Tipster
An NCIS oneshot
by mew-tsubaki
Note: The NCIS characters belong to Donald P. Bellasario, not to me. When a crossover happens and you just latch on to anything that lovingly reeks of Ellick. XD Read, review, and enjoy! *Note: Set after s19e17, "Starting Over," as well as Hawai'i s1e18, "T'N'T."
- ^-^3
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your pilot speaking. We will be landing in D.C. in less than thirty minutes…"
The announcement was a welcome one. Nick stretched his legs and repositioned the neck pillow behind his head before eyeing Knight on his left, in the window seat. "Hey, Knight. Knight. Jess," he insisted, jostling her arm.
She snapped her mouth shut and groggily sat up from her slumped position. "Hahm, wha…?" Knight blinked the sleep dust from her eyes before rubbing at them. "Did we land yet?"
"No, we're about to." He grinned. "You, uh, have a little drool, right—" He gestured to the corner of his mouth.
Knight mirrored him and grabbed a napkin from the seat pocket in front of her. "Thanks," she said dryly.
"Hey, better I politely point it out now instead of taking a picture to show Parker and McGee, right?"
She rolled her eyes but did a double-take at him. "Nick, did you sleep at all?"
The grin faded from his face. He shrugged and found his sweatshirt to pull on. "I napped here and there."
"This was a nearly ten-hour flight."
He pursed his lips.
Knight put her hair up, but her eyes didn't leave him. When both of them were more fully awake and seated, she raised her eyebrows. "Parker asked me to bring you home in one piece. I even remembered his malasadas. …I thought we wrapped up everything. Is that not the case?"
Nick ran a hand over the back of his head and leaned towards his friend since even airplanes had ears. "I think so…?" he started, speaking in undertones. "It's just something Winslow said…"
At that, Knight smiled, and Nick was reminded of whenever Lucia tried to put him at ease. She, too, dropped her volume. "Unless he left something about Fortress on the table, I don't imagine it's something Tennant's team can't handle. Or is even something to worry about. You said it yourself a lot the last few days, that Winslow wasn't all there. Being on the run, pretending to be dead—it does stuff to a guy."
He knew that and knew it well; he'd faked his own death on numerous occasions over the years before joining the team. But this…this was something different and not something he was certain he could convey to Knight or to McGee, even.
"Nick?" Knight pulled a face when his eye twitched.
"No, I hear you. I just want to check on something when we get back to the office."
Her dark eyes nearly popped out of her head. "Back to the—?!" But Knight threw up her hands. "You know what? You do you. I, on the other hand, am heading straight home for a shower and real sleep in an actual bed, because no one expects us to turn up at headquarters at this hour."
Nick opened his mouth but had no retort. If it weren't for Winslow's words, he would've been heading home, too, the moment their plane landed.
That last half hour didn't last long. Nick and Knight stuck together through the gate and outside, where the taxis waited. She grabbed her own, only leaving when he promised to head right home after "checking" on his thing and not to stay at the office the whole rest of the night.
But then Nick grabbed his own cab, to NCIS, and he didn't find himself worried with keeping Knight's promise. How could he? Winslow's words kept going through his brain… Winslow's intonation… His insistence that every last tip about Jennings had come from him…
Nick couldn't shake the feeling that something didn't add up.
The ride from the airport to NCIS was short but dragged on, in Nick's opinion. He drummed his fingers on his right knee, wishing they could just fly through the traffic. He was in such a hurry that he forgot to tip the driver until the cabbie barked a "HEY!" at him through the window.
Inside, the orange walls greeted him. McGee and Parker had gone for the night, but Ronnie and Sawyer, pulling night duty, were surprised to see him on their way out to a scene. But Nick's mind was too preoccupied to muster a "hello" for Ronnie or even to return Sawyer's usual taunt.
He didn't bother to drop into his chair at his desk before his swung his bag up and rifled through it for the case file. He yanked it out and flipped it open, rereading the transcripts of each time they'd spoken with Winslow, familiarizing himself with how Winslow spoke.
The tips weren't here, though. No, the tips were too many, because they'd been collected from over the years, so the tips were digitized.
Nick went around to his computer, logging on and pulling up the rest of the case file on Jennings, on Fortress, on Corporal Menlo. He zeroed in on the "anonymous" tips which weren't so anonymous now. He'd read these tips countless times before, but he read them once more, with this new itch in the back of his brain.
…nearly two hours later, he found it.
