Chapter 212: Gibbs and Penny
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| Retribution and Determination |
Privately, in his own internal monologues, Ducky considers
Jethro to be a force of nature. He's retribution and determination made flesh
and set on the Earth to go, single-mindedly, after anything that takes his
fancy.
Likewise, Penny is a force to be reckoned with, as well.
Intellect and determination set loose to break molds and overcome expectations.
What precisely it says about Ducky that he prefers the
company of people who are almost larger than life and capable of near
super-human feats of determination is something he has not spent much time
mulling over.
What he does know, is he's driving a car with Mohammed and
the Mountain, and he can feel by the flavor of the silence that it's time for
the confrontation, and he's completely unsure of how this is going to go.
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| Determination and Intellect |
But he's also sure that when you've got two massive, rock
hard cliffs of personalities about to rub up against each other, it's an
awfully good idea not to get between them if you don't want to be ground into a
pulp.
So, he says, in a somewhat conversational tone, mostly as a
reminder that there are people who would really appreciate it if both Penny and
Jethro were to get along well. "Timothy and Abigail love both of you, and
the three of us are, for all practical purposes, the only grandparents Kelly
has."
And though he added nothing else, nor did he preface that
comment with anything to give it any context, neither Penny nor Jethro seemed
to have any issue figuring out why he said it.
Penny glanced at Ducky, nodded to him, then half turned in
her seat so she could see Jethro more easily. "Have at it, Jethro, I know
you're angry."
Jethro's quiet. He doesn't want to talk. He hates talking
about stuff like this. He just wants to… glower, that's probably the right
word.
Because when it comes down to it, Ducky's right. He can see
it. Tim and Abby don't blame Penny. So as angry as he is, and as much as he'd
like to kick someone, she's not the person who needs to be kicked.
And yeah, he doesn't love getting slapped upside the head,
but it was similar enough to Mike that it got the part of his brain that actually
thinks back online and he could see it was exactly what he needed.
Tough love is his job, and he blew it.
He's the guy who's supposed to be the rock. He's the one who
Tim turns to when he needs someone calm and in charge and able to keep the fear
away long enough to function, and he lost it.
So, yeah, he's angry. At himself for panicking. At Penny for
not protecting Tim better. At John for being John. At God, because damnit
hasn't he gone through enough danger with his girls? He's got to live with Ziva
in the line of fire every single day. Couldn't just this one thing be easy and
simple? Is it too much to ask to have at least one of his girls safe and secure
and her baby healthy? Really, God is that too fucking much? And all
of it together in less than a week, it's just too damn much.
"You didn't protect him," he says it quietly,
because in the car, while Ducky's driving isn't the place to yell.
"I know." And that was all Penny said.
"You know? That's it?" What's worse than kicking
something when it's not what you want to kick? Seeing it just roll over and lay
there, no fight at all.
"What else is there? I failed him. His mom failed him.
His dad…" she doesn't finish that thought. "He was one of the
sweetest kids I've ever met, and my favorite of the grandkids, the one I was
most involved with, and I still failed him. So, you going to yell at me about
it? Tell me I should have paid more attention? Gotten him out of there sooner?
Done a better job raising John? Go ahead, not like I haven't said it to myself
already. Might make both of us feel better."
Gibbs closes his eyes and curses very quietly. Because, no
it won't make either of them feel better, not really, because she's not the
target he wants or needs for this. So instead of yelling he asks, "When
did it start?"
"I think when he was six."
"Six? How do you not notice something like that
happening to a six-year-old?"
"Because I lived three thousand miles away and it turns
out 'Dad took me sailing, and I hate it!' said during the five minutes we'd
talk on the phone each week when he was little actually meant 'Dad dragged me
onto a boat for ten hours, I spent the whole time throwing up, and then he did
it again every Saturday for the next month trying to get me to like sailing.'
No one said anything like that until February, and then it was thirty-one years
too late."
"Did you ever live near them?"
