Warnings: Minorspoilers, mentions of possible suicide

A/N: It's still snowing and cold here. Someone please tell Mother Nature that it is spring. I didn't get a chance to really edit this so I apologize for any mistakes that were made. Enjoy and as always please let me know what you think!

Natalie smiled before she opened her eyes, all the warm memories flooding back to her from the night before. Tony's words, his kiss... oh that kiss... it had been unlike any she had shared with anyone in her life. She wanted him to kiss her again and again.

Sighing, she stretched the aches of her back and snuggled even closer to the warm body she was using as a pillow.

Tony's arms were wrapped securely around her, Luna was purring in her ear, and she could feel the sun on her face. She couldn't believe how incredibly comfortable she felt being completely entangled in his embrace. Slowly, she let her eyes open and gazed up at him. I want us to be more than partners. Nothing had made her happier in the last few months than to hear those words. And she didn't even care what that meant when it came to rule 12 and Gibbs. They were going to make it work. She just knew it.

He stirred, sensing that she was watching him, and woke. Tony smiled at her, gently. "Hey, beautiful. Sleep well?"

She returned the easy smile. "Yes. Did you?"

"Best night of sleep in years," Tony replied, running his fingers lightly across her back. "Did you sleep well?"

"I was doped up on whatever Ducky prescribed me," Natalie teased, "Of course I slept well."

Tony chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. He tightened his grip on her waist and pulled her closer to him. "So... now that we've established that we... both want a little bit more than partners can provide... we're going to throw caution to the wind and break rule 12?"

Natalie chewed on her lower lip for a second and then nodded. "Yes," she said, simply. "I think it will... it will be worth the risk. Don't you?"

He paused for a second. Yes, he absolutely thought she was worth the risk... Tony kissed her suddenly, taking her off guard for a second, but smiled against her embrace when she gave into to him. "You are absolutely worth the risk, Nat," he whispered to her. "Rule 12 can go to hell for all I care."

She laughed, "We just might for breaking it. How long do you think we can hide this from Gibbs?"

"Figured we've got a few solid weeks."

"And then what?"

"Gibbs will either probably fire my ass or keep quiet about it because he doesn't want to mess with his team."

"What about me? He wouldn't fire me, the newbie, first?"

Tony shook his head. "No. He has a soft spot for women... especially ones that are close in age to what his daughter would have been."

Natalie startled for a second. She knew that her boss had been married four times but she never knew there was a daughter involved in one of those... or that she had died. "His daughter?"

"Ah, guess that was something I should have told you about a long time ago," Tony confessed. "His daughter was eight when she died."

"How did she die?" Natalie asked, honestly, still in a bit of shock.

"Car accident," Tony replied, softly. "Gibbs was away on a tour of duty."

Natalie closed her eyes and buried her face into his chest, soaking in the fading scent of his cologne and his natural musk. Gently his fingers ran through her hair, down her back and she wanted to just stay in this position all day. And judging by the lack of movement from Tony, she figured he wanted to stay like this all day as well. She had just started to drift off to sleep when Tony's cell phone rang.

Tony groaned as he shifted and reached for the phone on the coffee table. "Come on, boss, it's Saturday!" he whined before answering. "Hey, boss," his voice now cheery and bright, "what's up?"

"What's up?" Gibbs replied, sound a little suspicious. "We have a dead body that's what's up. Get your ass to Rock Creek Park."

In the middle of snow and ice the body of young, beautiful Navy lieutenant laid.

McGee had worked a lot of cases in his time at NCIS but there was sense of sadness running through the team on this one. She was laid out perfectly, peacefully, and there were no signs of foul play. It was like... she had come to die here. At the ripe old age of 26.

Slamming car doors made the junior agent look up. Tony and Natalie had emerged from the same car... Tony's car to be exact... and were making their way down the slope towards the crime scene. Natalie seemed to be walking a bit better on her knee but the way Tony was hovering around her it was hard to tell if she was really feeling better because the SFA was moving in to help even if she only flinched. So much for a better week... McGee thought, glumly, back to Ducky's toast just last night. "Hey," he greeted his partners, "missed you at the bar last night."

Tony looked at Natalie sideways for a second. "We... ah... had... other plans. Sorry, McGee... maybe next week."

Natalie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. If Tony was going to fumble around with answers like that instead of just the truth... that he had brought her some prescription pain killers and stayed with her, people were really going to start to talk. "If we don't get working... we might not get to next week," she said, gesturing with her eyes towards a sullen team leader that moving to join them.

"Right. What have we got McGee?" Tony asked, instructing the junior agent to bring the other two agents up to speed.

