The pale hand that slammed across the ME's chest as he crossed into the lab startled more than staggered him. He looked up curiously into Abby's face, which was scrunched worriedly beneath her dark bangs.

"What?" he mouthed.

Abby made a shushing sign and drew him across her body so that he had an excellent view of what was becoming a distressingly common occurrence in the bowels of the NCIS building: five-foot-six of Kate Todd stepped toe-to-toe with six-feet-two of Tony DiNozzo.

"You ever pull a stunt like that again, DiNozzo, and I swear you'll be unemployed so fast your head will spin."

"I knew what I was doing. If you'd let me finish, we'd—"

"You disobeyed a direct order, Tony," restated Kate.

Tony leaned forward, purposely accentuating their difference in heights. "Gibbs would have let me do it."

In response, Kate made an expansive gesture, taking in the not-so-empty lab. "Oh, well, if you see Gibbs anywhere around here, feel free to go report to him. But if you're going to continue to report to me, you will follow my orders to the letter."

"Now why would I want to do that, Todd?" DiNozzo baited. "We're trying to solve cases here, not fuck them up."

"That's it. You're on report." Kate spun on her heels and headed for the elevator.

"Oh don't bother ..." The lab door slammed behind her. "Because I QUIT!"

"Oh my," said Ducky quietly as DiNozzo paced a tight circle before settling at one of the lab tables, head in hands, pounding his exposed forehead non-too-softly against the corner of the nearest monitor and repeating "fuck" at each blow.

"That one's mine," determined Abby, pointing a finger in Tony's direction. "You take the other one."


"He left the office in the right hands."

Slumped at her desk, Kate snorted, her hands drawing down her face tiredly before she peered bleary-eyed at the ME. "DiNozzo doesn't think so. Sometimes I don't either."

"He did," reaffirmed Ducky.

"Well, Tony's going to get himself killed and it'll be on my watch."

Ducky settled a hip against the corner of the desk. "You know what today is?"

Kate glanced at her calendar. "Tuesday, June fifteenth."

Ducky merely studied her for a long moment.

"Oh, God," she murmured. "It's been a year."

"About this time," Ducky turned the face of his watch toward her, "you and I were in DC General's ER. I still had Jethro's blood all over me. It didn't look like he was going to make it and Tony was borderline."

"And that little boy was dead," remembered Kate. She mussed her hands through her hair. "Why doesn't this get any better, Ducky? Time is supposed to make things better, right?"

"You need a drink," prescribed the physician. "I'd say a strong one."


"Tony?"

"You heard," deduced DiNozzo, knocking his forehead against the monitor one final time, eyes closed.

"Was a little hard not to. If you two are going to keep this up, you really need to get a room."

Tony laughed bitterly, "No worries. Those days are over. I'm almost out of your hair. And as soon as I type up a resignation letter, I plan to go get excruciatingly drunk."

"Bad plan."

This clearly wasn't the reaction Tony had been expecting. Neither was Abby's next instruction. "Give me your keys."

"Why?"

Pale fingers jittered under his nose. "Give 'em."

Befuddled, DiNozzo handed the keychain over.

"You've got your priorities all backwards," remarked Abby, switching the captured keys from hand to hand. "Resignations can wait; we've got an anniversary to observe."

"I didn't think anyone remembered," said Tony, his voice hushed.

"I remember," said Abby solemnly. "And the last case of Leroy Jethro Gibbs deserves a toast."


The Life Centre's director stood at the door of Room 4 and watched the man within for a long moment. An unfair advantage, she knew, but she'd learned in the past months that the only way to truly judge this particular resident's emotional status was to catch him unaware, before he had time to put on the stolid mask his features usually wore.

"I'm sorry, Jethro." She made her presence known with a slight cough and the commiseration.

As she expected, the apology only made the man methodically searching the drawers of the dresser stiffen his back.

"Long shot anyway."

There was only a slight resignation in the reply. The hope he'd had, what little there was of it, had never been a hope shared – with anyone as far as she knew.

