The boy with the frightened eyes and flushed cheeks sits on a hard plastic chair that bites him. His fingers drum on his trembling knees and he opens his mouth and stammers, almost inaudibly, to himself. A man approaches. He is tall and hard and grey. And smiling. Shadows fall, and eyes look up, and they question.
"Boss? I mean, uh, um, Gibbs, um, well, Boss, I suppose-"
"Spit it out McGee, or do I have to guess?"
"Ziva." There is a sweet and concerted effort behind the one word. So much is invested in the right answer.
"Well, yeah, Elflord, I got that far."
"Is she – will she be – OK, I mean? I mean, I know she's not, not now, but um –"
Gibbs sips and stares at the wide eyes and slack mouth of the child he's seen grow up. His tone is unnaturally tender as he speaks.
"She's very tired, obviously, and you might've guessed that she had some issues to sort out with Tony and myself before she felt up to fully embracing normality again." An eager and wistful nod. "She's been beat up, McGee, real bad. They did everything under the sun to her apart from actually ending it all. But I doubt you'll be surprised to hear that she didn't tell them anything. Not one thing."
Those blue blue eyes appraise the scene carefully. They pick everything up. McGee looks down at his twisted and interlocking fingers and the tension in his shoulders and stomach eases a little. It makes Gibbs smile.
"That's ... that's Ziva, alright."
"Yeah, it is, McGee. I think when she comes back we should all value it more. take a bit more notice of it. She's something special." He knows before the sentence is up that McGee did not hear further than when she comes back. He bounces in his seat like an excited child and manages to slip from the smooth plastic a little. But his eyes are open and bright. Trusting. And somehow, it's beautiful.
"She's coming back?"
"I think so, McGee. Nothing's definite yet; it depends a lot, I think, on how the conversation with DiNozzo's going right now. They've both got a lot to say to one another. We need to give them time – both of them – to figure out what it is they want, what they can work with-"
"Whether they can work with each other, you mean?"
A long pause, and then a sigh. Gibbs backs up against the chipped blue paint of the far wall and slides slowly down. His coffee cup sits, a loyal little pet, next to his loosely crossed legs. He looks tired. And, for the first time that McGee can remember, he looks old.
"Yeah, Tim. Whether they can live with what they did."
Tim. So much is invested into one silly use of one simple word. A name.
"But you think, but you think-"
"Hell, McGee, I guess MIT didn't teach you much about eloquence, huh?"
"Um, no, boss. I mean, uh, uh, I – I don't know. Well. No. But, they did teach me some really cool...um. No."
Gibbs actually laughs aloud then, the throaty hope lingering in the corridor long after the sound itself ceases. McGee is on the edge of his seat. His hands are clammy and desperate.
"You think she wants to come back, boss?"
"I think ... I think she is traumatised, and lonely and tired. And I think she's angry at a lot of people, and everyone she's angry with deserves it at least a little. She's not angry with you." And the remark is gentle and reassuring and it makes McGee ache a little inside. "She feels hurt and lost and betrayed and doesn't think she can go back to Mossad, doesn't know even if she wants to, has no idea why her father hasn't contacted the hospital, why he isn't here with her, whether she trusts us, whether we can trust her ...whether she's welcome back at NCIS."
"Of course she is!" His tone is young and indignant and Gibbs raises a hand to quieten him. And-
He raised a hand to shush his daughter once, in just the same way. She was protesting in a high and imploring voice for him to let her stay awake just a little longer. Just one more story. But he knew his warm and lovely wife was waiting, alone and pensive, downstairs. And, as her pleading squeaks threatened to raise in volume, he held up a hand, and she understood.
"Uh, boss?" McGee's round and childish face swam blearily into view.
"Yeah, McGee?"
"I think you should probably get some sleep. I mean, you've slept less than Tony, and even Tony only slept for necessity. Like, it was more passing out than sleeping, I would say, but uh..."
Gibbs gazes with his old and lonely eyes down at the linoleum flooring of the corridor. He feels encased and snug, almost trapped, in a shiny rubber tube of light and brisk clicking heels and waiting breath. But he needs to explain.
"Director David has already contacted me. He said he did not want to disturb Ziva but wondered whether we had anything on the terrorist cell she was kidnapped by. I asked him what he wanted us to do with his daughter, and he said he'd had time to consider and thought it would be best if she came with us back to Washington for a while. To clear her head."
The silence is as thick as clotted cream in summer. It reminds him of lazy summer days spent staring out of a window at children having fun and having friends. Now he stares into the eyes of a man and sees his lonely self once more, sitting at a desk with a computer and a stale and heavy emptiness.
"He doesn't want her back."
"Well done, McGee." But it is not dry or sarcastic. It is angry and bitter, and McGee understands. How could a man who lost his own daughter possibly comprehend the ability of another to give up his so very easily? And after all she had been through. It astounds, and terrifies.
"So...can she come back to NCIS?"
"I'm gonna make sure she does if it's the last thing I ever do." And the words, so flat and insincere in every bad movie Tony had ever forced him to endure, are real and glinting in the cold hospital light.
Gibbs and McGee alternate. There is a row of four chairs, and there is a floor. To his credit, Gibbs does not commandeer the better option as he might once have done. After everything that has happened, Gibbs knows, truer than anything in his heart, that he is not superior. That the children he once babysat, the heads he has slapped and the excitable temperaments that he once so openly mocked, have become far more capable than he ever actually imagined possible. As McGee snores on the plastic chairs next to him, cushioned on layers of hospital-issued blankets and some ominous plastic sheeting, Gibbs lies on his back with his hands behind his head and stares up at the hall ceiling. He goes through memories, organised, one by one, each in their own little file. McGee, terrified and open-mouthed, with his head between Kate's ankles. Ziva, falling to the floor with a graceful whimper as the chair is nowhere to be found. Tony's incessant references to bad films that he knows are only made because Tony feels inferior. He was never a marine, and so he watches films about people that protect their country, their loved ones and millions of faceless and nameless innocents. He thinks he is so lacking, he realises, and yet there is something about him that makes Gibbs feel jealous and hopeful.
As McGee nasals on and Gibbs smirks at his own sleepless state, Tony lies curled around a girl with her eyes wide open and terror on her lips. He breathes, low and warm, next to her. It touches her neck, her ear and the curved grace of her head. Stroke her aching limbs and jutting bones until the grating of her angry blood slows. And when it does, she slumbers. Fitfully and full of fear. His green eyes glint in the moonlight and the dusty shadows under his eyes darken. But he will not sleep.
He has slept for far too long already.
Hmmmm. Not sure. I wanted to get McGee in somewhere because I really like the dynamic between him and the rest of the team, particularly Gibbs (and, of course, Tony and Abby!) but I hadn't included him at all in this apart from a couple of references. I hope you all enjoy.
Also: ARGH! JUST when I thought I was getting a break from work, I realise work experience actually DOES consist of the experience of work. And it's not fun working in an Oxford Uni library with literally hundreds of pissy and panicky History undergraduates who ALL WANT BOOKS OUT NOW, NOW NOW WORK FASTER. So, I'm exhausted, and might not be able to do much this week ... ok, I promise this weekend all I shall be doing is updating :) Enjoy. Review. Make love not war, etc.