a/n - A short chapter, but it needed to stand alone, as you'll see. Thank you for all the wonderful comments. There's lots more to come, so all of your questions will be answered.

"I'm having the satellite link directly fed into here." Vance welcomed Tim and Sarah once again into his office. "I thought this would be a little more private that in MTAC."

"Thank you, Sir, for everything." Tim still looked a little shell-shocked as he and his sister were ushered in by Vance's frazzled looking assistant. One of the techs from MTAC was working on the computer they'd hooked up to the plasma on the wall and looked up as they came in.

"Director Vance, I can't get the two systems to interface properly."

As soon as he heard the problem, McGee was back on his feet and leaning over the technician's shoulder, retracing each set of wires. As Vance continued to check his watch, Tim worked faster, afraid they'd miss the link with his sister. Sarah had also abandoned her chair and was pacing behind him.

"Did you try wiggling the wires?"

"Sarah..."

"Or hitting it, sometimes that takes care of... oops." Sarah caught herself but not quite quick enough.

He may now be her uncle instead of her brother, but the brotherly evil eye still worked as he turned and glared at her. "Is that why I had to replace the heat sink on your computer twice in the last year?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you don't." His glare shifted to the technician who was chuckling next to him. "Let's run a test signal."

Vance listened to the banter, but his attention was on the couple Gibbs' team was escorting toward his office, right on time. The man was tall and lanky, his still youthful face framed by salt and pepper hair. The woman was walking proof that Sarah would mature into a beautiful woman. It also appeared that she was the source of her daughter's quirky humor as she held her finger to her lips to quiet Vance. Enthralled, she stood in the doorway and watched her brother and her daughter quibble, her husband at her side.

"The test signal didn't come through. What port are you using on the main relay?" Next to Tim, the technician kept himself between McGee and the wires that went nowhere, delaying discovery until he was given the signal. Sarah was bouncing up onto her toes, trying to see over them.

"You still haven't wiggled all the wires, maybe one of them is loose."

"Sarah..."

"Maybe you should try the two cans with a string. It worked for us as kids."

Tim froze at the voice he hadn't heard for over twenty years, before slowly turning around. "Becky?" He would never remember the three steps it took to stand in front of her.

Rebecca reached up and touched his face. The familiar green eyes were wide as she brushed her thumb across his cheek. "How did my baby brother get to be so tall?"

"Becky." This time his voice broke as he pulled her into a hug. "You're here, you're really here."

After a moment, he straightened and reached out for Sarah, who was still staring in amazement at Rebecca. He pulled her close, giving her a reassuring smile. "Becky, it's time you met Sarah, your daughter. Sarah, this is... this is your real mom."

"My baby, my beautiful baby girl." Becky was crying as she reached out and touched Sarah's hair, believing for the first time that all of this was real.

Sarah looked into eyes so similar to her own and saw only love, no disappointment or regret, and threw herself into her mother's arms. "Mama, oh, Mama."

Richard could wait no longer and wrapped his arms around both of the women. "Our little girl, we have our little girl, Sweetheart, we have our family."

Tim stepped back from the newly united family, but Becky would have none of it. She grabbed his hand and pulled him in with them as Richard's hand came around to rest on the back of his neck, completing the circle. "Our family." The repeated words were just a whisper to the air, but a shout to his heart as he repeated them back.

"Our family."

The technician had left right away, but it was difficult to Vance and the team to move from the doorway. Eventually, Vance took a deep breath and closed the door before turning to the team. Ziva was openly crying for her friends, and DiNozzo was trying to subtly wipe his eyes. Vance decided to give them an out. "Why don't the two of you go get our new family some dinner?"

Tony nodded and tugged on Ziva to get her attention as he grinned at Vance. "We did good, didn't we?"

"We did good, DiNozzo, real good." Vance smiled once again and jerked his thumb in the direction of the main stairs. "Now, let's get them fed."

Once they were down the stairs, Vance next turned his attention to Gibbs. The man was still staring at the closed door, his eyes bright. Vance knew, of course, knew about Shannon and Kelly, about the family Gibbs would never get back. "Are you all right?"

Gibbs couldn't speak, couldn't even shake his head no, because it would have been a lie. All he could do was shrug with a tilt of his head before turning toward the back stairs.