All the lights in the house were off, and she'd spent the last hour and a half pacing back and forth from the couch to the basement. After the last disastrous attempt she'd made at working on his boat, although part of that had been the alcohol, Abby touched neither the tools nor the wood.

There was some comfort, though, in sitting on the basement steps in her girl-shorts and one of his old NIS shirts, a mug of hot tea in her hands. It tried its best to warm her deep inside and still couldn't touch the chill that had begun the moment she'd seen the letter in his mailbox. He was retired. Had been retired. Even from NCIS, and she'd thought she'd been going to lose him when he'd left that far. Not for long, though. A quick trip south to say hi and reconnect with some old friends and then he was back in DC. Living as quietly as Gibbs could, which wasn't saying much. She smiled a little at the thought, and refused to cry.

She had taken her watch off and left it on the end table by the couch, and even so she had to fight the urge to get up and look at the sawdust-covered alarm clock on the table. Red lights counting all the minutes he was away, time with him she could never get back. Time that was suddenly precious, if he was going to.

But he wasn't. He couldn't. He was too old to recruit, too old to be called back, too tired to want to go. He'd said so. After the fiasco with Pin Pin, he'd said he wasn't going to do this anymore. And he always meant what he said.

"Once a Marine, always a Marine, Abby." It came out in a whisper, and then a choked off sob, but she didn't cry.

Back up to the couch and walking right past the watch to push the curtains away from the window, and then look out the peephole in the door. For a second it was daylight, and two men in uniform were stepping out of a van and walking up with an envelope and a somber expression. And then it was night again and she could breathe.

They wouldn't be coming here to make the notification anyway. She'd find out about it in some column, some article in the paper, or maybe if she was lucky the Director would call them all into her office and really, Abby, is this the kind of thinking you want to start with? Gibbs has enough to handle without you having hysterics over things that might never happen.

She was on her way back to the basement when the door clicked and her heels skidded on the linoleum, feet almost sliding out from under her.

"GibbsGibbsGibbsGibbsGibbs!" Just in time Abby jerked to a stop in front of him, hands colliding with his chest harder than she'd meant to and eliciting a sharp 'whuf.'

"Abs..." One lined and weary hand came up to her shoulder for a second before he stepped past her, slogging to the kitchen. "I thought I told you to go home."

"Well..." She paused. A little disgruntled worm crawled through her innards before she squished it. "You did. I did. And then I came back. I was worried about you..."

He was chuckling to himself. And making coffee, of course. Starbucks blend. There was probably a Starbucks out this late, but she didn't want to offer to go for him in case he told her to go home instead, again.

"I'm fine, Abs. They just wanted to talk."

"About Baghdad. About Lebanon and..." Abby swallowed. She would not become hysterical. She would be a good soldier. "Are they calling you back?"

"They can't legally do that. I'm above retirement age."

She wasn't sure if that tone in his voice was rebuke or disappointment that he couldn't go back. And there was something else he wasn't saying, she knew just from the way he wouldn't look at her.

"But they're calling you back for something, aren't they? Gibbs..." Now she went into the kitchen and stood next to him, planting her feet on the floor. "Don't ... hide things from me, Gibbs, I can see right through you."

One finger poked him lightly in the arm. He looked over at her and smiled, taking breath and arguments away with one familiar expression.

"There's a Caf-Pow in the fridge."

She blinked. Went and looked, because he hated Caf-Pow, and he'd told her to go home, but if he'd gotten it and left it in his fridge for her that meant he knew she wasn't going to go home and so she wasn't entirely unwelcome, staying here half the day and half the night now. And using his shower. She did feel a little guilty about that, for some reason.

Abby yipped a bit in delight and grabbed it, taking a sip while she waited for him to answer. He laughed, shook his head at her, and was silent all the way into the living room and onto the couch. She sat at the opposite end, leaning against the pillow and tucking her feet up under her, crossed at the ankles.

"They want me back as a civilian consultant," he said, when they were both caffeinated and a little more relaxed. At least, as much as they could be. "They want me back to advise on some investigations into misconduct in the ranks with some of the prisoners, help with tracking insurgent activity. Baghdad." Like she'd said. "They want me helping with their security operations, internal affairs and protecting the troops."

And his sense of Marine responsibility wouldn't let him say no. She knew that, Abby knew that, and her fingers tightened on the cup because she couldn't latch them around his arm and beg him to stay.

