A/N: Yay! Finally done with another update. As a head's up, I won't have too many updates this coming weekend because I'll be out of town at a close friend's wedding. I'll still be thinking of all of you, though!
Review Replies:
Gottahavemyncis: And thank you for reading!
Momcat: I've considered the Shannon/Jethro interaction scene. It's in the cloud of Brainstorming, but nothing is finalized yet. If it were to happen, that scene is far off yet.
On to the chapter!
Event Twelve
Gibbs whistled loudly from his back door to call Jethro back inside. With the snow beginning to melt, the mutt would be tracking mud all over the house if he was allowed to stay outside any longer.
"How has it been with just you and Ziva on the team?" Abby asked from her place at the kitchen table. She nursed a coffee cup between her hands. When she started drinking coffee, she couldn't remember, but it had been a while since she had a Caff Pow.
"No different than when it was just me and Tony," Gibbs answered as he closed the door behind Jethro trotting in. It had been years since then. That was way back, before he recruited Kate to the team. It was different now than it was then, if Gibbs was being honest with himself, but that wasn't the answer Abby wanted at the moment.
"So much has changed," Abby let out in a whisper. She thought back to when she first came to work for NCIS. She had half expected to be fired within weeks for not following clothing regulations.
"Goes with the territory, Abbs," Gibbs said. He returned to his chair at the table and took a long drink from his own coffee. "The team couldn't stay the same forever."
"I understand that. But I can't help but notice that something's missing and that something is what kept the team together. Kate's death did not have the same effect Tim's has had the last couple months," Abby said.
Gibbs remained silent. He had noticed it, too. Everything felt different than when Kate had died. Yet, Tim's death being an accident wasn't enough to explain it. It felt wrong.
Jethro walked over and sat next to Gibbs' chair, setting his head down on Gibbs' lap and looked up. Gibbs gave the dog some head pats. Jethro always had that look of expectation on his face, as if to ask when he was going home. Gibbs wondered how long it was going to last. Would Gibbs even notice when Jethro would stop expecting Tim to come collect him?
"Has Tony's team been passing muster?" Gibbs asked. Abby interacted with them far more often than Gibbs did. They rarely showed their faces to anyone who wasn't working on a cold case with them. It was a wonder that Tony was surviving without having anyone to match his gregarious personality.
"They do their job well," Abby said, hinting at nothing else. Gibbs gave her a look to tell her he noticed her avoidance. "They do the absolute bare minimum for interaction, Gibbs. What else should I say? They don't exactly provide much information about themselves. That they're solving cases is the only detail I've been able to gather about them."
"Does it seem like they're doing well under Tony?" Gibbs asked, hoping it would further clarify. He could ask Tony the question outright, but Gibbs didn't want to bring up work whenever Tony made an appearance at Team Night. It was rare that Tony got away from his own cases early enough to join them. More often than not, Tony only swung by the house to say hi and pick up Ziva after Abby declared she was allowed to go home.
"They're solving cold cases," Abby repeated the only piece of information she had.
"Alright," Gibbs said, accepting that Abby wasn't going to be able to give him anything.
Silence fell between the two of them. It did that a lot the last few months. The usually talkative goth seemed to have finally run out of words to say when she no longer had anything work related to talk about. Gibbs reached out and grabbed one of Abby's hands, lightly caressing the top of it with his thumb as they continued to say nothing. There wasn't much to offer in terms of comfort anymore.
A crash in a room somewhere above them had Gibbs jerking away and standing up. Abby stood up at a slower rate, looking up at the ceiling in shock.
"Would someone really go through the trouble of going through an upstairs window when you never keep anything locked down here?" Abby asked.
"Apparently," Gibbs muttered. He made his way towards the stairs to the upper floor, listening carefully for any other noises that were out of place. Gibbs heard Abby's footsteps behind him and half considered telling her to stay in the kitchen, but he decided not to. Abby wouldn't listen if he said to stay behind.
"Surely Jethro would have heard if someone was trying to get into the house," Abby pointed out. The dog in question had retreated to his dog bed in the living room before the crash happened and was now standing above his bed with his hackles raised. Jethro was just as surprised as they were at the noise.
"Possibly," Gibbs said. He paused at the foot of the stairwell to listen again. When he heard nothing, he started to ascend to the upper floor. The upstairs was just a silent as downstairs was before the crash. Not a single hint of which room the crash came from. Without any specific place to check first, Gibbs opted for process of elimination and started with the first room closest to the top of the stairwell.
"I don't like this," Abby whispered behind Gibbs once the first room was cleared.
"Then go back downstairs," Gibbs whispered back, continuing on to the next room. Abby let out a frustrated noise and stayed close behind.
Once all the rooms had been checked and cleared, Gibbs and Abby stood together in the hallway. Not a single thing was out of place in any of the upstairs rooms. Nothing on any of the floors that hinted at something tipping over or one of the decorations falling off a wall. And all of the windows were closed. When Gibbs glanced up at the door in the ceiling that went up to the attic, Abby quietly began freaking out.
"Okay, no. Absolutely not. If the noise came from the attic, we are not going up there at night," Abby whispered.
"Never figured you for a chicken shit, Abbs," Gibbs teased. He reached for the cord that would pull down the latter into the attic.
"Loud noise in a dark attic at night. Not the best scenario for testing one's belief in the paranormal," Abby hissed back.
"You're welcome to go back downstairs," Gibbs reminded her before heading up into the attic. Abby threw a stubborn look at his back and followed, refusing to leave him alone.
In the middle of the attic floor, the remains of a chandelier lay scattered. Pieces of colored glass formed a halo around the deformed ball that used to be the frame. Gibbs approached the remains, careful not to step on too much of the glass, and crouched next to it to take a closer look.
"Okay. So an old chandelier fell from wherever you had it stacked for storage. Now let's go back downstairs," Abby said rapidly.
"It was in a box," Gibbs said.
"What?"
"It was in a box," Gibbs repeated. He stood back up and walked over to the box in question, seeing the tape torn and the flaps wide open.
"We already confirmed that no one broke into the house, Gibbs. Let's just go back downstairs," Abby rambled.
Gibbs ignored her and looked over everything else in the vicinity of the box that housed the chandelier. Nothing was jostled or moved. There wasn't a single speck of dust out-of-place that could explain why the chandelier suddenly burst from its container.
"Why was it in storage, anyway? It looks like it was beautiful," Abby asked, trying to distract herself.
"It was Shannon's," Gibbs answered. Abby went silent at his reply.
Accepting that it was highly unlikely that he was going to get an explanation, Gibbs turned and motioned for Abby to go back down the latter before he turned the attic light off. She crawled down the door and landed on the floor with a thump, immediately heading back for the stairwell to downstairs now that they had already checked the entire house. Gibbs let out a snort of amusement. As many times as he heard Abby ramble on and on about her interest in ghost stories, Gibbs expected her to be a bit more courageous with something as simple as being in the dark.
Gibbs reached for the pull string to turn the light off, but paused when he felt a brush on the back of his neck. He spun around and took a step back, looking around for the source of the brush. A cobweb, a crack in the roof letting in a draft, anything.
"Now is not the time," Gibbs said to himself. He didn't need to be freaking himself out over nothing when he already had a skittish Abby to deal with. Deciding to come back in the morning to clean up the mess, Gibbs quickly turned off the light and crawled down the attic ladder to the upstairs hallway. He'll deal with everything tomorrow.