Fic: Coup de Grâce [2/10]
Title: Coup de Grâce
Author: Jo. R (driftingatdusk)
Rating: FR-15
Pairing: Gibbs/Abby
Category: Drama, Angst, Romance, Case-file,
Spoilers: The S7 episode arc - 'Semper Fi', 'Borderland', 'Patriot Down', 'Rule 51'. Slight for 'Cracked', 'False Witness'
Summary: Sequel to 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. Abby's involvement with the NSA, past and present, puts her future at risk.
~*~
Josef Branley was found not guilty by the majority of jurors and walked out of the courtroom with a confident swagger and a self-satisfied smirk. He greeted the awaiting journalists and paparazzi with a well-practised air and carefully prepared answers to their questions.
Abby stood back and watched him from the steps of the courthouse, her eyes narrowed as he was escorted to the car waiting for him.
"I would say I'm sorry..." Margaret Allison Hart started, her voice quiet against the questions still being called out to her client.
"I'm sure you have your reasons," Abby replied, just as softly. She glanced at the other woman as she came to stand beside her. "If you were there celebrating with your client, I'd be less inclined to talk to you." She shrugged and looked back at Branley. "But I guess I owe you one, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."
It was Allison's turn to shrug, a sigh escaping her as she, too, watched her client make his exit. "You owe me nothing, Ms. Sciuto. I heard about what happened - afterwards. I guess I'm lucky I was out of the country, I doubt Alejandro would've been happy with me for keeping the report from him."
"That's why I owe you," Abby murmured, slanting another look at the woman beside her. "Don't take this the wrong way... But why are you back?"
Allison looked down at her feet for several moments before lifting her gaze to Abby's, regret shining in her blue eyes. "Let's just say I was made an offer I couldn't refuse," she said eventually, her tone as cryptic as her answer. "Take care of yourself, Ms. Sciuto."
"You, too." Abby watched her go, noting the way she carefully avoided the journalists and photographers waiting for the next big break in their stories, and wondered if their paths would cross again - hoped that they wouldn't. It wasn't that she disliked the other woman; how could she after what Allison had done for Gibbs? And it wasn't that she was insecure about her relationship with Gibbs, either; she knew he loved her and that that would top any attraction he'd once felt for the attractive lawyer. But there was something that didn't feel right about Allison's sudden reappearance in their lives, something that made her instinctively wary.
Or, Abby thought as she sensed someone move to take Allison's place at her side, maybe there was some other reason for how she felt.
"Catherine," she greeted her former mentor and boss at the NSA coolly, staring ahead at the dwindling crowds on the courthouse steps. "I'd ask what brings you here but I'm not sure I want to know."
~*~
She let herself into the house, noting the lights already on in the living room. Instead of going back to NCIS, Abby had called and spoke to Director Leon Vance, asking for a half-day off in exchange for the overtime she'd put in on the last few cases. He'd agreed readily, surprised she had asked but unable to turn down her request, knowing just as well as she did how much vacation time she'd managed to accrue.
She'd hoped to have made it back to the house before Gibbs finished for the day but knew from the lights in the windows and the warmth that greeted her as she stepped over the threshold that she'd been unsuccessful.
Gibbs walked out of the kitchen to meet her as she walked through the living room, the smile on his face offset by the concern in his eyes. "You okay?" He asked instantly, automatically looking her over for any sign of harm or injury. "Vance said you'd asked for the afternoon off."
"I needed some retail therapy," Abby answered, hating herself for the lie. "Window shopping only," she continued with a teasing smile, hoping to distract him, "since you said I'm not allowed to buy myself anything until after my birthday."
He gave her a slow grin in return, but there was a glint in his eye that suggested he didn't believe her. "I heard about the case."
She shrugged and moved forward, willingly accepting the hug he offered her although for different reasons than what he thought. "It's okay," she said softly, her words muffled against him as she pressed her face against his shoulder, inhaling deeply. The familiar scent of him both calmed her and made her heart ache. "We'll get him next time."
"Next time," he repeated, his lips brushing the top of her head as his arms closed around her waist. "I made dinner, if you're hungry. If you're not, I can take it off the heat and we can eat later..."
