Keryl Raist's Blog, page 20

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 219

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


Chapter 219: Aftermath


It took Ducky an hour to get all the glass out. And though there were long cuts, none of them were deep enough to warrant stitches. An entire box of butterfly bandages and half a roll of surgical tape, but no stitches.
Abby took him home, held onto him until morning. He may have slept. Mostly he remembers just hurting all over. Mental pain that hurts so bad your body aches along with it.
They both took that next day off and rested. And he worked on trying to heal.


The problem with a big, messy more or less public hissy fit is that it's big and messy and public. And if you do get out of it looking like you got into a fight with a ream of paper and got seventy million paper cuts, and you don't want everyone to know why you ended up in that shape, you need some sort of cover lie.
And it's not even so much that he doesn't want everyone to know… well, that's part of it.
And not everyone. It's just… He's sensitive to the fact that Ziva's dad makes his look like a good guy, and 'Hey your Dad dropped you in the middle of the desert to be tortured and raped and left you for dead,' and 'Mine said mean things to me, and I'm handling it with less than a quarter of the grace you did,' just feels really nasty.
So he doesn't want to get into that with Tony and Ziva. It's not even that he thinks they wouldn't understand or sympathize, it just feels like he's complaining about a sprained ankle to a double amputee.
And part of it is just not wanting to say it. Not wanting to keep talking about it. Gibbs' quiet seems like a really good plan now. He's liking quiet. Quiet is his friend. It's warm and comfortable and maybe this is a response to not being quiet and then really not liking what talking got him, but right now he's not in a big let's-talk-about-this sort of place.
He took two days off to let the worst of the swelling go down and the cuts start to heal.
But Abby went back to work, because officially he was putting up a mirror, accidently dropped it, and cut the hell out of himself. And she wouldn't stay home with him for something like that.
Officially that's a plausible lie.
Officially no one like Vance is going to say anything or question it. Tony and Ziva might wonder how he got his face cut up by dropping a mirror, but they aren't asking about it. They're probably assuming he was doing some sort of stupid sex thing, like trying to install it on the ceiling or something, and got hurt like that.
It'll hold until they actually see him, and since that's all it's got to do, he's fine with that.
Or he was until Jimmy came over.
Jimmy hadn't been in the house long enough to get through his first sentence. "Ducky wanted me to—" And then he saw Tim and stopped dead. "Oh God, what the hell happened to you? No way you did that by dropping a mirror."
Tim, who'd been sitting on the sofa, watching the second to last episode of Supernatural, stopped it, looking surprised to see Jimmy in his house. The don't-talk-about-it plan was a whole lot trickier to pull off if people who love you can see how damaged you are. "Why'd Ducky send you?"
"Supposedly to do a wound check, but I'm getting the sense it's not your cuts he wants me looking at. What happened?" Jimmy says as he sits down.
"Long damn story, and I promise, one day I'll tell you, but right now I don't want to talk."
Jimmy's looking him over, voice worried, nervous expression on his face. "Okay. Let me check your cuts."
"I'm fine. Abby's already doused me in Neosporin and changed the band-aids this morning. She'll probably do it again tonight. Neither of us want any of this to scar."
"Good." He pauses, looking at the cuts. "Did you do this to yourself?"
"Yeah."
"On purpose?"
"Not exactly."
Jimmy gently touched his jaw, tilting his head a little to see the long cut across his cheek better. "Might want to see a plastic surgeon on that one if you don't want it to scar."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Ducky and Abby know the full story of what happened?"
"Yeah."
His hands are gentle and competent as he looks over Tim's cuts. Tim can tell part of what he's doing is making sure Ducky didn't miss any glass. His eyes aren't as good as they used to be and glass can be awfully easy to miss. "None of them are very deep. That's good. I'm fairly sure Ducky's sent me over to just be here with you."
"Yeah. He and Abby are sort of keeping watch on me."
Jimmy nods at that, looking pretty disturbed. "You at least want to tell me how you did this to yourself?"
"Broke six beakers by throwing them as hard as I could at a wall less than four feet away from me."
Jimmy's eyes go wide. "You are so lucky you didn't lose an eye."
"Abby put safety goggles on me."
"Oh." Jimmy thinks about that for a moment. "When I needed to do something stupid and violent you were there for me. I am here for you. You need this, you pick up your fucking phone and you call me! You can't/won't talk, fine, I won't press, but you get off your ass and call me, okay?"
Tim nods. "I thought about it. Didn't want to wake you up."
Jimmy raised his hand, like he was about to headslap Tim, looks at all the cuts, and drops it. "Wake me up! If there's ever a next time, you wake me up!"
"I really hope there won't be a next time."
"Good." Jimmy sits next to him for a moment, not moving or saying anything. He looks like he's trying to figure out how to say whatever's in his mind.
"Just ask."
"Are you… hell… I don't know what to ask. I'm scared. And angry. Something hurt you bad enough or pissed you off so hard you did that. I don't want to make it worse by demanding you talk, but I don't know what's wrong, so I don't know how to be comforting, and I'm worried."
"You're here, so that means it's a paperwork day, right?"
"Yeah."
"Call Gibbs and pour me a scotch. Big one. I don't want to do this twice."
Jimmy was back two minutes later with a much smaller scotch than Tim would have liked. "That's a big scotch?"
"You're on pain meds, right?"
"Oh."
"So, yes, that's a big scotch. Much more than that and all Jethro and I'll be doing is tucking you into bed for a nap."
"Might like a nap."
"We don't have to do this. I mean, I want to know, but…"
"I know. Just… might as well." He blows out a frustrated breath. "'Course, 'might as well do it now' is why I'm in this shape, so maybe that's not a great plan."
Jimmy's looking at him, eyes wide and earnest, pain for his friend clear on his face. "Tim, talk to me."
He drank half of the scotch down. "This should be fully kicked in by the time Gibbs is here. I'll give both of you the whole story."
Gibbs got to his place in eighteen minutes, which means he was channeling Ziva behind the wheel. Like Jimmy he checks the cuts, hands gentle and careful on Tim's skin. Abby'd already told him why Tim was in the shape he was in, but actually seeing it made his eyes go wide, and then narrow in anger.
"You've both offered to listen, so here's the story…"
He finished up by telling both of them about talking with his mom and how he'd spent basically his whole life blaming his dad, pretending his mom had been outside of it… "But she wasn't. Maybe he made the rules, but he was gone all the time, so she upheld them. She knew. She might not have approved of every tactic he used, but she was with him on the general plan of verbally beat the living shit out of Tim until he's tough enough. Though God alone knows what the fuck tough enough is. I couldn't get it together enough to ask, and I'm honestly not sure I want to know."
Tim shakes his head. "In a lot of ways, this is worse than what actually happened. That was anger and pain and rage, and this is… betrayal."
Jimmy and Jethro are just looking at him. There's nothing either of them can do to change or help this, so they sit there, trying to be comforting, and let him talk.
"I don't even know what to do with this. Since… Annapolis… she's been nothing but supportive and encouraging of me. She's not the one who called me names or belittled me. She never was. It was like good cop/bad cop from Hell.
"The Admiral didn't go to any of my graduations. He was pissed about turning down Annapolis, so even though he got home the day before, he skipped the high school one. Mom and Penny were nervous enough about us being together that the day after graduation I was on the other side of the country. He was afloat for Johns Hopkins and MIT. Hated the idea of me at NCIS so he refused to attend FLETC. She was at all of them. She's got a wall covered in pictures of us kids… I mean, how the fuck do you do that? I get him. I wasn't who he wanted me to be and disappointed the shit out of him, fine. I get it.
"But… I mean, what the hell did she think she was doing?"
Unfortunately, Jimmy and Gibbs don't have the answer to that. And right now, the one thing Tim knows he doesn't want to do is get on the phone and talk to the person who does.


After Jenny died, Ziva had explained the idea of sitting Shiva to them. She had told them, that after everything had gone wrong, after God had ruined Job's life, his friends came to comfort him. They didn't say anything. They didn't try to fill the air with useless words. They just came, saw Job in pain, and sat with him, sharing his pain in silence, only talking when he was ready.
And thus Jews sit Shiva. They go to the home of the one who mourns, sit with him, and only speak when he wants, about what he wants.
When Jimmy told him about the "comforting words" people kept abusing him and Breena with after they lost Jon, he thought he got the idea. He thought he understood the power and value of comfortable silence.
But now, sitting on his sofa, between Jethro and Jimmy, both of whom aren't saying anything, because there's nothing to say, because right now words would be hollow, meaningless, almost an insult to the gravity of this pain, he gets it. He truly, deeply understands the gift of silence. Words might make this easier for Jimmy or Gibbs, but it won't for him, and they're respecting that.
Sitting on the sofa, Gibbs' arm around him, they are allowing him the space he needs to grieve, and providing him the safety and love he needs to do it.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 218

