HEAVY Tiva warning. Father/Daughter Gabby warning. Sad Stuff warning. Very Long. The timeline is very screwed up.
In a strange way, Mcbabyface's words had managed to send the agency into a bit of a rage. Agents talked picnics and snowboarding in the halls, over the usual chatter of gun models and Marine jerks. E-mail inboxes were filled with embarrassing memoirs disguised as agency memos, and as a result, McGee and Abby were swamped with 'please hack something or do something or press some damn red button and get rid of it!' requests.
Tony rubbed at his black eye in the reflection of the compact he'd swiped from Ziva's desk. Who would've thought the Crazy Mossad Ninja chick had a thing for M.A.C? He shut the compact, looking up to his partners desk, wondering if she had noticed. She was laughing at some e-card Abby had sent to the team.
Nothing at all like the crying wreck she'd been on the phone last week when the latest, serious, non-criminal boyfriend had broken up with her because of her dark history, or the girl pretending she didn't care and she didn't remember when she'd hit him with her pen/dart.
He was really, truly, happy. Tony wonders if she was ever like this before NCIS, if anyone ever made her laugh and smile like a little girl before the team. He wishes he didn't have to say the team.
He wishes, right at that moment, as people buzz around MTAC above and the bullpen, that it was him. He wishes he was brave enough to cross the carpet and ask her out. Mature enough not to tease her relentlessly and take her things. Man enough to be there for her when her world collapsed to dust. He wishes he could start over with her.
Yet somehow, that doesn't keep him from chucking the compact at her head like a little boy. It hits with the kind of accuracy she commands with bullets and is met with a startled cry.
'DiNozzo!', a harsh voice shouts. 'Boss!', he snaps at attention. Jethro Gibbs is closer to his face than he ever has been, and Tony can smell the Starbucks.
'You will pick that up and you will put it on her desk. You will not touch her things again, or there will be consequences.' Oh my God. Gibbs knows. Tony thinks. And he's giving you a chance, here smart guy! He gulps and nods, scampering to the floor, closing his hand around the thing before Ziva even bends down from her chair.
'Uh, my hand slipped there. Sorry Dah-veed.' He grins sheepishly. Ziva snatches it back and returns to her computer. Gibbs passes the both of them. Oh God. I broke a rule. Here comes the concussion. Tony's thoughts race with the endless possibilities. What on earth will the boss do to him?
He braces for the headslap, but instead gets a look. A different, non-Gibbs look. Like he understands, he's okay with it, and he trusts his agent to grow up and make good on it. It scares Tony a bit, even.
Ziva stares up at the silent exchange, wondering what is going on. There's so much that confuses her about the man, the self described sexy devil, the movie nut, the hardened agent, and the scared little boy. She wonders if he's accepted her, if he hates her, the shadowy replacement of his old partner, or if he wants something more.
If he does, she thinks, will she be enough for him? Or will she be just another conquest, thrown away in time?
He scares her, makes her laugh, cry, and wake in the middle of the night. But he also make her want to let go and fall, just so she can try what real love feels like in his arms. She hasn't known what that was like since Tali died.
'So it went not an inch beyond hugging last evening?', Ducky questioned his assistant over the body of a dead Lance Corporal. 'No! I mean, no. Abby and I just talked about, uh, sleepovers last night, actually.' Palmer said, not realizing what the sentence implied until after it was out of his mouth. The ME's eyebrows shot through the roof.
'Not..Not like that, We were talking about, uh, kids stuff.' 'Is this slang for some kind of sexual activity?' Palmer threw up his hands and sent his scalpel flying into a biohazard disposal bin.
'Look, Dr. Mallard, what is your problem? It was once in here, okay! It was a mistake and I don't just lie down on your table and do anything with breasts!'
Ducky shrugged. 'Mr. Palmer, if you made the mistake once, you may well be bound to do it again. I'm simply covering all my bases here, and making sure you can resist whatever sort of temptation you may encounter.' Palmer winced. Then he remembers what Abby told him last night, about mistakes and misjudgments. It's all a bit cloudy, but he thinks he has the gist of it.
'Dr. Mallard, what've you done in your life? What kind of mistakes have you made? Because judging from just what you've been in this week, I don't think you'd like to be judged on it. So yeah, I did a few thing with Agent Lee. I owned up to it. I made a few promises to myself. I learned my lesson. What'd you do? Keep everything you did in Afghanistan a secret and hope you'd die with it? I mean, who knows what you've done in this very room?' He stormed out of Autopsy, brushing past Agent Gibbs.
'Trouble at home, Duck?', the younger man asked, looking back at Palmer, taking a breath in the hall. Ducky looks at him with level eyes. 'I suppose that young man deserves congratulations. He has once again set my assumptions straight.'
