NCIS: A Christmas Carol (2/6)
Title: NCIS: A Christmas Carol
Author: water4willows
Characters: Gibbs, Tony and Vance, other characters on the show but not at themselves
Parings: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 20,371
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with NCIS and the characters in this work of fiction are the property of CBS
Summary: In honor of Christmas and one of the most beloved Christmas Stories of all time, I give you: A Christmas Carol, NCIS style :)
Chapter Two
As a little boy and his father made their way through the freshly fallen snow on their way to church, a lone man sat in an empty building trying to warm his hands over a fire that offered no warmth. Leroy Jethro Gibbs had always been a solitary man and that was the way he liked it. People were idiotic; sentimental fools who blindly gave away their hearts and their hard earned money for a stupid holiday he was fairly certain had been invented by the toy companies. Christmas did little more than congest already clogged city streets and fill the sidewalks of his usually no-nonsense town with the foot traffic of the criminally stupid. The crush of people pressing their noses against loud and gaudy storefront windows was enough to make him want to puke and he was glad he had a driver to weave him through it all safely tucked behind the smoked glass of his simple sedan's back windows. It was the one extravagance he allowed himself, that driver, though it angered him to no end every time he slid into the back of that car and knew it was costing him. He hadn't amassed an impressive fortune by squandering money, but even he had to admit the driver was necessary with the schedule he kept. And speaking of the driver and the late hour, Gibbs realized that there was no more business that could be done that day and left his place before the fire to gather up his things to leave.
He had his driver take back roads to avoid the choked main arteries of downtown and he arrived on the quite street outside his home faster than he had expected. Fernando rounded the corner of the car to let him out and Gibbs tossed the man a silver dollar, waiting to see how he would react. The insult would have driven most men to quit right then and there, a silver dollar hardly a customary tip for a family man missing Christmas Eve to drive a client home, but Gibbs had done a full background check on his driver and knew how much the man needed this job.
The ageing chauffer's face reddened a little, but he made no comment beyond a strangled "Good night then sir," as he folded himself back into the driver's seat. Smiling to himself, Gibbs made his way up the impeccably deiced walkway in front of his ageing house and fumbled for his keys in the dark.
Gibbs' home was a two story brownstone in a part of DC that had once been handsome and stately but was now a ghost of its former self. The neighborhood had gone to pot, but the mortgage was paid off, and Gibbs was content to sequester himself away in his dusty rooms while the hooligans and the homeless slowly took back over the streets. He had an impressive alarm system and a 12 gauge shotgun leaning against the wall just inside the front door and the people of the neighborhood knew not to disturb the owner of 112 East 60th Street.
Having no porch light to see by, Gibbs stepped away from the front door to fumble with his key ring when the one he was looking for refused to be found and was not expecting the voice that called his name suddenly from back beside the door.
"Giiiiiiiiiibs," a faint voice murmured as if brought up onto the porch by the wind, only there wasn't any wind tonight and Gibbs tried to swallow his heart back down out of his throat. A former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines, his brain immediately clicked into battle mode and he fell into a crouch and peered into the gloom of his porch, trying to find the source of the whispered name. The light from a nearby street lamp was faint and his aging eyes might just have been playing tricks on him, but there appeared to be something hanging from the handsome lion door knocker that was now tarnished and unrecognizable and sat at the center of his door. Thinking himself safe, Gibbs straightened popping knees and cautiously walked over to inspect whatever it was.
His heart was beating madly away in his chest as he advanced, hand yearning to grip the cold shotgun just out of reach on the other side of a thin wall, and he squinted into the gloom trying to make out what it was that was affixed to his front door. Each careful step forward seemed to bring the object into further definition until he realized it was a face; some kind of powdery, corpse like Halloween mask that had an uncanny resemblance to his old friend and mentor, Leon Vance, who had been dead these seven years. It was someone's idea of a joke and Gibbs found himself laughing in relief when he reminded himself a plastic mask was hardly a threat and wouldn't attack him, but then the eyes of the mask opened revealing dark pools of black so ebony Gibbs stumbled backwards and cried out.
"GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIBS!" The face wailed and Jethro did the only thing he could think of. He struck out at the moving, writhing thing hanging from his door with the briefcase he still had clutched in his other hand and beat mercilessly at the door with eyes tightly closed. When he was fairly certain that whatever it was had to be dead, he opened his eyes again and searched the porch for the corpse. Only there wasn't anything there and he leaned in to inspect the door knocker for any evidence of what had just happened. But the doorknocker looked like it always did and Gibbs stood for a long moment just listening to the night around him. If it had been some kind of practical joke the perpetrators were certain to be around somewhere, but the night was completely still and not even the vagrants were out and about.
