His insides froze slowly as the sounds of the numb sobbing slowly trickled into his foggy brain. The sounds of the muted and stupefied horror left no doubt in his soul as to their owner. He didn't need to ask to know what she knew. She would have heard it all. He had let his defences down with that imbecilic doctor and now his most treasured yet corrosive secret was no longer his own. His neck seemed to stiffen to stone of its own accord, he couldn't turn it. He couldn't look at her; he couldn't possibly meet her eyes. The monitors that seemed to fester on every feasible section of his body increased their ear aching screech. It was only the thin, wavering and borderline childlike "Gibbs?" that could have melted the ice build up in his neck. He could never resist her when she sounded so broken, so utterly decimated that a single word seemed to ooze with tangible misery.

He held out a weakened hand to her.

It shook as he desperately tried to steady it.

Even in the dire seriousness that cloaked him, shame seeped into his gut. He was a wreck, a relic. Useless. He forced his eyes to remain open as he slowly pulled them up to face the face he never wanted to see hurt. She was a terrifying shade of pale. Her eyes were burning with disbelief, rigid and unyielding. He could see it immediately. She wasn't going to accept it. She couldn't. In a way, he understood. It took him years really, to accept that Shannon and Kelly were gone. Abby just had the added misfortune of having to know him as he wheezed and gasped like an infirm waste of space. A thought, a desperately horrendous thought that he had thought many a time…crossed his mind. One sight of the stream of tears that were spilling down her face however soon put paid to that notion.

"Abbs, come here."

She choked on her own sob as she shook her head wildly, nausea beginning to engulf her, the room beginning to spin. She was in a dream. A horrendous, ludicrous dream. But as she looked at him, really looked at him, she realised the signs were there. His hand was shaking. His eyes weren't as blue, weren't as piercing. His neck was a little sunken, his complexion a little gaunt. She should have seen it before. But she didn't. Because the thought had never crossed her mind. She had shot down Tim's concerns that something was amiss, based on Gibbs' treatment of Tony. She had made excuses for him. He'd been shot by a kid she'd shrieked. That tended to change a man. Tony understood. Tony wouldn't hold it against him. Her tears as she stood there were tears of sheer conflict. Raw pain at the news she wasn't supposed to know and acidic guilt at the treatment of a friend who lay in a hospital bed mere meters from her.

Dizziness overwhelmed her.

Her heart was racing; her brow and palms were sweating profusely. Her pulse thudded uncomfortably close to the surface of her neck as her knees threatened to buckle. Perspiration trickled down her spine as some nameless, faceless doctors' words thundered like poison in her ears. Gibbs' eyes were wide with something she couldn't understand as his outstretched hand remained shaking and outwards. He was speaking, but she couldn't hear him. She was underwater. She was drowning. Her legs tingled with electricity as she was struck dumb, unable to speak, unable to hear.

Unable to breathe.

Darkness suddenly consumed her and she greeted it like an old friend. She needed to descend into the pillow of oblivion the nothingness would provide. She didn't hear the horrified shout as she descended like a broken ballerina to the sterile hospital floor. She didn't know that she had been spared a blow to the head by strong arms. Arms that cradled her gently as the face those arms belonged to whitened with pure shock and fear. Brown eyes flickered up to ghostly blue counterparts, questions singing within them like some perverse interval act. Standing slowly with her in his arms, assessing her pulse as he did so, Timothy McGee instinctively knew his life was about to change forever.

"What is it?"

Gibbs shook his head as purposefully as he could before the nausea overtook him. "Get a doctor," he ordered urgently, pointing at Abby's limp frame, securely encased in McGee's arms. "She needs a goddamned doctor. Go get one!" Tim pursed his lips and shook his head with an equal sense of purpose. "She's just fainted," he said quietly, "And Abby only faints in two situations. One, when she's at a concert and the music is too and I quote, "awesome to handle." He looked down at her, a frown knitting across his brow. "Or, when she's just gotten bad news. As in, really bad news." He looked around the room with sceptic fear burning in his gut. "I don't see a band setting up in here, Boss. So it must be the latter."

