Life in a Box (NCIS/SGA) PG-13
So I know I'm being the game here, but I just watched the NCIS season finale a few days ago and here's my reactionary post, yo.
Life in a Box
An NCIS/Stargate Atlantis story
Summary: After it's over, the remnants of a life fit into a single box.
Rating: PG-13 for some rough language
Disclaimer: Sony and MGM own all things Stargate Atlantis. CBS and Bellisario et al. owns all NCIS. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Spoilers: Nothing for SGA; major spoilers for the end of season five of NCIS (Judgment Day)
Characters: Tony DiNozzo versus John Sheppard with some Ziva David for added pain. A Tony-reaction piece to the season finale.
Word count:: 2,300
Note: It's another long-lost family fic, but that's really inconsequential to the NCIS-centric Tony guilt-fest here.
~~~
Tony tossed another box of paperclips into the packing box on his desk. Yes, they were federal government property, but if NCIS wanted to prosecute over stolen office supplies when he was exiled ship-side, then they could go fuck themselves. He didn't care.
He should have cared.
His helicopter to the USS Regan left in sixteen hours. His NCIS access pass to the Navy Yard would be yanked in three. It wasn't the same thing as being escorted out of Philadelphia Homicide by the Captain, but it was close. At least in Philly he hadn't lost a boss.
He wondered if Jenny was scared when the bullets came.
The bullpen lay still under the usual post-funeral malaise, with the shock and dull acceptance chokingly thick. It was the same after Kate had died at his side and Paula Cassidy had died on the other side of a brick wall. And now, Jenny was dead and he hadn't been anywhere near her in the end.
He didn't understand why Jenny had gone to Mike Franks when she was in trouble, and not to him. He thought she trusted him, and now she was dead.
The stapler went into the box, landing beside the small unframed photograph of Kate and Abby and McGee and Ducky from a staff office party so many years before.
It didn't seem right that Kate and Jenny had never met.
He couldn't do this, couldn't pack up his life at NCIS into a box and not break down screaming. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, there was no parking anywhere, and Tony couldn't figure out which was worse: that Jenny was dead, or that Tony hadn't been there for her in the end.
After Vance had torn the team asunder, Gibbs had pulled yet another vanishing act. McGee was in Abby's lab, trying to talk the girl woman, woman, Abby was nothing but woman and now Tony would never be able to tell her how much she meant to him out of quitting in protest or dynamiting the building, Tony wasn't sure. Ziva was off beating up cars or whatever it was Mossad agents did to vent steam, and Kate and Paula and Jenny were still dead on Tony's watch and Tony was alone, shoving every single moment of his life at NCIS into a box.
He couldn't do this without throwing up or breaking down or falling apart. Moving around his desk, he stood in the centre of the bullpen for a few minutes. No more campfires to get ideas, no more tormenting Ziva or ganging up on McGee and no more Gibbs' head-smacks. None of it. It was over now.
This time tomorrow, he would be Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, Agent Afloat on the USS Regan, and Ziva would be in Israel and McGee would be in Cyber Crimes and Gibbs would be all alone and Jenny would still be dead.
Something was wrong with his legs. It happened sometimes with his busted knee, hitting him at the strangest of times, like now. He managed to make it to Ziva's corner of the bullpen and lean on the desk before his body dumped him to the floor. It was a strange perspective over here, with a clear view up the stairs to MTAC and the Director's office and the tall Air Force officer making his way down the stairs with an overfull box in his hands.
Tony let his eyes linger on the officer, something new and different in the stale building. They didn't get many Air Force officers in this part of the Navy Yard, especially ones with hair that long. Seriously, it was like the man had stuck his finger in a light socket. How had his CO let him get that unkempt? At least he was shaven.
Had he been at the memorial service? Tony couldn't remember, and that bothered him. He was a trained investigator, he was supposed to spot inconsistencies in his surroundings. An Air Force officer in service dress blues in the Navy Yard was as odd as they came.
The man hit the bottom step and hesitated before turning right and curving around the windows. He met Tony's eyes and paused by the divider separating Tony's workspace from the empty space by the window. Tony had enough time to spot the man's silver oak leaves and marvel that an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel would let his hair get so punk are you talking to me? before the man rested the box on the divider and spoke.
"Don't suppose you could point me in the direction of the nearest fire exit?" the Lieutenant Colonel asked in something close to a weary drawl.
Tony jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the elevator. "Did you lose your escort?" he had to ask, because even Air Force Lieutenant Colonels were escorted around the NCIS building.
