When It Was Us
His grief is spent, for now. In Jeanne's loving arms, in silent tears and shock and broken words. He feels numb, cold and empty. He knows the grief will return, in the days to come, in the months and years that pass. The loss of Paula Cassidy will hurt for a long time.
But for now, he is numb. Numb and drifting aimlessly among his thoughts. Drifting back to that moment in the elevator, to the words Gibbs spoke.
'It could always be us. Every single day. Hell, sometimes it has been.'
He thinks about that. Not because he wants to, but because it is a convenient topic of thought, and he wants to understand it. To understand, maybe, just a little bit of what Gibbs was thinking then, in his words and his relentless drive to find justice for Paula and her murdered teammates.
He remembers Pachi. Cheerful, relaxed Pachi, with his wide smile and easy-going nature, which could only be disturbed if someone messed with his desk, with it's carefully neat organization. Pachi, who took a bullet to the neck and staggered down two flights of stairs and into the elevator before he died. Pachi, who was eviscerated after his death, left broken and bloody in the elevator, like discarded trash.
Killed by a transvestite former embezzler and murderer, of all things. He can't imagine what that would be like. He was embarrassed enough with his minimal interaction with Voss. Of course, Pachi probably didn't make the mistake of trying to date the he/she, let alone kissing her. Still. Then it was Pachi.
He remembers Kate. Brave, beautiful, spitfire Kate. A girl he might have fallen in love with, if they hadn't been teammates, sparking off each other like flint and steel. And if it hadn't been for Gibbs and his warnings about never sleeping with your partner.
Kate, killed by Ari, a bullet to the brain, faster than a blink. Laughing one moment, dead the next. The horrible irony of the bullet she had already survived, and her last words. 'Wow, I thought I'd be dead before I heard that.' And then she was.
Then it was Kate. Her number was up and she was gone, just like that.
Even now, he's not sure the hurt has faded. Ziva makes it easier, with her strong presence and her bright eyes and quick wit. But still, sometimes he sees brown eyes or brown hair and his heart stutters. Sometimes he hears a laugh that is just 'like that', and his heart contracts. Sometimes, Ziva says his name in that tone, that tone just like Kate, and he looks up with the wrong name on the tip of his tongue and has to snatch it back into his throat and find a quick retort.
He wonders if it's the same for McGee. McGee didn't know Kate as long or as well. But he was fond of her, as they all were. They had been a team, partners, almost family in a way.
There had been no warning with Kate. Just a split second between life and death and then she was gone. It hadn't been the same with Paula.
He knows that, as long as he lives, he'll remember those last moments, when their eyes met as the hidden door swung back into place. As they both realized what was about to happen, that there was no tomorrow for them, no second chances. He'll remember trying to scramble across the dirty concrete floor, to jam the door before it closes, while his eyes try to convey years worth of messages in moments. While he tries to read her expression, her last message to him.
Was it love, an admission that they still had that spark between them? Resignation, that it was all about to end? Relief, that she could avenge her partners?
He's not sure he'll ever know.
No more than he knows what his own last message would have been, if the plague had taken him away. He remembers that. The first moment of shocked horror, when the white powder exploded into his face and he realized he was likely in trouble. Trying to keep his spirits up as he showered and dressed and hopped into the ambulance. Harassing Kate just so he didn't have to think about being trapped in a negative pressure sterile isolation ward.
He remembers the first hitch in his breath, the first cough. The slow creeping ache as it became progressively harder to get enough air into his lungs. The tight, painful feeling in his lungs, that grew until every breath felt like someone was scraping the inside of his chest cavity with sandpaper. The coughing that wracked through him, made him feel like every muscle cramp he'd ever had in his life had multiplied by a factor of 10 and then taken up residence in his upper body.
He remembers spitting blood and gasping, trying to crack jokes as his lips cracked and his breath wheezed. He remembers Kate, trying to keep up his spirits as he grew weaker.
He can't remember exactly when he realized she wasn't sick. Or when he realized that the medicine dripping into his IV wasn't helping. When he realized that he was really, truly, facing the plague.
He can't remember when it occurred to him, with cold certainty, that he was going to die. That his time was up.
