Warnings: Spoilers for "Freedom"
A/N: Hope I'm not boring you lol, I know these stand alone case episodes are not as exciting as the larger arcs. I like to sprinkle these cases into the story because they allow for more character development than the larger arcs do. Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to leave feedback, favorite or follow; it's very appreciated :) Hope you enjoy this chapter!
Tony was startled when Tim accosted him at the elevator as he arrived to work. He was almost taken off his feet as Tim shoved him back into the cab. "Hey!" he shouted, almost spilling his coffee that Natalie had carefully prepared for him. "What gives McPushy?"
Tim glowered at the senior field agent and hit the emergency switch, shutting the elevator down. "A woman called looking for you, named Veronica. She wanted to know if you could meet for coffee. Are you cheating on Natalie? Is that why you're dodging her? Was all that crap about a Valentine's surprise for her just to throw me off?"
"Oh, Probie," Tony sighed with a sad smile.
"Don't oh, Probie me," Tim snapped. "If you're cheating on her, we're going to have a serious problem."
Tony reached out and put a hand on Tim's shoulder. "Timothy. Stop with the protective brother act… I am not cheating on Natalie. Veronica is my real estate agent—I put an offer in on a townhouse in Silver Springs. Natalie and I are moving in together… keep it down though, Vance might be okay with us dating but I'm not sure he'll be okay with us co-habitating."
Tim blinked, in surprise. Of all the things Tony could have said to him—or done to him—informing him that he was moving in with Natalie wasn't the first thing that came to Tim's mind. "Oh… oh…sorry."
Giving the younger man's shoulder a squeeze, Tony grinned. "It's okay, Timmy. You're the only one I'll let get away accusing me of cheating."
He looked away, nervously; Tim felt guilty for thinking that Tony was cheating. "I jumped to conclusions… you're not the same person you were even a year and a half ago—certainly not the same person you were when we first met."
"Are you saying I was a cheater when we first met?"
"No—saying that I wouldn't have been surprised if you had been—back then."
Tony could see why his partner would think that—he wasn't the most respectful when it came to women back in those early days of their partnership. "She changed me, McGee. She made me realize that I'm worth something."
Tim gazed at Tony, seriously. "Come on, Tony, you were always worth something. You're a great agent—you taught me everything I know—and more importantly, you're my friend… one of my best friends. How can you say you don't have worth?"
He thought back to his conversation with Natalie that very morning. Tony shrugged. "It's amazing what a person can do with just their words, McGee."
For a moment there was no sound in the elevator. Tim adverted his eyes. He knew things had not been wonderful and rosy growing up for his partner—hell, they hadn't always been rosy growing up with a Navy Admiral as a father. While Tony never said it out loud, Tim was sure that Tony had been abused as a child. He was physically assaulted as an adult by his father. "Well, you should listen to Natalie or Abby or even Gibbs more when they tell you that you are worth something. Your father doesn't get a say—not anymore."
Reaching out, Tony flicked the switch and started the elevator. The doors slid open and the slightly older man stepped out, coming face to face with Gibbs.
"Natalie go see Georgia Wooten?" the team leader asked.
"Yeah. She left from my apartment," Tony replied. "Something wrong, boss?"
Gibbs brow furrowed in concern. "Worried this might be too much for her."
Tony's jaw clenched, slightly. "She told me she could handle it."
"Handle what?" Tim asked, confused.
"Do you think she can handle it, DiNozzo?" Gibbs inquired, ignoring McGee.
"Strongest woman I know, Gibbs," Tony replied. "Yes, she can handle it."
"Did you get the guy's name?"
"No. Do you want it so you can go all Papa bear on him or something?"
Gibbs shook his head. "No, I want it so if the guy shows up I know to punch him in his smug face."
Tony grinned as the team leader turned around and walked back towards his desk. The senior field agent moved towards his own but Tim grabbed his arm, stopping him.
McGee brought his voice down to a whisper. "What is he talking about? The case?"
"No," Tony said, with a sad shake of his head. "And it's not for me to tell."
"Not for you to tell? Did something happen to Natalie?"
"It didn't happen here in Washington, okay? If she wants to tell you, she will."
"She was abused, wasn't she?"
Wincing, Tony glanced at Natalie's desk. Tim was smart and the senior field agent knew he would figure it out. "Yes," he said, softly, "verbally and emotionally. She got out before it got physical. Scars are just as bad."
Tim rocked back on his heels. Natalie was such a strong person, confident, okay, confident most of the time… How did something like that happen to a person like Natalie?
