Thanks everyone for the kind comments! I hope you'll enjoy this chapter J

Small Variations

Chapter 1

The cafeteria of Colorado Springs South Hospital had the worst coffee Gibbs had tasted in a long time, but it was the least of his worries at the moment. When he had first heard that McGee had been shot, he had prepared himself to the worst. Unfortunately, the worst was what had happened. The nurse at the reception desk had not needed to phrase it: from the look on her face when Gibbs had asked for his agent's condition, he had immediately known. He had been too late. Timothy McGee was dead.

It had happened one hour and a half before Gibbs had arrived at the hospital; about twenty minutes after his plane for Colorado Springs had taken off from Denver. The doctors had thought that they had stabilized him, but all of a sudden, Tim had gone into cardiac arrest. They had tried everything to revive him, but to no avail. He was too weak, had lost too much blood from the gunshot.

And now Gibbs was down in the hospital morgue, staring at his body. "It's him," he confirmed, his face unreadable.

The young female doctor who was standing there gave him a small nod. "Agent Gibbs," she said softly. "I am sincerely sorry for the death of your agent."

Gibbs did not reply. His eyes were locked on the corpse in front of him. Tim had died alone.

"Sir, do you know how we can contact Agent McGee's family? You were the only contact we had for him..."

"I'll take care of it," Gibbs assured in a whisper. He briefly closed his eyes, thinking of how he was going to tell McGee's family that their son, their brother had died. Then he thought of his team. Everyone was going to be devastated. This was Kate's death all over again.

But now was not the time for such thoughts. He had work to do. He spoke again, his tone much firmer this time. "I am opening an investigation for the murder of a federal agent. The body will be transferred to our unit in DC; we will fax you all the necessary papers asap."

Ducky would examine Tim's body; and they would catch the bastard who had done this.

The doctor nodded again, and opened the large cupboard that was standing in the corner of the morgue. She took a box from it and handed it to Gibbs. "These... were your agent's personal belongings, " she explained. "There isn't much, but this was all he had on him when he was sent here."

"Thank you," said Gibbs. He opened it and took a quick look at its content. The doctor hadn't lied: there wasn't much in it : just Tim's wallet, his NCIS badge, and his -empty- gun holster. Gibbs closed the box, shook the doctor's hand and walked to the parking. He would take a closer look at Tim's belongings later on. For now, though this was not something he was looking forward to at all, he had a few phone calls to make.

He put the box on the backseat, sat in his car, and allowed himself to take a deep breath. Then he started dialling. The director was currently unavailable - something about an urgent, confidential apparently, but Gibbs' patience had long run out by the time Cynthia had finished her explanation. "Tell her to call me back without fail," he ordered. He did not wait for an answer and hung up furiously. Technically, it was not Jenny's fault. He had not called her before leaving for Colorado this morning, she could not know that something was wrong. But Gibbs was not a patient man, and today was definitely not the day to break rule number 3 - never be unreachable.

It was not the rental car's fault, either, but Gibbs hit its ceiling repeatedly nonetheless in frustration when the Mallard's housekeeper announced that Ducky would not be reachable until noon.

Tony, fortunately for him, was reachable. Gibbs' anger at not being able to talk to Jenny or Ducky quickly dissolved when Tony picked up, replaced with a strange feeling, like a quiet sadness.

"Tony," he said with a very soft voice. "I'm glad to talk to you."

That, Gibbs knew, was enough of a signal for Tony to understand that the situation was serious.

And indeed, Tony got the message. "... what's wrong, boss?" he asked.

"Tim... he did not make it, Tony. He's dead."

None of them spoke for a while. Gibbs ran a hand on his face, giving Tony the time to digest the news. Then, he spoke again: "You still there, Tony ?"

"Yeah, boss."

"Is Ziva with you ?"

"No, she's... she should be on her way to McGee's appartment, trying to find any lead on
why he was in Colorado this weekend. We... we weren't able to enter in his personal files on his computer yet. We tried, but we couldn't. We probably should wait for Abby to-"

A long, heavy sigh could be heard. Gibbs did not need to see Tony to guess the expression on his face. "Take your time, Tony," he said, feeling strangely out of character, like he hadn't felt in years. Two years, to be precise.

"Yeah... sorry. I just need to- well."

"Just call me as soon as you have something. Tell Ziva. I'll tell Abby. In the meantime, I'm going to find out what happened here... "

"Okay, boss."

With that, Gibbs hung up and threw his phone on the front passenger seat. He squeezed his eyes shut and brought his hand to his forehead.

Why did this have to happen again? Why now?

He drew a deep, long breath and reopened his eyes, repeating to himself the same thing he had been trying to convince himself of earlier. He could grieve later. He had to find the bastard first.

Slowly, he reached for the box with Tim's belongings. He put on some gloves, and started to examine its contents. The NCIS badge did not give him much information, except that Tim was not the kind of person who polished those things often; the badge was slightly damaged, and there were several scratches on the metal. This made Gibbs smile a little. Could be my badge, he thought.

Next was the wallet. There was quite a collection of cards there- several credit cards, driver's license, member cards of various associations such as the Detective Writers' Guild of Eastern Coast, and business cards for various restaurants and for something called the WoW adult guild of DC (sounded suspicious - he would definitely have to check it). There was also a decent amount of cash, a miniature map of Paris' metro lines, but nothing so far that could explain Tim's presence in Colorado.

It was only when he found the photos that Gibbs got confirmation of what his gut was telling him - something was really, really off. There were five photos, each one of them stranger than the last...

Gibbs was in the process of reading the legend behind the third one when his cellphone rang. "Yes, Tony?" he answered.

Tony's voice was weird; he sounded shocked... almost scared. "Boss. I think there is something wrong."

"You think, Tony?"

"I- well, I don't know how to say this but-"

"Just say it!"

"Are you certain that McGee is dead, boss?"

To his own surprise, Gibbs did not find the question as stupid as he probably should have. "I just ID'd his body, Tony," he said, just slightly annoyed. "It was him. Why?"

"Because, boss, McGee just stepped out of the elevator. And if you forget the fact that he's really pissed off that I tried to get access to his personal data, he seems fine to me."