He swallowed.

"So, like I said, what is it?"

Gibbs felt his eyes flutter downwards as his faint grasp on life began to tumble along with them. His secret, his most dirty, festering secret…was out. There was only one way out of the lamp and the genie had thoroughly rubbed it. There was no stuffing it back in. He looked at McGee, and conflicting emotions battled through him. He'd changed so much. He pointed to the sofa in the corner of the room, Tim nodded and crossing, he gently placed Abby upon it. Shrugging out of his suit jacket, he draped it over her and brushing some hair out of her eyes, turned back to Gibbs. He raised a brow.

"Just tell me. Just spit it out."

Gibbs couldn't help but smile a rather sad, yet proud smile. He was assertive now, this Tim. A decade ago there would be no way he could tell him. Now though, now…he could handle it. He was a fine man, and Gibbs took comfort in the fact that he would be around for Abby. That he would keep her close when he no longer could. That he would be there for her, when he no longer would. He pointed to the edge of the bed and cleared his throat. "Take a seat, McGee." Tim shook his head rather abruptly. "I'd rather not get too comfortable, I don't want Tony on death's door and left alone with practical strangers. So just tell me whatever you want to tell me so I can get out of here and back to him."

Gibbs swallowed that sucker punch with enormous difficulty.

He had a point.

And there was no easy way to say it and he was as gruff on his death bed as he was in his heyday.

"I'm dying, Tim."

McGee stared silently. He stared at Gibbs as if he were some sort of bizarre oil painting in some pretentious gallery. He stood and he stared and he tried to understand. But of course he didn't. Because there was never any understanding bizarre oil paintings in pretentious art galleries. And so he offered the only explanation that made any sense. "You're medicated," he answered shortly; "You don't know what you're saying. You didn't take a hit. You'll be fine." He turned on his heel and made to storm from the room, an inexplicable rage filling him. Gibbs was lying there like the Mona Lisa spouting some rubbish about snuffing it, when Tony…the guy who'd saved him from knocking on heaven's door, was in actual mortal peril. He felt his teeth grind together when he crossed half way to the door and Gibbs' voice rang out behind him.

"I'm not dying from today, I'm dying from liver cancer."

Tim froze. He froze as if someone had rammed all the stalagmites and stalactites in the world down his throat. His eyes bulged at the sockets as his brain scrambled to keep up. He felt his hands and feet go cold as the classic fight or flight response kicked in. He felt a gust of sterility wash lazily over his tonsils as his mouth dropped open. He shook his head as if trying to clear an imaginary ear blockage. Pivoting slowly on his heel, his brows had disappeared into his hairline. Gibbs stared back at him steadily, cursing the fact that he couldn't even muster the energy to get out of his damned bed. There was a deathly silence between them; an imaginary wall neither could penetrate. Tim's mind was reaching melt down levels as thousands of tumbling thoughts barrelled through it.

It simply could not be true.

"You're lying."

The words slipped out of his mouth before he could bite them back. As soon as he heard them, coupled with his thin, almost whining tone, he was embarrassed. He sounded like a child. He felt even more like one when Gibbs looked at him with an uncomfortable amount of understanding in his jaded blue eyes. How had he not noticed the change in his eyes? They were like watered and beaten down stained glass windows. Musty and murky, unable to let the light truly in. Tim swallowed. How had he not noticed that?"

"I wish I was, Tim. But I'm not."

McGee stared once more. He didn't know he was standing in exactly the same spot Abby had been when she heard the news. But Gibbs did, and he hated that spot with a vicious passion. He took a deep breath, trying to explain it, but knowing he couldn't. Because he truly didn't know. He'd never read those ridiculous pamphlets they'd pushed on him, never attended those moronic therapy sessions. He'd heard the word cancer in his doctor's office, a long time ago, and decided his fate. He wasn't going to draw it out. He wasn't going to fight an unwinnable fight; he wasn't going to spend what time remained to him drugged up to the eyeballs, unable to wipe his own ass. He would rather end it all himself than do that. And now, it was time to stand by that decision.

