The expressions around the bullpen ranged from jubilation to resignation and, of course, the completely unchanged. Tony shifted his gaze back to Vance who was watching them with his usual blank-faced composure. "It's for charity, so I expect you all to attend," he stated firmly, toothpick moving along with his mouth.
"We just have to attend right?" McGee stuttered, face turning a queer combination of green and white. "We don't have to… perform?"
"Of course we're performing, McGee!" Abby bobbed on her heels, grinning widely. "It's for charity!"
"All of us?" Ziva's gaze flickered from Vance to Gibbs, eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.
Gibbs was silent.
Vance smiled coolly, toothpick twitching upright. "All of us."
Tony dropped his head into his hands. "Good work, McCharity. You put the idea in his head. You'll make a beautiful Dorothy."
The soft chuckle sounded like Gibbs but with how the world had gone insane in the last ten minutes, Tony couldn't be sure.
.
.
Palmer was in a dress.
The world had gone mad and Palmer was wearing a dress.
"You look pretty, Palmer," Tony announced, stepping up behind him and feeling a smug sense of accomplishment when the autopsy gremlin startled at his approach. "You're the perfect Glinda, you'll put Billie Burke to shame."
Palmer turned and grinned widely at him from behind smudged lenses, his heavy skirt rustling. "Oh, I'm not Glinda."
Tony stared at him until the grin begun to slip, replaced by a practised nervousness that was much more appropriate. "You're the Wicked Witch?" Tony didn't even try to keep the disbelief out of his voice. "Who's the Good Witch then?"
Ziva poked her head out from Abby's office, her catlike smirk aimed directly at him. "We had a competition," she said matter-of-factly. "Abby judged. He cackles better than I do."
.
.
"Flip a coin, McCowardly Lion." Tony dropped the coin onto his junior partner's desk, narrowly missing McGee's hand.
Tim eyed the coin as though it was something dangerous. "Why? And I don't have a part yet."
"Because," Tony said shortly. "The only two parts left are Scarecrow and the Lion. And there hasn't been a cowardly DiNozzo yet."
"You can be Scarecrow, Tony." McGee turned his attention back to the computer, tapping at the keyboard with short, angry strokes. "No matter which character I am, I'll still look ridiculous up there. The rest is semantics."
Tony sensed a sore spot. "Nope. Doesn't work like that, Probie. Now flip it. I call heads."
Tim flipped it. Tony peered at the coin and smirked. "Oh Timmy, if I only had a brain."
.
.
"What is this?" Gibbs poked at the package on his desk.
"I have one too." Ziva looked as though someone had planted a bomb on her desk instead of a present, a mixture of suspicion and calculation. "As does DiNozzo and McGee."
"Method acting!" Abby announced, appearing as though summoned, a wicker basket hooked over one arm and looking odd in a plain cotton, checked dress and heavy heeled red boots. "They're to help you guys get into the mindset of your characters!"
Tony tore into his package, revealing a battered straw hat and a stuffed crow. "I'm supposed to scare crows, Abby, not snuggle them."
"Mine is nice." Ziva was blowing bubbles from a novelty wand, expression oddly delighted. Tony wondered how often before that the tough as nails woman had played with bubbles. "Thank you, Abby."
Gibbs made a strange strangled sound, a tartan dog collar held loosely between two fingers.
"Boss, are you… Toto?" McGee choked with a pair of fluffy tan ears perched carefully on his hair.
"Part had the least lines," Vance announced, striding into the bullpen with a plastic axe hanging from his belt. "Put it on, Gibbs. If Jimmy Palmer can work with his face painted green, you can wear a collar. Just take it off before you go into the field." He paused, his dark eyes scanning the rest of them. "Keep the ears, McGee. They suit you."
Tony waited until Vance was gone before aiming a cheeky mega-watt smile at his boss. "Remember, Boss. It's for charity."
He probably should have ducked. The collar was going to leave a mark.
.
.
"I'm starting to think that this was not Director Vance's idea at all," Ziva muttered, watching Abby bound around the dress rehearsal having the time of her life. McGee slunk after her, face downcast. Tony fancied that if their probie actually had a tail, it would be tucked firmly between his legs. "McGee is looking very down in the South."
"Down in the mouth," Tony corrected absently. He peered around Ziva to spot Vance, in full tin man outfit, talking to the people arranging the seating.
