A/N Landslide and Gladiator - Now We Are Free Super Theme Song very much helped in this story.

The boat was destroyed. The explosion ringing loudly enough to draw attention of passer bys and call the police. The police realized it was Gibbs upon finding his wallet floating among the wreckage of the boat. McGee could imagine how it must have felt staring at that name, they didn't know his boss, they didn't care much, didn't know what they were opening before announcing to the press of the victim's name two to three days after the incident. Pity, they must have felt, or nothingness, separating themselves emotionally from the victim as a form of self preservation.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs. A name that echoed, filling the air waves, shocking all those who saw his silver hair and aged appearance on their television sets or on their phones. The only thing that was left of the boat was: Rule 91. Walk away and don't look back. It was a fairly large card almost written in gold contrasting against the brown scheme, intact, unharmed, just there. Burnt by time, burnt by a explosion, Gibbs's finger prints was all over the boat. Rule 91 was in the evidence lab with the remains of the boat scattered around in the visible outline of what had been the last form of transportation that Gibbs had taken in public. All that was left of the older man was the rules and a hat.

"It has his DNA." Hines words were still echoing in his mind. Her concerned demeanor, sorrow, sympathy aimed at him and he didn't need that.

They all thought that Gibbs was dead.

"50 pieces of hair." Hines added. "Just. . . fifty."

Fifty. How he got that part right and that was all that was left of Gibbs's person.

"Are you okay, McGee?"

"I am doing okay." And she patted on his shoulder, gripped it briefly, then watched McGee leave her lab.

Divers were searching for his body in the lake for hours at a time. McGee felt it in his heart that there wasn't going to be a body. There wasn't going to be a body. Gibbs had walked away and hadn't looked back with a new bone to chew, he had eaten the steak and returned to what had caught his attention; what it was, McGee didn't know. He didn't know the answer to the question to Torres that morning of the announcement being on the air waves, "If he isn't dead, then what's going on? Undercover? CIA? Is it like . . ." before motioning off to Bishop's desk.

McGee's answer: "Nothing more than you do." Just like Gibb's answer to him was about Bishop. McGee knew nothing just as much as Vance, Torres, Hines, Palmer. All that McGee was certain: boss had a new interest that kept him very preoccupied during infinite suspension apart from building boats and extracting them out through some simplistic means.

Gibbs was going to be boss to him, always was. The longest boss that McGee had. A boss who chose him, cared - even though he hid it, enough to be someone that McGee saw as a dad who was the boss of the family. That is what the entire NCIS crew amounted to, the living and the dead.

McGee turned away and walked away from the relics of a golden era that he had once known without looking back.

For the last 18 years, Gibbs was a fixture at NCIS. No matter how things changed, big or small, boss was always there with a head slap, quiet like a mute, appearing behind agents when they talked about him, "He's right behind me, isn't he?". Just like how he approached Torres and Knight just this morning before the beginning of a new case then tell them to get their gear to a unrelated case. It felt weird, weeks ago, saying that and not having Tony or Gibbs saying it, but now it was a go to phrase and relatively normal. What wasn't normal was Gibbs not at his desk, a complete void of nothingness, the staple gone and the stapler itself remained intact.

Now, McGee was the one who stood behind the agents, quietly, prowling upon them until they turned around and began to make amends in the most comical way possible. McGee had grown as a person and fit into the glove of leadership. That leadership position was a far cry from the awkward NCIS agent who wrote novels, played online video games, a computer nerd, and read books about women to prepare himself for the day that he dated one to be the best partner there was. He was the best husband, the best dad, and now? The best boss.

The head slap was gone. Quite out of the walls outside of NCIS. That bit went away with Tony even as he turned away facing the interior of the headquarters one last time, even as the doors closed on him for one last time. Even when he were quite not dead, but, it was as if he had died and the slap hadn't appeared as often. The functional mute was still there, that bit would never go away, like clockwork, reliable, always on time when McGee expected like the show navy crime procedural show that came on Tuesdays for the last two decades. It established a pattern and stuck to it as life had done for him.

