All Hope Lost?

1 Month Later

Gibbs awoke to the sound of a phone ringing and groaned when he realized he had fallen asleep at his desk again. For the last month he had been working till late at night along with Ziva and McGee, trying to find anything which would lead them to Tony, but they hadn't been able to find anything. He usually sent the other two home when it got too late but sometimes, like last night, they just ended up staying there all night. McGee was snoring lightly, head resting on his desk, if Tony had been there he would have been deciding if he should superglue McGee's head to the desk. Ziva was also sleeping with her head resting on the desk but she also had her gun lying next to her, ready to attack anyone who disturbed her.

Gibbs picked the phone and heard director Vance telling him to come up to his office because he needed to talk to him about something. Gibbs slammed the phone back done onto the receiver. He knew what Vance wanted to talk to him about but he didn't want to hear it.

Sighing he got up from his desk and walked up the stairs to the director's office, not bothering to wake Ziva or McGee up, because by the time he got down they'd probably be awake anyway.

Gibbs barged into the director's office, not bothering to knock, but Vance was so used to this by now that he barely even looked up from the file he was reading.

"What do you want Leon?" Gibbs asked, glaring at him

"It's been a month Gibbs," Vance sighed, trying not to be intimidated by the glare Gibbs was giving him, one which was reserved for serial killers and people who hurt a member of his team, "You may not want to admit it but the case is ice cold and unless you give me any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to have to declare agent DiNozzo dead."

"We don't have a body," Gibbs pointed out

"Not good enough, Gibbs, I'm sorry,"

"I'm not giving up on him,"

Vance sighed again, "Look, I need you back working cases, but in your free time you can keep looking for DiNozzo, and if you find any lead I will allow you to follow it."

Gibbs didn't say anything just stormed out of the office, slamming the door loudly behind him.

When he got back to the bullpen he saw McGee and Ziva were awake and working on their computers. They looked up when they heard him approaching.

"What did the director want?" Ziva asked

"He's declaring Tony dead."

"What?" they both yelled

"The case has gone cold, there are no leads."

"But we can't just give up, this is Tony we're talking about," McGee said, looking angrier than Gibbs had ever seen him.

"We're not, we're going to keep searching for him, it just means that officially Tony will be dead."

For the first time ever neither of his agents looked like they believed him. He saw a flicker of despair cross Ziva's face before she stormed off saying she had to use the bathroom. McGee just looked numb and was just staring at his computer screen without really seeing it, Gibbs, not knowing what else he could say, left to talk to Abby and Ducky.

They had a small funeral for Tony that weekend. Abby had been avoiding Gibbs since he had told they were, from her point of view, giving up on Tony. She had yelled at him for a while before storming out of her lab, tossing the caf-pow Gibbs had brought her onto the floor. He didn't think he would ever forget the look of absolute betrayal she had given him.

Ducky had also been upset when he told him but he had understood that there was nothing that Gibbs could do. Palmer had reacted the same way as McGee and just looked numb.

Gibbs couldn't help thinking that Jeremy Parker was right. He had failed Tony.

2 Months Later

Abby stared glumly at her computer screen, she was testing a powder which had been found on a marines clothing. It was the sort of thing which would have excited her two months ago, but then someone had taken Tony and even forensics didn't excite her any more, she just found herself wondering if she would ever see that confused look Tony always had whenever she tried to explain something to him or how forensics, something she had loved so much, had failed to help her find the man who had been like a big brother to her.

As McGee looked through the marine's phone records he couldn't help wishing that Tony was there to irritate him and call him 'McGeek' or some other stupid 'Mcnickname'. For past two months Vance had given Gibbs a string of replacements for Tony, but none of them had lasted long, one of them had only made it an hour before having a mental breakdown and he knew that the other agents in the building had made bets on about how long the latest was going to last. The main thing which McGee thought about, however, was not about how long the latest agent who he couldn't remember the name of was going to last, but how he, the smartest person on the team, had failed to find anything lead them to Tony.

Ziva was looking through the marines records, stopping every so often to glare at the man who was sitting at Tony's desk, feeling satisfied when she saw him squirm. She hated this guy, in fact she had hated all of the guy's Vance had tried to replace Tony with. She looked up when she heard Gibbs approaching and the idiot sitting at Tony's desk jumped, "agent Gibbs," he said, "as soon as this case is over I'm leaving," 'finally' thought Ziva, "I'm sorry but between McGee ignoring me, you yelling at me and, well, Ziva, this has been the worst week of my life."

"Okay, you can leave now if you want, agent Tyler," Gibbs said sitting down at his desk

"Its agent Bennet, agent Tyler was the one before me," he said before storming away, Ziva sighed and went back to her work, thinking about all the times Tony had corrected her whenever she said an American phrase wrong and wondering if he ever would again.

Ducky was performing the autopsy in silence, lost in his thoughts of Anthony, Jethro and the rest of the team. He knew they all missed Tony and blamed themselves for not being able to find him. Tony's disappearance was tearing the team apart, even his own relationship with Jethro was strained and the case closer rate had fallen dramatically. As for Palmer, he just wanted to hear Tony call him the 'autopsy gremlin' again.

3 Months Later

The team and the most recent guy sitting at Tony's desk (agent Jones or something like that) were finishing off their reports when Gibbs' phone rang.

He answered it with an angry, "Gibbs", but the person on the other end didn't answer and just breathed heavily. Gibbs, whose temper was even shorter these days, would have hung up if it hadn't been for the strong feeling in his gut that he shouldn't. "Who is this?" he asked angrily.

That was when the person on the other end of the phone croaked out the two words he had been waiting what felt like a lifetime to hear:

"Hey Boss."

Please review. I'm going to try to get the next chapter up soon