Echoes Chapter 53 - Call and Response, a ncis fanfic

Here is the next chapter of "Echoes"! I think that I will try to probably finish it by 60 chapters (seems like a good milestone to aim for). I will try not to take forever with it, but the next few chapters will be pretty emotionally intense, so it might take a bit to be able to find that energy.

For now, enjoy! And thanks to all the reviewers and quintawrites for her help. :)

Warning: spanking in this chapter.

Gibbs listened to the little outburst and it confirmed his belief that he would need to hand down some discipline before this spun out of control. He could tell she was trying to frustrate him and drive him to some reaction. He was unsure exactly what was going on, but he went with his standby reaction - stay consistent.

Consistent with modifications. After the genuine reaction he had witnessed - he could and would not believe that it was faked by Ziva trying to avoid a spanking - he was not going to paddle her. He believed her when she said that she had had some bad experiences. Spankings were meant to teach, not terrorize, and he would not risk that with her again. Although with the attitude she was showing now, he still felt that a spanking was in order. It seemed like she was goading him, daring him to try to discipline her.

Well, he was not going to turn her down. He reached over and pulled her over his knee. She was wearing sweatpants with an elastic band and it only took two tugs to get them down.

"I'm not going to paddle you, but I'm still going to spank you for disobeying me," he explained, giving her a firm SPANK! across her panties.

He heard the quick inhale before he landed the second SPANK!

...

Ziva felt herself be tipped over Gibbs' knee. How did that happen so fast? She had been expected to be told to get her backside back down to the basement. It would have given her time to prepare, to protest a little (on principle of making Gibbs' "job" harder), to start to block him out.

This was not working, she decided, as she gritted her teeth as the first sting from the first two spanks blossomed across her bottom. She felt it, and it was very uncomfortable! And blocking it out with no former warning besides the five seconds it took for him to secure her in space and tug down her sweatpants enough to start smacking was too big of a task. She could dissociate, but not that quickly.

SPANK!

It was not fair that she was getting a spanking on her panties rather than over her pants, like the paddling was going to be! Although she did have a flash of logical insight that made her reconcile a little bit that a paddling over her pants would probably have hurt far more than Gibbs' hand across her underwear. Not just physically. She thought about the feeling that had overwhelmed her when that paddle had rested against her bottom and shivered from the thought of it.

As far as punishments went, this one was not going to be too bad.

SPANK!

She could not help the little squirm that she did when the tenth spank landed on the undercurve - so very sensitive! - of her bottom. It hurt!

...

Gibbs gave the first ten spanks with his hand. Ziva had settled a little - there was no yelling, only uneven breathing as the start of the punishment began to sink it. With the tenth spank, she started squirming, and he sped up the next six spanks, each strategically placed across her bottom to cover it all.

SPANK! SPANK! SPANK! SPANK! SPANK! SPANK!

The increased heat began to come through her panties. Her sit spots - partially bare from her underwear - were turning rosy once again. Gibbs, having no interest in repeating another spanking for the day, paused. He had foreseen the need for having an implement near the couch, and now pulled one of the wooden spoons from between the cushions, grateful to have it nearby so there was no need to pause the spanking.

Ziva began to push up off his lap, apparently interpreting the pause as the end.

"Stay still," he scolded, resting the spoon against her sit spots.

"No!" she squeaked involuntarily.

"Yes," he said firmly, punctuating with four fast spanks to the bare sections of her sit spots.

SPANK! SPANK! SPANK! SPANK!

She had had twenty by now, but Gibbs was still not done.

She's been testing. And that needs to stop now, before she does something she regrets, something that hurts her, he told himself, taking the waistband of her underwear and tugging the back down far enough to join her pants.

"No!" Ziva squeaked, throwing a hand back. Apparently the instigator was not particularly fond of the idea of getting the dreaded spoon across her bare backside.

If only she could know how loath he was to apply it!

But then he had never believed that spankings hurt the ones applying them when he was a kid either. It took time and experience to learn, and she was still so young.

...

Ziva had squirmed, trying to blank it out.

She failed.