Gibbs peered over the cubicle wall and yelled for them. Abby had something—finally—and they were all needed in the lab. Speculation about Natalie's past on Tim's part was going to have to wait until later—much later.
Natalie had gotten no where with Georgia Wooten; but she came to realize that she did understand the other woman's plight.
At one point the abuse that Natalie had endured had gotten so bad she had lost close to twenty pounds; the weight loss, coupled with her withdrawing from social circles and her family had been a giant red flag to her colleagues in the Boston PD. Natalie had been benched and when she had argued with that decision she had been instructed to get help.
Her response had been to take all her vacation time and obsess over that serial killer case that had eventually led her to Washington. Several days after leaving had come her wake-up call, glancing at how thin she was in a mirror and listening to her boyfriend complain that she was too fat. She'd moved back in with her parents after that; healthy eating habits and sleep helped her put most of the weight back on, but she would admit that from time to time she was still self-conscious about how she looked.
Tony often told her that she was beautiful, but what was more important, when he said it—she felt it. However, it had taken her months to feel whole again after she started dating Tony. She was incredibly afraid at first that this relationship was going to go the same way as her last…
Thus, it didn't surprise her that Georgia Wooten had completely closed up to her when she stopped by. The marine was still insisting that she didn't kill her husband but the evidence was stacking up against her. No alibi, her refusal to take the body, claiming she couldn't afford a funeral…
"Natalie?" Tony's voice cut through her fog. "Are you with me?"
"Sorry," Natalie mumbled, looking up from her desk. "I…I zoned out for a second."
"Did you at least zone out to someplace nice?" he asked with a smile.
"Not really; comparing how different my life is now to when I was in Boston," she said.
Tony opened his top drawer and pulled out a small, pink pastry box. He stood and crossed the space between their desks and put the box onto hers. "I picked something up for you on my way back from speaking to Georgia's commanding officer—again."
Natalie recognized the box from her favorite bakery and immediately felt her spirits lift. His sweet, small gestures of affection is what really started her on the path to feeling whole again—feeling like she was worth something again. "Thanks," she whispered, lifting the lid to look at the chocolate cupcake.
He kissed the top of her head. "Just make sure you hide it from McGee. He's been known to steal cupcakes if he skips a meal—especially if you tell him you're going gluten free."
She looked at him, puzzled. "Gluten free? I never said I was going gluten free."
Tony chuckled, sat on the edge of her desk, and played with her hair. Once she saw her favorite kind of cupcake the deep lines of worry on her forehead had pretty much disappeared; it was as if that cupcake reminded her that her life wasn't so bad now. He kissed the top of her head one more time and whispered, "You're worth it."
Natalie smiled as she swiped her finger through the frosting. She licked the chocolate frosting off and glanced up at him. "I know. But it's nice to be reminded."
"DiNozzo," Gibbs snapped entering the bullpen. "Pull up those training photographs."
"Sure thing, boss," Tony said getting off of Natalie's desk. He grabbed the clicker. "What are we looking for?"
Gibbs watched as Tony pulled the pictures up onto the plasma, his eyes scanning them quickly as they flashed across the screen. "Stop there," he ordered. "Zoom in on Sergeant Wooten's wrist."
Tony did as he was instructed, feeling Natalie come to stand besides him, her body brushing against his. "It's a lovely watch," he commented. "Still not sure why we're looking at it."
Natalie felt her heart leap into her throat. "Those marks on the body, the ones Ducky couldn't quite figure out… they were made by a watch."
"Yeah, Georgia's," Gibbs sighed. "Abby just matched the imprints to the make of watch."
"It's not looking good for the Gunny," Tony mumbled.
"Did you get her to talk?" the team leader directed to Natalie.
"No," the young woman said with a sad shake of her head. "She closed up to me."
Gibbs turned on his heel, grabbed his jacket and barked at Tony to get moving. They were going to bring Georgia in again—this time she was under arrest.
Tony gently handed the clicker to Natalie and went to retrieve his gear. He saw the trouble expression in her eyes; he wanted to assure her that it was going to be alright, but the truth was, he couldn't be sure. Right now, it was looking like Georgia was going to jail for murdering her husband and their son was going to be taken into the State's custody.
Natalie swallowed back her tears and watched as they left. Glancing at the uneaten cupcake on her desk she realized that if she had not swiped her finger through it she might have given it to Tim to eat—she wasn't very hungry for it anymore.
"Talk to her," Gibbs instructed Natalie. "Maybe she'll listen to you."
"Because I had such great results this morning?" Natalie threw back sarcastically.
