Chapter Two
Delirium
Heavy pounding on the wooden door to her right drags Abby from black oblivion into her too bright living room. She can barely focus upon anything other than the gradual awareness that she's flat on her back. It too gradually dawns upon her that she's laying on a too thin carpet, the sun is up, it hurts like heck to move and the increasingly loud pounding on the door has got to stop.
"Sammy?" she calls. She couldn't be on the floor in daytime - Sammy would never - unless she's–!
Gone.
She forces herself to sit up far enough to get her elbows behind her so she can look around the room. She's alone. Where's Sammy? She's gone? Gone? Then who's pounding on the door?
What happened? It's morning. Did Sammy try to revive her and then run for help?
The pounding comes hard enough to shake the door's hinges. Did she lock herself out? She can't imagine who's pounding on the wood hard enough to rattle it in its frame.
"Who is it?" she calls, rolling over. It doesn't help; now the front of her body is abused by the hard floor.
"Tim! Open this door! NOW!"
Her heart leaps into her throat. There's only one reason 'Mild McGee' would beat on her door like this. 'Someone's dead! Sammy? Did Sammy get hurt, stagger out into the storm - or did she go for help and–?'
x
Abby shoves herself off the floor, her body shaking; and only has a moment, while fighting for balance against her body's preference to rejoin the floor, to wonder 'I thought this carpet was softer,' when McGee hits the door again - hard. It shakes in the frame and she staggers to the door, unable to think.
But then she realizes something that completely escaped her addled mind; McGee didn't sound distressed, he sounds mad.
But the pounding's shattering her thoughts, leaving them broken debris on the jagged, dark plain of her mind, and try as she does she can't pick them up again.
It takes a moment for her fingers to work the deadbolt properly - that must have been some jolt but 'Where's Sammy? And why would she leave me on the floor unless...?'
She manages to get the lock off, turn the knob and McGee bustles past her close enough to nearly knock her down. All she glimpses is a flash of white shirt as he passes.
x
"Leave your phone off the hook, Sciuto?" he demands briskly and turns on her. "We've been calling you for two hours."
Clutching the open door, feeling so shaken by the devastating bolt of lightning - how long ago? - that she can barely stand up, she finally manages to take him in.
"McGee? What're you wearing?"
The black trousers and white half-sleeve shirt start out okay but his gold NCIS shield is pinned over the left breast pocket of what's obviously his tailored uniform shirt. On his left half-sleeve, near his shoulder, is an American flag while on his right is the shield/eagle NCIS sigil, the eagle's brown wings extended to cover the Navy sigil. Below each of these, above the short cuffs, are gold on black Sergeant - PO1? - chevrons. 'T McGee' is incised into a rectangular golden plate that gleams above his right breast pocket.
"My uniform," he declares, monumentally aggravated. "What are you wearing?"
She glances down at the black silk pajamas that cover her from open neck to bare feet and that catches the sunlight in shifting gleams as she pushes herself from the door and closes it. "My pajamas... I think."
She can't remember them, but what else can they be but clothes she can't even remember getting into? She was wearing a white nightgown, her funeral shroud she wears to sleep in her coffin, when she's alone, wasn't she?
Was she?
What's happened? What's happened to her memory?
'Amnesia? Can lightning give amnesia?' She can't remember her pajamas. She can't remember Tim in a- "But what are–?"
"Well, get out of them and get to work." He turns from her, anger and disgust in every nuance. "For God's sake, Ga–" He halts, looking down at her coffee table. "What the HELL is this?"
x
She stares with equal outrage at the trio of empty bottles that litter the low table, the glass quarts overturned in every direction. Unlike her, McGee has no trouble finding words to go with the sight.
"Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, Kentucky Bour–" he snatches the last up, whirls on her, shaking the bottle violently. "This is your idea of 'clean and sober'?"
"McGee, I nev–" Leaning back against the door, she struggles to find words to counter the senseless. She can't remember the pajamas, the uniform, certainly can't remember the bottles.
"Jesus CHRIST, Gail! Five months into a six month Probation and you fall off the wagon so hard it's a wonder you didn't bloody your face!"
"But I - they're not–!"
He flings the bottle onto the white couch - white? - and his hands chop the air to silence her. "No! I'm done. I've had it. Look at you; you can't even stand up straight."
"I–"
"Enough! You don't show up for Roll Call, you don't answer your phone, I come here and what, were you passed out on the floor?" He slices the question away. "Look, I don't even want to talk to you anymore." His arm stabs the air toward her bedroom like a javelin. "Get in there and get dressed."
Shaking, so stunned she can't think, knowing how her trembling must look but that's not true, she pushes off the door, walks past the furious man on trembling legs through the left corner door and down the hall, follows his stabbing finger into–
x
She's through the door and her heart flips over, takes her lungs and sternum with it. She can barely breathe as madness threatens–
Her coffin, a luxury, full feature antique complete with twin silver candle stands at head and foot, lit only when she's not alone, has been replaced by a queen-size bed under a red comforter. The night tables on either side contain clock radio, pink shaded lamp and an assortment of feminine paraphernalia.
'What the hell? I wouldn't be caught dead with this stuff."
Closets, a mahogany dresser with brass handles, a mirrored bureau and other things, none of which is a proper somber black, have replaced her furnishings and all are illuminated by the sunlight that streams through pink pastel drapes.
Abby refuses to say aloud 'this isn't my room' for fear that if a disembodied voice answers 'yes, it is' she'll run screaming from the apartment - even past the astonishingly irate Tim McGee.
She stares at the room, walks from one insane artifact to another, barely able to stay upright on trembling legs. Going to her closet - at least that's where it belongs though it's brown instead of black - she opens it with shaking hand.
