Cycles of Recrimination
Gibbs had never been good at inaction. If something was wrong, you did something about it. Fix the leak, patch the tire, kill the bad guy. Now there was nothing left for him to do but wait. He paced the floor of his holding cell like a restless tiger. Five steps up, two steps over, five steps back, two steps over. Again. And again. Hours. Days. Half a lifetime. His arms were crossed over his chest, hands tucked under biceps to keep himself from hitting something. His mind cycled once more through the well-worn path. Hernandez escaped.
***** Five steps up. Kelly and Shannon gone. He hadn't even seen their bodies.
******* Two steps over. He can't be allowed to get away with it.
** Five steps back. No one left to care. Left love. What did it matter?
Two steps over. A bullet through his head. Simple.
***** Five steps up. Then Ducky. And Abby. And Tony.
******* Two steps over. How was he to know? Then? That these people would come into his life?
** Five steps back. How could he have known, almost twenty years ago, when his own life meant nothing to him, that he would be hurting people he hadn't even met yet?
Two steps over. Hernandez escaped.
****** Five steps up. He was a killer, trained by the Marines to shoot without hesitation.
******* Two over. What was the difference? Lack of orders? Maybe.
** Five steps back. On some missions he was expected to use his own judgment to select the most strategic targets. The ones closing in on the other men in the unit. The ones sneaking up from behind. The ones slaughtering defenseless women and children from afar.
Two steps over. There was nothing left. It didn't matter.
***** Five steps up. How was he to know? McGee. Ziva. Ziva who had killed her own brother on orders from her father. How can that be all right, and this be wrong?
******* Two over. The taste of metal in his mouth. His sidearm caressing his flesh. Perhaps that would have been better than this.
** Five steps back. He could never go to his girls without having avenged them. But how could he face them now that he had?
Two steps over. Abby's voice – "Gibbs doesn't do that – or does he?" Oh yes, Abby he does.
***** Five steps up. Does he love her like a daughter? Oh yes, he does. Tony like a son. How can he face them, now that they know?
******** Two steps over. How could he have known when he pulled the trigger that he was betraying a high school boy who had nothing on his mind but girls and basketball, or a bright young girl dissecting her first frog?
** Five steps back. He hadn't asked them to look up to him. To assign him superpowers. To pin their hopes for a better world on him. He is only human, after all, just like everyone else.
Two over. Hernadez escaped.
***** Five steps up. Franks can do nothing. Franks follows the rules. Cares about doing the right thing. A widowed childless father does not.
******* Two steps over. How many people had he killed?
** Five steps back. Officially, 67. Unofficially, he had it at 81. Sanctioned operations, some on the books, some off.
Two over. This would be off. Off everyone's book.
***** Five steps forward. Except two small children who now had no father.
******* Two steps over. Would he have done anything differently if he had known about Paloma and Alejandro?
** Five steps back. Probably not. He could not have lived knowing that bastard could enjoy watching his children grow while he would never see his own little girl again.
Two steps over. Hernandez escaped.
***** Five steps up.
Ducky walked into the observation room. Director Vance stood in the darkened room, watching a monitor over the shoulder of the quiet attendant.
"He's still at it?" Ducky inquired, though he could see for himself that Jethro was still circling his tiny cell at the same pace he'd started.
"Thirty-six hours," Vance confirmed.
"Let me give him something," Dr. Mallard asked. "To help him rest."
"He'll rest on his own, when he needs to."
Ducky glared at the younger man, but did not argue. The doctor in him knew Vance was right, even if the human in him resented seeing the prisoner suffer. He watched Jethro, tense, intense, silently berating himself. He longed to go down there and to try again to talk to his best friend, to comfort him, to knock some sense into him. But Jethro hadn't spoken since his arrest, not to his director, his lawyer or his team, not to Ducky or Abby or Tobias. Not even to his father.
"Do you think they'll approve extradition?" Ducky asked at last. Vance gave him an unfathomable look that hinted at favors and secrets and deals.
"Not if I can help it," he reassured the medical examiner before leaving the room. Ducky watched a few more minutes. Five steps up. Two steps over. Five steps back. Two steps over. Again.
"I know you would do it again," he whispered to the grainy figure on the screen. "No one could expect anything else of you, my friend."
The attending agent refrained from comment as the sentimental medical examiner brushed the screen gently across the prisoner's back before sighing and leaving the room to its silence and the pacing man to his relentless recriminations.