Sliding her hands up his arms, one curling around his shoulder and the other coming to rest at the back of his neck, Abby tilted her face up to accept his kiss, parting her lips to allow him to deepen the kiss after a few moments. She closed her eyes and sighed into the kiss, pressing her body more firmly against his as one of his hands slid from her hip to rest on the curve of her behind, encouraging the increase in contact.
Several breathless moments later, she pulled away, her eyes dazed, her lips swollen and her cheeks flushed. "Eat later?" She suggested breathlessly, her fingers already moving to the buttons of the shirt he wore.
He reached up to still her fingers, his eyes dark with promise. "Go check the door's locked," he instructed, lowering his head to steal another kiss. "I'll put dinner on hold."
~*~
Another day meant another case. Just as the Westward case was winding down - the victim's sister-in-law was found guilty of killing him when he threatened to reveal their affair to his higher-ranking brother - Gibbs and his team of agents found themselves thrown into another case involving Josef Branley.
"The guy doesn't waste any time," Tony DiNozzo muttered, taking photographs of the two victims found in a motel not far from the Navy Yard.
The victims fell under NCIS jurisdiction. One was a Navy Lieutenant, the other a Gunny in the Marines; both former clients of Branley's who had testified against him in their last unsuccessful attempt at taking the man down.
"How did he get their names?" Ziva David wondered, looking up from the floor where she was collecting blood and fibre samples to be taken back to the lab for Abby. "We made sure to keep them from any official records."
Tim McGee shrugged as he used his PDA to complete a background search on the two dead men. "He has friends in high places," he muttered, "obviously higher than we thought."
"Makes you wonder if he's got friends in NCIS," Tony mumbled under his breath. He looked up after a few moments, having expected to feel his boss's hand against the back of his head for his comment. "Boss?"
Gibbs stood a small distance away, scribbling notes by hand into the little reporter-style notepad he carried around with him. "It's a possibility, DiNozzo. One we can't really ignore at this stage." He shrugged when all three of his agents stopped what they were doing and looked at him. "Only a handful of people knew the identities of those willing to testify against Branley. Four of us are in this room."
It was an accusation that there could be a spy amongst the team but a stark warning that there could be in NCIS itself. If wouldn't be the first time, they all had to accept and acknowledge that.
"Oh, dear." Doctor Donald Mallard, known as Ducky to his friends, entered the room with his assistant, Jimmy Palmer, as the agents were considering their boss's words. The Medical Examiner sighed and looked from one body to the other. "Such an unfortunate way to start one's day, puzzling over a double homicide. These gentleman look familiar, Jethro," he continued, glancing up at the lead agent on the case. "Have we met them before?"
"You might've seen them around Headquarters, Duck," Gibbs answered after a short pause, recalling the few times Ronson and Jenkins had visited NCIS to make their statements. "They testified against Branley three days ago."
"Ah, yes, I remember them now." Ducky sighed and shook his head. "I expect they thought they'd be on their way to their new lives by now, though doubt either of them expected to leave their old ones quite like this. Don't just stand there, Jimmy. Go and get the other stretcher."
"Yes, Doctor Mallard."
Watching his agents finish what they were doing and move aside to make room for the ME, Gibbs joined Ducky at the side of the bed where the first body - Lieutenant Ronson - lay. "Cause of death, Ducky?"
"Given the amount of blood on the sheets and the floor, I'd be tempted to say the gunshot to his abdomen killed this young man," Ducky said after a momentary pause. His brow furrowed as he looked down at the second body on the floor beside the bed, Gunnery Sergeant Jenkins. "His friend, however, seems uninjured. I may not be able to tell you what killed him until we've taken him back to the morgue."
"Time of death?" Gibbs pressed, waiting only a moment for Ducky to dig around in his bag and withdraw the instruments he'd need to check. He ignored Ducky's exasperated look, arching his eyebrows instead when an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming.