Her frustration mounted, particularly as Gibbs started using the spoon.

Why can I not block it out? I am an expert at this! But ... OUCH! ... this stiiiings!

Finally, when her underwear started to be tugged down, she gave up on trying to mentally block out the spanking and instead threw her hand back, trying to physically stop it from happening at all.

"No!" she protested, adding a few unhappy kicks in for good measure. She felt Gibbs take her wrist in his calloused hand and pin it to her back.

I can get out of that hold. I know I can, I know I can...

But somehow she could not. With spanks from that horrid spoon smacking against her bottom, she chalked her inability to get free up to being distracted.

SPANK!

"Next time you go for a walk, are you going to try your best to be home at the time I tell you?" Gibbs asked sternly.

"No!" Ziva gasped due to habit. She regretted it half a second later, but by that point she was committed. She did not want to appear weak and give in, but she also did not like the spanks raining down on her bottom. She was sure that her answer was going to get her some more and braced for it.

...

Gibbs took a deep breath at Ziva's answer. He had been hoping that she would make the wise decision and "give up" the fight.

No. Not his Ziva.

"Wrong choice, Ziva," he said firmly, but letting some of his disappointment and sadness be apparent in his tone. He wanted her - needed her - to understand that he was not enjoying this painful process.

He refocused on her sit spots, giving them his full attention with the heavy wooden spoon, going back and forth, leaving about two seconds between each spank to make sure that each individual spank could make its impact.

SMACK!

He paused again, holding the spoon against her bottom as a warning of what was to come if she was not sufficiently motivated to make a good choice.

"Let's try this again. Are you going to try to come home on time the next time you go on a walk?"

There was a pause.

Then a teary voice asking, "How do you know I did not try my best this time?"

He rolled his eyes as she was not able to see his face at the moment. Then he patiently answered, "Your attitude. You didn't give me any reason either, even when you knew you were in trouble. If you had had a good excuse, you would've used it by now, kid."

There was another pause. A muffled sniffle. He rubbed her back gently as he repeated, "Are you going to try your best to behave next time, Ziver?"

...

How could he go from so stern to so comforting so quickly?

Ziva was, once again, confused.

And defeated.

Her plan had, once again, been a failure.

She considered fighting once again, but that horrid spoon was resting against her bottom, which was already uncomfortably hot, stinging, and sore. And for the second time that day, no less!

"I ... will try," she murmured softly, comforting herself with the fact that if she wanted to, she could always "try" for a minute and then do what she wanted and still be quasi-honest in her self-defense. There. It was not as bad as she thought it would be.

"Good," Gibbs said, gently patting her back and dropping the spoon to the floor next to them. Ziva made a face at its smooth, seemingly innocuous shape. It was evil!

She began to push up - she wanted up to redress and get away from Gibbs as fast as possible. But just then she felt a firm SWAT! on her still-bare bottom.

"Ouch!" she screeched unhappily, her defenses lowered and her reactions genuine. "What was that for?!"

"I decide when your spanking is done, not you," Gibbs said firmly. "You need to wait until I say you can get up. And I'd never make you get up without having your pants and underwear back in place."

Ziva squirmed uncomfortably. Somehow that last smack had hurt the most.

Then she processed. The spoon was on the ground.

Gibbs had smacked her bare bottom with his bare hand.

That was ... personal. Very personal. Jenny did that occasionally - but Jenny was Jenny. She had been there for years. She was here still.

Gibbs was ... new. And he had just swatted her like a ... parent.

She was quiet as he pulled her bottoms back up and quietly said, "It's okay if you want to get up now."

She squirmed away, feeling more confused about that final smack than the spanking in total.

"Want a hug?"

She shook her head, bewildered and stinging. That was not a hugging mood she was feeling!

"Go lie down for a bit," Gibbs suggested calmly. "I'll get you when supper's ready."

Ziva tried to open her mouth to voice a subdued "Okay" but could not get her body to cooperate. Instead she numbly nodded, then headed up the stairs to try to figure out what had just happened and discover how she truly felt about it.

It had been a long afternoon.