Title: Seven Stages of Grief Part Two: Reintegration.
Theme/Topic: After death, there are always people left behind .
Rating: T+
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: 2250 words for this chapter – 4487 words total.
Summary: After death there are always people left behind, always people left to pick up the pieces of lives broken in millions of shattered fragments. This happens immediately after the first chapgter – following on from it, but it's slightly different and very much longer so I think you should read that first.
A/N: This is the continuation of Part One of SSoG – you should read that first, before reading this.
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!
Part Two
Reintegration
Reintegration - It's sixteen days before Tony does wake up and another month before the doctors will let him go home. He's half mad on painkillers and his body is full of metal and he has two hundred and ninety four stitches on him. Who knew a human could survive a ninety mile an hour collision with a car and survive, even after being shot?
Ducky invites everyone over to his house – it's more than big enough for them all. He lets them pick bedrooms; it's not perfect and Ziva and Tony squabble over rooms, and Tim leaves half his stuff behind and has to go and get it and Abby's aged trunk breaks half way up the stairs and striped socks, dog collars and platform shoes cascade down the stairs like a tide of clothes. It's still better than being in their own apartments, grief echoing oppressively off empty walls and cheap carpets.
They eat together, drink together, make merry. Make up for lost time.
After the third day, Jimmy stops jumping at every little thing and begins to accept that death isn't coming knocking any time soon. He leaves on day five, taking a taxi to the airport and flying home to stay with his parents. He leaves the gun at Ducky's house.
He's accepted the truth, but he's the only one so far.
On day twenty, after hours of crying, and watching the few known films of Gibbs, poring over pictures of him and comparing stories with the team, the Director declares herself cured of grief, and mentally fit. She signs off on her own psych evaluation, even though that's not permitted. She cooks breakfast on the last day, has her hair cut short and leaves Ducky's house in an NCIS town car, promising to call them from her holiday destination.
Twenty one days after that, she's dead.
Tony and Ducky fly out to retrieve her body, and to establish what happened. They get the phone call from the Mexican authorities, just eighteen minutes after she is confirmed dead. Tony, still bandaged, wearing a sling and casts, limps through the crime scene, where her body laid a few short hours before; it's hard to believe it's been only a day since it happened. Bullet cases litter the floor; puddles of blood indicate the death toll. It's eerily still inside the room, but Tony brushes his hands through the dust, his face dry but his eyes sad. Ducky drives them to the morgue, where they see Jenny lying there, her ribs cracked open between the flaps of skin of the Y incision and her skull exposed as her brain is examined.
The funeral director escorts them out, apologising and begging forgiveness – Ducky waves him off. He knew it would happen and so did Tony. Later, when the numbness wears off and the pain sets in, they will begin to feel horror, but now, nothing.
The Director is given a funeral fit for a president, and is buried in a mahogany coffin strewn with flowers and tear drops. Tony accepts the flag from the top of the coffin as representative of her family – who knew the director had none?
Vance is appointed in her place.
Jenny's reintegration didn't work. She dies with Gibbs' name on her lips, and unrequited love in her heart as she fired a weapon. She knew she was dying, and she didn't care how.
Gibbs would have been proud.
It takes Ducky weeks after Jenny's death to realise that he hasn't cracked the bottle in over three months – since Jenny's death in fact. It's not something he misses – the bottle – he spends his days cooking, cleaning, watching films and reading books. He doesn't care to wake up on the floor or slumped in an uncomfortable chair, mouth tasting of sawdust and his head in agony.
He doesn't go anywhere, but all the liquor finds its way out of the crystal decanters and into the drain.
Abby and Tim wake up next, their ability to bounce back finally back to normal. They're still broken, still in pain over the deaths of two of their closest people, still hopelessly clueless about going forward, but they're better than before. They stay, but out of companionship rather than anything else. Abby begins to listen to things other than gospel hymns – for the first time, the rag time songs of post-funeral celebrations echo out of the speakers of Ducky's aged music system and Tim resurrects Ducky's ancient computer for him, without being asked. They're not fixed, but they're on the way.
It's slow progress, but progress.
Ziva leaves next, but not of her own free will. A mysterious call in the middle of the night, a blaze of Arabic in the morning, and a note on the kitchen table in the early afternoon, and the sound of an embassy town car leaving in the sunset.
