It was day two, and they’re already at seven bodies. Seven holes in the ground, seven lives snuffed out before their time was up.

Seven girls whose only reason for being dead is they just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That and they all looked the same. Short girls, with long brown hair, and deep blue eyes.

Bagging another piece of evidence, Gibbs snuck a look at his watch. He was wrong. It wasn’t day two; it was day three and thirteen minutes.

Standing up in the pit he had been gathering evidence in, its resident long since removed and shipped back to HQ, Gibbs surveyed the area.

He remembered McGee nearly falling face first into one of the graves earlier. Only DiNozzo’s quick reflexes kept the younger man on his feet. Gibbs had barked at the younger man to get some sleep before he further contaminated his crime scene.

His gut clenched a little in memory at the looks Tony and Kate had shot him, McGee tripping over his own tongue this time in an effort to apologize. That is, until Tony had told the younger man that he should go to sleep, everything would be fine.

The younger man had flushed, saying that if they were going to stay up, then he would too. Gibbs remembered the way that Tony had shook his head. The former cop said one of the most important things a field agent needed to learn was his or her limits. Working past them could lead to mishandled or miss-processed evidence. The kind of thing that leads to cases being thrown out in court.

McGee had flushed crimson again, until Kate had stepped up and said that she was going to sleep as well. She was exhausted; the words on the paperwork were starting to swim around the page. Did McGee want to escort her back to their base camp, help her carry everything they had to far and log it in?

Gibbs nodded at her as the two of them made their way over toward the Humvee sitting in the corner of the field, waiting to help them move the evidence. Kate glared for a few seconds more, then, with a pointed look at Tony, followed McGee toward the tables they’ve been stacking boxes of evidence on, snapping orders at a few of the Marines that were just standing around doing nothing to get their asses in gear and help them load up.

Gibbs didn’t bother suppressing the smirk on his face. He picked his people because they were the best and the brightest, and because they had backbones strong enough to put up with his bullshit.

Looking back at Tony, he wasn’t surprised to see the other man already back at work, taking shovels full of dirt from the graves and shifting it through a mesh, pulling out bits of bone and other debris, before sealing the dirt in a bucket, labeling it with the depth and position it was taken from, and moving on to the next bucket.

Looking at the seventeen or so other little orange little flags in the field that had come up as positive for metal when they had scanned the place after finding the first body, Gibbs let himself sag for a moment.

Sometimes, there were days he absolutely hated his job.

….

Now, three hours later, and the only person left in the field from the morning shift is him. Three graves over, Matherson and his SFA were thigh deep in a grave, poking at something that has both their attention. Gibbs has a passing thought about going over and seeing what it was, but he realized that if it was really important, they would have call him over.

Tony was nowhere to be seen, and for a moment, Gibbs’ heart missed a beat, before he remembered that they were on a secure military base, in the middle of a huge, well lit, equally well staffed crime scene. There was no way that anything could have happened.

Stretching for the first time in what felt like hours, Gibbs put his shovel on the lip of the grave and, with a push that took more effort that he was willing to admit, managed to haul himself out of the hole and in some semblance of up-right.

“Calling it a night?” Donna Miller. That was Matherson’s SFA. Turning toward the pair, Gibbs tipped his head, too tired to bother replying.

The tall black woman nodded her head back at him, pointing toward where another Humvee was waiting.

“Tony left about an hour ago. Got a call on his cell, I think it was Abby. Said she needed to ask him a question about something. He ended up deciding to take what we’d gathered so far and head back to base, log it in to the storage container they have set up for us. Think he was going to crash when he was done.”

“Thanks,” Gibbs rasped, wincing a little at the sound of his own voice. “Think I’ll call it a night for now. Be back in a few hours.”

Greg looked up from whatever it was that had the two team members so engrossed in their hole.

“We’ve got it for now, Gibbs. Try to get more than three hours or so. They aren’t going to go anywhere.”

Nodding again, Gibbs snagged a few Marines of his own to help carry things over, grabbing a water bottle and gulping half in the first swallow alone. The rest he downed in another few swallows, trading it off for another full one, watching with hawk's eyes as the base Marines loaded the evidence that he'd collected in the back of the waiting vehicle.

“We’re ready to go, sir. Did you want to drive the vehicle back, or do you want one of us to drive you there?” That he even needed to think about his reply is answer enough. Trashing his two bottles, Gibbs motioned for the young lieutenant to get in the drivers seat, before hoisting himself in the passenger seat, leaning his head back against the seat.

“And don’t call me sir. I work for a damn living.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gibbs’s lips twitched.

…

Another hour later, and all the evidence they’ve gathered is logged into the storage container they’ve been using, all the paperwork filled out. He’d managed to snag a sandwich and glass of juice, knowing his body needed the vitamins more than the caffeine if he’s going to keep this up for days.

A shower in the mobile HQ they had set up had helped make him feel more human, as if washing off the dirt could remove the taint of what had been done to those girls.

He knew that he would be seeing what was done to those girls for a long time, and not just in his dreams. But for now, his usual trick should help him get through the night.

“I will not dream about what I’ve seen today. I will not dream about what happened to those girls. I will not dream at all.”

Zipping open the flap of the tent, Gibbs waited a second for his eyesight to adjust to the low level light. Moving past the pile of bags that was his and Tony’s stuff, he made his way to the back of the tent.

He lifted the flap that separated the front living section from the back sleeping part, leaving his boots and windbreaker in the front. Hunching over, he crab-walked over to where one of the inflatable mattresses that DiNozzo had pulled out of the back of the truck was set up.

Sitting on the edge, he pulled off his jeans and tee shirt, shedding them like old snakeskin, balling them up and shucking them in the far corner, before grabbing the fresh shirt and sleep pants that were laid across the bottom of the mattress.

Pulling back the corner of the sleeping bag and extra blanket that was laid across the mattress, Gibbs slid inside, shuffling and twisting slightly to get comfortable when the lump that was already sleeping turned over and snuffled closer, head burrowing into his neck before settling on his shoulder, arm sliding around his waist, legs twining with his.
Dropping a kiss on the brown hair tickling his nose, Gibbs tightened his grip on the body lying against him.

“Cold, or can’t sleep?” He asked.

“Neither, both,” was the sleepy reply. Rubbing his nose against the silky strands one more time, Gibbs ran his hand down sleep warmed skin, before settling his hand on the small of Tony’s back.

“Get some sleep. They aren’t going anywhere.”

“Yeah. That’s the problem.”