A/N: Aside from the obvious – the Navy Yard – all locations in this story are purely fictional. I didn't want to do this to anyone's actual hometown.

Chapter Two

February 5, 2011 – 12:33am

After Tony left, Jimmy closed the door and leaned against it, surveying his tiny apartment. He didn't know why, but he was fairly certain he wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight. Good thing it was Friday – no, Saturday, now. Maybe he could sneak in a nap this afternoon if he needed it. For now…

For now, he decided, he would put this strange burst of energy to use. He still couldn't settle down enough to study, but there were plenty of things he could do that didn't require that level of focus.

So for the next few hours, Jimmy vigorously attacked every chore that he'd been avoiding around the apartment. He did the dishes by hand – his dishwasher had been broken for weeks and the landlord hadn't yet repaired it. He cleaned out the refrigerator, giving a firm farewell to a couple of plastic containers that now contained their own little ecosystems. After lugging the garbage down to the dumpster – if he'd thought about it, he would have saved the refrigerator til last – he reorganized the cabinet under the sink, getting rid of several near-empty bottles of various cleaning products that he'd never got around to throwing out. Then he took a nearly-new bottle of disinfectant and proceeded to wipe down the counters.

When the kitchen was done, he moved into the bathroom. It somehow seemed unfair that a room dedicated to cleansing the human body could make one feel so disgusting when he cleaned it in its turn. Afterwards, he took a shower – starting the vicious cycle over again, he realized – and changed into jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, finally ready to settle down on the couch and find some form of entertainment.

Though he was a little tired, physically, from his exertions, Jimmy was nowhere near being sleepy. He turned on the TV and flipped through the channels, but most of them were either still running infomercials – "If you call now, within the next 20 minutes – 'cause you know we can't do this all day" – or what they were labeling as "classic" movies. He and Tony had only been together for a few months, but in those months they'd spent quite a lot of their time watching classic movies together, and somehow, "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" just didn't rate.

Finally, Jimmy left the TV on ZNN and went to his closet to pull a long-ignored box from its dusty corner. Resolving to buy some Pledge or Endust next time he felt like cleaning, he brushed the dust off a box of puzzle pieces as he returned to the living room. A few moments later, he had a large space cleared on the worn coffee table and was happily hunting for corner pieces.

Maybe this was why he was so good at solving the "meat puzzles" that Dr. Mallard and he came across on an all-too-regular basis, Jimmy reflected. Or maybe it was his ability to focus on a problem to the exclusion of all else around him that made him so good at his job. Regardless, Jimmy knew where his strengths lay – and that was not as a field agent. He liked to take his time, examine the evidence from all angles, and discover how it all came together. The gut instinct, the fast action, and – Jimmy would be the first to admit it – the people skills necessary for such a job were best left to those who were better at it. Like Tony, for example.

Tony knew how to get people to open up to him. He could flatter and charm until they were ready to do almost anything for him. He could inspire trust. When that didn't work, he could use sarcasm and witty remarks to provoke people into telling more than they intended, sometimes just to get him to shut up. He had, more than once, turned the tables on people who thought that they were interrogating him. In short, Tony could respond to people in any of a dozen different ways, and – and this was the important part – he was generally astute enough to choose which of those ways would get him what he wanted. Unlike Jimmy, who'd stuck his foot in his mouth so many times that Abby insisted that was how he'd developed his shoe fetish.

Jimmy turned a puzzle piece over and over between his fingers, contemplating the larger puzzle of how he and Tony could make their lives fit together without screwing something up. They loved each other, and they loved their jobs; could they keep both, or would they be forced to give up one or the other? And, when it came down to it, which would they give up?

If we could just convince Gibbs that what we have won't interfere, Jimmy thought, not for the first time. But how do we do that? Is it even possible?

A sudden shift in the tone of voice coming from the television distracted Jimmy from his thoughts.