"I found out about a year or so ago," he heard himself saying. "Maybe a little more, I'm not exactly sure. Don't know how long I have left and all that nonsense. All I know is I'm not letting them stick me with this and stick me with that. I made the decision to refuse all medical treatment for this…whatever it is, when I found out. And I'm standing by it. You know as well as I do that there's no fighting something like this. After the…" he cleared his throat awkwardly. "After the shooting…I'm….well let's just say I'm not afraid of death. All I want is to spend whatever time I have left on the job and lucid. Not drugged up in one of these damned beds."

He swallowed once more.

"Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Tim had a freight train worth of emotions crashing through his brain as he stood there, his ears ringing. But one feeling managed to snake out past the rest, managed to round the corner before the rest could catch up. He flickered a gaze over towards Abby who stirred slightly, murmuring unconsciously. When she settled, he turned back to Gibbs and arched a brow. His face was paler than pale and his brow was dampened by a delicate sheen of sweat, but his voice was firm and unwavering. "A year ago? Or so?"

Gibbs nodded silently.

"About that, yeah."

Tim's jaw suddenly stiffened as his body begged him to yield to a more tolerable response. Anguish is painful, anger is distracting. He closed his eyes and allowed that thick coat of red rage to paint him without compunction. Images of the last year or more….words that had been spoken and unspoken screamed in his ears. Taking a deep breath he forced himself to open his eyes and look the man he had once respected more than anyone directly in the eye. "More than a year or so ago…that's when you started treating Tony like a piece of crap…"

It wasn't a question, it was a statement.

Gibbs swallowed.

"Tim-"

"No," the younger man half snarled, causing the elder's eyes to widen in surprise. "That is when you changed towards him. When you came back from the shooting…you found about then, didn't you?" His eyes were suddenly alight with rage. "Didn't you?" Gibbs tilted his head slightly, the movement making the room spin. "Tim…that doesn't….why is that relevant?" The stiffening of the junior agent was almost medically impossible, but he managed it. "Why is that relevant?" he echoed in a dangerously quiet voice, "Why is that relevant?" He laughed a bitter, hateful laugh. The hairs on Gibbs' neck rose and quivered in response. He had never, in over a decade, heard such a sound out of McGee's mouth.

Tim threw his arms up almost violently.

"Oh I don't know," he snarled, "Maybe it's relevant because you've been treating Tony like he's either the scum of the earth of as if he's invisible since you found about…about this. You've been either on his back non-stop, putting him down, making a fool of him or you've been ignoring him. And this is the reason? Your…illness? That's why you've been treating him like shit?" He forced himself to stop the rising tone of his voice as Abby stirred in his peripheral vision. "What the hell were you hoping to achieve?" he demanded quietly and yet viciously. "How was treating Tony like a pariah going to help?"

He suddenly paled further as what he considered to be the truth set in like gangrene.

"He's your punching bag," he muttered slowly, as if to himself. "He's always been your punching bag, your whipping boy. Even when things were good, he was always the one you blamed for everything, the one you put everything on. Even when something was my fault, and I told you that, you still blamed him." He jerked his head towards the sleeping Abby. "All the things she's pulled throughout the years that you've somehow managed to excuse and yet at the same time, blame Tony for. Same with Kate, Ziva and Bishop."

He shook his head incredulously.

"Is that what this was?" he whispered in horror, "Your last stand? Your last opportunity to put all your shit on him? You were too cowardly to face up to what was happening to you, so you lashed out at him?" He felt his jaw harden painfully. "It all makes sense now. It all makes so much sense." A wave of self loathing washed over him. He barked out a loathsome laugh. "And I'm just as bad. I stood back and watched it happen. Year after year, I watched it happen. I told myself it was just tough love, which…maybe it was. Back at the start, at the beginning. But this last year…that's been pure and unadulterated bullying. Making yourself feel better about your cowardice at Tony's expense. And we all saw it and did nothing."