"For this young man, I'd say he died between seven and eight hours ago," Ducky said after a long pause in which he checked his readings. He moved from the body on the bed to the body on the floor and performed the same procedure. "And this young man died between six and seven hours ago. That's interesting." The ME continued to mumble to himself as he carried out a cursory examination of the marine on the floor, making small sounds every so often that Gibbs knew from experience meant he'd found something he wanted to look into further.
After a few moments more, when it became clear the medical examiner wasn't willing to share his theories until he had something concrete to back them up, Gibbs straightened with a sigh and turned his attention back to his agents, who were finishing up around the room. "McGee, DiNozzo, get everything catalogued and back to Abby. Ziva, you're with me."
Casting her teammates an almost smug look, Ziva handed the evidence bags she'd gathered to Tony before following Gibbs out of the motel room. "We are going to see Josef Branley, yes?"
"If he's free," Gibbs confirmed, heading for the driver's side of the car. "No doubt there'll be some reason he can't speak to us."
~*~
The evidence was piled high on the worktops of her lab. Abby started processing it, as methodical as always, but couldn't quite bring herself to focus on it fully. Her eyes kept straying to the doorway, her heart racing every time she heard the ding of the elevators. She sat at the desk in her office as she waited for her tests to complete themselves, pen in hand as she put her thoughts and feelings down on paper.
When Tony arrived at her lab a few hours later, a Caf-Pow in hand, Abby couldn't decide whether she was relieved or disappointed to be disrupted. She hurriedly covered the pieces of paper on her desk with the files she'd been working on early and stood, moving to the main part of the lab to meet him.
"Hey, Tony." She greeted him with a warm smile regardless, accepting the drink in his hand. "Gibbs and Ziva still out?"
"They're waiting for an audience with Branley," Tony explained, following her over to the computer with only a mildly curious glance in the direction of her office. Abby, he knew, had to complete reports at the end of every case just like he and the others had. The paperwork was, in Tony's opinion, one of the worst aspects of investigative work. "Seems he won't talk to them without his lawyer present."
To Abby's credit, she only hesitated for a second, shrugging when she felt Tony's gaze on her. "I doubt it'll take Ms. Hart long to get from her office to his building. Do you know if they're talking to him there or bringing him back here?"
"Ms. Hart?" Tony repeated, his eyebrows shooting skywards. "As in Margaret Allison Hart? Colonel Bell's lawyer?"
Smiling a little at the surprise - and instant distrust - on his face, Abby took a long swig from her drink, drawing out the moment. "Didn't Gibbs tell you? She's his new lawyer, took over from the old guy on the last day of the trial."
"Great." He shook his head and sighed heavily. "Just what - or should I say who - we need on his side. The woman's got a knack for letting the bad guys off."
"Gibbs said something similar yesterday." Amusement coloured her tone. The conversation was a distraction from her thoughts, Abby decided, even if it wasn't exactly one she relished the thought of having. "And she's not all bad. She helped when it counted."
Assuming she meant the information Margaret Allison Hart had given Director Vance when Gibbs was in Mexico, Tony just shrugged, unimpressed. "She got Bell out of prison, had us distracted long enough that we didn't realise who the real bad guys out to get us - out to get Gibbs - were until it was almost too late to stop them."
"She said she didn't know what was going on," Abby reminded him softly. "I doubt she really knew what kind of man Colonel Bell was, and I'm sure she had no idea who Alejandro really was. None of us did. He was very convincing."
"He was smarmy," Tony argued instantly, his dislike of the Mexican official plain to see. He hadn't liked him for the part he'd played in trying to hurt their boss, and he hadn't liked him for the way he'd acted around Abby. Just the thought of the man brought out Tony's protective instincts and he found himself moving closer to Abby as though Alejandro was in the lab with them and not safely behind bars instead. "Why are you suddenly her number one fan, anyway? If I remember right, you didn't trust her, either."
"You're right, I didn't." Though part of that, Abby knew he knew, was because she'd been jealous of the lawyer, too. There'd been a time when she'd thought - largely thanks to the reports she received from Tony, Ziva and McGee - that Margaret Allison Hart was a good contender for being the next (and hopefully ex) Mrs. Gibbs and she still wasn't sure how much of the flirting between the silver-haired agent and dark-haired lawyer had been genuine and how much of it had been part of the game they'd been playing. "But she helped when it mattered," she repeated herself, remembering the report she'd written. "Besides, things are different now."
