Dry My Dreaming
Dry My Dreaming
Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still...
Iris, blue each spring ― Bashō Matsuo
NCIS / Aberrant Magic
Tony angst
Eventually Tony/Gibbs
Before Bishop's breakup
The new team does not exist
Life is normal for Tony-Gibbs is a bastard, Bishop is annoyingly enthusiastic, Senior is playing the part of a good father, and Tim is Tim. Their newest case even seems normal-a marine shot in the head three times. Only it turns out the victim is a shaman, and the case gets tangled in the Talent community. Tony has avoided magic since he turned twelve and his shaman father kicked him out of the house, not that Senior wants anyone to know he’s a shaman. No, that would damage his reputation. As the case gets more complicated, Tony’s masks and his history start to unravel.
Gibbs has always cared about Tony, but his patience is at an end. No matter what Gibbs says or does, Tony will not pull his head out of his ass and take care of himself. Gibbs feels helpless-like he’s on the front lines with a fellow Marine self-destructing in slow motion, and there’s nothing he can do. The fact that it’s Tony falling apart just makes it all worse. All he can do is push on and hope that Tony is strong enough to survive. Gibbs can’t do anything else because there’s no way to protect Tony, at least that’s what he assumes until a new shaman pushes into his case and changes everything-including how Gibbs sees Tony.
Previous chapters HERE
Chapter Two
Jethro reined in his temper. “Find me something,” he snapped at Tim. A few years ago, that would have sent Tim scrambling, but he had grown a lot. He gave Jethro a look just long enough to make his point before he retreated to his computer. He didn’t like Gibbs’ attitude, but then Gibbs didn’t like himself much lately. He was surprised he hadn’t sent Bishop running off, and Vance had made it clear that if Jethro scared off one more probationary agent, Vance would ask HR to do an internal audit of the team.
Jethro suspected the team would not survive. Tony was clearly struggling with depression and he refused to let anyone help him. Jethro had even invited him over for cowboy steaks, but Tony made excuses. And the more excuses Tony made, the more angry Jethro got.
Damn it. Tony had been the best young cop Jethro had ever seen. He had the flexibility and the moral fortitude to get the job done, but the Tony who showed up for work these days was a shell of the man he used to be.
Maybe Jethro should let Vance do the damn audit. Anyone with eyes would pull Tony out of the field, and maybe he needed that. The problem was that Jethro feared Tony would go home and lose himself. Maybe he wouldn’t end up at the bottom of a bottle or dead, but the risk was still there. Jethro had seen good men lose themselves. They held it together on the battlefield, but the second a psyche eval got them pulled from active duty, it was like part of them died. The helpless rage of watching a brother Marine fade away to nothing tore at Jethro every time, and he wasn’t about to let Tony go down that path. Tony needed this job. He was a damn good agent, and Jethro just had to figure out how to give him a swift kick and restart that fire for life.
Unfortunately, everything he did seemed to have the opposite effect. Jethro reviewed Richards’ service records while Tim typed away.
“Tony was right. Richards owes a lot of money,” Tim said.
Jethro didn’t have anything to add, so he kept reviewing his own work. Tim sighed. Tim and Tony might snipe at each other, but when Jethro was alone with Tim, Tim was getting more and more adamant about throwing in these pro-Tony comments, as if Jethro needed to hear them. If Tony weren’t good, Jethro wouldn’t have stolen him. Having a junior agent trying-badly-to give Jethro an attitude adjustment did not improve Jethro’s mood.
Eventually Tim stood. “I’m going for coffee,” he said. Jethro gave a single nod and waited until Tim was gone before he headed down to the basement.
Abby’s music made his head pound before he even reached her lab. When Jethro entered, he went straight to the radio and turned it down. Abby whirled around, her pigtails flying.
“Gibbs!” she sang happily. No matter how bad his day, Abby’s genuine joy at seeing him always soothed his nerves. The rest of his team might be a fucking nightmare, but Abby would always be Abby.
“Hey Abs. How’d it go with your friend?”
Abby’s face fell. “Totally not good. She’s a crystal user, so she doesn’t really hang with shamans, and she’s sort of not okay with Djedi center politics. She’s going to talk to another crystal user who does the whole community thing. Hopefully I can get you in with someone.” Abby’s face twisted with unhappy failure, and Jethro just wanted to fix her.
Jethro wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into him. “I totally don’t deserve the comfort because I failed you.”
“You did your best,” Jethro said. Comforting her was so easy because she never asked for any. Jethro’s gut called him a traitor because Tony had that same self-hatred and Jethro had never found it easy to open himself to the younger agent.
“My best didn’t work. But I’m still on it,” she promised. She stepped backward ending the hug. “Do you have new evidence?”
