Title: Sand & Water
Rating: T. Nothing explicit, but the thoughts are there. Thought I venture on the side of safety.
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Warnings: None that I'm aware of. Though all my Egyptian history comes from the Mummy movies and Daniel Jackson, so don't get too upset about that.
Disclaimer: All I own is the laptop.
Author's Explanation: I believe this is what they call 'highly experimental'. I watched an interview with JJ Abrams (Lost) where he said if your characters and their relationships are believable, they'll be believable no matter where you set them.
Enter the Muse.
This is one continuous plot, set in five different times, and with five variations on the team dynamic. And, more importantly, the Tony/Gibbs dynamic. Considering one of the great things about this pairing is that their relationship can believably change from one episode/story to the next, I tried to capture some of that mutability. Now buckle up, and lets see if this makes any sense.
"Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Antony came barreling around a corner, sprinting down the mud brick hall, just barely on time for the summons from the High Priestess. He wrapped his belt around his rumpled tunic and ran a soothing hand over his sweat soaked hair, trying to tame them both before entering the public domain and wishing the gods had planned their trouble for some time other than his early morning rendezvous. Other than the disdainfully delivered orders from one of his fellow Medjai, his morning had been practically perfect.
He'd woken early from a night of deep sleep, neither tormented by nightmares of his sketchy past, nor his uncertain future. He made his way in the pale light of dawn to his date with Ziva, a new priestess-in-training, and they'd whiled away the morning with conversations dappled in between her 'tests' of his skill as a Medjai. Mainly it meant letting her wail on him while she struggled to express her emotions, but the bruises were always worth it. And if everyone who saw his disheveled state took it for something else, then he was fine with the gossip that was to come.
Jethro was waiting for Antony outside High Priestess Katelyn's office, stalwartly examining the grain of the wood before him and ignoring the echo of his second's rushing feet coming up behind him. Those gossips that Antony was so keen to incite had already made their way to Jethro this morning, though he'd chalked Antony's behavior up to trying to burn off some stress. The High Priestess had made the boy all manner of nervous since the moment she threatened to make a eunuch out of him unless he stopped flirting with her, but though he understood it, Jethro wished the lad had found a better way to deal with his nerves.
Katelyn had been scolding Antony for his promiscuity for years, and though Jethro had occasionally tried a similar approach to convince Antony to spend a few nights in his own bed, but any time Jethro mentioned that he thought there were too many women, Antony seemed to take that as a sign to turn to the husbands of those women instead for his distractions. Needless to say, Jethro had stopped brining it up.
Jethro had come across a temple to Hathor in one of his many travels for Pharaoh, and there he'd found Antony lashed to a pole in the courtyard, with whip slices dripping blood down his back. The boy had been punished for stopping one of the priests from raping a village girl and fighting with him just long enough to give her time to get away. Antony had been beaten for his insolence (which, one very drunken conversation later, Antony had admitted was the first time he remembered being touched by human hands). Antony was the bastard child of one of the temple priests and the village harlot, and they kept him around as the temple's punishment for forgetting their path.
And that's where Jethro had discovered him, wanting nothing more than to die after twelve years of abject neglect, and Jethro couldn't make himself leave Antony there. Had Jethro been any less than Pharaoh's favorite Medjai, he probably would've been executed for the impertinence of taking a slave from a temple. But per usual, Donald let him get away with it. (Though it had been one hell of a fight for Jethro to apologize for doing it without consulting him first.) And every time a cuckolded husband demanded retribution for the boy's wrongs, Donald, ever Jethro's staunchest ally, would ply their anger with gold. (Though Donald was beginning to make noise about how in the four years since Jethro had taken him in, Antony had cost him more than any of his wives.)
Antony skid to a stop beside Jethro, braced for the scolding of his life, and was oddly disappointed when Jethro didn't say anything. Before Antony had the chance to do anything else disrespectful to get a rise out of Jethro, the great wooden doors to the inner sanctum of High Priestess Katelyn swung open and Jethro strode in.
'Damn.' was all Antony could think. His punishment this time seemed to be Jethro ignoring him, which Jethro should've known was only going to blow up in his face. Antony didn't like being ignored; being ignored meant he was about to do something incredibly stupid to get Jethro's attention right back where it belonged: on him.
Not that Antony was excessively territorial over Jethro or anything, other than he, ya know, was. Jethro was his hero, his savior, his family, and the only thing he really had in the world, and he didn't particularly like it when the High Priestess got that glint in her eye that said she thought Jethro would be better served by choosing his apprentice from one of the many, many appropriate young men she'd recommended to him.
