I promised you an update…and here one is. Thanks for the reviews, by the way. I was worried that people would have run out of interest in this story due to the long hiatus.
McGee arrived in the basement at the right time. He was ready to help Jimmy. He was still feeling alienated from Tony and Ziva but he was already closer to Abby which had radically improved his mood. He smiled across the table at Jimmy; a watery grimace with no feeling. He was indifferent to the Medical Examiner. They had crossed paths once since the team had disbanded following Gibbs's death and they had not felt the need to rekindle their never-existent relationship.
Gibbs. McGee sighed. Despite the lack of sawdust, it still felt like Gibbs's basement. Gibbs: dead because of McGee's failures. He had never been able to shake that guilt, gnawing away at him; throughout his single days, throughout his marriage, throughout his separation, it had never gone away. It never would. He dropped his face into his hands, hiding his expression from Jimmy.
McGee groaned and stretched his neck out. On Gibbs's orders, he had been sitting in his car, watching a house for almost fourteen hours now. According to Tony, though, it was not much better back at the office with Gibbs on the warpath for word perfect paperwork and ground breaking investigating.
There was a knock on the driver's window and McGee sat up in shock, twisting round to see who was interrupting his surveillance operation. He let out a sigh of relief when he saw the devil himself: Gibbs.
He wound down his window and smiled weakly at his boss, hoping that the sugary frosting from his jam doughnut was not still plastered around his mouth.
'He's not coming back,' Gibbs told him shortly.
McGee frowned. 'But –'
'He's not coming back,' Gibbs repeated, 'because he's outside the old NCIS building.'
McGee deepened his frown. 'Why would he be there?'
Gibbs stared at McGee, raising his eyebrows in impatience. McGee realised that Gibbs was waiting for the driver's seat to be vacated and he clambered out of the car, brushing the doughnut crumbs off his lap onto the pavement.
Gibbs climbed into the driver's seat and nodded towards the passenger side door. McGee ran round and slipped in beside Gibbs. Almost before the door had clicked shut, the car was streaking down the street towards the old NCIS building.
'So, was that night completely wasted?' McGee asked, clutching at the edges of his seat in fright.
'Nothing is wasted, Elflord,' Gibbs replied curtly, and they fell into silence.
They skidded to a halt outside the building and they both hopped out and jogged towards the door. They entered; McGee cautious, Gibbs running without concern; and made their way methodically through the rooms.
McGee peered into the bullpen-equivalent and whistled softly, thankful that he had not been an Agent twenty odd years ago. He crossed over to the window and surveyed the view. It was more sombre than the view across Washington D.C. He was looking out across a military graveyard, rows and rows of white stone rectangles poking out from the soil, directly above decomposing corpses.
He heard a shout, cut off before it had fully formed, instantly recognisable as his boss's voice. Spinning round, he charged in the vague direction of the sickening sound. Pausing in the doorway, looking out onto the empty street, he heard the screech of tyres. A black car shot out from the side of building, the black butt of a gun protruding from the back window.
A shot ran out, and McGee ducked behind the stone wall of the entrance porch. Grabbing his own gun from its holster, he aimed, squinted, bit his lip and pulled the trigger. He emptied the chamber into the air, each bullet missing the car zooming away from him with Gibbs inside, relying on McGee's steady hand and nerves.
And McGee had failed him.
Abby paused as she saw McGee sitting at the boat-building table. With each step she took, she was dissecting her options. She could sit beside him in a decisive act against her incarcerated boyfriend, Billy. Alternatively, she could sit beside Ziva at the other end of the table, a sign of her loyalty to Billy, at least until she had discoursed with him. She chose the stool next to Ziva.
Jimmy looked up as her stool scraped against the floor and he narrowed his eyes, counting the present ex-agents. Tony had not yet arrived, despite Abby's coming almost an hour late. He had specifically asked them to come at 10.00 but, apparently, sleeping in was more important than two missing children.
He might as well press on without the former Senior Field Agent, though, he reasoned. Then he sighed. He couldn't let his own antipathy for Tony get in the way of finding his children.
'Does anyone know Tony's number?' he asked, forcing the words through gritted teeth. He got no reply but Ziva's cheeks reddened. 'Ziva?' he prompted.
Her flush deepened but she nodded and brought out her phone, dialling the number she had copied from Tony's phone when she had 'accidently' knocked it off the table into her handbag and 'forgotten' to return it immediately.
Tony grunted at the shrill ringing of his phone. He sat up and squinted at the screen. It definitely wasn't Joey's number, which left Ziva as the only viable culprit to having stirred him from his restless slumber. Or bat-nap, as she would call it. He smiled sourly at the memory of Ziva's idiomatic mistakes.
He really didn't want to return to Gibbs's basement. The memories were too much. It had been left to him to pack up Gibbs's belongings and just being in that kitchen brought back memories of his crying fit on those tiles.
He forced himself to answer, telling himself that anything was better than lying in bed, clutching his stomach and drowning in self-pity. He hung up without speaking; only offering a noncommittal grunt to Ziva's demand for him to come to the basement. He sat still for a few seconds, weighing up his options, but then he stood up and trudged into the bathroom.
Gibbs will die in the next update, I promise. And then I'll move onto other things. Like why Jimmy hates Tony and Ziva, and where Ziva's husband is, and some Tiva. No story of mine will be complete without some Tiva.