Shards To A Whole: Chapter 274

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 274: Out Of His Depths

“So, what are we walking into?” Jimmy asks Tim as he gets out of the shower.

Tim’s already sitting on the bench in front of the lockers, putting his socks on.

“Not certain. She and Tony are fighting.”

“What?” Jimmy wasn’t expecting that, case crap troubling both of them, sure. But that? Nope. Of course, he’s also been out of the loop this last week.

Hard case and Team Leader means Tim hasn’t actually talked to Jimmy about, much of anything, really, since, God, Monday probably. Hard case means no getting together for lunch and gossip. Or lunch and real conversation, or, hell, a lot of the time, hard case means just no lunch.

“You know what happened at the warehouse?” Tim asks. They hadn’t talked about it yet, and since they all survived, Ducky and Jimmy didn’t get called in, but he’s not sure what the scuttlebutt on it is.

“You all almost got blown up?”

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it. Draga trips the bomb. Gibbs yells at Ziva and I to run. We’re at the doorway, almost outside the building. I book off, find the biggest, most solid building and get my ass behind it. Ziva runs into the building, toward the bomb, to Tony.”

“Ohhh…” Jimmy’s wincing. Tim can see that’s the fear of the person you love most in danger. That’s his husband sense kicking in, and he’s getting pissed at Ziva on Tony’s behalf.

Tim nods, he felt it, too. But, that’s not the whole story.

“It gets better. According to her, he handled it in a mature and rational way by screaming at her and telling her that if she ever disobeyed a direct order from him or Gibbs again, he’d fire her.”

Jimmy winces again, and Tim nods at that, too. Because while they are both sympathetic to not wanting your love in danger, they’re also both aware that while there may be women who appreciate caveman-style marital dictates, none of them married one. “He’s so fucked.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, still nodding.

“He told Ziva he’d fire her? What the hell was he thinking?”

“Well, he was home with a concussion, so maybe he wasn’t?”

“Youch. Wait, if you know this, when was that?”

“Thursday/Friday sometime. She was just steaming at her desk, so we broke off to talk, make sure she could work.”

“If she’s still that pissed, he probably made it worse.”

“Yeah.”

Jimmy stares at Tim for another second. He’s got an idea that if Ziva is still pissed about this, and if Tony did make it worse, it’s extremely unlikely they’re just chatting with Ziva today. “We’re not going to get to both of you, are we?”

Tim shakes his head. And really, right now, he’s not feeling too much need to get to him today. The desire to beat the living shit out of something been well-sated at this point. He’s not okay, but he’s not walking wounded, either, and that’ll all he needs for today. “Not today. Mine’ll hold.”

“Really?” Jimmy looks concerned for Tim, too. Yeah, he’s seeming better since they got done, but, he can feel there’s still some edge there.

“Really. Nothing that needs to be dealt with right now.”

“Your parents?”

Tim shakes his head. “Nah. It’s the job and this case. Got the last piece of the puzzle and it’s complete shit.”

“Tell me?”

“Yeah, but I need to be the one who tells Tony and Ziva, and Draga may not ever get this.”

“Okay.” Jimmy gets that’s Tim trusting him to keep his mouth shut.

“Ender was still an active CIA Agent.”

Jimmy looks like he got punched in the stomach, hard. “Oh, God, Tim.”

“Yeah.” He stops for a second, but knows part of owning it is saying it. “I’ve killed two undercover cops.”

“You… okay? God that sounds dumb. You’re not; I can see that. You…” Jimmy’s not even sure what question he’s trying to ask.

“I’ll be okay. I know it was the right decision this time. I do. But, yeah, I’ve had better days. Getting out of my head was good. It was really good. Probably gonna write when I get home.”

Jimmy nods. He knows that’s how Tim gets back into his head, but in a safe way. Sounds like a very good plan to him. “Don’t think we’re getting home anytime soon.”

“Not given how pissed she was. I mean, she was pissed on Friday, but was doing better when we closed the case, and now… Gibbs tells me he’s been talking to Tony, and that ‘I don’t need to know unless they tell me’ what about.”

“Ohhh…” Jimmy comes up short. “Ummm… Was Gibbs giving him marriage advice?”

“Uh. I hope not. When we got home from the bomb, he didn’t want me to tell Abby what happened.”

Jimmy shaking his head slowly. “That’s not good at all.”

“He didn’t want her to worry.” Tim’s voice makes it clear how intensely ridiculous he thought that was.

Jimmy just shakes his head slowly. Sometimes it isn’t a huge mystery as to why Gibbs has been divorced three times. Jimmy doesn’t know any woman who has ever appreciated, ‘I lied because I didn’t want you to worry.’

“We will talk about that, too. I’ll come in for lunch tomorrow, we’ll catch up, but she’s waiting for us, and this is like twice as long as it takes us to change.”

“Good point.” Jimmy stood up, dropping his towel, and opened his locker. He started to put on his briefs and caught sight of his thigh and hip, already dark red verging toward purple. “That’s not gonna be pretty.”

“We’ll make sure to get you some ice packs.” Tim held up his right arm, his entire forearm was mottled yellow purple from deflecting Ziva’s hits, and his legs aren’t in much better shape. “Me too. She’s gonna need them, too.”

“Gibbs keeps his door open, right?”

“Yeah. I locked up when I got his stuff, but I’ve also still got his key.”

“We’re getting the drinks to go and heading to his place. We’ll be able to talk, no little people begging for attention, and lay around and ice down everything.”

“That sounds really good.”

He got to Gibbs’s first. Not too much of a shock. Jimmy’s the one getting the drinks, and there’s no reason to race because Ziva can’t get in until he’s there.

But he’s not there for long when Ziva heads in.

While it’s true that Gibbs doesn’t have a well-stocked kitchen (Tim makes a note to do a grocery run for Gibbs before he heads home to his own place.) he does have ice, and ice packs, and some frozen vegetables that’ll do for ice-pack duty, too.

So Tim’s laying out the frozen goodies, finding dishtowels to wrap them in, (Cause Jimmy will scold him about possible ice burn if he just puts them on bare skin.) and then heads to the basement for the alcohol. Ziva prefers Tequila, and Gibbs doesn’t seem to have any of it, but if they have to get her drunk to start talking, and then drive her home, he’s ready for it.

Ziva’s sitting on the sofa, ice on her right calf, right arm, left shoulder, and back. “Scotch and Gin?”

Tim shrugs. “I know you don’t like bourbon, so I didn’t bring it up.”

“I thought Jimmy was bringing the drinks.”

“He’s bringing some of them. This is here if it makes it easier.”

“I do not need to be drunk to talk, McGee.”

“Good. Once he gets here, you want to tell us what’s up?”

Once again Ziva shrugs at that question.

“What?”

She shrugs again. There’s a reason she doesn’t talk about stuff like this with Tim or Jimmy, well, several reasons, but the one that’s coming up right now is the fact that, no matter how pissed she is at Tony (and the answer is god awful fucking pissed) she’s also still aware of the fact that the three of them have a sort of competition as to who’s better at the husband thing, and that Tony, at least, according to Tony, feels like he’s been coming in third for, well, since Jimmy got married and Tim started dating Abby.

And she doesn’t feel like this is a problem that will necessarily get better if Tony’s got his buddies ragging on him about it, too. (Let alone being smug about him being a twit.)

But she’s not sure if it’ll get better on its own either.

And there’s no way to keep this a secret.

And it will directly affect Tim.

Jimmy came in and handed out the drinks. Mango smoothie for her, iced-latte for Tim, and a diet vanilla-mint soda for him. He sees the booze on the table and looks from Ziva to Tim, eyebrow high.

“Thought it might help,” Tim says with a shrug while trading a few ice packs for his drink.

Jimmy sits on the sofa, next to Ziva, across from Tim on the easy chair, and sighs as he gets the ice settled on his hip.

“Come on, Ziva, you’ve beaten it out, now get talking.”

“Tim can go first.”

Tim shakes his head. “Nope. Mine isn’t going to get worse if it stews for a day or two. Yours might. Spill.”

Ziva took a few minute to tell her version of the explosion, getting yelled at, ultimatum fight, then segued into getting home early Saturday. “By then I was thinking it would be better. We’d had time apart to cool down. He’d realize he’d been stupid. I’d apologize for scaring him so bad. We’d talk. It would be better.

“But I get home, and he’s not in bed, or on the sofa watching a movie. He’s at the dining room table, working on his computer, and doesn’t hear me come in. He sees my reflection in the screen and slams it down shut, turns around looking panicked and guilty.”

“What was he doing?” Jimmy asks.

“Porn?” Tim asks. Panicked, guilty, furious wife, not impossible, but he didn’t think Ziva was touchy about stuff like that.