As of nine a.m. this morning, Candice Walters, CMSW and PhD, had eighteen residents in various stages of sight loss and equally various stages of denial. Some of them called to her more than others. This one ... well, she'd had her share of attraction to people at the wrong place or the wrong time. Meeting Leroy Jethro Gibbs here and now definitely qualified as both.

He stopped the orderly exploration to bring his good hand to his recently unbandaged left eye.

"Hurt?" she asked, stepping closer to intervene, but he brought the hand down self-consciously.

"The doc said I'd be a little photophobic for a while. Kind of ironic if you think about it: photophobia in the blind."

His visual field, what remained of it, had previously been a monotonous gray. Now it held an unattractive pinkish hue that blossomed brighter when he neared a light source. The bedside lamp brought forth a small spot of cloudy illumination. The windows -- blinds now up and the late afternoon sunlight pouring in -- were pale, soft-edged rectangles when he faced them directly. They faded rapidly when he turned his head to the left, the right eye so damaged he was unable to muster even simple light perception on that side.

It was habit, now, that he pulled his right arm tighter against his ribs as he turned, protecting the permanently curled hand from the damage he'd learned he'd easily inflict if he let it swing numb at his side.

A one-handed blind man and the one hand he could use still suffered from splotchy sensation; the ring finger and pinkie on his left hand nearly as numb as the useless fingers on his right. Braille was out. Tactile identification was iffy. His cane technique, in the words of the mobility instructor who reminded him of Abby ... sucked.

And Candice, he knew, was still watching him.

"My last night," he said conversationally, knowing, too, that if he didn't find a topic, the Centre's director would find one for him. And it would, inevitably, be one he didn't want to discuss.

"Apartment all ready?"

"Jeff's going to take me to the grocery store tomorrow, help set up the kitchen." Gibbs laid the neatly folded shirts out on the bed.

"You gave Donald the phone number?"

"I gave Ducky the phone number," he corrected.

"I am not calling a grown man 'Ducky'," Candice responded, not for the first time.

The physician -- and she wasn't even sure what kind of physician he was – was the only one who called. The only number the detailed phone bill ever showed was called from Room 4.

Jethro Gibbs could be stubborn and emotionally aloof and fiercely independent, but people – both the staff and the other residents, particularly the younger ones – gravitated to him. Which made it even harder to believe he only had one other living person important enough to call and be called.

Candice had met the doctor, face-to-face, only once – three weeks into Gibbs' stay when he'd banged himself up during an early OT session, taking a hard header down the outer stairs. Despite everyone's reassurances, the older man had immediately driven the hours from DC to check out the scrapes and contusions. And she'd watched a sore and tense Gibbs relax under the comforting touch and low murmurs. As peaceful as she'd ever seen him, before or since.

"He going to come up?"

"Busy," Gibbs deflected.


Kate nursed a rum and Coke, and watched Ducky sip his Glenlivet. "You think he's really going to quit?"

"In most instances," Ducky opined, "I would say, 'no'."

"Are you saying this isn't most instances?"

The ME looked thoughtfully at the well-stocked bar. "Jethro's ... leaving affected us all, but no one so much as Anthony."

"Well, Gibbs didn't leave him an agent short with a full open caseload." Kate winced at her own words, biting her lip as if she could stop the already-voiced complaint. "I didn't mean that like it sounded. Really," she took a long pull on the syrupy drink, "I didn't."

"You're angry with him."

"Tony? Of course I'm angry. I'm starting to see why Gibbs was always smacking him on the head. The idiot—"

"I did not mean Anthony," interrupted Ducky as he raised his glass in hopes the waitress would take notice.

"You think I'm mad at Gibbs? For God's sake, Ducky, he almost died. From what Tony said--" Kate took an irritated swipe at the tear that escaped her rapid blinking. "Even he didn't want us to see him that way. How can I be angry with Gibbs?"

"Easily," concluded Ducky, exchanging old tumbler for new, looking up just long enough to murmur thanks at the waitress. "I, myself, was furious with him."

