Disclaimer: no legal rights to NCIS, no money being made.
Beta: Mike91848.
Warning: Same as chapter one
CHAPTER THREE
IN THE FELL CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE
Previously on NCIS
"You have a thirteen year old witness to this homicide and you're only just now telling us about it?!"
Tony was shocked mute but not for long. "Why you...are you nuts or just dimwitted?! I've been trying to tell you that...wasting my time...but you had your head stuck so far up your...and you would have sent a ruthless assassin to pick him up...you're a damn fool if you..."
"YOU SHOULD HAVE TRIED HARDER!" Gibbs rudely interrupted. He had moved up toe to toe with Tony who didn't back down an inch and McGee thought physical blows would be next. Tim watched as Ziva sat back to enjoy the show and the Director reached for her phone.
What was Tim going to do? Today was the day of more surprises for him as he reached deep past the fear and pulled up another kernel of inner strength he didn't know was there. He forced his way into the huddle and for some reason faced DiNozzo instead of the lead investigator and felt Gibbs' breath on the back of his neck, and two laser beams boring into the back of his skull.
"WAIT! Just wait!" Tim repeated the words to Tony's hostile face, words the older man had spoken earlier and no one had listened. And saw the wild angry look slowly fade from the agent's eyes.
"Gibbs, that's w-w-what he's been trying to tell you since we got back. You just wouldn't listen." His words were directed to Gibbs but spoken directly into DiNozzo's face, acknowledging that he had also not listened.
Gibbs heard the censor in the younger man's quavering voice and moved back a step, then another, and wondered what had he been thinking, what else was he missing? No wonder DiNozzo was so...worried? Yes, his gut was telling him, DiNozzo had been desperately worried and fighting hard for something. A thirteen year old boy that he, Gibbs, had given orders to drag into NCIS like a criminal? And DiNozzo was right, sending Ziva, no less, a trained assassin who probably would have traumatized the little guy, handcuffed him, separated him from his parent and treated that parent like dirt on the bottom of her boot.
Had he taken leave of his senses? Had the miserable state of the agency and his disappointment in it cancelled out the reason he had joined NCIS in the first place? Shepard had basically hogtied him from the throne she sat on in the Director's office, effectively stymying him as to who was on his team, nor had he been given the power to hire or fire anyone. His being here was a cliche, idioms correctly used; he had no foot to stand on, his hands were effectively tied and he was over the proverbial barrel.
Ever since Morrow had left and Jenny Shepard took his seat, the agency had gone to hell. Mexico, Mike's cabana and Mariachi's were always in the forefront of his mind as an escape route. But something held him, something that was not known in the Agency.
Morrow had succumbed to Shepard's vile threats and took early retirement because Bob Morrow was a decent man and that information that she held over his head would further hurt innocent people. Morrow was also Gibbs' good friend and no one hurt his friends or his family without retribution coming to their door. THAT was why he was still here instead of flying third class to his rooms above the kitchen in Mike Franks' house in Mexico. To right a wrong.
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Gibbs backed away from the two agents, found his seat and sat down. DiNozzo still stood in front of Tim, eyes cold and body still vibrating with fury. He didn't follow after Gibbs but his eyes tracked the man back to his chair, and his fists were still clenched and ready to swing at the least provocation.
"Aah...could you save h-h-hitting me and breaking my nose for the gym, Tony? You know, like you told me?" McGee said, cautiously eyeing DiNozzo's still balled up fists.
The words penetrated and in spite of everything, tickled Tony's funny bone and he couldn't help cracking a quick sardonic grin at McGee before he too moved away to the window where he stared out at the busy navy yard. Tim breathed out a sigh of relief in that suddenly claustrophobic, stuffy room.
Ziva had sat on the edge of her chair with that disturbing, partly excited look of anticipation that morphed into one of disappointment when the fracas appeared to be over. Since DiNozzo had already tendered his resignation, all that was left was the singing fat lady exiting and the elephant in the room eating the cake and the icing too before they all left the building.
