A/N: So the team as to make a difficult decision … since they can't go on avoiding it forever, here we go g

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Question of When

Sometimes, Abby thinks, it would be good if you could just switch your brain off when you're sick and tired of thinking something over for the thousandth time, and that stupid mind of yours won't stop, no matter what you do.

She sat in her lab, staring at all the chemicals she uses for tests and analyses, wondering which of them could do the job. But then again she's just not that kind of person.

She copes or she doesn't, but she does it herself. And anyway the substances she stores would either kill her or show no effect at all. Neither would help.

It's just that, obviously, she's got something on her mind, and it's one of those things that simply won't leave you alone anymore.

Everyone knows them, there's plenty, really.

It may be something someone said or did, something that happened or something that you just realized. It hits you squarely in the face one day, completely out of the blue, like a snowball you didn't see coming, and then it sticks to you like glue in each and every thing you do.

Those things always remind Abby of those Paris-Hilton-wannabe-dogs (that is, since Paris has had Tinkerbell; before that, she used to just call them wannabe-dogs). Persistent, annoying and, most of all, small: small enough to squeeze through any gap, small enough to hide in the narrowest corner, small enough to live on the flies you killed and rainwater if you don't feed them. And they don't provide enough of a target, neither to heat nor to coldness nor to a bullet. Once you have them, you know you won't get rid of them for a long, long time.

Abby hates such things, she hates the feeling they give you when you wake up in the morning: you forgot all about them over night (unless you dreamt of them, of course), but they never give you more than a few seconds of oblivion. At the first blink of your eye, they lunge at you from the last remaining shadow beneath the cupboard, and off you go into another day of brooding and mulling over them.

They are heavy, cold and dark. Insubstantial, too, or else you could just punch them until they dissolve, and forget them. But they are always behind you, never in front. Cowards, that makes her even more angry at them. They make you shiver, keep you up at night and they constantly have you wondering What if?

And all the while you fear that one moment when that cold, dark and looming thing finally taps you on the shoulder, and you turn around because that's an impulse, and you have to face it.

Abby knows that the others – Kate, Tony, McGee – have the same thing on their minds as she does, and that they want to face it as little as she does.

They don't want to face the yes-or-no-question, switch-them-off-or-don't. It might be a when-question, too. They don't know and they don't care. Whatever question it is, they've got no desire to answer it.

It's a tricky question, damn tricky.

It's hard and sad and it made her cry more than once, but it's so really tricky too, and that's something Abby hardly expected it to be.

Each time she starts thinking about it, the first thing that always hits her, is incredulity, and also something like indignation. Each time, the first thing she asks herself is How can it be difficult to say yes or no when it comes to a friend's life?

But it is. She doesn't know how, but it is difficult as hell.

She and the rest of the team, they've been dancing around that question so skilfully over past few days, if avoidance were Tango or Salsa, they'd easily win the world championship.

To their amazement, Ducky plays along. Not a word since they talked the other day in the hospital.

They keep conversation glued to whatever victim Ducky's just examining when they're down in the morgue, and to anything but Gibbs when they chat. They avoid talking about what is on everyone's mind, and they know it's not fair.

Because, slowly, one question became two, and two became three, and now there's a multitude of them whirling around in their heads, playing small, immortal Tinkerbell.

Their common determination to never let anyone get near the Off-switch on all those machines that keep their boss alive, walked up to them and began asking Is that fair? And that became If it isn't, then what is fair? Towards Gibbs? Towards Ducky? They let themselves wonder what they wanted, what the team wanted. And then something asked Is that question even fair?

It's not like time were running out. How could it be? Right now, Gibbs has all the time in the world. And that's what makes the decision so damn hard to take, too. No pressing reason, no emergency, nothing beyond their control. Just a matter of saying Do it.

It's a situation not of their making, no one's guilty but the guy who fired at Gibbs, but the outcome of it all will be wholly their responsibility.

Eventually, though, they still ended up here, of course. Tony and Abby did, at least.

Two hours after midnight in a bar in downtown Washington D.C., dim light drifting in the warm air like it was something tangible, materialized by cigarette smoke.

Neither Tony nor Abby have been here before, and they both find the place emanates an odd kind of atmosphere. The furniture's stylish, dark chestnut-red leather and black-brown, polished wood, the milk-glass lights hang from a high ceiling and everything is clean. It's contemporary, easy kind of classy. Comfortable and young. Maybe not perfectly Abby's style, but certainly Kate's, and Tony's too (on the more grown-up days).

But there's something gloomy about it, something a bit worn, sad, or stale.

Maybe that's just how they feel, though.

