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Cassierules' Fanfiction |
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Okay, guys welcome to my fanfic page! Provided people don't utterly hate my take on the charcaters and flame away, evrything will be posted in order from newest-oldest. Thanks for coming by!
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Sept 18, 2009Straight in the Eye
Summary- Kate helps McGee out and ends up helping herself quite a bit too. It's kind of before and after, and a little bit sad at the end.
Kate Todd would've usually liked to go shopping. This was all before she found out that Shopping with McGee equaled slow, painful torture that nibbled away at the corners of your brain, persistently hacking away at sanity.
The Probie had a Date with Abby, and Kate, the best friend, had been forced to go with him to a quaint strip of shops deep in the city. Really. Gibbs had left two fifty bills under her coffee. She silently reminded herself that she'd never rush into a house and accidentally say CSI over NCIS. If this was the first offense...well, the risks were just too big. 'Hey, Kate, how's this?', Tim asked, holding up a piece of lingerie beyond description. They were in Sears now, just a couple blocks from the Navy Yard, both McGee and Kate giving up on the shops after they'd been chased out of a Future Shop and told not to harass the Geek Squad. Kate knew McGee couldn't help it. Sighing, she shrugged. 'Tell me what it is, McGee, I'll tell you if Abby already has one.' McGee frowned. 'Jesus. We're girls. We go through each others closets. Hanging with Tony?', she replied with a slight smile. He considered it for a moment, then returned the thing to a rack. 'How about-' He was cut off by Kate raising a hand. 'I see Starbucks in the future. Coffee, Now.' Kate just about pushed him out of the store and into the familiar coffee shop. She ordered the necessary Caffeine of course and a bag of Brownies. She needed the chocolate. 'Abby's gonna be mad.', Tim groaned, breathing in steam. Kate munched through a couple brownies. 'Y'know, Tim, maybe you don't need to give her a thing.', she said through Chocolate dough.
__________________________________________________ She was convinced Jesse McDonald was the best thing since sliced bread. Or at least peanut butter and jelly. The boy was mysterious in that way that a dark forest was, never speaking and silently drifting through life, yet she'd always felt like she'd known him. He did something to his hair that made it stick up in all the right places, tousled, yet still clean. And his eyes won her over. They were sharp when he looked on from far away, but when you looked Jesse straight in the face, his eyes were soft pools of blue light. Jesse loved music, and he would spend hours on the shore, sitting on a barrel, hunched over a guitar. She would watch him, but only passing glances. Any more would scream stalker. Eventually, on a gloomy overcast afternoon, she did get the courage to approach that barrel. She stood silently beside him, letting the chords vibrate through the sand in her toes. Jesse's song finished and he tilted his head up to look at her. He blinked, but didn't speak. Instead, he opened his case and passed her a single piece of paper, with the lyrics to a song on the reverse. She took it, the paper still heavy with...him. His touch and scent. Wordlessly, Jesse Put the guitar back in the case and turned up the beach, his footprints washed away by the late surf. She studied those lyrics in her room, running over the title on her tongue. ' If I could Say'. It was about a boy wishing he had the power to change things and people, yet knew he never could. It was strangely bittersweet and slightly even heartbreaking. The next week, she'd snatched a song about Sunshine from a songbook at school and folded it into her pocket. It was almost like the first time. He played, she waited, and then he reached into the case. She tapped his shoulder and held up the paper in front of that beautiful face. Jesse paused, then took it from her.
He laid it out in his lap and stuck a hand back into the open case. He offered her another sheet and nodded.
Just like the first time though, he was gone, his trail vanishing underwater. It was like that for weeks, months, years. They exchanged the lyrics on that shore, then later by mail when they were in school, and email when she joined the CIA and he moved to the UK. They never really spoke beyond those words on the page. There were no formalities, no hi-hello's on the headers. He had her number, yet never called. Somehow though, he gave her more every week than any king could have tried to.
________________________________________________ 'It's sweet, Kate, but Abby. I mean, what do I do, Google Android Lust?', Tim sighed. Kate shook her head. 'Give her what you can, Tim. Show her yourself. Make sure she knows that you can be right beside her forever, if that's what she wants.' McGee considered this. 'I'll make her my Mom's famous meatloaf. I mean, Women love guys who cook, right?' Kate groaned. ________________________________________________ Much, much later, Jesse did call. It was, to Kate, any other morning, she pulled a light brown sweater over her head, brushed her hair, and was right in the middle of pulling on a pair of matching slacks when the phone rung. 'Caitlin Todd speaking,', she said, on leg in her pants. ' 'Hey, Kate. This is, uh, it's Jesse McDonald.', his voice sounded like honey on gravel. Even all these years later, her mind called up the image of his face and made her flush. 'Oh, God. Jesse. Hi. Hello. I'm sorry. I was just going to work.' There was a laugh on the other side. 'Is this a bad time?'