"The Director's assistant was supposed to walk me out, but she's not taking things too well." The Lieutenant Colonel centered his hat on top of the box, just enough to reveal the top contents. Tony had a moment to stare at Jenny's father's framed photograph before he registered the nameplate on the Lieutenant Colonel's uniform.
Sheppard.
Tony's blood turned to ice. A man named Sheppard carting away Jenny's personal possessions on the day of her funeral couldn't be a coincidence. And now here he was, talking to the NCIS Agent who had let his sister? Wife? No, Jenny hadn't ever been married relation die alone in the California desert.
"Cynthia was very fond of Jenny," Tony heard himself saying, straightening up as well as he could in his funeral suit. "Vance couldn't walk you out?"
"Who?" Colonel Sheppard pushed his hand through his hair, making it even worse. Tony spotted a bright red scar on the back of the man's wrist, a recently healed injury.
"The new Director," Tony said slowly, not liking where this was going.
Colonel Sheppard shrugged, dropping his hand to rest on the box. "He wasn't around. It wasn't like I was expected." His mouth turned up in a grimace that might have been a smile on a better day. "I was... deployed, when I got the news about Jen. I just got here in time to miss the funeral."
What was worse, missing a chance to say goodbye by a few days, or a few hours? Tony swallowed. "It was nice, you know. Flowers and stuff and lots of high-placed people saying things."
Colonel Sheppard shifted in place uncomfortably. "Jen would have hated that. All the bullshit political crap." He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, looking so very tired. Then he opened his eyes again, taking in the rest of the bullpen. His gaze stilled on the half-empty box on Tony's desk. He frowned. "Did you lose someone else?"
Tony looked at the box on his desk. Of course the Lieutenant Colonel would think that someone else was dead. The Director was dead, so wouldn't it have been fitting to have her bodyguards also down for the count?
Of course Sheppard would think that, because how was it fucking logical that Tony and Ziva and even Mike fucking Franks were unharmed and Jenny was dead, her small body ripped up by the deadly ravages of automatic weapons fire because she'd been on her own in the middle of the desert because Tony was too eager for a break from work to have seen the signs that she was in danger?
Tony shoved away the tsunami of guilt behind a grin that was totally inappropriate but he couldn't stop himself. "No, just some reorganization of the staff." He realized belatedly that his voice had sounded too happy when Jenny was dead on his watch, but that was the DiNozzo way. Betray the woman you love, let the woman who trusts you be killed alone in the desert, and do it all with a grin.
Colonel Sheppard looked at him with indecipherable eyes, and Tony had to turn away under the guise of straightening his tie. His new vantage point put him staring directly at the elevator doors opening on Ziva. She stared at Tony with eyes so wide in her pale face that it made his gut ache.
Ziva David shouldn't look like that. She was hardcore, an assassin and a survivor, and people like that didn't get to look so close to skittering apart on the office floor.
Tony turned back to Colonel Sheppard, wondering what else the man wanted. He knew the way out, he had no reason to stay. Then Tony remembered that he hadn't introduced himself I better introduce myself. I'm the big landowner, chief moneylender in these parts. Pushing off the desk like he had springs in his feet, he blurted out, "Tony DiNozzo," making the passing Agent Lee jump into the air at the suddenness of it all.
Colonel Sheppard took Tony's offered hand without hesitation. His grip was firm, his hand calloused as if he held a gun for most of the day, and Tony wondered, because Lieutenant Colonels were seldom in the direct line of fire that would demand such constant vigilance.
Ziva drifted to her desk on silent feet, sitting demurely in her chair and folding deadly hands in her lap. Did she blame Tony for Jenny's death? If he'd listened to her in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have buried Jenny that day.
Colonel Sheppard let go of Tony's hand. "Call me John," said the Lieutenant Colonel, his eyes flickering to Ziva, for only a moment. "Jen told me about you guys."
"I-- She did?" That was news to Tony, who had never heard a mention of this Lieutenant Colonel who was now carrying away the remnants of Jenny's life.
"Yeah," John said, fiddling with the edge of his cap. "I'm the only person where I'm stationed, who has family with security clearance as high as I do." His fingers slipped and landed hard on the picture frame. "I mean, had family."
"You are her cousin John," Ziva said quietly. Her dark eyes had fixed on John's face with something akin to hunger and Tony didn't understand. "The one in the Air Force."
That didn't take much deductive reasoning, seeing as how the man was in dress blues, but Tony wasn't sure he wanted to interrupt Ziva with snarky feedback when in two hours, he may never see her again. Just like that, she's gone.
"She spoke of you while we were in Europe," Ziva continued.
"She did?" Tony interjected.
"She did." Ziva finally looked away, at the gleam of the afternoon sun shining through the windows on the Anacostia River. "But that was years ago. Many things have changed since then."
