Chapter 1
Director Jenny Shepard's voice was terse and quiet on the other end of the line.
"Word just came, Gibbs. SecNav says drop it. Morgan's too high up, too well connected."
Leroy Gibbs clenched the phone harder, as if it would stop the truth from being spoken. He closed his eyes as Jenny voiced the unthinkable.
"We have to let him walk, Gibbs. I don't like it any more than you do. Give your people my thanks, but this is not one we win."
The line clicked as the director hung up, and Gibbs sat, phone in hand. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, exhausted by the endless hours and days of work they had done, all of them, on this case.
Sighing, he hung up the receiver. Child molester's gonna walk free, he thought. No matter that they had him dead to rights; hair, fiber, fluids, DNA all corroborated their case. Gibbs looked at his team, running the last thirty-six on bad coffee and no sleep, tying up the last details to make certain, absolutely certain, that this human monster Jeffrey Morgan never saw the light of day again. And they had him. They had him... but somebody far higher up the pay grade had his back.
How could he tell the team, his team, his family, that they had just wasted four months of soul-crushing case work, just to wave bye-bye to some well-connected government darling?
Ziva David would listen calmly, take a deep breath and, for all intents and purposes, appear to move on. Oh, she would unleash hell on the next bastard she took down. But that was how she dealt with it. She tucked all her anger away, saving it up. But never think she would forget about it. Ziva David never forgets anything.
Tony DiNozzo would rail and lash out and swear. He would argue and maybe punch the wall and blame everyone from SecNav to the Pope. But he would get it out and over with, and maybe the next time he sat in his apartment on a weekend off, he would get roaring drunk and listen to Sinatra and cry for the poor little kids that Morgan had victimized. And the next case, he would double and triple-check every fact, every fiber and every statement and make damned sure that, if there was even the vaguest possibility that the Morgan case's outcome would repeat, DiNozzo just might have to shoot a fleeing suspect, even if the guy didn't actually run.
Gibbs took a long look at Tim McGee. This would be the first real case loss that his youngest agent would experience; where, in the face of damning evidence, the system totally and completely failed the victim. McGee was so very assured that good triumphs over evil, so fully invested in policy and procedure and it's ability to protect and serve.
Whatever the outcome, Gibbs did not relish telling his team about Morgan's release. But, like ripping a band-aid off a wound, it was best done quickly and with as little pretense as possible.
"Some days, you win. And some days, you lose. Morgan's got connections, and the director says we're dropping the case." Gibbs looked at the shocked faces of his team. "Go on, go home and get some sleep."
Gibbs had been right about Ziva and DiNozzo; she received the news with quiet acceptance and gathered her papers together, lips pinched in a hard line to bite back her unspoken words. DiNozzo jumped up, scattering papers and folders to the floor and started with the "But Boss, we..." when Gibbs silenced his with a glance.
"Nothin' we can do, DiNozzo. Go home." DiNozzo sputtered and sighed and started clearing his desk.
Gibbs turned his eyes to Tim McGee, who sat stone-still and open-mouthed.
"I said go home, McGee. We're done today."
McGee's reaction, however, was not something Gibbs would ever have imagined.
Chapter 2
Screw this nightmare of a job, McGee thought as Gibbs' pronouncement of the Morgan case had sunk into his sleep-deprived brain. I'm finished. All those little kids and nobody gives a goddamn.
McGee's tirade had come unexpectedly, in front of the whole room. His entire team witnessed his meltdown. He shouted at them all, lashing out with furious profanity that DiNozzo was shocked that baby-faced little Timothy even knew. And then almost unthinkable had happened, Tim McGee had screamed at Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
Oh man, McGee was done, forget it.
He stormed past Tony DiNozzo, who stood, shocked into silence, a case file in his hand. Ziva David sat, open-mouthed, as he practically ran past her desk. Tim might actually have thrown something in the process of leaving, he couldn't really remember.
"McGee!" Gibbs shouted at him. "Come back here!" But McGee brushed past, evading Gibbs' grasp and escaped into the elevator, hitting the "Door Close" button with a fist.
