Cinders
by channeld
written for: the NFA 9/11 challenge. The aim of the challenge was to write about one character's connection to the events of 9/11.
rating: T
genre: drama
featuring: Gibbs, Stan Burley, and an OC
disclaimer: I own nothing of NCIS.
Hatreds are the cinders of affection.
~ Walter Raleigh
Chapter 1: Scenes from the Summer of 2001
July
"…and this is Agent Gibbs' team, Admiral." NCIS Director Tom Morrow stopped in the part of the squad room ceded to the Major Case Response Team. Between Morrow and Rear Admiral Blake, Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs stood in quiet readiness, assured that—hoping that—his duo would behave.
"This is senior agent Stanley Burley. Stan has a fond interest in NCIS' role in ship duty," Morrow said with a smile, as the lanky agent reached over to give the admiral a firm handshake.
"Who here doesn't like our connection to the Navy?" Stan said pleasantly. Safe answer, I hope.
"…and this is the team's junior agent, Fabian Senhaji."
Fabian shook the officer's hand heartily. "A pleasure, Admiral."
A slight frown crossed the admiral's face. "Senhaji. Where's that name from?"
"My family's from Chicago," Fabian replied, still smiling.
"Admiral, I can show you the forensics lab. It's rated one of the best in the country." With that, Morrow, Gibbs and Blake took their leave of the squad room.
"You 'like our connection to the Navy'?" Fabian said with a smirk when the superiors were gone.
Stan spread his hands. "I was caught off-guard. Morrow knows, of course, that I've applied for an Agent Afloat position, but…"
"You're going to have to tell Gibbs sometime."
"If I don't get it, I don't ever have to tell him."
"Hi, Fabian," a trio of young female techs in short skirts cooed as they slowly walked by, hips swinging.
"Good morning, ladies," he replied with a bow and a wink. They giggled and moved on, with Fabian giving approving looks to the shapeliness of their legs as they did so. He was a leg man.
And then…
In the men's room a few minutes later, Fabian perused his reflection in the large mirror over the sinks, and nodded in satisfaction. His well-cut suit hung just right, and the color flattered his olive skin. He ran fingers through his black hair, recently cut to a good design. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses and ran them under the faucet. Fabian's vision wasn't so far off that he couldn't see Stan come up next to him and regard him with a smirk.
"What?" asked the younger agent, straightening his neck tie and looking critically at Stan's typical outfit of a plaid shirt and one of the three neck ties (all bland) he owned. "Maybe if you didn't dress like someone who lives and works in the north woods, they'd say hi to you, too."
Rubbing his face with a wet paper towel, Stan said, "I don't know which is more amusing—your assumption that I have something to learn from you, Kid, or that I have any trouble getting women."
"I only know what I see here at work…and that's the daily outpouring of loooooove for Fabian P. Senhaji."
Stan threw the paper towel at him.
Another day…
"Gibbs, Stan, Fabian…this is Jocelyn Willis; the new lawyer in Legal," said Becky from HR, who loved introducing the new people to the rank-and-file. "She's come to us from the Department of Justice."
While Gibbs and Stan gave her smiles and gentle handshakes, Fabian's response was different. He took the 50ish, white-haired woman's hand in his. "Enchanté, Madame," he murmured silkily, while kissing the air just over her fingers.
She put her other hand over her heart and giggled. "I've always wished someone would do that to me! Oh, my!" She looked delighted.
Stan only shrugged in Gibbs' direction as the two women moved on. "What? Every team needs a charmer. I don't have the patience for the job."
Gibbs only rolled his eyes…something he seemed to do a lot around those two.
Yet another…
"No, ma'am; NCIS does not go out and investigate just because two men in turbans were seen walking down M Street by the Navy Yard. Not unless a crime is being committed…" Stan's patience was wearing thin with the tip line. The prospect of an Agent Afloat job was sounding more and more appealing.
"No, I personally don't think it's a shame that people can wear any kind of headgear they want to wear…is that the official position of NCIS? I certainly hope it is. Goodbye." He hung up the phone and looked desperately at his teammate. "I'll give you five dollars if you answer the next phone call."
"Save your money, and invest it in another neck tie from the convenience store. I'll take the next call, because I'm a nice fellow and a prince among men." Fabian hummed as he set the call buttons on his phone so that the tip line would ring there.
"Okay. How would you have handled the turban question?"
"I would have said, 'Maybe it was me you saw, in my shesh.' "
"You don't wear a turban."
Before Fabian could answer, the tip line rang. "Good afternoon; NCIS tip line…" Then his face darkened and he hung up the phone with force.
"Who was that?" asked Stan.
"Wrong number," was all that Fabian would say.
And another…
"What's Stan really like?" asked Patty Anne, one of the two comely clerks whom Fabian had invited to lunch at the food court. The dreamy look on her face indicated she already had an opinion.
"Old. Really old," Fabian said with a slight sneer. "Old enough to be my father."
"He is not," said Rose, the more practical of the two. "I heard that he's 35."
"That is creaking old, in my book," Fabian persisted, digging into his plate of meatloaf. "Now I'm 24, which is an absolutely perfect age to be."
"But next year you'll be 25, and then what?"
He shuddered. "I still won't be as old as old Stan. I plan on being young and attractive for a long time yet."
August
The three agents crept up on the suspect's house. "Stan, take the rear. Senhaji, with me," Gibbs hissed.
Fabian winced a little, but didn't say anything. It was a bit annoying that Gibbs always had him as his shadow; that he was not allowed to shadow Stan, or better; be the one person to take the back entrance. He'd been an NCIS agent now for 17 months! Well, okay, a few of those were spent at FLETC, but still… Gibbs persisted in treating him like he was five years old, and in need of having his hand held when they crossed the street, lest he run in front of a car.
