AN: Yes, Sarah and Josh will find out they have this connection through Tim and Tony at some point, but you'll have to be patient for a bit. I think you'll decide it's worth the wait. ;) Today's update's going a little early because I'm off to prep for NaNo over coffee and didn't want to make you guys wait until I finished with that. I went to an awesome writing workshop on ending yesterday led by Rebecca Makkai, so that's got me thinking about how I end stories and which ones are most effective when. I might be tweaking the ending of this slightly before it gets posted... Not a lot. Just language-wise. (Bonus: I know what the final scene in my four-book Mob Chronicles subseries in Exeter is! Now I just need to write books 2, 3 and 4 to get there...)
After DiNozzo headed to the bullpen, Gibbs took the elevator down to autopsy. Duck wasn't there, so he decided to go all the way back upstairs. From the catwalk, he was able to watch the team and Josh Cooper without them noticing.
McGee was tapping away at his computer, conferring with Cooper periodically. McGee really had a knack for teaching what he knew, something Gibbs could recognize, even if his own style was different. This was a good chance for him to mentor somebody, see what he'd have to do more of as senior field agent — and to find his own style. He wasn't the type to haze like DiNozzo, and Ziva hadn't needed mentoring from McGee, not in most areas. This McGee was a true leader, something he'd grown into. After meeting Sean and getting to know him, Gibbs could see where he got it from.
DiNozzo, well, he was up to his usual antics. Gibbs could hear him playing the clown with the others. He let his lips quirk upward at the sound of a startled laugh from Cooper. The boy was obviously not expecting the team, not the way they really were. It wasn't the same team he'd met back then. Still he fit in. And Gibbs knew that a copy of that essay from Cooper was already in DiNozzo's file. Vance saved things like that — better at it than Gibbs. He could never remember the little things like that.
But as Tony kept up his rapid-fire commentary, Gibbs felt his legendary gut tighten. McGee just tuned it out, chiming in occasionally, but letting the sound roll over him. Must be a survival skill from living with all those words. Gibbs couldn't. His dad was chatty enough. And Jack wasn't near the talker Tony could be on a roll. DiNozzo could rival Abby when they both got going.
Cooper was getting sucked in occasionally, then visibly bringing himself back to work. Gibbs made a mental note. Goofing off was fine when the situation needed it. Tony had a finely tuned sense of that. But knowing when to buckle down and work was necessary, and Cooper seemed to recognize that. Good trait for a future officer.
Ziva, though, was like an island. She worked at her desk, ignoring the commotion around her. Not like McGee either, who was part of the flow, even if he tuned it out. Her frame was tense, her shoulders stiff. She did not look up, did not threaten to kill Tony with office supplies. DiNozzo was wrong. This wasn't the old Ziva. The old Ziva knew exactly how to play her role, to fit into the team by flirting with Tony and intimidating McGee. She did neither. She just ignored all around her. That couldn't last long.
Gibbs watched a while longer, then headed back to autopsy. Ducky should have some insight if any of them did.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
Agent Gibbs came down to see Dr. Mallard today," Jimmy said as he sat on the floor in their apartment. "He wouldn't say what he wanted, but he looked worried."
Abby dropped her head down from the sofa so she was looking at him upside-down, her pigtails hanging down. "You can read Gibbs' face now? Go Jimmy!" She cheered, and promptly fell off the sofa to the floor. "Ouch."
"Are you OK?" Jimmy checked Abby over, but tried not to laugh. He didn't quite manage.
"It's OK," Abby said, giggling. "It was pretty funny. Good thing Tony wasn't around or I'd never hear the end of it."
Jimmy helped her up and stood to join her. "Time to make dinner, before we both get wacky. Wackier." he said. "Today was a crazy day, especially with the rest of the team doing, well, something."
"Timmy told me," Abby said. "They have a plan to trap Alejandro. I mean, they want to catch Paloma, bit they're going to use Alejandro as bait, so first they have to get him up here from Mexico and Timmy gets to play the idiot in MTAC and mention my report and make Alejandro think he can get it if he comes up here so then we'll have him and Paloma will come after him and we'll catch her and everything will be normal again."
Jimmy snickered. "Normal? Us?"
"Well, normal for us." Abby stuck her tongue out. "Now come on, let's eat."
By the time they were sitting down to eat some of Abby's mom's jambalaya recipe, Jimmy remembered the other weird thing from that day. "Abby, weren't you going to the doctor today?"
She shook her head. "Next week," she said. "Sarah and I figured it would be easier to get appointments at the same time, since our doctors are in the same practice."
Jimmy nodded. "So you are going next week, right?"
Abby nodded, but she used her fork to push things around on her plate instead of eating for the next few minutes.
"Abbs?" Jimmy asked.
"I'm just... What if she says it's too late and we can't?" Abby didn't look up. "I know I'm jumping to conclusions, and it's too early to say that and you gave me all the numbers about how a lot of women miscarry, but that doesn't mean I'm one of those women or that it's not too late for me, it just means I can use facts and figures and statistics to hide behind if I want to and-"
Jimmy put his finger to her lips. "Breathe, Abby," he said. "Look, you don't know she's going to say any of that. This is just a chance to go and make sure you're okay and figure out where to go from here. If she says we can't, we'll deal with it then. Whether you can have kids or you can't, it isn't going to change my mind about spending the rest of my life with you."
"Aww..." Abby smiled, then nibbled the tip of his finger. "Come on, let's clean up. Darren's on duty outside, we don't have any hot case right now and we can actually have some fun time together."
But by the time they finished the dishes and were in bed, Jimmy couldn't help but ask the questions that had nagged at him.