"Yeah." Sheppard blinked, his eyes flicking to the box then back to Tony. "I never expected Jen to go like this. In a house fire." The words were banal, but Tony was suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings, as sure as if the man had aimed a gun at his head. "I always expected her to go out in the line of duty."
Tony returned the man's look. The man couldn't know how Jenny really died, but Tony didn't give a fuck about cover-ups and his job or anything because Jenny was dead on his watch, just like Kate and Paula before her, and no amount of truth or lies would bring her back, and Tony missed Jenny so much, too much for propriety or reason, and after she was gone his whole life had been ripped away.
Without missing a beat, Tony said, "And I wish I could tell you that she'd gone out fighting."
Ziva's breath hitched, but all Tony could see was the way Colonel Sheppard's eyes darkened and his grip tightened on the box. The man nodded at Tony, an acknowledgment, nothing more. Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
Above them, Tony knew that Director Vance watched, that Gibbs hovered in the corner of the bullpen, that Ziva stood at Tony's side for the last time ever, and the guilt in his head would wear him down until one day, he'd be the one lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
One day, someone would be standing where John stood, with Tony's life packed up in a box.
"I should go," Colonel Sheppard said into the stillness. "Thanks for your help."
Ziva choked on a laugh. A laugh, because Jenny was dead because of them, Tony and Ziva, and her cousin was holding her life in a box and he thanked them and Tony couldn't say anything.
Without another word, Colonel Sheppard scooped up the box off the divider and walked towards the elevator, walking the path out of NCIS that Tony would follow in mere hours.
Ziva's presence at Tony's side was warm, and he wouldn't let himself touch her in case the last memory he took was her pulling away. "Did Jenny really talk about her cousin?" he asked, because standing in silence like this hurt.
"Once," Ziva replied. "Their relationship was... complicated."
There was something loaded in that word that Tony couldn't decipher, but it didn't really matter. Ziva went back to her desk and Tony went to his, hands moving over objects on the surface as the only way to prevent himself from breaking down as his whole life spiraled down the drain.
He resumed shoving things in the box, and it was too much like the box John Sheppard had held, and that was the fucking point, wasn't it? In the end, all anyone's life and death amounted to was a pile of inanimate objects shoved in a box, set aside to gather dust.
an end
Life in a Box
An NCIS/Stargate Atlantis story
Summary: After it's over, the remnants of a life fit into a single box.
Rating: PG-13 for some rough language
Disclaimer: Sony and MGM own all things Stargate Atlantis. CBS and Bellisario et al. owns all NCIS. I'm only borrowing and will return them at the end of the fic.
Spoilers: Nothing for SGA; major spoilers for the end of season five of NCIS (Judgment Day)
Characters: Tony DiNozzo versus John Sheppard with some Ziva David for added pain. A Tony-reaction piece to the season finale.
Word count:: 2,300
Note: It's another long-lost family fic, but that's really inconsequential to the NCIS-centric Tony guilt-fest here.
~~~
Tony tossed another box of paperclips into the packing box on his desk. Yes, they were federal government property, but if NCIS wanted to prosecute over stolen office supplies when he was exiled ship-side, then they could go fuck themselves. He didn't care.
He should have cared.
His helicopter to the USS Regan left in sixteen hours. His NCIS access pass to the Navy Yard would be yanked in three. It wasn't the same thing as being escorted out of Philadelphia Homicide by the Captain, but it was close. At least in Philly he hadn't lost a boss.
He wondered if Jenny was scared when the bullets came.
The bullpen lay still under the usual post-funeral malaise, with the shock and dull acceptance chokingly thick. It was the same after Kate had died at his side and Paula Cassidy had died on the other side of a brick wall. And now, Jenny was dead and he hadn't been anywhere near her in the end.
He didn't understand why Jenny had gone to Mike Franks when she was in trouble, and not to him. He thought she trusted him, and now she was dead.
The stapler went into the box, landing beside the small unframed photograph of Kate and Abby and McGee and Ducky from a staff office party so many years before.
It didn't seem right that Kate and Jenny had never met.
He couldn't do this, couldn't pack up his life at NCIS into a box and not break down screaming. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, there was no parking anywhere, and Tony couldn't figure out which was worse: that Jenny was dead, or that Tony hadn't been there for her in the end.
After Vance had torn the team asunder, Gibbs had pulled yet another vanishing act. McGee was in Abby's lab, trying to talk the girl woman, woman, Abby was nothing but woman and now Tony would never be able to tell her how much she meant to him out of quitting in protest or dynamiting the building, Tony wasn't sure. Ziva was off beating up cars or whatever it was Mossad agents did to vent steam, and Kate and Paula and Jenny were still dead on Tony's watch and Tony was alone, shoving every single moment of his life at NCIS into a box.