“Nothing like that. But I didn’t know that then. At least, I didn’t see any pictures, and he was typing, but…”

Both of them know sitting in front of a computer, typing away, late at night, and slamming the screen shut means lots of possibilities. And of course, Ziva knows that, so she’s going to get suspicious as soon as she sees that.

“I ask what he’s doing, and he says getting everything in order. And we had a serious conversation, about serious things, which makes sense, we both almost died, but the whole time I had the sense that was not quite what he was doing. Why slam the screen shut if he was writing a living will? I should be able to see his will, right?”

“I’d think so. Breena and I wrote ours together.”

Tim nods along with that. Sure he got his stuff in order first, then told Abby about it, but he showed her everything and told her any changes she wanted made, he’d make. “We’ve got to re-do ours since Kelly’s been born, but I’d assume we’d do that together.”

Ziva nods at them and sips her smoothie. “That is the way you do that. Together. But we had our conversation, and I told him I was sorry, and how I understood how scared he was, and how scared I was for him, and… And it was a good conversation.”

“One sided?” Jimmy asks.

“No, he was talking, too. His mother died, and Wendy left, and Kate died, and if anyone gets that, it is me. I understand what having everyone who ever really mattered ripped away feels like. I understand. We talked about how to deal with it better. Talked about how… how some of our coping mechanisms weren’t healthy, and how to do better.

“I thought we were in a good place when we went to be bed that morning. We’d deal with it, together, get better at it, together.”

Tim and Jimmy are listening, this sounds good. This sounds healthy. The fact that they know Ziva’s so pissed she was beating both of them to pulp means that everything in this story is about to go drastically wrong. “We went to bed, slept in late. Saturday was a good day. We had fun. He seemed lighter, happier. I was feeling better, case was closed, we got them, all wrapped up and ready to go, and we’ve got a week off. It was good. This morning, when I woke up, he had  left a note on the mirror saying he’d gone out for food. His computer was still on the table, screen up. I was curious. So I peeked.”

Tim sees her hands ball into fists and her jaw clench, and then she forces her muscles to relax and begins talking again, “He was writing the request for me to be transferred to my own team. I’d take Draga, start my own. He’d take you and Gibbs and build his own, new team from the ground up as you left.”

Tim and Jimmy both wince and Jimmy makes a very pained sound.

“Does that sound like working on it together? Does that sound like healthier coping mechanisms? No, that is him pushing me away.” And Ziva is spitting mad.

“Maybe it was just a draft. What he was thinking before you talked?” Tim asks her.

She shakes her head. “I thought that for a moment, chided myself for jumping to conclusions, and… I was going to wait, going to talk to him, but…” Tim and Jimmy don’t need too much input on but. Ziva’s home, alone, this bomb dropped into her lap. Tony’s computer is right there, and if she checks his email and he never sent it, she can just let it go and pretend she didn’t snoop. “So I checked. He sent the request to Vance last night while I was sleeping. He lied to about what he was doing. This wasn’t getting his affairs in order, not the way he let me believe. He did not even suggest that was what he was thinking. He didn’t talk to me about it at all. He just did it.”

“What did you do?” Jimmy asks, suddenly very worried for Tony.

“I stabbed the knife he made me through his computer and left. I have not been able to even think about being in the same room without really hitting him, so I figure we are better off not in the same room.”

Tim’s nodding. Jimmy is, too. They look at each other, neither really sure where to go from here.

“You want us to talk to him?” Jimmy asks.

Ziva tilts her head a little, looking curious. “What could you possibly have to say to him?”

“We could slap him upside the back of the head without killing him,” Tim answers.

“How does he even start to fix this?” Tim asks Jimmy as he pushes the button on the elevator at Tony’s place.

“Abject groveling and making it very clear that he knows he went insane? Hell, I don’t know. I’m trying to imagine what Breena would do to me if I did something like that and lied about it.”

“Abby’d kill me, and I’d hand her the fucking knife, because that’s just… You just don’t do that.”

“Yeah. Look, I don’t hold him not wanting to work with her against him. I don’t think I could stand seeing Breena in danger every single day. Especially after Jon. It’d kill me.” And Tim knows that Jimmy’s really not kidding about that. “So, I get that part of it.” Tim’s nodding along as he says that. He gets it, feels it, too. And he doesn’t know if he could handle Abby in the field now. Once or twice, yeah, he’d make it through, but every day. No. “But you sit down and you say, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take the fear. You don’t go over her head and get rid of her, just… No!”

They stand quietly as the elevator eases its way up the levels.

“So, shock and awe? Use that to at least handle the work part of it.” Tim asks.

“Go in pissed and then give him an out by saying the concussion was acting up?” Jimmy replies.

“Works for me. You check him out, and while you’re doing it I’ll call Vance and countermand his email.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Granted it’s true that beyond the rules, no one in their family has any sort of guy code or guy playbook, but that doesn’t mean they don’t watch out for each other, and that doesn’t mean that all four of them aren’t invested in slapping (literally or metaphorically) the others upside the head if they’re being stupid.

That’s the point of having each other’s backs.

That’s the safety net. You don’t always have to make the right decision. You don’t always have to be strong. There will be men who will hold you up if you fall down, save your ass if it needs saving, and they’ll do it in a way that’ll hurt your pride as little as possible.

And for Tony, it’s a lot easier to be stupid than it is to be scared. So they’ll work the stupid angle, lay down cover for him, let him save as much face as he can, and help him fix this mess as best as they can.

“On a scale of one to toothpaste, how much trouble am I in?” Tony asks as he opens the door.

“Between invade Russia in November and reject Hitler’s application to art school.” Jimmy answers, herding Tony to the sofa, getting him sitting down and starting to check him out.

Tim adds, “Marginally closer to invade Russia, though. Trust me, Abby was significantly less horrified by the toothpaste thing than Jimmy was.” (At least, he’s assuming that’s why Tony knows about the toothpaste thing, and that’s going on the list of things he and Jimmy are talking about tomorrow, because he’s got no idea how bad the version Jimmy told Tony was, especially compared to real life.)

“Where is she?”

“My house,” Jimmy replies, holding his finger in front of Tony’s eyes. “Follow my finger.” Tony does, looking exasperated. “She hasn’t gone looking for a divorce lawyer, yet. How’s your head feeling?”

Tim’s staring at the remains of Tony’s computer, still on the dining room table, Ziva’s knife still sticking out of the keyboard. Time for the awe part of shock and awe. He gets his phone and dials up Vance.

It rings a few times and Vance sounds a little wary as he says, “McGee?”

“It’s just come to my attention, that due to severe head trauma, Tony somehow got the idea that this was still his team, and that he was allowed to request a change to the roster. It’s my team, and will continue to be my team until at least 8:00 AM August 3^rd, when it may, if he’s all healed up, revert back to being his team. Any communications you get from anyone other than me until then, just toss right into the trash. Don’t even open them. I’m the only one you’re talking to right now.” Tony is staring absolute daggers at him, and might have been on the verge of getting up and doing something about what Tim’s saying, but Jimmy’s keeping him in check.

“Good.” Leon sounds relieved. And Tim’s certain he doesn’t want to get in the middle of a DiNozzo work/marriage fight. “And is DiNozzo receiving appropriate medical care?”

“Yes, I’m getting him checked out right now.” Now the daggers are aimed at Jimmy. “Preliminary reports indicate some level of temporary insanity due to…” he’s looking at Jimmy, give me a reason on his face.

“Inter-cranial pressure.” Jimmy adds, making it up on the fly.

“Inter-cranial pressure,” Tim says to Vance.

“And will this issue with inter-cranial pressure…” Leon’s voice makes it clear that this is bullshit, and he knows it’s bullshit, because among other things, the man’s a boxer, so he know everyone has inter-cranial pressure. It’s like blood pressure, as long as you’re still alive, there will be some level of pressure. Too much is a bad thing, too little is a bad thing. But his voice also makes it clear that he’d much rather have Tim fix this mess than deal with it himself, so any lie Tim wants to tell him right now, including that Tony is currently a pod person and he and Jimmy are trying to get him back with the help of Mulder and Scully, he’ll happily accept. “…be resolved by next Monday?”

“I certainly hope so, but if not, I’ll let you know. I’ll handle this until it doesn’t need to be handled anymore.”

“Good. Keep me updated as necessary.”

“I will, sir.” And Tim hung up.

“You’re pulling rank on me?” Tony asks him sounding… a lot less angry than he should. Tim’s looking at Jimmy wondering if maybe something really is wrong, but Jimmy shakes his head slightly, Tony’s checking out okay.

So Tim stays with the angry play, because that’s the plan. “I don’t have rank on you to pull. This is a flat out mutiny. Second-in-command and the Doctor can take out the Captain if he’s being insane. And, my God, Tony, you’re being insane. What the hell could you have possibly been thinking where fire Ziva, lie to her about it, pretend you didn’t do it, and then what, hope she doesn’t notice, made any sort of sense?”