"What happens if this plan doesn't work?" he asked. "We're trying to bring Paloma here, but if she's here and she finds out about Sarah, this could go really bad really fast."
Abby pulled the sheet up almost to her ears, despite the heat. "I'm trying not to think about that," she said, her voice muffled by the cotton in front of it. "Ziva, too. I know she pretends everything's fine and she's over Somalia, but she told me she wasn't ready to date anybody yet, even though she's interested in Damon, and now she's living in the same house as him. I know she came up with that idea, but..."
"But you're wondering if she was thinking just as an agent, not about herself?" Jimmy knew Abby well enough to fill in the words she wasn't saying.
Abby nodded, her hair swishing against the pillow. "If I ask Ziva, she won't talk about it. I mean, come on, this is Ziva. She's worse than Tony or Gibbs about talking about things."
Jimmy couldn't help the chuckle that burst out. "I know, it's not funny," he said. "But you're right, she really is worse than them." He thought about it. "You know, she has talked to Dr. Mallard a few times," he said. "Especially after Ben-Gidon came back last fall to burn her. Maybe I can ask him about it?"
"That's it!" Abby sat up. "That's why Bossman was looking for Ducky today. It can't be a case — the cartel is the only one we have and I know Gibbs doesn't want to talk to Ducky about that one. But he would go to him if he was worried about Ziva."
"Then I'll go to Dr. Mallard tomorrow and make sure he knows three of us are worried," Jimmy said.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
The next morning, Ducky listened as Mr. Palmer explained his concerns. As he was finishing, Anthony walked into the room.
The next morning, Ducky listened as Mr. Palmer explained his concerns. As he was finishing, Anthony walked into the room.
"You too, Autopsy Gremlin?" he asked. "McWorry was tossing and turning all night, and if I hadn't been awake wondering the same things, he would have kept me up."
"Yes, I can see that you both are concerned," Ducky said. "I expect Abigail and Timothy would say the same, but you have chosen to be discreet and not have everybody piling in here to ask."
"Gibbs is worried, too," said Anthony. "I talked to him a couple of days ago and I'm pretty sure he came and talked to you. About Ziva that is. Although the Boss might have said something about Sarah — I'm sure Mom and Dad have been talking to him since the rest of us are lying low to keep them safe."
"As to that, I could not say," Ducky replied. "But I rather think both of you and your other halves could benefit from a bit of perspective. You see, it is human nature for us to want to help those we care about, and to worry about them. But there is a point where we need to recognize those situations where we can and should do something and those where we must just observe. At this point in time, I rather think both Sarah and Ziva are in the latter." He looked around, then added, "Of course, should we become aware of something that requires intervention, that is a different story. But I do not believe we are at that point at this particular moment." He hesitated. "I have been visiting Sarah's workplace some mornings, just to keep an eye on her as it were, and I shall endeavor to ask her about how things are going at home."
"Thanks, Ducky. We're trying not to intrude, especially since I think we all feel like we're still borrowing each others' homes," Anthony said. "And neither of us wants a Sarah tongue-lashing for babying her, because a ticked-off McSis is worse than Hurricane Abby."
Ducky reminded himself to commend Mr. Palmer later — he was keeping his snickers much less audible these days.
~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~NCIS~
McGee looked at the documents he'd found in his search — photos of Paloma and Alejandro as children, and then as teenagers. The earliest ones showed Pedro Hernandez, and McGee wondered once again why people didn't show their evil on their faces. It would make his job so much easier. In the later photos, the siblings still were close, but as they became adults and went their separate ways on the surface, there were fewer and fewer photos of them together. The ones he could find, though, showed the same look of love that he saw in the early ones, the same look he knew he would find in photos of himself and Sarah, and in the one photo of Ziva, Ari and Tali that he had seen.
That was a strong connection, and McGee was leading the charge to take advantage of that. Well, no, Tony was, but McGee was coming along right with him, and they would both go down together if this caused an international incident. He knew Tony didn't understand the bond between siblings, but he did. He thought Ziva did, too, as hard as she had fought her father when he initially ordered her to kill Ari. Tim couldn't imagine killing Sarah, much less on his father's orders. Then again, Sean McGee was as different from Eli David as was possible, and neither he nor Sarah was following in their father's deadly footsteps. Tim didn't actually know if his father had ever killed anybody in the line of duty, but Tim had, and he didn't think it was the same thing. He knew Eli David would argue that all the deaths he had caused, all the ones Ziva had caused, those too were in the line of duty. He didn't know if Eli would defend Ari, but he knew nobody else would. Kate didn't have to die that May morning. She hadn't done anything wrong.
That's where Tim could draw the line, where he found the ability to kill somebody and continue on. They had done something wrong. He'd gotten that from his dad and from Gibbs. Sometimes, people got caught in the crossfire. That time he thought he'd killed Benedict — really had killed Benedict, he figured, despite Abby's refusal to believe it — he'd initially reassured himself that Benedict was a dirtbag. Then he found out that Benedict was one of the good guys and he'd lost it. This time, he had no such doubts. Alejandro was in this up to his sleazy neck, and just because he wasn't actually the head of the cartel didn't mean anything as far as Tim was concerned. He was turning a blind eye to what his sister was doing at best, and giving her assistance using his post with the Mexican government at worst. That had to stop.
Still, Tim hesitated. He could just see the photo of Sarah on the wall behind his desk, the one Tony had taken of the two of them after graduation. In that one, you couldn't tell what was coming a few days later, her news that turned everything upside down. All you could see was two siblings, different as night and day in all the ways there were — all but one. They loved each other, and Tim would do anything to protect Sarah because he loved her and because that's what older brothers did. Paloma clearly was the same way. That's how they would get her. Tim tried not to think about the possibility Paloma was saying the same about him right now.