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


Chapter 218: Mom


MomTim felt his phone buzz and checked it. One word on the screen. Mom.
The call he'd been dodging for weeks. He checked his computer, saw the day, okay, technically more than three months.
The conversation he wasn't feeling like he wanted to have. At all.
On the other hand, it's night, after dinner. He's on paperwork, but Abby's working late, so he's just hanging out in her office.
He has time to take this now. He's not home. No excuse to avoid it, like he could be writing.
He's just not entirely sure he wants to do this. No, that's not right. He doesn't want to do this. But he's also fairly sure that putting it off forever won't make anything better or different.
So on the on the third buzz he picked up and said, "Hi, Mom."
"Tim? I thought I was going to get your voice mail again."
"Not today. What's up?"
"What's up with me?" She sounds surprised that he's talking like they just chatted three days ago. "Nothing new. What's up with you? You've been hiding since before Valentine's Day. Penny says you're busy, but I'm not buying it. You work ninety hours a week, write, have a wife, and before February still managed to talk to me every week. What's going on Tim?"
He sighs quietly, catches Abby's eye, she can see him holding his phone to his ear. He mouths the word 'Mom' and she nods. He heads to the ballistics lab. That way if someone not Abby wanders in, they won't hear/see him on the phone.
"Tim?"
"Just finding a better place to talk. Still at work, waiting for Abby to get done and head home."
"Okay."
He drags a chair in and shuts the door. It's not wonderfully comfortable, but it's probably the most private place at NCIS.
"So…"
He's still not talking.
"Is everything okay with you and Abby?"
"We're good, Mom. Real good."
"And Kelly's fine?"
"Yeah, kicking up a storm." He doesn't want to get into what's actually going on with Kelly and Abby.
"Your friends that lost the baby? Are they okay?"
"Yeah, Mom. Breena's pregnant again."
"Oh, that's so good!" She waits for a few beats, hears Tim very much not saying anything, not volunteering to say anything, and said, "So, everything in your world is fine, but you aren't talking. What is going on? Last I heard you were looking forward to Valentine's, then you dropped off the face of the Earth."
He sighs, and begins with, "A few days after that I got the flu…" And like with Penny he didn't censor himself, didn't pull any punches, and wrapped up with, "And since then I've been thinking about it. Well, really trying to not think about it, because mostly, I'm just really fucking pissed at you. You knew. The shit he pulled on me. You knew, and you let it happen. That summer he dragged me on a boat every damn day, you didn't stop it until I had lost thirty pounds. He spent two solid months terrorizing me, and every morning until August you let him take me out and do that to me. And all of those shooting practices. And the constant fighting… And, did you think that was normal or okay or… You're the grown-up. You were supposed to protect me from that!"
His mom is just silent. And he knows this flavor of silence. He's felt it before, been on both sides of it. It's the everything is sideways, the rug just got yanked out from under you but you haven't hit the floor yet, oh shit oh shit oh shit, keep it together, got to think, silence.
So he waits. He lets her think.
And finally she said, "I never thought about it like that."
That's a remarkably not comforting answer. He's not sure what a comforting answer would be, but it sure as hell isn't that. "Well how did you think about it?"
"We wanted you to be the best you could be. We wanted you to be strong and tough and capable of doing anything and everything you might want to do. You have so much talent, but you'd second guess yourself or get worried or let other people talk you out of things, and we wanted you to be able to stand up for yourself.
"So, you… agreed with it? He's threatening to have me gang raped by his sailors and you thought that was appropriate?"
"No. No!" He can hear she's upset, but he's not getting the sense she's surprised. The idea that John might have told her about that makes him feel sick. "That was too far. And I told him that." Fuck. She had known. He can feel his control slipping away, and he's scrambling to hold it. "But we were both afraid that you were so sensitive that life would beat you down. We thought you needed a thicker skin to survive and thrive."
"So you thought letting him do it to me instead was a good plan?" He realized he just yelled that, and took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.
"He's your father. I knew he wouldn't really hurt you. Knew he'd never push too far."
Unfortunately that broke his exceptionally tenuous hold on calm and he was yelling again when he asked, "What the fuck did you think was too far? Actually having me raped?"
"He never hit you. And the one time I was afraid he might, I made sure he wasn't alone with you."
Tim realized he was shaking from head to toe and was actually so mad he was having a hard time seeing. So, before he threw the phone against the wall hard enough to break it, he said, "Okay, Mom, I've got to hang up, throw up, shoot something, and cry." And he hung up before she could say anything else.
There is a sink in the ballistics lab, and he did throw up in it.
Then he emptied his gun into the ballistics tank.
He was crying and looking for something not too expensive to break into a whole lot of very tiny pieces when Abby ran in.
She came to a short stop, stared at him, eyes wide, and said, "You are not okay! What happened?"
Plastic test tube rack. He's got no idea what it's doing in the ballistics lab, but it'll work. He put it on the ground, hands still shaking and methodically stomped it into about ninety pieces.
"Talked to my mom."
"Oh God."
"You see anything else I can break?" he asks, grinding bits of plastic into much smaller bits of plastic.
She looked around, but it's the ballistics lab: there's a tank for shooting bullets, the catch net they use to grab them back out again, a sink for refilling the water in the tank, a desk for taking notes, a shelf with ear and eye protection, several gun safes for holding weapons that are about to be processed or just were processed. Beyond that it's a seven by ten closet of a room with one tiny window up by the ceiling.
"Back in a sec."
It took longer than a second, but when she came back she had two more magazines for his gun and half a dozen glass beakers.
"Oh, good." He grabbed a beaker and threw it, hard, against the wall. Having it shatter into seventeen million pieces was satisfying. "Maybe you could go outside for a few minutes? I don't want you to get hit by flying glass."
He can see she's thinking about saying something along the lines of she'd prefer he didn't get cut by flying glass, but he can also see that she knows him well enough it's just not going to work, so she heads to the safety glasses, grabs one, puts it on him, and leaves.
He's simultaneously feeling very hot, rage, anger beyond anything he's ever felt before, and very cold, outside of himself. He's having a very precise, very determined, exceptionally destructive but controlled temper tantrum. He shatters each beaker, flinging it against the wall, breaks it into thousands of pieces and then grinds the pieces into dust. Then reaches for the next beaker and does it again.
He's not sure it's really helping, but it feels good—ish. Well, not bad. And short of calling up Jimmy, who is probably sleeping and would likely want to continue to do so, and asking him to fight, which would mean explaining this whole thing, again, and he doesn't want to, he's kind of out of ideas on how to burn some of this feeling off.
When he's down to two beakers he serious debates shooting them. He's got lots of bullets, but he decides against it. The walls in here are just drywall, nothing that'll really stop a bullet. So he goes back to throwing them against the wall.
Then reloads his gun, empties it again, reloads again, and empties that magazine into the tank, as well.
BertAnd when he was done, he wasn't shaking anymore and felt like he could probably put together complete sentences, so he opened the door, and found Abby standing in front of it, staring at it, holding Bert.
Her eyes went very wide and she said, "Do not move at all."
Two minutes later she was back with a small broom, a dust pan, and Ducky with a first aid kit.
Ducky just looked at him, horrified, and said, "Oh, Timothy! Please, hold still."
He's feeling like he should probably be a lot more worried about how they're acting, but he's not hurting, and his eyes are protected, so it can't be that bad.
Abby looked at Ducky. "Do I sweep him off, or…"
Ducky's looking him over, and he's just standing there, not really feeling anything. Like he's detached from everything and just watching with a vague, academic interest in the subject.
"Abigail, I think we need a comb."
"I have one in my purse."
"Good. Start at the top and work our way down?" Ducky, with a very disturbed look on his face, suggests.Abby's back a second later with her comb and begins to very carefully, very gently comb his hair, saying over and over, "Please, baby, don't move."
It occurs to him that he might still be shaking, but he doesn't think he is. He thinks he's still. Though he's mildly curious why she's combing his hair, but not enough to ask about it. He's also mildly curious about the fact that Ducky has left, come back with scrubs, and is laying out both a lidocaine syringe and sutures.
Finally he asks, "Am I bleeding?"
Abby pauses in combing out his hair. "Yeah."
"Oh."
He almost nods, and she says, "Stay still."
"Why are you combing my hair?"
"You're covered in hundreds of bits of glass. We're trying to get if off of you without getting you cut to ribbons."
"Oh. Shower?"
"Eventually, Timothy. But for right now we want to get the bigger pieces off."
"Okay."
Abby finished with his hair, which was when he noticed that she had thick, protective gloves on. She carefully peeled off his shirt, watch, and wrist cuff, got his belt off, and as this was happening he was aware of soft, gentle tinking sounds as more and more pieces of glass fell off of him and hit the floor.
Abby stopped with his belt. "Can't get your pants off without taking off your shoes."
"That's fine."
"No, it's not, look down."
Hundreds of glass fragments glinted up at him from the floor. He also, for the first time, noticed the blood dripping down both arms. He'd had his sleeves rolled up, and apparently had gotten cut.
"Just keep holding still. I'll get this swept up, and we'll move onto the bottom half of you," Ducky said.
"Okay." He just stood there and waited, let them undress him. The good thing about the bottom half of him was he had on jeans and thick shoes, so a quick glance showed the bottom half of him was fine. Once he was clear of his glass encrusted clothing, he was able to put on the scrub pants, and Ducky had him sit down at Abby's desk.
Abby stood next to Ducky while he carefully removed fourteen slivers of glass from Tim's forearms and hands.
On the fifteenth one, Tim stopped counting and said, "This should hurt, shouldn't it?"
Ducky glances at Abby, looking very worried. "Yes, Timothy."
"I can't feel it."
"You might be in shock. As soon as we get your wounds dressed, we'll get you wrapped up and laying down."
"I should probably clean the glass out of the ballistics lab."
"I've got it, don't worry about it," Abby said.
"Okay." He nods a little, sighs, and says, voice very flat and matter of fact, he could be reading a weather report out loud, "So, my mom called, and instead of dodging the call, like I did with the last ten of them, I answered." He's not looking at them. Not watching Ducky take yet another piece of glass out of his arm. Really he's not looking at anything at all. He's thinking that if he could see himself, he'd probably have a thousand yard stare. He keeps on talking in that same eerie calm voice. "That was a bad fucking plan. Should have let it go to voicemail." His voice is still very calm as he says this, but he's starting to feel a bubble of hysterical building under that calm, and he's not sure if he should try to tamp it down or let it out. "And I talked to her about it. And apparently all of that crap with my dad was some sort of make-sure-Tim's-tough-enough-to-deal-with-the-real -world thing. Apparently they were worried I was too soft or sensitive or something."
He watches Ducky ease another long shard of glass out of his skin. He can see his own blood on the glass, and the way his skin pulls against it as Ducky tugs gently with his surgical tweezers.
"Apparently I wasn't hard enough then. You're pulling an inch long piece of glass out of my arm, and I haven't even winced. You think I'm hard enough, now?"
That's when Abby starts crying. She circles around behind him, pressing her lips to the top of his head, he's guessing that's one of the few places she's not worried about ground glass rubbing into his skin. The sound of quiet sobbing, and the feel of her lips on his body, her tears in his hair, brings him back, snaps him out of the numb, shocked, dead sort of place he'd been.
And first and foremost is the sensation that he'd been an utter idiot. He's married, with a pregnant wife who could go into labor at any minute, who could start bleeding any second, and the last thing she needs is him having a massive destructive fit. He has a family, and they come first, and he cannot be doing crap like this. Tim looks and really sees his arms and they look like he had to fight his way out of ten miles of thorn tipped vines.
"Oh, God, Abby! I'm so sorry!" He starts to reach up to comfort her, but Ducky holds his arm fast.
"Don't move. We still have a lot of glass to go."
He can definitely feel it now. It looks like his shirt did a good job protecting his arms and chest, there are only a few long scratches on them, but his forearms, hands, and face feel shredded.
Abby's murmuring against his head, "It's okay, baby. It's going to be okay."
He closes his eyes, realizing he's crying, might have been doing it the whole time. "She knew Abby." That bubble of hysterical broke, and he started to sob. "She knew and approved."
"Shhhh… You've got to stay still a little longer, baby." She's kissing the top of his head, petting his sides. "Shhhh…"
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Shards To A Whole: Chapter 217

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


Chapter 217: First Time Father


May 22, 2015.
Another doctor’s appointment.
Another ultrasound.
And yeah, the 4d picture show complete with thumb sucking and kicking was awfully cute. There was indeed cooing from both parental units at that. Close ups of little feet and hands resulted in even more cooing.
But the transvaginal wand came out again, and the placenta is still “low,” hasn’t moved at all.
But Abby’s still at no effacement and no dilation, so for the time being everything is still, okay.
They make another appointment for June 5th, with the understanding that if contractions start, any of them, at all, they’ll make one sooner.