There’s a fast flare of anger from Tony, and his words are hot, and… God… just so, so sad, and defeated. “You wanna know what I was thinking? I was watching Kate’s head explode right in front of me and feeling her blood spatter my face wet, not even sticky yet, just wet, like drops of water, warm, salty, water. I tasted her blood, Tim. It was on my lips and face and… And the sharp sting of the little shards of her skull against my cheeks,” he gestures to his face where the bits of skull tore across his skin, “and superimposed on that was the fire of the explosion rushing over us and holding Ziva down, my body, Gibbs body on top of her, and begging God to please, please, please no matter what please let her get through this because if I lose another one I will eat my gun.

“I was thinking about how I don’t know what to do if she’s not here.

“And how I don’t care if she hates me as long as she’s alive.” He takes a deep shuddering breath.

“I was thinking that as long as we are on the same team that no matter what, she will come to me. She won’t let me go. She won’t not jump to put her body between mine and the bullet heading toward me. ‘You go. I go’ that’s what she said to me when she ran toward me. Not, ‘I’m better with explosives, get out of the way and let me do it,’ but, ‘You go. I go.’

“She says she’ll work on that. And I’ll say I’ll work on it, but in the end we’ve both lost too damn many people, and if she’s there when push comes to shove, she’ll run to me to shove right back. And this is the line in the sand, the one I can’t let her cross. She’s not dying for me.”

Tim remembers Gibbs saying, ‘Scared guys do stupid stuff.’ And he’s staring at a terrified guy who just did something remarkably stupid.

He looks at Jimmy, and Jimmy looks back at him, and there’s giving your buddy a smack and some cover to get him moving in the right direction, and there’s so far out of you depth you don’t know what the fuck to do.

And this is way beyond what he and Jimmy can handle.

Tony’s just staring at his hands, probably still seeing his own, personal, mental horror show.

Then Jimmy says, and Tim thought this was very wise, “When was the last time you talked to Dr. Cranston?”

Tony shrugs.

“Would you talk to her? Because, there’s smacking you upside the back of the head for being stupid, which is something both Tim and I are willing and able to do at the drop of a hat whenever you need it, and there’s this, and this isn’t going to get better with a smack and some booze.” Jimmy takes Tony’s hands and gets him looking at him. “We love Gibbs, but we don’t want you to be him. You don’t need to continue his pattern of sabotaging the things you want best because it’s easier to screw them up on your own terms than it is to live with the fear of losing them.”

Tony doesn’t respond. He’s looking pretty listless right now. Tim’s texting Gibbs, asking what Cranston’s phone number is.

“Look, if you need help to do this, I will take you myself.” Jimmy’s voice is gentle, soothing as he says this. “I’ll go with you if you need it. And if you want to come to Bootcamp and fight it out, too, we’re here for that. It helps, it really does. But you need to talk to someone who knows how to deal with this, and that’s not me and it’s not Tim, and it’s really not Gibbs, not on this one.”

Ten digits flash up on Tim’s screen, and he punches them in. While it’s ringing he can hear the phone letting him know he’s got another text, but he wants to move on this before he talks more to Gibbs about it.

“Hello.” Her voice sounds warm and open. He has the sense this isn’t her professional number.

“Dr. Cranston?”

“Yes.”

“Hi. It’s Tim McGee, do you…”

“I remember you, Tim McGee, what’s up?”

“I need to ask a massive favor of you. Tony’s having a really, horribly bad week, and he really needs to talk to someone.”

“And you think that someone should be me?”

“I know that someone isn’t me, and it’s not Jimmy, or Gibbs, and if it’s not you, you’ll have a much better idea of who to point him to than any of us will. Anywhere, anytime, just, soon, please?”

He has the sense of her nodding, that gentle, concerned, curious look on her face. “And you’re with him?”

“Jimmy and I both are.”

“Text me his address. I’ll be there as soon as I can be.”

“Thank you.”

Turns out as soon as she could was seventeen minutes. During all of that, Tony didn’t say much. He made a half-hearted joke about Dr. Kate’s Sister coming to visit, straitjackets, and how maybe he needed to hide the computer.

Jimmy smiled a little and asked if he wanted him to stay, and Tony shook his head.

Rachel knocked, and Tim let her in, giving her a very cut and dried version of the last week, but she stopped paying attention to it about four sentences in when she saw that computer with the knife through the keyboard and Tony sitting on the sofa, Jimmy next to him, hand on his shoulder.

“Did he do that?” She pointed at the computer.

“That’s how Ziva let him know she was pissed. He had the knife made for her as a Valentine’s present last year.”

Cranston nods, then notices that both Jimmy and Tim are sporting bruises. “Did he do those?”

“Nope. We… Long story. Not from him.”

“Ziva?”

“Some of them. But probably not the way you’re thinking. We train with her.”

“And trained extra hard with her today?”

“Yes, as I said, it was a really long, really bad week, Tony got it double barreled.”

Her head tilts slightly, that’s got her attention. “Interesting choice of words. That sort of bad?”

Tim shakes his head a little. “Among other things. Really bad week.”

Cranston heads over, and once again Jimmy asks if Tony wants him there, but he shakes his head, so they leave them to talk.

“God, I hope that was the right thing,” Jimmy says.

“I can’t imagine it’ll make things worse.”

“That’s not a high bar to jump.”

“I know.”

“I’ll head home, let Ziva know what’s up.”

Tim holds up his phone, Why do you need it? from Gibbs on his screen. “Gonna go find out what Gibbs has been telling Tony, if I can. Lunch tomorrow?”

“Definitely. Tuesday, too, if you can?"

Tim nods, they’ve got more than an hour of talking to do. “If we can.”   

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 273

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 273: Work Out

He woke up with a jerk, heart pounding, bedroom dim with almost dawn sunlight.

It was his night, and he missed it. His job to get Kelly fed and he slept through it.

FUCK!  Yes, Abby will forgive him, but still, FUCK!

Apparently he wasn’t exactly thinking that, and may have, just possibly, said it out loud, because Abby moved when he did it. (He’s really sleepy and jittery with adrenaline and all in all, pretty out of it.)

“Tim?”

“I’m so sorry.”

She’s looking barely conscious. “Huh?”

“You got Kelly, didn’t you?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve been sleeping.”

His eyes went wide, and the first thing he did was more or less leap out of bed to check on her, but she was still in her crib, still breathing, still sleeping. He very, very quietly crept out of Kelly’s room, and crashed back into his own bed, suddenly feeling completely exhausted as last night hit and the adrenaline crash faded.

“She slept through?” Abby asks.

“She slept through.”

“Yay!” Abby said, tiredly, and then snuggled into him, and they both caught more blessed sleep.

Round ten he got out of bed feeling… He doesn’t really know. Not good. Not sick, that haunted, all-over-ill sort of feeling that went with Benedict isn’t there. Just, kind of on edge, like he knows something’s going to break if he pokes it, but right now it’s in one piece.

He decides not to poke it.

Like most Sundays he checks his phone first, and today there’s a text from Jimmy.

Molly’s got a cold, and Breena didn’t sleep well. Skipping church.

“Thank you,” he says quietly under his breath, and quickly sends back. Good, couldn’t feel less like it if I tried. Bootcamp?

By the time he finished with brushing his teeth and putting on some clothing, (More pjs. He’s home, he’s tired, and he’s not planning on going anywhere soon, so jammies work just fine.) he had one back. Hope so. See how Breena’s feeling when she wakes up.

What’s up?

More of the same, tired, nauseous, pregnancy dreams. Touch of Molly’s cold.

When she wakes up give her a hug from Abby and I.

Will do.

I’m going to hit the gym no matter what. Come if you can. I’ll understand if you can’t.

No problem.

He fired one off to Ziva: Bootcamp?

YES!

Sounds like you’re in a good mood.

And he realizes he’s got two other people who need to--

Or maybe not… Vance wasn’t going to tell him. He didn’t even get to figuring that out last night, and now it’s sitting there in front of him, and maybe if it had hit him earlier, he might resent it, but thinking about Ziva and Draga…

They don’t need to know.

They just don’t.

But you don’t lie to your team, not about stuff like this. Draga’s idea. Ziva installed the canister. He made the call, but they’re part of it. And they deserve to know…

Maybe…

Part of him really doesn’t want to say. Just let it go. Bury it. 

Would it stay buried? If it’s going to come out, he wants them to hear it from him. If it can stay a secret…

He heads downstairs, finds Jethro on the sofa (where else was he going to be…) “You want a hand getting to the porch? Suck up some sunshine?”

Gibbs looks up from his phone. (Probably reading on his kindle ap.) “Yeah, that sounds good.” He lets Tim give him a hand getting off the sofa, but not in getting to the porch, (beyond opening the door for him) and he accepts help in getting down onto the chaise.

