Disclaimer, Credits and Notes: Please see Part I
He didn't let himself think about what he was doing. If he thought, his insecurities would take over again and he'd back out. Instead, he just pressed the buzzer and waited.
"Hello?" He barely recognised the voice, distorted by bad electronics.
"It's me. Can I…" He didn't even get to finish the sentence before the door buzzed, allowing him entry.
He didn't bother waiting for the elevator, instead he took the stairs, two at a time, needing to get to her while he could, before it was too late. Too late for what, that didn't matter. Anything could happen, seconds were precious.
She opened the door on his first knock, dark eyes wide and worried. "Tony? Are you okay?"
He didn't answer, just pulled her into a tight hug. "You're precious, Abby. I just wanted you to know that."
"Okay." Abby's voice sounded muffled, as though she was having trouble finding air to breathe. "I can go with that."
He let her go, just slightly. "I mean that. I needed to make sure that you knew…"
She took his head in her hands. "You're precious too, Tony. Do you want to come in?"
He nodded, relieved. He should have known she'd understand. Abby always did. That was their secret, their connection. He was the rich kid from the big house and the prep-school, she grew up in the tiny house next to the junkyard, but they understood each other. They were the outsiders, the perpetual kids who somehow managed to be best friends despite the differences. Abby was the only person he really felt comfortable with, for hours at a time, never feeling the urge to show off or impress, never worried about what she might be thinking about him.
She was perceptive too, catching the bow of his shoulders and the puffiness of his eyes, and recognising them for what they meant. "Here. You should lie down." She threw some couch cushions on the floor, creating pillows. They lay down, side by side, like children, just staring at the ceiling and the strange patterns like they were clouds.
"I miss her." Abby broke the silence, voicing their common thoughts.
"Me too." He wondered what McGee would think if he saw this; he probably wouldn't be able to understand. If Tony weren't a part of it, he wouldn't be able to understand it either, but he and Abbs were as close as it was possible for two people to platonically be. She was the first person he'd ever been able to truly be honest with, about good points and bad. He couldn't even imagine the possibility of losing her.
"That's okay, Tony." She patted his hand, reassuring him. "Kate's very missable."
"Yeah." Six months ago, he would have said he'd miss her like the plague, but he didn't miss the plague at all. The Kate-shaped void, though… when would that wound heal?
"You should have heard Gibbs this morning. Man, was he pissed. He told Ducky that if you weren't dying, he'd make sure that you were." Abby paused. "I think he was worried. You know how mad he gets when he's scared. And you haven't been yourself lately."
"Who have I been?" Probably someone people liked better.
Abby smacked him in the side. "You've just been very moody. Very un-Tony."
"An-tony." He hoped Abby would forgive the pun, the levity at this time when levity seemed equal to sacrilege. "That's my name, all right."
Abby groaned. "That was horrible. Anyway, Ducky said that you were sick and then he and Gibbs had this really long talk – and they wouldn't let me listen – and then Gibbs was grumpy, well, grumpier than usual for the rest of the day."
"That doesn't mean he was worried about me." Gibbs didn't worry about people. Especially not me. "He's probably just mad because it's another screw-up to add to the list."
Abby sat up and looked over at him. "You really don't have a clue, do you?"
"About what?" He didn't move, didn't take his eye off a certain sparkle in the ceiling. Maybe he'd name it 'Kate', give her a point of light to call her own.
"Out of everybody, you're his favourite." Abby pulled her legs in to sit cross-legged. "Don't ask me why, but Gibbs likes you best."
"Don't be stupid. He had the hots for Kate." Maybe he hadn't been willing to admit it, but Tony had seen. Gibbs definitely had a thing, he just wouldn't break one of his precious rules to pursue it.
"Be that as it may, he still likes you best. I think he admires you."
