Chapter Eleven: Tony and Rule Fifteen
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"The director wants to see you." As soon as Cynthia is done delivering this curt order, she hangs up. Tony pulls a face at the phone, before quickly checking to make sure none of his team have noticed his momentary lapse in professionalism. It's only been three months and he's already getting pretty sick of Shepard's continued insistence upon 'checking in' on them. They're coping. They're fine. Fine.
Honest.
"Director," he greets her, strolling in with his best nonchalant face. She barely glances up at him, brow furrowed in concentration at the folder in front of her.
"Special Agent DiNozzo. I hear you did great work with the Jonson case earlier this month, we've had commendations."
"Just doing our jobs, ma'am."
Now, she finally looks up at him, smiling slightly. His gut churns at that smile. Isn't there a Gibbs rule about smiling redheads? If there isn't, there should be. "Well, in the three months since gaining the post, you've done admirably. In fact, you've exceeded all expectations."
He doesn't react, face still. Either the woman is cold, or she compartmentalises her emotions better than anyone else he knows. She makes three months sound like eons. Three months isn't that long. Three months isn't enough time to get used to the hair on the back of his head remaining unslapped, or to be able to enjoy the burn of bourbon again without gagging, or to be able to smell wood shavings without turning his head instinctually to look for a man who isn't there.
"Thank you," he says stiffly, letting her lead the conversation.
"But," she begins, and the smile has vanished this time. Tony braces. He'd known there was going to be a 'but'. "We've noticed the toll leadership is having on you. Perhaps a break is in order, a chance to get away from… this."
"Ma'am?" Is she firing him? For a moment, he really thinks she is, wondering what he'll do without this place.
Instead of firing him, she slides a folder across the desk and, when he opens it, the last face he'd ever expected to see within NCIS stares back at him. "You are uniquely placed to be of use to us with this case," she says. "It's deep undercover, of course. You'll have to be no-contact except for a handler, but I think you'll find the opportunities that will be open to you after the op is successful… perhaps your own team, outside of Gibbs' shadow. How does Rota sound?"
Spanish. Hot. Far away.
Tempting.
Leave DC?
"No," he says shortly, closing the folder with a snap. "The danger would be… no. And I won't leave while Gibbs is still out there."
She nods like she's not surprised but tries again anyway. "We have a taskforce dedicated to the retrieval of those lost to the slavers, working with every other agency in the country and much better suited to finding Jethro than the MCRT."
Tony smiles. It's not a real smile but she doesn't know that. "I respectfully decline your offer, Director. I'm sorry."
He's not.
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That week, two more NCIS agents go MIA. A task force swarms the bullpen, pulling two desks apart for any clues to suggest what has happened to their occupants, how they were made vulnerable. Chip's legacy.
"Kendra isn't even a shifter," McGee murmurs. "She's a wind witch."
Tony stays silent, eyes locked on Balboa standing by the entrance to his bullpen and watching the task force searching for anything to lead them to his missing witch. The man looks up and meets Tony's gaze; his expression is the same one that Tony sees every day when he looks in the mirror. The case has gone far beyond Gibbs. It's not quiet anymore.
That night, every TV channel has pictures of the missing people, hours and hours of minute details of all of them, warnings on how to stay safe, documentaries on the history of slavers and necromancy. Tony flicks aimlessly through, watching a channel mindlessly until the words NCIS or 'Leroy Gibbs' appear before switching to the next. Eventually, he turns it off completely. It's a strange feeling, having everyone suddenly discussing the nightmare his team have been living for three months.
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They're distracted, maybe they have reason to be, but they pay the price and, as team leader, the blame lies on him. That doesn't stop him from lashing out.
"Tony, I'm fine," McGee insists, glamour sitting strangely on his face where the crowbar had shattered in his forehead. It gives the oddest impression of a thin material stretched over an empty space, as though Tony could tap his finger against it and make a drum beat. "It's easily fixed, it doesn't even hurt."
If he was human, he'd be dead. If it had of been Lee, she'd be dead. Ziva, dead. Him? Alive, maybe. Probably not entirely. He's resilient, not immortal.