All of the tips had been helpful, to some extent, but Nick thought it strange when Winslow claimed every last tip had come from him. Dozens and dozens and dozens of tips, all from one source? Winslow was good, but that many tips never came from one source. Especially not in Nick's experience.
But Winslow's way of talking had given him away, and his tips were worded much the way he spoke. Winslow was always proper about his numbers, precise about the probabilities and locations. He was well-spoken, too, but he didn't use proper grammar when writing things out.
And Nick knew someone who did.
He knew it was a stretch. Had he voiced this part to Knight on the plane or if McGee had still been around to watch him in his manic activities, Nick knew they would've been concerned he was grasping at straws. But they didn't get it.
No one knew Ellie Bishop the way he did.
Nick sat staring at the two tips he was certain hadn't come from Winslow. The word order—what did McGee call it? Syntax?—didn't match the patterns Winslow used in all the other tips, nor did it match the way he spoke when they had him in custody in Hawaii. Sure, Ellie hadn't spoken with proper grammar all the time, but she always took the extra time to correct her drafted reports and chide Nick and sometimes McGee for their errors, too. That was how Nick knew. Not to mention these tips were only from the past year, so she could've been anywhere in the world when coming across the information.
He reread them again. Doing so—it was like having her right there, reading them aloud to him. Nick could hear her voice so easily still, as though no time had passed at all.
He sagged then in his chair, pushing the case file aside and ignoring paperwork. Nick wasn't sure he wanted to be right about this notion… This thought did nothing to serve him except leave him wistful and musing how Ellie couldn't seem to leave him be…
Nevertheless, his computer chirped as another tip for another cold case came in.
- ^-^3
Elsewhere, 07:07AM; location: [redacted], Southeast Asia
"You don't have time—we must go!"
Ellie blew a loose lock of hair out of her eyes, which flew over the lines of information while her fingers blazed a trail over her keyboard. "I just—it's just a few more cases." She paused to click in a separate file and cross off names listed there.
But Odette huffed. She peeked around the doorjamb before stomping, in Ellie's opinion, over to her operative. "We don't have time," the older woman said. There was an equal amount of heat and desperation in her voice, even though the gunfire was far, far off, elsewhere in the building.
Ellie met her eyes. Her fingers kept going, but she spared Odette the few seconds of connection before returning her attention to the laptop screen. She clenched her jaw. She'd done this before, but not with Odette in the room. She'd gotten too used to begging for forgiveness later—her previous team leader had taught her the usefulness of barreling through without question. "I'm not in this for the money—I'm in it for the work, for the good I can do," she said evenly, keeping her voice quiet even though they had yet to be discovered on the empty floor. "This is extra good. So you can spare me thirty seconds."
Odette squared her shoulders. But no rebuttal came. She went back to her post at the door.
Ellie exhaled again, but not to keep her hair away this time. She typed up another couple tips and began closing files and programs as the tips bounced off IP addresses, heading for Washington, D.C.…
Odette said nothing as Ellie packed up and they got the hell out of there. But Ellie liked to think her mentor understood, on some level, why she risked doing what she did.
Ellie doubted Nick would ever know it was her anyway, but she sincerely hoped it helped him.
- ^-^3
SO. The moment Winslow said, "Every tip came from me!" my muse went into overdrive. XD And this oneshot is the result of that spark of inspiration. ;) I just—it was too good a chance not to write? And it WOULD FIT INTO CANON SO WELL? Honestly, the writers are missing some great opportunities; so long as a charrie still lives, you can continue to build the canon with them in it even if their actor's not present! ;w; Plus seizing on a difference in the tips…well, as someone with both a math and English bkgd, I can assure you that a lot of my classmates in either major back in uni hated the opposite subject with a passion and tended to struggle with it, so someone like Winslow slipping up in his tips isn't beyond the realm of possibility. Anywho. Tho I've actually had some other things done and ready to post, rather out of order XD, this ended up being my 50th published NCIS fic! :D So it's now officially the fandom I write 3rd-most for (HariPo coming in 1st at well over 500, HQ! in 2nd closing in on 100), so this is rly exciting~ Ellick's actually mostly responsible, too, since I write them most, followed closely by Parknight now. ;D I think I need to get back into drawing Ellick, too! Alas, there's never enough time in the day to write and draw everything… But pls do check out my NCIS art if you've never seen it and also my other fics if you've been missing my writing. :'D (I promise Parknight's worth it. -w-)
Thanks for reading, and please review! Check out my other NCIS fics if you liked this. And, as with my other NCIS fics, show your support via tumblr with a reblog~
-mew-tsubaki ;w;
