It's night.

The whole floor is dark; just you, your light and your computer, stuck redoing a case report because apparently there is a difference between loose and lose, though your computer can't pick it up.

You hear her laugh; turn.

Abby is moving within yet totally apart from the shadows as if there is light under her skin, surrounding her in a halo; McGee has his jacket slung over one arm and looks like he's been cut straight out of the fifties with his straight back and good boy eyes.

This is your last moment with them. Remember it well, because you won't get another chance.

"Chained down, Tony?"

You shrug, mutter. She comes round the desk and hugs you sympathetically, smelling of cashews and phenolphthalein.

"You can still come with us; we're only going to Roscoes."

You're torn. You're close to finishing, it's best to stay; but you've been meaning to mock McGee for his new shampoo, the smell of which wafts even now.

In the end, you decline.

"That's ok." She kisses you on a cheek you can't bear to wash for a week after. "We'll have fun, won't we McGee?"

She turns away. You give McGee a big fake wink, flash your thumbs at him and pull a leer. You know that whatever happened between him and Abby is long gone, but you love to tease him with false hope.

You shouldn't have rubbed it in.
Made that last look of his one of annoyance, exasperation.
You shouldn't have put the idea in his head, because then he wouldn't have seen that look he gives her, always, crushed him for it.

They turn, vanish in the dark. As the elevator chimes, you glance at the clock.

9:36 pm.

You remember that, always, because you still would have had time to go after them.
It could have been so simple.

You stand, head tilted slightly, eyes closed. Breathe.

Do all hospitals have this smell?
Sodium hydroxide, formaldehyde. Chemicals. For a place so apparently filled with humanity, you would never tell by such alien reek.

The lift clicks slowly, and Gibbs is stiff with waiting; Ziva is shifting impatiently, but you are still as the numbers tick down to zero; if your focus hard enough, maybe...
…maybe.

You don't know.

Before.

That time when Tony judged his life in measured amounts of normality.
Just another day. Nothing out of the ordinary. He had the leisure of such terms once.

Nothing out of the ordinary, just another serial killer who preyed on couples.
Just your run of the mill crazy.
Just.
Then he took McGee and Abby in the NCIS car park at 9:39pm, and everything changed.

Twelve hours, the team knew they were missing. In twenty-four, Tony knew they would be dead. They knew his MO, they knew his vehicle, they knew who he had but none of this is important in the vital fact that they are both gone.
On hour eighteen Ziva found a trail from a dockworker who saw the truck near a clapboard house up north, and she raced for it alone despite his protests and Gibbs threats.

It didn't matter either way. The police and ambulance beat them to it.

Tony knew it then. Already felt it, that bottomless knowing he can't take back.

An ambulance passed them on the way, the rise then fall of the wail as it blew past. Gibbs parked so viciously he was nearly thrown, but Tony barely noticed.

Police everywhere. There's a line of guys outside in a row, all who seem grey and green under the flash of lights.

Ziva is curled on the front step, head in hands that are clawed and red. She looks up, and it's over her face, her shirt.

"Ziva. Ziva." Her face is in Tony's hands, she's beyond ice to stone.

Her eyes droop, then shut.

"McGee is dead."

You hate this room. It's covered with fabric the colour of puke, and you hate it so much it feels like murder.
She's in the far left corner, curled up tight with bruised fist splayed flat. Her ear is pressed against the wall like she's listening.

She doesn't look up as the door is unlocked.

Time number one, your throat closed up and you very nearly hurled all over the warden. Now, this is time number forty-six. Your stomach doesn't quiver, your throat doesn't close up.

Your eyes burn.

Her hair is lopsided; some of it is still growing, over where they had to sew up her skull. It's a nice counterpoint to the vague, uneven smile on her face.
You feel Gibbs stiffen to stone. They were told not to dope her up before your visit, but its clear from her unfocused eyes and floppy limbs something has gone wrong somewhere.

Gibbs steps forward, kneels.

She smiles at him shyly, and to Tony it feels like someone is grinding their heel down on his chest.

"Abby," Gibbs says softly.

Her eyes slide away from him, narrow as whatever music she listens to changes.

Tony didn't remember even reacting. Maybe he thought he had misheard, or she had overreacted. Though he knew that Ziva couldn't overreact and his hearing was perfect.
Her face is in his shoulder, soaking into the Armani shirt he'll later fold up and keep because it's got McGee on it, keep it with the one with stains of Kate.

Ziva does not weep; it is a fundamental truth like gravity or time. His world is shaken to the core, because Ziva is fragmenting and McGee is being pulled out in bite-sized pieces.

There is a garden at the back of the hospital.

Roses, chrysanthemums, lilies. A morbid gardener is planting funeral flowers against the stone wall. The air is still, drifting. Leaves seem to hover, not fall. The trees don't whisper, the flowers don't release perfume.

There are people watching, guarding. Abby is not dangerous, but she is unstable. She tore out Ziva's hair on the third visit, and no one could explain why. Ziva follows behind, because she makes Abby nervous.

Identical murders.