"What did you tell them?" It was a compromise between when do you leave and you said no, right?

Gibbs shrugged, leaning back. "I told them I'd think about it." Then, off her incredulous look. "Abs, I'm a little old to be going on an eighteen, twenty hour flight into a war zone. There are other people..."

She put her Caf-Pow down so she didn't spill it. This was just getting her hopes up for maybe no reason, and if Gibbs hadn't decided yet then it was no reason for her to get excited either way. She leaned over to him, though, taking his arm and being careful not to jostle his coffee.

"There are other people," she agreed. "But they're not as good as you are. And they want you for a reason, because you have experience and you were over there, and because you're a good investigator. You're the best."

He gave her a small smile that said many things, nothing helpful.

"I guess I just..." And then she took a breath, swallowed, tightened her hands on his arm and gave in to what she'd wanted to say all day. "I don't want you to go."

The coffee was set aside, giving her a little wriggle of amused delight that she was more important than coffee. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair, murmuring her name for a second of delay. She curled into him, putting her hand on his chest and snuggling as though they'd been doing it for years.

"I know..." But he didn't follow it up with anything.

"It's scary over there, Gibbs. People die over there. And I can't help you. I can't, can't give you the right forensics, or tell you what kind of bombs you should be looking for, or where the bad guy is. I can't track people down with the magic of my computers. And you could die and you'd be millions of miles away and I might never know what happened to you..."

"I know."

"And I don't want you to go. I don't want to lose you, I don't want to lose you again. I thought we'd lost you when you left, I thought you were going to go down to Mexico to be with your friend or something, I thought you were going to leave us. We need you, Gibbs. We need you here, too, even if you're not working with us, we just need to know you're nearby, that you're okay..."

He pulled back and gave her a look. She shrank down a little, but knew him better than to think she could hide from him much longer, especially now.

"I need you."

It came out very small.

He kissed her forehead again and pulled her back into his arms, holding on tight and for the first time in a while she got the hopeful feeling that maybe, just maybe, he needed her too.

"They want me over there, Abs. They do need me over there, but it's only for a couple of months. I can go over there and work for them, or I can go over there and teach a bunch of people..."

"... to think like you." Abby smiled at the idea.

Gibbs smiled, too. "The rules. If I go over there and train their best candidates, I can come home in two months. That's the deal."

"The deal you worked out with them."

He nodded.

"And what did they say?"

"I don't know..." He sighed a little, and she felt it against her cheek, heard it through his chest and his shirt. "They didn't say anything yet. They made an offer, I made a counter-offer, and now we're both backing off to think about it. I'm supposed to hear from them tomorrow."

"But," she sat up again so she could look at him. "If they don't go for it, if they want you to go over there for the long haul, what are you going to do? I'm sorry," she bit her lip. "You don't know, I know. That wasn't fair."

"It'll be okay, Abs." He tugged her ponytail lightly and with a smile, but this time he did something new, when his fingertips moved to the curve of her jaw and stayed there long enough to make her breath catch. "I won't be in the field. I'll just be consulting. I'll be back in two months or I'll be back in a year and a half."

"But you're going either way."

He looked at her for a moment and then both face and fingers dropped. This time her fingertips moved to his cheek, and down to make him look at her, because if this was getting personal she wanted him to look at her when she said it. Whatever 'it' was.

It didn't come out, anyway. "I don't want you to go, Gibbs..." And it sounded pale and whimpery, even to her. "I don't want to be reading about your death in the paper, about the bombings and the people and..."

"Hey..." He pulled her close again, lips over her forehead. "Hey. I'll be okay. I'll come back, you hear me? I'll come back." It was a whisper over her lips. She could taste his coffee. "I'll come back."

Abby nodded. She'd sworn up and down that she wouldn't cry and here she was, forehead tucked to his shoulder, soaking his shirt. Trembling, holding on tight to him as if people were on their way to the house right now to steal him away.

"Two months?"

His hand cupped the back of her head, she could feel the movement of her ponytails as he stroked her hair.

"Two months."

She curled up closer against him, one knee drawing up over his lap. She was practically in his lap by now, and still not close enough.

"You promise?"

His arm tightened around her waist, his other hand slid down from her head to her shoulder. He was prepared to hold her all night if that's what it took, she realized.

"I promise."

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