hated the cold. She always complained about how she missed the desert, but Tim could tell that she liked her job. She'd joined the team almost three years ago, when Tony and Abby took their permanent vacation, and she was perpetually putting up with Angel's crap. She was always willing to learn, and that was why Tim liked her.

Tim crept up on them. "Save it for the ride home."

Shauna jumped and Angel grinned. "In the back, Probie!"

Matt rolled his eyes and climbed into the far side of the van followed by Angel and then Tim.

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to let me sit up there just once," Shauna complained, crawling into the back.

"Yeah, but you'd feel really bad if it did."

The drive was uneventful. Angel and Matt bickered, as usual, and only a couple of bruises were acquired on Shauna's part when Matt had to stop short at a street light and once on a tight curve that he took too fast.

It gave Tim some time to drift off in thought. It was four years ago that Ziva requested her team be reassigned back to D.C. when she was given custody of her newly orphaned thirteen-year-old relative, Natanael—her cousin's child. She'd wanted him to have a stable life, and seeing as she was his only living relative, she figured D.C. would be the best place for him to grow up, where if he couldn't be with his family, he could at least be around her found family. Natanael didn't speak for three months after she brought him back, having witnessed his parents' deaths. He'd had problems, but the now seventeen-year-old was happy and prepping to go to college. He had more opportunities here than in Israel, and Ziva was happy for him. She loved him like her own, even though they had only met once before the tragedy.

It was three years before now, however, that the most unexpected thing had happened. Both Tony and Abby decided to go for someone their own age, and eloped in Vegas. Everyone was shocked when they came back with matching black diamond rings on their fingers and tattoos of each other's names. They just suddenly realized that they were exactly what the other needed. Someone who liked what they did, with equally spontaneous natures. Apparently, according to them, that was what love was. They were both nearing fifty and wanted something familiar. Then they went to Hawaii on their honeymoon and never left; they got themselves transferred to the NCIS office at Pearl Harbor, leaving Tim to take care of Angel and Matt as team leader.

Tim's went back to the road when he started to see cops with handheld stop signs and barricades. He showed his badge and rolled up to the new crime scene. They all got out of the truck and Tim strode to the yellow tape, leaving his team to get the equipment.

Palmer was already there. "Hey, Tim," he called, raising his hand as he got out of his own truck. He normally didn't come alone, but his assistant had recently quit and he was still looking for a replacement. "I'll just get the body and go. Ziva's got one on the other side of the park."

"Really?" Tim asked as they met by the crime scene tape.

"Yeah," Palmer held up the tape for Tim, but dropped it right in front of Angel's face. "Weird, huh?"

"Coincidence."

"But we don't believe in coincidences, do we, Boss?" Angel said, coming up behind them camera in hand.

"Nope."

He surveyed the scene; the victim was lying on the ground, curled inward on her left side. Her frizzy black braids were clogged with dirt and leaves. She had obviously been there a while. Her face and arms were also covered in grime and there were unusual-looking rips in the tight jeans that she wore, as well as the low cut top. Party clothes, but they looked like they had been worn for a couple of days before she died.

Angel took a few photographs from different angles and then Palmer turned the girl on her back. "She's way past rigor mortis," he said. He pulled out his liver probe. "More than a day, but less than a week. Might have been here the whole time, but nobody noticed her." He pointed at her neck, where two distinct purple handprints were visible. "Looks like she was strangled." He looked up at Tim. "How was she identified?"

"Local cop ran her prints with a handheld. Petty Officer Mary Stevenson, stationed at Norfold, administration. Cops said nothing else was disturbed."

"Good."

Matt and Shauna showed up as Palmer went to insert the probe. Palmer paused in his task. "What is it, Doctor?" Matt asked.

Palmer lifted the shirt completely off the victim's stomach and Shauna gasped. Right above her belly button, was a small cross carved into the flesh. Angel snapped another picture.

"Let me see that memory card," Tim said, holding out his hand to her. Angel gave it to him and he inserted it into his phone.

"What are you doing?" Shauna asked.

Tim was still trying to shake the feeling of dread that had come over him. "Asking Ziva if she has the same thing at her crime scene." He typed 'look familiar?' into the text box and hit sent just as Palmer pulled out the liver probe.

"Three days," he declared. "Give or take a couple of hours."

Tim nodded. "St. Clair."

"Yes," Shauna answered.

"Help the doctor with the burrito wrap and when you're done, start collecting evidence around here." He pointed to the area around the body. She nodded and ran off. "Matt,"

"Canvas the scene," he said, nodding his head.

"I want to know who's been here."

"Yes, Boss."

"Angel,"

"Sketch and take some more photos."

Tim nodded. "And then help Matt after you talk to the witnesses." He handed back her memory card.

"You got it, Bossman."

It was then that Tim's phone rang. Ziva. "Yeah?"

"I think we have a problem."