"Between you and the boss man, you mean?" He waggled his eyebrows at her when she looked to him, some of the tension leaving him as a familiar, mischievous glint entered his eyes in its place. "You gonna actually admit there's something going on there?"
"No." She rolled her eyes and fought back a smirk of her own. "I meant things are different in that the Reynosa's aren't after Gibbs anymore. And while Branley is a bad guy, he's not exactly an enemy of any of us. At least, not yet," she added, biting her bottom lip. "We have a habit of making enemies out of the wrong people, though, so that could still happen."
Tony wrapped an arm around her, drawing her against his side. "It doesn't always happen. Maybe this time we'll get lucky." He held her for a few more moments, hoping his embrace and the reassuring tone he used would calm her fears - fears she knew he shared. After the serious moment had passed, he squeezed her shoulders and dropped his arm, only to nudge her gently in the ribs. "So, about you and Gibbs..."
Abby rolled her eyes again and took another drink from her Caf-Pow. She indulged herself, and Tony, in his teasing for a little while longer, enjoying the easy affection and relaxed companionship between them. She'd been so worried at first that the exposure of her past with the NSA would put her friendships with Tony and the others in jeopardy, more concerned about losing the people she'd come to love than she had been about losing her own life.
The relief she'd felt on returning to her lab after taking time off to recuperate from her injury only to find the welcome back banner and gifts from not only the agents on Gibbs' team but the others she worked with had been immense.
Abby kissed him on the cheek before he left, promising she'd call as soon as she had results. She watched him go before returning to her office, moving the files to reveal the letters she'd started and hidden beneath them.
"I hope you can forgive me again," she murmured, running her fingertip over the neatly written names on the front of the envelopes she'd already prepared. "I hope I'm here for you to forgive."
Shaking herself mentally to rid herself of the melancholy thoughts, she resumed the task of finishing the last letter she'd started before reaching for a blank piece of paper to begin the next.
~*~
Author: Jo. R (driftingatdusk)
Rating: FR-15
Pairing: Gibbs/Abby
Category: Drama, Angst, Romance, Case-file,
Spoilers: The S7 episode arc - 'Semper Fi', 'Borderland', 'Patriot Down', 'Rule 51'. Slight for 'Cracked', 'False Witness'
Summary: Sequel to 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. Abby's involvement with the NSA, past and present, puts her future at risk.
~*~
Josef Branley was found not guilty by the majority of jurors and walked out of the courtroom with a confident swagger and a self-satisfied smirk. He greeted the awaiting journalists and paparazzi with a well-practised air and carefully prepared answers to their questions.
Abby stood back and watched him from the steps of the courthouse, her eyes narrowed as he was escorted to the car waiting for him.
"I would say I'm sorry..." Margaret Allison Hart started, her voice quiet against the questions still being called out to her client.
"I'm sure you have your reasons," Abby replied, just as softly. She glanced at the other woman as she came to stand beside her. "If you were there celebrating with your client, I'd be less inclined to talk to you." She shrugged and looked back at Branley. "But I guess I owe you one, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."
It was Allison's turn to shrug, a sigh escaping her as she, too, watched her client make his exit. "You owe me nothing, Ms. Sciuto. I heard about what happened - afterwards. I guess I'm lucky I was out of the country, I doubt Alejandro would've been happy with me for keeping the report from him."
"That's why I owe you," Abby murmured, slanting another look at the woman beside her. "Don't take this the wrong way... But why are you back?"
Allison looked down at her feet for several moments before lifting her gaze to Abby's, regret shining in her blue eyes. "Let's just say I was made an offer I couldn't refuse," she said eventually, her tone as cryptic as her answer. "Take care of yourself, Ms. Sciuto."
