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“Nick, we haven’t even heard from her since she left,” Tim hisses, very aware of how sound travels across the squad room, “it’s like she just dropped off the face of the planet!”
“It wouldn’t have been safe for her to contact us,” Nick responds calmly.
Almost suspiciously so.
Tim stands, agitated, and moves closer to him, “Well yeah, if she did then she would probably go to prison.”
“No, Tim-“ Nick cuts himself off, shaking his head impatiently as he glances around the squad room then motions for him to follow.
Neither of them speak a word until they’re safely in the stopped elevator.
“Look, it was a setup,” Nick begins, voice still low, “she planted those files to discredit herself so she could build up a believable backstory to go undercover.”
“What? Where?!” Tim asks, shocked.
“I don’t know.”
He’s still disconcertingly calm about it all.
“Nick! How do you even know this?”
“I worked it out, followed the lies-” the way he spits the word is the first sign of true anger in him- “extra training, extra skills, extra knowledge. Ever since she met Odette,” his fists clench tightly, “I know how the undercover life works. I confronted her just before she left.”
Tim feels a sense of what he thinks might be despair, or at least deep dread, rising inside him.
“Who else knows?”
“Just me. Gibbs suspected I think.”
“Gibbs usually knows these things,” Tim agrees, feeling a little numb as he tries to process everything, “well, Ellie always did enjoy the undercover work… I can see how she thought it would be a good next step for her…”
It still hurts that she’d just up and left but it does hurt a little less now he knows why.
At least she hadn’t actually leaked the documents and buried it for nearly ten years.
He frowns, “I just wish she’d told us.”
They would have supported her but she’d shut them out. Perhaps she’d been shutting them out for a long time.
“Look, Tim,” Nick sighs, “I don’t know how long she’s going to be gone. If she’s even coming back. You know how different she was in those last few months – the changes are only going to keep coming.”
There’s genuine worry in his eyes, borderlining on fear, and it creates a rare moment of vulnerability between them.
“Are you worried she won’t be the same person, after it all?”
“I know she’s not going to be the same person. It’s just how much of the real her there is going to be left,” he paces the short length of the elevator a few times, flexing his hands, “it worries me, Tim. I might be angry at her for leaving but I’m also scared for her. I know how dangerous that world is, possibly better than anyone.”
It worries him too but, “You just have to trust that she’ll be able to look after herself.”
“It can all fall apart so quickly.”
It’s so completely out of their control. And, to a certain extent, out of hers too.
“Then trust that she’ll come back for you.”
“For me?” Nick turns back to face him suddenly, “Tim, if I wasn’t enough to get her to stay, then why would I be enough to get her to come back?!”
Here it is, another flip-flop between worry for her and anger at her for having left at all.
There’s just been so much to process over the last year. Jack staying in Afghanistan, Ellie leaving, Gibbs being suspended. They aren’t really sure where they stand anymore and Tim is just trying his best to hold the both of them together, clutching at any semblance of normal that he can.
“You didn’t see what we did-“ he may have been reluctant to acknowledge it but that didn’t mean it wasn’t clear as anything to all of them- “Nick, she’s coming back for you,” he maintains emphatically, “it might be a while from now, but it will happen. One day, we’ll open a door and she’ll be there, ready and safe to come back into our lives again.”
“She chose to leave,” he insists.
But he calmly counters, “And she’ll choose to come back.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Tim swallows, “It’s what I’m choosing to believe. I’m choosing to believe that the woman I knew, who I think of as a little sister, is still in her somewhere,” stubbornly, he continues, “that she’s pushing herself to see how far she can go but she won’t push herself past breaking point and she’ll come back.”
Not waiting for Torres to answer, he turns and flicks the elevator back on, jabbing at the button for the squad room.
As the doors begin to open, he glances across at who is, for all intents and purposes, his brother and states resolutely, “We’re her family, Nick, it doesn’t matter how hurt I am at her leaving, I’ll always be here for her.”