Doctor Donald 'Ducky' Mallard was extremely knowledgeable about a large number of subjects, as anyone who had ever been in his presence for more than a day could attest to. He had a habit of telling long stories about things that had gone on in his long life. Most people did not want to sit around and listen to long winded tales, which was the real reason that he told them. Saying 'I once knew a man' was a good way to guarantee that his audience would either leave quickly or tune him out completely. His favorite former assistant had even gone so far as to wear ear plugs whenever he thought that Ducky was likely to be in the mood for expounding.
Gerald had never known that Ducky was well aware of his little trick, or that he approved of it. It wouldn't have done for the man to actually listen to what Ducky was saying, as most of it was still classified. Very few people knew that he had once been Illya Kuryakin, KGB assassin, Naval Intelligence Officer for the Soviet Navy, and United Network Command for Law and Enforcement Section Two field agent, with doctorates in both the medical and physics fields. He told those stories more to remind himself of who he had been and just why it was that he was in semi-hiding, as well as for his own amusement, than it was to actually educate anyone. Of course he did have enough experience with truly strange and astonishing things that it could on occasion be helpful to the senior investigation team of the NCIS.
Of course, the fact that his and his partner's son was the second in command of that particular team probably had a great deal to do with the unusual circumstances the Major Crimes team sometimes found themselves involved in. Anthony had inherited his fathers' trouble magnet status, not that his sister Abigail was much better. That fate had put them both on the same team, along with one of their biological fathers, was almost guaranteed to insure that strange and unusual cases would be popping up at the most inopportune times – which fact, suitably edited for Madam Director's hearing, Anthony was trying desperately to use to get out of their team attending the conference she had just told them they would be attending.
"You are going Agent DiNozzo," Director Sheppard glared. "According to the records, of all the NCIS agents currently in the field, you are the one who is most likely to at least be a carrier of the Sentinel genes. Personally I seriously doubt that you're a Sentinel yourself as you are far too frivolous, but I was over ruled on sending you." She turned to Gibbs, ignoring the looks from the rest of the team as well as ignoring the large, apparently dull-witted man that Ziva had been handcuffed to for the last two days. She knew what that was about and was very pleased that U.N.C.L.E. would owe N.C.I.S. for letting Ziva do her training here. "While you have the attitude that a Sentinel should have Gibbs, your scores as a sniper didn't qualify you."
"I could have told you that," he said mildly, sipping his coffee. "I've been in enough situations that if I had been a Sentinel, I would have gone on-line a long time ago."
The very fact that he wasn't glaring at being sent off to a conference was enough to send alarm bells ringing through the minds of those who knew him, but it was Tim McGee who knew why that was. "I'm sure the conference will be very educational, ma'am," he said, trying to distract her from Gibbs' mellow attitude.
"See to it that all of you pay attention," she said. "If my best team is going to be out of circulation for a week, I want something to show for it." With that, Sheppard left the bullpen, storming up to her own office.
"Educational, McGee?" Tony growled.
"Very," Tim said with a smug grin.
"Where exactly are we going?" Ducky asked. He had been delivering a report to Ziva, and checking on her latest attempt at a partnership, when Sheppard had thrown her bombshell at Gibbs' team. Conferences tended to be the same, a needle in a haystack search for good information among speakers who were either boring or idiots. It had to be the location that was bringing out the little boys in Jethro and Timothy.
"Denver," Tim and Gibbs chorused.
That one word was all that Ducky, or rather Illya, needed to hear to understand exactly why the two men looked like a particularly satisfied cat. Tim must have figured out who his partner was and tracked him down. He and Gibbs were setting things up so that he and the twins could have a clandestine family reunion. "Educational is one way to put it," Illya said, hiding the smirk that wanted to creep out at the thought of introducing Napoleon to the twins that they had given up, and placed into hiding all those years ago, especially Abby. "I shall inform Abigail of our impending doom."
"You do that, Duck," Gibbs said. He turned to his team. "I want all of our paperwork done before we leave. McGee, check our flight arrangements, and the cost of ticket upgrades. Tony and I are not going to be turned into pretzels again if we're going civilian."
Tim shuddered. "I'll get right on it Boss," he promised.
Illya patted him on the shoulder and whispered, "I'll pay for the upgrades, my boy. I don't want to have to deal with that again either," on his way to Abigail's lab. He was determined that the last time they'd had such a flight would be the last one he would have to endure. Between watching Anthony suffer from being stuffed into a too small seat, Jethro's horrendous mood that not even getting him good coffee had managed to lift, and all of the small irritations that modern air travel brought to his own heightened senses, he'd been seriously tempted to go into a still sleep. Only the thought that Napoleon wasn't there to bring him out of it had allowed him to resist the temptation. Although anyone could bring him out of a doze, a deep still sleep required his own heart brother. Illya stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the level that Abigail's lab was on.
