Author's note: Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, followed and favorited. I'm so very thankful to all of you and very glad you're enjoying this. It always takes me a while but I make it a point to respond to every review I get from registered users so please don't think I haven't appreciated every single one of you! :).
Again, some flights of fancy with regard to characterization in this chapter, but I think it works. Enjoy!
Chapter 5
In all his travels of the night, Gibbs couldn't remember one instance of feeling too hot or too cold, but the cloaked spirit before him seemed to be radiating frigidity from it's very being and Gibbs shivered in the cold it produced. His nephew's home was now covered in a thin layer of frost and the same blue light Gibbs had awoken to when the first spirit had presented itself to him bathed everything around them in an ethereal light. The effect was unnerving and Gibbs wasn't sure if his shiver had been from the cold, or from the foreboding atmosphere this new apparition had brought with it. Clearing his throat, he addressed the ghost again.
"Are you here to show me the future? The things that will happen if I don't start doing something different with my life?" Along with the cold, the spirit seemed to have brought with it a sadness Gibbs couldn't name and he felt something tighten within his chest. This next guide, this one final apparition he would have to endure, felt pivotal somehow. The previous two spirits had been merry and had shown him things he had no control over, but this spirit was about to show him the future, and one he had no one to blame for, but himself.
The spirit answered his question with a single nod of it's head but remained as silent as the grave.
"Don't you speak?" but the spirit simply stood there and Gibbs got all the answer he needed in an unseen, but icily felt stare. The cloaked figure's face was covered by cloth, but Gibbs could feel its eyes on him all the same. He shuddered and made himself take a step toward his new spirit guide. If the events of the night were indeed real, this was his last chance to learn what it was Leon had meant about the fate of his soul and maybe have a chance to fix it. The visions and hallucinations had gone above and beyond anything he could have ever imagined a drug capable of and he couldn't deny that it was cold he was feeling and that the floor of his nephew's home was as real and as substantial as anything beneath his socked feet. This wasn't a dream and with all the emotions the two previous spirits had stirred up within him (seeing his mother again, taking Shannon into his arms at the Christmas dance, watching Kelly open her gifts on Christmas morning, seeing Palmer play just like his mother, Ellie, and finally his trip to Tony DiNozzo's house and the effect seeing Tiny Tim and his condition had on him) Gibbs finally believed.
"Alright, here's the deal. I'm not too keen about following some hooded unknown bogey into the future and I know I'm not going to like what you have to show me tonight, but I'll do it. I'll go with you because this might be my only chance to change what's to come, so show me what to do and I'll do it."
The spirit, still as silent as the empty apartment around them, lifted a hand and pointed one skeletal finger to its left before sweeping itself around to begin walking in the direction it had indicated. Gibbs followed behind and the shadow the ghost produced in the blue light seemed to swallow him up and carry him away. They landed in the lunchroom of the NCIS building and Gibbs glanced around as he blinked into suddenly bright light. Everything but a group of men huddled around one table having lunch was out of focus and distorted by a heavy mist, some effect, Gibbs figured, of visiting the future and he watched his guide point a finger to the men sitting at the table. Gibbs approached and listened in on their conversation.
"Come on Dorney! Give us all the details!" One of the men prodded eagerly, leaning forward across his lunch. Gibbs didn't recognize the man who spoke, but he did recognize the man who was being addressed. Ned Dorneget was one of his own agents though Gibbs had never given him the time of day.
"You guys know I can't tell you anything about an ongoing investigation!" Dorneget beseeched his captive audience without much conviction and Gibbs had to hold his tongue, remembering this was just a glimpse into the future and that the men sitting at the table could neither see nor hear him.
"What the heck, Dorney! We all work for NCIS. There's no one here who's going to go blabbing that you told us some of the juicy details!" Another piped in to a rousing chorus of 'Yeah, come on Dorneget!'
"I'll tell you a little, but I'm not going to give you any names or important details." The men sitting at the table all leaned in further as did Gibbs, eager to discover what about this gathering was pertinent to him.
"You guys remember a few Christmas' back when those soldiers got slaughtered in Pakistan?" The table nodded. "Well the families of those soldiers were pretty pissed and we think one of them went postal and killed him." There was a collective intake of breath and Dorneget went on. "Shot him right in the head. You should have seen the mess. I hear they're still scraping brain matter off his basement floor."
"You sure it wasn't suicide?" Another man asked conspiratorially.
"No, the forensic team definitely ruled that out." Dorneget replied.
"Well that's not that I heard," the first man who had spoken interrupted and the rest of the table turned their heads in his direction.
"Peterson, you idiot, Dorney's point on the investigation. I'm gonna believe what he tells us over anything you heard from the broom squad."
Peterson scowled at the dissent but kept talking. "That's not what I mean. I heard a different rumor about why he died."
"And what's that?" Someone snorted; Petersen apparently not the most trustworthy of sources.