"It shouldn't have happened," Tony snaps, eyeing the way McGee's left eye looks so slightly out of place and feeling ill. He's supposed to stop his team from being hurt. "Who was on your six?" Lee jolts and stammers out half an apology as Tony whirls on her.
"I was," Ziva interjects. "I was supposed to be watching Lee, I was negligent. It will not happen again."
"You were negligent, and McGee could have died!" Tony snarls. He knows he's dancing dangerously close to losing control. "We work as a team, David. A team. That means we watch each other's backs, we don't lose each other!" Something in his tone must rub her the wrong way, because suddenly she's in his face and her lip is curled in a way that suggests he's about to find out what happens when you piss off a cat.
"Lose each other like I lost Gibbs?" she says in a low, dangerous growl. If he says what he's thinking in response to that, there's no coming back from the betrayal she'll feel. He could walk away. He should walk away. He's angry, irrational. Not exactly the best time to be playing verbal chess with a Mossad operative with a razor-sharp tongue.
"Exactly," he says instead, and even he's shocked by the bitterness in his tone. For a moment, he's sure she's going to hit him, and he waits for it. He deserves it. Instead, she turns on her heel and stalks away, shoulders straight and back stiff.
He lets her go.
"That was uncalled for," McGee says, mouth twisted unhappily. "That was really uncalled for."
"Problem with my leadership skills, McGee?" He doesn't look at McGee, can't look at McGee without feeling the possibility of another loss hanging over their heads like a macabre raincloud.
A beat of silence follows, then his sullen reply: "No, Boss."
It's a lie and they both know it.
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"Agent DiNozzo." Lee is nervous, wringing her hands in her shirt and biting at her lip. Even after three months, she's still not comfortable working with him. Which is fine by him, because he prefers her not to get comfortable. There won't always be a place for her, not once Gibbs comes back.
"Lee," he says coolly, fingers stilling on his keyboard. The cursor blinks slowly on the half-finished report about McGee's injury. No agent was to blame for the injury, typed out solidly in Times New Roman, waiting to be sent on to the director and Law. No disciplinary actions will be undertaken as a result.
"I want to talk to you… about… about Miss Sciuto."
Oh. Well, he hadn't been expecting that, but he's not surprised. He rattles off the spiel they all learn within a month of starting at NCIS. "If you have a problem with her conduct, you need to speak to HR. Ask for John, he deals with Abby complaints. If you have a problem with the way she dresses, ask for John. He also deals with that. If you—"
"I think she's a mole."
And, in the blink of an eye, the furious anger from before is back and she's stepping backwards like a frightened mouse. He gets a savage kind of pleasure from her fear and the way it changes her scent, before carefully rearranging his face to be less… predatory. "Excuse me?"
He doesn't really mean for that to sound as cold as it does.
Lee charges on anyway, without meeting his gaze. "She locks her door most of the time now and won't let anyone into the lab until she's done with her 'tests', except I've checked her logs and the tests she's running don't need to be isolated, and when you go in there the whole place smells like disinfectant and camphor and I asked Jimmy but he said to drop it and got all funny and I found her access code on the missing agent's files, and—"
He cuts her off before she passes out from lack of air. "And you thought you'd just casually accuse her of being a traitor to her country. You do realise the damage you could do by shooting your mouth off about this?"
Lee freezes like a rabbit. "Ye… No. Not really. I just think… maybe she's doing something she shouldn't be."
"Lee?"
"Yes, Agent DiNozzo?"
"Get out."
The sound of a startled sob floats back to him as she bolts for the elevator and he cards his fingers through his hair anxiously, the beginning of a migraine throbbing in the back of his skull. Another visit to HR in the morning, no doubt.
He probably could have handled that better.
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His next stop, expectedly, is forensics. He doesn't take a Caf-Pow because she doesn't get one for being weird—not because he forgot. He didn't forget. Gibbs wouldn't have forgotten.
He misses Gibbs.
