Disclaimer: Trust me. If I owned NCIS, It would still be done by Shane Brennan! I'd hire him to do it for me, otherwise CBS would lose a lot of money.
Sorry I've been so long uploading! It takes a long time to write as much as this :) it's funny how when you read them you don't realise how long it takes to write them.
This isn't the most interesting chapter - there's not that much Tiva and there's actually a bit of Jibbs and Gibbs/Shannon, which is kind of out of the ordinary for me, but kind of cute (I hope!)
Enjoy!
"TONY!!"
The moment Anthony DiNozzo walked out of the elevator to hear his name in the distinctive Israeli accent, he knew it wasn't good. After many years of missed paperwork and prank calls he'd come to learn that if you upset the Ninja-Mossad-chick that was his partner, it was not a good idea to come within 100 metres of her – or any of her Mossad 'friends'. Tony spotted McGee coming up the stairs and made a lame attempt to duck under the dividing wall next to Ziva's desk.
"Probie! Probie! Diversion!" Tony whispered, throwing the younger agent a 'save me' look. McGee caught the glare coming from the desk behind DiNozzo and decided not to risk his life to save someone who had a metaphorical library of insulting "McSomething" names.
"Uh...Tony I think she's already seen you," came the faux-hushed response. McGee might have made a good investigator, but his espionage skills were, in Tony's books, depressingly awful.
A sultry voice came over the parting. "Oh, believe me, McGee. I have." Ziva stepped round the partition and faced off Tony. "I'd like you to explain the meaning of this." She walked him round to his desk and pointed to the screen of her partner's computer, where a collection of all-too-familiar bikini photos glowered at the senior field agent. Tony nervous laugh echoed across the squad room as he searched for an excuse that wouldn't get him killed.
"Well...I guess...I don't know how they must've got there..." he pointed an accusing finger at McGee. "Hold on! You're the one who told McShutterspeed to get rid of the photos, and he didn't! So it's NOT my fault!" The Mossad agent's eyes darted to McGee, and the probie's face widened into a look of horror.
"I didn't! I got rid of them, but Tony already had them on his computer!"
"He did?"
"I did...no, wait –" Tony was interrupted by his partner coming a little too close for comfort in front of him with a disturbing smile that made Tony slightly worried about what she was going to do to him. "Not getting enough, Ton-y?" The way she said his name sent shivers up his spine, and as usual he couldn't help leaning in slightly. Her face was inches from his, and memories of a dark closet came rushing back. If they were alone, and it was dark, and a few more centimetres towards...
"Done playing grabass?" The ever-interrupting Gibbs snapped Tony out of his daydream, and his partner stepped sharply back away from him and slunk back to her desk, grinning like the cat that got the cream.
"Yeah, boss."
Tony hated how every time they got close, every time something might have possibly happened, something stopped it. He couldn't help it but to blame Gibbs. In the closet, Gibbs had interrupted them over the earwigs. Even when they were under cover nearly 4 years ago...they could have done that without Gibbs and Jenny's interruption. And now, Gibbs had ruined it again. Maybe it was some weird sign: after all, Gibbs was the one to have invented and infamously disobeyed Rule #12.
DiNozzo suddenly realised that he hadn't spoken in about five minutes, and sat himself down into the awkward silence that fogged the bullpen.
"So boss...anything happened that –"
His attempt at conversation was cut short as Gibbs' typing faltered and the boss-man looked up.
"Gear up – murdered marine wife found near a house just outside the district"
There was a pause as the team secretly relished in the prospect of something to do that didn't involve Tony spitting paper balls at them, or contests as to whose butt was the highest rated, but as per normal McGee felt to say something stupid and disturb the peace.
"And metro isn't handling it because..."
"If I knew, McGee, then you'd know too."
Tony smirked, giving the impression of a ten-year-old whose brother has just been grounded. "So boss...want me and Ziva to gas the truck?"
The relaxed "Me and Ziva" had caught Gibbs' attention before, and now it dawned on him that Tony rarely referred to himself and McGee, or himself and Gibbs. It was always "Me and Ziva" – it was always Tony and Ziva.
Gibbs sighed. "McGee, you get the truck and take Ziva with you. DiNozzo, with me"
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"So where are we going, boss?"