The only one in the room who seemed content and at ease was Jenny Shepard who had plans to keep these four people together as a team but apart, alienated from one another and NCIS. Alone. And it was working. They had each gone to their separate corners to lick their wounds and have their private thoughts.
There was no communication, no familiarity, no eye contact amongst the group. They were together in the same room like a trainload of busy commuters who held onto the strap or the pole, each one to his own tiny space, not touching unless forced to by the rickety movement of the train on tracks. They had no ties to each other and 'on your six' and 'Semper fi' were just bywords of a TV show or expressions found on the Internet, meaningless and forgettable. That was her master plan proceeding successfully towards its successful end.
The buzz of the intercom interrupted this uneasy tableau. The Director answered her phone impatiently, "I thought I told you to hold my calls, Cynthia." After listening for a moment, she said resignedly, "Very well, please give me a minute then put him through." She hung up the phone then turned to the team in apparent conviviality as though she hadn't just been screaming at them minutes before.
"I need to take this phone call, Agent Gibbs, but I'm glad we've got this settled. However, if you or your team members feel unable to work this case, I will assign it to Balboa's team and we can discuss the ramifications after the case has been resolved."
The threat was pleasantly delivered. When there was no response she gave them further orders.
"Now, since this has been a cold case for eight years, I doubt another day will matter. Go home, get some rest and start fresh in the morning. And Agent Gibbs, I know your propensity to plow ahead regardless, so I will make this a direct order. Agent DiNozzo will be the only one to correspond with the boy in this investigation. It's hands off to the rest of you. Is that understood?"
"Of course, Jenny." Ziva rose gracefully, minor problem solved as far as she was concerned.
"Yes, Director Shepard." McGee followed suit, rising ponderously from his seat like a vigorless old man.
"Gibbs?" Was he going to cooperate or not? Jenny thought, irritated. Just go with the program, Jethro, for God's sake! Her mighty frown showed she was running out of patience with him.
"I hear ya'." Gibbs doggedly conceded the point though he was thinking something altogether different. 'I also hear ya' butting in where you're not wanted making an ass of yourself giving me and my team orders. You and I are gonna have a talk Jenny to set matter's straight on some things.' That was a promise Gibbs meant to keep but he rose to lead the procession out without saying another word.
A grateful glance from Tony, still standing by the window solidified, at least in Shepard's mind, the debt he now owed her. Shepard then picked up her phone, dismissing this group of agents that made her want to pull her hair out whenever she had to deal with them. But...they were alienated strangers to each other, silent acquaintances, fragmented, partner free. She picked them because of their individual angst; hubris in some, depression, low self- esteem and downtrodden in others. Soon...she'd set her plan in motion using MCRT toward the end she so coveted.
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Back in the bullpen Tony got on the phone to reschedule his appointment with Arroyo and Marc for the next day. He felt a weird sense of urgency but there was nothing more he could do tonight. He thought resentfully of the time wasted in futile arguments with the self-important egomaniac Gibbs that had almost come to blows. Time he could have spent on getting the evidence he had collected processed and finding the guy with the eyebrows that Marc still remembered after all these years.
Tony finished his call and looked around at the empty bullpen. It seems his co-workers had taken advantage of the Director's order to leave and had jumped bail, even Gibbs was nowhere to be seen. But Tony felt too uneasy to go home. Maybe there was still something he could do. Maybe Abby could start the program to configure a facial composite of their suspect from the information Marcus gave him. He didn't look forward to having to deal with Gibbs' self-centered Abby Sciuto but he would make the sacrifice.
So now Tony was down in the lab clandestinely after hours because he was apparently wasting his breath trying to get the ill-tempered lab dragon to cooperate. He'd brought the evidence he had collected earlier to her and told her they needed it ASAP. The look she gave him was downright malevolent. But one evil Goth wasn't going to slow him down.
While she made a show of calling Gibbs and giving him an earful of complaints about Tony and said it would take two days to work on the new evidence since it wasn't an active case, Tony grabbed the signed receipts that said he had delivered the evidence and slipped out. He decided that he had really grown to dislike that woman.