"– just received reports of an apparent explosion in the D.C. suburb of Rothstown, Virginia," the news anchorwoman was saying. She had one hand held up to her ear, presumably to an earpiece. "Details are spotty, but I'm hearing that a building and perhaps part of a nearby interstate have sustained damage. No word yet on the cause or the number of casualties. Emergency services are on the scene, and –"

Jimmy felt a little guilty about the huge sense of relief he'd felt when he realized that none of his family or friends lived in the suburb in question. He wondered what had happened, and how bad the damage was. How many people were on the interstate at the time? And how many in the building? He glanced at the clock – 5:16am. Early enough that some people would have started their morning commute – but wait, this was Saturday. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

"We now have footage taken by a traffic helicopter near the site of the explosion. You can see the large plumes of smoke coming from this office building. The building is located almost underneath the Interstate 66 overpass, which accounts for the damage to the roadway. A large section of the overpass has collapsed –"

The puzzle completely forgotten, Jimmy stood up and moved closer to the screen. The helicopter was quite a distance from the site of the explosion – and some air traffic controller somewhere is probably having fits trying to get them to move even further away, Jimmy thought – but the damage to the roadway was clearly visible. Part of one lane – the eastbound lane – was missing a huge section of overpass. Almost sick to his stomach, Jimmy saw one car teetering on the edge. He hoped that its passengers had already made it out alive.

"I-66 is being shut down from exit 74 to 75. The Virginia DOT is asking anyone needing to travel to use these alternate routes –"

The aerial view vanished, replaced by a traffic map. Jimmy ignored it, his thoughts turning inward as he contemplated the tragedy being shown on live TV.

The emergency rooms were going to be full of injured people, some with just a few scratches, some barely clinging to life. The ER medical staffs would do their best, and at least they could offer the families of the injured some hope that their loved ones would survive. But there would be some who wouldn't make it; and for those, there would be people like Dr. Mallard to offer the only hope they could – that the reason for this disaster would be found, and the responsible parties brought to justice.

A new voice wrenched Jimmy's attention back to the TV.

"– I'm two blocks from the building, just outside the perimeter that law enforcement officials have set up." The speaker was a young brunette, trying but not quite able to hide a nervous excitement. Not that she was happy to be reporting live from a disaster site; but while most law enforcement or FEMA spokespeople would try to project an aura of calm, this woman exuded just the opposite.

"We have reports that Homeland Security, the FBI, and several other law enforcement agencies responded immediately to the crisis, and may in fact have already been here when the building exploded –"

"What?" Jimmy collapsed to his knees, pressing his hands to either side of the screen as he leaned in closer, studying every inch of background he could see. Directly in front of him, the brunette continued:

"– Rescue workers are shoring up parts of the building in an attempt to gain access. We are told that the call center located on the first floor runs a half-shift on the weekends, but was scheduled to be closed this weekend due to decreased demand during the economic slowdown. Given that the FBI and other agencies appeared to be on the scene at the time of the explosion, we are speculating at this point that there may be law enforcement officers trapped inside –"

"No, oh no," Jimmy whispered. His heart pounded painfully in his chest; the temperature in the room seemed to climb by several degrees. Desperately he kept his eyes glued to the screen, searching for any sign that NCIS was one of the "other agencies" mentioned.

Abruptly the scene cut away, replaced by the aerial view from the traffic helicopter. Dimly, Jimmy noted that the car he'd seen earlier was being winched back from the edge of the precipice, but he no longer had a thought to spare for its unknown passengers. The relief he'd felt earlier was gone completely, replaced by stark fear that this was what Tony and the others had been called in to try to prevent, and worse, that they'd been inside…

"An unnamed source within the FBI has confirmed that an ongoing investigation led them to the Art Jones Building early this morning, though not in time to prevent what appears to be a deliberate attack, most likely intended to destroy the I-66 overpass." This was from the anchorwoman at the ZNN studio. Live footage had been compressed to a corner of the screen; the majority of the screen was taken up by the studio camera, though a news ticker ran at the bottom, rehashing the events of the morning. "We are told that Homeland Security, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service were involved in a joint investigation –"

"No, no…" Jimmy moaned softly. He wrapped his arms around himself, unconsciously rocking back and forth. "Oh, God, guys, please be safe –"

Then he jumped to his feet, looking wildly around the room. His phone, where was his phone? He never called Tony while the team was working a case, he didn't want to be a distraction or give their secret away, but who could blame him for wanting to make sure the team was okay, after something like this? He could even call one of the others – not Gibbs, he wasn't that brave, even now – McGee, maybe. Even without knowing about their relationship, McGee would understand, and wouldn't mind sparing just a moment to reassure Jimmy that they were alive and well.