He must have been getting rusty, Gibbs keeps thinking, because Abby and McGee weren't a couple like the rest. Then again, by now all he probably needs is the semblance of it.

"Was it quick?"

They never asked it for Kate, and anyway Gibbs had been looking her in the face as Ari blew her brains out; she barely managed to get in a look of surprise.

But the only one who saw McGee die is off somewhere, hunting, so they won't know.

Ducky won't look at Tony, he won't look at Gibbs, and he won't look at what's left of McGee on the table.

"Ducky."

Tony knows Ducky can lie. Can give them something that'll make them sleep a bit easier. But it would deny McGee everything, make his last terrible agony for nothing, not for that last shred of Abby they dragged back or for that mistake Tony made that could have been the difference.

So they say nothing. They stare at the mess one man had made, until Tony excuses himself to throw up in the trash can outside the autopsy door.

Gibbs hands are fluttering before her, and she watches them curiously with that same blank smile.

Tony has picked up a few words, because what Gibbs says is always the same. "Hospital" flutters from his fingers, followed by "Friend" and the slash of movement that is "hurt".

Then, emphatically, like punches: "Who?"

Her face falls, and for a moment Tony can delude himself into thinking she understands. Her teeth flash white and sink into her bottom lip.
Her fingers flick, twist, but Tony knows she's saying nothing. Her hands speak in gibberish. There's only one that's clear; a circle rubbed around the heart. Abby's knuckles are purpled and bruised from this movement, and Gibbs takes her wrist gently.

"No." he says it firmly, like to a child.

She stops, but her teeth keep gnawing. Her eyes dart, sliding past his face to the grass, to the guard, to Tony, to the ground…

"What are her chances?"

"Of recovery?"

Ducky spots the loophole. "Full recovery."

The neurologist is doubtful. "There is always a chance. But the head wound, and the extended time in confinement means that it has been drastically—"

"What are her chances?"

"Minimal. It is doubtful that she will ever leave here."

Poor, idiot McGee.

I bet you stood up to him. Trying to protect Abby, even though in a fight she'd have had a much better chance then you. You probably said something wrong, even though it would sound so right and honest because that's you, and you could never keep your damn mouth shut when we needed you to, could never lie to save yourself.

What did you say, to piss him off like that? To make him so angry he cleaves you to pieces, hits Abby as she tries to save you so now she's broken? So all she does is that fist into her chest?

And now you're dead. Now you're dead, and how are we supposed to fix this?

You hear the dull thud and curse of Ziva kicking something.

It's the tone of Gibbs voice that finally makes you look away. "Abby, please, tell me."

She's still biting her lip as if to say no, no, it's not time yet. Her fingers touch Gibbs on the cheek, touch the wetness beneath his right eye.
But she won't say a word, and you know this will break Gibbs soon.

Ziva only saw a shadow before he clouted her, and you know whenever she closes her eyes she sees that shadow. She's waiting for him to appear so she can tear him to pieces.
She's like a bloodhound when the trail goes cold, wandering back and forth just hoping she might catch a glimpse. But it's been months and he's killed again and again and she's still got nothing, and its gonna kill her.

You step away from Gibbs and Abby, stand near her. Her back's against the tree, and she's staring up into the whispering leaves.

"I can not handle this anymore." Her voice is soft.

"I can't see how it's different from the other forty five times".

"Forty six."

You blink at her, she stares levelly back, and you both let it pass.

"You weren't there. You did not see them—"

Her throat shuts off.

Didn't see Abby with her skull almost shattered and McGee torn to pieces.
You reach out a hand, and it touches her arm before she snatches it away. She burns hot and cold, and it hurts you either way.

She's looking at you with those eyes that you can't believe are dry after all this time.

"We try and we try but she is not coming back, Tony. She's gone."

"No."

"What?"

"Gibbs wouldn't keep trying if he didn't think she could."

"You know he would."

Silence.

"They are taking her back tomorrow."

Your eyes flick down. "I know."

Her parents. They want to be able to look after her, closer to home. With all those uncles and cousins to look after her, there will be no place for Gibbs or the shadow that broke her.

There is a memory, back from before. Before Ziva even, when the bullpen smelt of tofu and soy from Kate's desk.

Just McGee and him, and it is nothing special. Interviewing a nurse working at a mental hospital just outside the city.

"I hate asylums." Tony says it like he says everything, to fill the air. They are standing outside, looking up at the brick.

"It's so they can feel safe." Tony looked at him and felt his eyebrow lift at McGee's affronted tone.

He takes a breath, explains. "That's what asylum used to mean. Sanctuary."

"Sanctuary? From what?"

"Everyone else."

Tony frowns, and he shakes his head because he can't understand.

You don't understand.

How can one moment have such importance.
If you had gone, the shadow would have seen three, wouldn't have seen that spark between them and crushed it.

There would have been three, and they would be here.
You know that it would have been different, because when you close your eyes you see it, everything shades of normality and Abby and McGee.

But you keep waking up, it's dark, and you can hear Ziva moaning in the darkness nearby even as you hold her.

You don't understand.