There is a point in every first-time pregnant father’s life that can best be described as, “Oh Shit! That kid’s gotta come out, and it’s going to happen soon! I don't know what to do. Shit!”
This moment comes in many styles and flavors.
Gibbs remembers it very clearly. He’d gotten home, and found Shannon in Kelly’s room, surrounded by doll clothing. And he just stood there, staring at her sitting on the floor, surrounded by this huge pile of doll clothing, that she had very carefully laundered and was folding up, thinking how absurd it was that a twenty-three-year-old woman, who was about to be a mother of all things, would start playing with dolls all of a sudden.
And he stood there, watching her fold them up, not getting it for a good, solid two minutes, and it slowly dawned on him there was no doll in the room, and that all of that tiny clothing was going to go on a real person, a real person who would be making her way out of his wife’s body, and his knees went weak and he had to sit down or he was going to pass out.
He still feels a little stupid when he remembers it.
But, anyway, he was expecting that sooner or later (and as the weeks went by later got bumped off the menu and all there was was sooner) that Tim would show up with that scared and determined look he got when he ran into something that was uncomfortable but he was going to master it on his face.
And Gibbs was ready for it. He’d been prepping for it since they told him Abby was pregnant. He was bound and determined to be useful and calming for this.
So, of course, that’s not how it worked. Abby showed up in a blind baby’s-coming-soon-what-the-hell-am-I-gonna-do panic.
This of course shot his plan to hell and gone. Among other things step one was offer scotch, and that certainly wasn’t going to work.
She’s pacing (well, waddling) around his living room, rambling on about how this kid is going to come out and she doesn’t know what to do or how to be a Mom and this little girl is going to be entirely dependent on her for everything and nothing’s ever been entirely dependent on her and what if she screwed it up because sometimes she does that and it’s not okay to screw things up, she can’t screw it up, Kelly’s gonna depend on her, and Tim does too and she can’t—
Gibbs finally figured out what to do. He gently took both of her shoulders in his hands, and held onto her for a long minute, his lips pressed against her head, and he just held her still, stopping the spinning of her mind and body.
When he felt her start to relax he pulled back a little, smiled, and kissed her forehead.
“You’re gonna screw up. Tim is too. I’m gonna do it. Penny is. So’s Ducky. We’re all going to screw things up with Kelly. But she’ll be fine. And so will you. And so will Tim. I screwed up with my Kelly and so did Shannon. My parents screwed up with me. Yours did with you and Luca. It happens to everyone.”
And Abby burst into tears.
So he cuddled her against his shoulder and rubbed her back.
It turned out that was probably the right answer.

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Shards To A Whole: Chapter 216

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


Chapter 216: Ten Centimeters


May 18th was the first of the childbirth classes.
And yeah, Tim feels kind of stupid standing there with Abby in front of the elevator at the hospital with two pillows, but it’s kind of obvious why they’re there, so it’s not like he’s some sort of weirdo who just likes sleeping in a hospital.
Privately, he’s feeling like this is probably not going to be a very useful way to spend every Thursday night for the next six weeks.
It’s just, since everyone and their cousin all said, basically: “Don’t worry about it, the placenta will probably scoot out of the way,” he’s got this bone deep feeling that that’s soothing bullshit designed to try and keep him and Abby from freaking out.
If placenta previa really is a problem in one out of three cases at mid-term, and down to one out of two hundred by seven months, and they’re still right next to the danger zone, he’s just feeling like it’s unlikely to suddenly get better when it didn’t before.
But Abby’s still really hoping this won’t be a c-section, so they’re in the hospital, waiting for an elevator that’ll take them up to their OB’s office where they offer Lamaze classes.
And, as Breena said to him, when he was being a bit of a dick about this being a waste of time, (Not in front of Abby. Jimmy and Breena were there, though.) that even if they don’t use it for actually getting the kid out, the calming, focusing, breathing stuff is all good for the very long time after the kid comes out when you’re so annoyed at her you’re ready to blow your top and you need to remind yourself that you love this tiny creature more than anything on earth, even if you don’t feel that way this particular second because you haven’t slept in a week and are wiping poop off of what was your last clean shirt two minutes before you need to leave the house.
Tim laughed for a second when she said that, and then realized she wasn’t kidding.
And so, Lamaze classes.
Abby had liked the idea of the Bradley ones, but they were a bit behind the eight ball on that, because they take twelve weeks, and Kelly’s due out in six.


The classes aren’t bad or anything.
Their instructor is very perky, and can say things like ‘mild discomfort’ and act like she means it.
10 CentimetersAnd she’s not vehemently anti-pain meds which Tim appreciates. And, okay, maybe this isn’t cool, but he hates the idea of Abby in pain and knows he’ll be using pretty much every coping method he can think of to try and not push meds on her she might not want. (Maybe the Lamaze techniques will be good for that.)
So, they spend an hour talking about focusing techniques, working on centering, which he figures the yoga is good for, but mostly this is a more in-depth how the baby goes from being inside of your wife to outside of her kind of class, and well, he felt like he already had a pretty good handle on how that happened.
Though he did feel a little silly when they passed around a ten centimeter circle and he found himself suddenly realizing exactly how big that is. He knows what ten centimeters is, but somehow no tangible image of a ten centimeter circle had formed in his mind in relation to actually getting Kelly out. Though the fact that Abby also looked mildly horrified at that idea, like she’d also never managed to get that idea into her head made him feel a little better.


It’s a delicate question, and he’s sure Jimmy won’t mind, but… It is kind of personal…
They’re grabbing a quick coffee, killing a few minutes together during a paperwork day. “So… we’re in the Lamaze class and they were talking about after the baby comes…” Tim can feel himself blushing as he gets ready to ask this, which is kind of dumb, not like he and Jimmy haven’t talked about stuff like this before, but… yeah, really personal. “And… the instructor was saying that sex after is different… and I was wondering… how different is it?”
Jimmy laughs, which makes Tim feel a bit more comfortable. Then he shrugs. “Different. Like first time back at it different or lasting different?”
That there’d be levels to that question wasn’t something Tim had thought of. But he is now, so he says, “Both?”
Jimmy takes a sip of his coffee. “First time back... Okay, look, her body does not want to get pregnant while she’s nursing. So part of that is that nice, easy kiss her just right and she gets wet and eager, that vanishes. That’s evolution trying to make sure mama and baby have their best chance of survival. So, first time back, even with lots of lube, and slow, and gentle, you aren’t going to rock her world and the only reason she’s rocking yours is because you haven’t gotten laid in months.”
That’s not very encouraging. “How long did you two wait?” Maybe Jimmy and Breena just hopped back into it too fast. After all, Molly was born in February, and Breena was pregnant with Jon in late August.
“Two months, both times.” So much for that theory. “Everything heals up sooner than that, but… she’s still going to be dry, and it’s still going to hurt a little, and you’re both tired, and if she’s nursing you can’t really touch her breasts because they hurt, too, and honestly, if you’re like me and jerking off in the shower every morning you’ve gotten enough sleep to function, those’ll be better orgasms.”
Really not encouraging. “Wonderful.”
Jimmy shrugs. It is what it is, and not all that fabulous is what sex is the first few times back at it after a baby. “It gets better. Just first few times back, treat her like a virgin.”
That’s not helpful for Tim. “I’ve never had sex with a virgin.”
“Never?” Jimmy looked really surprised at that.
“Only virgin I’ve ever had sex with was me.”
Jimmy laughs. “Ah. Well, lots of foreplay, lots of attention, make sure she’s on top and in charge of speed and depth, and if you’ve got the time, and you probably don’t because babies eat every three hours and it takes them an hour to eat, get her off before you get into her.”
Sounds like a decent strategy. Tim makes a note to remember that. “What about looser?” Having held that stupid ten centimeter plastic circle in his hands, he’s now got a very concrete idea of what ten centimeters is and well… okay… yeah… that’s really pretty big.
Jimmy shrugs and then nods. “She’ll heal up. She’s not going to stay that wide open, but you’ll be able to feel the difference. It’s not bad. It’s still sex, you know, sex with her, but if you had hair trigger issues before, you won’t anymore.”
“Not a problem.”
“And likely won’t ever be then.” Jimmy thinks about it. “Look, you’ll get back to it, and you’ll ease into it, and after a few months you’ll catch back up on your sleep and it’ll go back to being great. And, she’ll feel different, but it’s not bad, just different. The biggest thing, the glowing-neon-sign, watch-the-hell-out, danger-ahead, steer-clear-of-the-rocks thing is how she thinks she looks after she has the baby. You look at her and think ‘Yay! Boobs! God, I wish I could touch them!’ Seriously, they’ll be bigger than Kelly’s head at first. It’s really impressive, and you get to see them all the time. That part’s great.
“But she looks at herself and sees droopy skin and stretch marks and spider veins and thinning hair and flab and black circles under her eyes and red-chapped nipples and if we’re been really frank, floppy vaginal lips and hemorrhoids, and wants to shoot herself in the head because she thinks she looks so bad. And do not tell her that her breasts are so incredible that you haven’t looked at any other part of her body because she will hit you, hard, for being an idiot!”
That made Tim laugh. “You did that, didn’t you?”
“I finally got Molly to sleep, and she was in the bathroom, and normally, she’s in there, I don’t go in, but I could hear her crying, so I knocked and poked my head in, and she was looking at herself naked, and she was absolutely appalled.”
“Breena’s beautiful.”
“I know. And I told her that. In very graphic terms. And she hit me and called me a liar.”
“Ow.”
“Yeah, I have no idea how to deal with that and not get hit. Because the one thing you absolutely do not want to do is go, ‘Yep, you look like you got hit by a truck. But it’ll get better, and even if it doesn’t you can get a tummy tuck.’ I mean, I may have some issues with finding the appropriate thing to say, but I sure as hell knew that wasn’t it.”
“Yeah.” Tim’s trying to think of strategy for this, and so far is coming up with a great big blank.
“I really think it’s an evolution thing. Her body does not want two kids in one year and does everything it can to avoid it. So for about four months she’s got no interest in sex, thinks she looks revolting, and even slow and gentle with a lot of lube is uncomfortable.”
For Tim this is a pretty easy formula, if her body’s not into it, wait. “So why not wait four months?”
Jimmy gives him a you’re kidding me, right? look.
“I’m serious. Not like I haven’t gone four months without sex before. Why not wait that long?”
Jimmy’s look has morphed from you’re kidding me to please tell me you aren’t this stupid. Tim’s still looking at him blankly, not getting it. “Just because you became a dad doesn’t mean you stop being a husband. It is your job to walk a tightrope of making her feel desirable, loved, and adored, without pushing too hard in the ‘I want to get laid’ direction. But I can tell you this, if you go four or six or however many months and don’t make a pass at her, she’s going to think you think she’s hideous, and you aren’t getting any husband-of-the-year awards for that.”
“Ah.” And Tim gets that, really gets that.
“Yeah, and guess what’s the easiest, clearest way to let her know you still want to have sex with her?”
“Yeah, I think I got that one figured out.”
Jimmy grins. “Nothing says I-want-you like an erection.”
Tony stops, stares at them looking pretty disturbed, shakes his head. “Please tell me that was just the worst possible moment I could have walked in on this conversation.”
Jimmy grins at him, too. “Just passing on the wisdom of the veteran dad. Two years, you and I’ll be having this conversation.”
“Oh God.”
“Well, I suppose you could have it with Gibbs,” Jimmy says.
Tony’s eyes go wide.
“Or your own dad,” Tim adds with a smile.
“No! I’m not even sure what you’re talking about, but I do not want to have a conversation about anything involving erections with my dad or Gibbs.”
That gets Tim and Jimmy laughing.

Next.

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 215

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


Chapter 215: Dreams That Never Happened


"Palmer, where's your head at? It's certainly not here," Gibbs asked as Tim swept Jimmy's feet out from under him for the third time in seven minutes.
"Sorry, Jethro," Jimmy said, standing up slowly.
"Focus, Jimmy, get your mind here."
"Yes, Gibbs."
Jimmy's not sounding all that good today, either. Gibbs flashes Tim a quick what's going on? look to Tim, and Tim sends him a quick no clue look back.
"Switch it up, Tim, you defend, Jimmy, go after him, get yourself back into it."