"You, too." Abby watched her go, noting the way she carefully avoided the journalists and photographers waiting for the next big break in their stories, and wondered if their paths would cross again - hoped that they wouldn't. It wasn't that she disliked the other woman; how could she after what Allison had done for Gibbs? And it wasn't that she was insecure about her relationship with Gibbs, either; she knew he loved her and that that would top any attraction he'd once felt for the attractive lawyer. But there was something that didn't feel right about Allison's sudden reappearance in their lives, something that made her instinctively wary.
Or, Abby thought as she sensed someone move to take Allison's place at her side, maybe there was some other reason for how she felt.
"Catherine," she greeted her former mentor and boss at the NSA coolly, staring ahead at the dwindling crowds on the courthouse steps. "I'd ask what brings you here but I'm not sure I want to know."
~*~
She let herself into the house, noting the lights already on in the living room. Instead of going back to NCIS, Abby had called and spoke to Director Leon Vance, asking for a half-day off in exchange for the overtime she'd put in on the last few cases. He'd agreed readily, surprised she had asked but unable to turn down her request, knowing just as well as she did how much vacation time she'd managed to accrue.
She'd hoped to have made it back to the house before Gibbs finished for the day but knew from the lights in the windows and the warmth that greeted her as she stepped over the threshold that she'd been unsuccessful.
Gibbs walked out of the kitchen to meet her as she walked through the living room, the smile on his face offset by the concern in his eyes. "You okay?" He asked instantly, automatically looking her over for any sign of harm or injury. "Vance said you'd asked for the afternoon off."
"I needed some retail therapy," Abby answered, hating herself for the lie. "Window shopping only," she continued with a teasing smile, hoping to distract him, "since you said I'm not allowed to buy myself anything until after my birthday."
He gave her a slow grin in return, but there was a glint in his eye that suggested he didn't believe her. "I heard about the case."
She shrugged and moved forward, willingly accepting the hug he offered her although for different reasons than what he thought. "It's okay," she said softly, her words muffled against him as she pressed her face against his shoulder, inhaling deeply. The familiar scent of him both calmed her and made her heart ache. "We'll get him next time."
"Next time," he repeated, his lips brushing the top of her head as his arms closed around her waist. "I made dinner, if you're hungry. If you're not, I can take it off the heat and we can eat later..."
Sliding her hands up his arms, one curling around his shoulder and the other coming to rest at the back of his neck, Abby tilted her face up to accept his kiss, parting her lips to allow him to deepen the kiss after a few moments. She closed her eyes and sighed into the kiss, pressing her body more firmly against his as one of his hands slid from her hip to rest on the curve of her behind, encouraging the increase in contact.
Several breathless moments later, she pulled away, her eyes dazed, her lips swollen and her cheeks flushed. "Eat later?" She suggested breathlessly, her fingers already moving to the buttons of the shirt he wore.
He reached up to still her fingers, his eyes dark with promise. "Go check the door's locked," he instructed, lowering his head to steal another kiss. "I'll put dinner on hold."
~*~
Another day meant another case. Just as the Westward case was winding down - the victim's sister-in-law was found guilty of killing him when he threatened to reveal their affair to his higher-ranking brother - Gibbs and his team of agents found themselves thrown into another case involving Josef Branley.
"The guy doesn't waste any time," Tony DiNozzo muttered, taking photographs of the two victims found in a motel not far from the Navy Yard.
The victims fell under NCIS jurisdiction. One was a Navy Lieutenant, the other a Gunny in the Marines; both former clients of Branley's who had testified against him in their last unsuccessful attempt at taking the man down.
"How did he get their names?" Ziva David wondered, looking up from the floor where she was collecting blood and fibre samples to be taken back to the lab for Abby. "We made sure to keep them from any official records."
Tim McGee shrugged as he used his PDA to complete a background search on the two dead men. "He has friends in high places," he muttered, "obviously higher than we thought."
"Makes you wonder if he's got friends in NCIS," Tony mumbled under his breath. He looked up after a few moments, having expected to feel his boss's hand against the back of his head for his comment. "Boss?"
Gibbs stood a small distance away, scribbling notes by hand into the little reporter-style notepad he carried around with him. "It's a possibility, DiNozzo. One we can't really ignore at this stage." He shrugged when all three of his agents stopped what they were doing and looked at him. "Only a handful of people knew the identities of those willing to testify against Branley. Four of us are in this room."