"Give me a break." Now he knew she was lying. Admire what? Compared to Gibbs, Tony didn't even rate. Gibbs was career Marine – the closest Tony had ever come to the military was prep-school, and he'd nearly gotten himself kicked out of that. Gibbs was a master interrogator, sometimes Tony was lucky if he could remember to ask the right questions. "He's probably just pissed off that it was Kate instead of me." He couldn't believe he said that aloud. But it was true. It should have been me. The only reason it was Kate was because Kate had the potential to be dangerous. Kate had been competent. Kate…
"Don't you say that!" Abby uncrossed one of her legs so she could kick him. "You take that back, Anthony DiNozzo. Nobody wants you dead, even to get Kate back."
Not nobody. He'd make the trade.
"And Gibbs does so like you. When you were sick, he nearly went crazy. He yelled at everybody, and I thought he was going to kill people. Don't you say that." She sounded like she was going to cry.
"I'm sorry… it's just…" He didn't know the words to say it. It's just that I'm not used to people having a high opinion of me? Possibly. It's just that I know I'm an idiot and I hate it, but I can't do anything to stop it? Maybe. It's just that people lie about things like that in the hopes of getting close to money then they leave when they find out that I don't have it, and I'm so used to that, that I can't imagine any other reason that people would want to hang around with a loser like me? That was probably closer. He couldn't confess it though. Even Abby, who'd seen some of his darkest moments, didn't know that fear, the fear that people saw him as even a lesser being than someone like McGee. Even she didn't know that McGee scared the hell out of Tony, with that geeky knowledge of anything electronic and his freaky sensitivity to people's feelings. He was so goddamn perfect at the job. His first case manager report for the director – Gibbs forwarded it on without even blinking. Gibbs never did that. Tony still had to write his reports two, three, and even four times just to have them 'acceptable.' How long before McGee eclipsed him and Gibbs went nuts when he got sick, and Tony faded into the background, remembered only when it was time to do the dirty, mucky jobs reserved for rookies and the guys nobody wanted around?
He felt himself starting to cry for the second time in a single day. This was insane. Just more proof that he was in the wrong line of work – Ducky said toughing things out wasn't healthy, but this wasn't healthy either. It couldn't be. Cops, good cops, didn't burst out in tears like this all the time. Marines sure as hell didn't burst out in tears like this all the time – not that crying when you were hurt was necessarily bad, but this wasn't to hurt, he was just…
"Oh, Tony…" Abby tugged on his hand until he sat up, then pulled him into a hug. "Everybody likes you. Even Kate liked you."
"Yeah, right." As if. Kate thought he was a jerk, which was only fair, because he was a jerk. All that time he spent picking on her, as though there'd always be a tomorrow to apologise in, as though the Wheel of Time was some great, big, slow moving thing instead of a whirling roulette wheel and you never knew when it would come up black.
"Tony…" Abby let him go. "Why can't you believe that? Why are you always so worried about what people think? And don't tell me you don't, because you do."
"Of course I do… because when you're gone, all that's left is other people's memories."
"Tony, you are not going to die." As if Abby had any say in the matter.
"You don't know that. I don't know that. I could die tomorrow, or maybe it'll be Gibbs or maybe it'll be Ducky or you, or McGee…"
Abby said nothing.
"It's just… I keep asking myself… why? We'd won. We'd beat the bad-guys, you're not supposed to die then." So it was comic-book/television/movie philosophy, but wasn't that what the world ran on these days? If Gibbs could play Dirty Harry and blow up a guy's trailer, why the hell had Kate been killed in that moment of success? Earlier he could have understood. Firefights were crazy, and it was nothing personal. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was still jealous – even in dying, Kate had been special.
It was more than that though. She'd thrown herself in front of a bullet to save Gibbs, and all Tony had done was stand there while Ari put that other bullet through Kate's head.
"It's not your fault." Abby seemed able to read his thoughts. "You couldn't have known. I know you like to think so, sometimes, but you're not Superman. You barely outran a car-bomb."