All that was left of the old Gibbs was appearing when everyone least expected it. Out with the old, in with the new after the gun shot. McGee missed the old days: Kate, Tony, Ducky, Gibbs, Jenny. And Ziva. Kate would have loved Ziva. That fact comforted the young man. Everything was gone from those glorious days that over time decayed, fell apart, slowly exploded until there was all but one survivor of the golden group. Dazed, confused, shocked, stunned that it had all happened-and how did it happen?

Now. . . it was just McGee, Vance, and Palmer, all that was left. That's all that was left. All that was left was their desks with all so sweet memories of before. McGee remembered when he sat across from Tony, when Tony was in the desk, when Ziva/Kate was across from him, and across from Tony would be Gibbs. That was how the last eighteen years had been at any given moment in his tenure at NCIS headquarters.

McGee remembered the lunches that he shared with Tony and Ziva, Kate and Tony, Gerald, Palmer and Ducky, in whichever combination, outside of work. One by one they slowly peeled away out of his life. It started out with a gush then taped over with a gradual removal of each member with the pain stinging NCIS from top to bottom. It had been a fairly active social life that came with its perks, it's sorrow, it's horror, it's angst, and it's silence once familiar players were gone. Gibbs was gone; McGee remembered a few lunches that he had with his old boss (only after the first instance Torres and Bishop opted to prank him and go off doing something).

He was never sure where they went, but Gibbs provided some advice, some additional rules, in the years prior to the dog killer case. Gibbs went on to tell some rules to McGee in the basement while building one of the boats with care and passion on some days. McGee can still recall how Gibbs laughed after McGee's reaction to Rule 94 before saying, "If you suggest there's wizards running around one more time in my ear shot, I'll head slap you, Probie." A small quirk of a smile was earned from McGee, "Yes, Boss."

Boss was a carpenter, McGee would tell later special agents. Special Agent Jethro Gibbs cared when it appeared that he did not: he cocooned himself to protect himself emotionally from the loss of agents (or their subsequent abductions) but it always failed as it tore through the walls right into his vulnerable skin and caused him to become the man that was revered and disliked from JAG, from the confines of prison, from across the globe, all to rescue a agent leaving behind a trail of blood and/or wounded agents. That was the man McGee looked up to. Boss. The man that McGee modeled himself to be and trained to be.

Delilah didn't push him about what he was feeling about Gibbs being possibly dead.

She waited for him to come to her.

McGee moved his belongings over to Gibbs's desk then Torres took McGee's desk, Knight took Torres's old desk, and . . . Bishop's desk went unseated. For as long as McGee could remember, whoever took that seat always left after two to eight years as a member of the squad and fell in love with one of the team. Rule 39, there is no such thing as coincidences. It was a curse cast upon that one desk in the office. No wand could do that: only the strokes of luck, only the claws of fate, only the winds of destiny. Yet, it felt like a actual wizard had came in before McGee's time in the office and placed the curse with dramatic effect.

But, Knight had shown up after 8 years much like Bishop. That desk was what could be best compared as what was the equivalent of defense of dark arts. It was too soon to place someone at Bishop's desk. Too soon far as McGee was concerned. The pain was raw in Torres's eyes when Knight sat at Bishop's desk as the mood shifted so Knight got up announcing, "This has bad vibes." upon sitting in it for five minutes and took over McGee's desk as had been his recommendation. McGee found it a bit amusing himself.

McGee didn't want to lose the first agent that he recruited to the team. Someone else should take the hit then will leave in eight years. Rule 94, curses can exist. Torres would leave in a few short years for reasons following after Bishop who would return years after he did. McGee looked toward the empty desk then toward Torres in Tony's desk and Knight in McGee's desk. He smiled as he filed through his memories of the eras where he had been Probie not Boss.

It was every bit of that one phrase that Kal-El's father had said, Jor-El, for the farewell of his son.

"I bequeath you, my son. You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son."

The Probie becomes the Boss and the Boss becomes the Probie. McGee bore a smile observing a transpiring NCIS circle of life occurring through a different lens of a time that he lived in before with Torres proceeding to prank Knight. No matter how it went, he was always going to be the Probie, always learning, no matter his position in NCIS, just as Gibbs had. That was McGee's belief.