“One more day.”

“Jethro?”

“On my butt for a week. Tomorrow is the last day.”

“You’ve got an appointment for a checkup on Tuesday, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take you. Or Abby will, if she wants to get out of the house some.” Tim smiles and heads inside, foraging for breakfast, and then heads out again, a few cold turkey sausages on a plate next to a peach.

“Where’s Abby and Kelly?”

“Abby said Kelly slept through the four AM feed, so to celebrate they went out to do some shopping.”

Tim thinks about that for a moment, about what sort of celebration Abby may have in mind for baby sleeping through the night (ish) let alone what sort of shopping it may involve. He’s very pleasantly intrigued by that idea.

“Cool.” He ate a few bites, enjoying the fact that it wasn’t oppressively hot, yet, and then got back on track when he remembered why he was down here chatting with Gibbs. “I’ve got a question for you.”

“Fire away.”

“Do I tell Ziva and Draga? Would you have told us?”

Gibbs thinks about it then counters with his own question: “What are you thinking?”

Tim makes a dismissive sound, indicating that if he had confidence in what he was thinking he wouldn’t be asking Gibbs about it.

“Gonna run your own team soon enough, tell me what you’re thinking.”

“If they find out, I want it to be from me. But they don’t need to know, not really. But if it gets out, and I don’t tell them, Ziva’ll rip my head off, and she’s smart enough the dead battery is bugging her, too. Bugs Draga, but I don’t think he’s got enough experience to put it together. The gas was Draga’s idea. Ziva installed the canister.

“He’ll take it bad. He already feels like he’s screwed this one because of the first bomb, add this on top of it, and that might be the end of him as a cop.

“Ziva… I don’t know. I’m not the one she talks to about this sort of stuff. She might just take it in stride, hazards of the job. It might really hit her, she was a handler who’s asset went off the rails. She was an asset out there, spent months, probably, hoping her back up would get her, and then realized they weren’t coming." Tim shakes his head. "She was an asset left to die. Getting her out was too expensive, so Eli didn't even try. And if I had known Ender was an agent, that's the same calculation I would have made for him. Too many people would have died if that house had gone up. 

“So, I don’t know. I know she’ll be really pissed if I don’t tell her and she finds out anyway. And I know that she doesn’t need to know. She probably wants to. She’d probably, I hope, be okay with it… Well, as okay as I am.”

“Are you?”

Tim exhales long and slow and eats a few more bites of his peach. “I don’t know. It’s not hitting me right this second, but I feel like it’s still there, waiting to hop out. Bootcamp is going to be interesting.

“Which gets us to the next point, can I not tell her? Say she doesn’t want to know. Say it won’t help anything. She’s always been able to tell when I’m lying and has never had any problem getting me to talk.”

Gibbs tilts his head in agreement, that’s been an issue, too. “I always thought that was because you wanted to tell her. You never seemed to have any problems not telling her about stuff you really didn’t want her to know.”

“And yet it always came out anyway.” Tim half-smiles. “But it’s entirely possible that’s true. And I haven’t tried to keep anything from her, besides taking her home for Tony to propose, in years. I might be better at it now.”

“Not craving approval so much now. You’d probably hold out better.”

“Great. So…”

Gibb doesn’t say anything.

“You ever not tell us what was going on?”

“Yes.”

Tim’s expression is saying, go on tell me.

Gibbs shakes his head. “If I didn’t say then, I’m not now.”

Tim stands up and tosses the peach pit into the far back of their yard. He eyeballs the grass, gotta mow tomorrow.  Without turning around he retries the question. “Then how about this, she talks to you about this stuff, should I tell her?”

“As her friend, you should tell her. As a leader trying to keep his team working as well as he can... You’ve got the next week off, that’s time for you and her to get your heads on right. And that week’ll be shorter than the fall out that might happen if she finds out another way.”

Good, that makes sense. He turns away from the grass to face Gibbs. “Draga?”

“Draga doesn’t need to know. Draga especially doesn’t need to know if Tony’s going to can him or get him transferred. And that’s the last part of this, Tony needs to know. When we go back to work, it’ll be his team again, so he has to know.” 

Tim nods at that. He’d… forgotten isn’t exactly right, but stopped thinking about Tony as Team Leader. Not once during that week did he call to check in, (About the case. About Tony as an injured friend, yes, he checked in) or try to get any advice, or… anything. Once he took over and benched Tony, that was it. From Wednesday to Saturday it was his team, so that’s how he ran it. (He also made a quick mental note to give Fornell the heads up on that, too. He’s fairly sure CIA wants Ender’s cover in place but he’s also sure that whoever’s in charge of the FBI clean-up of this should know what’s going on.)

“I should probably go see Tony.”

Gibbs nods at that, too.

“You talk to him?”

“Commiserate about how much being on the shelf sucks?”

“Something like that?”

“Yeah. Talked with him a few times.”

“He okay?”

Gibbs doesn’t answer.  And it was in the silence of not answering that Tim notices something, Ziva never responded to his comment about being in a good mood.

He snags his phone out of his pocket and sends her. Are you in a good mood?

A minute later he gets back. Bootcamp 4PM.

So he texts: See you then.

“Jethro, she told me they were fighting, are they okay?”

“Unlike Ender, that really is something you don’t need to know unless they want to tell you.”

Originally, six (Really, six months? Only six months? It feels a whole lot longer.) months ago, when Bootcamp started, it was mostly about making sure Jimmy had a place to really work out his feelings.

Because fighting is good for that. You have to focus on what your body is doing, so you can’t be focused on the wider world. Stress makes your body produce chemicals that trigger a desire to run or fight, and if you don’t run or fight, those chemicals just hang around, linger, making you less and less happy, more and more tense, and often cause chronic-pain conditions. When you fight, your body floods with endorphins, which not only make you feel better, but they also help to shut down sad, afraid, depressed, and the like.

And when you fight, those walls you build to keep the crap away, to hold it in a safe place where it doesn’t touch you, they crumble, and you let your body do the physical work it needs to do to grieve and move on.

And so, when they began, it was about that. About letting his body do what it needed to do to get through the loss of Jon.

But they kept at it.

Because it’s good exercise. Because it feels good. Because time went by and there were Sundays where he didn’t need it so much, but Tim did. And every Sunday, Gibb is there, because… (Feels a little odd to say this, even in his own mind, but it’s true, so he might as well say it, even if it is only in his mind.) because they’re his boys and this is the kind of stuff you do for your boys. (The kind of thing Jimmy is desperately hoping he’ll have the chance to do for his own boy one day.)

And Ziva started showing up every week, and so far she’s been here because… Jimmy thinks it’s mostly because she likes it, and because she needs to practice. And maybe she’s here because Ziva misses having brothers, misses dad time, too, and this space here, where they beat on each other fills that need. (He thinks that’s probably kind of weird that his family’s deepest communication form is combat, but… it works, so it doesn’t matter if it’s weird.)

So far, though, they’ve never had a Sunday where they were there to let her fight off rage or fear or unhappy or whatever.

But in that she’s killing him, absolutely killing him, and not in a let’s-kick-this-up-a-bit-and-get-your-heart-pumping sort of way, but in a holy-shit-I-need-pads-or-I’m-going-to-die sort of way, Jimmy’s realizing that Ziva is not in a happy place.

Jimmy calls time before he hit the mat, holding up his hands in a ‘stop’ gesture. Any of them can stop any fight at any time for any reason.

He looks over at Tim, who’s just… brutalizing… the punching bag, and realizes that Tim’s got something going on, too.

For a second, he feels a surge of thankfulness at working in Autopsy, he knows this last case was an absolute bastard, but not for more than a second, because Ziva’s glaring at him for stopping things. She wants to fight, but he’s so far outclassed by pissed off Ziva, he knows he can’t give her what she needs.

“Tim!” He has to yell; Tim’s got earbuds in.

Tim stops, looks over at him, expression curious, as he takes out his earbuds.

“Get over here.”

Tim’s still in the dark, though he’s heading over. Ziva’s not looking nearly as annoyed. Two on one should be just what the doctor (literally) ordered.

“Have you ever done this before?” Ziva asks Jimmy as Tim slips between the ropes.

Jimmy shakes his head, hoping he hasn’t just signed his own death warrant. “But, we’ve danced together—“

“When the hell have I ever danced with you?” Tim asks as he catches that bit.

“You and me and the girls. Ziva’s killing me one on one. She’s going to kill you one on one. Both of us against her should let her get enough of a fight in to calm her back down, and not get either of us killed.”

Tim nods, smiles, and Jimmy’s seen that smile before, that’s the dark, predatory thing that hides in Tim and doesn’t come out a whole lot, but when it does...

