Hi, I'm sorry this chapter has been a bit late coming! I hope you all enjoy it. I'm not entirely pleased with it but I don't know when I'll next have time to work on it, so I thought I'd post this and then get back to the later chapters. This is really just a lot of gap filling stuff that I wanted a chance to develop more, but it didn't really fit with the story. I have remembered all your requests, however, and they will be making it into there…so…for those who wanted to see Gibbs getting the grandparents, here it is!
Chapter Fourteen: I Don't Need Help Making A Bed
"So, what do you think?"
Penny looked at Tony as if he were insane.
"Well?" he prompted. "What do you think of your new bedroom?"
She silently stared into the empty room for a few moments. Tony had spent the better part of the previous evening dismantling everything in the spare room, namely his computer desk and the shelves that surrounded it. There was no room to put the shelves anywhere else, and the desk, for the moment, was crammed into one corner of the living room. The shelves, beloved shelves that he'd spent a whole weekend fixing up because he was terrible at DIY, would go back into a flat-packed state in the back of a closet until he figured out what to do with them. He supposed he could always do with more DVD shelves…
Penny, on the other hand, didn't see the room as an area for film investment. She saw a pale blue room. She saw a crème carpet. She saw a window without any curtains.
"Its very empty," she said simply.
"Well, we're going to fill it with stuff," he reminded her.
"What stuff?" she asked. "I don't got much stuff."
"You do now we've been shopping," he half mumbled under his breath. "Now, how about we put the bed over here, by the window. What do you think about that?"
She tilted her head on side. "We didn't buy a bed, Daddy."
"Yes, we did. You spent an hour jumping on it in the store, remember?"
At this titled her head to the other side, scrunching up her nose. "Where is it then?"
"It's in the box in the hall," he told her.
She stepped back into the hall, looking at the box with keen interest. "It doesn't look bed-shaped."
"That's because it's in little pieces and I'm going to put it all together," Tony told her.
"All by yourself?" she asked him. He nodded. "Can you do that?"
"Hey!" he protested. "I can make a bed!"
"Daddy, maybe you better call Uncle Gibbs for some help," she told him.
"I don't need to call him."
"But he's making a boat all by himself. He can help you make a bed."
"I don't need help making a bed."
--
Gibbs stood outside of the house for a short while, observing it from beside the car. Of course, this was through no choice of his own; he was forced to wait on the edge of the sidewalk while McGee struggled with his seatbelt. He would trust his life to his youngest 'probie' agent, but for all his brains there was sometimes a lack of common sense, and a definite divide between him and the rest of the world, that made him want to double the force behind his head slaps. So, while he was forced to wait, he looked up at the house before him.
It didn't give off first impressions of a house that had imprisoned a child, although they rarely did, he remembered. Almost a replica of the houses surrounding it, it looked as if it were nothing more than a house. Not a prison. But it had been a prison, if not one with bars. His eyes caught a particular window, not sure why he was drawn to this one, but he could imagine the darkened eyes of a frightened child looking from that window, wondering when she'd next get to go outside. That frightened child was a DiNozzo, Tony' s daughter. It was probably why the hurt eyes he pictured were the same ones he saw on his senior agent whenever Tony's father came up in conversation. Tony and Penny. Father and daughter. Two innocent children who had been neglected by the people who were supposed to love them; their families.
At least they had each other now, he thought, as McGee finally managed to clamber out of the car. He stood beside Gibbs, looking up at the house. "Is this it?" he asked.
Gibbs just stared at him.
"Right, of course it is," McGee realised. "Are we going in?"
"No, McGee, we're going to wait for them to notice us and invite us in for tea."
"Right," McGee repeated, looking down at the sidewalk for a moment. "Of course, we're going in."
"You think?"
Gibbs walked up the front path, pausing on the step before he knocked. This was DiNozzo's daughter. One of his team's children. Penny had been mistreated her. Neglected. He fought back a shudder as he remembered the marks Tony and Ziva had described to him, angry bruises and red lines that tainted her skin. She'd been abused here. She'd been hurt. Beaten. Traumatised for life, probably. So, when he knocked, he made damn sure that he knocked hard.
An aging woman opened the door. "Mrs. Deirdre Ryan?" Gibbs asked.
She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. "Who wants to know?"
They flashed their badges. "Special Agents Gibbs and McGee. NCIS."
"NCIS," she repeated, testing the word on her tongue. "You're here because of the girl."
