Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Author's Note: Sorry this took so long . I've been in the process of moving and I'm not so sure about the tense I've used here. Let me know, eh?
The Presence Of An Absence
"...let the stars of twilight therefore be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day."
-Bible
Their mandatory week is up and as he pulls into his parking space the clock on his dashboard tells him it's five thirty in the morning, which he already knows.
He locks the doors as he gets out and wonders why. He hates this car. It's obnoxious and ostentatious and he'd bought it thinking about her; bought it because she'd have hated it on sight, because she'd have taken one look at it and rolled her eyes and probably would have made some comment about his ego, his libido, or his maturity level.
He'd wanted her to, had driven off the lot looking forward to the moment with that damnably heady mix of smug satisfaction and giddy anticipation.
The elevator doors slide shut and he tells himself to forget it, he'll sell the car, or better yet after work tonight he'll go trade it in for something more sedate. Something economical and efficient. Something that would've caused her to arch that brow of hers had she ever seen him driving it.
Early as it is for him, for almost anyone, to be coming in it doesn't surprise Tony to find Gibbs already at his desk, engrossed in the paperwork spread out before him. It's Gibbs after all and not even Kate's death is going to change the man.
Because that thought makes him want to hit him, Tony reminds himself that the former marine doesn't sleep, or doesn't sleep well, and makes his way to his own desk. Gibbs doesn't look up as he passes, doesn't acknowledge him or give him that carefully knowing look he can't seem to escape. Which is fine. If he did then Tony'd have to make some comment back or muster enough interest to conjure a look of his own when all he wants to do is to hurl something heavy and hard at the man, to make him hurt and bleed.
He knows he can't, or that he shouldn't, so he stays silent and hopes Gibbs does too. So long as he doesn't say anything, so long as he doesn't try to offer comfort or friendship, Tony thinks he might be able to ignore the ravening beast that's settled so comfortably behind his eyes and in his chest, lurking behind his tight smiles, watching for it's chance to leap out and draw blood. To share his pain with the world as it were.
The world that just went on, unchanged by the death of someone he could have loved. Someone he should have loved. Someone he'd loved too much to admit to himself or to anyone else.
And now he's sitting across from her desk (And it is still her desk, though the interns had gone toe to toe with Gibbs about it and Abby'd come up with her box just after the funeral. He'd fought with her over that, fought but not yelled because he thought once he started that he wouldn't be able to stop, wouldn't want to stop, and she'd left with an empty box.) and it's too late. She's gone and he can't tell her what everyone else seems to know and to have known all along.
He logs onto his computer and remembers that he'd brought her flowers once, remembers that she'd smiled at him, then glared, and the one had meant as much as the other. That memory tears through him now, beautiful and blinding and precious, and he clings to it. Clings to the memory. Clings to the pain that will never be enough to fill the empty places she'd left in him.
And he wonders, almost idly from within that haze of grief and anger and behind the sickening roar of that thing which wants to tear the world apart with his hands, what her brother means to do with her car.
He checks his email, something he hasn't managed to do since getting sick, before going ahead with work and is nonplussed by the number of messages in his inbox.
Twelve hundred and thirteen new messages.
Before he would have made some wise crack about his sex appeal and maybe believed it, but today he just opens the folder because the desk across from him is empty and she's gone and he's not who he used to be.
His filters are pretty good and he makes quick work of the inevitable Spam. A few clicks and it's gone, leaving him with well over nine hundred messages. He deletes the messages from the women who aren't Kate and sends the work related ones to a separate folder. That brings the total to three hundred and four. Almost all of which are dated up to, but not past, the day of Kate's death, most of them from Abby.
Most, but not all, and the fact that quite a few are from McGee catches him off guard. He wouldn't have expected that.
There's a smattering of messages from Ducky, which on a normal day would've made him smile. Today he just lets his gaze skip down the screen without interest, automatically registering the subject lines and senders. There's even one from Gibbs and some logical and overly fascinated part of him notes how much that would've meant to him when it was sent and doesn't now.
Half a dozen of the messages are from Kate.
He's stopped breathing and only realizes the fact when Gibbs finally looks up and in that pathetically cautious voice says his name. His real name. The name only his mother and Ducky ever used with any consistency.
"Anthony.," There's shock at hearing it said like that, drawn out until it's nearly a question in and of itself , a shock at realizing that that careful negotiator's tone is being used on him and in Gibbs's voice no less. Yet there's an absurdity about it too because this is Gibbs and Gibbs may be gruff but he's never gentle. Not like this.," Anthony, breathe."
Isn't he already? Well, no, he supposes he's not at that, but he's not sure he wants to anyway. Breathing's largely overrated .
"Do it Dinozzo."
But she's gone, he thinks. And maybe he'll buy her car and maybe when he's sitting in the driver's seat, when he's surrounded by all those little things she's left behind, it won't hurt so damn bad anymore. But it won't change anything.
"Dinozzo!"
He hurts so damn much.
And he always will.
He takes a breath, closes the window without opening any of the messages, and makes a mental note to open an new account on a new server.," I'm fine boss."
But Gibbs is still watching him, watching and wondering and measuring , so Tony looks away from his computer, forcing himself to meet the older man's gaze head on.
It's hard, bitterly hard, to do so.
Because she's dead and he hadn't known, this man who'd always seemed to know everything else, what Ari had really intended, and there's no way, now , to take it back and make it okay. Kate is dead. Kate is dead and Gibbs should've known it was meant to be her.," I said I'm fine Gibbs."
"We'll get him."
Of course they will and whether that means they'll catch him and bring him in to face the civilized world's version of justice, or whether that mans something else altogether remains to be seen . Maybe they'll kill him. He wants to, more, he thinks, than he's ever wanted anything in his life because no court, no jury, will ever be able to appreciate the evil of the man and he can't tell himself that just sending him to jail will ever be enough.
"And then we just go back to normal," his voice is quiet, steady, the anger and the accusation thick and unmistakable, and there's something in his boss's eyes that tells him the man'd do anything not to hear it, that he'd do anything to have him be the same old Tony again.
But he knows that's never going to happen. You can see it in the careful, not-quite-guarded expression on his face. Kate's dead and Tony might as well have died with her and not even he, the mighty unstoppable Gibbs, can change that.
And now he's going to lie to him. To try and sooth him with the same empty platitudes the Priest had used during the funeral, the same repetitive and useless assurances he's been spurning since they brought Abby out to get him off that rooftop. Of course he'll be expected to go back to normal, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. The world has no time or care for his grief and his loss; not even Gibbs.
"Go back," he says it almost wonderingly, as if the thought, the concept, had never occurred to him and wouldn't have. There's sorrow there, and pain, and Tony can see now that the man is tired. It occurs to him that Kate isn't the first person he's lost to violence and will not, in all likelihood, be the last. He should care, he thinks. He should care enough to let that calm the fury burning steadily beside his heart, but he doesn't and he can't.," No Tony, we don't go back. We go on."
That's how things are supposed to work, isn't it, he thinks as he turns away from Gibbs, knowing that alone gives him away. The world turns, times change, and those who are left behind go on.
But what of it?
He'll call her brother when he gets home from work about the car.