So he waited in his car in the parking lot until she finally left. Having to improvise had never been a deterrent to him so he went down to the lab and used the equipment that Abby made seem like you needed to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. He could get some basic information even though it would just take him twice the time to do it. And if or when Abby found out, what could she do but run to Daddy Gibbs again and whine and complain; he'd make sure it wouldn't be the last time either just to aggravate her highness. Marcus was more important than her fits and tantrums. And besides, he'd be in and out before she even got to work in the morning.
That's why he sat half the night away in a chair not suitable for sleeping while the machine clanked and groaned in irritation probably because he wasn't talking baby-talk stupidity to an inanimate object. And Bingo! There he was; dark hairy eyebrows that met in the middle and looked like a bird's wings, and deciduous tiny crocodile teeth.
He put the composite into the data base and its facial recognition magic flew by picture after picture and there he was. Eddie Thomas, petty thief, forgery, larceny, burglary, fraud, possession of a controlled substance. Surprisingly, the records indicated the man disappeared off the face of the earth eight years ago, right after Marcus said he was the person in his house when his mother was killed in a supposed home robbery. The guy was off the radar, no sightings, no arrest record, just disappeared.
Was there more to the Petty Officer's death? What were these guys looking for in that house other than a couple pieces of modest jewelry and three hundred dollars in cash? Gibbs had told DiNozzo last night after the fiasco of a meeting in Director Shepard's office that it was 'his lead, his case'. Tony wasn't stupid. He surmised that pretty much meant that he'd be basically working it alone with nil help from his teammates. Fine! He'd worked alone before, he could do it again.
It was six o'clock in the morning just as the machine zinged its completion and Tony jumped up from the quick catnap to print out the results when another zing and swoosh of doors opening alerted him that someone had entered the lab. Wouldn't you know, the paleface pigtail brigade would arrive early to work. He scrambled to get the printouts because who knew how the crazy would react to someone, especially Tony, invading her dungeon. Loud, armor piercing screeching gave him the answer pretty quick.
"What do you think you're doing in here?"Abby Sciuto yelled at him, having shown up way too early. She stood facing him with hands on hips and tapping toe that fell short of intimidating as her mode of dress made Tony want to cavort rather than cringe. Pigtails, school-girlish blouse, short, short skirt, long socks and patent leather footsies was one of his more imaginative sexual fantasies that he certainly did not want to have about her.
It was time to go on the offensive. "Your job, Ms Sciuto, that's what I'm doing since you appear incapable of doing it. You're stalling on a case involving a thirteen year old boy. What does that say about you? And you might consider asking the Director for a lab assistant to help you out if you're so bogged down, I mean, come on. If little ole me can work these machines and get results, surely you should be able to find someone..."
Tony prattled on not letting her get a word in edgewise while he got his paperwork and she flustered in place. And just to add injury to the mix, he waved the criminal Eddie Thomas' picture printout in her face to prove what he had accomplished as he quickly made his way toward the glass doors and his precipitous escape. As the doors swished closed Abby found her voice and she shrieked threats after him.
"Don't think you've gotten away with anything, DiNozzo, and how dare you say I'm putting a child at risk. I came in early to start the search for your information and just so you know, Gibbs will hear about this and I will be writing a complaint to Director Shepard about your unauthorized use of my babies as well, you can count on..."
The elevator doors closed on the rest of her diatribe and a good thing too, she had him quaking in his E. Zegna boots. Not really; did he look like the poor pathetic McProbie whom she forced to take a vicious dog into his apartment-a dog that had nearly ripped his throat out, which he managed to keep for two days before he almost croaked of a panic attack and heart failure? Or how about the guy she made walk around with jangling bells around his neck perfectly imitating a docile mooing bovine? Yeah, that was a kick in the head, and she's tried controlling every other male she comes in contact with her Gothy potions and mesmerizing spells. It seemed to him that even Gibbs was under one of her spells, the one where she blinks her teary, little girl eyes and no matter the wrong she's done, he becomes her protector against all the big bad bogey people.
Not him! Any time she tried something like that anywhere near Tony, he just reminded himself of Ellen Berent's femme fatale in the film noir Leave Her to Heaven.