Metal doors slamming shut in the face of his boss. Tim beat his fists against the unforgiving elevator walls, bruising his hands. The elevator descended slowly, while Tim leaned against it's cold grey walls, feeling sickeningly dizzy. He realized that he was holding his breath, his fists clenched against his sides. The mantra of I quit, I quit, I quit repeated in his mind. Moments later, the door pinged, opening into the parking garage.
Tim McGee planted his feet firmly, trying hard to take a deep breath, attempting to exact a modicum of calm from his infuriated body before climbing behind the wheel of his car. But that calm was nowhere to be found. He was seething. He was livid. He started toward his car.
He faintly heard the elevator chime again, the doors whooshing open. And then, he heard his boss call his name. He sounded mad. Big fucking deal.
"McGee? McGee! What the hell do you think you're doin'?"
He turned to Gibbs, his green eyes brimming with tears.
"I'm not you, okay? Stop trying to make me be you! I am done. I quit!" McGee shouted, roughly shoving away Gibbs' hand as he reached for McGee's shoulder and turning away, shoulders heaving.
With an almost superhuman effort, Gibbs pushed down the anger he was feeling toward his younger agent. He tried again, his voice raising only slightly in volume. He had to stay in control. One of them had to remain calm, and clearly it was not going to be McGee. He reached out again.
McGee.." he began, but Tim whirled and slapped the hand away again.
"Fuck you!" he screamed at his boss.
And then, Timothy McGee's world shifted.
In the next moment, McGee was on all fours, face stinging. He felt something warm running down his chin as he panted. Above him, he heard Gibbs speak in a terrifyingly calm, low voice, a voice Tim had only heard on a few occasions through the protective glass of Interrogation Observation. Then a second time, the voice came.
"I said. Get. Up."
Tim was jerked roughly to his feet and pushed backward into the brick wall behind him. Gibbs' hands bunched into McGee's shirt front. Blue eyes blazing fury, he leaned in close. Tim could feel Gibbs' breath on his face, hot against the blood still trickling from his split lip.
"If you ever," breathed Gibbs, eyes locked with Tim's, "use those words to me again, two things will happen: One, you will be picking your teeth up off the floor. Two, you will clear out your gear and get off my team immediately. I do not tolerate a lack of respect." He pulled McGee forward slightly, and pushed him back again, none too gently, against the wall. He leaned in very close.
"Do. You . Understand. Me?" Gibbs enunciated very carefully into McGee's right ear.
All the furious anger that McGee felt before evaporated under Gibbs' stern glare. He felt his eyes begin to sting, and he blinked repeatedly. One tear trickled down his cheek, then another... then the floodgates opened.
McGee squeezed his eyes shut, the tears coursing down his face and mixing with the blood on his chin, which dripped down onto the hand that still clutched his shirt front. He bowed his head and leaned forward, whispering "B-boss... I'm … I'm so sorry...", and slumped down, hunched against the wall.
Gibbs sighed and crouched in front of him.
"McGee..." he said quietly. But Tim just shook his head slowly.
"It's j-just... I'm n-n-not.. " Tim stammered, raising his hand to wipe away the tears, but only succeeding in smearing his face with watery blood. Gibbs knelt beside him, wincing at the ache in his knee as he did so. God, I feel old, he thought.
"Talk to me, Tim," he said quietly.
McGee took in a shaky breath, unable or unwilling to look up from the floor.
"It's not... enough," Tim whispered. "It's not ever. No matter what, it's just... not enough."
Gibbs placed a hand gently on McGee's shoulder. He knew full well what the kid meant, but McGee needed to work it out for himself.
"What isn't enough, Tim?"
"Just... me. Or... anything." Frustration and defeat. Every agent hit this wall; it had just taken McGee longer; young and eager and full of belief in the triumph of good over evil, he was taking the death of his personal ideology hard. He looked up at his boss, eyes rimmed red, the loss almost palpable.
"What we do, what some of us die for, Boss... it just doesn't matter. The bad guys will always win." He exhaled slowly, the bitterness creeping in where the anger had welled moments earlier. "Always."
