Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue

Three A.M. had come and gone long ago and Tim McGee still couldn't sleep. He sat in his living room, clad only in the boxers he'd gotten into bed in nearly five hours ago and with bare feet up on the coffee table, listening to the radio beside him. The news was on, the late night rerun of the eleven o'clock broadcast, one of several reports giving sparse and sporadic details of an almost unbelievable chaos that had assaulted the Hotel Meritz on the last hours of the 'Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention'.

The incident was a sensation and would soon, at least on the Convention circuit, pass into the realm of Legend.

No one had the complete and accurate story, few really knew most of the parts, but there was one thing he was certain of. Even though by morning most of the details would be in place, absolutely no one would have what was, for him, the most significant thing.

Tim McGee leaned back on his writing chair and closed his eyes. For him the most significant thing about this legendary weekend that was soon to become known as 'The Superheroine Murders' or some such terrible appellation, was not anything the world would be privy to. The most dramatic and life changing thing for him would not be the sad and terrible deaths of Leslie Greene and Cathleen Disla, horrible though they were. It would not be the gruesome rapes and torture of Nancy McCarren. It would not be the rampage of a madman who, if God is as just as he believes, will never see the light of day again.

Why Hogan had done it, McGee realized he didn't care. He had more and better things to do with his life than to try to unravel the twisted reasoning, if any, of a sadistic madman.

No. What was for Tim McGee the most significant; the most world-shattering thing about this weekend, was that which had kept him up for hours since, that kept him out of bed and awake listening to a radio that he had not paid attention to since midnight. And it could be reduced to just two simple words.

Ziva David.

x

What had happened? He couldn't find logic, sense or reason for it, yet he could not get her off his mind.

In the past few months she had haunted his nights and maddened his days – and though he'd spent far too many months in silence, when he thought he had nearly lost her he had finally acted with his heart.

But then she had been taken to the hospital to be treated for her injuries, and though he had tried to see her, there were reports and depositions and reports about depositions and in the end he thought he would just go mad.

By the time he had gotten away it was after nine-thirty, and he had spent enough time in hospitals to know that if she was not asleep naturally, she was asleep with the aid of a pill.

But the morning would come soon enough, he had only to wait here another few hours. He had to make sense - of what? What had happened? Why did seeing her become so important? Why was she the only thing he could think of? Why had he done it? Why had he gone insane? He would see her in the morning, and then he would –

x

There was an almost inaudible 'click' behind him, one as jarringly wrong as it was familiar. And coming from behind him at nearly four o'clock, it jolted him into full alert. It was the sound of his front door unlocking!

He turned off the radio, listened very closely. The sounds were still almost inaudible, but they were there. There was someone outside his door - opening his door!

Utterly silent, he reached under the edge of his coffee table, his hand closed on his backup weapon. Drawing it from the mounted holster, he carefully got up and moved stealthily to the bookcase as he watched the knob turn slowly.

He stood behind the only available cover, at the corner of his living room, several feet away, gun gripped in both hands, trained on the door as, with maddening slowness, it started to open. It swung inward with a very soft moan of hinges normally inaudible had it been opened at his customary speed.

Tim's heart pounding in his chest, not with fear but with readiness and anticipation, he aimed for a heart shot. Someone was outside, someone very cautiously listening as attentively as he was. The door continued its slow creaking opening. He took a deep breath, held it, let it out very slowly. The door opened completely and he sighted down the gun at

Zatanna! No, Ziva! No, Ziva as Zatanna!

x

She stood just outside his doorway, dressed as a dream, her pose sexier than he'd ever imagined.

"Abracadabra," she said with a seductive smile. He knew his own expression was one of dumb shock. His thumb just barely managed to press the safety on his gun before it fell with a heavy clatter from his nerveless fingers.

"Ziva!"

"Zatanna," she corrected him with a sexy shift of her hips.

"I almost shot you!"

She shook her head. "You are too good an Agent for that. I knew you would not fire."

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be –."

"I wasn't hurt much – thanks to you. I checked myself out. And after what you did – especially after what you did – I had to come see you."

x

He stared at her, utterly incapable of finding any more words to say. From her perkily placed top hat, her long flowing jet black hair, white bow tie, white shirt and vest, short tuxedo jacket with long tails behind, high and tight short black dance pants that hugged her as intimately as he longed to, through heart-poundingly sexy long legs accented by black fishnet stockings to her high heeled slippers, she was the image of the Enchantress.

In one sense, this was watching a dream come to life. In the other, this was Ziva – for him a dream given life.

She smiled at him, that maddening seductive smile that always set his heart pounding, came in and closed the door.

x

"I wanted to thank you for saving me." She stepped up to him, and he couldn't rip his eyes from her. He tried to answer, but words wouldn't come. "And I wanted to … to see if we could pick up where we left off."

The words got further away.

"And it occurred to me that you never did get to see the full effect of your …" she considered, "plan."

x

His mouth moved, but nothing came out. She smiled, knowing full well the effects of her magic upon him. It was almost unfairly easy. But she knew now that she liked him very much like this, and wouldn't stop for the world. Tim McGee had always worn his heart not so much on his sleeve as in his eyes, and those eyes were telling her things his voice never could.

"I was hoping we could talk. For a while? Get better acquainted?"

.

End?

Next Episode: 'Jurisdiction'. Abby defies Gibbs and all of NCIS to bring a perp to justice.