He couldn't do this without throwing up or breaking down or falling apart. Moving around his desk, he stood in the centre of the bullpen for a few minutes. No more campfires to get ideas, no more tormenting Ziva or ganging up on McGee and no more Gibbs' head-smacks. None of it. It was over now.
This time tomorrow, he would be Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, Agent Afloat on the USS Regan, and Ziva would be in Israel and McGee would be in Cyber Crimes and Gibbs would be all alone and Jenny would still be dead.
Something was wrong with his legs. It happened sometimes with his busted knee, hitting him at the strangest of times, like now. He managed to make it to Ziva's corner of the bullpen and lean on the desk before his body dumped him to the floor. It was a strange perspective over here, with a clear view up the stairs to MTAC and the Director's office and the tall Air Force officer making his way down the stairs with an overfull box in his hands.
Tony let his eyes linger on the officer, something new and different in the stale building. They didn't get many Air Force officers in this part of the Navy Yard, especially ones with hair that long. Seriously, it was like the man had stuck his finger in a light socket. How had his CO let him get that unkempt? At least he was shaven.
Had he been at the memorial service? Tony couldn't remember, and that bothered him. He was a trained investigator, he was supposed to spot inconsistencies in his surroundings. An Air Force officer in service dress blues in the Navy Yard was as odd as they came.
The man hit the bottom step and hesitated before turning right and curving around the windows. He met Tony's eyes and paused by the divider separating Tony's workspace from the empty space by the window. Tony had enough time to spot the man's silver oak leaves and marvel that an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel would let his hair get so punk are you talking to me? before the man rested the box on the divider and spoke.
"Don't suppose you could point me in the direction of the nearest fire exit?" the Lieutenant Colonel asked in something close to a weary drawl.
Tony jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the elevator. "Did you lose your escort?" he had to ask, because even Air Force Lieutenant Colonels were escorted around the NCIS building.
"The Director's assistant was supposed to walk me out, but she's not taking things too well." The Lieutenant Colonel centered his hat on top of the box, just enough to reveal the top contents. Tony had a moment to stare at Jenny's father's framed photograph before he registered the nameplate on the Lieutenant Colonel's uniform.
Sheppard.
Tony's blood turned to ice. A man named Sheppard carting away Jenny's personal possessions on the day of her funeral couldn't be a coincidence. And now here he was, talking to the NCIS Agent who had let his sister? Wife? No, Jenny hadn't ever been married relation die alone in the California desert.
"Cynthia was very fond of Jenny," Tony heard himself saying, straightening up as well as he could in his funeral suit. "Vance couldn't walk you out?"
"Who?" Colonel Sheppard pushed his hand through his hair, making it even worse. Tony spotted a bright red scar on the back of the man's wrist, a recently healed injury.
"The new Director," Tony said slowly, not liking where this was going.
Colonel Sheppard shrugged, dropping his hand to rest on the box. "He wasn't around. It wasn't like I was expected." His mouth turned up in a grimace that might have been a smile on a better day. "I was... deployed, when I got the news about Jen. I just got here in time to miss the funeral."
What was worse, missing a chance to say goodbye by a few days, or a few hours? Tony swallowed. "It was nice, you know. Flowers and stuff and lots of high-placed people saying things."
Colonel Sheppard shifted in place uncomfortably. "Jen would have hated that. All the bullshit political crap." He closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, looking so very tired. Then he opened his eyes again, taking in the rest of the bullpen. His gaze stilled on the half-empty box on Tony's desk. He frowned. "Did you lose someone else?"
Tony looked at the box on his desk. Of course the Lieutenant Colonel would think that someone else was dead. The Director was dead, so wouldn't it have been fitting to have her bodyguards also down for the count?
Of course Sheppard would think that, because how was it fucking logical that Tony and Ziva and even Mike fucking Franks were unharmed and Jenny was dead, her small body ripped up by the deadly ravages of automatic weapons fire because she'd been on her own in the middle of the desert because Tony was too eager for a break from work to have seen the signs that she was in danger?
Tony shoved away the tsunami of guilt behind a grin that was totally inappropriate but he couldn't stop himself. "No, just some reorganization of the staff." He realized belatedly that his voice had sounded too happy when Jenny was dead on his watch, but that was the DiNozzo way. Betray the woman you love, let the woman who trusts you be killed alone in the desert, and do it all with a grin.