Tim figured out what the problem was halfway through that round. He hadn't been hit that hard, that many times since January, and he's thanking Gibbs that they've been training because he's good enough to at least deflect most of the blows.
Finally, he just stopped, stepped back, held his hands up, and said, "Look, I need some padding. I am not coming home to Abby looking like I got run over by a truck again. Okay?"
Jimmy nods, breathing hard. "Okay."
That's when Gibbs started to figure out what was going on. He did a little math that confirmed his suspicions, so while Tim got into some padding, he leaned against the ropes and said to Jimmy, quietly, "You want to be here?"
"Here, home, doesn't matter. It's gonna be a shit day no matter where I am. At least this way, I get to work some of it out."
"Okay. Breena all right with this?"
"Yeah. She'd be here herself except…" And Jimmy ran headlong into the fact that they aren't telling anyone other than the McGees, Ducky, and Penny that's she's pregnant again.
Gibbs nods, not making him come up with some sort of lame excuse. They all know Breena's pregnant. When pregnancy equals violent, all day long morning sickness from about twenty second after the test comes up positive to about week fifteen, a pregnancy is hard to hide. But they all respect them not saying anything about it, yet. So, if Breena's been looking awfully green, skipping out on most gatherings, and occasionally has to excuse herself when she does attend, no one is saying anything about it.
"You got anything other than this planned?"
Cremation DiamondsJimmy looks down, rubs his forehead, might be tearing up, and then gently, almost reverently, stroked his forefinger over the tiny diamond embedded in the medic alert bracelet he wears. Gibbs had noticed he had a new one. That's not true. He noticed Jimmy kept it on. He usually takes it off when they fight. But today he didn't. Gibbs assumed from the fact that he kept it on, and from the way he's touching it now, that it's new.
"There weren't a lot of remains. He was… too small for that. And we didn't have a place to scatter them, no memories of him anywhere. So… there's a company that'll take the ashes and make diamonds out of them. Carbon is carbon. We got them last week and started wearing them today." He wiped at his eyes. "Shit, hate doing this with contacts in." He pretty much ran off.
Tim stood next to Gibbs and said, "Jon's due date, right?"
"Yeah, think so."
"I'll go keep him company. I don't know if we're gonna fight again or not."
Gibbs nods at that, too. "I'll wait."

One of the great things about the NCIS gym is that at 2:00 on a Saturday it's pretty empty. The men's locker room is basically deserted. There's Jimmy and some guy actually showering.
And the great thing about NCIS is that it's small enough, and Jimmy's well-enough known, that if he's sitting on the floor in the back corner of the locker room sobbing, no one is going to ask him any questions or give him a hard time.
Tim sits next to him and puts his arm around his shoulders, not saying anything.
After a while, Jimmy calmed back down. He looked at Tim, eyes bright red, face puffy and wet. "It was supposed to be easier than this."
Tim doesn't know if Jimmy means, life, fatherhood, or loving in general, but it's true for all of them, so he nods. "Yes, it was."
"I'm supposed to be snarking at Breena about how…" his voice broke, and he couldn't finish that sentence.
Tim rubbed his back, saying, "I know, Jimmy. I know."
Several more minutes went by. Tim quiet, holding his friend. Jimmy crying.
"There was five minutes this morning where I didn't remember. Woke up, snuggled with Breena, Molly started fussing, so I got her, and we all piled into bed, together, and it was good, you know? It was really good. Then Breena had to get up, because she was feeling sick, and I turned on the TV, watch some of the Sunrise show with Molly, and every morning they do the time, the day, and the date, and for a second there it still didn't click, and Molly's giggling, watching that little squeaky bird, and then they did the 'Who's having a birthday today?' thing and it did click, and I lost it.
"Molly's scared because I'm crying, so she starts crying, and the last thing Breena needs is both of us sobbing, but that's still what she walked in on."
"Tomorrow'll be better."
Jimmy took a deep breath and exhaled slow, head back against the locker behind him, looking up at the ceiling. "Yeah."
"You two want to come over tonight? Don't have to talk or anything, just, not be alone? Snuggle on the sofa, get lots of Abby hugs, eat take out, watch some sort of dumb movie?"
"Maybe."
"Or we can take Molly, and you can really be alone."
Jimmy was shaking his head. "I don't know. The only thing I want is to not feel like this."
Tim nodded.

When they got out, Gibbs had packed everything up.
"Tim, you're done. Go home. Jimmy, with me."
Tim's a bit surprised by that, so's Jimmy really.
Gibbs flashes both of them a it'll be okay look.
Tim checks with Jimmy, and he nods. So Tim heads off, reminding Jimmy that if he wants to come over later, or wants them to watch Molly, to let them know.
Jimmy turns to Gibbs. "I'm with you?"
"Yeah. He's not in a good place for this right now. He doesn't need any extra reminders that it doesn't always work out, not right now, otherwise he'd come, too. We're going to my house."
"You gonna tell me what we're going to do there?"
"Say goodbye to dreams that never happened."
That's way more poetic than Jimmy expects Gibbs to be, so for a second he just stands there staring. Gibbs starts off, and Jimmy quickly follows a few heartbeats later.


"What do you drink?" Gibbs asks when they get to his basement. It's empty right now. Kelly's crib got taken to Tim's Tuesday night. He'd been seriously debating opening the basement back up and lugging the Shannon back in, but it's summertime so anything he wants to do he can do outside, and, he's feeling awfully sure he's going to have another project down here in the very near future.
"Girly mixed drinks that actually taste good. Stuff you'd find horrifying."
Gibbs shrugs, that's a pretty accurate read, though he reminds himself he's trying not to be the guy who winces at other guys drinking a… whatever those fruity things are. "And when you don't get a mixed drink?"
"Rum, Gin. Is absinthe a mixed drink? It's just poured over a sugar cube and water."
Gibbs closes his eyes and opens them slowly. Absinthe, trust Jimmy to come up with something like that. "Don't have any of that." Though at the rate this is going, he's going to end up with a small bar down here.
Jimmy sits on one of the stools. "You don't need it. I don't need to be drugged to talk. I actually prefer to enjoy myself when I'm drinking."
Gibbs pours himself a bourbon and gestures to the two bottles, but Jimmy shakes his head.
"Maybe one day you'll come down here and drink with me when you're enjoying yourself?"
Jimmy smiles at that. "I hope so."
"Traditional to do this at least a little drunk," Gibbs says, taking a sip.
"What tradition are we upholding?"
"It's a wake. Back a bit after Molly was born, Tim dragged me down here and poured enough bourbon in me to get me talking. It… helped."
"Been talking, Jethro. I don't bottle things up."
"Yeah, I know. You're… you and Breena… are doing a lot better than I thought you would."
Jimmy nods at that. They're doing better than he thought they would be, too. But there are still bad days, and likely will be for a long time, though he's thinking today, and maybe, January 8th next year, will be the worst.
Though maybe, since Nikki (what they're calling the new baby when talking to each other) is due at Christmas time, they'll be too busy to even notice January 8th when it rolls around.
He can hope, at least. Jimmy takes one of the mugs and pours himself a little of the Scotch, sips some, winces a little. "How does Tim drink this stuff?"
Gibbs shrugs at that, too.
Jimmy takes another sip. "So, are we talking for me, or for you?"
That's a better question than Gibbs was expecting, and he realizes that they are here for both of them.
"Both of us."
Jimmy nods. "The dads sans kids club?"
"Something like that."
"But not exactly. I've got Molly and we're calling the new one Nikki for now, and you've got Tim and Abby and Ziva and Tony."
"And you and Breena."
Jimmy looks curiously at him. "Didn't realize you were that attached to me."
Gibbs shrugs. "Breena's a package deal. Love her, gotta love you." Then he smiles to show he's kidding, that it's not just fondness for Breena that's binding him to Jimmy, and maybe to underscore exactly how much he isn't Ed Slater.
Jimmy laughs at that. Then he sobers. "So tell me what dream you miss most."
"Shannon and Kelly""I was going to teach Kelly how to drive. Had been looking forward to it for years. Already started a little. Her sitting on my lap, steering, while I worked the pedals. We were going to get some sort of old junker when she was fourteen and rebuild it. That's the one I still dream about. Kelly, sixteen, seventeen, she'd look like Shannon did when we first met, but brown hair instead of red. Old Mustang or Impala all fixed up. Check the mirrors, put the key in, turn in on, look around, foot off the break, okay, let's go!"
Jimmy smiles at that, nods, doesn't say anything for a long minute, then finally gets out. "That's a good one."
Teen KellyGibbs reaches for a few sheets of paper and one of his pencils. He starts sketching while Jimmy says, "We didn't know if he was a boy or a girl yet, so, not much in the way of dreams yet, not really. Just, images, you know? But… the clearest one was Molly seeing him for the first time. Tim and Abby would have taken her while we were in the hospital, and brought her to see him. I had this image, Tim holding her, putting her on the bed next to us. I'd be holding Jon so that she could snuggle in with Breena, all four of us together, kind of cramped because those hospital beds are pretty small. But, I'd be the one who got to say, 'Molly, this is your little brother.'"
Gibbs looks up and smiles gently at Jimmy. "Had one kind of like that myself, once."
"What happened to it?"
"Shannon had preeclampsia. Bed rest at 32 weeks. Trying to keep Kelly in long enough for her lungs to get strong. Moved into the hospital at 34 weeks. And at 35 and one day her blood pressure spiked so high she couldn't see. They got Kelly out in an emergency c-section, but they had to do it so fast there wasn't time for anesthesia. I helped them hold her down while they did it, and both of them came out fine, but before they were home from the hospital, I'd had a vasectomy. Just, couldn't do that again. Couldn't risk it."
"No wonder you were white as a sheet when you heard about Abby."
"Didn't help. But before that, before we got Kelly, we'd both been hoping for more than one."
"Never thought of adopting?"
"No." He shakes his head, not looking up from the paper. "Don't know if that was a blessing or not." He erases a line and re-does it. "Jimmy, that story's not for Tim, not now. He doesn't need that image in his head."
Jimmy nods. "I get that."
Then Gibbs looks at him, and takes another drink. "Ducky and I, walks in the park with Molly, Jon, and Kelly. Thought he was going to be a boy, and was looking forward to taking him shooting with you and Tim and Tony."
Jimmy's crying at that but eventually says, "We're not taking the girls shooting?"
"We are, but it'll be different. Gotta have some things we do as guys, right?"
"Yeah. Camping."
Gibbs laughs at that. "Is that gonna be just you and me and the kids? Don't see Duck, Tim, Tony on that trip."
"Tim likes camping."
"I've heard him say that, but he can't seem to figure out what the hell poison ivy looks like, and best I know hasn't been out in the wood for fun the entire time I've known him."
Jimmy wipes his eyes. "Good point."
Jethro hands Jimmy a sketch of a crib. It's all square corners, somewhat plain, but there's room for change.
"Early Christmas present, say, at your place 'round about Tim and Abby's anniversary. We'll talk more about it when you and Breena know more about Nikki."
Jimmy looks at it, fingers ghosting over the lines of slats and legs. He sniffs a little, and nods. "Yeah."
Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 214