He snorted. "Yeah… and look how much good saving her life did. The next day…"
"She'd had another day to live. Don't make it all your fault. You're a sweet guy, Tony. Even McGee thinks you're cool."
No he didn't. McGee had probably had a great day today, without the constant presence of his number one abuser. "Don't lie to me. He'd way rather have Kate back."
"Arrgh." Abby picked up a cushion and hit him with it. "We'd all rather have Kate back, but not at the expense of you. Get that through your thick, Tony DiNozzo skull."
"Well, you got that right." Thick-skull, numbskull… that was his trademark. I'd rather be homeless than you, McGee. Hadn't he said that? It was true, too… Anthony DiNozzo was so stupid that he pretended to be stupid just so people wouldn't realise he was smart.
"Tony…" Abby closed her eyes for a second, exasperated. "Stay there." She got up and disappeared into the kitchen – Tony could hear dishes clanking around. He remembered he hadn't eaten yet… did Abby somehow think food was the solution to all his problems?
It couldn't hurt. The dark, nasty voice of reason that lurked in the hidden recesses of his mind snapped out at him. He hated that voice because it was usually right, telling him things he didn't want to hear. Doctor's advice…
He sighed. Did everybody in the world know about his blood-sugar problems? Did they think that was the source of his misery?
She emerged with two enormous bowls piled high with ice-cream, whipped cream and drenched in chocolate sauce. The junk-food junkie's ultimate fix – despite himself, he drooled.
"Chocolate is not a food, it's a mood-altering drug." Abby announced, sitting down and handing him one of the bowls. "It gives you that same feeling you get when you fall in love… it reminds me of the first time I snuck into the junkyard and found these cars… they were so messed up… one even still had bloodstains on the hood. I mean, how cool is that? What does it remind you of?"
"I don't know." Falling in love… that wasn't a feeling, it was a disaster. She always turned out to be married, or a lesbian or – increasingly more common and even more disturbing – a possible murderer. "NCIS. You, Gibbs, Kate, Ducky… busting the bad guys." And now even that was tainted.
"You need a hobby," Abby opined. "I mean, even Gibbs has his boat. Your entire life is work, isn't it?"
How did she do that? How did she manage to see through every fiction he'd carefully constructed and find the truth between the lines? Everything important in his life was in that office, and there was a big vacuum there with nothing to fill it. Chocolate turned sour in his mouth, he dropped his spoon into his bowl and set it aside.
"Come on, Tony. There's nothing wrong with having a life outside of work." Abby put her own ice-cream down and gave him one of her puppy-stares, not that she'd call it that, but it was.
"Welcome to cop-dom, Abbs. We never leave the job behind. Didn't you know that most cops get divorced more often than Gibbs? If they get married at all?" Maybe not entirely true, but divorce was high, mostly because the department was like the priesthood, more calling than job. You couldn't leave it behind and go home to your wife and kids, crime didn't happen on any sort of schedule. Long hours, high-risk… and it certainly wasn't attractive for the money.
It was why he'd never commit, though. He wouldn't do that, wouldn't lie to someone that he'd be there for her, that they could have a life together, because he knew he couldn't offer it. She'd always come in second to somebody dead, or somebody missing; it just wouldn't be fair.
"That's not all true, and you know it." Abby sounded exasperated. "You know, if Kate didn't like you, she would have busted you for harassment months ago. Kate would have done it."
"She'd just lost one job," Tony countered. "She wouldn't risk losing another by taking on the establishment. Kate was smart."
"Yes, she was. And it was fun having someone around to talk to sometimes about girl-things. We all miss her. We're supposed to. That's one of the things about dying – people get left behind."
"Yeah." He fell back again onto the cushion. The sparkle was still there, winking down at him. As exhaustion settled in again, he thought he saw it move. Streaking away and moving on. Leaving him behind. He wanted to chase after it, catch it, stop it from getting away. All that's left… He needed to hold on, keep all the memories fresh and bright. If he did, he could keep her alive, keep her real. He could save her.