'Oh. No, no, my boss can wait.'
'You tell federal agents to wait for you? Nice, Kate'
'The guy lives in his Basement on Coffee and Bourbon. He Can wait'
'Uh-huh. Not to keep you on, I just gotta tell you something'
'Shoot'
'Kate, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Got two months to live. I.. My parents are dead. The wife and I broke up years ago. My kids don't know me. I just wanted to tell you to...y'know, live your life fully. You gotta just stare death in the face and say well, here I am. Y'know what I mean? You can't live scared, okay, Kate? You can't lie down and expect thing to come for you. So, Fight hard, girl. The nurse is coming, so I gotta...well, bye. Kate.'
She can't even say goodbye when the phone clicks off.
_______________________________________ Later, his words ring in her head when her heart is pounding, right after she's saved Gibbs from a bullet. She's grinning, between Tony and the boss, joking, telling herself to breathe when the next shot comes. 'You've just gotta stare death in the face and say here I am.'
September 17, 2009-
Some Things Never Change
Summary- Just a bit of a tester. Post Aliyah Tony-Ziva fic that's not at all romantic. Plus Abby for the Abby!
Tony DiNozzo hated desk clean-up. He didn't just hate it, if it was a perp, it'd be on it's way to the morgue, the nasty remains resembling a scrambled Greasy Burger left to Ducky, Palmer, and Abby to make sense of.
God...did he really think that? Could he... Tony sighed and bit his lip. Just a couple months ago, he might have said it out loud, left it out for McGee to groan at, Gibbs to give an exaggerated roll of the eyes, Abby to grin, and Ziva to give a small reserved chuckle, catching his eyes with that magic sparkle.
Magic...or had it just been the glittering eyeliner she'd suddenly become a fan of, the thing that had made her stick out in the crowd of agents (at least to him), who wore functional make-up in nude shades, suddenly as unique as her words and sweaters. But all still a mask. Just a shell on the outside, hiding whatever else he didn't know.
Tony liked thinking he knew her. Really knew her. He liked thinking she trusted him, that he would be the one she called when things fell apart. But that was...Gibbs...it was Micheal. It would never be him.
He pulled open the top drawer, spilling over with old Playboys and TV Guides, bookmarked with fast food wrappers and post-its that listed crucial numbers. Between pens and a half-open tube of Lifesavers, someone had wedged a foreign object, a clean, white, envelope, with a tight, thin, script outlining his name.
Tony's eyes flew right to it, his fingers hungrily ripping the seal, a return address sticker for a street and apartment number he had gotten to remember far too well over the past weeks. He didn't look up at the name. Didn't need to. Her touch, the soft and precise strokes of her writing clung to the envelope as he did, grappling and yearning for someone that just wasn't there...anymore. Tony read the letter, or note, really, a short little thing in the center of NCIS copy paper quickly, just like ripping a Band-Aid off a cut.
Dear Tony,
Yesterday you told me that I am not in my country anymore and whatever I found acceptable there, is not tolerated in yours. I think perhaps you are right. If you are reading this, then you have probably either began cleaning your desk (How angry is Gibbs?) or you have learned about the entire mess I have put myself in. I have been thinking, and I believe there are some things I never said to you, because I never had the courage to, and for a time believed I had the freedom never to have to tell you these things. Why am I writing this? Why do you need to know? I don't know. Lately I don't know much of anything, but it is nearing time I decide where I truly belong and where my loyalties truly lie. I am sorry I hurt you. I am sorry for what my actions have caused and sorry for my mistakes. This will just end up crumpled in a crash bin but I needed to write it down, to see it in black and white. For me.
Your Crazy Mossad Ninja Chick,
Ziva David
He shoves it back in the drawer, far, far, back. Tony puts his head down on the desk, to keep from crying. He can see her signature, burned in his mind, Ziva signing off on case reports, writing a check for rent, doodling little knives around the elaborate curves of her handwriting when McGee would go off about the newest Mac model. He remembers giving her the name, but for a Crazy Mossad Ninja Chick, she'd sure learned to smile. And laugh. And see humanity buried deep in the superficial motives of their cases. Ziva was smiling at her reflection in the interrogation room mirror, laughing when Abby suggested Vance looked like a frog. Destroyed when Agent Lee's sister...no...he doesn't want to see another life their work has demolished. Sometime later, he realizes exactly what he needs. Abby Scutio.