It was an accusation that there could be a spy amongst the team but a stark warning that there could be in NCIS itself. If wouldn't be the first time, they all had to accept and acknowledge that.
"Oh, dear." Doctor Donald Mallard, known as Ducky to his friends, entered the room with his assistant, Jimmy Palmer, as the agents were considering their boss's words. The Medical Examiner sighed and looked from one body to the other. "Such an unfortunate way to start one's day, puzzling over a double homicide. These gentleman look familiar, Jethro," he continued, glancing up at the lead agent on the case. "Have we met them before?"
"You might've seen them around Headquarters, Duck," Gibbs answered after a short pause, recalling the few times Ronson and Jenkins had visited NCIS to make their statements. "They testified against Branley three days ago."
"Ah, yes, I remember them now." Ducky sighed and shook his head. "I expect they thought they'd be on their way to their new lives by now, though doubt either of them expected to leave their old ones quite like this. Don't just stand there, Jimmy. Go and get the other stretcher."
"Yes, Doctor Mallard."
Watching his agents finish what they were doing and move aside to make room for the ME, Gibbs joined Ducky at the side of the bed where the first body - Lieutenant Ronson - lay. "Cause of death, Ducky?"
"Given the amount of blood on the sheets and the floor, I'd be tempted to say the gunshot to his abdomen killed this young man," Ducky said after a momentary pause. His brow furrowed as he looked down at the second body on the floor beside the bed, Gunnery Sergeant Jenkins. "His friend, however, seems uninjured. I may not be able to tell you what killed him until we've taken him back to the morgue."
"Time of death?" Gibbs pressed, waiting only a moment for Ducky to dig around in his bag and withdraw the instruments he'd need to check. He ignored Ducky's exasperated look, arching his eyebrows instead when an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming.
"For this young man, I'd say he died between seven and eight hours ago," Ducky said after a long pause in which he checked his readings. He moved from the body on the bed to the body on the floor and performed the same procedure. "And this young man died between six and seven hours ago. That's interesting." The ME continued to mumble to himself as he carried out a cursory examination of the marine on the floor, making small sounds every so often that Gibbs knew from experience meant he'd found something he wanted to look into further.
After a few moments more, when it became clear the medical examiner wasn't willing to share his theories until he had something concrete to back them up, Gibbs straightened with a sigh and turned his attention back to his agents, who were finishing up around the room. "McGee, DiNozzo, get everything catalogued and back to Abby. Ziva, you're with me."
Casting her teammates an almost smug look, Ziva handed the evidence bags she'd gathered to Tony before following Gibbs out of the motel room. "We are going to see Josef Branley, yes?"
"If he's free," Gibbs confirmed, heading for the driver's side of the car. "No doubt there'll be some reason he can't speak to us."
~*~
The evidence was piled high on the worktops of her lab. Abby started processing it, as methodical as always, but couldn't quite bring herself to focus on it fully. Her eyes kept straying to the doorway, her heart racing every time she heard the ding of the elevators. She sat at the desk in her office as she waited for her tests to complete themselves, pen in hand as she put her thoughts and feelings down on paper.
When Tony arrived at her lab a few hours later, a Caf-Pow in hand, Abby couldn't decide whether she was relieved or disappointed to be disrupted. She hurriedly covered the pieces of paper on her desk with the files she'd been working on early and stood, moving to the main part of the lab to meet him.
"Hey, Tony." She greeted him with a warm smile regardless, accepting the drink in his hand. "Gibbs and Ziva still out?"
"They're waiting for an audience with Branley," Tony explained, following her over to the computer with only a mildly curious glance in the direction of her office. Abby, he knew, had to complete reports at the end of every case just like he and the others had. The paperwork was, in Tony's opinion, one of the worst aspects of investigative work. "Seems he won't talk to them without his lawyer present."
To Abby's credit, she only hesitated for a second, shrugging when she felt Tony's gaze on her. "I doubt it'll take Ms. Hart long to get from her office to his building. Do you know if they're talking to him there or bringing him back here?"