Colonel Sheppard looked at him with indecipherable eyes, and Tony had to turn away under the guise of straightening his tie. His new vantage point put him staring directly at the elevator doors opening on Ziva. She stared at Tony with eyes so wide in her pale face that it made his gut ache.
Ziva David shouldn't look like that. She was hardcore, an assassin and a survivor, and people like that didn't get to look so close to skittering apart on the office floor.
Tony turned back to Colonel Sheppard, wondering what else the man wanted. He knew the way out, he had no reason to stay. Then Tony remembered that he hadn't introduced himself I better introduce myself. I'm the big landowner, chief moneylender in these parts. Pushing off the desk like he had springs in his feet, he blurted out, "Tony DiNozzo," making the passing Agent Lee jump into the air at the suddenness of it all.
Colonel Sheppard took Tony's offered hand without hesitation. His grip was firm, his hand calloused as if he held a gun for most of the day, and Tony wondered, because Lieutenant Colonels were seldom in the direct line of fire that would demand such constant vigilance.
Ziva drifted to her desk on silent feet, sitting demurely in her chair and folding deadly hands in her lap. Did she blame Tony for Jenny's death? If he'd listened to her in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have buried Jenny that day.
Colonel Sheppard let go of Tony's hand. "Call me John," said the Lieutenant Colonel, his eyes flickering to Ziva, for only a moment. "Jen told me about you guys."
"I-- She did?" That was news to Tony, who had never heard a mention of this Lieutenant Colonel who was now carrying away the remnants of Jenny's life.
"Yeah," John said, fiddling with the edge of his cap. "I'm the only person where I'm stationed, who has family with security clearance as high as I do." His fingers slipped and landed hard on the picture frame. "I mean, had family."
"You are her cousin John," Ziva said quietly. Her dark eyes had fixed on John's face with something akin to hunger and Tony didn't understand. "The one in the Air Force."
That didn't take much deductive reasoning, seeing as how the man was in dress blues, but Tony wasn't sure he wanted to interrupt Ziva with snarky feedback when in two hours, he may never see her again. Just like that, she's gone.
"She spoke of you while we were in Europe," Ziva continued.
"She did?" Tony interjected.
"She did." Ziva finally looked away, at the gleam of the afternoon sun shining through the windows on the Anacostia River. "But that was years ago. Many things have changed since then."
"Yeah." Sheppard blinked, his eyes flicking to the box then back to Tony. "I never expected Jen to go like this. In a house fire." The words were banal, but Tony was suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings, as sure as if the man had aimed a gun at his head. "I always expected her to go out in the line of duty."
Tony returned the man's look. The man couldn't know how Jenny really died, but Tony didn't give a fuck about cover-ups and his job or anything because Jenny was dead on his watch, just like Kate and Paula before her, and no amount of truth or lies would bring her back, and Tony missed Jenny so much, too much for propriety or reason, and after she was gone his whole life had been ripped away.
Without missing a beat, Tony said, "And I wish I could tell you that she'd gone out fighting."
Ziva's breath hitched, but all Tony could see was the way Colonel Sheppard's eyes darkened and his grip tightened on the box. The man nodded at Tony, an acknowledgment, nothing more. Sometimes the truth does taste like a mouthful of worms.
Above them, Tony knew that Director Vance watched, that Gibbs hovered in the corner of the bullpen, that Ziva stood at Tony's side for the last time ever, and the guilt in his head would wear him down until one day, he'd be the one lying on the ground in a pool of blood.
One day, someone would be standing where John stood, with Tony's life packed up in a box.
"I should go," Colonel Sheppard said into the stillness. "Thanks for your help."
Ziva choked on a laugh. A laugh, because Jenny was dead because of them, Tony and Ziva, and her cousin was holding her life in a box and he thanked them and Tony couldn't say anything.
Without another word, Colonel Sheppard scooped up the box off the divider and walked towards the elevator, walking the path out of NCIS that Tony would follow in mere hours.
Ziva's presence at Tony's side was warm, and he wouldn't let himself touch her in case the last memory he took was her pulling away. "Did Jenny really talk about her cousin?" he asked, because standing in silence like this hurt.
"Once," Ziva replied. "Their relationship was... complicated."
There was something loaded in that word that Tony couldn't decipher, but it didn't really matter. Ziva went back to her desk and Tony went to his, hands moving over objects on the surface as the only way to prevent himself from breaking down as his whole life spiraled down the drain.
He resumed shoving things in the box, and it was too much like the box John Sheppard had held, and that was the fucking point, wasn't it? In the end, all anyone's life and death amounted to was a pile of inanimate objects shoved in a box, set aside to gather dust.
an end