"Navy Lieutenant, no identification, no signs of foul play," McGee reported. "Ducky estimates she's been dead twelve hours."

"Body was dumped here overnight then. Cold out, not many people in the park," Natalie surmised.

McGee would agree with her except they didn't know how the young woman had died. "There's no visible wounds on her, no blood, no signs of drowning or suffocation... Ducky isn't sure how she died yet."

Tony furrowed his brow and looked down at the body. "Poison?"

"Unfortunately we won't know until Abby does a tox-screen," McGee sighed, sadly.

"Ok... um... Natalie and I will walk the perimeter and see if we can find anything."

Gibbs joined McGee just as the two other agents went off on their own. The junior agent looked up at the team leader, puzzled. "Something's different between them," he told Gibbs. "I can't figure out what... I just... something's different."

The former marine offered him a small grin and a tip of his head. "Ah... doesn't seem to be effecting their work ethic," he pointed out, watching as both his agents carefully picked their way around the perimeter looking for evidence.

McGee watched as the pair wandered further apart. Maybe he was reading into things too much... maybe that conversation he'd had at the bar the previous night with Abby and Ducky about how Tony felt for Natalie was effecting his judgment a bit. Of course, there was no way to deny how Tony looked at Natalie and according to Phil the janitor he thought he might have seen them kissing the other day. What the hell is Gibbs going to do when he finds that out?

But Gibbs didn't seem bothered by the fact that Tony and Natalie were growing closer and closer. Which... was very out of character for Gibbs. It made McGee wonder what was so different now? After everything that had happened back in May, with Ziva's involvement with Rivkin nearly destroying the team, had Gibbs changed his stance on rule 12?

It seemed almost impossible to think that Gibbs would have recanted on one of his rules. He was stubborn about them. Even the ones that McGee often found were meant to keep Gibbs from making the same mistake twice. Natalie was not Jenny Shepard, she shared very little in common with the late director of NCIS, and in comparison, Tony wasn't Gibbs. Ducky had mentioned telling Tony not to make the same mistakes as Gibbs, in regards to the team leader never having admitting his feelings for Jenny before it was too late. Had the M.E used that same argument on Gibbs?

A complete 180 on a rule was really making McGee's head swim with wild and crazy ideas. Perhaps he was looking too deep underneath the surface. If Gibbs had thrown rule 12 aside to allow Tony and Natalie to be happy... something had to change the stubborn marine's mind...

Natalie came back holding a pair of dog tags up in an evidence bag. "I found these, discarded in the woods. Either our lieutenant threw them away to hide her identity or her killer did it."

McGee stood, brushing his knees off. "Don't suppose you found a murder weapon."

"It's possible... that this is suicide," Natalie replied, seriously. "She might not want us to know who she is... she might ashamed of who she is."

"Why though? And where's the suicide note?" McGee questioned.

"Back at her place," Natalie surmised. "Listen, I'm not saying this is suicide... we just can't rule out the possibility with no signs of foul play or marks on the body."

Tony returned empty handed. "What do you want us to do now, boss?"

Gibbs grabbed the evidence bag from Natalie's hand and read the name on it through the plastic. "Go find out if Lieutenant Hill is being missed by anyone and where her last duty station was."

Both Tony and Natalie turned to go but their boss stopped them. "DiNozzo... take McGee. I want Callahan to stay here and profile this crime scene a bit."

"Um, I don't think I've ever profiled a crime scene, Gibbs," Natalie confessed.

"Well," Gibbs said with a chuckle as he waved Tony and McGee off, "there's always a first time for everything."

Natalie was holding Lieutenant Hill's service record in her hand, thanks to Balboa bringing out to the crime scene for her. She was standing in the middle of the cleared knoll, Gibbs keeping a safe distance from her. What he was hoping to accomplish... she wasnt' sure.

Ducky and Palmer had taken the body back to NCIS about an hour ago. And Natalie was no where close to being inside this young woman's head than she was at that time. She glanced down at the sheet in front of her. Julia Hill had joined the Navy after graduating from the top of her class at the Naval Academy... she had served one tour of duty overseas and was currently assigned to the Navy Yard. Single. Never been married. Family lived in Kanas.

"Gibbs... none of this is helping," she told him, looking over her shoulder at him.

"Think outside of the box, Callahan," he said.

"Outside the box? You have me profiling a crime scene... I'm standing miles and miles away from the box."

"Find your way inside then."

Good lord, this is crazy. And I'm freezing! Natalie sighed, angrily and turned back to the empty crime scene. "Ok. She was laid out. Hair done, make up done, everything perfectly in place." Perfectly in place. "Someone might not have liked that she wasn't perfect, that's why she was lying the way she was."