What he does remember is when he realized he would live.
He remembers the cold, the darkness faintly held off by blue light, the numbing fear coupled with draining exhaustion. Then shouting, surprise, voices talking, though he didn't have the energy to pay much attention. Or the will, because it was probably bad news, and how much worse could it get? He was dying.
Then a hand, rough and callused and familiar. First on his hand, then on his face. Firm and strong. The moment when it registered that Gibbs was touching him with bare hands, and didn't he know that was dangerous, because he was coughing and sweating and hacking up blood.
Then that voice. Commanding, sure. Unwilling to back down. 'Listen to me DiNozzo. The bug is dead. So you listen to me. You are going to live. Understand? You are going to live.' A pause. 'Got that, DiNozzo?'
To anyone else, Gibbs might have sounded gruff, brusque, uncaring. But he knew that voice and he knew that touch. Gibbs always sounded harsh when he cared. He managed to cough out a response, and then he relaxed for the first time since he'd been placed in isolation.
The bug was dead, and he was going to live, because Gibbs had ordered him to, and he couldn't disobey Gibbs. Couldn't disappoint him like that. He was going to get well and come back and be the Senior Field Agent, because he was Anthony DiNozzo, and he was a member of Gibbs' team, and he would not back down. Not when Gibbs said he had to get better.
He remembers the cool hard plastic of the cell phone case in his hand, and Gibbs' parting shot about someone named 'Spanky'. The bubble of laughter that he couldn't force out of his throat, but felt nevertheless, the first humor he'd felt in days. Kate and Ducky's relieved voices as he sank into sleep.
He remembers the slow battle to recovery, one day at a time, and the way Gibbs checked on him and fussed at him, scolding and swatting and feeding him by turns. That first day back, when Gibbs had watched him like a hawk with a chick, alert to any sign of distress on his part, and sent him to lie down when he flagged.
He remembers the cold terror of the trunk bomb, the rush of adrenaline, the desperate scramble for safety and the shocked horror that he might die, just when he had recovered enough to return to the life he loved.
He thinks it's moments like that, moments when life was on the line and everything hinged on a split second and nerve and force of will, that Gibbs meant when he said 'it's been us'.
Or perhaps Gibbs spoke those words remembering the bomb of eight or ten months ago. Perhaps the older agent was remembering the explosion that nearly killed him, that slammed him to the deck and caused him to lose, temporarily, 15 years of his life.
The explosion that stripped him of all his safeguards, and led him to expose the secrets he had buried away from the world. The secret of his family, of Shannon and Kelly, of their deaths and what it had done to him.
He can't imagine what it must have been like, to wake up in a world where nothing was familiar, surrounded by strangers who acted like friends. Or, perhaps worse, to wake from that to realize that everything you had hidden, everything you didn't want people to know, had been revealed. That all your secrets were no longer secrets. That your privacy had been ruthlessly torn away.
He doesn't think he could survive something like that. The shock, the hurt. The shame and embarrassment afterward, facing people you'd known for years and never revealed the truth to.
He wonders if Gibbs equates that event with dying. He can see why he might. None of them were the same after those terrible days, least of all Gibbs. Sometimes, he even finds himself looking back at the Anthony DiNozzo of before and wondering if they're the same person. It doesn't always feel like it, no matter how much he calls McGee Probie, or harasses Ziva.
But then, he didn't feel the same after the plague either.
He wonders if Ziva has any memories like that. Memories of such frightening change, such brutal violence or brilliant clarity that her life is separated into before and after. Moments that irrevocably changed her. He thinks he's seen shadows in her eyes that might be such memories, but she's never mentioned it. Not except for scattered fragments here and there. But sometimes, when she talks of things she did in Mossad, before she came to NCIS, he sees echoes of a different Ziva. Someone colder, someone harder. Someone without the bright and playful edge she has developed over the past year or two. Someone weary of the world, haunted and jaded.
McGee, he thinks, is too new and raw to have those memories. Or at least, he thinks that until he remembers McGee's first case as lead agent. The one with the girl who witnessed a Marine's murder. The same case where McGee saw his informant and friend, a pretty girl he thinks Probie could have fallen in love with, murdered right before his eyes. Or the time when McGee shot a cop, and spent three days thinking he'd wrongly killed an officer of the law.
