Title: Seven Stages of Grief
Author: Snowstormskies
Universe: NCIS
Theme/Topic: After the death of someone close, destruction rages rampant amongst those left.
Rating: T+
Characters: Tony, Abby, McGee, Ducky, Ziva, Jenny, Gibbs, Jimmy.
Warnings/Spoilers: Umm... Not really. Perhaps post season six, I think. I shouldn't think you'd need to know much more than that.
Word Count: 1937 words for this chapter – 4487 words total.
Time: About five days. It kind of...seeped out.
Summary: The day that Gibbs died was the day that the team became divided, isolated from each other, alone on their islands of grief. Pain and grief are universal concepts, but there are always differences in how people grieve and feel pain.
Dedication: To the few on earth who still remember the good ol' days before NCIS turned into something beyond wrong.
A/N: Ummm... I'm not really sure where this one came from. I think, though I couldn't be sure, my dreams might have had something to do with it. It's something really rather strange. I know, I know. Everyone is begging me for updates across the board, I'm sorry. Look, I'll even post this and another one just to make it up to you, but please! Have patience and you shall have finished stories! I promise *running away*
Distribution: Mine. Not yours. Bugger off. Or ask for permission. Either or...
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to someone else - not me, I make no money and I use the characters safely and responsibly!
Seven Stages of Grief
The day that Gibbs died was the day that the team became divided, isolated from each other, alone on their islands of grief. Pain and grief are universal concepts, but there are always differences in how people grieve and feel pain.
Shock – Abby lives in a perpetual daze after the incident. Barely eats, barely sleeps, barely lives. She goes through her day like a robot, completing tests and running down analyses but she's lost her sparkle, her shine. No more 'Scene Abby', no more 'Guess The Result' games, no more hugs and kisses. She clings to the few she has left, and cuts herself off from everybody else. Her speakers no longer blast "Undead Zombie," or "Final HOWLING". Instead, for weeks, the mournful wails of gospel hymns and the powerful lyrics of long dead blues artists pour through the mesh of the speakers, intermittently cut with long periods of silence, where the only sound is her tears and her sobs. Gibbs was her father, her friend, her drive and her inspiration. His presence was motivation, his pride a goal to win, his kisses rewards for a job well done. When he died, so did she. She was sure he would always be there, always a constant presence in her life, but now all she has left is a veil of shock pulled over her mind – an impenetrable wall that she can't move past. She can't move on.
Disorganisation – McGee finds himself struggling to function in the days and weeks after Gibbs' death. He comes to work wearing two different coloured socks, wearing yesterday's shirt and forgetting his lunch. He can't find his gym bag, his sneakers mysteriously lose their laces every time he puts them away, and he forgets his password almost every other day. Tim can't remember the last time he cooked his own food, or what his publisher said last time they spoke – he keeps putting her off for writing a new book – LJ Tibbs' inspiration is gone. Left. Abandoned. He puts his clothes through the wash before remembering to take out pens, pencils and notepads; he only finds out when he takes them out and his crisp white shirts have turned into grey dingy wrecks. He can't recall how he got to work, frequently is late to work because he lost his car keys and has to take a taxi, he offers to pay for lunch and it turns it out he's left his wallet at home. He's all over the disorganisation stage of grief as he has to repair the hole in his soul that Gibbs used to fill.
Denial – Jenny's manages denial pretty well for all of them. After all, if one does not think about, it cannot be real – a dead Gibbs cannot be dead if one does not think of him as such. Yes, she has it covered – she still CCs Gibbs on the departmental memos, still has him on speed dial one on her mobile phone, has his mail redirected to her house so she can keep it for him. Sometimes she wonders why she doesn't just replace Gibbs with Tony on her speed dial, send out official notices of death to his mortgage company and sell his house, but on the really bad days, when there are terrorists howling at the door, bureaucrats demanding her attention, mountains of paper that never go away and when the full weight of the agency rests heavy on her shoulders, she goes to his house, unlocks the door that was never locked when he was alive and sits on his sofa, reads his books, cooks in his kitchen or just sits in the basement beneath the boat that will never be finished now. She can still smell the sawdust, the faint trace of bourbon, and the smell that was so indefinably Gibbs she could almost pretend he just stepped out for a moment and he'll be back any second. She can almost pretend that Gibbs is still alive, still breathing, still waiting for her. Logically, she knows full well he's dead and buried. Irrationally, emotionally and against all the evidence, she still likes to pretend sometimes. He can't be dead, if she never forgets.
Depression – Ducky knows he's got depression down to a T. He's not blind to Abby's clutching almost childishly to his hand every night when she leaves, Tony dropping in and staying longer than a flying visit to collect autopsy reports – the fact that Jimmy counts every scalpel and needle before locking the door and waiting for him to go home first. Even the Director herself sometimes graces him with her presence, though those visits are often awkward and painful on both parties. Sometimes, Ducky lets himself think how much he would give to drink during the day, but he has to content himself with nights spent sinking into a bourbon fuelled stupor, memories of his dead friend spilling out of him like the whiskey spills into the glass he pours himself as soon as he walks in the door. He spends hours in the dark, fighting back tears of anger, rage and grief, waking up the next morning with a mouth that feels like it is full of sawdust, a head that feels like a single raw nerve ending and pain in his soul, the likes he has not felt since his mother died all of four years ago. No more "What'cha got, Duck?", no more evenings of watching a boat come to life, slowly and patiently, no more long lazy evenings of drinking hundred year old ale and contemplating the future. No more Gibbs.
