Kath and Tony were waiting in the car for Gibbs. Kath sat in the back, her seatbelt already buckled and she seemed very quiet. Tony looked at her through the rearview mirror from where he sat in the passenger's seat.
"You okay?" he asked. He knew that flirting with the gorgeous woman would be a bad idea. She looked up at him from where she sat, looking at him through the rearview rather than at him directly so he wouldn't have to look back at her.
"I've been through this before." Came her quiet reply. Tony raised an eyebrow.
"You had your twin sister kill your husband?" she gave a small smile at this but it was sad.
"No, I mean losing someone close to me… almost all of my family is gone now. When I was seven, my mother got pregnant and then two days before my baby brother, Sean Michael, was born, she lost him due to a doctor's error. After that, people close to me kept dying. My grandfather, my grandmother, my great aunt, one of my father's friends, my great uncle. When I was nineteen, my dad died of non-alcoholic sucrose of the liver. Six months later my older brother and his wife were killed in a car accident. My oldest younger brother was drinking with some friends and someone slipped him some PCP and he ODed on it. My middle younger brother was in a police training program and got shot in a drive by. My youngest brother fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. My mother is slowly dying and a bitter old woman. She's been diagnosed with breast cancer and isn't expected to live much longer. And now Aaron's been taken from me. I'm far too used to grief for someone of my age. I just know how to deal by now." Tony was shocked by her revelation. He couldn't believe this woman had lost so many.
"How old are you?" he had forgotten to ask her. She gave another small, sad smile.
"I just turned 25 this past August on the 16th. Aaron was two and a half years older than me. He'd been in love with me since the first time he'd seen me, which just happened to be gym class my freshman year and his senior one. Things were tough for us because I was 14 and he was 18 so I couldn't date him till I had just graduated from high school." Tony nodded a bit. He had dated women that were younger and knew the difficult problem of being of consenting age. Just as Tony was about to ask another question, Gibbs came and got into the car, closing the door behind him and taking off faster than one could manage to blink. He took off first for the ship that Petty Officer 1st Class Aaron Ammazzalorso was stationed. The USS Bataan.