Maybe McGee does have a few of those memories after all.
He's sure Ducky does. He hopes Abby, gentle sweet, bright-natured Abby, doesn't. Though there was that incident with Ari shooting into her lab, and the issue of the stalker trying to kill her. He remembers the two days she practically lived in the elevator, terrified of her stalker lunatic ex-boyfriend and her unknown assailant.
Not to mention the homicidal lab assistant. The one who tried to frame him and nearly succeeded, with Abby's forensics.
It seems like Abby might have those memories too.
Maybe they all do. Maybe that's what Gibbs meant when he said 'it's been us'. Maybe he meant that they all have to live with those unforgettable, terrible memories when reality seemed to disappear. They all know too much, have been too close to death. No matter what they do, they will carry those memories, and the nightmares of afterward and the changes they make, for the rest of their lives. Even if they retire, take up lives as yoga instructors or coaches or corporate nerds or even beach bums, their reactions will forever be shaped by what they have seen and done while working at NCIS.
It occurs to him then, in one exhausted moment of clarity, that Gibbs has always tried to protect them from this. From those soul breaking memories.
The voice in the dark, pulling him back from the brink, isn't the only lifeline Gibbs has thrown him over the years.
The rules. The sharp voice, commanding and leading. Even his blunt sarcasm and biting words. Slaps on the back of the head. The occasional praise, or barely masked concern when something goes wrong. The times when Gibbs has ordered them out of harms way, or lied to keep them safe. Protected them with his own life.
They see so much death, so much pain in the world. And it occurs to him, lying in the dark, that Gibbs is the safety net that keeps them from becoming jaded, broken, cynical. His rules keep them safe, or as safe as they can be in their line of work. His harshness keeps them focused, when it would be easy to lose track of themselves.
It occurs to him that Gibbs loves them, and in loving them he keeps them true to themselves, sometimes at terrible cost. He is their strength, their guiding star, even when such work must be an intolerable burden.
He knows that burden, from the four months that Gibbs was 'retired'. And though they never speak of it, and he will never mention it, he remembers the first few days after Gibbs returned from Mexico, the shadows of exhausted pain in his eyes.
He remembers when Gibbs decided to come back, and the brief, fleeting glimpse, swiftly buried, of a man trapped and chained to a painful, unbearable fate. Gibbs hid it well, but he knows that his return was not without great cost.
He thinks that might be the real reason he decided to stay after Director Shepard offered him his own team. Not the undercover mission, not Jeanne, not even his concerns about Gibbs' memory. Just the knowledge that by being there, he could help ease the terrible strain.
It's why he still stays. Why he will return to work tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, in spite of his grief, in spite of the tangle of difficult truths and unwilling lies he must face. Why he will keep going, even knowing that there are days like today.
Even knowing that Gibbs is right. That every day brings with it the chance that they will suffer, that they will lose, that they might even die. Even knowing that, some day, somewhere, it will be them. One of them will take the hit, take the fall. Whether it be a shot in the dark, the death of a loved one, some case that breaks their hearts, it will happen.
There will be other days that break his heart, leave him gasping and grieving and crying in the dark. Other days where he faces the adrenaline flood of near death. Other days that burn into his mind with such dark intensity that they leave a 'before and after' sense about the memories, the feeling of irrevocable change.
But it doesn't matter. Or at least, doesn't matter enough to change his mind, to erase that desire to protect as many people as possible from that feeling. It's not enough to keep him from wanting to stand beside his mentor, the man he loves like a father, though he'll never admit it out loud, to help in any way he can.
Someday, he'll be the voice in the dark that draws someone back from the abyss. The shield that protects those dear to him. And that moment will be worth every bit of pain he feels, now and in the future.
And that, perhaps, is the truth that Gibbs wanted him to know. That sometimes your number is up, and you have to choose whether to bear it or break under it. And that some things are worth living and striving for, even knowing that.
Some things always have been. Even when it was them.
Author's Note: I was re-watching the show, and this episode, Grace Period, hit me hard. Then this wrote itself...