Chapter Seven
Ducky
Abby whirled about on the stool and barely managed to keep from lashing out at "Ducky, you scared me out of a year's growth!" She saw her own pale expression and wide eyes reflected in the round lenses of his glasses. Not the least reason for her fright was that she was doing something she most certainly should not be.
"I do apologize. You may have some of mine. At my age, I've little use for it."
She had to smile, the man always had that effect upon her. "Where'd you learn to sneak about like that?"
"It was not my intention to sneak. I did call to you several times, but you were engrossed in your work." Then his tone changed to his digression voice. "I suppose I've always been quiet. I used to think I would be quite good at Covert operations. I had visions in my youth of being a suave Secret Agent."
"I can see it now," she said with an affectionate grin. "'Ducky' Bond, licensed to kill and then explain how they died."
"Well, we Scots do have a tradition to uphold." Though Bond had been played by actors of several nations, including an Irishman, for Ducky the only true Bond was a Scotsman.
"You'd have made a good Secret Agent. I can see you now - but I think I'd like you with a bit longer hair."
"I could often move about invisibly, as it were," he agreed. "Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago. Or is it two?"
She turned off the radio. "I sense a story coming on."
"Something with masks, I think. Remind me to tell you of it someday." He looked at the screen beyond her. "What have we here?"
x
She glanced back. The search was still proceeding at blurring speed. "I lifted a clean print from a crime scene." She told him the story, feeling she had to relate it to someone who was not a boss, just a friend. She ended with the pain of the hangups. "I thought I'd have something by now, but there are no parameters to narrow the search. Can there really be so many sexual perverts in one country?"
"Sadly, my dear, the answer seems to be yes."
She kept staring at the screen, but couldn't keep from admitting "I'm not supposed to be doing this."
"Ah," was as judgmental as he got.
"I can't help myself. I can't sit by and do nothing. Why can't I stop?"
"It's a terrible thing when your sister is in trouble, you have the power to help and they say you cannot."
She turned back. "She's not my sister."
"Not here…" he touched her forehead with one gentle finger. "But here." He tapped above her heart. "How long have you known her?"
"I started baby-sitting her after school and weekends, when her parents were trying to get their grocery store off the ground. She was seven and I was eleven. I'd be doing my homework and all she wanted to do was play and have me read comic books to her." She smiled at the fond memory, admitting that "I read a lot of comic books."
"Four years between you, a wide gap when you're seven and eleven, a breath when you're twenty two and twenty six."
"Now she teaches kids. Kindergarten. We've been best buds since forever." She tried to keep her pain out of her tone, but it was hard. "Now she won't even talk to me."
"She will."
"I wish I could be sure. I tried my best to help her. I even defied Gibbs. I'm defying him even now," she admitted, pointing to the flashing images upon the screen.
"She's your sister. You protected and cared for her for all those years, kept her safe, and at some point it stopped being a job." His eyes met hers, and she was struck again by the wisdom she saw in them. "And now she's hurt, in trouble, and all those feelings again come into play. You are her big sister, and you will always care for her."
"It's not just when we were kids," she agreed, the heartache easing as she spoke to this man. "Even after I moved up North we still keep in touch. Sometimes - lots of times - she came to me for advice even before she'd go to her parents." She leaned back in the seat. "I remember once she asked my advice about choosing between two boys."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her the guy with the stud in his tongue would probably be a lousy kisser, but for licking he'd be an experience she wouldn't believe."
He nodded, carefully schooling his expression. "Sage advice, and not likely the kind she might get from her parents." She smiled. "The point is that there is a bond between you that time and distance will never break."
Her smile turned to a depressed sigh. "She's mad at me now. Thinks I betrayed her, turned my back on her when I had to give over everything to the Virginia Troopers."
"Is this your first fight?"
Abby laughed, but it was bitter. "God, no."
"And when you're both old and gray, like me, you'll still feel the same bond."
She looked up at him, and this time her smile was more genuine, more hopeful. "Thank you, Ducky."
He patted her shoulder. "Think nothing of it, Abi-girl."
x
He was the one person who could use her full name, much as she disliked it, without arousing her ire, because he didn't use it in full either. He turned and started out of the Lab, but before he could get all the way out; "Ducky?" she called to him impulsively, not allowing herself to hold back.
Almost to the sliding glass doors, he turned back. "Yes?"
She stood up, too tense to remain seated, too driven by emotion to keep silent and determined to say what was on her mind before she lost her nerve.
"Can I ask you something? And have you forget I ever asked you?"
He thought about the strange request for a moment. "Yes."
She stepped up to him. "What did I do wrong?" she asked plaintively.
He waited expectantly for a moment. "It might help if I knew what we were talking about."
"Tim. Tim and me." She bit her lip. "And Tim and Ziva."
"Ah. You two had something of a relationship before he was reassigned from Norfolk to Washington."
"Even when he got here permanently, we …."
"Yes, I understand it went through some interesting developments." She didn't say anything. She couldn't.
"But then it cooled," she admitted.
"What happened?"
"McGee will say it was because of commitment issues, that he wanted to commit to a steady relationship and I didn't."
"Ah. And why do you think he would say these things?"
Her smile was heavily tinged with sadness. "Because they're true."
x
He didn't say anything in turn, but waited her out. "He and I got started so well. It was a good relationship, pretty hot at times. Sometimes maybe a bit too hot?" She added with fond recollection. "But I wasn't ready to take it to the next level, so things cooled down, you know?"
