Sep 28
You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.
Orison Swett Marden (1850 - 1924)

Abby Scuito danced on the outside as well as the inside when Gibbs walked through the door of her lab. A visitor!

She needed visitors like Tony needed girlfriends. Sure, she could go without them, but she became lonely and depressed. A visitor cured all ills, even if they occasionally brought something with them.

And she wanted to have a word with this particular visitor. She'd had an idea a few hours back, but with one thing and another she had become bogged down in her analyses and been unable to call her silver-haired fox and ask her question.

"Gibbs," she began, with her sweetest smile firmly on her face, the one that made even a homicidal Ziva calm down.

"Abs," he replied.

"Have you ever failed?" she asked. "Not like a school test or something, although I never failed a school test, but I mean fail failed, like when Tony stuck his foot through –"

"Don't think I've ever succeeded," he informed her, cutting her rambling off towards the beginning rather than allowing her to pick up speed.

"Well, with Tony maybe, but that's just because he's our loveable Tony." she mused. "Look at Director Shepard. You clearly trained her well. Who else can say they trained their current boss so well she became the first female Director of an armed federal agency?"

She thought he muttered something about her sitting behind a desk all day and wasting her talents, but the Goth decided to ignore it. "Gilmore case?" he asked more clearly. Beaming, she began her run-through of the evidence. She could continue this conversation later.