Ziva kept her face down, but her eyes were boring into Tony's. The understanding built up over nine years of partnership was not so easily lost. She could see that he was reliving the nightmare of that night. She could see the orange tongues of fire burning somewhere deep in the black void of his pupils. He was torturing himself with his believed culpability. The misplaced remorse was twisting his mind and rotting his life away, drowning it in the alcoholic poison that she could smell on his breath, even across the table.

She longed to tell him that it wasn't his fault. She longed to sit across from him in Autopsy, two crystal glasses of whisky between them, in silent companionship. Instead, he was as far away as possible, avoiding catching her gaze. Whatever they had had all those years ago was dead.

When John T. Mullin developed the video tape, he could not have fathomed the damage it would do to a team's relationship: one life vanquished, three gnarled irrevocably. And all from that one ten minute long spool of black, magnetic tape.

Ziva was leaning against the vending machine, the toe of her shoe dented from kicking the unforgiving metal, when she got Tony's call. In ten minutes, she was running towards the warehouse, the door of her car swinging open on battered hinges.

She passed the gaggle of disinterested uniformed police officers and stopped in the doorway, staring at the scene. McGee was hunched in the corner on hands and knees, one hand resting on the wall. Behind him, on the floor, was a shadow about the length of a horizontal cadaver. Tony stood a distance away, peering at a flickering screen.

Steadying her jumping heart, she walked slowly inside, heading towards Gibbs. At the sight, she crumpled to the floor beside him. She hid her head in her chest, shielding the tears streaming down her face from sight. Tentatively, she reached out a hand and touched Gibbs's arm. Theoretically, it was no different from the bodies that they were around every day as a living. It killed her. His skin was just as cold as every other corpse. His muscles were just as tense as every other corpse. To all intents and purposes, he was just the same as every other corpse.

Her body was slowly decaying from the inside out. She could feel her sanity seeping out through the pores on her nose. It wasn't the same as every other corpse. No other corpse had been Gibbs.

She raised her eyes and appraised the body, trying to force herself to view it as just another body. His body seemed intact enough; it was only his neck that was damaged. His throat was bloody and there was a rough hole punched into the skin, tearing through the bones and muscle beneath the leathery skin.

She stood up and looked over at McGee, who tensed and retched. She smiled empathetically at his back before crossing slowly over to Tony. As she approached, the quiet thud of her shoes on the stone caused him to look up. He paused, his eyes widening in horror and then confusion. And then he stood up and moved away, sending the TV screen one last, lingering look.

Ziva bent over, mirroring the position that Tony had been in. A video tape was protruding from the video player. Biting her lip nervously, she pushed it in with her index finger. It was swallowed up and, after a stomach churning grinding noise, the screen guttered into life.

The initial white noise disappeared and an instantly recognisable face appeared, the nose pressed right up against the screen. Sidney Latimer. She recoiled slightly, hating this man with a passion that ran deeper than any hatred she had felt before.

Sidney moved away from the screen and Ziva could see Gibbs. Her mouth opened and a fragile gasp escaped and floated delicately through the air. He was bound to a chair, the cloth gagging his mouth spotted with blood from his cut lips. He was moving, however, and Ziva's squeezed her eyes tightly shut, willing the cadaver on the floor behind her to move.

She could only see Latimer's back now but the glare from a flat metal object was reflecting onto the camera lens. A knife. Ziva clenched her fists, directing all her anger through her veins and into those two balled up hands. Latimer took a tiny step towards the struggling Gibbs but he was still close enough for Ziva to hear his voice clearly through the speakers on top of the black TV box.

'I'm not going to kill you,' he said, his rasping voice driving a stake through Ziva's vampiric heart. 'No. I will make you suffer, just as I was made to.'

Even though his face was disfigured by the tightly wound cloth around his mouth, Ziva could see the terror those words instilled in Gibbs. She lowered her eyes, not daring to watch. She guessed that her boss had worn that expression all those years ago when Ari, her half-brother, had threatened to make Gibbs suffer.

'I think that I will start with the foreign girl,' Latimer continued, and Ziva's eyes jerked back up to the picture. It had the same effect on Gibbs. In spite of his bondage, he attempted vainly to shake his head.

Latimer chuckled softly, the quiet sound sending poison tipped spears into Ziva's body. She bit down on her tongue to stop herself from shouting out to the two-dimensional, blurry projection of Gibbs. Latimer moved out of the limited scope shown by the camera and appeared again by the table directly in front of Gibbs. He stepped towards Gibbs's shoulder, bent over and saying something into Gibbs's ear. From the distance, Ziva could not make out the words.

Latimer walked back towards the camera and adjusted it, focussing it more on Gibbs. He straightened up again and flinched.

'Have to piss,' he muttered, just loud enough for the camera to pick up on it. 'I'll be back,' he told Gibbs, walking towards the door.

The second that the door closed behind Latimer, Gibbs tensed visibly. Sensing that something was about to happen, Ziva bent closer to the screen, her chest constricting. Suddenly, Gibbs jerked forward and the chair tipped. Gibbs's legs were not tied up so he could have stopped himself from falling but, as Ziva well knew, he meant to fall.

His neck skewered on the corner of the table and his body hovered there for a sickening second before rolling sideways and crashing to the ground. He twitched once but then he went limp: dead.

Ziva stared at the motionless form of Gibbs for a moment before her chest constricted again and her stomach lurched. She twisted around and copied McGee. She turned back to the screen. There was nothing else happening to draw her gaze away from Gibbs and she just stared at it, feeling dreadfully guilty and helpless, and a single tear slipped down her cheek, barren compared the easy flow when she first saw him but the emotion behind it was a tsunami now that she had seen Gibbs end his own life to save her.

The few minutes before Latimer returned felt like an age. Hell froze over ten times before she heard the startled cry slipping from his lips. Despite everything, she felt a pang of satisfaction that Gibbs had, yet again, thwarted the plans of a psychotic killer.

Latimer stood still for a second, much like the reaction of Ziva. Then, in a concerted effort, he burst into life; rushing to Gibbs's side and cutting him free of the chair. He glanced around them room once before running out, forgetting the video tape, much to his demise. And Ziva's peace of mind.

Ziva blinked. In reliving it, she had slumped off her stool and was curled up on the floor, retching. Tony was by her side, hand on shoulder, attempting to comfort her with meaningless platitudes. She looked up at him and all the bromides died on his lips. He simply pulled her into a hug.

That's all the happiness that you are getting for now. And, since we have finally put Gibbs to rest, we can get back to their post-NCIS lives.