Disclaimer: Not mine. And I make no profit.

The Presence Of An Absence

O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last, And careful hours, with Time's deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face.
William Shakespeare

No one expected them to exactly welcome Special Agent Keller which was wise as they wouldn't have and they didn't.

Tony can't remember speaking to her, though he knows from what came after that he must've done, can recall only looking up from his paper work to see a livid and grim faced Gibbs striding off the elevator with a slim and neat looking blond at his heels.

She was probably attractive, in her stylish and expensive gray pant suit, with her perfect hair and make up and her toothpaste commercial smile, but she wasn't Kate. She wasn't Kate and so Tony's eyes passed over her attributes unappreciative if not unseeing.

He knows she tried to catch his eye, to smile at him and only him in that way he'd stopped noticing when he was still in college. That way that was nearly an invitation and could become one with only a little attention on his part. She tried…

But his interest was fixed on Kate's desk, (And even after a month he and Gibbs refused to let it be cleared out, though they knew it would have to be eventually; if only to keep the department shrinks from taking an interest in one or the both of them. Though for himself Tony didn't doubt it was probably too late.) and for what was most likely the first time since accepting her appointment by the new Director, she hesitated and wondered about what she might have stepped into.

It was McGee who told him later of how he'd sat there, his expression blank but his eyes full of fury and loathing, as the introductions were made, of how Gibbs had almost smiled at his reaction, at his rejection, and Special Agent Keller had lost some measure of her cool composure in the face of the obvious dislike of those around her.

Which wasn't really fair of them. It wasn't her fault, after all. Not really. She hadn't asked to be assigned to work under a man who clearly didn't like her and was barely prepared to tolerate her. To be surrounded by coworkers on whom her life may well depend knowing they resented and reviled her presence. No, she wouldn't have asked for that.

But.

But there was a kind of fantastical myth surrounding Gibbs and his team wasn't there? And the prestige of belonging therein was inescapable. Maybe Agent Keller didn't ask for the appointment, but she'd accepted it, wanted it, just the same.

He doesn't know what he said to her, but he can remember, as clearly and as horribly as he can remember the copper taste of her blood on his tongue, thinking that this Special Agent Keller had always wanted to work with Gibbs. That maybe, somewhere in the silent places people rarely look into, she'd hoped something would happen to one of them and she'd get her in.

And now Kate was gone and here she was, polite and discomforted, but determined to prove to them all that not only was she as good as Kate, but that she was in fact better.

And Gibbs was going to give her Kate's desk.

Whatever he'd said then had made Gibbs smirk a little and sort of wince, he can remember that, and take this new Agent off to meet Abby and Ducky and Palmer. And as soon as they were gone he'd turned to McGee.

By the time Gibbs and Keller came back, maybe fifteen minutes later and certainly no longer than that, he had both of them completely moved. And if he felt a pang of something that was almost possessiveness when he glanced across the isle to see McGee settled into his desk, it was nothing compared to the bare and vicious satisfaction that coursed through him as, without missing a beat, his boss gestured toward McGee's former desk and told her to get comfortable with that predatory showing of teeth that suggested she should do anything but.

Gibbs never said anything about the desk change, and Tony supposed that he didn't quite dare.