Gibbs felt tears sting behind his eyes and blinked them away. He knew that feeling, oh he knew that feeling so well. It sat on his chest and mocked him every night, and it was there every morning, grinning in triumph. It drove some agents to the bottle, some to the grave. Others, like himself, it just drove.
The older agent lowered himself, creakily, to the floor beside McGee. He slid the hand from Tim's shoulder across his back, then pulled the kid against him.
"I don't recall anybody callin' this game over, Tim," Gibbs almost drawled. Oh my god, I am becoming Mike Franks, Gibbs thought. "It's not about the win, y'know. It's about the fight." He shifted his hand, giving McGee a little shake. It could almost, but one quite, be called a hug. And Tim leaned into it, almost, but not quite, relaxing under the paternal confidence of his boss. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off, kid.
They sat for a few moments, just like this; Gibbs mind reeling back to the exact same conversation he had as an NCIS probationary agent with his own boss.
It's just that, no matter how many bad guys we put away, more keep comin', Mike... it's never enough.
Only thing it needs to be enough for is at the end of the day, Probie. Was it enough for today? Today it was. It won't always be. But the enoughs make a big difference to the people who don't get hurt because you tried to keep 'em safe. Only thing to be ashamed of is not tryin' at all.
"Boss?" Tim's very quiet voice broke through Gibb's memories. "Boss... I'm sorry I got so mad acted so stupid and... made you need to hit me."
Gibbs bit back a grin. He gave McGee's shoulder a small shake. "Well, Tim... I shouldn't have done that. I don't say it very often, but I'm sorry. I mean that."
McGee shifted to look at Gibbs, but carefully; he didn't want to dislodge his boss' arm that still draped casually over his shoulders.
"Boss, I totally had that coming!" He raised a hand to his face, gingerly feeling his lip. The bleeding had stopped but it was swelling fast. He could still feel the imprint of Gibbs' hand burning on his face, or was that just the shame he felt at not only losing it and practically throwing a tantrum in front of the person he admired most in the world?
"I just..." McGee paused, inhaling shakily. This must be what the confessional feels like, his mind raced. "I just … don't want to let you down. I don't think.. I'm not sure I could live with that." He dropped his eyes, staring at his hands fidgeting in his lap.
Gibbs pulled his arm from around Tim and turned, gripping him by the shoulders. "Tim, you cannot disappoint me, do you hear?" McGee was unable or unwilling to look his boss in the eyes. Gibbs gave him a very gentle shake, and Tim look up, almost flinching away. Gibbs continued.
"I am probably the world's worst at talking about feelings and... such..." Gibbs felt uneasy, but soldiered on. He knew Tim had to hear the truth. "But I am so proud of you, of the agent you've become. " Tim gave the very smallest of smiles. "But all I ever ask of you, is to respect yourself and your team, and to do your job the best you can. Just be enough, for that day. Some days, you feel like it doesn't matter." Gibbs mind flooded with the faces of victims and families and funerals and reunions. "But it matters every damned day. It matters because you care." He saw that Tim's eyes were brimming with tears again, but the kid was trying his damnedest to hold them back.
'You ever stop caring, that's when you walk away, okay?" Tim nodded ever so slightly and then dared a glance upward at his boss.
"I promise, Boss. But I won't ever be the guy who stops caring."
Gibbs smiled and clapped his hand on Tim's shoulder.
"Good. Now help me off this damned cement floor."
Tim grinned, pushed himself up, then leaned down a hand to his boss. He dug his car keys out of his pocket as Gibbs stood, then turned to leave.
"Hey, where ya goin', McGee?" Gibbs asked almost exasperatedly. McGee turned, confused.
"Um... you s-s-said... to go home, Boss..." he stammered but Gibbs interrupted, waving him back toward the elevator doors.
"Oh, thaaat..." Gibbs punched the UP button on the door panel. "That was for Director Shepard's ears."
The door opened and Gibbs ushered a confused McGee inside.
"We got ourselves a date with a team who can't follow rules." Gibbs gave a small smile. "Let's go catch ourselves a predator."