That crazy dame stared longingly and incestuously at some poor pathetic sap who just happened to look like her father and who sat across from her on a train. She stared so hard with her barely lucid, piercing blue eyes, that she had him squirming and uncomfortable, antsy and ill at ease. The poor fool read those warning signs wrong for the road to sanity and detoured off the tracks into madness by marrying her.
After she'd accomplished that and had the man glued to her side, she'd off any man she came in contact with including her brother-in-law and unborn baby boy if they tried to steal his affections from her only. That's how he pictured Abby Sciuto, in the worst light, so if he ever made the mistake of trusting her, he'd think of that crazy, jealous, female whack-job in the movie, then once armored with that protective thought, come down to process his evidence, gather his results, and leave still intact, still his own man.
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Tony rode the elevator to the gym floor, got some clean clothes from his locker, took a quick shower and got dressed, grabbed coffee from the break room and a stale, left over donut and got to his desk before anyone else from the team had arrived, and started doing more research on this mysterious guy Eddie Thomas.
He knew when first David then McGee showed up for work but chose to ignore them and continued searching his computer for a clue. Where had this guy vanished to? Gibbs had come in right after DiNozzo, disappeared then come back with his trademark cup of coffee. When Gibbs spoke from his desk it took Tony a minute to realize the man was talking to him.
"How far have you gotten with your composite, DiNozzo?"
"...Excuse me?" Tony was honestly dumbfounded. The man was talking to him, not bellowing?
Gibbs had called Mike Franks the night before after consuming a portion of bourbon in a stained sawdusty cup and was feeling nostalgic. Gibbs had complained to Franks for ten minutes about his lousy team and Shepard's crappy directorship then he had to listen to Franks' grizzly rumblings and the brutal insults he'd hurled at him.
"Well what'd ya expect, Probie? When you're there, you're only half there, the rest of the time your brain's in sleep mode dreaming about them exes of yours or should I say nightmare mode. And those beautiful girls of yours. No one can tell you when to let them go, Jethro. I'm just saying...you ain't got no team worth spit 'cause you ain't no team leader worth the spittoon to spit in.
"They're worthless cause you're a worthless leader so quit whinin' and complainin' and get your team straight, and your act together and take down that conniving female tarantula director, man, before she devours whatever else parts you still got that makes you a man."
"Are you done, Mike?" Why had he thought calling his old boss would be a good idea?
"No, I ain't done! Don't bother coming down here just to mope around and start building rooms onto my cabana, I got too many rooms to keep clean as it is. And that loser team you got, why don't you try to cultivate some normal human speech patterns and communicate with them, speech wise that is, rather than just giving them your evil-eyed death stare and grunting, and no, head slaps won't work. That DiNozzo guy would probably hand your hand back to you one finger at a time. And the pretty lil' lady Ziva, hahaha ha. She'd skip the hand altogether and start hacking further south on your der ri errr ..." And though Mike had cackled evilly at his own warped humor, Gibbs found nothing funny to laugh at and hung up disgruntled and pissed-off while the man was still pouring out raucous sounds of his merriment.
So Gibbs had come to the slightly inebriated conclusion that no human being could actually read minds, especially not his, and he was thus now cultivating patience and human everyday speech patterns, and the results; his team now stared stupidly at him as though he'd grown a medusa head and gray dreadlocks.
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"What?" DiNozzo was still shocked dumb.
"Oh for the love of...Are ya deaf, DiNozzo? Abby said you visited her lab last night. Did you get any results from your search?"
Tony waited for the angry rebuke, the reprimand and more threats for offending Gibbs' best girl, then sighed in relief when none was forthcoming. He'd wasted enough time and promised himself not to lose focus and get embroiled in any more physicalities with this hard-nosed dinosaur whose old ways could teach him nothing and went nowhere.
Since Gibbs didn't redress the earful he must have gotten from Abby, Tony moved forward relating what he had been able to discover about Eddie Thomas and that the man was mysteriously missing.
"I'll need to show Marcus this picture. He'll be home from school at 3:30."
"He was five years old, Gibbs. Does Tony expect him to remember anything, much less a man's face?" Ziva expressed this idea in seeming amusement, though the emotion never reached her eyes.