Jimmy sees that smile and sighs, silently wishing Gibbs wasn’t flat on his back, an extra set of hands would be really useful today. “Okay, looks like both of you need this today. But when we’re done, we’re getting drinks and talking, too.”

Ziva shrugs, and Jimmy knows they aren’t the guys she usually talks to, but, you put your literal skin on the line to help your friend, you get to find out what the problem is. Tim nods, because for him, Jimmy is one of the guy he talks to. (And he was planning on telling Jimmy about it no matter what.)

Tim’s thinking this isn’t dancing. It’s really not. He and Jimmy would be a hell of a lot better at this if it was dancing. But the skills aren’t completely dissimilar. And when it is the four of them dancing, he does have to keep track of three other people, one of whom is Jimmy, and Jimmy’s doing the same thing, and they do have some level of skill at doing that. (Okay, they’re not going to be winning any dance competitions anytime soon, but everyone has a good time and no one gets their toes stepped on.)

See when you’re dancing either one on one, or one on one on one on one, two things are true, first off, there’s music, which helps you keep an idea of time and beat, and you’re moving slowly enough you can actually see what the other people are doing.

And he and Jimmy can sort of, kind of, okay, not really, but it’s better than nothing, communicate what they’re going to do by look, and kind of coordinate. If Ziva wasn’t so fast, they’d be better at it.

(If they’d danced as a foursome sometime between Ziva’s wedding and now, they’d be better at it, too, but for some reason there just hasn’t been any clubbing dates lately…)

But, as of this point, (round two) he’s only accidentally hit Jimmy twice and gotten in his way four times. Jimmy’s doing about the same with him.

And Ziva’s winning.

End of round two, another thought has hit Tim, he’s got unlimited music on his phone and two floors up and a few hundred feet over, he’s got speakers. Good speakers. LOUD speakers.

And, it still won’t be dancing with Abby and Breena, but he and Jimmy are both going to do better if there is music for this.

So he calls stop, tells Jimmy and Ziva what he wants to do, and goes to do it.

Nine Inch Nails. Full volume. Unless Abby’s playing it he hasn’t listed to them since college. But he knows it well enough to know what’s going to happen when. And he knows Jimmy does, too. No one their age who grew up in the States and went to college in the late '90s doesn’t know this music.

But Ziva’s five years younger and didn’t grow up in the States.



That smile pops up again. The first few beats of Mr. Self Destruct come up. Jimmy’s head jerks up when he hears it, and he shakes it softly, grinning, and mouths, you bastard at Tim. Yeah, he knows this.

This is going to be fun.

This is going to be the kind of fun that he really needs right now.

Better. This is a whole lot better.  Set beats both of them know, means he hasn’t gotten in Jimmy’s way and Jimmy hasn’t gotten in his since the music began.

Music, loud, thumping, vibrates through your bones, inflicting minor hearing damage music means that even Ziva’s moving with the beat, so they’re having an easier time anticipating where she’s going to be.

Music they know means that if he takes one melody (if NIN can be said to have melody) and Jimmy takes another, (Usually Jimmy takes the main lyrical line, and he takes the beat. He thinks that’s because Jimmy’s the singer.) they have a much easier time anticipating each other’s moves. Likewise, they’re doing much better at coordinating attacking and defending because there’s a steady beat holding the whole thing together. (Or as much as NIN can be said to have a steady beat.)

The fact that this music is as much rage and pain screaming at the sky as anything else, doesn’t hurt either. This music was designed to be yelled, designed to celebrate pain, channel it, force it into something tangible and real.

It’s a very good way to blow off even more of what’s bugging him. (It’s possible he may be singing along at some points, at least mentally, because he needs his breath to fight.)

Round six (Get Down Make Love) begins with the electronic beat, spoken voice, and moaning, and Ziva’s staring at Tim, “You listen to this McGee?”

“I did in college.”

She shakes her head, listening trying to map out the music, knowing that Tim and Jimmy will corner the music, use it as their guide.

“You, too Jimmy?”

“Trent Reznor dropped out of my college about five years before I went there. We fighting or resting?”

Ziva pivoted on her back leg, looking like she was aiming to kick Tim, but her right hand flashed out and would have caught Jimmy’s cheek but he got his forearm up in time to defend while Tim spun into an elbow strike that Ziva deflected with the kick she started the move with.

“We fight!”

By the second verse he and Jimmy are working together well enough for one to constantly be defending and the other to constantly be attacking and to swap back and forth between them well enough to keep Ziva off balance.

Round nine, Head Like A Hole, began. Two main musical lines: ‘Head like a hole, black as your soul’, has one sound. ‘Bow down before the one you serve’ has another. They blend and support each other. Like the way Tim and Jimmy are fighting. Jimmy takes the bow down refrain, Tim’s got head like a hole. Tim’s moving faster, more attacking. Jimmy’s slower, distracting, on defense.

Head like a hole, black as your soul, I’d rather die, than give you control. And sure it’s not real, not him, but he can feel it, hook into it, channel all the pissed off just want to beat the hell out of Ender into this, and he’s making Ziva sweat, literally and metaphorically.

And on what Tim considered a very well-coordinated move, in on the last run of ‘bow down’ Jimmy caught his eye a second before the line hit, and Tim knew, because he knew the music, what was going to happen. He slid slightly behind Jimmy, while Jimmy was engaging Ziva, but when the word bow hit, Jimmy dropped to the floor, and Tim kicked through where he had been, forcing Ziva’s balance back as she leaned back to dodge the kick. Jimmy, on the mat, grabbed both of her feet and yanked them out from under her.

Round nine, for the first time ever, Ziva hit the mat. 

Round ten, Ziva asked if they could sub in some of her music.

They took a ten minute breather, each adding three of their own songs.

He stayed with NIN. Jimmy tossed in the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, which Tim recognized. Hell, he even watched the movie back in the day. Perfect music. He’s got no idea what Ziva’s added. It’s not in English and he’s never seen it before, and steels himself to getting killed when her music comes on.

He flicked the play to random, music he didn’t know, had to be Ziva’s, began to shake the gym, and they got ready to go.

By the end of the playlist he knows he was feeling better, and he hopes Ziva is.

Next up, talking.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 272

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 272: Loose Ends

“Did I lose a day, Honey? It’s Saturday, right?” Elaine asks as Tim heads into the diner. She’s not facing him, so he thinks she identified him by his car coming in, as opposed to watching him walk in. She turns to him, and as she does, she sees he’s very much not in his Special Agent garb. “Oh, it’s Saturday all right. You’ve got a whole other side to you, don’t you?”

He’s got a ratty MIT t-shirt, sneakers, and his flannel jammy pants on. Wrist cuff and the bottom of the bicep cuff tattoo are visible. It’s occurring to him that he didn’t brush his hair before leaving the house.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Elaine smiles at him and says, “Amen to that. So what brings you out here in your pjs?”

“Wasn’t planning on heading out. But I’ve got Gibbs trapped at my place, and Abby keeps feeding him vegetables. He tells me he’s starving, and he needs you to save him.”

Elaine chuckles at that. “And am I just rescuing him from healthy food, or am I rescuing all three of you?”

“All three of us. Please?”

“Not a problem, Hun,” she says, placing a coffee cup (of course it’s decaf) in front of him. “For the wait.”

“Thanks, Elaine.”

She handles their orders and the other customers, but after a few minutes she drifts back. “So, when do I get to see that baby girl of yours?”

“Tomorrow or next Sunday, I promise. We’ll come in for breakfast before church.”

“You better. He’s been showing me pictures since the sonogram, time for me to see his little princess in the flesh.”

Tim smiles at that. “You will.”

“So, why’s he trapped at your place?”

He told her about Gibbs’ knee, and staying with them. She nodded and made appropriate sounds as he worked his way through the story.

“Good that he’s got someone looking after him. That man’s been alone for too long.”

Tim grins and sips his coffee, feeling the stress of the presents finally really fade away. “He’s been holding out, just waiting for you to make an honest man of him.”

She laughs at that, waves at him (brushing his comment off), smiling, and shakes her head. “My husband might have something to say about that.”

“All the good ones are married.”

She laughs again. Her husband, the man who actually makes all the food they adore, whacked the bell, and Tim knew those to-go boxes meant their order was up.  

“Thanks, Elaine,” he said, paying and heading out.

Summertime dinner on the porch. Nothing better than that. Gibbs is on the chaise. (Which Tim usually shares with Abby, but he’s not resenting not having a place on the prime lounging real estate.) He and Abby both have chairs at the table. Kelly’s in her bouncy seat, kicking her feet a little, making the chair bounce.

The sun’s low enough everything is pleasantly orangy-pink, the air is hot and humid, but not oppressively so. A tall pitcher of ice cold mint-lime-soda (Abby calls it non-alcoholic mojitos) is sitting on the table, drops of water meandering down it.

Cicadas are chirping away. Lightning bugs aren’t out yet, but as the shadows get deeper, they will be. 

