Good Fences
by channelD
Written for the NFA Deserted Island challenge
Rating: K+
Characters: Tim and Tony (friendship, non-slash)
Genre: Adventure
Thanks to: the poet Robert Frost for the references (from Mending Wall)
- - - - -
Disclaimer: I still own nothing of NCIS.
- - - - -
They had been friends, sort of, before being dumped on the island. They might not have admitted to the friendship, however—being of such different types, they worked together with some reluctance, got in each other's hair, occasionally played jokes on each other, and, more often than not, spent part of the work day fuming about having to put up with each other.
The pilot of the small plane that was to have carried NCIS special agents Tony DiNozzo and Tim McGee to the city of Funchal on the island of Madeira, off the coast of West Africa, had instead stranded them. How he had and his assistant had learned that they carried $300,000 in cash for a sting operation they didn't know; suddenly, in mid-air, the assistant had turned a gun on them and insisted they put on parachutes. They had been forced out of the plane, and come down in the water in easy swimming distance of an island. Not Madeira itself; perhaps somewhere near.
Somewhere near, and yet far. Somewhere deserted; once inhabited, and now lonely.
Tony pulled himself out of the water and onto the beach. "If you hadn't been all, 'Hands off my briefcase, it has a very sensitive alarm—' "
"Well, it does have a sensitive alarm. Did. Does." Tim's mind was more on disentangling himself from his parachute than it was on verb tense. "I didn't want them touching the case at all. Tony, I signed for that $300,000! Once the agency learns it's gone—"
"—They'll take it out of your pay. Boo hoo. Or no, wait! Let me think! You'll go to prison for theft!" Tony put his sneering face inches away from Tim's. "But no! The great McGeek lucks out again. There will be no prison time, 'cause they'd have to find you here on this freakin' island to put you in prison!"
"It's not my fault," Tim mumbled, though feeling somewhat that Tony might be right. "Look, Tony; if we work together, we can come up with a plan to get rescued. We just need to—"
But Tony would not let the other issue drop. "Well, this is all so not my fault! I didn't even want to go to Funchal! We could have left it in the hands of the branch office in the Azores—they were even willing to make the transfer!"
"It still would have been my responsibility, since I signed for the money! I pretty much had to deliver it in person!"
Tony laughed unpleasantly. "And that meant I had to go with you—so you wouldn't blow the money on comic books or video games."
"That's not the reason for the required second agent, and you know it!"
"I am soooooo sorry. I don't have your computer-driven brain so I can't possibly remember all the regs that you remember, McGeek! I don't sit around trying to memorize twaddle like you do. I have a life! Or I did until you got us stranded on an island!" With a swift move he stuffed a conch shell (still inhabited) down the back of Tim's shirt.
The shells' inhabitant roused from slumber, and started moving. Tim danced and leaped to dislodge it, tugging on his shirt and crying out, and finally he and the small creature were separated, and happy about it. But Tim's mood turned to rage, as he charged at Tony and bowled him over, into the sand. They growled and struggled, and after a minute or so gave up.
"I can do very well without you, you moron!" Tim snapped, leveling a finger (outside of grabbing range).
"Same here, Geekoid!" Tony roared. "If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of my sight, and stay out of my sight!"
Tim hesitated. "Instead of fighting, we should work together. Look; I'll apologize, and—" But he saw Tony had picked up another conch shell. "Fine! Forget I said anything that implied you might have tactical uses! I dibs the other half of the island." Tim folded his parachute loosely but neatly, and walked off along the beach, without looking back.
"Well—fine!" said Tony. After a long moment he splashed back into the water, and retrieved his parachute, which had washed up on a nearby rock. If McGeek's saving his, it must be useful somehow…
- - - - -
On the second day, a small plane went overhead. "Hey! Hey!" Tony called, ridiculously, as if he could be heard that high up. He ran along the beach, waving his arms and jumping up and down, but the plane went on.
Over on his side of the island, Tim was doing the very same thing, but the plane took no more notice of him than it had of Tony. Tim fell to his knees in the sand after a few minutes and covered his face in despair.
- - - - -
Three days later Tim and Tony met by chance in a clearing in the island center. Some force had, long ago, caused the jungle to halt at the fringes of the clearing, as if awaiting construction of a football field. Sweet berries ringed the clearing; there might be other delectable plants, too, just waiting to be discovered. "My clearing," said Tony. "Get out!"
"Actually, I think you'll see by these back-of-the-envelope calculations I made that—"
"I don't care if you got it off a Googlemap! I've claimed this clearing, and—"
"No."
Tony screeched to a halt, physically and emotionally. " 'No'? What do you mean, 'no'?! This is the point where you argue at length with me, then storm off. This is how we always fight!"
"No. I won't give in this time."
"What? Why not?"