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


Chapter 214: Alpha, Beta, and Omega


There are Alpha Males, the leaders of the pack, Beta Males, the followers, and Omega Males, the ones who don't fit tidily into those groups. They don't generally lead, but can if they need or want to, follow only when it suits them, and tend to care very little about whatever it is the rest of the pack is interested in. They're the creators, artists, jokers, misfits, loners, and dreamers.
Omegas range from Steve Jobs and George Carlin to that guy in the back of the bus station in bad need of a shower complaining to himself about how no one understands him and his art. Basically, it's the entire range of guys who never had any interest in being on the football team. (Not the ones who couldn't get onto it, the ones who didn't want to.)
Tim's spent his life slipping between Omega and Beta (depending on the relationship and period of his life, he's currently firmly in the Omega category and unlikely to leave it again.) His whole life he's been surrounded by Alphas and Ascendent Betas (the guys who will take over the pack when the current Alpha leaves).
"Draga" circa 2014So, as an Omega, especially an Omega who won't be part of the team for all that much longer, watching Draga, who used to be a test pilot for the Navy, IE someone who is used to being part of an elite team of Alphas, try to figure out where he fits on Gibbs', soon to be DiNozzo's team, is vastly amusing to Tim.
The first time they met, Draga knew how to behave. Gibbs, by reason of white hair, Marine bearing, and the fact that he just commands respect is The Alpha, and as such Draga knows his place: roll over, switch into Beta mode, and show due respect. Tim, as the Tech Guy, was the Omega, and treated like an equal and potential ally.
But Tony and Draga…
Let alone Tony, Draga, and of course, Ziva, (because the addition of women always makes male pack dynamics more interesting) is, well… Tim's excused himself three times because he was about to burst out laughing in a remarkably unprofessional way. (And he did notice the corner of Gibbs' lip quirk upwards twice.) He did however get video of it, and spent lunch with Abby and Jimmy, all three of them giggling hysterically.
Basically, Tony has, for the first time ever, run into a Geek he finds threatening. He's never met an Alpha Geek before, probably never dreamed any of them exist, let alone a young, strong one with physical courage coming out the ears and decent looks. Tony's default way of dealing with people smarter than he is is to focus on the fact that, like Tim, they're usually kind of awkward and less conventionally attractive.
Neither of those things are true about Draga.
The fact that Ziva's being nice to Draga is making it worse.
And on top of that, Draga's ability to see pretty much everything, thus instantly proving he'd be useful to them, means Tony can't just blow him off, either.
Likewise, Draga doesn't know what to do with Tony, either. Tony with strangers is smooth, polished, a little too pretty. Namely, nothing Draga respects. But Tony is the Alpha to be. But he's done nothing to look like he's earned it, at least not that Draga's seen. And right now, Draga's coming to the conclusion that Tony's a Beta who's getting promoted higher than he deserves because he's the senior man.
So, Draga's showing real respect for Gibbs, that too polite, pseudo-respect (putting on the Lt.) for Tony, being friendly to Tim, and friendly and charming (without crossing the line, she's married to the guy who'll be his boss if this goes well) to Ziva.
Abby's watching the video, giggling with him and Jimmy, and says, "If they could just pull 'em out and measure, this would be done so much faster."
Jimmy's watching and says, "They'd end up with this passive aggressive being too polite argument about what sort of ruler to use and if the damn things are accurate."
Abby grins wide and happy at that idea. "They so would. Tony'd suggest the ruler, because he's old school. Then Draga'd be all that's not nearly accurate enough, really we should go by mass, looking at Gibbs and saying something about how important accuracy is…"
"And if either of them said anything like that to me they'd get headslapped so hard their ears would ring." Abby, Jimmy, and Tim all jerked, looking embarrassed and slightly guilty as they heard Gibbs' voice.
"Got a body out in Faluvia County. Draga's getting some in the field time. Palmer, head up and grab him. Let's see how he does with you and Duck. McGee, get moving."
"Moving, Boss," Tim said.


They're in the van, heading toward the dead Marine that Faluvia PD just called in. Tim's driving. (When they want to talk, as opposed to sit there clutching their seat belts in terror, Tim or Tony drives.)
"What's Aubrey like?" Tony asks.
"Lot more like Tim than Draga is," Gibbs answers.
"Precise, fussy, he's a forensic accountant. Why, you already want to knock Draga off the list? Look, Aubrey might be a better fit, but Draga will be able to hit the ground running."
Tony winces at that. "I can see that. He's not going to take a ton of training. Just not sure if he'll mesh well."
"You mean you will not be able to Probie him," Ziva says with a smile.
Tony sighs and flashes his I'm done with you look at her.
Gibbs nods with that. He gets this in a way Ziva doesn't. By virtue of being female, she's sort of outside the line of command, and Draga, due to deeply ingrained chivalry, will always treat her with respect and if given orders by her follow them. Tony's not a girl though, and the two of them may have issues. "It's a concern. As long as I'm here, he's not going to give you any trouble. But he's not going to just accept you as the leader. You'll have to prove to him you're worth it."
"Aubrey won't give you any problems along those lines." Tim's sure of that. He probably won't let himself be bullied the way Tim did, but he'll fall into line easily. Tim knows a good Beta male when he sees one, and Aubrey certainly is one.
"So, easy to work with or photographic memory," Tony says.
"Not sure it's a photographic memory, Tony. He's got some serious visual processing skills, but he'd have to be a fighter pilot, but, we asked him if he had any questions and his first one showed he'd already put together the fact that he's not really replacing Gibbs."
"He's sharp," Gibbs adds.
"I can see that. Aubrey's in day after tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah," Tim nods. He's basically in charge of the whole interview thing.
"He's better with the computer stuff?"
"Yeah. It's what he's trained in."
They pulled to a stop in front of long strings of yellow tape and cop cars with flashing lights.
"Work time. I'm on point for this one, and he's with me," Tony says. Gibbs, Ziva, and Tim got out of the van and started gearing up, getting into coveralls and crime scene booties while Tony grabbed Draga from Ducky and took him over to the local LEOs to get the whole story.
"Step one of an investigation, take custody of the crime scene from the local LEOs."
Draga's nodding as they head over to the Faluvia Co. police.


Two hours later they're still bagging and photographing. The body, Corporal Holly Page, had been taken back to NCIS, and Team Gibbs was working with the scene.
Draga's hovering around the edges. He's not allowed to touch anything, but he can look. He hasn't been saying anything, and no one's really paying attention to that. They were all pretty quiet at their first crime scenes. After all, five hours ago (ish) this was a real person, alive and doing whatever, expecting to have a normal day, and then from the looks of it someone broke in and killed her.
As Tim's photographing the foyer, Draga says to him, "None of the witnesses saw the break in, right?"
"Ziva and Gibbs did witness statements, but yeah, I think that's right."
Draga looks at the door more closely, the lock is busted, broken inwards. Looks like the door was kicked in.
"No break in," Draga says.
"Huh?" Tim's still shooting the carpet and stairs.
"No footprint on the door. It's one of those cheap doors, and if you kick one of them you leave a mark. No mark on the wall. Kick a door hard enough to break it in, it swings back and slams into the wall, or…" he kneels and points at the little doorstopper at the base of the door, "or that thing does. But nothing. No mark on the door from hitting the doorstopper. No mark on the wall from the doorstopper hitting it. The carpet is out of place, and that doesn't happen when you kick in a door. The door got pulled in from the inside, hard enough to make it look like it was forced."
Tim nods, that works, and also works with a bit of the case that he doesn't think Draga's gotten, namely the patio door had been unlocked.
"Good work. Go tell Tony about it."
And Draga does, carefully skirting the edges of the scene, making sure not to touch anything.
Yeah, he may have a hard time with Tony, but Tim's really liking the idea of someone who sees that much, that well, on the team.


"Aubrey"Tony had a much easier time with Aubrey. Because Aubrey fit his expectation for a Geek. And because Aubrey knows his role and how to play it.
Tony tried a little mild hazing on him, and Aubrey just looked at him, a long, calm look, up and down, suddenly making it very clear that this man is a Marine, and then turned to Tim and said, "You know, the IRS has been gearing up for ACA compliance officers. They're offering fifteen thousand a year more than you are and a company car."
Tony didn't haze him after that.
Aubrey showed up on a paperwork day. So they didn't get a chance to see what he'd do out in the field.
After lunch, Tony and Ziva took him shooting, wanting to see him handle a weapon. They came back an hour later, and Aubrey was slightly green. Tim looked up at him. "Single biggest threat to anyone on Team Gibbs is Ziva's driving. Congratulations, you've survived the first test."
Aubrey sat down heavily. "How does she still have a license?"
"Cops look after their own. They see the plates and usually won't pull her over."
"Great. Does she usually drive?"
"'Bout a quarter of the time."
"Oh, God!"
Tim hit the enter key, finishing the form he was working on, and stood up. "Come on. Time to head down to meet the rest of the team."
As they were heading to the lab, Aubrey asked, "If I take this job, how much crap will DiNozzo give me?"
"As much as you'll let him, and then just a tiny bit more."
Aubrey shakes his head. "I didn't like that about the Marines."
"From what Gibbs has said, DiNozzo's not exactly on the same level as Marine hazing. More pranks and nicknames than anything really dangerous, but I have had my face superglued to my desk."
"Great."
"The way you looked at him shut him up a lot faster than usual. Reminding him that you've got other options seemed to work. And he's grown up a whole lot since I was the Probie."
"So, you were the Probie, Gibbs was team leader, and DiNozzo was more or less in charge of training you?"
"Basically.
"So, I join in, Gibbs retires, DiNozzo will run the team, and you'll be more or less in charge of me?"
No. But he can't say that without letting out that he's not going to be around all that much longer. "I think Ziva will be in charge of you."
"Why not you?"
Good question. Tim thought up a quick lie. "Low man takes the Probie, and that's her."
"Oh." They didn't say anything for the rest of the ride down to the lab. Once the elevator door opened, Aubrey asked, "Is it always this loud down here?"
Tim smiles. "Not always. It's usually quieter when I'm down here."
"And you're down here a lot."
"Yeah. Remember when Gibbs asked you about my wife?"
"Uh huh."
"You're about to meet her."
"Oh. She works here?"
"Yeah." They stepped in. Abby's back was to them, working on her computer.
"Don't turn it down, Kelly likes this one," she says without turning around, so Tim put the remote in his pocket, as soon as this song is over the volume is going down.
"Who's Kelly?" Aubrey says to him, not seeing anyone else, as they walk to the computers.
"Our daughter." Which was when Abby turned and Aubrey figured out where Kelly was and why she might require the music this loud to appreciate it. Tim kissed her, and then said, "Abby, this is Aubrey, he's applying to replace Gibbs."
She nods and offers her hand. "Hi. I'm Abby." She gestured around her. "And this is the lab. All the magicky science stuff happens down here."
The song ended, and Tim turned the volume down. "Blowing out your own ears is one thing. It'd be nice if Kelly could hear," he said as a joke.
"Uh huh." She signed at him quickly. But he finally did ask Gibbs what it meant and had prepped a response. Abby's eyes went wide when he signed back at her.
"What was that?" Aubrey asked.
Tim smiled. "You don't need to know." (In reality she'd been signing at him, Then you'll just have to learn sign language, and he'd finally flashed back with, working on it.) But he kind of likes the mystery of what they might have been communicating to each other.
"So, how are you liking NCIS, Aubrey?" Abby asks.
"So far, so good. Kind of quiet."
"We tend to work in two modes, everything all at once, pedal to the metal, and laid-back not much going on. Yesterday we closed a case," Abby says.
"Yeah, not much in the way of middle gears here. It's either full-out run or lay around and fill out paperwork."
Aubrey thinks about that for a moment. Then he looks at Tim. "You said you work down here?"
"Yeah, I've got two computers up on my desk, so I set them searching, then head down here to use one of hers, as well."
"So, how will this work? Gibbs retires and…"
"He's not retiring until January, so for the first bit, you'll be covering my leave when Kelly's born. Then there'll be a few months of the five of us. Then Gibbs goes, and we settle into whatever the new normal is."
"All right." Aubrey looks at Tim, and then Abby, and Tim again, but he doesn't say anything. Tim's fairly sure that he's putting together that two plus two isn't exactly the four he's been told it is, but unlike Draga, he's not asking about it.