Looking back over his life, Illya realized that he had been incredibly lucky that it had been his babushka that had raised him. She had been a Watcher herself, and between her and her heart sister, his training as a Watcher had begun from before the time he could walk. By the time he was the only survivor of his family at seven years of age, he had been in firm control of his abilities and never permitted himself to slip into more than a doze and more importantly, thanks to his babushka he knew why it was so vital that he avoid the condition.
Illya had watched as his babushka and her heart sister had confronted the Nazis when they'd come into the small village, hidden under the steps of the head man's home. He hadn't realized until years later that the group was only a small patrol, and quite possibly hadn't even had permission to leave the main group. They'd wanted food and were demanding it from the crippled head man at gun point. Most of the men and older boys of the village had already gone to fight, so the only ones left in the village to defend it were the elderly Sentinel and her heart sister. Bows and arrows were just as deadly to the soldiers as they were to what little game that the women could hunt to supplement what little could be gotten from the abandoned fields and the surrounding forest.
Three of the Nazis had fallen to the women when one of them shot and killed his babushka's heart sister. Immediately his babushka had fallen into a deep still sleep, and he had watched as the two remaining men had beaten the unresisting old woman to death. Those two men had died at his hands, his arrows hitting them directly in the eye. It was the first time he had ever killed, but the lessons of that day were burned into his mind. A Watcher was willing to risk death to do their duty, was willing to kill a man to protect what was theirs, and that a deep still sleep meant death.
For years afterwards Illya had kept his senses suppressed to a certain extent, never using them to the full extent that they were capable of…at least, he hadn't until the first time Napoleon had been in danger. He had accepted his assignment to attempt a partnership with the brash and suave American with reservations, mostly because the man's personality clashed with his Soviet upbringing. Three days into their trial, three days full of what Illya later admitted to himself had been pointless alpha posturing, an idiot had accidentally discharged his weapon in the men's locker room. The bullet had passed far too close to Napoleon and Illya had reacted instinctively – his senses had flared with the adrenaline rush and he had broken the idiot's hand disarming him, and all without so much as mussing his partner's hair. That was the moment that Illya had known that Napoleon was his heart brother and the man he was destined to share his soul, the same one that his superiors (all of them atheist, party members, and proper servants of the State, who would never admit to anything that did not agree with the dictates of Communism) would have been horrified to learn that Illya believed in, with for the rest of his life.
Illya had been appalled.
Looking back on that day from the experience of more than forty years, Illya chuckled at himself as he left the elevator. To say the least, neither of them had made a good impression upon the other at first, but their respective nationalities and ideologies hadn't been part of that; unlike most of those who didn't like either man. No, they'd simply been far too opposite in personality (and Illya hadn't wanted yet another ladies' man for an immediate superior after the one he'd left behind in Russia) to take to each other easily.
Illya reached Abigail's lab and looked through the glass wall. She was bouncing on her stool in front of her monitor, a sure sign that the music in her lab was up as far as her little boom box would go. Frowning, not wishing to subject his ears to the blast of sound, he pulled out his cell phone and rang her number. How he could never be sure, but Abigail always knew when the phone was ringing. "Abby's house of mysterious substances, Abby here," she answered cheerfully.
"Would you mind turning down your music so an old man might join you in your lab, my dear?" he asked, amused as always by his daughter's irreverence.
"Sure, Ducky, just gimme a second," Abby said before she hung up. She jumped off of her stool and ran over to her radio. As she turned it down the door to her lab opened and the elderly ME entered. "Hey, Ducky!" she said as she threw her arms around him.
"Thank you Abigail. I'm afraid my old ears aren't up to that level of sound," he said, falling back into his role as Ducky with the practiced ease of many years. "I am afraid I have some rather bad news." He took her hand and led her back to her main computer station. He set her down on her stool, fished another stool out from under the table and sat down next to her.
"What is it?" Abby asked, uneasy. Her birth father was a professional and nothing that he did not want to ever showed up on his face. She had no idea how bad this was going to be and tried to brace herself for it.
"We're being sent to Denver for that large conference next week," Ducky told her seriously. "The two of us and Jethro's team."
"We're doomed," Abby said, fighting an evil grin.