Guilt – Ziva's got guilt. She's guilty, guilty, guilty...What-ifs, the knowledge of deeds you can never undo, past mistakes haunting her mind every step, every turn. Nightmares of what happened that day, the aftermath and the shattering of everything she knew keep her awake at night, force her out of bed in the early hours to run, run, run away from them. At four in the morning, she pulls on sneakers, takes to the park to pound out the nightmares – by the end of an eighteen hour day, she hopes she is tired enough to collapse into bed and gather a few precious hours sleep before the nightmares return. During the day, while sat at her desk, even under the bright, invasive lights of the bullpen, she can picture Gibbs' face, his bloody hands slack around his weapon. She can still feel the pain of the burning rubble under her hands, still see behind her eyelids the dead eyes of someone she had grown to genuinely love. She wonders every day whether she could have saved him, whether if she'd been a bit faster, a bit more aware, a bit more better, she could have saved him. Every day, Ziva endures the torture of Survivor's Guilt and every night, she endures the guilt that comes with thinking of it.
Anxiety – Jimmy has Anxiety – he knows he does because that's what the department shrink diagnosed him with and he agrees. Every strange noise has to be investigated, at night he triple locks his door with the three brand new shiny silver locks he brought, every single time he enters a room, he turns the lights on and has to check behind the door and everywhere to make sure he's alone. Death still haunts the team – it got Gibbs but there's no telling who it'll get next. Jimmy buys a metal bat to keep by his bed, and another one for by the door in the umbrella rack one of his buddy's gave him, and he does something his mother still can't understand or forgive him for. He buys a gun and a permit, and has the shooting range guys teach him how to use it to defend himself with. He's twenty seven years old, and he's got the paranoia of a man who grew up in the Cold War. He's no Clint Eastwood with the gun but he knows enough to kill a man. At night, sometimes, he can't sleep and so he'll sit in the living room, all the lights turned on and wait anxiously with the gun in his hands, loaded and ready. He's not ready for Death, but the fear is strong enough to inspire him to protect himself. Gibbs died. Jimmy won't let it take him without a fight – he's too afraid to die.
Aggression – Tony gets aggression. Oh yes, he understands it well. Hours on the punching bag, beating the stuffing out of it while he envisages beating the shit out of the guys who took Gibbs away forever, pounding out every last scrap of energy onto an imamate object. He gets bloody knuckles and strange looks from other people, but he's a little bit too angry to care. At night, he hits the streets, pacing through the concrete jungle of Washington DC, his mind begging for a perp to try it on him, to see if they'll fight him and he can expend some more energy. He's already put away fifteen punks and drug addicts by doing this – even got a commendation for his efforts, even though he wasn't looking for one – only looking for a way to legitimately beat the shit out of something other than a punching bag. He puts every scrap of energy into something physical, into something that will allow him to fight, hurt something or hurt himself. He chases perps for miles, vaulting gates and fences like a mad thing, no longer arresting but hunting them down. Tony wins awards for this, medals of achievement, but he gives them to McGee so he can start his own collection of insignificant tokens of merit for a leader who doesn't know courage from stubbornness, and strength from just sheer dumb luck, and a leader who is leading a team when he himself don't know where he is going. He's angry at the world, and he wants the world to know it.
Resolution – It takes Tony running straight into a gunfight between gang members, sans bullet proof vest, and carrying enough weaponry to bring down the Taliban before waking up in hospital, an inch from death for the team to realise that Gibbs might be dead, but they all need to pull together. Tony has four broken ribs, broken his right leg, left arm, shattered his elbow, been shot seven times, given himself bleeding on the brain. In surgery, his heart fails, twice. The team is required to contact his emergency contact to verify the surgical team can proceed with the surgery, but when the form comes through, the only contact on there is Gibbs. In the end, the Director signs off on it, and fifteen hours later, Tony is wheeled into a private room.
He looks terrible.
The doctor tells them, kindly but realistically, he might not wake up. If he does, he might not be the same. If, not when. When the team understand this, they know that unless they bring it together again Ducky'll drink himself into oblivion, Ziva will eat her own gun, Abby could starve to death, McGee might step into the middle of oncoming traffic without paying attention, Tony will continue to rage against the world, pitting himself against death before the odds stack against him and the die is cast and Death catches up with him and the director might go completely mental before they can save each other.
Tony might have already played his last card, and lost the bet.
Standing around Tony's bed, they make the pact to go forwards, somehow but to go forward none the less.
PTO (the last stage is in the next chapter.)