Being a NCIS agent came with poetry as it appeared, it rhymed, it repeated, the bits and pieces different, the key players different, but the same event playing over and over and over like Shadow Play from the Twilight Zone except there was always different faces. He was witnessing history repeating itself with different figures, more fondly, the chuckles, the snickering, the laughter that came from Gibbs made more sense at the shenanigans that the team pulled on one another. Gibbs appreciated being the outsider of the situation, McGee was in Gibbs shoes so he could say that with reasonable confidence.

McGee could see the deviousness in the young man's demeanor of his intentions (the same one Tony wore before he did stupid stuff to either Kate or Ziva when McGee was around) as Knight was reading a book labeled as 'Harry Potter: The Sorcerer's Stone REWRITE, raised by Black-Lupin' in big bold letters printed in the back. He remembered the incident, where the fandom turned to fan merchandise instead of official merchandise, so very well, boycotting a literal Death Eater. McGee had his copy hidden somewhere, well written, passionate, one that he had written under a anonymous name with a different writing style. Knight's attention was turned off the book with beeps coming from her phone as Torres was stifling back laughter as spam filled her email.

Gibbs was gone. The lynch pin was removed. Gibbs was no longer the long term fixture at NCIS, it was McGee now. A life that was a cradle of comfort and familiarity delivering justice, arresting, gathering evidence, an saving lives. If anything was to be understood in a few short years, if McGee timed how long the first director stayed well, Vance would leave and a new director would take his place. It was the NCIS circle of life. It had established a pattern, the wheel of life, of the navy, of curses, of tragedy, had taken its usual toll through Time itself gently dipping the players into heartache, horror, and sorrow each time it made the dip with them attached with cases locked in between each dip.

And one day, possibly, McGee could end up the new director.

Possibly, but it came with risks, after everything Vance and Jenny had been through.

Did he want that for his children? No, McGee did not. He wanted to stay in the field outside of directing.

Although being the writer of his own stories came with being a director while writing.

One day, McGee came back from NCIS and cried. He had said good-bye to Gibbs, before the explosion, something that Gibbs had made a point to do before closing the door on the life that he had lead before and walk way from. Delilah cradled McGee in her arms as he cried three months after the announcement had blasted on the air waves.

Gibbs had been given a funeral, adorned with all the people that had known him and were still alive. Ziva and Tony were there including with Tali, all filled with sorrow, burying a empty casket that was full of only things from the older man's desk including two flasks, one that had a bullet in it, a old phone from the 2000's that McGee had personally sought for in the black market. From a distance, Bishop attended.

There was no one else to hand the flag to in terms of family, but, a special request had been made by Vance for the little boy that Gibbs had known and did his best was safe and sound. Phineas cried, the dog barking when the gun shots rang in the air, it had been a very dramatic and grim ceremony. But, they hadn't known that Gibbs was there, distantly, with Marcie observing his funeral from afar with a pair of binoculars. Gibbs left once the ceremony was over without being seen. Phineas was given the flag.

"I didn't tell boss that I considered him a dad! I never-I never-I never told him that he was part of my family!"

Buried six feet beneath the ground.

"He knew, McGee. . ."

Gibbs hadn't shown up and to the wikipedia; he were dead, to the marines, he were dead, to JAG, he were dead, to NCIS, he were dead, to far-right conspiracy theorists, he were going undercover to bring back President Kennedy from the dead but to the very intelligent and sane conspiracy theorists; he were not, but engaged on something no one knew. The last one was something that people who knew him best subscribed to and sane.

Yet, without evidence, as months went by, it was becoming plain that he were dead and his body had been carried down the river.

Morgan and John would forget about Gibbs quickly and that was painful to consider.

Like orphaned Harry Potter forgetting about his parents weeks after their deaths.

It hurt.

There were agents who were going to look up to him and that meant being the best man that McGee was suited to be. The man that he was walking all his life to become and fit with ease, becoming Gibbs's replacement felt easy, relatively easy. It felt bittersweet now to watch the beginnings happening before his eyes but more rougher with a team member left-Tony had talked about the woman that came before Kate, the woman that was all but a supernova compared to everyone else, briefly there, then not there at all by the time that they came across Kate at Air Force One. And so very soft.

