Chapter Text
A honey light filters in from the west facing windows as dusk begins to wane. The bustle of the day has diminished to a hushed hum that is slowly being dissolved into the buzz of the fluorescents. The building has begun its exodus and empties as agency skins are shed in anticipation of the coming promised domesticity. A lone inhabitant of the bullpen remains behind in the gathering quiet, the click of his fingertips across the keyboard punctuating the music of the overhead lights.
He's been at it for hours, this one thing he knows how to use to distract himself. The only thing that works to help him forget what is happening elsewhere beyond his control. He long ago abandoned MTAC, his mission being complete, leaving instructions for them to come fetch him should any new information come over the airwaves, and has taken up sanctuary at his desk. H e lets the quiet of the office envelope him, thoughts concentrated on reports and numbers and figures and finding the patterns in the impossible until night has fallen and the familiar gong of the elevator pulls the agent's eyes to the double doors. It begins as a sliver of light then slowly grows to frame a familiar figure. The disheveled ME steps out then lets the doors close behind him. It's then McGee notices that this normally well-maintained friend of his is in a state of disarray and is spattered with something dark. Coffee? Mud? Blood? He's certainly seen his share of those substances lately.
His audible intake of breath is involuntary as their eyes meet and the older man walks with wearied shoulders toward McGee's desk. Anticipation has him on his foot, crutches and all, before the good Doctor can even round Ziva's desk. The fractured femur screams at him, but adrenaline quickly quiets the white hot pain.
"Who?"
It's more than just a question and it drops from his lips before he even realizes he's asked it. It asks, yet is also tells of the unanswered calls, the hours he's spent waiting for them to return, of the wire strung so tight inside his chest he's amazed he's not vibrating with the strain of keeping it together. He's trying to read the name in Ducky's eyes, a name in the way the old man's shoulder's stoop. Something twinges in his chest when he thinks of Ducky's own brush with death. It was a day ages ago yet the memories come so easily and so suddenly at times. As if to punctuate the point, the scar at his side throbs unexpectedly.
"Ducky?" He asks again as he lowers the hand he unconsciously brought up to cover the phantom pain. The wire inside tightens a fraction and it's taking everything he's got not to let it snap him in two.
"It's Tony."
There it is. The pain twisting inside has been named.
Not Gibbs. Not Abby. Not Ziva and certainly not Timothy McGee. Agents with broken bones are on desk duty, not out in the field backing their teams up. His eyes glance down towards the pristine plaster of the leg cast, the sudden urge to smash the white surface bubbling up inside his guts. Instead he stares at his knuckles, as white as the plaster encasing his leg and suddenly Ducky is beside him.
Was that the doctor calling his name just then?
Tim meets the ME's concerned gaze and a hand shoots out to steady him on his foot as the pain in his leg protests loudly. The world tilts and instead of being deposited on the floor, Ducky manages to tip him into his desk chair. Forgotten crutches clatter noisily to the ground and in the stillness of the bullpen, the sound is like a thunderstorm. But to McGee the noise is lost in the roaring of the blood in his ears. He covers his eyes with shaky hands and tries not to choke on his words.
"Tell me," He says from behind trembling fingers, "what happened."