"Again, I question the validity of pursuing such nonsense as this. It is irresponsible and in my opinion, we would best be suited moving on to a different cold case." Her attitude suggested any further discussion should be over and done with.
Gibbs was under the impression that this was a free country so he granted that Ziva had the right to have an attitude, express her opinion, or question his leadership style anyway she saw fit, provided, of course, that her attitudes, questions and opinions stayed within the confines of her own mind and not anywhere in the vicinity of where he could hear them or know anything about them.
He wasn't impressed by her haughty tone and couldn't imagine how things had gotten so turned around on this team during his watch. Mike Franks was right; he was doing a pretty lousy job of leading the troop. Especially since this wasn't a joint endeavor and he wasn't a co-leader type of guy. It was his job, no one else's, certainly not Ziva David's; any failure that befell the team, the blame would land on his shoulders, as it should.
So he started off by explaining forcibly to David and McGee too, for that matter, his opinion.
"Look, David, this is how things are gonna be on this particular case. It's simple; DiNozzo's the lead. He will be the lead till I say otherwise. Follow his lead or be assigned to another team! Clear?"
"Uh, yeah, Gibbs." McGee mumbled though not lifting his eyes from a file he was reading on his desk.
Ziva's answer was slower in coming. She leaned back in her chair calculating her response before she said coolly. "Of course, Gibbs, if you feel that it is necessary to threaten us with losing our jobs just to give Tony the lead then I realize how serious of a matter this is to you. I was just trying to point out that we have nothing to go on even if the boy can identify the sketch..."
"Gotcha, there is no..." McGee blurted out suddenly, then jumped up and waving the file folder in hand scurried over to Tony's desk. He was in such a state that he didn't seem to care that he had interrupted Ziva's self-important soliloquy mid-sentence, or the venomous look she threw at him.
"I was right!" He crowed triumphantly. "I've re-read all the reports, the lab results, everything! That blood drop doesn't match Claire or Sam Arroyo, so unless he was adopted, the blood didn't belong to Marc either."
McGee suddenly realized the implications. "You did lie to Arroyo, Tony, there was no proof that Marc was there. But you knew...you knew there was a witness. How did you know?" Tim's inquisitive mind was seeking an answer and he sounded more curious than accusing.
"Mind filling us in, DiNozzo?" Gibbs' voice was matter-of-fact, oddly different from his usual scathing norm, but at least not confrontational.
They waited for the suddenly quiet man to speak. There was no big secret as far as DiNozzo was concerned. He had read the report like countless others but the clue had jumped out at him; a clue simple enough that no one else had seen but effective enough to prove that someone else had been there. Would they take it as bragging or a fluke? Aw, to hell with it. Why should he be worried about that? He was done with the whining and complaining about these people, they weren't going to change in a million years and he wasn't sticking around that long to be there if they ever did.
He wasn't looking for their approval, and granted, job well done!, in praise for finding a clue that sat for eight years staring everyone else in the face would be a boost to his ego, whose wouldn't? But praise from Gibbs, yeah, and the moon was cheese full of holes, so fortunately for him, he didn't need Gibbs' praise. DiNozzo wanted nothing from Gibbs, unless it was to help Marc. That's all he needed. So, he'd explain, let them take it as they would.
DiNozzo took a sip from his cold coffee to clear his suddenly dry throat; ironically, the old adage, 'talk is cheap', came to mind, and it basically meant 'put your money where your mouth is. He can scoff at the jibes and jeers but they were unpleasant no matter how vehemently he denied it, and they did affect him. 'Sticks and stones' was true but 'words can never harm' was a load of crap. Straightening his shoulders, he prepared to be mocked even though the clue he had found was valid.
"I like peanut butter and jelly occasionally; milk, once in a while. But I don't like peanut butter and honey and I like my chocolate milk hot not cold; preferably in a mocha macchiato." He looked up expectantly at the blank faces, would they figure it out? McGee hurriedly sorted through the notes again.
