About the Same Amount: (Of Egos and Brains) "Gibbs, your team is an impossibility. I can't even see how they manage to get the bad guy without killing each other off first." –Vance By Ruby. Slightly AUish.
Authority figures and Gibbs had never gotten along. This was why Gibbs held a certain amount of apprehension and exasperation at the new Director as he headed up to Jenny's old office. Per usual for him, he simply walked into the Director's office, disregarding the secretary's protests.
"Agent Gibbs," Director Leon Vance said, surprise and exasperation in his voice. "Come in, why don't you?"
"Thanks for the invite," Gibbs retorted, equally sarcastic.
Vance leaned back into his chair, gesturing to the guest chair and began talking without waiting for his subordinate to get comfortable. "I will say that I've ultimately decided to let matters lie before I say anything else. I will also say that upon reading your team's files, my first instinct was to pull you apart and ship you off to opposite corners of the country."
Ice-blue eyes almost widened.
"I will say this as tactfully as I possibly can," Vance continued. "Gibbs, your team is an impossibility. I can't even see how they manage to get the bad guy without killing each other off first, let alone having the highest detain—by death or by arrest—record that the agency has ever seen. Your team has about the same amount of egos and brains—a little more brains in McGee, a little more ego in DiNozzo, and a small side-order of crazy in David."
"Director—"
"I'm not done yet, Special Agent Gibbs," Vance said mildly, chewing on his toothpick absently. "And do remember that I'm not splitting you up. I almost did after watching your team bicker almost endlessly. It gave me a goddamn headache because I was trying to see if McGee was being bullied by DiNozzo, if DiNozzo was sexually harassing David, or if David was simply going to pin DiNozzo to his chair like a butterfly after a couple too many lewd comments. Then I realized that McGee and David liked to tag-team DiNozzo with increasingly incomprehensible and lengthy sentences, that David and DiNozzo both poke and prod McGee about his writing and prowess with computers, and that McGee and DiNozzo somehow are able to reign in David when she goes on a warpath—verbally or physically."
He fell silent for a moment, thinking. "I'm just going to stick with my first statement: Gibbs, your team is an impossibility. I don't know how you found these three, or how they put up with each other and yourself, but I'm going to let sleeping dragons lie."
Gibbs actually smirked. "Thank you, sir."
"But Gibbs," Vance cautioned, "if they fall apart…I will be shipping them off to opposite ends of the country."
The Gunnery Sargent was already at the door, a cheeky wave flying by. "No worries, Director!"
Ah…hi. It's been a little while since I've last posted anything, although I'll be updating another story in about a week or so. But yes, this is after Jenny Shepard has been killed, and probably a couple episodes after Vance is first introduced. It's been a while since I've watched those episodes surrounding Jenny's murder.
This was kind of inspired by how much fandom controversy surrounded the characters. Everyone seems to have picked favorites—okay, understood—but then decided to villainize the ones that they either didn't like or simply weren't in their favorites. Me…well, I look at the series as a whole, and I think that each of them give as good as they get. They all have their problem episodes. It would be interesting to go back through all of them from Day 1 and keep tally of the jibes, barbs, disciplinary action upon one when it was really the other, life-threatening situation caused by another, or even almost crazed revenge. I think McGee is the only one of the team that hasn't gone out and hunted someone down with the intention of killing them.
Oh wait. Somalia and him and Tony and Gibbs hunting down Saleem for killing Ziva—who turns out to be alive. Yeah, McGee has that episode too.
*shrugs* Anyway, that's me.
Toodles!
-Ruby