Tony didn't want to be replaced, no matter how perfect and not at all psychologically damaged those young men may be. Jethro was his only kin, his father and best friend. Sure, there were plenty of practically perfect little Medjai who salivated at the thought of being trained by Jethro, but no one, NO ONE could be a more perfect match.
Whatever Tony was expecting when he stepped into large room that functioned as Katelyn's office, a body was not on the list. Laid out in repose on a table usually reserved for near-corpses receiving rights for the dying, was the bloated and blue body of a young man.
The boy had to be a few years younger than Antony and the stark paleness of his body was in painful contrast with the dark wood of the table he was spread upon. His robes were the dark green of life, and the irony not lost on Antony. He supposed there should be something morose about seeing the husk of a fellow so close to his own age, but there had been too many bodies in his short life for one more to inspire the sense of loss that some part of him knew he should be feeling.
"What happened?" He asked. The passive calm in Antony's voice startled Katelyn, but she wasn't to be outdone. She replied with a compassionate disinterest, "The body was found about an hour ago in one of the sacred ponds."
"Why did you move him?" Jethro almost snapped.
Katelyn stuck her chin out, mightily affronted that Jethro sounded so irritated with her. "Because he's a priest in training, Jethro. He deserved to have his body tended to, not left in disgrace where he was murdered." Her tone was tense and chiding, but Jethro ignored it.
"What makes you think he was murdered?"
Katelyn stalwartly ignored Antony not paying any attention to her view on the matter while he made a circle around the body, and answered Jethro, "Because the spirits testified it to me, and they are never wrong."
Jethro used all his will to constrain his snort of disbelief, but it wasn't enough to stop his raised eyebrow. As grace personified, Katelyn refrained from stomping her foot like a petulant child (as she was always tempted to do when Jethro spoke to her like she was a fool), and merely looked down her nose at him for not heeding her counsel. Antony's declaration of, "She's right, Boss." from beside the body was the only thing capable of breaking the violent staring match.
Katelyn looked triumphant, but Jethro ignored her to turn his focus to Antony. "Whatcha got?"
"He's got a dent on the back of his head, but there wouldn't rocks in a sacred pool for him to bash against. It's probably from someone knocking him unconscious. We should check around the pool, see if there are any bloody rocks, or scuff marks from a body being dragged in."
Jethro nodded and turned to Katelyn, gesturing to her to lead the way to the pond where the body was found. When Antony stepped behind to follow in his usual place, Jethro waived him off and said, "Go talk to Timothy"
"But, Boss-"
"Go Antony." Jethro turned away too quickly to see the flare of hurt in Antony's eyes caused by the rejection. Katelyn waited until Jethro's back was turned then looked to Antony with an unseemly glee that Jethro had chosen her company over his. For such a typically gentle and compassionate woman, the mere sight of Antony raised something vile in her behavior that she didn't quite care to admit to.
Antony slunk off to pester Timothy, Pharaoh Donald's only son, and Antony's best friend. He made his way through the city almost mindlessly, not noticing the 'come hither' looks that many citizens sent his way. By the time he made it to Timothy's apartment, he had already grown a long list of people irate with him for not having the common courtesy to at least flirt. Jethro may have disapproved of Antony's fondness for flirting, but he didn't seem to realize the benefit it paid them when carrying out their duties.
Antony walked in to Timothy's rooms unannounced and flopped down on the couch beside Timothy's favorite reading chair (placed there specifically to accommodate Antony's ever-lengthening frame when they were younger). The various servants scampering around the chambers didn't wait for Timothy's signal, they simply scattered at Antony's unnatural state of quiet. An Antony who wasn't complementing them on the flowers, or asking after their children was an Antony to be avoided.
"So... how are you?" Timothy asked tentatively.
Antony gave an exaggerated roll of his head around to stare at Timothy, clearly commenting that this was a stupid question. "That good, huh?" Antony lollopped back on the couch, turning his gaze to some far off point on the wall, ignoring the questioning glance Timothy sent him. Timothy had heard the servants gossiping about the sweaty, breathless state Antony had been in when he met Jethro that morning, and Timothy could easily make the assumption about why Antony was in a funk.
Though as always, the only thing Timothy could really think when Jethro and Antony had a spat over his sleeping habits was, "Why do you do it, Antony?"
His friend sprawled back, kicked his legs out and looked every inch the sex fiend the more puritanical among them accused him of being. He responded jauntily, "Why does anyone do anything, Tim?"
Timothy just put his hands on his hips and stuck out his chin, putting on his best 'I am to be Pharaoh' face to demand that he give a decent answer. Antony held his nonchalant pose and retorted, "What, Tim? It's the truth!"