Gibbs watched as she flipped another page in the file and carefully picked her way down the slope. None of this would ever hold up in court... but it might lead them to evidence that would. Slowly, the team leader followed behind her.

Natalie made her way to the edge of the woods were she found the dog tags. "They were ashamed of who she was... so they tossed the dog tags away... hoping no one would figure out her identity. But... the cared for her so... that's why there was no markings on the body, no wounds. They wanted her dead but they didn't want to physically harm her with a knife or gun or other weapon."

"So... they poisoned her?"

"Yes. She... she would have just drifted off to sleep... depending on what they used... or the pain would have been minimal. Not a slow, drawn out death."

"Ok. How did the body get here?"

"Walked."

Gibbs looked at her incredulously.

Natalie countered, "It snowed last night. There were no tire tracks."

"No footprints on the slope either."

"They entered the park a different way."

"Through the woods."

She looked in the direction that he pointed in and saw the set of footprints in the snow. But only one. Well there goes that theory, Natalie thought as Gibbs pulled out her camera and took some photographs of the prints. "So... she wasn't murdered... she killed herself?"

He finished up with his photographs and straigtened. "You said yourself she was perfectly laid out."

"She did die because someone didn't think she was perfect... just that someone was herself."

"Exactly."

"You already knew that, didn't you?"

"Uh-huh."

"So... why the exercise?" Natalie asked him, honestly.

Gibbs grinned. "To get you think outside that box more, Callahan. Not everything fits perfectly in the hole. Sometimes... you're holding a square peg."

Natalie opened her mouth to say something when the former marine's cell rang. She watched as his eyes clouded over and he reached out to grab her wrist, pulling it up so he could see her watch.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it Ducky," Gibbs said, shortly. "Natalie and I will look into it." He snapped his phone shut and saw her eyes searching his face.

"Something wrong?" Natalie inquired, almost fearing the answer by the way he looked at her.

Gibbs pulled in a deep breath, drawing calm and strength from it, because they were two things he was going to need in the coming hours. "Tony and McGee never arrived at NCIS. All attempts to reach their phones have failed. And Abby can't get a location on them. They're missing."

Everything hurt. Tony felt like he had gone about ten rounds in the boxing ring with Gibbs. However, he hadn't. His brakes had given out when they'd hit a patch of black ice and gone off the road.

Tony remembered the car slamming into the hundreds of years old pine, the sound of crumpling metal and glass shattering filling his ears. He must have blacked out for a bit after that because when he woke up it was snowing again, the snowflakes falling in cold, icy little daggers on his face. "McGee," he groaned, wanting to turn his head to look for his partner but the pain was too much. "You okay?"

McGee didn't answer and it forced Tony to turn his head. Pain shot through his entire body but he bit down on it. Tony's eyes fell on his partner, covered in shattered glass and blood. He had taken the brunt of the accident, the car ending up on it's passenger side against the pine tree. "Oh God, Tim," Tony gasped, reaching out to check his pulse. He found one, but it was barely there.

"Alright," Tony said, turning back and finding the buckle on his seat belt. "I'm gonna get help, probie."

He wiggled his way out of the belt. Gibbs is going to kill me if I hurt myself, Tony thought, in a moment of clarity that he shouldn't move his body. But McGee needed help... and Tony was the only one that could get it for him.

Crying out in pain the senior field agent slid out the broken window and rolled to the ground. Tony laid there in the snow for a moment, taking deep breaths, trying to work his way through the pain. Glancing up he realized that the slope his car had fallen down wasn't that high, but just enough out of sight of cars passing by... no wonder no one had found them yet and his cell phone was probably nothing but tangled plastic and wires in the wreck.

You gotta do it, DiNozzo, you gotta climb that slope.

All he could do was crawl, really. His right leg was obviously in rough shape, probably broken, and every time he did try to stand he got dizzy. Great, another concussion. Suddenly, it was five years ago, just after he had told McGee and Kate to run, and he was crawling up and over the guard rail, after nearly getting blown up. As he reached the rail this time, grasping it and pulling himself over, there was no team waiting for him.

The pain was so severe when he made it over the guard rail that he blacked out. Everything after that came to him in flashes. He heard the squeal of tires, car doors slamming shut and then Gibbs was in his face, yelling at Natalie to stay with him and call for help. And then Gibbs was gone, Natalie replaced him and just before everything went back again, he gave a half-hearted smile and whispered, "Guess there... could have been... worse ways to...start the weekend."