"Okay, it says she was home, called in sick from work. There was food on the counter and knocked on the floor. Agent Trotter mentions the honey pot, white bread, turned over carton of soy milk, plastic container of chocolate syrup, so what? Time of death was estimated at around noon, she was making her lunch when they came in, what...?"
McGee was tying himself up in knots that something was eluding him, though he was trying his hardest to see what DiNozzo had seen; and he was enervated and stimulated to find it.
"I don't like peanut butter and honey either, but a child might." Gibbs said, a painful memory resurfacing of his daughter Kelly's love of honey. "You're saying she was making Marc's lunch when the intruders entered, DiNozzo? What are you basing it on?" Gibbs had a hunch where this was going and he felt a modicum of respect for the man's intuitiveness; not that he would express that to DiNozzo out loud.
"That's what I'm saying, Gibbs. That white bread had the crusts cut off. And I can see why no one would take note because it wasn't in any of the written reports but I looked at the pictures of the scene and there was that one picture of crust-less bread scattered on the floor.
"Now, come on! What adult does that for himself- cuts the crusts off? Arroyo wouldn't have admitted the truth with just some crust-less white bread for evidence that his kid was there, and McGee was right, there was no sample of Marc's blood. I knew I had to come up with something more definitive so, yeah, I lied to the man, McGee. When I said we had tested blood drops found at the scene and they were Marc's, Mr Arroyo then confessed that it was Marc who was home sick with a cold. Mrs Arroyo just took a sick day and her job just assumed she was the one sick. So he lied to the authorities and kept Marc away from any questioning."
"So you were just guessing? A fool's guess is how it is said, yes?" Any emotion other than curiosity was expertly hidden in Ziva's voice.
Shrugging cooling, Tony failed to answer her and let her interpret it any way she wanted to.
Gibbs, though, changed his mind about admitting something out loud.
"More than a guess, DiNozzo, and a damn good one!" Gibbs admitted because, granted, he was a stubborn old bastard, but he still knew good when he saw it, and in this case, that was good. And there was no need for the other three agents to turn and stare, even just briefly, at him, as though he had lost his wits because he gave a few words of commendation where it was due!
"Uh, thanks?"
"Don't let it go to your head, DiNo..."
"Wait, wait." Tim was on a roll interrupting people right and left, totally involved in getting to the bottom of something that peaked his interest. What Gibbs saw was a side of McGee he hadn't seen since the third week he had been employed at NCIS when everything young and spirited about the man had been gradually gouged out by the sharp knife of Ziva's careless cruelty, Gibbs' cutting, break-the-spirit reprimands and putdowns, and Abby, who had gotten a hold of him with her tainted sweet tongue and pointy, 'love you like puppies,' promises. When Gibbs had more time, he would think about this, and his part in a young man reduced to hiding and cowering. But now was not the time as he listened to McGee.
"Marc said just before they came in, he had been using his child scissors to cut a paper heart for his mother for Valentine's Day and he ran upstairs, and the perp found him. That's why you wanted to go upstairs, because..."
"On the off chance that Marc brought the scissors with him, I wanted to see the closet." Tony confirmed. "Marc said he jabbed at the guy with the eyebrows who hollered from the pain. Sounded like Marc may have drawn blood, so I needed to get into that closet."
"You find anything?" Gibbs had gotten up from his chair and now stood in front of Tony's desk also.
"Found the scissors and an item of clothing with what appears to be blood stains. Arroyo was right. I don't think the maid ever entered that room to clean it. I got the items to Abby and I believe she is working on the evidence now. We need to find this Eddie Thomas whether he's the same man who Marc cut or not. If Marc can identify him, we at least know that he was at the scene when the murder occurred."
Gibbs was feeling the thrill of the hunt again after it being so sorely absent. It felt good. "This is your case," he told DiNozzo. "What's your next step?"
Tony tried not to look at Gibbs cross-eyed and suspicious, but he was floored at the man's seeming cooperation. He answered Gibbs' question guardedly, expecting the man to turn back into a pumpkin or a pod.
"I've got a 3:30 appointment with Marc, Gibbs. I thought McGee could try and find this guy Thomas, I've taken it about as far as I can?" And Tony dumped what he had on McGee's desk. "Do your magic, Tim."