He felt, to his shame, his eyes water.

"And now he's lying down the hall surrounded by a different team. People, who couldn't possibly know him, people who aren't us. He's lying there half dead, surrounded by strangers, because of you. I was just down there, in case you were wondering. And they don't know if he's going to make it." He let out a pained, bitter chuckle. "Be optimistic, but prepare yourselves for the worst," he repeated almost maniacally. "That's what they told us. Well, that's what the doctor's told his new team and they kindly relayed the info to me. They don't like us very much, and it's pretty obvious why." He ran a hand through his damp hair, his heart heaving with the effort of watching his world tumble down around him. He felt a cold stone slip into his soul and it leeched his natural empathy and kindness from him. As he looked at the man in the hospital bed, he felt nothing but a coursing hatred. It would be a long time before he could truly understand what happened to him in that moment.

"You're a bastard, Gibbs. That second b? It's about the only truth you're capable of living up to."

His chest was heaving when the single tear spilled from his eyes. He couldn't control it and swiped it away with rage in his heart and held back the stream that was bashing at the banks of his eyes. He suddenly felt himself storming across the room and scooping the still slumbering Abby back into his arms. Bearing her weight easily in his arms, he pivoted and strode quick march to the door. Gibbs watched with a breaking heart and a constricting windpipe. His voice was thick and weak and to anyone who couldn't see where it projected from, none would believe it came from the mouth of the once great LJ Gibbs.

"Tim….please."

His tone and the word "please" would have stopped McGee dead in his tracks on a normal day. But this was not a normal day. There would never again be a normal day. The man that meant more to him than his own father was dying. Was not long for this world and had wasted precious time lying to them. Lying to them all. Spent time refusing treatment, spent time in his own web of misery. He had cancer but Tim now regarded him to be the cancer. A malignant growth. One that was trying to burrow its way into him and those he loved. Well, he wouldn't let it. Gibbs had made his choice and had thought of no one but himself when he was making it. Tony was potentially on his way his way to a matching casket, and it was all Gibbs' fault.

It all came back to him.

He was a growth that needed cutting out.

The same way he'd cut them all out.

The same way he'd cut Tony down to a shadow of himself, cut out his glimmer and shine.

He turned in the door, Abby stirring sleepily in his arms, soon to be awake. Soon to wish she'd never woke up. Tim clutched her tighter to him, wishing he could protect her from the crushing reality, yet knowing he could not. He looked at Gibbs with a curious mixture of passionate hate and dispassionate indifference. In another world, he never would have reacted like he would. But Gibbs had hand crafted this world, the one they were in. He had had hand crafted his own story as meticulously as he crated his boats. And that's what stung and that's what was unforgivable.

McGee raised a brow that made his face age a decade in one, swift movement.

"You wanted to do it all on your own Gibbs. You wanted to be the macho man and fall on your sword. You wanted to be a hero. Then be heroic. Be a lone wolf. Don't worry, we're going, we won't be in your way. So, be whatever the hell you think is what you should be. Deal with this however you want to deal with it. I have more pressing concerns. I have to go and sit by the bedside of my best friend and hope he doesn't die."

He stepped back and out the door, Abby still clutched to his chest.

"I have to go and hope that he doesn't die because he was protecting you."

He shook his head.

"Because if he does, Gibbs, if he does…if he dies because he made the mistake that we all made, the mistake of giving a crap about you….of trusting you…"

He hoisted Abby a little closer and turned to leave, calling chillingly cold words over his shoulder.

"You won't have to wait for the cancer to kill you, because I'll kill you myself."

….

A/N: Hands up, for a long time I'd pretty much forgotten about this one. Thankfully I had a few review prompts and here we are. Another gentle reminder, this isn't going to be angsty forever. I have a resolution in mind, but I just don't want to rush it!

_Inks

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