"I heard it was a professional hit," Half the men at the table grunted in disbelief. "What?! You don't believe me?" Petersen countered outraged. "You all know the kind of guy he was. Shady, arrogant, and he double crossed the wrong people."
"No one was ever able to prove he ever did anything illegal," Dorneget cut in and Gibbs looked over at the guy. The conversation was awakening something at his center but there wasn't enough there to make a decision about who this discussion was about. But Dorneget stayed true to his promise and gave away no names.
"Are they even going to have a funeral for him?" One of the table dwellers asked. "I mean, who'd even go?"
"What I want to know is what's going to happen to all that blood money of his? He's probably got it stashed in a mattress somewhere in his house. Guy was a miser! Did you hear what he paid his people?" Said another and the table fell into a quiet debate on where the subject of their conversation could have possibly hidden their fortune and the pros and cons of setting up a search party to go and loot the house of the poor wretched soul they were discussing.
The cloaked spirit of Christmas Yet to Come came up to Gibbs' elbow and he turned towards the specter with a frown. "The person they're talking about, that could be me, couldn't it?" But the spirit remained impassive and unmoving. "Come on, there has to be someone out there who was effected by this man's death. Can you show me them?" The spirit pointed out into the unfocused mist about them and Gibbs cast one last sidelong glance back at the men who were still plotting their robbery before following the ghost out into the fog. Like before, Gibbs was swallowed up into the ghost's shadow and the pair reappeared in the middle of a home Gibbs had never seen before.
A woman stood before a kitchen island rolling dough; her face, hands and front completely covered in flour. The room was festive with lighted snowflakes in the windows, garlands along the tops of the upper cabinets and the smell of baking cookies permeating the air. A door opened behind the baker and the woman remained oblivious, continuing to roll out her dough even as a soldier stepped stealthily into the room and up behind her. He was a Corporal, Gibbs could tell by his uniform, and he leaned over to press a kiss to the flour covered woman's cheek. She turned her head sharply, saw who it was, and actually squealed. The solider caught the woman in his arms, flour and all, and lifted her from her feet.
"Oh Davey! You're home!" The woman breathed, hugging the Corporal even more tightly to her, if that was possible.
"Merry Christmas, Mom," the young man said and set his mother back on her feet.
"How is this possible?" She asked with tears sparking in her eyes.
"They shut down my mission for a few days because of a death at headquarters. The whole place is in an uproar so I got my leave approved and there was only one place I wanted to be," the solider explained, hugging his mother again.
"I hope it wasn't anyone you knew, darling," the woman said sympathetically, trying to wipe away some of the flour on her son's shirt front as they separated from their embrace.
"No, nothing like that. In fact, he was actually the one responsible for those guys that died a few Christmas' ago." The solider said sadly and his mother patted his arm.
"Justice be done," she said simply and her son nodded his agreement.
"Alright, spirit, enough," Gibbs started, turning toward his silent guide as the pair they observed started discussing Christmas cookies. "There has to be someone who's 'sad' about today. Take me there?" They moved forward again and this time guide and traveler arrived out of thin air in front of the home his assistant, Tony DiNozzo. The Polish bakery beneath the apartment was boarded up and a large red FOR SALE sign sat tucked into one dusty corner of a window, but that was not the sight that caught Gibbs' eye almost immediately. What he saw first was the bent and shaking form of his assistant, Tony, sitting on a bench one shop down from his house.
DiNozzo had his head in his hands and was visibly crying. Gibbs couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen a grown man cry and turned to the spirit for some kind of explanation as to why it had brought him here to witness this when there was no way the tears DiNozzo shed were for him, remembering too late that this particular ghost could not (or would not) speak to him. The spirit pointed instead and he looked over in the direction the skeletal finger indicated and watched as Tony's wife Ziva exited their building, pulling a winter coat on against the chill, and walked over to her husband.
"Tony," she said cautiously so as not to startle the man and Gibbs moved in closer to listen to the exchange, dreading what he would overhear, knowing deep down what it was he would learn.
DiNozzo looked up as his wife approached, unabashed face streaked with tears as he sighed. "Busted."
"I saw you walking towards the house but you didn't come up. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." Ziva sat herself on the bench beside her husband and wrapped a hand around one of his own, squeezing slightly. "You were gone a long time today."
"I'm sorry Ziva, I guess it all hit me a little harder than I thought it would." Tony forced out then hung his head again, shoulders shaking with the force of his grief. "It's not fair," he whispered last and Ziva enveloped the man in her arms.
Gibbs, knowing he'd get no answer, rounded on the spirit anyways. "He's dead, isn't he, Tony's son, Tiny Tim?" The spirit surprised him with a nod and Gibbs made himself turn back to the couple sitting on the bench.
"You should have seen his little hill today, Ziva," Tony was saying, drying his face with the back of his glove. "Since it's been such a mild winter this year the grass is actually still green, and someone left a Christmas wreath for him. I tried to find out who but Dan didn't have any idea."