Timothy just sighed and plopped down on the end of the sofa, looking at Antony with wide, sad eyes. "I just want to understand, Tony. I don't care what your reason is, I just want to understand it. You're my friend, my best friend. Someday you're going to be Jethro, and I'll be my father, and I want to know you like my father knows him."
Tony snorted and jumped from his seat, "No one knows Jethro. He keeps everything to himself."
Tim furrowed his brow, "But you always tell the other Medjai-in-training that you know him well..."
"That's because the only person living who knows him better than me is your father. I know him well, but only by comparison."
"And you wish he'd open up to you more?"
Tony shrugged out, "It's just, he's Jethro, you know?" To Tony, repeating the name in that tone and with emphatic hand gestures was enough to communicate his meaning, but Tim was still learning. Tim 'Ummed' for a moment and then shook his head.
Antony bit back the urge to sigh at Tim, knowing that his best friend was just doing his most with the exceptionally proper upbringing he'd been given. (An upbringing where excessive gesturing was frowned upon.) Tony rubbed his temples then snapped his head back up and continued, "Ok, here. This might explain it. When I first got here, Katelyn told me how she believed that the gods killed Jethro's family. Not as a punishment for anything, but because he was too perfect a Medjai. They needed him too much, and taking away his wife and daughter was the only way they could make him what they needed.
"He's a legend, Tim, and a saint, and he waltzed in and saved me when all I wanted to do was die. He's seen me at my absolute worst. But he doesn't. have. a. worst! He's always right, always fulfills his task, and never seems to be stressed by any of it!"
"So, you act out because you think Jethro's perfect?"
Sweet Tim sounded so confused that Tony could help but try to explain again. "I'll never be him, Tim. I'll never be the Medjai that people whisper about as the best there ever was. When Jethro brought me here, before I'd even had the chance to do anything wrong, I got gossiped about. And then they told me I wasn't worthy of being the one he trained. Rather than break myself trying to be just as good as he is, I decided to become less. Like, if I wasn't really trying it wouldn't hurt when I failed."
"But why not act out some other way?"
"Because at least this way someone cares. They tell me I'm good at sex, and get excited to see me. And it's not nearly as many people as you think, Timothy. With the women, it's actually mostly just talking. Like this morning! I was with Ziva-"
"That new priestess Jethro has taken a shine to?"
The briefest flicker of pain flickered across Antony's face, but he continued, "Yeah, her. Jethro asked me to make nice, so we've been talking. She'd been telling me all about how she misses home, and how great Jethro is for looking after her."
Timothy hesitated just a moment before asking, "And that doesn't bother you?"
Antony just grinned, "Contrary to popular belief, I do try and like people who like him."
"I know Antony, it's just… do you still worry that you'll get replaced?"
Antony dropped back to his spot on the sofa, looking every inch his eighteen years rather than the twenty-something he usually pretended, and muttered, "Every. single. day." Tim had been sitting cross-legged on the end of the sofa the entire time, watching Tony pace back and forth, struggling to actually express himself to another person rather than just bottling it all up inside.
Tim knew Tony was right, partially. Most days Jethro was closer to myth than human, and the other Medjai didn't quite grasp why he thought Tony was worth spending his time and energy on. Jethro thought they were all idiots with no vision, but Tony had always secretly agreed with them. Timothy didn't pretend to really understand how the two men worked, but despite all odds they seemed to match perfectly, night and day, like two halves of the same whole.
At least, that's how his father put it. One night they'd puttered around the garden, examining each of the flowers when Timothy had asked Donald about Jethro and Antony. "They're bound up together my lad, two lives sharing one fate. They are meant to walk together through life. Just, uh, don't mention that to Jethro, he's liable to shout at you. He hates feeling enthralled to fate."
Timothy hadn't needed the extra advice, but he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Papa, when you mean together, do you mean, together?"
Donald chuckled to himself, knowing that his son's ever-growing interest in sex was directly the result of his dealings with Antony, so of course that would be the first question he asked. "What path their togetherness takes shall be of their own choosing, my boy. Love has many forms." His father had then proceeded to tell a story about the Queen of Sheeba, but Timothy wasn't truly paying attention, too wrapped up in the looks he knew his best friend sent Jethro when he thought no one was watching.
Knowing his father's gift for observation Timothy then asked, "Do you every think Antony will trust that Jethro won't just be rid of him?"
Donald chortled, "Jethro must be rid of the idea himself, first."
Timothy stopped their walk mid-stride with horror in his eyes, "Jethro wants to send Antony away?"
"No, no, no."Donald gave a comforting squeeze to Timothy's shoulder, "But he's yet to realize that the best thing for Antony is to stay just where he is. Jethro must figure that out first, and then the lot will fall to Antony to be the one to trust, and that will not happen until the moment he could walk away."