They didn't want to go to some place they frequent, somehow they needed to get away. Until an hour ago, Kate was still with them, and actually they just wanted to pay and then follow her lead, but asking for the bill turned into another order and so here they still are.

Abby's been watching the last pathetic piece of ice that's rapidly diminishing in her drink for at least five minutes, prodding it with a black plastic straw as if she wants to teach it a trick. Suddenly, she drops the straw and looks out of the tall, wet window onto the street. Heavy, mushy snow mixed with rain has been coming down since the early evening, and the streaks it leaves on the glass blur her vision. It's isn't hard to guess what's happening outside, though.

Hardly anyone walks past, and only few cars drive by at this time of night, and those that do make you wonder what their drivers are still doing out there. Going home or running away, night shift or insomnia, can they feel the lateness or are they used to it, happy, sad, cold, indifferent?

"Wow," Abby says into the silence that got quite comfortable between them over the last quarter of an hour, "I never thought I'd ever, ever have to think about something like this."

Tony looks up and watches her thoughtfully for a while. He could ask what she's talking about, he's sure what she just said has got nothing to do with their previous conversation, although he can't quite remember what that was.

But actually he knows. Abby can surprise as well as anyone with the interesting turns her thoughts sometimes take, but lately it hasn't been hard to guess what's on everybody's mind.

"Yeah," he replies, "it's one of those things you hear about every day 'cause they really happen all the time, but I guess you'd never imagine yourself in that position." He pauses and frowns down at his whisky sour. "Hell, it's not even like we're the most unlikely people to get into this sort of trouble."

Abby slowly shakes her head, her black-rimmed eyes narrowing as though she's trying to see something particular in the black January night outside. "I still keep waiting for my alarm clock to go off", she tells him absently. "I still keep believing it's a bad dream."

Her friend gives a soft laugh. "You know what? It's been so long now, even the surrealism of it all wore off for me. First the shock wore off, then the way I didn't feel too confident about heading the team, and now even the way I couldn't believe it." He pauses, and Abby turns to look at him again. "It's like – I don't know. I don't walk into Gibbs' room anymore thinking This can't be true. Sometimes I'm still surprised it actually is true, but I know now it did happen. We never thought it could, but it did. That's how it is. And what we're going through now, these are the consequences." Another pause, and Tony's expression turns somewhat troubled as his thumb draws a pattern into the droplets of condensed water on his glass. "You think I should be feeling different?"

Abby studies him for a while, contemplating. He looks different when he's so solemn, she thinks. When she first knew him, over the first couple of months after they'd started to work together, she would have said he looks strange. Unfamiliar, not like himself.

In the meantime, however, she's learnt that this is as much a side of him as his cheerful, silly self. He's someone who likes to enjoy life and see things a little less seriously. It's just that, right now, that's a little hard to do even for him.

Abby smiles at him, remembering his question. "No, Tony", she replies, "what you're doing is accepting, and that's a skill. Taking things as they are because you can't change them. That's something Gibbs could always do, and it's something you need to be able to do now. The rest of us, we're still having trouble, obviously." She shrugs and actually grins at him. "See? One more thing that tells you why you're our boss now, and not someone else."

Tony sighs, but he returns her smile. "Yeah, maybe."

They fall silent, both following their own thoughts for a while. At length, Tony runs a hand over his eyes and looks at her.

"I don't want to say it, Abs."

Abby reaches across the table and puts her hand on Tony's forearm. "Hey – you're the tiger, remember? If you don't say it, none of us will. We're not up to it."

Tony purses his lips. Silence stretches out between them until Abby's ice-cube has altogether vanished. Without looking up, Tony says: "We should tell Ducky we're behind him. In whatever he thinks is the right thing to do. He knows best and he knows what Gibbs said about this."

Abby bites her lips, and if Tony didn't know better he'd say she bit too hard, judging from the way her eyes begin to glisten.

"We've only been a bunch of selfish people, haven't we?"

Tony lets out a deep breath and runs his hands over his face tiredly. "Yeah, maybe", he concedes after a few moments, but the maybe sounds very hollow. "We shouldn't make Gibbs stay if he doesn't want to. That's not how he taught us to handle things. We shouldn't be doing this just because we know we'll have a few difficult months ahead. Just because we feel like we can't cope."

"We'll cope."

"Yeah."

Abby nods, her forehead in creases and a lot of spite in her eyes, but the tears that begin to slip down her white cheeks say that her determination isn't real. Not yet.

She bows her head and swallows her tears, trying to be strong because she knows that if she starts like this, it'll only get harder once this night is through and all of this becomes full reality.

"Tony?", she whispers after a while, "If Ducky tells them to turn off those machines, Gibbs will die, won't he?"

TBC

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