Going in, sigs drawn, Fabian followed Gibbs' lead right down to a hair. He was then surprised when Gibbs nodded to him to check the rom to the left. Fabian silently moved to do so, knowing that Gibbs suspected there would be nothing at all in there, or else he wouldn't have sent him in…
"Clear!" came Stan's voice from the kitchen.
"Clear!" Gibbs in the dining rom.
"Cle—unk!" In the small bedroom, Fabian fell over with a small thud as someone cocked him.
When he came to, with Stan holding gauze on his head, Fabian demanded, "What happened?"
"Did you look behind the door before you entered, Senhaji?" asked Gibbs.
"No; I don't see through wood very well, Gibbs."
His boss sighed. "The door was ajar. You look through the area between the door jamb and the open door before you went in."
"Oh. Er, sor…er, I know you don't like that word."
"Learn from it." Gibbs pulled him to his feet, and then went out to see to the suspect he'd handcuffed.
"Yeah, learn from it, Kid," said Stan, giving him a mild head slap. They both laughed.
A different day…
Coming back from an unproductive trip to Norfolk on a hot day, Stan and Fabian plopped down at their desks, each with take-out lunch and a cold drink. Gibbs was off somewhere.
"You know what the difference between me and you is, Fabian?"
"No, Stanley; enlighten me." Fabian studied his French fries.
"On days like this, you get obsessively troubled by being sweaty, and I don't give a damn about it."
"Ha ha. Just don't come too close to me, Stinky." He pinched his nose. Then he noticed the small piece of paper on his keyboard, and picked it up. As he held it, his expression became very angry. Fabian wadded the paper tightly and threw it into the trash.
"What's that?"
"Nothing. Nothing. What do you think that petty officer meant by 'Key West'?"
Stan was not put off, and crossed the space to Fabian's desk in seconds.
"Hey! Get out of there! That's my trash!"
"And you're my team mate." Stan found the likely paper; the only crumbled one in the nearly-empty basket.
"Give me that!"
But Stan kept it out of reach as he scanned it.
Go back to Arabia, towelhead.
"I thought you said this junk had stopped!" Stan snapped.
"Forget it! It's nothing. Ignore it, like I do."
"Oh, yeah; ignoring it is really working well for you now, isn't it? Your blood pressure's so high I can almost see steam coming out of your ears…I'm going to see if I can lift prints off this; we'll track down who—"
"I know who did it," Fabian sighed. "Or, one of three or four people here."
"Then report them! This is a violation of your civil rights, Fabe."
"There are some people who will say that Muslims in America have no civil rights."
"Don't give in to the bigots. We can't do much about the whole country, but we can eliminate this in NCIS."
Later…
Fabian felt soft arms around his shoulders, and could then the black fingernails. "Abby."
"I hate haters," she said. "Well, I mean that I don't like hate, but if people wouldn't hate other people, then I wouldn't have to hate them. You see?"
'Stan told you?"
"About that stupid note you got? Yes, He thought you might need a little cheering up."
"Good old Stan."
"He's not that old." She smiled. Everyone knew that Fabian considered Stan to be old. Then she turned serious. "You've had other hate notes. You should tell Gibbs, or someone who can do something."
"Abby, this is just something I have to live with, and have done so all my life. These blowhards aren't real threats."
"But you're a big, strong agent. If you stand up now, that means that some petite Muslim woman who comes to work here wearing a head scarf doesn't have to feel intimidated."
He considered this. "These are just a few troublemakers who will probably move on to other jobs before we hire another Muslim."
She smiled and gave him a tight squeeze. "Maybe we need more like you, Fabe."
"NCIS is not ready for two or more of me," he grinned. "Although, it would be worth it if we were all on the same team to pester Stan."
"I heard that," Stan called.
And then…
Fabian wandered by Stan's desk on his way in from the elevator and saw that Stan had the agency Vacancy listing open on his computer. Stan was beaming. An Agent Afloat position had just come open, and would close in a week. "Ah; there's your—missing pen. Good morning, Gibbs," Fabian said with cheer.
Gibbs was always a little suspicious about anyone who was that cheerful this early in the day, but he didn't comment. "Someone leave you a love note, Senhaji?" He picked up a piece of paper that had a crude skull and crossbones drawn on it.
"I don't know what…" Fabian paled. He hadn't even made it as far as his desk yet.
" 'Death to jihadists'." Gibbs read on the paper's other side. "Is this a joke, Senhaji?" When both of his men were silent, Gibbs repeated the question, more loudly.
"Uh, I don't think so, Gibbs," Fabian responded. "It's just foolishness, though."
"Sounds like a threat, to me," said Gibbs, staring his young agent down. "You get any other anonymous notes like this?"
"Not…just like that," Fabian hedged.
"How many others?"
"I don't know. I throw them out."
"Burley?" Gibbs turned to his other man. "What do you know about this?"
Stan shrugged. He really didn't know the answer. It was not something Fabian had wanted to talk about, and do Stan only knew of the ones that he had caught Fabian reading. He'd help his partner if he could…but when Gibbs got in one of his overbearing moods, like now, Stan was less willing to help him. It was times like this that drove Stan apart from Gibbs, and made his long for the freedom of being his own boss, on a ship.
Gibbs got back into Fabian's face; the paper clenched in his hand. "You get another thing like this; you come straight to me. Understand?"
"Yes, Gibbs."
Uneasily, Fabian and Stan watched as Gibbs took to the stairs, headed for the Director's office.