"And you let him know that?" As quickly as Kate had sounded irritated, she now sounded decidedly protective of the man who'd left her with more work than she could handle and an unruly Tony DiNozzo to control in the bargain.

"I let him know what I thought about his leaving the way he did. The rest," Ducky shook his head, "... the rest was not his fault. Even though I was angry about that as well. It is irrational, but I was angry with Jethro for being injured, much as I was angry with my parents when they died."

"You talk to him, don't you?"

Ducky threw back a swallow of whiskey. "Twice a week or so."

Kate shut her eyes. "He's okay?"

"He says he is 'adapting.'"

"He ever ask about us?"

"No," said Ducky gently, "he doesn't."

Kate pressed her lips together and blinked rapidly again. "Why'd I even ask?"

"He cares, Kate." In this Ducky looked confident. "Don't ever doubt that. It's why he doesn't ask."


Abby raised her Red Bull and clinked the can against the glass of Campari Tony was holding in mid-air. "To Gibbs."

Tony had been distant ever since she'd dragged him out into the late afternoon drizzle. She'd prevented him from retreating bodily, so he'd obviously found some interior mental wall to hide behind. Now he blinked at her in surprise, unaware he'd been sitting there, the tumbler of bittersweet, rose-hued liquor levered halfway to his slightly open lips.

"I ..." he began, only to pause again as if he still wasn't really in the same moment she was occupying. "I shouldn't have been there."

Abby frowned. "Been where?"

"With Gibbs when ..." Tony trailed off again.

"You're starting to worry me, here, Tony."

"Yeah, well, I'm not doing a hell of lot for myself at the moment either." He settled the drink back down, untouched. "He was always ... different with you and Ducky. You disarmed him, somehow."

"Ah, getting under the great shield of Gibbs. Not a quest for the fainthearted. Gibbs is like one of those little puzzle boxes. A dozen little doors you've got to unlock to get to the center." Abby shrugged. "Ducky and I just had a little more time to work on it. He calls him, you know."

Tony took a deep breath. "Is he okay?"

"Don't know directly. Ducky's a whole other puzzle box. But it's lucky I'm a good eavesdropper."

"So?" prodded Tony.

"Both operations failed. He's not getting his sight back." Abby watched Tony bow his head, his fingers toying with the rim of his glass. "Think they're ready to kick him out of rehab, too. Ducky mentioned something about an apartment."

"He's not coming back," he concluded.

"Gibbs? He's kind of not the prodigal son type. So, I'm thinking 'not.' At least unless someone goes and gets him. Someone foolhardy enough to stand up to him and drag his butt back here. Maybe somebody who just can't seem to follow orders."

Tony snorted. "And how did I get volunteered?"

"Who was the only person besides Ducky he'd let see him in the hospital?"

"That was before ..."

Abby raised a dark eyebrow.

"Before I ran out on him," Tony finished.

"You didn't run out on him. He got into one of his reclusive moods and wouldn't see you either."

"Because I ran out on him. He probably thinks it's because I saw him..." Tony gestured to his own face, "...saw what a thousand shards of glass will do to you. And I bolted."

Abby watched Tony rub at the fading scars crisscrossing the backs of his own hands.

"It was a shock, Tony. Maybe not to Ducky -- it's like the Duck-man's seen everything -- but you got to glimpse way down inside the center, you got to see our feared and mighty boss vulnerable and it scared you both."

"He doesn't look so good, Abs."

"Well, luckily, Gibbs was never the preening type. Think—"Abby reached across the table looking terribly serious "—haircut, Gibbs-style."

She grinned at the smile that Tony finally let curl the corners of his mouth ... another chink gone out of his distancing armor.

"If Gibbs doesn't want us finding him, he can make it hard. And if Ducky hasn't shared yet, it's doubtful he's going to."

"Well, you've got me." Abby interlaced her fingers, bending her knuckles back in jolting pops. "The hacking thing, remember? What they pay me for? Besides, I think, deep down, Gibbs does want to be found." She took another sip of the canned stimulant. "He just doesn't realize it yet."