On Friday, at Shabbos, after dinner was over, they talked through who they were going to offer the job.
Tony still wasn't sure who he wanted. In the short run, Draga would be more useful. When it comes down to it, they don't know when Tim's leaving, though the discrete ear he's got down in Cybercrime is indicating that Jenner's been interviewing lately, so it'll probably be sooner than later, and the possibility of both Tim and Gibbs gone in quick succession is real. The possibility of Tim gone before Gibbs is real.
And if that happens, someone who can pull his own weight as both a tech and a field agent matters.
But if Tim's there for another year, having someone who will fit more easily into the dynamics of the team, someone who isn't used to being in the limelight, that'll lend itself to a happier, and maybe, in the long run, more-effective team.
In the end, it's Tony and Ziva who have to make the decision. Gibbs won't be there. Tim won't either.
"So, the guy I have to prove myself to, or the guy who sees but doesn't ask?" Tony says.
The fact that it appeared that Aubrey had also figured out this wasn't about replacing Gibbs, but didn't say anything about it stuck with Tony.
"Looks like it, Tony," Tim says. "If you want, we can call Howard back, too, but… I mean, she's really green."
"And that's saying a lot, coming from you," Tony replies.
"Yeah. Do you have the patience to break in another Probie, one that'll make Dornie looks sophisticated and experienced?" Tim asks him.
"Ugh. No. Ziva?"
"No. I'll do fine with Aubrey or Draga, and am probably leaning toward Aubrey. Nine years from now, when you run into mandatory retirement age, Tony, I have a feeling he and I will work together well as the core of that team. Draga would challenge me for leadership of the team."
"He won't stick around that long. He's good. He sees everything, and puts it together fast. He'll have his own team in five years," Tony says.
Gibbs sits in his chair, quietly drinking his wine, listening. He sends Tony the you've made up your mind, stop dithering and go with it look.
Tony nods. "He's the better agent, and we're the strongest team at NCIS. I'll send Draga the job offer on Monday."
Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 212

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


Chapter 212: Gibbs and Penny


Retribution and DeterminationPrivately, 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.
Determination and IntellectBut 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.

"Sean James McGee"
Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 213

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


Chapter 213: Habit



A case might have been a godsend. Or it might have been a very bad thing. After all, someone got killed, actually three someones, so there’s a perspective issue and all, but still, something to think about other than Abby and Kelly was a good thing.
Either way, Tim had been in the bullpen just long enough put his go bag down, flick on his computer screen, get a third of his password in, and then Gibbs’ phone rang, and a minute later they were gearing up and heading toward Georgetown.


Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo doesn’t mind at all if most people think he’s something of an intellectual lightweight. In fact, he’s spent years cultivating a personality designed to make people who just casually know him think he’s got about fifty fewer IQ points than he actually has.
This usually works to his advantage, especially as a cop.
People who think he’s stupid slip up. They say things they shouldn’t. They’re less careful about keeping the details of their stories straight. And all of that is a good thing.
And sure, Tim’s smarter than he is, Gibbs is more intimidating, and Ziva’s danger sense is so well-honed she can tell when people are watching her from two hundred feet away behind her, but even with all of that, he’s not a moron, and does not appreciate being treated as such, so the fact that Tim and Gibbs are both doing the worst job in the history of worst jobs of trying to act like everything is okay, when it clearly isn’t, but neither of them are talking about why, like somehow they’re managing to pull one over on him is awfully annoying.
He gets Tim by himself as they’re systematically going through the crime scene. Tim’s bagging. He’s shooting everything.
“Okay, what the hell happened? Yesterday you were all, ‘Yay! New baby pics.’ Today, there are no baby pics, you and Gibbs are communicating entirely in monosyllabic grunts and looking pleased that we’ve got a triple homicide.”
Tim, not saying anything, took out his phone and showed Tony the pictures.
“They look great! So what’s going on?”
So Tim told him.
And Tony stopped bagging and just stood there, looking pale and very worried. “Are they going to be all right?”
“Everyone says so. But no one actually knows. And we won’t know until something happens or Kelly’s born.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. So, best case scenario, two months of constant fear followed by an uneventful birth with the Doc hovering over us the whole time because even if her placenta does move further out of the way, it’s not going to end up all the way at the top the way it’s supposed to be, so she could start hemorrhaging at any moment or not stop bleeding the way she’s supposed to after Kelly’s born.”
“Great,” Tony says with a lot of sarcasm and a sigh. “But, Kelly’s far enough along that if she needed to come out, she’d be okay, right?”
“Probably. She’s tiny, but lots of preemies are born at thirty-two weeks and do just fine.”
“So the real risk is Abby?”
“Yeah.” Tim nods a little. “Jimmy and Penny and Ducky are all saying that she’ll be fine, but you go online and see stories of women who went to do the grocery shopping and bled out before they could get it stopped, and the baby lives… sometimes… but…” Tim shudders, feeling the fear arcing through him again, stops that sentence, forces it back down, picks up another shell casing, there are tons of them around them, and says, “So, yeah, three dead bodies, lots of leads, huge, heaping stacks of intel to go through, bring it on, Gibbs and I both need something else to think about because otherwise we’ll sit there, hovering over Abby, driving her buggy.”


The single greatest adversary of fear is not courage, nor bravery, not even distraction, not really, it’s habit.
The same thing happens over and over and the worst doesn’t come.
Habit lulls the little, screaming voices, clutching their collective blankets over their heads, trembling at the unknown.
Because, really, the heart of fear is the unknown.
And habit is its antithesis.
Habit is the known, the known so well and so often that without conscious thought or effort actions take place, motions are gone through, and a web of well-known comfort wraps around and supports you through your daily endeavors.
And it’s true that no case is really routine. There are always twists and turns and unexpected bits and pieces, but there’s also a routine to a case, a comforting, lulling pattern of actions.
And, so, it was a case that Gibbs, Tim, and Abby desperately needed.


Once they get back to the bullpen, Tim has a set routine of what happens next. First off, phone records and financials, and for this case, that’s times three. Well, technically, two. They haven’t been able to ID the third vic, yet.
His phone records search is set to handle as many variables and databases as he might want to throw at it. So, first hunt, see if the vics were calling each other, if so, how often and when.
Next hunt, any numbers they had in common.
Third hunt, any numbers called more than five times in the last week.
Fourth hunt, IDs on all of those numbers.
He sets his first computer to slicing and dicing the data on that and then moves to his second computer.
Financials are trickier, first and foremost, he’s got to get the rights to go into them. Unlike Verizon and Sprint, most banks aren’t willing to give him blanket permission to go poking around in people’s financial records. So getting his permissions in place to go in and build the database he needs takes two hours. And proof of death, requisition forms, requests for data, he can do them in his sleep he’s done them so many times.
From there, once he’s gotten into their data, he sets a database of the two IDed vics’ financial records and begins to cross reference them.
Like with phone records he starts with payments between them, and branches out from there.
Unlike with the phone records, he actually has to look at the financials as well as set his computers on them. So he loads his data onto a thumb drive and heads for Abby’s lab.


This is not habit. Sitting at his desk, going over the financials while his computers slice and dice, and then heading down for the next part of it is habit. But no one says anything when he heads down there about an hour earlier than usual. He’ll be back up for campfire time, and that’s all that matters.
Spending a moment standing by the door to the lab, watching Abby bop around as she prepares trace for Major Mass Spec, that’s habit. Stepping in, turning the volume down five notches, (He’s been teasing her for years now about how she’s going to be deaf as a post by the time she’s fifty. She usually signs something back to him, and he thinks it might be rude but hasn’t shown it to Gibbs or looked it up online to see if it is, but one day he will, and he’ll learn something to sign back, because he wants to see the look on her face when he does it.) it’s still loud, but he can’t feel the music anymore, kissing her on the neck, petting Kelly gently, and then heading for the computer on the right of her desk, that’s habit.
“You’re early,” Abby says as he logs in and loads up the financials.
“Yep.” Usually he comes down for the third part of his search. It’s not standard policing technique, but it should be, and that’s social media. That’s a more hands-on search, because while it’s true that he can automate it to a degree (find the vics talking about each other, who are their good friends, what were they interested in, where were they when, who’s been stalking them, etc… etc…) it’s still useful to actually go through by hand to get a better feel for who they’re dealing with. You never know when it’ll come in handy to know the vic was a diehard David Bowie fan. “How’s it going down here?”
“At least three co-mingled blood sources. DNA all over the place. Four sizes of bullets. Two guns. Six unknown substances on swabs from Ducky. It’s peachy!” She grinned at him. “You?”
“Just getting started. Three vics, two sets of phone records, two sets of financials. Right now I’m at sit down and see what jumps out on the money trail.”
“Who’s broke?”
“Yep. Then it’s Facebook time, and eventually you’ll get done processing their phones and laptops and I’ll go play with them, too.”
“Any ideas yet?”
“Four sizes of bullets and two guns means someone else had to have been there. But who and when and where… We don’t even have an ID on the third vic, yet. Waiting for you to do your magic with that.”
She pointed to the computer next to him. “She’s working as fast as she…” and then it beeped, and they got the red flag of doom. Abby went to the computer, put in her information and clearances, and then they got the info.
Tim sat back and looked at it. “Great.”
“What’s great?” Gibbs asked.
“Seriously, do you have the lab bugged or something?” Tim asks him.
“Just good timing. What’s up?”
“The chances of you seeing your other Abby.”
Gibbs sends he the tell me more look.
“Your third vic is John Henrids, CGIS. He’s one of Borin’s guys. And she’s probably about to jump out of her skin because her man is way off grid.”
Gibbs nods, pulling his phone out, and heading up the stairs.


He’s back at his desk, ready for the campfire, they’re just waiting on Borin.
It occurs to him the last time he saw her, the four of them were getting drinks, Tony and Ziva were playing darts and Borin asked if he had been serious about going out. After all, she knew about the bet, but going far enough to get tickets was more of a step than she’d expected either of the guys to go, which was making her think that Tim might have actually been interested. And yeah, he did a piss poor job of asking her out, but they’d worked together enough times that the idea that seeing him relaxed and playing was interesting to her.
Since he’d intentionally done the worst job he possibly could have of asking her out, the idea that she might have been interested in saying yes had never, ever occurred to him.
This resulted in him genuinely tripping all over himself, trying to explain what he’d really been doing without sounding like a jerk who was using her, and without Tony and Ziva noticing what was going on.
Fortunately Borin thought it was amusing and wished him the best of luck.
They haven’t seen her since, because, like many people who have the drive to live a job 24/7, the skill to be good at it, and any political skills at all (unlike Gibbs) Borin got booted up the food chain. She’s now the head of the Chesapeake CGIS office.
Abby BorinThe idea that Abigail Borin is mild-mannered or laid-back is not something that has ever occurred to Tim. The fact that compared to how she is right now, ready to avenge one of her team, every single time he’s seen her before she’s been a paragon of mellow isn’t shocking, but it is still hard to deal with.
No hello, no chatter, no coffee even, just hit the ground running and find the bastards that did this.
But, settling in, working the data, he’s very aware of the fact that no one at NCIS or Coast Guard is sleeping anytime soon.