"Yes. The year Tim was born, when he was three and
four, and the year he was eight. They were out of Annapolis those years. They
spent a lot of time out of California, moving from Alameda to San Fran and back
again, two years out of Pearl, and a year out of Brisbane when Tim was a baby
and John was working on a joint project with the Australian Navy. And he lived
with me the summer before college began, but for most of his life we'd visit
during winter and summer holidays, talk on the phone, write letters, and email
once that became an option.
"And as you know, if something unpleasant is going on
in his life, he doesn't talk about it. And that's not something he picked up
recently. That's been true since he was little. And maybe it's because no one
ever let him complain and people like me would say things like, 'Honey, it's
okay, give sailing another try, I'm sure you'll like it if you try again,' not
knowing what was really going on."
Gibbs grits his teeth, because that's right and true, and he
knows he did it with Kelly when he thought she was being overly sensitive about
something, and still he just wants to hit something.
"When did they stop talking?"
"First time was after Tim turned down Annapolis."
"Tim got into Annapolis?" Gibbs tries to wrap his
mind around that. Not that he wasn't smart enough for it, and he's sure Tim had
the grades, but… Tim's not a sailor, he's not a solider, and he can't think of
anyone who would have been more miserable dropped into the Naval Academy than
Tim would have been.
"Yeah. Would have been the fourth McGee in a row there.
His spot had pretty much been reserved since the day he was born. All he had to
do was get the grades, and he was in. He was something like twelfth in his
class of fifteen hundred. So, he had the grades.
"John made him apply. I know he didn't want to go. I
know he intentionally bombed the interview and wrote a terrible essay for the
application. But a 3.97 GPA, 1560 SATs, and three previous generations of McGees
meant that he was in.
"He'd also applied to half a dozen other schools with
great bio tech/medical engineering programs. Got into all of them. I'd been a
professor at John Hopkins so he got a good deal there, too. Got a good enough
deal that John's if-you-don't-do-Annapolis-we-won't-pay-for-your-schooling,-and-we've-got-enough-money-you-won't-qualify-for-financial-aid
wasn't able to scare him into submission.
"So he got in, and then apparently he showed John his
acceptance letter and ripped it up right in front of him. And once the fight
was over, they didn't speak again until Tim's grandfather died, two years
later.
"The second time was right after he got on your team.
He was really excited about it. Less than a year at NCIS and a place on the
best team. I guess that's when John had to come to terms with the fact that Tim
really wasn't ever going to enlist. I think John was gearing up for a huge
fight, but Tim just hung up on him and didn't call back for seven years."
"And that call didn't go well."
"Nope."
"But John and Sarah are fine?" Which is something
Gibbs doesn't get at all. Tim mentioned it, but he doesn't understand how that
could be true.
"Yeah. He never had any expectations for Sarah. Never
expected Sarah in the first place. Tori miscarried several times after Tim, and
they'd hit the point where they were never expecting to have another child. And
she's just as smart as he is, maybe not at as sweet, but smart, sassy, funny.
She's a lovely girl… but you've met her, right?"
"Few times."
"John's enough of a chauvinist that the idea that the
fourth McGee at Annapolis could be a girl never crossed his mind. Sarah's not
tied to his idea family pride or carrying on the name or however he's got that…
crap… labeled, so for her whole life, she's gotten to be brilliant and pretty
and the apple of her daddy's eye, because anything she's done has been more
than good enough for him."
"And nothing Tim did was?"
"No. That's not true. Though I'm sure that's how it
felt to Tim. Anything that distracted away from the goal of being the third
Admiral McGee was never going to be good enough. Anything that moved him toward
that goal was fine. Math camp, science fair awards, anything like that was
good. Time spent writing when he could have been studying something else, that
wasn't. Wrestling was good. Scouting was good. Role playing wasn't. Reading was
fine, as long as it was properly 'male' type things, mysteries were fine, Tom
Clancy was even better, fantasy, not so much so, but even with that, if it
glorified warrior culture, then it was good.
"I talked to John a few weeks ago, and he had this sort
of hyper-masculine ideal of who Tim was supposed to be, and anything in line
with that was encouraged, but there isn't a whole lot of Tim in line with that.