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So Abby sips Caf-Pow while Tony minimizes the match screen. How many times had he been in this same lad, with her at his side, Abby sharing some case-breaking discovery, McGee carefully moving his mouse closer to her hand. It's the things like that which hurt the most, because Ziva's leaving had signaled a sort of leaving of those moments to Abby. Things haven't been the same, and they haven't gotten a replacement shot right at the them like when Kate died. They have no new Ziva, no shadowy replacement that in time will form a solid comrade that will strike a harder blow when she leaves. Abby thinks the position is just bad luck.
Tony doesn't tell Abby about the note, but just lets her babble on about who knows what for a few minutes, a charade of perky happiness that does little to convince him, before the topic turns, like it has every time these past couple months, to Ziva David, whose presence Abby misses the most. She beats herself up over those few months, when she was nothing but terrible to their new teammate, as cold and heartless in truth as she'd called Ziva. Abby wonders if she was thinking about those moments when she stayed behind in Israel. Maybe Ziva thought she wasn't wanted, just another reason for her to leave.
Tony tells her that when Abby Scutio is cold and heartless, hell will freeze over, but given Global Warming, neither can happen. And she laughs back, just like old times. In a golden moment, nothing is different. Machines beep behind them, and the computer flashes through a set of prints. Agents trudge by in the hallway, balancing coffee cups and paperwork, phones in the other hand. The sun shines though the window, reflecting off flecks of a broken beer bottle not yet swept away on the sidewalk, where businessmen and crackheads and little girls who want their daddy home form his tour all walk together.
They meet each others eyes, reaching a solution, a mental lightbulb pops up and reminds them of what it seems they can't remember. Life goes on. You meet others along the way, try to help them, or hurt them, you love some, and you lose some. It's...cyclical, in Abby's mind. It's like spinning a ball with candy inside. Colors shift and change and nothing stays the same, but it settles. It'll be okay again, before another spin rocks them to the core. And they survive again. Even if the only way to do so is put on a mask, and fake it, then cry at night in your bed, before waking to accept the challenges of a new day, pushing through when you don't want them there, hiding the scars of yesterday that make you weaker.
So when Tony leaves, on his way back to the bullpen, swishing out those doors, Abby does think of Ziva, finding some other girl to show which gun she wants to, a friend that's more like her, one that won't call her cold and heartless, that she probably throws knives and shares body armor with, that speaks her language, instead of throwing strange looks her way and secretly searching her in spare time. Maybe Ziva feels wanted over there. Like she's really part of something, not just a square peg in a circle hole, which will fit through, though with a lot of struggle and bending plastic. Abby tries not to be too sad. If Ziva's happy, then it's her duty as a friend to be happy for her, even if those words, friends and duty, have elusive meanings she barely ever tries to comprehend...or to separate.
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Back at his desk, Tony folds the letter neatly and puts it in a frame, behind a picture of he and the team, the one time Gibbs had enough bourbon in him to take them on a fishing trip. They're soaking wet, which is enough of a clue. Ziva is holding a trout, speared with a sharpened twig, at the camera like a trophy, radiant and mysterious at the same time. He allows himself to think of her now, still his Crazy Mossad Ninja Chick, showing all those guys who's boss, listening in with a smile to the ones who complain about Eli David. Probably flipped Boss Daddy off at least once. And when she's not kicking butt? She's sneaking seasick pills on the missions where they're on water, putting on eyeliner in a reflection of herself in a lake in the woods.
She's still Ziva, and no matter how lost she gets, and how much crap gets thrown at her, she firmly believes she is achieving something and making a difference, if it is purpose or vengeance that drives her, Tony knows that never changes. So whatever Mossad is up against better say their prayers.
These thoughts bring a foreign comfort to Tony DiNozzo, because though he still wishes she were here, he is happy thinking she's okay, she's alive and living her life. Maybe she's still finding herself, still learning exactly what and who she is. And he's okay with that. Because when she comes back (and she will) Ziva David will mess up her English and be obsessed with mustard and snap out a paperclip at him. Things come and go. Rock the boat. But there are some things that never change.
The End!