Murders are like jigsaw puzzles with a missing lid, one piece in place makes it easier to see the whole picture, get enough of them, and you’ve got a feel for what you’re dealing with, eventually, you get enough to see what the picture is, and then it’s just a matter of slapping the little buggers into place.
Getting Henrids and CGIS into place is a major piece of the puzzle.
It’s a smuggling ring.
Cloe (Pvt. First Class, Marines) and Jensen (Petty Officer, Navy) ran the first and second steps of the process. Cloe got the raw opium out of Afghanistan and into the custody of his buddy, Jensen. Jensen made sure the drugs got to their processor in Barbados. Henrids, who was replacing Jensen’s younger brother, was in charge of moving the product out of Barbados and into the States. From there they had a collection of at least seven other guys who moved it up and down the eastern seaboard in tiny boats, and then fifteen more guys who handled sales and distribution.
It’s a small ring, but there’s not a lot of people who trade in pure heroin.
Borin’s people had been running this with the DEA for close to a month, building a case, and when Jensen’s younger brother died, they found a chance to get their own man into it, so they did.
So, they’ve got motive. They’ve got opportunity. They’ve got a massive mess because the three links at the top of the pyramid are dead, and close to 2000 kilos of heroin are missing.
To say that Gibbs and Vance are less than pleased at the idea that this op had been going on for more than a year at DEA and a month at CGIS, under their noses, focusing on their guys would be an understatement.
To say that Borin couldn’t care less about that would also be an understatement.
To say that all three are pissed at DEA, who couldn’t even be bothered to send someone to see what was going on is an even bigger understatement.
And when Tim found the next big chunk of the puzzle, that the reason why no one at DEA showed up was that no one at DEA was actually involved in this, the proverbial shit hit the metaphorical fan and spattered on everyone even remotely nearby.


Really, all in all, it was a very clever plan. “Harkness” and “Milo,” the “DEA Agents” were in fact members of a rival smuggling group, who had infiltrated Cloe’s group. Triple agents.
And with as big and unwieldy as DEA is, and how bad it is at actually co-operating with other agencies, it wasn’t hard for two guys to put on some bad suits, get some fake badges, and walk right into CGIS, lay out all the information about this “sting” they’d been working on for over a year, and then, the plan was, give CGIS all the info, wait for them to swoop in and arrest everyone, and then they’d just walk in flashing badges and paperwork, confiscate the drugs and the info on who the processors and producers were, and take over.
The problem was that Cloe and Jensen figured out who “Harkness” and “Milo” were, resulting in a five person fight/shootout in a cabin with Henrids in the middle.


It took two days, two solid day, two days where the only person who got any down time was Abby, mostly because Gibbs and Tim forced her to rest. (Okay, Tim got a cat nap. She made some very pointed remarks about how if she needed rest he did, too, so he agreed to lay down with her, and as soon as she was asleep he drug himself back up and went back at it.) But by the end of day two they had tracked down “Milo.”
Unfortunately, in that he was deader than Marley (as Ducky said, which got Jimmy talking about reggae, and Ducky looking at him like he’s a twit, but Jimmy linked it back to Dickens and popular media, and from there Ducky took over, and the rest of the team just stood there, exhausted and dead-eyed watching them chatter away) so he wasn’t providing any useful information on finding Harkness or the drugs.
At least, he wasn’t until Ducky and Jimmy got him back, got the trace to Abby, Abby got the trace into Major Mass Spec, and from there came the voila moment that broke the case wide open.
Sometime Tim wonders what it must have been like to try and do this when you couldn’t take dirt samples from the vic’s clothing and find out they’d been cavorting around somewhere in a ten mile circle of ground on the southwest shore of the Chesapeake where that one particular sort of moss grows.
But by that point he was too tired to care much.
They closed in on Harkness, a small boat, 2000 kilos of heroin, and this was a nice coup, four of the guys who belonged to Harkness’ own drug ring.


Sunday, round about noon, both of them having slept basically round the clock recovering from that case, Tim found that routine helps, work helps, and most of all, nothing going wrong helps.
And it’s not that fear is gone, because it’s not. It’s just living the routine over and over and seeing that the world didn’t end, another day went by and the worst didn’t happen, pushes fear back, increases the expectation of yet another day of just… normal.
And he figures that’s probably about as good as this is going to get.
So he got up and make them breakfast, like he usually does on Sunday morning (even if it’s technically afternoon), and the rhythms of life went on.

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 211

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


Chapter 211: Jimmy and Tim


After Penny got done with snapping some sense into them, they spent a while looking at the pictures, and by then Tim, Abby, and Gibbs had calmed down enough to start asking more questions, and Abby started showing them what she was reading, and it's not so much that it's factually wrong, (Though Jimmy's pretty sure that's true, too, but he hasn't done the research, so he doesn't actually know.) just really spun in a very anti-western medicine sort of direction.
Jimmy walked them through how a c-section works, which Ducky found fascinating, the last time he did one they still cut straight through everything in one long line down the abdomen. So the idea of multiple crossing incisions to minimize scarring and long term abdominal weakness struck him as awfully cool. He'd certainly seen the technique used for tracheotomies, had done it back when he was a medic, and was feeling intensely stupid that it took so long for anyone to think of using it for a c-section.
Eventually though, the conversation wore down, and just sitting around trying not to be scared was pretty useless, so Penny, Ducky, and Gibbs went home.
Jimmy stuck around a bit longer than that, wanting to make sure Tim was good before he left.
"Walk me to my car," Jimmy says to Tim. Abby's looking at him curiously, wondering what he wants to say to Tim without her around, but he just winks at her and kisses her cheek, saying, "Stupid husband stuff. Don't worry about it."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Come on, I know you talk to Breena without me. I know, tomorrow, you're going to call her and complain about how Tim and Jethro went bonkers on you." She shrugged a little and smiled a little at that. "And you'll cry on her about how Penny was being sort of mean, and how the rest of us just don't get it when it comes to this whole natural birth thing."
"Well, you don't!"
"Of course we don't. And you're going to talk to her about it tomorrow. So, give me a few minutes with Tim. He'll probably tell you all about it when he comes back in."
"Fine."
Tim walked him out, and they both stood next to Jimmy's Tuscon. (Yes, they have an Odyssey, this is the smaller, going places without a kid car.)
"So, you okay?"
"No. Gibbs isn't, either."
"I know. You okay to be on your own and not freak out?"
"Yeah." He held out his hand, and it was pretty steady. Not as still as normal, but not as bad as two hours ago. "I'll probably head up, wrap around her, and not let go until Kelly's out."
"She's going to be okay."
Tim flashed him a quit the bullshit look. "You don't actually know that."
Jimmy squeezed his shoulder, smiled weakly, and said, "You're right, I don't. And I know all about rolling snake-eyes on the one in 10,000 chance. But I do know, no matter what happens next, we are here to get you through it. And I absolutely know that by the end of work day after tomorrow at the latest Ducky and I will have everything on hand to deal with an emergency c-section if she needs one at work, let alone whatever it is Dr. Draz recommends for stabilization-type things to get her to stop bleeding long enough to get her to real obstetrical experts.
"And I know that it's okay to be scared about this, because it is freaking scary, but that if you do go up there, wrap around her, and not let go for the next eight weeks she will be miserable. She loves you, but she doesn't want to be your conjoined twin.
"And I know one other thing, when I leave, you need to go back up there and make love to her." Tim's eyes go wide at that. "Look, I know you, and I know you're planning on not having sex with her again until Kelly's on the outside. Bad plan. All that'll do is make both of you miserable, so don't do it."
"I can't risk it." Tim doesn't even know how to begin putting into words how scary he finds that.
"You can and will because it'll make both of you happier, and it's probably the only thing that'll really get it through your head she's not going to break."
"But…"
"No buts, I've seen you walking around in your boxers with morning wood. You're really not that big. But if that makes you too damn nervous, I know for a fact that both of you have mouths, and hers is located nowhere even remotely near her placenta."
Tim looked at him, annoyed. "Why would you jump straight to dick? Dr. Draz did that, too. I'm not a moron. But… muscle contractions are muscle contractions, right?"
Jimmy grabbed Tim's arm and squeezed, hard, really hard.
"Ow!"
"Exactly. In medical terms that's a mild contraction. Usually, you don't even go to the hospital until you can't talk through them and they last for a minute."
"Shit."
"Yeah, they aren't kidding about the whole it-hurts-thing. But, my point is, you're not getting her off that hard."
"I get her off hard enough her whole body shakes for minutes after and she blacks out."
"You do what to her?"Jimmy just stares at Tim, dumbfounded. For a good minute he seemed to be thinking of things to say without saying them and finally settled on whacking Tim's shoulder and saying, "Well, don't do that! If she blacks out it means you've messed with her heart rate, respiration, and muscle tension to the point where her brain isn't getting enough oxygen. So, just… don't do that when she's pregnant." He spent another minute looking at Tim, shaking his head, exasperated, and then said, "But I'm willing to bet, that if you try really hard, and maybe spend a little while studying, you could, just possibly, locate some middle ground between no sex at all and orgasms so hard you black out. And if push comes to shove, I bet Tony could give you some pointers on how normal sex works."
Tim rolled his eyes and shoved Jimmy. "But you couldn't?"
"Nope. Wouldn't know normal sex if it bit me on the ass." Jimmy smiles at him, looking cocky. Trying to jolly Tim a little, lift his mood some.
"Everyone tells you that sex can trigger labor."
"Bullshit. Labor starts when it starts, and sometimes you happen to have sex before it does. Seriously, we did it every single day for the last three weeks, twice, sometimes three times when Breena was getting really desperate to get Molly out, and nothing. If the first thirty times we did it didn't set her off, that last one wasn't the magic bullet. It just happens, and there's nothing you can do short of pharmacological intervention to speed that up."
"I can't."
"You need to. She's not going to break. And you need to know that."
"Jimmy…"
"Tim, you did not just meet this woman last week. You know she can only take so much overprotective bullshit from you. She's been humoring you for months now, and unfortunately you've already probably cashed in the I'm-scared coupon a few times too often. And on top of that, Gibbs is likely to go all Papa Bear on her. Hell, he's probably already calling Vance to see if the Norfolk guys can be transferred tomorrow or the next day so she'll have help in the lab that much faster.
"Under the absolute best circumstances, she was going to be prickly and annoyed over the next two months. You two hovering over her like she'll drop over dead if she puts a toe out of line will just make it worse.
"So get your ass up there and act like this is the most important person on earth, and that her happiness is more important to you than your comfort. Make love to her, treat her like a woman, like your woman, and not a child. Prove to yourself and her that she won't break."
Tim's staring at the windows of his bedroom, still dark. From the looks of the lights, Abby's still downstairs.
"Come on, you're not going off to face a firing squad."
"Thirty times and nothing?"
"Nothing."
"I don't know if that means you're lame at sex or if it really doesn't work."
Jimmy punched his shoulder. "Really doesn't work. Did her water break the last time you made her pass out? Did she start bleeding? No, she didn't. And it's not going to today, either." He turned Tim to face him. "Look, I don't know if she's going to be okay, I just don't. But I do know that absolutely nothing you are, could, will, or even might imagine doing with her tonight will cause a problem. And I know that because it didn't cause any problems yesterday, and everything is exactly the same today as it was yesterday, you just know about it today."
Tim sighs, looking back at his house, like he could see Abby through the walls. "Story of my life."
"Tim?"
He shook his head. "Long story, not for tonight."