And that was always where the friction came in. He got John to play D&D
with him once, rolled up characters, and of course John's playing this huge
fighter with lots of muscles and a sword bigger than I am, but Tim rolled up a
wizard, and at first level those guys are more or less useless. You've got to
keep them safe, carry them around for a while, and eventually they can wipe the
board clean with a spell, but you've got to keep them alive long enough to let
them get there. Anyway, John had been hoping that he'd be able to run that like
a lesson in combat tactics, and instead it ended up being a massive lecture
about strength and power and how men are supposed to act and both of them had
an awful time and never played again.
"What John didn't know, and Tim wasn't able to express
because he was ten, is that a fighter is a tank, they wade into battle and take
out whatever's nearby, relying on force to kill and heavy armor to protect
them. A magic user is artillery, raining fire down from a sheltered location.
Put both together and you're in better shape than you'd be with two fighters.
And if either of them could have figured that out, they could have had a pretty
good time, but they couldn't. And then because they couldn't, John poisoned
it."
Gibbs thinks about that, realizes that somewhere along the
line Penny must have played with Tim, and the something else hits. He latches
onto 'anything that distracted away from the goal of being the third Admiral
McGee' and mixes that with the few specifics he's got from Tim from what John
used to say to him. "He was terrified Tim was gay, wasn't he?"
Penny shrugs. "He was terrified Tim was feminine. Come
on, Jethro, you've been around long enough you know gay/straight isn't how it
works. Not in the Navy, probably not in the Marines. No one cares if you like
boys or girls as long as you 'act like a man.' A mouth's a mouth and it doesn't
matter who's mouth it is as long as it's not yours, right?"
Gibbs blanched at that. He'd never, ever expected Penny to
be that frank. But she's also right. That's always how it played when he was
in. You were only "gay" if you were the one doing the sucking/getting
fucked.
"Yeah."
"So, no, I don't think he was ever afraid that Tim
liked boys. It's always been blatantly obvious that he doesn't. He fell in love
with his first girl when he was three. So, no, not gay. It was entirely about
him not being John's idea of a man. Tim walking around in a kilt and eyeliner
with his pregnant wife is vastly scarier to John than him sleeping with a new
man each week, as long as Tim's the top and he's wearing a uniform when he
heads home."
Gibbs doesn't quite know what to do with that. Because he
knows that he feels, well, felt, the same way, granted a much milder version of
it, but it's definitely there. Male, female, gay, straight, somewhere in
between, none of that mattered as long as you weren't 'girly.'
Or as Ziva put it, "I am not good with the crying and
the women."
It's not as strong as it used to be, but yeah, that's
something that's true about him, and something that used to irk him about Tim
and Jimmy.
First time he saw Tim wear the kilt to one of their family
gatherings he just sort of sighed. Same thing with Jimmy being a bridesmaid.
There are just some things men don't do, wearing skirts and being a bridesmaid
are two of them. And they should know that, but they don't seem to, and it's
not bad or anything that makes him angry, it's just… kind of weird.
But his identity and hopes and dreams aren't tied into any
idea of how Tim or Jimmy are supposed to act. At least, not in that regards.
It's tied to them being good husbands and fathers, but that's something he
doesn't worry about when it comes to them. So he can sigh, shrug, catch Tony or
Fornell's eye and flash a quick, What the hell? look across the room
and be done with it.
They're sitting in his driveway, probably have been for a
while, but he's finally just noticing it. So he grunts an absent-minded goodbye
to Ducky and Penny, thinking about how he would have handled a sensitive little
boy, not like John did, certainly, but whether he could have been properly
supportive.
He walks into his house, realizing no one said anything
about if Abby will be able to have other babies after this, and that suddenly
he has no idea if he'll ever get to find out how he'd handle a gentle little
boy.
And suddenly he's wishing, praying, that he'll get the
chance to find out, because he's bound and determined that Tim's son will have
men around him that love him no matter who he chooses to be.
He can't fix or change what happened with Tim and John, but
he can be a the tough, old, gruff Marine who loves Tim's boy-and the image of
that child, should he ever exist, is suddenly achingly clear in Gibbs' mind-the
way Tim should have been loved.
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| "Sean James McGee" |
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