"I'd say your relationship matured rather than cooled," he told her. "It was no longer based upon animal magnetism nor on lust but upon something deeper. You learned how to deal with your feelings in a workplace situation, and balance hot animal passion with genuine affection."
"But part of me misses the passion. I want those times back."
"They do not come back, Abby, at least not in the same way. Whatever your future relationship with Timothy is to be, it's going to be based upon the evolution in your relationship that has come over the past two years. The feelings you had for him initially were flavored with the novelty, and with unique spices.
"Now you've worked together closely for several years. I can see the affection between you, even if neither of you do. But it is the affection and love that come from working beside one another for several years. I'd say it's like two married folk, even if you never do get him into your coffin again."
This time her smile was tinged with a coloring blush. "You heard about that, huh?"
"Rather hard not to, the poor boy was shaking for a week. When he and Tony investigated that crematorium, I heard he did not have an easy time of it."
"I'd told him it was a box bed, and he believed me. I think at the time he wouldn't have cared what we were on. Maybe I should have put the lights on, not have him find out about it from Gibbs." But then her smile vanished, and she sighed.
"But I have these feelings, you know? For a long time. I wanted … that is, I tried to tell him … how I feel. But he just … never seemed to get it. And now I'm back …." She couldn't finish.
"And he is in a relationship with Ziva."
"It's making me crazy, and I can't help it! I can't stop thinking that …." She couldn't bring herself to admit what she was thinking. He put his arm about her shoulders, turning her about toward her lab.
"Abby, putting aside for the moment the dubious wisdom of pursuing a relationship in the workplace, something Jethro can give you a great deal of perspective on, I have a very accurate scale in my morgue."
"Huh?" She was completely lost.
"On that scale I can give you the exact weight of any organ in the body, and there are many other instruments to give all sorts of other information. But you cannot weigh or measure feelings," he pointed to one of her instruments, "nor subject them to a mass spectrometer.
"They simply are."
x
She thought about it. "So what you're saying is …"
"I'm not 'saying' anything, Abi-girl. I don't even remember what we were talking about." Kissing her lightly on the side of her head, he turned and left.
She thought of calling him back, but knew there was no point. In his grandfatherly way, he had told her everything he was going to.
xxx
Abby sat staring at the flickering images on the right side of the fingerprint computer screen, lost in the blur. On another machine was the continuing analysis of a DNA sample, this one mercifully invisible, for it would have to run for about eighteen hours to give a reading, and only two thirds of that time had elapsed. Until then, there was nothing she could do. Unable to endure the silence any longer, she reached for her radio.
"That had better not be from Virginia!" a sharp voice boomed behind her. She looked over her shoulder and had to swallow her heart, seeing Leroy Gibbs approaching like a looming thunderhead, Tony DiNozzo hanging back a pace or two, seemingly wanting to keep out of the fallout.
Biting the bullet, she turned and hopped off the stool, deciding the only way to play it was to face up to him. "It is."
x
He couldn't believe it. He wanted to help her so badly, yet she insisted upon making it impossible.
"Abby," his face colored in frustration, "what's gotten into you? Didn't I order you to stop this? Didn't the Director talk to you this morning?" With this tone, there was no point in answering.
"I can't let this drop, Gibbs. Damn it, she's my s–." She managed to bite it back in time. "She's my friend. I'd do the same for you." She looked past him to DiNozzo. "I have done it for you!"
Gibbs' face colored more; she had never seen him so angry. "What the Hell is wrong with you? You are bringing Insubordination to a whole new level. I wanted to believe that your problem was with the caffeine addiction, that a month away from work would help, but ever since you're back your behavior, your judgment, are–" He forcibly bit back the words. When he could speak again, he couldn't contain the pain. He'd hoped a month away would help her; now he was worried that her problem was deeper than he'd realized. He cared for her like a daughter, but he couldn't keep seeing her like this.
"Abby, I didn't want to do this – I thought it could be avoided – but you leave me no choice. I don't want to lose you, but if you can't show valid jurisdiction right now to justify your actions I'm going to have to suspend you pending an Official Psychological Review to determine your fitness to remain on duty. These bouts of flagrant insubordination seem to be evidence of a deeper problem. Now I don't want to do this, but if it's the only way for you to get the help you seem to need, then that's how we'll do it."
She glanced away from his riveting eyes to the flashing fingerprint scanner that offered no help, and to the equally uncooperative Electrophoresis machine which was analyzing a small hair sample.
"Well?" he demanded, the last of his patience gone. He wanted her to succeed, or to get the help she needed, but she wasn't helping herself either way. "Where's your Jurisdiction?" She looked down, unable to meet his eyes. The seconds drew out. He gave her them, and more. Still she would not look at him.
"Okay." He acceded to the inevitable. "Pack your trash. You're suspended."
x
He turned and stalked away, signaling DiNozzo to follow. She saw the pain in the younger Agent as he'd had to watch, unable to interfere, as a fellow Agent's career self-destructed before his eyes. He turned, following Gibbs to the door. She looked at the fingerprint computer, at the DNA Analyzer, turned and watched them go through the sliding glass door.
"The rapist's a Marine!"
Gibbs stopped so suddenly DiNozzo almost slammed into him. "Okay, show me." Was there actually a tone of relief in his voice, despite her outrageous claim?
"Get the others down here, and I'll give you everything I have."
Gibbs nodded to DiNozzo, who pulled out his cell phone.