Author's Note: Hello readers! Welcome to my new story, which started swirling through my head as I was finishing my last fic, To the Sea. Whereas that story was adventurous and pretty upbeat, this one will be heavy on angst. It follows the sentiments from my story, Five Gifts She Gave Him, so it might help to read that one first. I also have a sequel planned already. Cross-posted to AO3 under the name Elsie_Snuffin.

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just taking them out for a ride.

Prologue

I'm not living

I'm just killing time

The five stages of grief. Ducky had explained Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' theory once, years ago, while he stood in the observation bay with Tony and McGee, watching Gibbs and a victim's husband in interrogation. The husband was alternately crying and angry at his wife for not being more careful and at Gibbs for not catching the killer already. Gibbs, having experienced loss himself, was silently empathetic, letting the husband get it all out. Ducky had looked on in sympathy, and without looking at the other two, explained the stages of grief.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

Tony noted that this man seemed to be skipping a few of the stages, and Ducky, in that patient way of his, told him how they didn't happen in order, and one could jump between stages. He then went on a tangent about how Kubler-Ross later regretted calling them "stages," because that implied the feelings would happen in order. She knew as well as anyone from her work with the terminally ill, he said, that grief presented itself differently for each person.

"There is no blueprint for grief, just as there is no blueprint for life," the doctor had mused.

Tony thought he had understood what Ducky had told him, but it is only years later that he realizes that he hadn't understood, not fully.