She never comes back.
A year after she leaves, news that a ship sunk off the coast of Africa makes the CNN feature segment for a single day. It takes Ziva's father four more months to tell them that Ziva was on that ship.
That night, the sounds of wails and harrowing sorrow come from Ducky's house as the team experiences yet another moment where they are crushed beneath Death.
It found them again.
Two weeks after the news of Ziva's apparent death, the bodies are recovered from the wreck, brought to America to be identified – it's too dangerous to fly them to the middle east at the moment – the Taliban have taken to taking potshots at all aircraft flying over.
It takes dental records, DNA and Tony identifying her Star of David necklace in order for them to establish Ziva's identity. Tony shuts himself in his room, and if Ducky notices that there is a glass antique vase in the trash the next day and pieces embedded in the wall, then he doesn't say.
Ziva is given a Jewish ceremony, cremated according to her will. Ziva's will expresses that her ashes be divided, half scattered to the winds in America, where she learnt to grow, and half in Jordan, where she lived for much of her early life. Ziva's father extends a hand to Tony – it's the only sign of acceptance the man ever gave him.
Tony scatters her ashes on a quiet beach he once took her too – the wind takes them far out to sea. Ziva's father sends him a letter and a disc with a video of him doing the same in Jordan. He tries not to cry too much as he watches her ashes be flung into the air and the water of the river, just as she once requested. It's hard to watch, but he watches alone. McGee requests not to see it, as does Ducky and Abby refuses to, point blank.
He takes flowers to the park, leaves them beneath a tree she once said she sat under. The Agency pays for a plaque to be set up on the ground beside the tree, and gradually, every week there are four bunches of flowers on the ground - one from Ducky, one from Abby, one from Tim and one from Tony. The next year, in the middle of spring, Tony bends down onto his knees – slower than he might have done once; he is older now obviously, and since the incident all months ago signs of age have begun to flourish on his body – and plants flowers beneath the tree. Pansies, daffodils, anything he thinks she might have liked.
Abby plunges into despair and for a few weeks, her friends think this might be like Gibbs all over again. Her courage is stronger this time, and she puts herself back together. There are cracks and glitches and there are moments where it is clear that she has changed, and grown. Her music is different – often gospel hymns and Arabic melodies interrupt the blaring punk/goth/rock music she once took pride in. She keeps reminders on the walls of all her friends, especially those she has lost. In the corner of the ballistics lab, there is a shrine, and occasionally you can find McGee or Jimmy staring at it, Ducky placing a flower on the altar of it.
Sometimes you will find a mysteriously lit candle, though nobody ever lays claim to lighting it. Tony is always mysteriously absent at this point.
Abby adds to her tattoo collection in the months after Ziva's death. On her left wrist goes Ziva's name and her right wrist bears the simple elegy LJG. He is her guiding light, and Ziva her balancing partner. She adds a J in cursive Gothic font to her shoulder – she was never as close to Jenny as she could have been, but nonetheless, she was a friend and a friend who earned her place. She has plans for Tony, McGee, Ducky and even Jimmy but not yet. She's still sketching the plans.
Tim mourns for months again, immersing himself in grief. But eventually, even he pulls out of it, and has Ziva's name carved into memory. Instead of his body, he chooses a cherry wood plaque and has Ziva, Gibbs and Jenny etched into it. It hangs above his desk and many new Probies have asked its purpose.
To never forget those we love, to never lose sight of our purpose and to always inspire great things, he tells them. They think he's very strange. He knows that's what Gibbs, Ziva and Jenny would have wanted. He does have Gibbs tattooed on his shoulder though – in the hope that the awesome sharpshooting abilities and the courage in the face of danger that stilled a trembling hand that Gibbs possessed might transfer to him.
His girlfriends think it's strange. He doesn't care.
Ziva's death is the final straw for Tony. He becomes a replica Gibbs, except without the occasional niceness and with his own special brand of bastard plastered over the top. It's no longer a job, either.
It's a personal mission.
He practises in gym, logging easily thirty hours a week, every week, without fail. He spends ages at the punch bag, rowing machines, chasing invisible perps while on the treadmills almost at the limit of his endurance and every few months, the fitness supervisor submits a new request to the director for new equipment – punch bags which have lost their stuffing, treadmills pushed beyond their limits, rowing machines which have been worn out.