That was what he'd do. He'd call McGee, and everything would be okay. It had to be. If only he could find his phone!

A shift in sound from the TV turned his attention back to the screen.

Apparently ZNN had more camera crews at the scene; they were cycling through views from several different angles. First, the camera with the brunette; she was speaking into her microphone, but her words really didn't register in Jimmy's mind. That was because while she spoke, they'd cut to another camera, another angle – and that view hit Jimmy like a blow to the stomach.

The MCRT van had been far enough away from the building that it had survived the explosion mostly intact. The force of the blast had shattered the windows, but otherwise it looked okay. Just beyond the van, Jimmy could see where a dark sedan, parked closer to the building, had been blown onto its side. The view he had was of the roof of the car; he wasn't able to see an agency logo. Then the scene changed again.

Floodlights were being set up and aimed at a section of the building – or at least that was what it had been, before the explosion reduced it to a pile of rubble. Though dawn couldn't be too far off, Jimmy was grateful, and hopeful, too, to see that they weren't waiting. A rescue operation would begin right away; a recovery operation would wait until it was light out, for the safety of the workers. That meant there was hope that someone in there was alive.

The scene changed again: Rescue operations continued on the overpass, though the immediate danger had passed. Vehicles had been pulled back from the unstable area near the hole, and now local LEOs were directing an orderly evacuation on foot. The scene changed: Jimmy was now looking at the collapsed section of the overpass, from ground level. He could see at least two cars in the rubble, and firefighters were climbing through the mess to reach them.

The scene changed: Covered stretchers were being carried away from the destroyed building. Jimmy swallowed hard. It was one thing to know that there would be casualties, but quite another to see it, to watch the body count on live TV –

Wait. Jimmy shook his head hard and lunged for the remote control, praying that he really hadn't seen…

Jimmy had splurged a little bit on his last birthday and added TiVo to his cable package. Usually this meant that he could keep up with a few TV shows, even on his crazy schedule. Tonight, it meant that he could go back and see that camera shot again. He almost didn't want to, but he had to know –

– that he was right.

The second stretcher was being carried by a firefighter and a man in an FBI jacket. The FBI agent was in the lead, walking backward, and he stumbled on a bit of rubble. His stumble jarred the stretcher, and the body's left arm slipped from the stretcher to dangle almost to the ground. The firefighter was quick to stop and lift the arm back to the stretcher, under the sheet, but it only took Jimmy a split second to see one critical detail. It took longer for its meaning to fully register, but when it did…

The arm had been wearing a watch. A watch with an orange watchband. Gibbs' orange watchband. Gibbs' arm.

Gibbs. On the stretcher. The covered stretcher. Gibbs.

Gibbs was dead.

Jimmy started to shake, and couldn't stop. He was afraid to look at the screen; he was afraid to look away. He sat huddled on the floor in front of the TV, knees drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs, staring unblinking at the screen while the horrifying images seared themselves into his mind.

It was amazing how well TV cameras could zoom in on something happening dozens of yards away. Or maybe the ZNN camera operators had slipped past the crowd control barriers. Jimmy, and millions of viewers around the world, saw the response to the disaster in excruciating detail. Occasionally the network pulled back to the less-explicit aerial view, but mostly they showed whatever they could get a camera near enough to film, with little to no filtering.

Thus, Jimmy saw when rescue workers broke through a mound of rubble into a protected pocket created by part of the wall that was still standing – only to find several badly burned bodies. The camera operator quickly zoomed out, but the wonders of digital technology were mercilessly on Jimmy's side. Rewinding the image, Jimmy paused on the clearest frame he could find and hesitantly leaned forward to examine the picture. One of the bodies wore an NCIS vest. He mentally compared the body's proportions to those of the agents he knew; then he spotted a familiar pair of brown leather boots. Tears blurred his vision, hiding further details, but he did not wipe them away. He didn't want to remember Ziva David that way.

Jimmy reached out blindly and fumbled until he found the power button. The TV went dark; the room was mostly silent, except for the sobbing coming from the young man. He hid his head in his arms, as he tried to hide from the realization that threatened to steal away his last remaining threads of sanity. But there was no hiding from this, and finally, Jimmy had to face reality.

And the reality was that with two of the MCRT dead, the chances of the other two surviving were slim to none.

Bonus points if you recognize the infomercial!