"Ms. Hart?" Tony repeated, his eyebrows shooting skywards. "As in Margaret Allison Hart? Colonel Bell's lawyer?"
Smiling a little at the surprise - and instant distrust - on his face, Abby took a long swig from her drink, drawing out the moment. "Didn't Gibbs tell you? She's his new lawyer, took over from the old guy on the last day of the trial."
"Great." He shook his head and sighed heavily. "Just what - or should I say who - we need on his side. The woman's got a knack for letting the bad guys off."
"Gibbs said something similar yesterday." Amusement coloured her tone. The conversation was a distraction from her thoughts, Abby decided, even if it wasn't exactly one she relished the thought of having. "And she's not all bad. She helped when it counted."
Assuming she meant the information Margaret Allison Hart had given Director Vance when Gibbs was in Mexico, Tony just shrugged, unimpressed. "She got Bell out of prison, had us distracted long enough that we didn't realise who the real bad guys out to get us - out to get Gibbs - were until it was almost too late to stop them."
"She said she didn't know what was going on," Abby reminded him softly. "I doubt she really knew what kind of man Colonel Bell was, and I'm sure she had no idea who Alejandro really was. None of us did. He was very convincing."
"He was smarmy," Tony argued instantly, his dislike of the Mexican official plain to see. He hadn't liked him for the part he'd played in trying to hurt their boss, and he hadn't liked him for the way he'd acted around Abby. Just the thought of the man brought out Tony's protective instincts and he found himself moving closer to Abby as though Alejandro was in the lab with them and not safely behind bars instead. "Why are you suddenly her number one fan, anyway? If I remember right, you didn't trust her, either."
"You're right, I didn't." Though part of that, Abby knew he knew, was because she'd been jealous of the lawyer, too. There'd been a time when she'd thought - largely thanks to the reports she received from Tony, Ziva and McGee - that Margaret Allison Hart was a good contender for being the next (and hopefully ex) Mrs. Gibbs and she still wasn't sure how much of the flirting between the silver-haired agent and dark-haired lawyer had been genuine and how much of it had been part of the game they'd been playing. "But she helped when it mattered," she repeated herself, remembering the report she'd written. "Besides, things are different now."
"Between you and the boss man, you mean?" He waggled his eyebrows at her when she looked to him, some of the tension leaving him as a familiar, mischievous glint entered his eyes in its place. "You gonna actually admit there's something going on there?"
"No." She rolled her eyes and fought back a smirk of her own. "I meant things are different in that the Reynosa's aren't after Gibbs anymore. And while Branley is a bad guy, he's not exactly an enemy of any of us. At least, not yet," she added, biting her bottom lip. "We have a habit of making enemies out of the wrong people, though, so that could still happen."
Tony wrapped an arm around her, drawing her against his side. "It doesn't always happen. Maybe this time we'll get lucky." He held her for a few more moments, hoping his embrace and the reassuring tone he used would calm her fears - fears she knew he shared. After the serious moment had passed, he squeezed her shoulders and dropped his arm, only to nudge her gently in the ribs. "So, about you and Gibbs..."
Abby rolled her eyes again and took another drink from her Caf-Pow. She indulged herself, and Tony, in his teasing for a little while longer, enjoying the easy affection and relaxed companionship between them. She'd been so worried at first that the exposure of her past with the NSA would put her friendships with Tony and the others in jeopardy, more concerned about losing the people she'd come to love than she had been about losing her own life.
The relief she'd felt on returning to her lab after taking time off to recuperate from her injury only to find the welcome back banner and gifts from not only the agents on Gibbs' team but the others she worked with had been immense.
Abby kissed him on the cheek before he left, promising she'd call as soon as she had results. She watched him go before returning to her office, moving the files to reveal the letters she'd started and hidden beneath them.
"I hope you can forgive me again," she murmured, running her fingertip over the neatly written names on the front of the envelopes she'd already prepared. "I hope I'm here for you to forgive."
Shaking herself mentally to rid herself of the melancholy thoughts, she resumed the task of finishing the last letter she'd started before reaching for a blank piece of paper to begin the next.
~*~