'So that's how you two know each other?', Gibbs said incredulously. 'Yeah, I guess so. And don't even think what I think you're thinking, she's clean. Olivia and Me are a lot different from when we were kids.'
They were in his musty old basement, Gibbs with his bourbon and Abby with a bowl of spaghetti. He worked on the boat, and she talked, her voice echoing against the walls, occasionally met with a grunt or a chuckle. The Unity was coming along nicely in Gibbs' words, though for Abby to say a boat was coming along nicely meant she had to see it float.
'How did you ever get the boats out of this place anyway?', she asked herself more than the boss, going through hypotheses in her head. Secret Door? Gibbs Magic? U-haul?
He took a step back and considered the question. Abby looked eagerly at him, the look she gave her machines, willing them to work faster. 'Hacked them to pieces and burned 'em in the fireplace.', he admitted. Abby's eyes widen and she shakes her head.
'But Gibbs! You can't just burn something that you made!', she protests, throeing up her hands. 'If I made it, Abs, I'll wreck it. I still got that right.' He doesn't like where this conversation is headed.
'No you can't! Or don't. Or whatever! Gibbs! Everything stands for something and you can't just destroy it because oh...' Abby suddenly realizes whats been puzzling her for months. 'You burnt Jenny! And Shannon and Kelly and Stephanie!', she cries, shocked and angry that he could do such a thing. Gibbs sighs.
'So what if I did? Abby, listen to me. You have got to start growing up and realizing the world doesn't bend for you. You lose some, and you win some. You deal with what you lose. Do you-Abby!' He's being crushed by one of her killer hugs, her pigtails rubbing at his neck.
'You burned them so you could forget they ever existed, right? Gibbs, they do exist, even if they're dead, there's still everything they were in life that's still here! You can't forget that!'
And that's what breaks him. Her sweet clear voice, stained with tears, ringing out in this prison he's built for himself. He hugs her closer, knowing she'll be fine once he puts her own little world back in order. She reminds her of a lifetime ago, of the same things he had to fix when someone else came running into his arms.
'That's why I built this one.', he whispers. 'Promise you won't burn it?' Abby breaks away and glares at Gibbs, begging for an answer. 'Nope.' Abby retreats back to the staircase with a tiny grin.
'Okay, bur how are we really gonna get it out? I mean, we can always build a trapdoor. I know one guy from Habitat for Humanity who...' her voice trails into the night, and he smiles.
'So, uh, Director Vance, why did you want me up here?', Tim McGee asked the man, half turned away from him. 'Needed to ask you a few questions, McGee.'
Vance faces the agent, and fixes him with a grim look. 'So, some things have been flying around the intranet lately. Would you know anything about that?' McGee shook his head, more terrified of Vance than he'd ever been of some perp with a .45 in his face. 'Oh the memos? I think it was just a agency flame war thing that got out of hand.', he offers nervously.
Vance turns the monitor toward him. The surf picture Tony had broadcast to the entire Navy Yard was blown up on Vance's Outlook. 'Uh, oh, that was just something Tony-uh, Agent DiNozzo sent around. Y'know, a prank.' 'I'll bet you didn't like the entire agency seeing that, did you Agent? McGee shakes his head. 'Well, uh, I'll see what I can do about stopping all this. Maybe a filter or-' Vance stops him with a stone cold look.
Seconds, Minutes, hours, seem to pass between them. 'All I mean to say, Agent McGee is that perhaps you know the value of letting some things stay in the past. Do we have an understanding?' McGee is too dazed to do anything but nod. 'Then you're free to go.'
'Ouch. McGee's gonna be scared out of his wits for weeks.'
'I would not count on that. He has survived being held hostage in a prison, yes? He will recover.'
'This guy makes Gibbs look like a choirboy. I mean honestly, this fired up over a juvie record?'
'Government agencies can do that to you.'
'The paranoia or the macho-man idiocy? Because looks to me like you find all that on the streets.'
'I see what this Gibbs liked about you!'
'Yet he still burns my boat. I'm content to think the bourbon was behind that.'
'Mommy, mommy, who's that girl with Daddy? Why is wearing one of his old shirts?'
'Oh. That's Daddy's scientist friend, dear.'
'Abby, oh, Abby. Still my girl.'
'Who is this Abby?'
'Mommy, they look really happy down there, and look, he's building another boat!'
'That's very nice. I suppose it's about time someone made him smile.'
'They also look as though they enjoy each other's company, also. It is interesting to Ziva actually feel for someone.'
'Ha, it's interesting to see a woman from JAG go by without Tony turning the bullpen into an ocean. We've all missed a lot, haven't we?'
'Maybe, maybe not. I mean, look at all that. We're just seeing the beginnings of something great, ladies.'
THE END!!
Try to guess who's speaking in the dialogue at the end!! And please review if you feel like it!