"Dan the groundskeeper?" Ziva asked and Tony nodded.
"We kind of hit it off since I've been there so often lately. He has a son, too so I think he kind of gets what we're going through."
"We will make it through this Christmas, Tony." Ziva said firmly, cupping her husband's cheek to turn his freshly dampened face her way. "Just like Tim would have wanted us to," she finished, making her husband hold her gaze and Tony captured his wife's hand in his own and kissed her.
"I just miss him so much," he whispered when they finished, keeping their foreheads connected and closing his eyes against another wave of emotion that was strong enough to set his shoulders to shaking again. Gibbs had to look away.
"There has to be something someone can do," he said, not sure who the words were really directed at. The ghost of Christmas Yet to Come came up once more beside him, indicating it was time to move on, but Gibbs stood firmly rooted in place for a moment more. It was time to put an end to all of this once and for all.
"I want to know who that man at NCIS was; the one who died. Will you take me there next?" He asked, expecting only silence and the ghost obliged with a pointed finger into the confused swirling mist that obscured everything around them but for the grieving couple holding each other on the bench. Gibbs followed after the spirit one final time and was transported to a familiar graveyard. Stomach bottoming out and heart skittering away madly in his chest, Gibbs spied the gravestones of his long lost wife and daughter. But there was a new addition to the family plot and it was at this stone the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come pointed to next. Gibbs turned back to his guide, completely unwilling to accept what he was seeing though knowing the truth deep down all along.
"No," he pleaded, nearly clutching at the spirit's grey robes, turning his back on the grave that was utterly forgotten and overrun with dead weeds. "The whole point of this was to give me a chance, right? So what good is it for me to go over there and read that headstone?" But the spirit before him stood tall and imposing and pointed again in the direction of the grave, hands more claw-like than Gibbs remembered. He took a few steps forward that stopped to turn again.
"If I wake up tomorrow and make this right, there's a chance Tiny Tim will live and that I can fix all this, right?" Nothing. "Damn it, can't you tell me anything?" But the tall grey specter merely continued to point, unmoving and unsympathetic to the man nearly trembling before him. Choking on some foreign emotion he didn't understand, Gibbs made himself turn again and fall to his knees in the snow before the ice encased gravestone in front of him. He reached out a trembling hand, and brushed against the frigid stone with bare fingers.
Leroy Jethro Gibbs, 1958 to 2014
No words of remembrance, no place of honor in a military cemetery, just a forlorn and forgotten headstone lost amongst the hills of a DC graveyard.
Gibbs pulled his outstretched hand back in and balled it into a fist, angry at no one else but himself and the future he alone had created. Faces flashed through is mind: Ellie, Tony, Tiny Tim, Palmer, Shannon, Kelly... he'd betrayed them all because he'd let his heart go black, because he'd let his grief blind him to the people, hell the world, that was around him and still filled with love and hope and joy and Christmas, even though he no longer kept a place open in his own heart to receive any of it. He'd been a fool and now he had been shown the fruits of those labors and he didn't even know if he could change it. But the strange part about all of it was, it wasn't so much the lonely gravestone that had him so upset, it was thoughts of Tiny Tim's death, his assistant's heartache, and his own nephew's ostracisation that worried his mind because he'd been the cause of all of it...
Gibbs pulled himself up from the snow and walked back over to where the spirit of Christmas Yet to Come still stood.
"You showed me all of this so I can change it, right? Otherwise what's the point?"
The spirit stood as silent and as still as the graves around them.
"Damn it, why won't you speak to me?!"
As if in answer, the spirit began to raise it's arms, cloak falling back to reveal decaying grey skin as it reached for its hooded face. Gibbs took a step back without thinking, terrified he'd done something wrong and that this specter of death was about to reveal its face and pluck him from the world forever.
"Stop!" Gibbs yelled. "I get what you were all trying to show me, alright? I know what it is I have to do, what I want to do to fix all this! You just have to give me a chance to change it. And I will! I'll live in the past, the present and the future, and honor my family instead of disgracing them," but the spirit's clawed hands continued to reach for its hood and Gibbs cowered. He actually coward.
"Please!" he begged one final time, just as spirit's mask fell away.
The dead, pallid and unseeing face of Ari Haswari, the terrorist he'd sent troops into Pakistan that morning to collect, stared out of rotting eye sockets and a face that seemed to decay right before Gibbs' eyes. He stumbled backwards then, a cry cutting through the still air of the graveyard, but he slipped in the icy snow in his haste to escape and his head connected heavily with a gravestone behind him.
And as the spirit of Christmas Yet to Come hovered above him, Leroy Jethro Gibbs knew no more.
A/N: Don't forget to leave me a little note to tell me what you think so far! I've put a lot of different elements from all the Christmas Carol movies out there as well as the original Dickens story. Hope you like and see you next chapter for the finale! :)