This is short, and I know it's been quite a while. I have bits and pieces written, but not much time recently to put them together! But anyway, have a snip of Gibbs for Ziva's birthday.
It's hard for Gibbs to be around DiNozzo these days. The man clearly thinks he's fooling them all with his front of normalcy, but he positively stinks of loss. It's not rocket science, anyway. Ziva's gone; they're all sad.
Gibbs hasn't exactly avoided Tony in the past few months, but the shoulder he's provided has been a stony one. He feels a little guilty about that. Tony's a grown man, and he can figure this out on his own, but it's possible Tony needs him to be a little more of a parent and a little less of a boss right now.
But he's not Tony's parent.
He's not Tim's parent. He's not Abby's parent, and he's sure as hell not Ziva's parent.
But he'll be damned if it hasn't felt like that for years now, and he's doubly damned if he didn't fall right into that role. When Parsons decided to take him down, Gibbs gave a long, hard look at his NCIS career, and it's a fact borne out by his paperwork: he's gotten soft. When Tony and Tim had first called him boss, he'd been Special Agent Mysterious, Hard-Nosed, Infallible, Leroy Jethro the-Second-B-is-for-Bastard Gibbs. By the last time Ziva stood in front of his desk, he'd become Special Agent Substitute Dad, Camp Advisor, We-See-Past-Your-Tortured-Past-and-Hard-Assed-Exte rior Gibbs, and the double B couldn't possibly stand for anything more terrifying than "baby bunnies."
His work persona has melted away at the edges and been replaced by Gibbsy.
He'd seen it, in how hurt his team was when he didn't want them to bat for him when Parsons came snooping around. They'd expected him to want them there.
And he had, because at some point, they'd resculpted him into a suit-jacketed Andy Griffith and he'd let them do it. And now he was paying for it. One of his kids was gone and he felt like he'd been robbed. Again. It's not like he'd expected her to be forever in his life, to sit in the next desk until he retired, to ask him to walk her down the aisle—for real this time—to give him an exhausted smile when he told her good work after birthing her babies—but aw, hell, maybe he had, after all. Another symptom of his weakness: He hadn't even realized how much he'd expected them to be there right up until hekicked the bucket.
He tells himself Tony'll get over it, but his gut calls him on the lie. Tony'll form more scar tissue on his heart. He'll live. But none of them will just get over it. Tony was right a few weeks ago when he said, aching all the way through and so, so exhausted, that it felt like she was dead. He knows she's been in touch with Abby and Ducky, but for the rest of them…not a peep. He watches Tony's hope drain incrementally with every day that passes with no email, no letter, no text message.
"I am not coming back, Gibbs," she had said on the phone, her voice thick, and she'd always been a woman of her word.
He supports her. Of course he supports her. He'll support her to the end of the world (and he's pretty sure that's exactly what's currently going on). But…she chose to be dead to them. At least Kate—
No. He won't do that; it's not fair to either of them.
But now there's that empty desk.
These are the things going through his head as he stands at his workbench the night after Halloween. He doesn't whittle often; he prefers the bigger projects, where he gets to see the pieces come together over time. But tonight he wants small-scale. He wants something small enough for a pocket. Something to be a token. So out comes the knife and a block of wood, and he begins shaving one side down as he mulls over what shape this token should take.
He thinks of how on the phone with him, she spoke of new beginnings, and how she sounded young and weary and mostly like she was trying very hard to be brave.
Carving and fiddling and turning it over in his hands with no direction seems to be enough. The minutes slip by and the lump of wood shrinks and the work dulls his thoughts. And eventually, it's very late and he's leaning over his workbench using a sharp pocketknife tip to dig patterns into the cap of a little wooden acorn.
He doesn't pause to think about the appropriateness of a seed as a symbol of a new beginning, or the potential inappropriateness of the seed being made of wood. He doesn't bother thinking of what she'll do with it. She can stick it in the ground and hope it sprouts a tree for all he cares. That's not really the point. Instead, he rubs it with fine sandpaper, then finer sandpaper, and then with the pads of his fingers until it's silky. He rubs in a beeswax paste to make the wood look alive.
He's satisfied.
It should be in Israel by the twelfth.
It takes him a little while to find the right number, but he does eventually, and he's grateful to not have to go through Vance for this one.
She picks up on the second ring, with no greeting. "Ms. Elbaz," he says.
"Ah, Agent Gibbs. Tell me what favor I'm going to be doing for your team this time."
Gibbs smiles. He'd suspected DiNozzo'd taken full advantage of this connection. "Need an address."
Orli sighs. "I do not have her address. And I shall not hunt her down for you."
"Not hers. You know where Shmiel Pinkhas lives these days?"