Timothy furrowed his brow in confusion, "But Jethro could always walk away."
"Not Jethro, my boy, Antony. Once Jethro has no bonds of debt or duty, and Antony could walk away and stand on his own, and then Jethro doesn't leave, then Antony will know he's here to stay. But not before."
Timothy kept this conversation to himself, but recalled it in all its enlightening detail as Antony sprawled morbidly on his sofa. Timothy had no counsel to offer that would do his best friend any good, but he desperately hoped his father wasn't wrong where their fate was concerned. To spend the rest of his life in doubt over Jethro's affection would destroy Antony rather than make him whole.
XXXXXXX
Jethro and Katelyn's walk through the temple to where the young priestess was recovering from the shock of discovering the body was fraught with silence. Katelyn was riding too high from the perceived slight to Antony to notice that the telling furrow in between Jethro's eyebrows had appeared the moment Antony had been left, and not upon seeing the body. But there was one thing she noticed that did bother her. "Jethro, how did Antony know to check the priest's head?"
He grunted back, "Because he's seen murders before."
"In his time following you around?" And though she tried, she really did, Katelyn couldn't help the derision that snuck into her tone. Jethro shot her a look for that that either said, 'Duh,' or 'He's not a damn puppy. He helps me.'. (Probably the latter, but though she was decent at speaking Jethro, she wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination.) What he actually said aloud was, "And before."
"What do you mean?"
"He's not just a pretty face, Kate."
"I'd certainly hope not. He's not all that pretty." Jethro cocked an eyebrow, not believing her denial for a second.
"He's good with people."
"So I've heard," she giggled. Jethro gave her a glare with the full force of his irritation. "Oh Jethro, you know I didn't really mean it." but she was still smiling.
Usually she was a good friend to Jethro, but he couldn't trust her with his concerns about Antony today, since she'd just proved herself to be in an unreliable mood. She didn't need to know that Jethro had noticed with a wrenching in his infallible gut that the dead priest was the spitting imaging of Antony. Nor should she know that he didn't want that realization to dawn on Antony in Katelyn's presence.
She also didn't need to know that in trying to keep Antony safe, Jethro had gone and done him harm with the rejection. Some days Jethro worried that he'd taken Antony from his life of neglect only to plant him in an entirely different form of abuse.
The gods had seen fit to rob him of his pregnant wife and unborn child, only to give him a second chance at family, and he couldn't help but wonder why they'd go to all the trouble just so he could muck things up so spectacularly once again. He failed in trying to convince Antony for years that he'd keep him, no matter what anyone else said, and now he failed in his ever more wretched attempts to fight the way he wanted the boy.
Antony loved him like a father, but every time Antony found his solace in someone else's bed and then came stumbling back to Jethro, sated and loose, he couldn't help the feral stab of jealousy that clenched his heart. On his worst days Jethro wondered if he should turn Antony over to some family far away from the capital and let him live a normal life. One where the only person in this world that he thought of as family didn't have the ever growing urge to taste him.
Jethro tucked his worries off to the side when he and Katelyn made it to the scene of the crime. He scanned the area, found no scuff marks on the ground, but saw flecks of blood that must've splattered from the head wound. Ironically, Katelyn just trailed behind Jethro around the scene contributing nothing, just what she'd accused Tony of doing. "There's no murder weapon," he said, "but he must've been hit here, standing next to the pool, then caught and tossed in before he hit the ground."
Jethro took in the scene one last time, then gestured to Katelyn to lead him to the witness. There he found a young girl sobbing into her hands, trembling from the shock of her day. He glared at Katelyn for leaving the girl in this state, but Katelyn muttered, "She was just fine when I left her."
Upon seeing Jethro the bright-eyed girl dashed into his arms and unleashed a whole new string of sobs into his chest. "H-he said there'd be more!"
"He who?" Jethro asked.
"The man!"
Jethro ran a comforting hand over her hair, fixing Katelyn with a glare until she mouthed the girls' name to him, and he asked, "Abigail, I don't understand. What man?"
"The man who came in here and said he killed the priest! H-He said there'd be more!"
Jethro looked over the girl's head and mouthed to Katelyn, 'Get me Antony, and the Medjai'. To the girl he asked, "The man found you here in the temple?"
"Y-Yes. And he told me to tell you, 'They're all just practice, Jethro. Practice for the real thing'. But I don't know what that means!" He cradled the girl close, trying to soothe her while his own soul erupted in panic.
Whoever this murderer was, he was targeting Jethro, and judging by the dead boy's appearance, that meant the psychopath was targeting his Antony.
