The response this little story has gotten continues to stagger me. Many many hearty thanks to you, who have slugged through eight previous installments to get to this moment. May you find it worthwhile...
Symbiosis
9
The sap is thick enough to overcome dead babies.
"What does it mean?" Ziva asks somewhere between the second car fire and the final toll booth. When the confused silence of her male companions meets her question, she clarifies. "What Danvers said about his nephew; 'the apple does not fall off the tree?'"
"Doesn't fall far from the tree," her partner corrects. Tony has reclined the passenger seat as far back as the sedan's manufacturer has allowed, eyes closed against the midday brightness.
McGee, authorized to drive because the other two are exhausted, looks in the rearview mirror to find Ziva observing all the scenery that a freeway can provide with a bored eye.
"What does it mean," she repeats, turning away from concrete dividers and graffiti.
"It's meant to describe children who carry the tendencies of their parents," McGee explains while merging away from the fast lane. Drivers in Maryland are, on the whole, polite folks but the outer lane has been commandeered by psychos today.
Tony shifts in his seat, legs too long to find comfort in the compact rental vehicle. "It's rarely a compliment," he says.
"You have had the phrase applied to you?" Ziva's warming to the subject. "Your father is quite the charmer, so one might say you have not veered far from the example he set."
"For a great many reasons, I hope that's not true."
The tone has shifted the amiable atmosphere toward the sort of tension that ends conversations with anyone else but Ziva. She's been bred to ignore hints, no matter how pointy the spear they're attached to.
"I have no complaints with your father. A bit shady perhaps but not…"
"Shady?" Tony snorts. "S'like saying this case was bad."
There are some discussions that do not invite third party opinions and McGee, missing only the hat, will gladly play the role of the mute chauffeur. The case has, indeed, stretched the very shirt fabric of the word bad until it was the size of a circus tent. There is no possible reason for the criminal element to produce victims under the age of four.
As the sprawling industry of an old city passes them on all sides, the occupants in the car fall collectively quiet. McGee's literary mind fills in clichés about smokestacks belching and tires rumbles. But the craftier piece of his brain mulls over the image of cannibal silence eating the participants with a brutal and indiscriminant hush. It has not gone unnoticed that DiNozzo managed in a few careful words to change the subject and effectively halt Ziva's comments about the apples of his family tree. That he chose to remind them of a dead toddler rather than talk about his father is telling.
Forty minutes from the office and to say the snores coming from Ziva are indelicate is being unduly kind. Wincing each time the octave dips into the range of drunken cavemen, McGee keeps looking into the rearview as though an annoyed stare can wake the noisy dead. The still-lounging Tony seems entirely untroubled by the nails-on-chalkboard irritant and the question simply must be asked.
"How can you sleep with that?"
Opening his eyes to cast a quick glance backward to his fiancée, Tony's smile is more adoring than the level of audible pain warrants.
"You get used to it." His shrug is unaffected but when she evicts a vicious snort from her nose, he amends, "sort of."
Against logic, the snores actually increase from their impolite decibel to something on par with the demolition of a building and McGee is considering the damage to his career if he drives the vehicle into the next abutment.
"Seriously, how do you stop yourself from mauling her?"
"She may sound like the apocalypse but at least she's here."
The commitment-phobic man speaks with all the sincerity of a lifelong romantic and while the drivel is the sort of ear-bleeding nonsense that single people despise, the practically unattached McGee cannot fault DiNozzo for indulging in it. After what the couple has come through, no one can cite them as undeserved. And though Tony hasn't slept for the whole of the drive, somehow the freight train in the backseat slowly soothes him into sleep. A ten minute delay and they reach the parking lot without incident. As Ziva comes alert and notes their location, McGee opens his door and swings numb legs toward the asphalt. Leaning between the bucket seats, Ziva gives Tony's shoulder a gentle shake and whispers what sounds suspiciously like wake up baby. He inhales deeply, blinking awake with a shiver.
It's not from the cold.
Days ago, Tony had infiltrated an extreme betting ring to drive out the crew responsible for Tabitha Oravo's mutilation. The fifty six hour party the group engaged in had been hard on both Tony and his partner, who stayed on the comm. With his for the duration. McGee and Gibbs took turns on an uncooperative futon. Having found the discarded body of a second toddler, later identified as a long-missing boy, Tony closed the trap on the ringleader and lieutenants, who placed bets on how many kicks it takes to get to the death of a baby. A condensed briefing was conducted on sight and the team was sent back to the office to complete the staggering pile of paperwork.
No one had such inclinations.
The bull pen is hushed as the hour approaches dinnertime. Files sit open but unread, pens hover mid-word, fingers held mid-type. The image of two abused and decapitated children, with names and families they'd have to forget when the next case arrives, lingers now, thickening the air as two agents at separate desks draw together without moving and the third looks on. Jealousy is the wrong word but the writer can't settle on the right one.
McGee hasn't spoken to April about his work and the horrors that punctuate the pranks and good-natured ribbing. She scans books and accepts payments and smiles to each stranger without considering the depravity they may have inflicted on humanity. She sees no one as evil, only misguided. That he's in law enforcement hasn't piqued her interest enough to seek details. She'd rather hear about the publishing process. McGee wants to talk about something real with a listener who can comprehend the mortality they swallow down with every phone call.
Tony and Ziva speak more with sighs than most people can with words.
His soft exhalation says he's tires and troubled. Hers signals a promise to take it all away later. Maybe they'll finally venture into that conversation about children, the one Tony had said they have by not having. Perhaps they'll decide this world of bodies stuffed in chimneys or killed by robot trucks or embalmed while alive is no place to raise an experiment of their shared genes. Likely the dangers of their jobs will seal the door on parenting. But evidence leads Tim to believe these two will be alright regardless.
They may exist in the apocalypse but at least they're still here.
