When they first came to Rota, they had rented a condo on the western side of town, far from the base but in the newer resort area. It had made for a pleasant lifestyle, with the beach on the doorstep, but it was expensive and otherwise inconvenient, and after the baby came they rented the top two stories of a house in the older part of town from two retired professor-types from England. Their flat is a recent addition to an older home, so it has larger rooms and unobstructed views. The bedrooms are on the third floor, the living spaces and a terrace on the fourth. The unobstructed views aren't great, as Rota is flat, and the best indication you can get on most days that the ocean is out there is a vague blue haze. But the eastern exposure makes it hard to sleep in too late.
This morning—a morning perhaps ten days after the SAIC teleconference—the sun has risen far enough to lighten the room but not yet enough to be insistent. She is awake, he is not. He's snoring a little. She considers waking him, but she's slept through far worse from him, and she's comfortable where she is. She is not by nature introspective and she isn't conscious of a lack of time for reflection. This morning seems luxurious to her on creature comfort grounds, and so it's just coincidental that her half-awake thoughts roam over so much of the last few years.
She is embarrassed that she's the sort of person who takes thousands of pictures, many of them unfocused or poorly composed, which she can't bring herself to delete. She can't resist the impulse to share, either. To her mother, to her father-in-law, and to Abby, she sends virtually everything, knowing they will enjoy her mistakes as much as she does. She tries to be more judicious in what she sends to Ducky, not appreciating the depth of his indulgence. She is far more critical in choosing what she sends to her father, with whom she communicates infrequently and with some defensiveness. She wants to be certain that what she sends to Eli says, without too much triumphalism: Look at my beautiful child, innocent and happy. Look at my Agent Meatball, how you underestimated him. Look at what we have done, on our own and without your assistance or approval.
If she were to send pictures to Gibbs, which would she choose? When she'd bought the frames for Ducky and Abby and Rivka, she had actually bought one for Gibbs. But she'd been uncertain, and Tony had not been. Don't send it, he'd said. He hadn't said it meanly, but he'd seemed very sure, and so the extra frame sits, unopened, in a bottom drawer in the spare bedroom.
When Tony had made up his mind to leave DC, he'd made it up quickly, and he'd made his plans without telling anyone. Just before he'd left, he'd said to her, There's a place for you if you want to come. I want you to come. But I'm going either way. This had amazed her, for Tony was never so direct, and they hadn't even been together. Anyone might have seen how restive and unhappy Tony had been in those days, but then he had been unhappy and restive for some time, and she hadn't expected him to do anything more than go on moping.
But he had said, I want you to come, but I'm going anyway. She had gone to Gibbs, confused and unhappy at the place she'd found herself in. She had hoped there was someway to salvage the old situation, or at least not to leave so abruptly. But Gibbs had been just as decisive as Tony had been. If you want him, you have to go. You won't get another chance.
And so she had gone, and gone on Tony's terms, and she has never regretted it. She does regret that going with Tony seemed to mean losing her relationship with Gibbs. Neither man asked her to make that choice. And she hasn't entirely, as she makes contact with Gibbs every now again, sending him a birth announcement, the news about Tony's promotion, a call—which always goes to voicemail—on important days. But it remains a source of sadness to her that the man who had once meant so much to her is basically a stranger, and that her daughter will never know him.
Of course she knows it is worse for Tony. His personal relationship with Gibbs had gone on longer, and the professional relationship had gone far deeper. Tony had made his peace with the limited nature of the personal relationship, but he could not live with the fracturing of the professional. Tony left believing that Gibbs no longer respected him as an agent. Once, it had been almost possible to think of himself as Gibbs's colleague; at the end he had seen himself as a poorly tolerated subordinate, and the lowest subordinate at that.
That had hurt him deeply, and she thinks it troubles him still. When they'd first come to Rota and he had taken over a team, he had struggled between trying too hard to be Gibbs and trying too hard to not be Gibbs. But he'd found his way. These days, the man she sees in the office mostly gets the balance between carrot and stick right, and mostly his goofiness is put on with the purpose of relaxing his young agents enough so that they learn and act, but the satisfaction is real. Perhaps not since he was playing football in college has he been so certain that he is in the right place, doing something as well as it can be done.
She is enormously proud of him.
Her career in Rota isn't quite so satisfying. After Tony she is the most experienced agent in the Rota office, but she can't be a team leader, as that would leave Tony supervising and evaluating her directly. She understands why but it chafes, and as much as she loves their lives here, she finds herself wondering if perhaps a year or two they might find themselves in a larger office where there would be enough senior agents for her to take a team.
But somehow his happiness is bigger than the happiness of other people, and it makes her happy, even if it's old-fashioned and embarrassing for a woman with her training. He'd made sure that Vance's evaluation was left out where she could see it; Vance had praised Tony for running a tight ship. "A tight ship?" she'd snorted. "The only thing tight around here is your pants."
"They're not tight, they're a European cut. And I make it look good."
And it does look good on him, all of it: responsibility, marriage, fatherhood. He's tan and fit, more fit than he was when they came here, and she sees a lot of the sunny young man she'd first met. (Happiness looks good on her too, but she doesn't look at herself that way and so does not notice it. Everyone else notices it.) It still surprises her that two people with such unpromising pasts, who had never really even dated, could jump into a new country and new jobs and a baby and somehow make it work. But they have, and it does.
It's not perfect. Gibbs still troubles them both, though Gibbs is her problem and Gibbs is his problem but somehow not their problem. She wishes she could have more of the work satisfaction that Tony has. Neither of them wants Rebecca to be an only child. She had gotten pregnant easily (well, unintentionally) the first time, but since then they have had disappointments. She's had three miscarriages over the last two years. She had been convinced that the first one had been her fault, and she had kept herself chained to a desk the other two times, but the end result had been the same. Each miscarriage is a separate pain, and while the first was most shocking, the third was no easier. But this is sadness, their sadness, not a problem. The losses do not push them apart.
And as the sun gets a little brighter, and she feels very comfortable, and very pleased with herself for not interrupting his snores, he surprises her. "You're thinking too loud again."
"I didn't make a sound."
"But I could hear all the little gears going." He makes machine noises.
"You heard your own snoring." She squints up at the windows. "It's almost time to get up."
"Hey," he says hopefully.
"Ducky is across the hall."
"Ducky is frequently across the hall. And I think he knows that we, you know, do it."
She frowns. "But it's noisier in the morning. Or it feels noisier."
He rolls his eyes. "It's just as noisy as you make it. Keep in mind that we've got an aircraft carrier group coming in. You may have to wait two weeks before you get another chance at this."
She considers. "In the shower," she says. "To cover the noise. And only because I cannot listen to you whine for two weeks."
"It takes a proud man to turn down pity sex," he says. "And I am not that man."