McGee gave the retreating DiNozzo's back a long-suffering look but got to work willingly enough once he felt Gibbs' eye on him and Ziva's disapproving angry gaze. Why her gaze was directed at him was a mystery; was he supposed to defy a direct order? Say he wasn't going to do it because Ziva didn't want him to? And why didn't she want him to? Besides, what Tony had done, that was a great piece of investigative work he had come up with and Tim was impressed by it. Gibbs had certainly shown interest in Tony's thinking process that pulled a clue out of thin air, why wasn't David?
Ziva sat quietly but Tim recognized that she was on edge by the constant movement of her slim fingers on the twisted paper clip. Gibbs had put her firmly in her place and that was a first, something Tim observed with sneaky gleeful delight. Normally, Gibbs issued orders then seemed to forget about the team and his orders, as long as the work got done.
Gibbs issued orders. Ziva changed his orders, that was the status quo. She directed them at the crime scene as she saw fit and from the first, Tim had just assumed that Gibbs was the figurehead and Ziva wielded the real power. Ziva always gave the impression that she was firmly entrenched in her position as Gibbs' second and Gibbs had never said anything to disavow this; until Tony DiNozzo arrived and thumbed his nose at Ziva and her pushy demands and counter orders.
While he entered data into the computer, Tim had time to think about his relationship with Ziva David. He suddenly realized he didn't like it. He had allowed Ziva to take advantage of his weaknesses; his propensity to give away his will and hand over authority to strong woman. It was as though she had prior knowledge of him being raised by dominant women like his mother and grandmother, and an absent father.
Even his younger sister could rule the roost over him. Had Ziva profiled him and now had a dossier with all his weaknesses gloriously displayed? Had the former Mossad officer used that agency's vast stored information to figure out what buttons to push elevator-like, ten here, five there, subbasement next, to make him move at her direction?
He sat behind his desk and let the programs run unattended while he thought really hard about his future.
It rankled that if Ziva wasn't in charge, then as a new employee to the team, he hadn't had to jump through her hoops and ask how high at her every command. He should have known better when Tony was hired and scoffed at every bossy word that came out of the woman's mouth. DiNozzo had tried to warn him, to clue him in about Ziva and her vivid, self-glorifying imagination, and he had noted that if Gibbs didn't tell Tony to do something, he didn't do it and to hell with Officer David, but he had snubbed DiNozzo's advice.
Don't go tramping through those bushes McNovice there's probably poison ivy in there. Take some motion sickness pills, McThrow-up, you look like the type to barf at the sight of a boat.
DiNozzo had been serious, hadn't smirked until Tim had glanced inquiringly at Ziva, then he outright laughed. Suit yourself, McDoubtful. So he had ignored the advice and he suffered a great deal of hurt as a result of the virulent allergic reaction to the poison ivy and severe dehydration from vomiting bouts the whole time they were on the Chimera; pain, discomfort, humiliation and belated hindsight, things that could have been avoided, had he just listened.
Later, he had asked Ziva why, why not take Tony's advice? She had replied indifferently. 'You are certainly free to listen to anyone you see fit, however, I do not trust Tony DiNozzo to have your best interest at heart. There was no way to know if there was poison oak or not and he would have sent you out of your way if you had skirted that trail thus I thought he was sending you on a wild water bird chase, and he was only guessing about your seasickness. We did not have time to stop at a drug store to get medicine for your possible stomach weakness.
And that was that from her standpoint. So, well needed advice from DiNozzo he had intentionally disregarded and listened instead to Ziva's skewed careless reasoning, causing him significant amounts of pain should have clued him in. Tim methodically examined his worthiness and positive attributes and found himself lacking as usual. He had made a mistake on who he had put his trust in, and was in the deadly grip of circumstances of his own making. Why should Ziva be a friend to care about his health, Tony trust or confide in him, or Gibbs respect him? Friendship, trust and respect were earned.
Just then, the computer indicated its findings, which ended McGee's dire retrospection and pending depression, for the moment, as he exulted in something he could do right: he had found Eddie Thomas.
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