"What? South is down, mine made sense. Mouths are not down." Ziva glared at him, before following his eye line. "He really has no heart, making poor McGee get up on stage."
"Hearts will never be practical until they are unbreakable!" Tony quoted He nudged her with his shoulder. She turned confused eyes onto him and furrowed her brow. "Goddamnit Ziva, read the script. How do you not know the lines? Tin-Man wants a heart!"
"It is a children's movie. I am not a child, therefore I have not watched it."
"It's a classic. I must have seen it a thousand times."
"That is because you are a child, Tony." But she smiled as she said it and he rolled his eyes and laughed.
.
.
Abby's face was the picture of forced innocence, the stage lights making her eyes glitter oddly. "How do you talk if you don't have a brain?"
Tony almost rolled his eyes at her before remembering that they were on stage with his entire workplace and then some watching him. Gritting his teeth, sore in the knowledge that he was never going to live this down, he delivered his line. "Well, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking don't they?"
The noise that Gibbs-as-Toto made was not at all doglike, and definitely not scripted.
Maybe it wasn't too late to see if there was an opening in the FBI…
.
.
McGee played a fantastic Cowardly Lion. Tony would admit, he himself had felt like he was about to throw up when he first stepped onto the stage, but DiNozzo's adapt quickly. Even when being watched as they pretend to be a scarecrow by hundreds of people.
McGee's wide eyed terror and green complexion under the yellow make-up only served to add to his performance, as well as the stuttering, stilted way he delivered his lines. Tony would have been proud of him if he believed for one moment that the kid was acting.
Ducky smiled, and there was a man who wasn't acting at all. It should have come as no surprise to any of them that the man was as comfortable on a stage as he was at an autopsy table. "You, my friend, are a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate impression that just because you run away you have no courage; you're confusing courage with wisdom."
McGee met Ducky's eyes and smiled slightly, painted whiskers twitching, and for the first time Tony realized that perhaps their roles were a little more appropriate than he'd first believed.
.
.
Ziva was busy shaking glitter out of her hair when Tony cornered her after the show, shirt itching where he was pretty sure there was still straw shoved inside it. "Good job, Ziva. You were the deadliest Witch of the South that ever wore those wings."
"You were an adequate Scarecrow as well, Tony," she said snidely, mouth twitching. "Although, you would also have been a wonderful lion."
He took the obvious bait. "What, no Tin-Man? Aw Zee-vah, are you saying I have a heart?"
She flicked glitter onto him. "But no brains."
He leant back against the walls, arms behind his head and hat tilted disarmingly. "Ah, but what would I do with a brain if I had one?"
.
.
He found McGee carefully pinning his 'courage' medal to the partition next to his desk. "You know, that medal doesn't actually give you courage, right McBravery?"
Tim grinned at him, no sign of the grumpiness that he'd carried around him ever since Vance had told them they were in the play. "I know. But, I had fun. I figured this was something to remember it by."
"What, and the Oz shrine that Abby's fixed up in her lab isn't enough? You know she has photos right? Lots of photos?" Tony wiggled his eyebrows menacingly as McGee's face fell. He felt a slight twinge of guilt as the cheerfulness vanished from his partner's posture. "You know," he chose his words carefully, reaching over and tweaking the medal so it caught the light. "It was really brave of you to get up there, even though you were terrified."
McGee didn't trust this side of Tony one bit. Tony didn't blame him. "Yeah well, Abby would have been shattered if I hadn't. And Gibbs didn't complain once about the whole thing, what right did I have to grumble?"
Tony was of the opinion that Gibbs had probably complained quite a lot, just not in front of them, and certainly nowhere near where Abby could hear him. "Abby was a terrible choice for Dorothy," he finally settled for stating.
McGee looked outraged, glancing about quickly for their forensic specialist. "Tony! How can you say that? She was wonderful! She didn't forget her lines once, unlike Palmer."
Tony slipped his hand into his pocket and ran a finger over the folded paper that was his diploma, carefully filched from the props department on the way out. "I didn't say she was bad at it, just that she didn't suit the role. Out of all of us, Abby's never once forgotten where her home is."
McGee didn't say anything but as they left the office together, Tony fancied that his partner's step were just that little bit lighter.
He hoped that McGee was still this cheerful tomorrow when Gibbs found the box of dog treats hidden in his desk. That was a storm that they were all going to have to weather together.