"Cleveland Park. The woman was found tied to a tree by a kid who lived next to it." Much as he tried to hide it, there was an unusually shaky tone in Gibbs' voice: he might not have shown it, but anything involving marine wives brought him back to Shannon and – and he wasn't going to think about that. He wasn't going to think about any of it.
The car pulled up at a small, tattered house in almost-the-middle-of-nowhere that looked like it had stood for about a million years. The truck was parked up in front of them next to the poppy field, and the only other vehicle in the drive was a 4x4 dating from the age of the dinosaurs.
"Oh yeah, little piece of howdy heaven". Gibbs tried not to let Tony see him smile at the comment. "So what're we doing this time boss? You head on up to the crime scene and give the body a bit of a look-around or..." the Gibbs stare faced him off. "...I guess...I'll just catch up on Ziva and the McGook"
His sunglasses caught the light as he turned and jogged off over the fence and into the field towards the forest with his backpack.
88888
Gibbs rapped his knuckles on the fragile white wooden door round at the front of the house until the door opened and a scarecrow-boy smiled back at him.
"Are you the cops? My dad's in the kitchen. He says he wants to talk to you." The boy needed a good bath, a haircut and some new clothes, but as Gibbs strolled through the prehistoric house he was reminded in a way of the way he looked in his father's old sepia photographs of him as a child. The memory gained strength as the agent saw old family photographs of every generation who'd owned the house, whose faces lined the hallway all the way down to the kitchen. The whole house seemed as if it and all the people in it still lived in whatever century it was built in.
A redneck twang greeted him as Gibbs walked into the kitchen.
"Agent Gibbs. Your director gave me the heads up on your investigation."
It was a rare occasion when Gibbs automatically took a dislike to someone, but the wry smirk that greeted him made him want to retch. The chubby man sitting at the table was at least 40 years old with a savage orange crew-cut and the piggiest small eyes Gibbs had ever seen, and he gave off an air of self-loving that Gibbs didn't appreciate in the slightest.
"Investigation hasn't even started yet. We don't know what we're dealing with here." The man chortled. "Were you the one who discovered the body?" Clearly the guy didn't appreciate two things: Gibbs' tone of superiority that apparently almost matched his, and secondly not being asked his name in return.
"No. My daughter. She's upstairs, but she's doing homework, so I'd rather you didn't –" He didn't get a chance to finish as Gibbs swept out of his seat and creaked up the stairs. He peeked in every room until he found the girl's room. It was an aged shade of blue, filled with everything under the sun, and roughly the size of Jenny's old walk-in wardrobe...Gibbs' mind flickered for a moment as he saw Paris, a liquor-filled glass, a burning house...
His trained mind shut out the bad thoughts and he spotted a blonde-haired girl of about twelve writing at a desk. Well, it was technically a side table, but apparently it served as a desk, with her perched on the end of a tiny wicker chair that seemed to describe the room in itself – tiny, old, wooden, but somehow extraordinarily personal and homely. Gibbs sat down on her bed and squeezed his hands together in his lap.
"Hey. I'm Agent Gibbs."
The girl shifted in her chair to look at him, and the mischievous brown eyes reminded him of the Mossad agent assigned as a liaison to his team.
"I'm Katy. Have you found out what happened to the girl in the woods?"
Gibbs smiled and looked down at his hands again. "Not yet. But I will. Did you know her?"
"She lived on the other side of the forest. I didn't ever talk to her, but I used to hear her when she walked through the field next to her house on the other side of the forest sometimes and sing. I don't know her name, but I remember that it started with an M because we got a letter from them once, but Daddy wouldn't let me see it. And her last name was David."
"Run of the mill last name."
Katy frowned slightly.
"I guess, but it was pronounced funny – like, Da-veed – and my dad said...he said they weren't our sort of people. He said they prayed wrong, but the girl and her sister used to pray in the field sometimes. I loved watching them pray, because it made me feel calm, and...and I don't know what was wrong with them. I don't know why Daddy didn't like them. I don't know who...why...I don't know how someone could..."
The trembling lip was Gibbs' cue. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna make you talk if you don't want to."
"You're a good guy, right Agent Gibbs?"
Gibbs chuckled. "'Course I am." He started to make his way towards the door
Hope it was good, there'll be more Tiva in the next/later chapters, I promise!
Lotts x