Title: Dinner Gone Cold

Warnings: None. That's right, nothing bad at all, except some sad stuff. Post-Ep for Endgame.

Summary: Jackie in the office

Disclaimer: I don't own this, any part of it, I'm just a fan of the director's wife. In a way that doesn't sound weird. O.o

Jackie's been set up nicely in the office, with a mug of warm tea and a cell phone that her children have just disconnected from, affectionate and annoyed with past-bedtime sleepiness. It's pleasant in here, and quiet, and she's had lots of time to write up her statement on the smooth yellow legal pad Leon pulled from his desk.

She's bored. She's cranky. There's a couch, and Leon's overcoat to fold up as a pillow, and she'd sleep (but when she closes her eyes she sees that girl's back shudder, and sees Leon's face surface, anguished, in the empty space between them that held a person a moment before and she's killed Kai twenty times in the past quarter of an hour, with every too-long blink she's taken.)

So.

She zips up her University of Maryland sweatshirt, slides the cell phone into its pocket, wraps her hand warm and secure around her mug, and let's herself out of Leon's office.

Looking down from the stair landing she sees an office still half too busy for the late hour. She imagines Leon waving an arm to take in the cubicle expanse, saying see, as if the view will justify his indecent hours. She can feel the familiar retort forming on her tongue about how the people still working now don't have wives at home waiting with dinner going cold.

No, she thinks, padding down the stairs, this hour is the realm of bachelors; men and women alike, she adds mentally, as Ziva looks up as she approaches. The Israeli woman looks familiar, and not just because Leon ordered her out of their living room earlier that day. She remembers a few weeks past, Leon stretched on their couch with a headache and a file limp in his hand (just a few feet from where she would kill Kai.) She swapped him the folder for two advil and saw a serious, dark eyed woman in fatigues peek out from a corner. She stole a glance as Leon took his medicine, noted the clear brow, the swoop of dark hair, the mouth that could laugh so easily and rarely did.

"She's who they went to rescue?" she asked rhetorically. "It's no wonder. Girl like that gets under people's skin."

"Well she's certainly under mine," her husband replied, voice clogged from a too-large drink of water to wash the pain-killers down. "I swear, sometimes the David family…"

He never finished the thought.

"Can I help you?" Ziva asks, bright and accented, in the here and now (the here and now where Kai is dead, where she has killed Kai).

"No, thank you Agent David," Jackie says.

"Ziva," Ziva tells her, as she smiles a clever smile and her hands rustle study materials on the desk.

"Ziva," Jackie echoes obediently, and she smiles back, but not as wide, because her life has enough people in it who are under her skin, and she doesn't want to add this girl who can draw people across oceans to her side.

"Would you like to sit down?" McGee asks, polite around company, but bursting at the edges with the need to hit something. He slips headphones off his ears, and she wonders if he was listening to anything in the first place.

"Sure," Jackie says.

"Take Gibbs' chair," Tony offers, casual, from over her shoulder, so she does. Leon's chair is nicer, apparently one of the perks of the director gig is lumbar support, but it's better to be here, with people, than in that high-ceilinged office, alone.

"Terps huh?" Tony says, looking at her sweatshirt.

"Always," she says, because it's true, sports are an easy constant, even now (even after Kai is dead, after she has killed Kai.)

"Buckeyes," Tony says, and the gleam of college in his eye that has never vanished, brightens for a moment.

"Terps?" Ziva asks.

"Terrapins," Jackie says, "Maryland Terrapins. Fear the turtle?"

"Ah," Ziva says, uncertainly.

"Good Americans like things like college basketball," Tony tells her, and it sounds like another point in a long-standing argument.

She flicks a paperclip at him, which seems like another point in a discussion of even longer standing.

Jackie steals a glance at McGee. He has his headphones back on, and his eyes look distant, but his shoulders don't move like a man listening to music. Sometimes he mouths something to himself, but he's looking at the screen, so maybe it's just his report.

Maybe.