While they eat, Tim tells them about the last day of the case, starting with the info dump, and ending with telling Kort to fuck off. (Gibbs laughed out loud at that, very pleased by the idea.)

As he’s wrapping up the story (by then the lightning bugs were out, and Kelly had headed up for yet another nap) Tim says, “I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s a big piece of it missing. I mean, I know we don’t usually get everything tied up into a tidy bow. I know there’s usually something missing…”

“Tim, when it’s over, walk away.” Gibbs’ voice is serious about this, because he doesn’t want Tim gnawing on this one for years. But he has to admit, there’s that little niggle in the back of his head, too. The gut does not like this case, at all. But right now, everyone they were hunting is dead, (They pulled the plug on Blake at 3:30 in the morning, after the second doc declared him brain dead.) so it’s not like that niggle can lead to anything good.  “We never get all the pieces.”

“I know, Jethro, but something just feels off about this.”

“Off like there’s another part ready to jump out and attack…”

Tim raises an eyebrow when Jethro says that. Sounds like he’s also feeling that sense of not done. “Yeah, but I don’t know how there could be. I got them. I got their communications system, that was all of them, but, it just feels… wrong.”

“What’s sticking out?” Abby asks.

“The dead battery. It’s such a dumb mistake. Come on, I carry back up batteries for everything we use. Draga has back-ups. Ender’s trained by the best, he runs a plan where he’s putting guys in place four years in advance, he’s gotten his hands on super-duper high-level secrets--We weren’t even supposed to know where those subs were. The Israelis weren’t sharing on that; we stole it.--so how did he find out?  Which is another thing that stuck out...” Tim waves that off, he had a point and he’s getting lost in the details, so he swings back to the original point. “He rigs the detonator with a dead battery? It’s just… wrong.”

“We don’t know he rigged it,” Gibbs adds.

“True. Blake probably did. That was his thing, but… He’s successfully blown up things on at least three continents, and he uses a dead battery?”

Abby thinks about that for a moment. “Why don’t you know who set the detonator?”

“Hmmm...?” Tim asks. That hadn’t occurred to him.

“Is my team completely asleep at the switch? Why didn’t they tell you who put the battery in? Should have prints on it. After all, who wipes down a bomb detonator?”

Tim looks at Gibbs, who’s looking back at him. They did get prints. There were prints all over everything down in that storage area, but…

“Give me a second…” Tim gets up and goes to his computer. A few minutes later, he’s logged into his account at work, and checking the print reports. He’s scanning through it, and finally gets to the detonator. No prints.

Who wipes down a bomb detonator? The man who’s exceedingly cautious. But the man who’s exceedingly cautious also double checks the damn battery to make sure it works.

The man who wipes down the detonator is the man who knows the detonator is going to be found.

Shit.

He just about ran out to the back porch. “I’ve got to go see Leon.”

“Tim?” Abby asks, and Gibbs is looking pretty concerned.

“Your team wasn’t asleep. Well, sort of, they didn’t highlight it. The reason we didn’t know who set the detonator is because there were no prints on it. It had been wiped clean. This isn’t done, yet.”

“You want me to come?” Gibbs had successfully hobbled, by himself (and his crutches) the length of the living room and kitchen for dinner, and his knee didn’t feel like it had slipped the whole time.

Tim shakes his head. “No. But get on my computer and look around for evidence we don’t have but should. Something’s really wrong here.”

He wants to try and calm down, but it’s not working. He’s driving fast, that special, hyper-alert zone that he sometimes hits when his brain’s on overload so it focuses down on one thing and gets ultra-aware. Usually for him that’s a coding thing, but right now it’s a driving thing, too.

Right now he could tell you, from memory, the license plate of every car around him.

And it’s a driving thing because he won’t let his brain flail about on the case. Not enough intel. But something about this is really, really wrong.

“McGee?” Kayla Vance is very surprised to see him on their doorstep. He’s never been here when she was here. Last time he was here… No don’t think about that.

“Is your dad home?”

“Yeah. Come on in.” She turns and points toward the living room, calling out “DAAAAADDDD!”

Vance heads out of the dining room saying, “Kayla, what have I said about y…” Tim sees Vance’s face get tight and the tension in his posture shoot through the roof as he recognizes Tim standing there. By the posture he knows that Vance has a piece of the puzzle he doesn’t.

“Tim?”

Shit, how bad is this? He’s calling me, Tim.

“Can we talk in private?”

“Yes, I think we should.” Vance leads him into his office. It’s a tidy room, lots of books, lots of boxing posters, a few trophies, some bronzed gloves, lots of pictures of the kids, a few pictures of the four of them from before Jackie died. Some pictures of the kids with Lara, and, stereotypes about dating the nanny aside (apparently it was working for Vance) there’s a new one on his desk of him, the kids, and Lara. It’s very much a shrine to the things that make Vance, Vance. Once he closed the door, he says, “What’s on your mind, McGee?”

Tim doesn’t sit down, and Vance doesn’t either. He leans against the edge of his desk, and Tim paces.

“The dead battery’s been bugging me since we found it. I was telling Gibbs and Abby about it, and I mentioned that we didn’t know who installed it.”

“Blake?”

“Probably. He’s the guy who does that. But we didn’t know. Abby asked us why didn’t we know that, because that’s like the number two piece of evidence she’d send up. Which is when I checked, because we should know that. Of everything we should know, that’s the top of the list.

“The detonator was wiped clean. The only guy who does that is the guy who knows the detonator is going to be found. Something’s really wrong on this one.”

Vance nods toward the sofa on the far wall of his office. “What do you drink, Tim?”

Tim feels his stomach knot up and his knees get that loose, wobbly sensation that means his body is sure something very bad is about to happen. He sits down, quickly, and licks his lips, his whole mouth suddenly very dry.

“I’m good, Sir.”

“We’re in my home. Here, I’m Leon.”

“Okay, Leon, I’m fine and right now; I don’t need a drink, but you offering me one and calling me by my first name is making me really nervous, so how about we just get to why you think I’m going to want a drink?”

Leon pours himself one, grabs the chair from behind his desk and drags it over so he can sit in front of Tim. “Bit after two-thirty this morning Clayt,” it takes Tim a second but he realizes Clayt is Jarvis, “came in to see me. Carl Hanson,” Vance pauses to see if Tim knows who that is, and he does recognize the name of the Director of the CIA. “had just gotten word that Ender was killed and that we were the ones who did it. Ender was on a deep cover, report directly to Hanson, long-term mission…”

Vance keeps talking, but Tim doesn’t hear it, all he could hear, feel is the voice in his head screaming NOT AGAIN.

He can see Benedict crumple a few million-year-long seconds after the bullet hit him. That was the shock of the first time he’d shot someone, the first time he ended a life. And it was bad. But since he got the news of who Benedict was, there’s been the feeling of getting kicked in the gut to go with that image, the screaming desire to take it back, make time slow, to do, anything, anything to have not made that decision.

He can see it, replaying in his mind, Ziva hooked up the canister, and for about three minutes while the DEA vans made a huge noise and spectacularly broke into the across-the-street neighbor’s house, he and Draga waited, not really breathing, hoping she could do it and not get caught. They watched all three men on the heat monitor, watched them watch the DEA raid, and apparently they decided it wasn’t their problem, so they went back to their computers.

And then she was back in their van, and they waited, watching the three as they moved slower and slower, and one slumped onto the ground, and another’s head fell to his chest, and the third… he was already pretty slouched, but eventually they saw his hand slip off the mouse.

And it wasn’t until they were all presumed out of it that Tim gave the go for the evacuation of the neighborhood. He didn’t want to start the evac until he was sure none of them could see it and hit a kill switch.

That took two hours, but they weren’t going in until everyone was out of the blast range.

And yeah, he knew the longer a person was exposed to the gas, the lower the survival chances were. He knew it, and he watched the figures on the heat feed slowly get cooler and cooler as their bodies shut down.

They didn’t let the Coroner or EMTs into the Ender’s safehouse, couldn’t get it safe enough. Two of the bomb squad techs carried him out, body limp, one arm trailing on the ground.

And last night he went to sleep with a clean conscience because there were more than forty kids in the blast range, and every single one of them made it out alive. Last night, that image… It’s not that it didn’t bother him, but it was firmly filed in the greater good pile.

And now it’s not. Now it’s tied to a ragged mental voice screaming NOT AGAIN.

Part of him is sitting apart from the screaming. Part of him is amazed at how much this feels like the first time, it’s that same breath stolen, want to pass out and puke sensation.

“Tim…” Leon’s shaking his shoulder. “Come on back, Tim. That was a clean kill. I know it. SecNav knows it. Even the CIA agreed.”

“How clean can it be? He was one of ours, and I killed him.” Tim hears his voice crack on that.