"Because the flora and fauna might prove to be necessary for both of our survivals. We need to share this space. Make it a free zone. Something."
Tim looked determined, and ready to scrap again. Tony, though, was tired; tired of living (so far) on berries. This might be one way to keep McGeek in view, and steal some ideas from him. "Fine," said Tony, snappishly. "We'll divide the clearing in two." He picked up a rock and laid it down, then another next to its long end, and so on.
Good fences make good neighbors. Tim recalled the line of poetry, though, like the poet Robert Frost, he doubted the wisdom of the saying. But this was an opportunity to out-stubborn Tony…and it was better than having nothing of the clearing. He picked up a stone and tried to form a line like Tony's, parallel to it, barely touching. Stone here, stone there…By the end of the day they had a two-foot-high wall that stretched across the island like a big, stone belt.
- - - - -
Weeks bore on. The glimpses Tony got of Tim's domain showed that Tim had shaped his parachute into an elaborate canopy and hammock. Day by day, he grew a little jealous of Tim's ingenuity. Meanwhile, Tim had noticed that Tony had hacked apart his parachute and made clothing out of it. I wish I'd thought of that, he said to himself several times. Sometimes a plane passed over. After a few attempts, both men gave up trying to make the plane see them. The island would be their home, for the rest of their lives.
- - - - -
They met along the wall, occasionally. At first their meetings were hostile and territorial. Tony even threw clumps of dirt at Tim in those early weeks, but stopped after Tim started returning the pitches, wrapped in sticky mud. Each found enough food on the island to keep going: fish was a staple, along with several fruits and grains. Their lives were solitary.
The wall structure did require a little maintenance. From time to time one of them would walk alongside the wall, picking up fallen rocks and sliding or sticking them back in place. Sometimes they were there at the same time, and performed this duty in silence.
Then came the rains.
The fence, built by two people with no real knowledge of fence-making, sighed before the master of the rains and fell apart, little by little. By the fourth day of the rains, it was just a sloppy heap of stones.
Tony, cutting through the clearing to check his fish lines, swore on seeing the devastation. Now he'd have to start building all over again. It was probably all McGeek's fault. The klutz couldn't build the first layer of a house of cards. Grunting, Tony lifted the rain-and-mud-slicked rocks, barely able to see for the water running down his face. He put them into place, mentally working it out. Place. Daub. Tuck. Repeat.After awhile he looked back to see how much he'd gotten done. And there was Tim, taking apart the wall at the same rate that Tony had been assembling it.
Tony was speechless. Tim took advantage of that. "It's time, Tony. Time to take the wall down. It's been between us; it's been keeping us from working together to find a solution to our dilemma."
The anger inside Tony cooled. "You really think there's a way out of this?"
"Maybe. I think the clearing, not the beach, is the key. I tried cutting down old, dead trees with this makeshift axe, but it's really a two-person job."
Despite misgivings, Tony was interested. "How does cutting down trees help?"
"I figured we would line them up in the clearing to spell something. Not just the tree limbs themselves; we'd coat them with chalk from the chalk cliffs on my side of the island. That should be visible from a plane."
"McGee, you're a genius, maybe! What do you plan to spell out in the message?"
Tim looked a little embarrassed. "Well, something like 'Help! Two stranded NCIS agents on this island would appreciate rescue! Please save us! Call NCIS toll-free at 1-800-' except it should be in Portuguese; that's the prevailing language in the area, and I don't—"
Tony slapped him lightly on the head. "McGee. We'll go with 'SOS'. Got it?"
Tim winced. "Yeah, we could do that."
- - - - -
And so a week later, a day after the trees and their chalk coating was in place, a seaplane touched down on Tony's beach. Tim was there, too, when it happened, and they danced and laughed as the local authorities looked on curiously. Within minutes the men in tattered clothes and unruly beards were on board, headed for Madeira island at last.
"It is good that you spelled out the SOS," one of their rescuers said. "We did not think that anyone would be here. The island is deserted, for over 80 years, now. Once people, maybe 40 people, all lived on this island."
"What happened to them?" asked Tim.
"Some left, some stayed and died. I only know, from my grandfather, that there was a big fight, and they divided the island in two. When I flew over it a few weeks ago, I thought I saw the same old stone wall across the middle."
Tony and Tim exchanged glances. "Huh," was all Tim could say.
"It is a good thing you two worked together," said the rescuer. "Alone, I do not think anyone could manage."
"I'd rather have good neighbors and skip the fences," Tony said firmly.
The copilot said something in Portuguese, and the rescuer turned to the agents with a smile. "Ah! We have made radio contact with your NCIS. Someone named Gibbs says he is glad that you are safe, but he wants to know where the $300,000 is."
Tim and Tony looked at each other, then back at the rescuer, then back at each other. Simultaneously, they leveled fingers and said, "It's all his fault!"
- END -