Usual disclaimer applies: I don't own NCIS, or anything like it I'm just borrowing them for a little while, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Okay, so I know I said this was finished already, but I got badgered about it (glares in certain person's direction) and then my muse paid an unexpected (and brief) visit. So Behold - an ending!
Of sorts, anyways...
Epilogue
Kate took his hand and led him to the elevator. They kissed again, breaking the contact as the doors to the lift opened and they stepped inside. As the doors closed, an observer could have seen they resumed their physical contact.
An observer did watch as Tony and Kate entwined in another intense kiss.
An observer who sighed quietly from his unobserved post in the dark.
And this observer had been trained to be unobserved, and so quiet as to make himself part of the darkness.
So much so that the darkness had become part of him.
The darkness had, at times, all but consumed him, threatening to drag him into depression at the low points of his life, offering the dark seductions in return for his release of self, of things he thought were important but, whispered the darkness, meant nothing in comparison to the fulfilment and pleasures you could experience. If you surrender to me. Only me. And at the offers had been tempting at times, when life was going to hell in a handcart. When not even work could ease the gnawing doubt at the back of his mind that perhaps, just maybe, there was more to life than catching the bad guys.
That perhaps, just maybe, it would make life more interesting if he were on the opposite side, leading the chase, instead of following it.
Indecision had never been part of Jethro Gibbs' make up though. Which was just as well, considering who he worked for. Though he doubted that he could ultimately commit murder and escape justice for long. Not with the agents he worked with on the case.
Which bought him back to his current situation. This was going to take considerable thinking time.
And he knew a better place to be in order to be doing that in, than sitting here in an uncomfortable government chair mulling over what he had just been witness to.
Yes, a much better place.
And, besides, didn't he need to start work on the hull?