"You've been expecting us, good," Gibbs said. "May we come in?"
She turned on her heel, walking into the house but not closing the door. "If you're anything like that DiNozzo boy, you won't take no for an answer," she said as she walked away from them.
They followed her, McGee closing the door behind them. They found themselves in a living room, and Deirdre was now sat down beside a similarly aged man. "My husband, Alan," Deirdre introduced simply, before turning to the man in question. "Navy cops, here about the girl."
"Alan Ryan?"
"That's me," he said, not looking particularly bothered about two federal agents interrupting his television programme.
"Special Agents Gibbs and McGee," Gibbs introduced again. "We'd like to ask you a few questions about your granddaughter."
"Would you now?" he asked.
"No, actually," Gibbs said. "What I'd really like to do is lock you up and throw away the key for the damage you did to that little girl, but my boss keeps reminding me to ask the questions first."
Now, that had Alan's attention. He turned away from the television screen completely. "If you're gonna go accusing me of hurting a little girl, you'd better start at the top and tell me why," he told them.
"You kept a three year old girl locked in a bedroom," Gibbs said simply. "Her mother was dying in hospital and she hadn't seen her in weeks."
"Is that a crime?"
"I didn't say it was. But if you want to talk crimes, then I'm more than happy to arrest you over the evidence of physical abuse we found on her."
"The girl was misbehaving," Deirdre said defensively. "It was discipline."
"Not in that magnitude," Gibbs told her.
"Well you're Navy cops, right?" Alan said. "I ain't hurt no marines, so you can't arrest me."
"No, you haven't hurt a marine," Gibbs told him simply. "But Penny's father is one of my agents, and his family is entitled to NCIS investigations as much as a marine."
"I'm getting the third degree because Alicia's good for nothing boyfriend decides to be responsible for once?"
"Mr. Ryan, when was the last time you saw your daughter?" Gibbs asked him, taking the focus away from Tony.
He sat back in his chair again, thinking about this for a moment. "Now, you gotta understand that me and 'Lish weren't on good talking terms-"
"When, Mr. Ryan."
"She kept calling every day, asking to see her girl, but seeing her? Not since she dropped Penny off last month."
"You're aware that she has a serious illness?" McGee asked.
"Yeah, I know about the cancer," he said.
"Alicia Ryan passed away this week, did you know that as well?" Gibbs asked.
"Yes," Alan said. His voice changing. "Yes, I know she's dead." He stood up, revealing himself to be at least half a foot taller than Gibbs, although it was still questionable as to who was more intimidating - the special agent, or the grieving, yet absent and abusive father. "I want you feds out of my house, now."
"We'll leave, Mr. Ryan," Gibbs said. "But you're coming with us."
"Excuse me?"
"McGee," Gibbs prompted.
"Alan and Deirdre Ryan, we're arresting you in connection with child neglect and abuse…"
--
An hour later, Penny stood in the doorway still, watching Tony with a large smile on her face. "You think this is funny, don't you?" Tony accused her. Grinning behind her teddy bear, which she clutched ever faithfully to her chest, she nodded. "It's not funny."
"Yeah, it is," she laughed.
"No, it's not."
"Is."
"Not."
"Is."
"Not."
"Is times forever," she shot at him suddenly.
He looked at her, realising from the triumphant expression on her face that he couldn't argue with 'is times forever'. Instead, he grumbled, going back to the instructions. "It's so not funny."
"Daddy," Penny said. He looked up, seeing her walking towards him with something in her hands. He smiled sadly at her, remembering how Alicia had done the same thing to him once when she'd watched him brutally attempt to put up a shelf in her dorm room. Penny, on the other hand, didn't take hold of the instructions and show him how to do it properly. Instead, she pressed his cell phone into his hand. "I think you better call Uncle Gibbs now."
He smiled at her, ruffling her hair. She'd wanted pigtails that morning but had to make do with her hair hanging over her shoulders, as neither Ziva nor Abby were there to do it for her, and Daddy was a bigger disaster with hair than he was with DIY. "I think you're right, kid."
--
Gibbs took one look at the unstructured bed on the floor and almost cringed. Already there was sawdust and nut bolts all over the carpet - God only knew how. "What did you do, DiNozzo?"
Tony looked hurt at Gibbs' tone of voice and exchanged a look with Penny, who giggled at him. "I just took it out of the box, boss," he said simply.