“Clean, Tim. CIA wanted to fuss. Clayt went over our notes. Hanson went over our notes. Given what we knew, no one could give us a way to get Ender out of there without that whole neighborhood blowing up. CIA wanted to. They wanted to yell about it, but Clay sat down with their higher ups, at three in the morning, and told them, ‘Have at it! You’re all so smart and good at this. Get Ender out without killing the whole neighborhood.’ No one had a better answer than you did.”

It helps, a little. Not enough. But it’s better than nothing, helps anchor him to the idea that this time everyone isn’t staring at him like he’s the enemy.

“What do you mean, ‘given what we knew?’”

Vance wishes he hadn’t said that. It’s easy to forget that Tim’s not just computer smart. “Kort had orders to break Ender’s cover if he needed to. He decided he didn’t need to. CIA did have an exit plan in place for Ender. But, because Kort didn’t see any need to tell us about Ender’s real alliances, they didn’t get to put that plan into place.”

“What was it?”

“Kort was going to have the FBI fake an arrest of the ‘terrorists’ who tried to blow up the Reagan. He’d also supplied all three of them with high quality, fake, US Army IDs. He even had ‘fake orders’ for them. The plan was they’d hop a transport for South Korea, and then cross the border for their next job. Only thing was, that transport flight wasn’t going to work the way they were hoping.”

“Kort didn’t tell because he didn’t think I could catch Ender.”

“Kort didn’t think we could catch Ender. He was there before you took over, and he didn’t tell DiNozzo or Gibbs. According to him, this was an operation that required brains and finesse, not just… ‘bull doggish tenacity and an intimidating stare.’”

Actually, Kort had said nothing of the sort. But it sounded like him, and if you’re going to lie, you need to be specific, and Vance is a good liar. Which is also why Vance changed one other key detail in his story, those IDs were supposed to be Marine IDs.

Tim had called that one correctly. It wasn’t NCIS in general that Kort doubted, (When they were planning what the target should be, and who would eventually take Ender in, Kort had recommended a Navy or Marine target so NCIS would catch it because he knew Gibbs could handle it. He knew Gibbs would be ready and able to make sure that transport plane was the end of the trip for Ender, Simmers, and Blake.) it was Tim in specific. Once Kort knew he wasn’t getting out of this, he owned up to the whole thing and his report made very clear that he figured there was no shot at all of Tim taking Ender down, so there was no reason to compromise his cover, and once DiNozzo or Gibbs was up and about again, he’d read them in. But… And because of but, Ender was dead.

But none of that is anything Vance thinks Tim needs to know. This’ll be enough of a hit to McGee’s confidence, and from what he’s been seeing these last few years, McGee confident is capable of great things, and he wants that man working for him, running his Cybercrime department. He’s not about to do anything to hurt that. He does not want him second guessing himself any more than he already will be, and honestly, right now, he was wishing Tim was a little less sharp, so this whole thing could have just died.

Tim sat there for a long minute, staring at his hands, seeing the bodies on his screen slowly fade as the heat leached out of them.

“Scotch.”

“Tim?”

“I like scotch.”

Vance nods, gets up, and gets him one.

Tim holds it, looking at brown liquid and clear glass. Then he takes a good swallow. He’s not really looking to get drunk (he still has to get home, and he’s still aware of that) but he hopes the burn will help pull him out of this numb space.

At least the screaming is over. That’s kind of nice.

“So, what happens now?”

“Nothing. Like I said, CIA wanted to yell. I told Jarvis we go to the wall on this one, because we are not sacrificing anyone just to keep CIA happy, especially not when they don’t play fair with us. He went in full bore, and by this morning it was done. Not sure what’s going to happen to Kort. If he wasn’t so damn dangerous, they’d cut him loose, but he knows too much to ever really retire.”

“That’s why they call them spooks right? They live forever?”

“Something like that. My guess is that Kort might be spending the next year or two brushing up on his Farsi, and find himself doing some deep cover field-work.”

“Great.”

He sits quietly next to Leon for another moment.  

“You going to be okay?”

Tim shrugs.

“It was a clean kill.”

Tim sighs. “No such thing, Leon. He’s still dead, and I gave the order that did it. That’s on me, and it always will be.” He takes another sip of his drink.

“That’s on Kort.”

“Kort might have put me there, but I still made the decision.”

“It was the right one.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t.” Tim thinks about it. That’s a difference. Probie McGee couldn’t have said that. Soon-To-Be-Head-of-Cybercrime McGee can. Given what he knew, it was the right decision. He does feel sure about that. It still hurts, but... he’s not doubting himself. He follows that thought a bit further, what if he had known…

Even if he had known Ender was one of the ‘good guys’ he’d… still do it. Sometimes you can’t get everyone out. “I’d make it again. You don’t leave two guys with dead man switches sitting on tons of explosives in a neighborhood. They had mercury switches on the windows. Some kid misses the ball playing catch, and it hit one of those windows, that whole neighborhood would have gone up.  You can’t leave that in place and hope the angels are on your side while you wait for the seventeen part trap you’ve got to play out. When we handed it over to the FBI, their techs were saying they’d basically have to dismantle the house to declare it safe, and they were planning on searching for landmines, too, given how much crap was in that place.” He takes another sip of his drink. “But he’s still dead, and I made the call, and in the end, there are no clean kills, not for something like this.” 

“I know.” 

“Was there anything in the reports about James or Lisbeth Ender?”

“Not much. No one knows who killed James. Thomas was going to take James’ place, that was part of the plan, but what was supposed to happen to James isn’t in any of the reports. Thomas did recruit Lisbeth for what he was doing. The CIA made sure she was reimbursed for the phones she was buying.”

“How’d we miss that?”

“You didn’t. They had an off-shore account for her, under a fake ID. We know who she became when she vanished, and they’re getting her back.”

“Great.” He hands Vance his still mostly full glass. “I should get home. Abby and Gibbs are both waiting to see what’s going on.”

“Okay. I meant it about you guys taking the week off.”

He nods. Not sure if he’s going in on Monday just to have something to do, or curling around Abby and clinging to her and Kelly for a week.

It’s after ten when he got back in the car. Abby should be nursing again. And hopefully sleeping soon after that. He’s been using up her sleep time, and that’s not fair, not with her getting up every three hours to feed Kelly.

He texts Gibbs. Everyone up?

Right now.

Case is over.

???

Long damn story. It’s done.

That doesn’t sound good.

Is it ever? He pauses for a second. Is Abby reading these, too?

No.

Tell her I’m on my way. Will be home soon. Head to sleep, I’ll be there for snuggling soon.

Are you? He wonders about that briefly, and then gets the idea that Gibbs is asking if he’s telling her to head to sleep, so she doesn’t notice him just driving around on his own, or whatever, for a while.

Yeah. I’m coming home and going to bed. Not sure about sleep, but…

I’ll still be up when you want to talk about it.

Thanks.

Gibbs was on the sofa, reading, waiting up.

It occurs to Tim that this is the first time he’s ever come home and had a Dad waiting up for him. That gets a sigh.

“Tim?”

He shakes his head.

“I’ll be here.”

Tim nods and heads up. His eyes take a second to adjust to the dark of their bedroom, but once they do, he sees she’s on her side, her usual sleeping position, but he’s usually behind her, holding her.

Long exhale. Keep your routine. Routine helps. So he did. He stripped off and brushed his teeth, peed, and headed for bed, just like any other late night. It’s just not like any other late night. He wishes it was.

He snuggles up against her, between soft, nubby sheets and a light summer blanket. Warm, soft body, easy breathing, vague scent of her perfume and shampoo, deeper, stronger scent of her skin, little whiff of baby spit up. Home.

She scoots a bit closer, her neck resting on his arm. Automatically, his other arm curls around her, hand coming to rest under her breast. He kisses the back of her neck, and she sighs in her sleep.

Clean kill.

If that means anything.

I am a gun in the service of life, and if I have to end a life to protect others, I do it.

That’s why I’ve got the badge.

That’s the purpose of the gun.

That’s the job.

More.

It’s not just a job. That’s the life. The life you chose, because it matters, because it’s the man you need to be.

You do what you need to to save lives, and if some goddamn son of a bitch sticks himself in the middle of a fucking bomb, he’s gonna die because I’m not letting the fucker blow. Not me. Not on my watch. Not in a neighborhood filled with families just like mine.

He feels pure white anger surge as he gets to that last bit of his mental monologue. It’s his job to protect people. That’s the long and the short of it, and when it all comes down and works out, that’s who he is. The rest is just window dressing. And that son of a bitch built a cage so dangerous no man in his right mind could let it stand, walked into it, locked the fucking door behind him, and then expected to be saved.

You wanna live, asshole? Don’t sit in the middle of a goddamned bomb, and don’t ask me to get you out. Don’t stay with maniacs who are walking death.