"Oh, my God... this can't be happening..."
x
The bar is filled with dresses and blouses and skirts; pink, red, green, yellow, blue... and on the door beside her hang from a hook four sets of uniforms similar to McGee's.
Up front, the first set of black pants hang straight within a crisp white half-sleeve shirt already made up for wearing. An NCIS badge – she doesn't use a badge! – is pinned opposite a gold name plate 'A Sciuto', while on the sleeves the flag and sigil are repeated above two gold chevrons. "PO2 to his 1?" she wonders, half annoyed by the inequity. 'I've been with NCIS a lot lon–'
She slices the thought, unable to endure the insanity of it.
The pressed white shirt already has a black clip-on tie with brass NCIS clip attached. There's a Sig Sauer in a belt-attach holster hanging beside the uniform. She hasn't worn a weapon in all those years she'd been about to claim and doesn't want it now. But then again, if Tim McGee's gone berserk, maybe she should have it.
x
'This is a dream. It has to be a dream. I was shocked by the storm. Well, if it's a dream,' she feels the white shirt, the gold badge, 'it's a heck of a good one. But dreams can't hurt me, so while it lasts I wonder where it goes.'
It's not the first time she's been self-aware in and about a dream, so that doesn't bother her as much as Tim's aggressive attitude. This isn't the Timmy she knows.
She steps to the full length mirror that also doesn't belong here, half wondering why her hair is loose rather than in last night's pig tails like she'd put it. She opens her black pajama top and lets it fall behind her.
'What the hey!'
The pink demi-bra is one thing, the cups almost exposing her areolas – pink, double ugh – but above the waist she's had, for years, eleven of her sixteen tattoos. 'So where are they?' Her skin is as virginal as ... well, as when she was a virgin.
She half turns, searches back over her shoulder, but the two Saint stick emblems and the masterpiece Cross are gone from her bare back.
Pushing her black silk pajama pants from her hips so they form a black puddle about her feet doesn't reveal any traveling artwork, just a pair of matching pink bikini panties. 'Come on, that's going too far! If I have to have this dream, black or a decent red, please.'
x
The door behind her opens. "You ready yet?"
She whirls with a gasp, nearly trips over the black pajama pants pooled about her bare feet as her hands fly to her chest and pubes. "McGEE!"
He searches her from bare feet to face and down again as she tries to cover more of herself than possible, cringing before him as if that could help hide more.
"So you've got tits and a pussy, so do three billion other women. Now get them into your uniform. Let's get going!"
"McGee–" He cannot - Tim McGee can not have broken in on her. 'Tits and pussy?' McGee does not talk like that - any more than he'd stand here ogling her - "Get Out!"
He crosses his arms across his own chest, but unlike her he's hiding nothing, particularly not anger. "You've already proven you can't be trusted without supervision, Corporal. How much did you guzzle down last night, or have you been working them for days?"
"I didn't drink anything!"
He stalks up to her. That he'd walk in on her while she's nearly naked is unthinkable; that Tim McGee would use such words as 'tits' and 'pussy' to her is insane.
But she never, ever imagined he'd hit her!
x
The backhand slap to her right cheek stuns her, knocks her against the mirror and, incredulous even more than hurt, she makes the mistake of looking at him. The open-hand slap to her left cheek is even harder.
She trips in her black silk pants puddle about her feet as the slap knocks her toward the bed. She bounces off the foot of the mattress to the floor, too shocked and scared even to scream.
He grabs her by her forearms and she's prevented from fighting back by her hands covering her only half covered breasts. The demi-bra makes her breasts seem half on display. She knows she should hit back but her mind, overwhelmed by so many shocks, won't let her move.
When did her modesty overwhelm her instinct to survive?
He yanks her upright to her bare feet, spins her around him and backs her fast across the room until she slams against the wall next to the dresser so hard the barrier shakes.
x
Anyone else on the planet she'd fight, but Tim McGee would never, ever raise a hand to her! Insane as this is, it has to be a dream, she can't fight him and tries to cover her breasts with her hands.
"You stupid bitch," he grates through gritted teeth, his face inches from hers. "I don't know what's wrong with you that you'll throw away your future but I've had it with you. The only reason I don't break one of those bottles and carve 'clean' and 'sober' into these udders is that I just dry cleaned this uniform. But you get me and you get me good: you fall off again and I'll save you the trouble of a Departmental Hearing. Understand?"
Heart slamming so hard she can barely hear him, she can't even think of the weapon hanging on her closet door beside her. This isn't happening. Tim McGee cannot–
He pulls her and rams her against the wall so hard her head bounces off it. "Understand?"
She's stunned, fighting unconsciousness, shaking so violently, gasping so brokenly she can barely whisper "Y - yes."
This CAN'T be happening, and as a dream it sucks, but it hurts too much to be a hinky dream.
He releases her just as violently. "Get dressed. We're leaving in three minutes no matter what you're wearing."
He turns, stalks out and she's shaking so hard she can barely breathe. She only knows that she absolutely believes his deadline.
x
She tears the uniform off the door and yanks it on with trembling hands, utterly relieved to find black socks tucked into leather shoes beside the bed. 'First thing that makes sense.'
Feeling so strange in these clothes - she couldn't be paid to wear this quasi-military outfit - she barely gets the last shoelace tied when he walks in, catching her seated on the edge of the bed.
"Done. Good."
x
She leaps up, hands raised defensively, not sure if he's going to hit her again. "Tim please - wait - listen. I know this is going to sound crazy but I don't know what's happening here."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean this isn't me. Whatever's happening I don't know - I don't understand this. I don't belong in this uniform."
"You're damned right you don't, Corporal. Move it!"