Author's Note: I apologize for the several day hiatus! I had the stomach flu, and can't reach my keyboard from my bed, so I had to wait. Hopefully now things will start picking up again, and we can have much more frequent updates. The plot will pick up again now, too. Thanks for bearing with me!

Vivian

Chapter Three – Substantiation

"Where's Mike?" asked Gibbs, after he'd successfully convinced Abby that he couldn't let her sit on his lap in his condition. Instead, she was perched on the edge of her seat, next to Jackson, who'd managed to charm a nurse into finding him another chair.

"He's at Ducky's," said Abby, "with Leyla and Amira. Tony and Ziva are there watching them, to make sure that nobody comes over from Mexico to finish the job they botched up last night. Not," she added quickly, "that your injuries aren't…totally legitimate battle scars, wounds sustained in the line of duty, but I mean…you're still alive, which I'm so, so happy about, but it probably wasn't supposed to work out that way. I mean, for the…bad guys."

Gibbs shook his head. "Wasn't me they wanted," he muttered. "They came for Leyla and Amira. I was just in the way. Mike probably would have taken a bullet too-!"

"If you hadn't been there to protect him," insisted Abby. "You're a hero, Gibbs. You're my hero."

"Right place at the right time," muttered Gibbs. He didn't feel particularly heroic. Standing in between Franks' family and some hate-crazed shooters had, it's true, prevented them from being the first targets, but it had also put him very thoroughly out of commission for what might be several long, useless days. Rather than standing alongside his former partner to help look after his girls, he would have to settle for letting other people do the difficult work while he lay, safe and sound, on a mechanical cot. He could even stomach the hospital food. The only thing he couldn't stomach was the idea of being out of the line of fire while his colleagues were still in it.

Remember, said something in the back of Gibbs' mind, you did keep Abby from being shot. Even as he thought about it Gibbs knew that Abby had never been the target. They'd been waiting out there to pick off the big guns, and he, Mike Franks, Tony and Ziva had been the big guns. Abby hadn't really been in danger at all…she'd only created a lucky break for the shooters by drawing Gibbs out into the open.

He wasn't angry at her. The time for anger, or frustration, or reprimands was very much past. She had been so delighted to see him, so much so that she'd apparently let herself forget about the elephant in the room. The fact that all Gibbs' fears and admonitions about their relationship had come true, and that she really had placed him in a vulnerable position, was only half of the problem. The next time something like this happened, it could just as easily be Abby who took the bullet. She may not have been the target this time, but he now knew just how capable she was of muddling his mind up and distracting him from the crucial rules of safety in the moment. In a different situation, he might lose his head in an even worse way, and he might be unable to stop a bullet that really was intended for her heart.

"Gibbs?" Abby sounded worried. Gibbs pulled himself out of his darker thoughts long enough to smile at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "What's wrong? Does something hurt? Should I call the nurse?"

He shook his head. "No. Doesn't hurt. Nurse'd probably just tell me to go back to sleep."

Abby didn't look convinced. To mollify her, Gibbs said, "I need you to go back to Ducky's, Abs. Find Tony and Ziva, tell them I need regular updates."

"I could just call him," Abby said, fishing her cell phone out of her pocket. "I bet he and Ziva'd love to hear your voice."

"They won't let you use that in here," Jackson reminded her. "You wouldn't want to get in trouble with the nurses. They'll revoke our visiting privileges."

"Go, Abs." Gibbs was firm. "I need your help on this one."

Abby's face lit up a little, like Gibbs had hoped it would, when she heard that he needed her to work with him on this case. Straightening up, she hopped off of her chair, set her shoulders, and offered him an enthusiastic but poorly executed salute. "Yes, sir! Updates coming right up. I'll be your personal go between." Dropping her arm, she hurried over to Gibbs' bedside, reached up, and kissed him quickly on his closed lips. "I'm really," she told him, more seriously, "really glad that you're okay."

When Abby had marched out of the room, full of her new professional duty, Gibbs found his father looking at him curiously, like he was waiting for something. Gibbs raised an eyebrow, and Jackson sighed ,shaking his head and giving Gibbs a very stern, unexpectedly paternal look.

"Don't you start that brooding, Leroy," he said. "What's done is already done. No point in losing sleep over it. Besides," he added, turning towards the door, "you're gonna need all your sleep if you're gonna get better in time to help put this hate-mail mastermind away."

"You think there's still one of them out there, huh?" asked Gibbs.

Jackson narrowed his eyes at him. "Yeah," he said simply. "Don't you? You just better hope that I don't get to him before you get out of that bed. Won't be anybody left for you to investigate if I do."

Gibbs couldn't help smiling as his fiercely protective father, apparently unaware of his own advanced and hardly threatening age, wandered out of the room to join Abby. Not for the first time, he wondered if he would know himself better if he'd only gotten to know his father a little sooner.

***

Ducky had always thought that he had plenty of space in his undeniably spacious house. He hadn't, however, had quite so many overnight guests in a very long time, and it was putting a bit of a strain on his repository of patience.

Amira was an incredibly well behaved child. She sat, very passively and demurely between Ziva and Leyla, playing with Leyla's hair as the two women chatted about anything and everything, trying to keep their minds off the danger of their situation and the recent shooting incident. Tony DiNozzo was a much less well behaved child, and he had already managed to sit on and permanently destroy one of Ducky's favorite records, the one that Ducky had only recently taken out of the player after promising to lend it to Palmer to help further his musical education. Tony had also managed to almost trip Ziva down the stairs while she was carrying a large pile of bedding intended for Leyla, causing her to drop a set of recently cleaned sheets and blankets all over the trampled on floor.

Tony was restless, wandering around, asking idiotic questions and looking at the clock every thirty seconds. His discomfort was making him particularly clumsy and obnoxious, and although Ducky had a great deal of affection for Tony, that affection only went so far. He, too, was worried about Gibbs, and Tony's unhappy wanderings were only making him more aware of the futility of trying not to think about it.

That as probably why, when Ducky answered a ring of the doorbell, that his greeting came out a little bit more testily than he had intended. "Well?" he asked, when he saw Abby standing eagerly on his doorstep.

She blinked at him, temporarily deflated by the harshness of his tone. "Um, hi, Ducky. Everything…okay?"

"Yes, yes, everything's fine." Ducky sighed, opening the door wider to let her through. "We've just been having a bit of a stressful morning, that's all. No doubt you've had one as well. What can I do for you? Have you seen-?"

"Yes." Abby beamed at him. "I have, and his dad's here, and we went to the hospital, and Gibbs is fine. Well, I mean, no, he's not fine, he's been shot through the chest, but the surgery went really well, and he's going to completely recover, and he's already able to sit up and be his normal impatient self. That's why I'm here." Glancing around the room, she asked, "Where's Tony? I need to talk to him."