"So?" Abby said when he came in. She was laying on the sofa, on her side, looking at the ultrasounds of Kelly, one hand holding the shots, other one gently resting on the baby bump.
Tim sat on the floor in front of her, kissed her tummy, then leaned so his forehead was resting against it and his arm draped over her stomach and hips. He didn't feel any movement, and figured Kelly was probably napping.
"I'm scared.""I'm scared. I've never been this scared in my life, including every time I've almost died, including when Cobb was running around killing us, including dragging you out of the lab when it was filled with cyanide, and when that maniac was holding a gun on you, and every bad fight with my dad, and just every shit thing that's ever happened to me or me and you, and this is worse. And Jimmy knows it, because he's been here, and he was reminding me that if I don't want to end up miserable in addition to terrified, I've got to suck it up and not annoy you so bad you want to shoot me."
Abby smiled at that. "Wise man."
"Last week the idea of doing this at home was terrifying, but I'd trade this in a heartbeat for that. And I'm trying not to be a jerk. I'm trying to keep in mind that this was something important to you, in a way that it wasn't to me, and that you just lost that, too."
"Thank you."
"And I'm trying not to be totally insane about this, but I know I'm going to be a little insane."
"You and me, both."
That got a half-hearted smile out of him. "Yeah."
"And Gibbs is going to be a lot insane."
"Yeah. Jimmy's betting he already has Vance on the line and is trying to get Norfolk shut down that much faster so you've got people in the lab all the time, and my guess is that he won't be able to swing it, so my new workstation is down there."
"That's his idea?"
Tim shrugged a little. If Gibbs didn't think of it on his own, he'd certainly agree to it once Tim started moving his stuff down there. "I'd imagine we're both on the same page with this. You're down there on your own for hours at a time. That's a lot of time for something to go wrong before someone might pop in and see you need help."
"This is your definition of a little insane?"
He smiled very dryly, a wild, scared look in his eyes. "Yeah, because I know what a lot insane looks like. I can feel it. Trust me, you don't want to see it."
She petted his face, and he took her wrist in his hand, kissing her palm, feeling her pulse under his fingers. "So, that was Jimmy's pep talk? Don't freak out?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"It was focused on a pretty specific aspect of freaking out."
"Ahhh… And that would be?"
He looked at their sofa. It's really not wide enough for both of them to spoon on anymore.
"Not enough room here." Tim kissed her lips soft and sweet, stood up, and offered her his hand. "Come upstairs with me, and I'll show you."


Sex can be comfort made touch. It can be hot, shuddering, sweaty orgasms. Or sweet, gentle reprieve. It can be pleasure, or anger, or rage, or love.
It's the ultimate shape-shifter, capable of filling whatever vessel it's poured into.
And comfort, reassurance, surcease, all of those are available options.
It's true that Tim's scared enough he wasn't able to get hard. It just didn't happen. His dick was showing some mild interest in what was going on, but it never got past that. Abby certainly noticed, but didn't say anything.
But his fingers, tongue, and lips still worked, and they're all firmly under the control of his brain, so they did exactly what he told them to do, and the results were pretty good.
And yes, Abby arching against his mouth, the taste of her on his tongue, her hands clenching in his hair, shuddering in a very happy sort of way was very good. Nothing besides warm, happy, sleepy feelings after that was better, and Jimmy was right, it did help, and he's thinking that come morning time, he'll be able to get his dick into the game, which would be a good thing.
But at the same time, her body on his, her skin under his, warm and alive and vibrant, the sound of her voice, and the feel of her breath, the pleasure of her body, all of that sharpens how much is at stake. The only person in the world he can't live without is sleeping in his arms, and the idea that he might have to, might need to find the strength to go on without her kept him awake until the sun rose.
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Shards To A Whole: Chapter 210

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


Chapter 210: Abby and Penny


Abby hates this. Tim and Jimmy are looking at her like she's being a petulant child because she doesn't want to automatically jump to letting the doc hack her open to get Kelly out.
She can see Jimmy backpedaling, trying to figure out how to manage this, because, of course, he's all 'c-section-no-big-deal.'
Major surgery, bleeding all over the place, maybe never have babies again, maybe instant menopause, no big deal. Ten days and then you're all better. Yeah, he might heal up from being castrated in ten days, too, but that wouldn't mean he was better!
Fucking men!
And yeah, Jimmy's pretending he gets it, but she can see he's with Tim on the whole get this kid out as fast as possible, screw the consequences, we'll pump you full of antibiotics and drugs and who cares what you wanted as long as it's taken care of nice and tidy?
There are times when having men for your two best friends is an issue.
Granted, she's not sure Breena or Ziva would be much better right now, either. Breena flat out told her that the whole 'bonding' thing is total crap, and that when you've got a little lamprey eel attached to your boob every three hours, for two solid months, you're bonded. Literally.
And she just has a hard time seeing Ziva getting excited about any particular path for getting a baby out.
But…
Okay, maybe this is a little whiny, but it's not what she wanted!
She's not sick. Pregnancy isn't a disease, it's not a 'condition' to be 'managed.' And she should be allowed to be sad about not getting the fantasy. And it's not insane to think that wait and see might actually mean wait and see so maybe we don't need to schedule the c-section right this minute (Jimmy) or go on bed rest (Tim!).
But mostly, she's scared. She doesn't want a c-section, at all. Twenty to forty percent infection rate. Triple the rate of maternal death. Increased rates of blood clots, heart attacks, uterine embolism. None of that sounds like something she wants to sign up for if she can at all possibly avoid it, and it sounds like this is something she can avoid.
Then Gibbs and Ducky and Penny were there, and Gibbs is holding onto her like she's a life preserver, and she's fairly sure she's never seen him this scared.
Tim's on her right. Gibbs is on her left. And being clung to by 300 plus pounds of terrified male is not helping her composure at all, and if they don't back off and just let her breathe she's going to snap and do something really rash.


This was not going well.
Penny was sure that Jethro could take on a machine gun nest, armed with only a pen knife and Hoorah attitude, without blinking. He'd go, do it, and that'd be that. And if he didn't make it back, then he didn't make it back, and that would also be that.
But he can't kill this. He can't fight it. And it's not danger to him.
She knew from Ducky that he's got bad personal history with this sort of thing, too.
So, it was understandable. It made perfect sense. The problem is, Tim's holding onto not panicking by his fingernails, and scared Jethro next to him is not helping that control at all.
And last but not least, you didn't have to be a forensic psychologist to see that Abby was about to melt down. Pregnant women are rarely known for emotional fortitude, and with two of her best guys one the edge of panic, and the third treating her with kid gloves and lots of concern and she's about to start yelling and crying.
Penny smiled gently at Ducky, and he nodded at her, aware that she's about to do what Grandmas have been doing pretty much since the invention of Grandmas, and that's slapping some sense into people who are being silly.
"Jimmy, could you scoot over a bit?" Penny asked, and then settled in front of them, sitting on the coffee table. She then leaned forward and gently whacked Tim and Gibbs upside the back of the head.
"No one's dying. Not today, not tomorrow, not two months from now. So calm down, both of you." Then she handed her phone to Tim and Abby. "This is from Gladys. She's the head of Obstetrics at John's Hopkins. Which means that she's one of the top five obstetricians in the world. And if I knew any of the other four, I'd have cced them on the email, as well. She's thinking watch and wait is good advice. Basically, exactly what your OB said to you. It's a borderline case, and likely won't cause any issues. That little girl is going to double in size between now and when she's ready to come out, if not more than that, so there's a lot more growing that's going to happen, and your placenta will likely be out of the way by the time you're ready to deliver. But no doctor, let alone one in a high risk specialty like OB wants to get sued. Everyone is being cautious because one or two lost cases and jerk your malpractice insurance so high it puts you out of business."
And right that second, Abby loved Tim's grandma more than anything. The look on Gibbs face was worth having to go through this whole thing. No one besides Franks had ever head-slapped him, and he didn't know how to deal with it.
But she was going on like she hadn't noticed the look (Shock, outrage, anger, and mostly more shock, but, and this was Penny's plan, fear was gone, or at least shifted to the side.) he had aimed at her.
"There's only one thing a woman is designed to do, and that's squeeze out babies. And Abby's going to be fine, so is Kelly. I've done it." She looked at Gibbs. "Your wife did it," she turned to Jimmy, "and yours, too. It's not fun. It isn't easy, but it's what we're built for, and these two," she petted Kelly, "are going to come through just fine."
Then she turned toward Abby. "And you are going to stop pouting about a possible c-section and get down on your knees and thank both God and science that they're available because if you need one, it will save your life and your daughter's life. And that's all that matters on this.
"I've done this four times, and I can tell you, there's no magic in doing it any given way. You don't get a medal for no meds or no interventions. Anything that gets you and Kelly out of this in one piece is a godsend and should be treated as such."
"That's not the problem," Abby starts, though it actually is part of the problem, sort of, well, at least, giving up on an ideal is the problem, "it's so much riskier."
"No one's talking about you having one for kicks and giggles. And so much riskier is, according to Gladys, for healthy women without other complications, three out of 100,000. So if your OB says get one, you get it."
"I've seen thirteen out of 100,000."
Penny is done with this.Penny shoots her an I'm done with this look. "And did you look into the maternal mortality rates for women who need c-sections and can't get one? Did you research how many babies die when they get into distress and can't get out fast?
"You're a scientist, Abby, start acting like one and get into the data. That thirteen number includes all c-sections for all reasons, including the ones where they did the c-section because the mother was dying or already dead. You want Gladys' email, and I'll happily give it to you. You can talk it through with her, but you know that anyone can mess with the data any way they want to make it prove whatever they want. And I want you to get out of panic mode and into data mode and realize thirteen out of 100,000 is about your chances of getting hit by a car driving home from work, which you do every single day without a whimper, so calm down about it!"
The next bit was aimed at Tim and Jethro. "And if the OB says it's okay to try for a vaginal birth, and that's what Abby wants, you two support her in it. A c-section is more dangerous, it's not easy, it can take a long time to heal up from, so avoiding it if at all possible is a good plan.
"So, we all on the same page? Abby and Kelly will be fine. Baby's coming out however the highly trained medical providers you have hired to provide you with their expertise think will result in the best outcome. And we're all done panicking. Right?"
Jimmy smiled, saluted, and said, "Yes, Ma'am."
She's still staring at Tim, Abby, and Jethro.
Jethro nodded first, then Abby, and Tim finally yes, "Yes."
"Good. You get any new ultrasound pics?" Tim rubbed his eyes, got up, grabbed Abby's purse, and found the shots, handing them to Penny.
Unlike the previous ultrasounds these were 4-d and provided enough detail to see what Kelly actually looked like. And unlike the previous ultrasounds, they'd been vastly too scared to really look at them.
Penny gazed at them for a moment, then handed the clearest of the face shots to Gibbs and said, "What do you think, Jethro, Tim's lips and Abby's chin?"
He stared at the shot, his arm around Abby, hand resting on her tummy, feeling Kelly squirming around. He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against her temple. "Yeah, Penny."

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