"And you played with it too," Penny reminded him, despite Tony pressing his finger against her lips in an attempt to silence her.
"You 'played with it'?" Gibbs questioned, turning away from the woodwork mess on the ground.
"I just…tried to make the bed…" he explained vaguely.
"With a hammer," Penny added.
"DiNozzo!"
"Yes, boss?"
"…go put a movie on for Penny. Then get your ass back in here and learn how to put a bed together."
Building the bed had been quite easy in comparison to making up the remainder of the bedroom. The chest of drawers had been more complicated, and Tony was sure he'd never lifted anything as heavy as the mattress Penny had chosen 'because it was bounciest'. Weren't you meant to discourage kids from bouncing on beds? He remembered breaking his arm by doing that once. He'd been thirteen, trying to argue against his father by acting like a child. He lost the argument, to say the least, and that was how he ended up sitting in the emergency room with his next door neighbours babysitter instead of his father.
After the furniture had been made, it was time to break out the paint. Penny had chosen for her new bedroom to be lilac. He was glad of that, girly, but not girly enough that Ziva would forever tease him for being covered in pink paint. He knew that she wasn't there, but it wouldn't surprise him if she'd left some kind of spy surveillance to check up on him. Penny had wanted to join them for the painting, so, with Gibbs being the one who pulled her hair back and secured it with a hair band, something Tony chose not to question, she had been given her very own paint brush. Her new clothes wouldn't get stained either, seeing as Tony had given her one of his NCIS t-shirts to cover her. It gathered on the ground beneath her, but that meant he also wouldn't be under stress getting lilac paint out of her new favourite socks, either.
"How are you?" Gibbs suddenly asked, when Penny went over and pressed all the buttons on Tony's portable radio, searching for 'good songs'.
Tony was a little taken aback at this, but gathered himself quickly. "I'm doing okay," he said simply.
"Can I believe you on that one?"
Tony looked over at Penny, who decided on a radio station and then went back to painting the corner of the room by the window. The look of concentration on her face was undeniably adorable. The determination to not touch the other wall, even though it was going to be painted the same colour anyway, was something that brought to mind a more advanced image; concentrating on homework. In a few years, she'd be in school, and it definitely wouldn't be long until he'd have to start thinking about kindergartens for her. She'd be getting homework…was he going to be able to sit and help her with that, or was she going to be like him, hiding away her bad grades at the bottom of her bag and forging his signature to evade trouble?
"How do you get to be a good father?" Tony asked his mentor.
Gibbs, instead of answering his question, laughed. "That's what you're worried about?" he asked.
Tony looked at him strangely. "I kinda thought it was a big deal."
He turned serious. "I can't tell you how to be a good father, DiNozzo," he said, looking away from the wall he was painting to where Penny was now standing back to admire her work. "You learn it from her."
--
Hours later, when Gibbs had gone home, Tony and Penny stood in the doorway for a third time that day. This time, they were admiring their handiwork. Beneath the window stood a bed, with a lilac and pink bed cover, covered almost completely by the array of stuffed animals that they'd bought the day before. Taking prize position on her pillow though, was her favourite. The chest of drawers stood beside a wardrobe, not completely filled with clothes but holding enough to get her by for now. No doubt she'd grow into her female state of mind and learn to love clothes shopping no matter how boring it was or how long it too. Beside the bed was a small set of shelves, holding her books (many, many books), and the children's movies that she'd brought on the small amount of time Tony had been allowed in a movie store when they were shopping.
But something was missing, Penny knew.
She turned on her heel, and went down the hall to Tony's bedroom. He frowned, watching her leave. After a few moments she came back, dragging the old rucksack that he'd first brought her home with. She put it down in the centre of her new bedroom and began to dig through it as it still contained some of her old clothes. She resurfaced with a photograph frame, only a small one, and she looked at it for a while.
"What's that, Penny?" Tony asked, having not seen this before.
Penny was silent, and put the photograph frame on the bedside table next to the lamp. "Now it's a perfect bedroom," she announced. "What's for dinner?"
But while Penny tugged on his hand to try and manoeuvre him into the kitchen, he stared at the photo frame, where the sparkling eyes of Alicia Ryan looked back at him.
Reader choice time!
I'm going to put one of these in wherever I can, because you all like being involved in this story! Your choice for this chapter involves the following:
Ziva's going on a date…no, not with Tony. He will, however, see her in her dress. What colour should her dress be? Any colour! The one with the most suggestions will be used!