But Ender is still dead, and the screaming from before isn’t guilt, and it isn’t fear. (Or maybe it was, but it’s not now.) It’s rage.

God damn that motherfucking cunt for putting me here. GOD FUCKING DAMN HIM!

Tim rubs his face and can feel he’s shaking, so he gets up and tosses on some pants. He’ll wake Abby if he keeps holding onto her this angry, and she needs her sleep.

  

“So?” Gibbs asks as Tim walks down less than fifteen minutes after he went up.

Tim shakes his head, pulls on sneakers, and points to the door.

Gibbs nods. He gets it. Sometimes you can’t talk. Sometimes you’ve got to work it off, and it’s got to be physical. If he could run, or fight, he’d go along, but he can’t. So he nods again, and once again says, “I’ll be here.”

Tim closes the door quietly, and Gibbs snags his phone. He flips through his numbers and calls Leon. “He’s not talking about it, yet. What happened?”

And Vance told him.

With Benedict there was sorrow, and grief (which, until that point, he thought was a synonym for sorrow, but after Benedict he knew it wasn’t, not really) there was guilt, mountains of stomach emptying guilt, and fear (which took care of everything in his intestinal tract that he didn’t puke up).

This time, running, hard, though his quarter-moon, ghost-silver neighborhood, there’s just rage.

He wants to scream it to the heavens, but he’ll settle for running. Too late, too public for screaming.

But that little voice is in the back of his head, screaming in rage.

TWICE.

Fucking twice.

His feet pound pavement, his body races through humid dark, heart pumping, sweat dripping, endorphins fighting so far outside of their weight class it’s not funny.

Once was bad enough. Everyone’s got that one case where you fucked up and the end was bad. Everyone.

But twice. When you did everything right?

This isn’t even failure.

This is what, a pyrrhic victory? This is every move done right. Meeting and exceeding everyone’s expectations, being three steps cleverer than the people who doubted him, and the wrong guy still died.

Not died. The wrong guy was killed. Passive voice. Avoidance technique. It’s yours. Own it.

You did everything right, and you still killed the wrong guy.

Tim stops running, staring at the stars, listening to the cicadas and the frogs, and then walks home.

He slumps onto the love seat. “Would it help if I shot Kort?”

Gibbs doesn’t know if Tim knows him so well he just knows he’d have gotten the story from Leon by now, or if he just doesn’t care if he knows the story.

“Can you look at yourself in the mirror without wincing?”

“Probably.” He left the light off while he brushed his teeth, and didn’t spend any time looking at himself.

“Good enough. Unless you’re between eating your gun or feeding it to him, you don’t shoot a man for this.”

“What’s this?” Tim sighs, feels like he’s been doing that a lot, staring at the ceiling.

“Hell, if I know the word. Fucked to hell and gone? Nothing else you could have done, nothing else you can change, you did the best you possibly could and it’s still wrong.”

Tim nods.

“And for that, you only shoot him if it’s you or him, and you’re not there.”

“No. Not even close.” Tim shrugs. “Never been close.”

“Good.”

“Not close isn’t the same thing as spiffy.”

“Nope. It was the right decision.”

“I know.” And this time, Gibbs sees that Tim does. He really does. That’s not the problem not today. “I am so fucking pissed at that asshole for making me do it. This must be what suicide by cop feels like, if you’re the cop.”

“Which asshole?”

“I was thinking Ender, but Kort’s got a mountain of shit I want to drop on him, too.”

“Why Ender?” This is when Tim realizes that he never did get deep into the details of the safe house.

“Front door had a bomb under the welcome mat. All of the first floor windows had mercury triggers on them, any vibration stronger than a lawnmower would have set them off. Bomb squad said they were set so that if, somehow, the cops missed the welcome mat, breaking through the door would set them to blow. Pressure plate on the door they used to get in and out, step over it, fine, but most people would have landed right on it. Pressure plates on the back porch. More mercury switches on the sliding glass doors on the back. Garage doors were wired with magnets. Every entrance of that house on the first floor was wired to blow. And a fucking softball tossed the wrong direction could have taken that whole neighborhood out. And Ender let Blake set it up, walked his ass into it, and somehow trusted us to get him back out again.

“And I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. Stick me in that van, tell me Ender works for the CIA, and I’d still make the call. I’m not going to dance around and wait for the CIA to come up with some rescue plan that gets him out three weeks later, leaving this huge bomb in the middle of a fucking neighborhood waiting to go off. Hell, a delivery guy at the wrong address, neighbor knocks on the back door… No. I’m not doing it.

“That son of a bitch made me kill him. Because I’m not the guy who can just sort of hope it’ll go okay and wait it out.

“He was good at what he did, and he wrapped up a cell with more than fifty guys in it, and if I could have gotten him out alive, he would have gone right back to it, pulling in more guys, dangerous guys, evil guys, but he’s not doing it anymore because he let one of the assholes build the trap that I couldn’t let stand, and it didn’t matter if he was still in it or not.

“And all the right decisions in the world doesn’t help with the fact that I want to get his corpse up and smack the shit out of it because I’m the one who had to pull the fucking trigger on him.”

Gibbs starts to get up, and Tim glares at him, then moves, sits on the floor so he’s next to Gibbs. (Gibbs is across the sofa with his foot up.) “This what you were aiming for?”

“Close enough.” He squeezes Tim’s shoulder, and leaves his hand there. “I know it doesn’t help, but I’ve been there, too. Half of sniper training is guns and math, feeling the wind, understanding distance, knowing where something is going to be instead of where it is, trajectories, air currents, calibers, vantage points, and cover. Half of it is pulling the damn trigger. Snipers take out other snipers. We take out machine gunners. We take out high power targets like the other side’s officers. Big enough gun and we take out engine blocks, that’ll force a column off the street and into the mines.

“And when you’re doing that, you’re taking out enemy targets, and that’s just how it is.

“And I was good at it.” Gibbs smiles a little, but it’s not happy, just acknowledging the bittersweet flavor to being exceptionally good at killing people.

“Really good. And in Colombia I ended up… Another son of a bitch with a bomb, and the idiot Lieutenant wants to parley, hoping we can get our guys and some villagers back by talking. He knows where I am, and the idiot keeps walking around, and the son of a bitch is getting more and more aggravated, and I know where this is going, but I don’t have a clean shot because that idiot keep walking back and forth…” Gibbs goes quiet, seeing that moment through his scope again. Wet behind the ears, twenty-one-year-old moron fresh out of Annapolis, who’d been told not to do this, walking back and forth, and Gibbs can see Delando Cortenz smirking, hand on the trigger that’ll blow his hostages, and he knew where it was going to go, knew that smirk wasn’t going to lead to anything good. “So, I swapped up, bullet big as your thumb, damn thing would have practically gone through an elephant, and it did go through the Lieutenant. He didn’t even slow it down, and it went through the son of a bitch, and we got our guys out, and a dozen villagers. And no one ever said anything about it… but, yeah, I wanted to hit him. If he had stayed the fuck out of it, I would have had a clean shot and gotten our guys out with no problems. If he had stayed to the side, just picked a place and stayed in it, I could have gotten a clean shot. But no, the little asshole had to keep moving around.”

Tim squeezes Gibbs hand back.

“How old was he?”

Gibbs shakes his head, looking frustrated. “Twelve? Something like that. Too damn green, too damn stupid. So full of himself, thought he was God’s gift to all things military. The next incarnation of Chesty Puller.”

Tim doesn’t say anything, he just sits there, and Gibbs lets him. There’s nothing else to say. Eventually, he hears Kelly crying, asking for yet another meal, so he stands up, kisses Gibbs on the forehead, and heads up to bring Kelly to Abby, save her from having to get up yet again.

“Tim?” Abby sounds sleepy as he lays Kelly in front of her. “You get any sleep at all?” she asks as she gets Kelly settled on her breast.

“Not yet.” He pulls off the pants, and curls into bed behind her.

Between no sleep, and the fact that she has to be able to smell the sweat on him, there’s fear in her voice as she asks, “How bad is it?”

His lips on her shoulder, his arm over her side, his hand on Kelly’s back, he says, “I’ve had better days. But nothing that won’t hold until tomorrow if you’d rather doze while she eats.”

“You think I’m going to nap after that?”

“I can hope?”

“Uh uh.” She lifts his hand to her lips, kissing his palm, his wedding ring, and the tattoo of her lips. “Let me help you carry this.”

So he told her, and held onto her and Kelly, and tried to let anger go, and maybe it didn’t entirely, but being home helped, running helped, talking to Gibbs helped, wrapped in his home and people who love him, helps, and eventually, when Abby flips over, Kelly now between them, so she could nurse on the other side, Tim falls asleep to soft, little sucking sounds, and the feel of his hand on Abby’s hip, his forehead pressed to hers.

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