Gibbs responded by handing her a file folder. Natalie took a deep breath and the folder and stepped inside the interrogation room. She gently closed the door behind her, fixed her pink sweater, and went to the table.
Georgia Wooten looked up at her, coldly. "I have nothing to say to you."
Natalie sat down at the table. "You're in pain," she simply stated.
"What do you know about me?"
"I know what it's like to be told you're worthless; to be under the control of a man and that they only way to survive it is to shut down emotionally."
The marine didn't say a word, and Natalie sighed, sliding out photographs that had been taken of Georgia after her husband had sent her to the hospital. "I know that he beat you, Georgia. And I know that you are an extremely proud woman. These beatings had to stop and there was only one way to stop them."
Georgia slammed her hand down onto the photographs that Natalie had placed on the table. "Enough! I am not a victim!"
Natalie shook her head. "I know you're not; you're a survivor."
"I could take the beatings. It had been happening so long… I didn't even feel it anymore. Even when… even when he hit me in places… that no one would see. But Travis… he knew I was getting numb," Georgia said, looking away from the NCIS agent.
"He started to look for other ways to hurt you," Natalie surmised.
Georgia nodded. "Yes, that night… that night he found it… he found the one thing that could break me."
Natalie hid the photographs underneath the folder. "Jacob."
"He threatened to take my child from me; to tell the courts that I was unfit."
"You had no other choice."
"No! I did not kill him! I grabbed Jacob and I ran! I know how to disappear from my husband," Georgia argued, "but I did not know how to kill him."
Tony crossed his arms and leaned against the glass. He watched as Natalie asked a few more questions, trying to get some answers… "Do you think she did it, boss?"
Gibbs didn't know what to think. If Georgia was the one that had killed her husband, there were ways to get out of jail time—but the way the marine was closing up to the team, and especially to Natalie, was troubling. "I don't know, DiNozzo. This is the most she's talked to any of us."
"If Georgia didn't kill him, and Jancey didn't kill him, who the hell did?" Tony mused outloud.
"Damned if I know," Gibbs mumbled.
Tony pursed his lips and fixated his gaze on the back of Natalie's head. "You know, if that ex-boyfriend of Natalie's ever shows up… it will probably take all of my self-control to prevent myself from killing the guy."
Gibbs perked up. "What did you say?"
The senior field agent turned, a little sheepishly, and looked at his boss. "Sorry, boss, I was just saying that if Natalie's ex shows up, I might kill him."
The former marine realized that Tony was onto something and the younger man didn't even know it. "Tony," he said, "you might have just solved the case."
"Huh? I did?"
"Yeah. Someone felt the same way you feel about Natalie's ex-boyfriend."
Tony looked back int the interrogation room. "Well, who was that?"
Gibbs shook his head. "I don't know," he said as he left the observations room. But I'm going to find out.
It was hard to believe that Len Feeney had thrown everything away just because he heard the pain in Georgia's voice when she had called the bar. Natalie wondered if her voice had betrayed her; if there had been pain in her own voice when she spoke.
Tony rubbed her back, sensing her troubled thoughts, but kept his eyes on the road. After they had arrested and booked Len, Gibbs had let the team go for the night. The SFA was hoping to brighten his partner's spirits—and this time he knew that a chocolate cupcake wasn't going to be enough.
Natalie watched the pretty streets of a Silver Springs neighborhood pass them by while he drove. "Where are we going?" she asked.
"My real estate called me," Tony said, "My offer on the townhouse fell through but she found us something that she thinks we're going to love. It's a bit of a fixer upper but… that means we can make it our own."
"Fixer upper, huh?" Natalie questioned with a smile, "Kind of like us. We've both needed a little fixing over this last year."
Tony chuckled and turned down a street lined with tall, thick trees and older, stately homes. He pulled up in front of a run-down bungalow and shut the car down. "So…. what do you think?"
Natalie looked at the house. It had to be at least seventy years old, it reminded her of some of the homes back in Boston in the suburbs… "Well… it needs a lot of work. Do you know how to do any renovations?"
He chuckled again. "I know how to paint."
She laughed, softly. "Me too… this could take us a long time…"
"Good news is, I have this trust fund," Tony said, smiling, "We could use that money to hire a decent contractor."
"You really think we can do this? Work full time and oversee a renovation?" Natalie asked.
Tony shrugged. "I don't see why not. People do it all the time on TV."
Natalie reached for him, gently pulling him in for a kiss. "Then let's do it. Let's buy this broken house and make it beautiful again."
