Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.~Mohamed Ali
Special Agent Gibbs stomped down the stairs, having just been released from MTAC, and Vance. With Jenny, he would have taken every spare moment of his day up there,trying and failing to understand charts on screens over black coffee and the occasional view of her behind. He glared at an intern on his way up, obviously terrifying the young man, as papers and folders flew on the catwalk.
'McGee!', he called. The agent's head shot up from a mess of fast food wrappers. 'Just getting lunch boss! I mean....uh not that the case isn't more important, because it is, it's just that-' 'McGee!' 'Yeah, Boss!'
Gibbs sighed. 'Forget the case. I need you to grab Abby and find me some information.' 'But..uh, on it,
McGee weakly replied. 'I need a name.' Gibbs leaned into the team geeks face. 'Leon Vance. And you will pay if he hears we had this conversation.'
Tim gulped.
'Leon Vance...Leon, Leon.' Google yielded standard results, high school newspaper articles, the NCIS website, a personal page set up by his wife. Just to be safe, he'd also Googled Tony and his dentist, just to make it look like he'd been bored. Pretty high heart rate for being bored.
'Tim! Tim! Oh my God. You will Not believe what I found!', Abby, via webcam shouted. Tim's head whipped back. 'Ugh, Abby don't do that! I'm coming down now.'
Abby spun to meet Tim on her newest pair of combat boots, which Gibbs had ordered painfully online from her favorite shop. 'Okay, so nothing in the databases and Google. Plus it would be totally creepy and wrong if he had a facebook, so I started looking at stuff that isn't out in the open. Case in point, juvenile records. Apparently, these were expunged, but that's just the paper copy. Check this out!'
'Kid, you cannot keep doin' this. What the hell, this is the sixth time this month we picked ya up for doin' some kind of crime.', Sheriff Gates shouted as he slammed the door to interrogation. 'What's you problem, son?', he asked, softening as the door shut.
'Ain't your's to know, old man. I'm gonna drink if I wanna drink. I'm gonna drive if I wanna drive. You ain't holdin' me for stealing you chicken nuggets.', he said defiantly.
'Yeah, really?', the Sheriff shouted, spit flying from his mouth as anger boiled inside him. 'You're a runaway little cretin, y'know that? You're never going anywhere with that fat mouth, so you better get used to the buddies you make in holding, boy.'
'Put him in with the other kids.', he ordered the uniforms at the door. ' And contact the parents.', Sheriff Gates added. He didn't know what that kid had inside, what he dealt with, or what made it all spill out like black oil on a placid lake.
The others hadn't touched him in the cell. Hadn't even said a word after he'd said the name of the gang his cousins were in. It was strange like that, as though the gang gave him more of a mark than his own name. They stood for him, backed him when the only others who even knew he existed were census officials and a woman he barely knew, who worked fifteen hour days at some dead end place. Made him memorize some dead white guy quotes, like words were gonna make him strong.
As if. The world was all gonna go to hell anyway, he just wanted to be able to say he'd felt the pure rush of real life before he came crashing back to the streets. He wondered what it'd be this time. He'd gotten kicked out of boarding school, banned from the Resource Center, and fired from every job he could get. They'd probably put him in the system. Like those other guys on his block, who'd been gone for months and come back bragging they'd given a cop lip. Some cops.
The night wore on and people were pulled out for arraignments and release. Release. Was there ever really any release? You just got swept back in again, here again, churned back out. There was no white picket fence dream, no diploma hanging on your wall, no wife that loved you and wouldn't run off the moment you got broke, and if you got to keep your kids, they'd just follow in your every footstep.
The others talked about how many times they'd been right here, how many times they'd gotten away with some horrible thing or another,complete with all the gory details.
God, half these kids were too young to even like girls, he thought, increasingly disgusted at what he was becoming a part of. 'Hey, you really with those guys from 12 th street? Whoa, man.', a boy who looked as though he had dropped out of the fifth grade said, trying to sound cool, yet miserably failing with a high, thin voice.
He looked down. The status was no longer a symbol of strength or a shield from reality. It was proof he had dug himself into a rut with no turning back. May as well decide right at that moment which arm he wanted prison tattoos on.
He leaned back on the concrete wall, breathing slow, playing over those old dreams. Then it hits him. One of those old quotes. He's only gotta keep moving forward, start being who the voice inside his head is, and less what the look in his eye says he is. He looks back at the kid. He probably dreamed of being in here, acting all cool when they let him off for being so young.
If dreams like that come true, he thinks, staring up at the empty gray ceiling, his has to.
'Oh my God, Abby, this is huge! I mean it's like Gibbs' ultimate blackmail material! I mean this is Huge!', Tim exclaimed, eyebrows raised as he read the file. 'I'll call Gibbs.', he said jubilantly. Take that, Vance, he thought as his fingers reached for the speed dial.
'Tim, No!', Abby protested, grabbing his arm. 'We can't tell Gibbs. We can't tell anyone. I mean, we all hate him, but there are all things in our pasts that nobody needs to know. He has a wife and a kid, Tim, think about them. We can't just take away everything he worked for, even if maybe it is destroying what it used to be like.', she blurted out, eyes pleading, growing quieter at the end.
McGee sighed. He hates to admit it as much as he hated Cyber Crime, but his hyper Goth hacker is right. He takes a deep breath and hits the button.
'Gibbs? Uh, sorry boss, we didn't find anything. No, even Abby didn't. Looks like this one's a dead end.'