Jackie drinks her tea, and they forget about her, conferring on the final details of their cases. There is a doctor dead, a car abandoned, a morning run turned witness statement. Ziva has turned the carnage into a neat-clipped pile of papers, that Jackie will have to clear off the dining room table Saturday morning to serve the kids breakfast.

There's a woman, a shotgun, a hole through a door, and a complaint about license and force. Tony's on the phone with the poor D.C. cop who's stuck taking dictation at this hour that Jackie refuses to name.

There's a cute redhead from a coffee shop, a dozen aliases, an identity compromised. McGee deals with that, she knows it from the wrinkle in his forehead, the steadiness of his hands. His task, to boil down morning coffee and treachery. To make sense of an inexplicable act of brutal charity, a single, saving, sniper shot in the back.

Kai's last act, Jackie knows, (her last act before I killed her).

And there's Kai. She's being dealt with elsewhere. Probably by Leon. Probably by the man who's chair she's stolen, Jackie thinks, as he comes around the corner and raises his eyebrows at her occupancy of it.

"Jethro," Jackie says, "We should really have you back for dinner."

"I'd like that," Gibbs says, as he slides a sheet of paper with Ducky's signature into a file on his desk. She sees a girl's picture peek out from the corner as he flips the manila cover closed, a serious, dark-eyed young woman, high, clear brow, dark swoop of hair, a mouth that never laughed, or at least not in amusement.

Kai, when she was young (when she was just a girl who got under your skin, just as your bullets got under hers.)

"We're done," Gibbs tells his team, and as one multi-armed creature they stretch and sigh and flip switches to plunge this part of the office into even further degrees of dimness, the low glow of monitors winking out one by one. They wish her goodnight, and file out. She watches them depart for the elevator, bachelors all, and it doesn't matter that they don't have dinners gone cold on a table somewhere, they can go to places that are still brightly, and order something hot together, tease the hurt out of McGee before he hits something for real.

In her pocket the phone buzzes.

"Yes Leon."

"Where are you?" he asks, and his voice has just a bit of the edge she'll have to get used to hearing from now on when he insists on taking out the trash himself.

"Downstairs," she says, and listens to him sigh. There are footsteps round the corner, and he's there, squeezing her shoulder once, before helping her to her feet.

"Sorry," he says, and she knows he means it for a lot of things, but specifically for the hours and hours that have eaten them both up in this office this evening. "You see how it gets sometimes."

She sees, and understands, and notes the shadows under his eyes, and the headache gathering speed in the back of his skull.

Still.

"Dinner's totally ruined by now," Jackie tells her husband, and hands him her mug.

(Dinner she started before the back door cracked open and let in a storm of stolen childhood and blood.)

"You want dinner?" Leon asks, and she knows he doesn't mean to sound so incredulous. "I mean, we could go somewhere, if you want."

"No," Jackie says, thinking with a shudder of the greasy food that is offered in places that are open at this hour. "I want to go home."

(Home, where she killed Kai, and there's a bloodstain on the carpet where she usually stands to turn off the reading light Leon's fallen asleep under.)

Yes, she wants to go home. She's no bachelor used to girls with guns, but she won't shrink from the things she's done.

(She's killed Kai, killed her before the girl could kill others, kill Leon.)

She's killed Kai.

She's laid a body to rest today. Not a good thing, but a necessary one. Won't do to let more meals go cold over it.

"Yeah," Jackie says, pushing in the chair, making a mental note to have Leon get Jethro a new one. "I want to go home."

She's not Gibbs' team that thinks this place is home just because their family is here. Home is where dinner is waiting, and she'll remind the man at her side of that fact as often as he needs.

((This is just something I dashed off, and it refused much revision, so it remains a little rough around the edges. (Don't you like how I waited until the end to admit that?) I just wanted to do something on Jackie because I loved her in that first episode, and I loved her in this one, and I just get the impression she sees other people so very clearly, whether they're close to her or not. I'm thinking I might do a little companion story on the team getting a late dinner, so if you're interested, keep an eye out. Thanks for reading!))