She hasn't noticed him when he slouches in the doorway watching her, but he charges forward anyway and only smiles a little when she twitches with surprise. "Anything you want to talk about, Abs?" The loud music is aggravating the headache he already has building but, despite that, he knows she's heard him. He can sense her pulse quickening. "Ignoring me for any particular reason?" As he sidles up to her, he gives her his best charming smile.
She looks up, face dark. "Third bottle on the left, pour out thirty mLs, boil it, drink," she says shortly before turning back to the slides.
"You mad at me, Abby?"
"It'll help your headache."
Oh yeah. She's pissed. He does as she says, feeling the instant relief when he downs the oddly flavoured mixture. "Watermelon?"
Her shoulders twitch. He knows he's got her; she can never resist talking about her concoctions. "If it tasted bad, no one would drink it," she says finally, turning around and staring at him with an exasperated expression. "You were out of line with Ziva. She didn't deserve that."
Ah.
"Yeah, I know. I'll fix it."
"Can you?" She looks so woeful that he can't help but walk over and pull her into a hug, hearing her sniff sadly into his shirt. He tucks his chin on her head and closes his eyes, appreciating the closeness. He's missed this. Judging by her reluctance to let go, she has too. Plus, it lets him catalogue the differences in her that he's been too preoccupied with his own problems to notice. She's lost weight, too much of it. Always skinny, but now he can trace the outline of her bones through her clothes if he's so inclined. She also smells different. Harsher, less… Abby.
Maybe sick?
Tony misses Gibbs again keenly in that moment. The man knows Abby. He could have gotten her to spill with one long glare and a twitch of his formidable eyebrows. And if she is sick, he'd have smelled it on her before it was even a problem. The magic of the canine nose. Tony has his own way of knowing if people are ill, but it isn't exactly co-worker friendly. Maybe he can ask Ziva…
"You'd tell me if there was something going on, wouldn't you, Abs?" he asks the top of her head.
She sniffs again and shakes slightly in his grasp, either laughing or crying. "Why would there be something going on?" she mumbles, and her voice doesn't give it away either. He decides to go with laughing: that's easier to deal with.
He wishes he had the answer to that question.
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Tony's already on his third beer when Fornell slides onto the stool next to him and waves down the bartender. "DiNutso," he greets him. "On your tab tonight."
Tony runs his finger over the ring of condensation on the wood of the bar, smearing it, and snorts. "I paid last week."
"And you will next week too. You don't think I come out here for pleasure, do you?"
Tony rolls his eyes. Business first, then. Like usual. "Got any leads for me?"
Fornell nods and pulls a hard-backed notebook from his coat pocket, tracing a finger over the careful writing as he runs over the contents with Tony. It's a weekly tradition now. Tony tells him everything they don't know, Fornell tells him what they do. It's his way of not giving up.
Two hours in and plenty of alcohol, they'll both stop pretending they're there for any reason other than loneliness, and Fornell will tempt Tony into a game of pool that he'll lose on purpose. Eventually, they'll both just get drunk and avoid talking about Gibbs while Fornell rattles on about his daughter and ex-wife and Tony pretends to listen. Finally, they'll get their coats and stagger out, Fornell telling him that it's always a displeasure to see him and Tony laughing and returning the sentiment.
Then, they'll do it again next week. Etcetera, etcetera.
Life goes on.
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That night, Tony curls up drunkenly on the couch and stares at the blank screen of Gibbs' ancient TV, lights from the streetlamps outside glittering through the curtains. After three months, the living room smells more like Tony than Gibbs and the kitchen holds barely a fading trace of its previous occupant. Tony's cleaned it up. Lick of paint. Even got Abby in to help replace the spell-work. Made it nice for Gibbs to come home to. Keeping the place warm and lived in. Unloved houses get nasty, he knows, and Gibbs wouldn't want to come home to a mice-infested house, or one with brownies in the attic. The basement lies untouched and, occasionally, Tony goes down there and runs a hand along the unfinished boat, before leaving and closing the door carefully to seal in the scent. He can't finish the boat. Gibbs is gonna have to do that himself.
Sleep doesn't come easily. It never does, surrounded by ghosts, but at least this way Gibbs won't be forgotten.