Tony only talked about her when it came to telling McGee about not making mistakes that could harm their reputation or their career in a off hand that way which threw him off guard and ask what had happened. Blackadder had became that way to them; a warning. The Blackadder protocol was well known for team members all except for this new bunch. Kate knew about it long before McGee.

McGee checked the time, certain, then decided it was time for a campfire story, as it was late and a case had been solved-McGee was sure that Tony hadn't discussed this at all with Bishop. Perhaps, he had. It was normally Tony's duty to do that. Now, it was up to McGee. The Blackadder protocol had to be activated with the new additions to the team.

"Knight, Torres, with me."

"Uh, can this wait for tomorrow?" Torres asked.

"It cannot wait for tomorrow." McGee said with a glare toward him. "This way."

Knight and Torres followed him out of the office.

"What's this about, McGee?" Knight asked.

McGee came to a pause beside the stairs, right at the corner, then turned around and faced her.

"There are rules and if you break the most important ones. . ."

McGee started, quite awkwardly, then sighed pinching the bridge of his nose and sighed then withdrew his hand. He was right, just as he suspected, he was always going to be the awkward Probie and that much wouldn't change from his view. McGee suspected the same for Gibbs.

"Swear to God that I will not break any rule leaking information pertaining to investigations," Knight held her hand up as did Torres.

"And hope to die." Torres finished.

McGee sighed, shifting his shoes, lowering his gaze before he lifted his attention up in exasperation.

"From now on, you're all supposed to call me. ." McGee began. "Boss."

McGee accepted it, after weeks of rejecting it as a permanent thing, he was the new Boss, just as great as his old boss, the word remaining precious with one face forever associated to it in his heart and mind and memories.

"Right, boss." Knight said.

"Okay, what about off duty?" Torres asked.

"Still boss." McGee said

"What about in the hospital?" Knight asked as McGee lifted his brows at the suggestion at such a ridiculous question. McGee got a feeling this was going to make him get gray very quickly in a few short years. "If you do wind up in one."

McGee glared at her, I'm going too slow getting to the protocol. Ain't I? I am going too slow. How did Tony do this?

"Four letters." McGee said.

"McGee?" Knight asked.

"That's five letters, Jess, not four." McGee said as he held up all five fingers and wiggled them. "It's boss from now on."

"That's it?" Torres folded his arms with a tilt of his head then snickered. "Big announcement?"

"Nope." McGee shook his head before adding. "This is the Blackadder Protocol enforced."

"Never heard of it." Torres said.

"Never?" McGee asked, surprised.

"Not a thing." Torres said as he observed the confused features on his boss's face. "What? Was Bishop supposed to tell me about it?"

"Was she?" Knight folded her arms with a tilt of her head.

"She was." Torres confirmed as he read the older man's features and a part of the younger man was angry. "She was."

"Given that relatively minor error can be remedied, it had been enforced every time there was new NCIS agent who joined this team by Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo as it is that serious to be carried over to this team."

He looked on with fondness toward the hallway where it had all began by stepping foot into the NCIS office with Tony at his desk, Kate wearing the USS Philadelphia hat, and Gibbs at his desk doing what Gibbs did. The past momentarily flashed before his eyes playing out with such fondness watching it play out as a gif as a distant event occurring across from the team. The senior agent standing there, mouth gaping, shocked, at the fact that McGee got a tattoo reading: Mom.

The third team member would enter that elevator into their lives and he wouldn't know it until deciding they would be the best agent to be part of the team as part of the natural order of things. It was a small smile shared at that memory then he shifted his attention to his small command. They were all, but: babies. Children, more so, to aptly put it. Just as young as Kate, Tony, and himself had been in the beginning when Gibbs chose them to be part of his team.

"I'll start from one of the earlier cases and build my way up to the reason the protocol exists." McGee informed them, then sighed, before he began to lecture. "Eighteen years ago; there was Special Agent Gibbs, Special Agent Dinozzo, and Special agent Vivian Blackadder called on to investigate a crime scene at a boy scout camp . . ."

And Gibbs was gone.

And McGee was the only one left behind.