“Nope,” Jethro said. “The team is still digging.”
“I don’t have anything beyond the ballistics report I already sent you.”
Jethro nodded. He knew that.
Abby narrowed her eyes. “So what do you want?”
Jethro hated to drag anyone else into this, but his methods were failing badly. “Is something bothering DiNozzo?”
Abby sat on her stool. “Bothering like more than usual? I don’t think so. I wish it were that easy.” She wrinkled her nose. “You see it too, huh?”
“Hard to miss,” Jethro said.
“His aura is all hinky,” Abby agreed. Jethro didn’t even know what that meant. “But you aren’t helping with the whole cracking the whip routine.”
“Not much else I can do for him,” Jethro said. Tony needed to keep focused on work or he’d fall apart.
Abby pressed her lips together, and Jethro changed the subject before she could subject him to another lecture on the fragile nature of Tony. DiNozzo was a tough man, and Abby’s attitude was going to push him closer to a dangerous edge. If Tony started thinking of himself as weak or helpless or damaged, he was going to pull himself from the field, and Jethro did not want to imagine what would happen to him. Jethro had lost too many good people, but he couldn’t face losing Tony. None of Jethro’s marriages, none of his brother Marines, none of his bosses, no one else had ever been in his life for ten years. Jethro would move heaven and earth before he’d let depression steal Tony, and that meant Tony had to buck up and stay on the job so he had something to live for.
“Give me the short version of the shamanic crap,” Jethro said. He’d tried looking it up online, but he couldn’t figure out who was telling the truth and who was wildly exaggerating to make some political point. Coming from a small town, Jethro had never known anyone with Talent, or at least he’d never known anyone who admitted it. Rural people still held deep prejudices against magic, so Jethro understood why they hid their power. Hell, Jethro had done the same with his bisexuality. He didn’t need anyone in the Marines doubting him, so he’d never shown even a passing interest in another man. Of course, back then he’d had Shannon so it hadn’t been hard to simply ignore his attraction to either gender.
“Okay,” Abby said slowly, like she was trying to gather her thoughts, and Jethro braced himself for a lecture.
“Just the highlights.”
“They have magic,” Abby said with a bright smile. Jethro stared at her.
“More of the midtones?” Abby teased, but then she kept going. “So you have one big split. On one side you have shamans and adepts who do the whole spirit walking and have magic from just being them. On the other side you have magic users who can manipulate the magic that gets left around. My friend is one of those. She is totally into crystals, but she doesn’t exactly have magic as much as she has an ability to use magic.”
“And Richards?”
“Lots of people totally are not into talking about their skills.”
“But…” Jethro tried to hurry her along.
“But it sounds like he might be a shaman. At least, my friend said that if he doesn’t have any magical stuff around his apartment, he’s either a shaman or a really crappy magic user who doesn’t know how to use much magic.”
Either was possible. Jethro’s gut was quiet, but if Tony was chasing the financial angle, Jethro was willing to bet that’s where they would find their perp. Now Jethro just needed to keep this FBI team away from his case. Another supervisory agent could make life difficult, especially when DiNozzo was so obviously operating at less than his best. The wrong word in Vance’s ear, and Jethro was going to have more trouble than he could keep away from his team.
Worse, this Boucher had a reputation for being the sort of rule-obsessed ass that made Jethro hate the FBI. The agency had a higher profile than NCIS, and because of that, they were paranoid about not getting caught with their pants down.
Jethro didn’t have any illusions about how long he’d last over there. Tony might have adapted well if Jethro hadn’t dragged him to NCIS first.
He wouldn’t now. The FBI would kick DiNozzo’s ass to the curb so fast that the company shrink wouldn’t have time to get his claws in Tony. Jethro just wished he understood why Tony was veering wildly between inappropriate joking and a general lethargy that made Jethro worry about him in the field. Jethro had never handled it well when people didn’t live up to their potential, and if Tony didn’t figure this out and Jethro couldn’t get him back on track, their team wasn’t going to survive.
After giving Abby a kiss on the cheek, Jethro gave her a quick thanks and headed back up to his desk. They had one day before the FBI team stuck their nose into this case. If Jethro didn’t have a reputation, he’d give the FBI Talent team the case. It would keep them away from his people, but given Jethro’s reputation, that would make people ask too many questions.
With a lack of clear objectives and no way to get intelligence on what was eating DiNozzo, Jethro had to fall back on his most basic training. He would dig in and protect their position until something changed. Maybe then he could figure out how to get his people back on track.
Either that or he’d just kill DiNozzo. The stress of the team dynamic was aggravating Jethro to the point where homicide was starting to sound like a reasonable solution.