Vance just signs on the dotted line.
Vance and Tony aren't friendly – there's none of the special bond between them like it was between Gibbs and Jenny. It's all teeth, barbs and working together out of necessity rather than anything else. Tony knows this – he's too angry to even try to get close to a man who sits on the top of the agency and controls every string from here to Canada. He's still angry, still hateful, still raging against the world. Vance and he share a relationship around work, crystal clear in its function. He still has the privilege to move in and out of MTAC when he pleases, still invades the director's office at all hours of the day and night, still calls Vance 'Leon' when they're alone. Tony is top brass, without the brass – he has knowledge and access that even the deputy directors don't often get. It's well known knowledge around the agency that Tony and Vance are a balancing act – Vance needs Tony because he's now one of the most senior resident NCIS agents still in active service, and he's quite literally one of the best. His gut, as Gibbs would say, has led the way through numerous successful mission and undercover operations, there are some things Tony just knows and the director has to trust in that gut; he's an asset to the agency – one Vance cannot afford to lose through alienation. He's just that damn good. Tony needs Vance to control the media, to cover for his team and he when they do things the right way not the 'legal way', to protect everyone in his team from the politics of these cases.
Anger is still there, and even though Tony is in his late forties now, and should be thinking about winding down his career, maybe advancing up the ranks into the world of desk jobs and complex paperwork things, he doesn't. Tony's still out there, pounding the streets, driving the sedan at breakneck speeds through the streets of America. He doesn't date, isn't married, has no children. He isn't interested anymore – not in pretty women, not in lovely ladies in their primes. He doesn't have a boat in his basement, but he does have a gun collection that's increasing, and a race car in his garage which is his only housemate, it seems.
At night, you can look into the bullpen, and see a single solitary light on, a desk still littered with paperwork and a pair of glasses resting on the top of the stack of folders still waiting to be read. Tony's older now, his knees are going from years of chasing criminals on top his football career – he has arthritis staring him in the face every morning and sometimes he wakes up and feels the plague advancing back up his lungs, aged beyond their years. He's been getting gentle pressure from the legal department to retire now, while he's still successful and still able to leave of his own accord. He tells them, not very politely, to leave him the fuck alone, and to get out his life. Every morning, you'll find him at his desk from five or at the latest, six o'clock onwards – he eats, even sleeps at that desk sometimes.
Tony even looks like Gibbs, only one that's hard and cold and driven. He's going grey and sometimes, he sits down with a heavy sigh and realises that he just really wants a hot cup of tea and his bed, before getting out the chair again to run down some more evidence. His body is still as hard as ever – it'll stay like that until he retires, McGee reckons.
If he ever retires.
He has tattoos, now. Ziva over his heart, Jenny on his left arm, Gibbs on his right. On his forearm, he has "To Protect and Serve," from his days at a cop emblazoned over a sketch of his old badge, complete with his old number. On his right shoulder, he has Kate flowing in cursive. It's actually her handwriting – he had a copy brought up from some of her notes and took it to the graphics department. He feels something every time he raises his gun and quite literally, Kate is right behind his every move. He's thinking of where to put Abby, McGee and Ducky next - where to put the people you love on your body?
He's angry still, still raging against the machine of the world. He's a cold, angry man, in a cold angry world, and he knows it. He's never let go of that anger, doesn't plan to. He's still holding onto Gibbs' memories, holding on to Jenny and Ziva and Kate and Paula, and even Chris Pacci in a way.
He's never stopped searching for redemption.
He's never stopped grieving.
So, what did you think? I know, I know. You all want chapters for something else, not a new story and a crap one at that. I'm just struggling to find inspiration for them at the moment. They're very complex stories and right now, they're happening literally about three hundred words at a time. Fingers crossed, once I actually find the manuscript for WACIB, and for Brother, Slave, Pet I can actually start posting them again. I stashed them in a file somewhere and for the life of me I cannot find where.
Well, I have work in about twenty minutes, so I'm off to go and get dressed and then off to go to work.
Drop me a line, and please don't be afraid to point out spelling errors – my laptop has temporarily erased its function of Add to Dictionary – Ziva still comes up as a spelling error and I've had to beat it into submission to accept Tony's as a real word for some reason. Anyway, toodles, have fun and enjoy your day responsibly~
Hung Parliament, anyone?