"Stupid kids," he sniffed, at last sliding the right key into the door and gaining entry into his house. He closed the heavy front door behind him with an irritated snap and a grumbled a "humbug" as he flipped on the light of the foyer. A lone empty and naked bulb swayed from the center of the ceiling in the gust of cold air Gibbs had brought in with him from outside and the swinging light cast strange shadows around the bottom level of his house. Nerves already frayed, he talked himself down when his brain began to imagine all manner of creature hiding in the dark ready to attack him, and scolded himself for being so childish. Darkness was not something he feared but rather embraced as an old friend.
Lighting a candle and not bothering with any more lights, Gibbs descended the stairs down into the basement of the house and to the little living area he'd created for himself down there beside an old unused woodshop and the decaying skeleton of an unfinished boat. Gas was expensive and frivolity he'd never allowed himself, so he lit a fire in the wood burning stove he'd dragged down there years ago to warm himself and the basement up and set an old camping kettle to boil. He pulled the half eaten remnants of his lunch from his briefcase and settled in to a high backed chair that had been in the basement when he'd bought the house. It was quiet and secluded, and Gibbs liked it.
The flames of the fire were especially warm and Gibbs found himself nodding off earlier than he usually did which surprised him, but those thoughts were forgotten when one of the dusty tools on a far wall of the basement shuddered against the masonry wall and clattered to the floor loudly enough to make Gibbs jump. It was the second time that night his heart had migrated to the back of his throat and he chastised himself for being so easily startled.
Pulling himself up out of the chair he went to inspect the source of the noise. It was an old wrench lying rusted and weathered on the floor and he picked it up and placed it back on its nail, seeing no obvious reason for why it should have fallen and furrowing his brow at the puzzle. But as he turned to leave the noise repeated and this time the wrench came to rest right behind his left ankle, bouncing a little off his foot as it stopped. Gibbs turned around slowly and bent to pick it up again only this time more tools started jingling on their nails and Gibbs backed away with eyes as wide as saucers as every single tool on the wall began to vibrate and kick up plumes of dust. The cadence of the colloquy built and built until Gibbs was covering his ears with his palms and falling to his knees on the floor. And with one more brutal swell of sound, every last wrench, vice, screw driver and nail fell from the wall and crashed to the concrete floor at his knees. He blinked stupidly at the mess, clouds of dust rising from the floor as if the pile of tools were on fire, unable to process what had just happened and turned his head without thinking when his name again was spoken.
Standing at the top of his basement stairs, dressed in the same clothes they had buried him in, stood the spectral vision of Leon Vance. Gibbs brought a hand up to cover his mouth as it hung open in shock and Vance began descending the staircase, the wall beyond visible through his opaque form, a mass of chains and lock boxes, heavy padlocks and keys following along behind him like the tattered remnants of a shredded wedding gown.
Gibbs made himself get to his feet and backed away from the advancing specter until his back hit the old wooden frame of a long abandoned boat.
"Leon?" He sputtered, cringing at the sight of his long dead friend standing before him, decaying and molting before his very eyes. "But your dead."
"Astute observation Gibbs," the ghost intoned, sounding enough like Leon to give Gibbs the courage to pull himself away from the protection of the boat and stand tall.
"You can't be here Leon, it's impossible!"
"Oh it's possible Jethro." The ghost replied, spreading its arms and rattling a length of chain in the process. "I'm as real as you are."
Gibbs shook his head as much to deny what he was hearing as to try and shake himself away from whatever nightmare he'd fallen into. There was something seriously wrong with him. He had to be hallucinating or something. "Someone got to me, didn't they? Poison? Some psychotropic nerve agent?"
"No, Gibbs, I assure you, I'm quite real and you're just fine. Well, physically anyway."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You're doomed Jethro and someone up there must still like you because they let me come back and warn your sorry ass." Vance smiled, teeth visible through the holes eaten through his lips by decay. "So listen up cause I'm only going to say this once.
You see these chains? They're mine for all eternity Gibbs because of the life I chose to lead on earth. After my wife was killed I let the darkness eat away at me until I became a monster and now I'm paying the ultimate price."
"You weren't a monster, Leon." Gibbs interrupted, pained to hear his old friend speaking of himself that way, even if it was just a hallucination. "You did what had to be done, made the hard calls when no one else could."
"Well I shouldn't have, Gibbs. I should have stepped aside and let more qualified men run NCIS."
"That's bulls..." but Vance raised his hands, clanking the chains hanging from them loudly and bellowed.
"LET ME FINISH!" And Gibbs flinched back from the force of his anger.
"You've gone hard Gibbs and you've forgotten what it means to love your fellow men, and you're forging yourself a chain that's already twice the size and length of the one I now carry! If you don't turn from the path your on, it's into the fires of hell with you!
You will be visited tonight by the ghosts of three spirits. Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one."
Gibbs shook his head and eyed the hallucination before him with a contemptuous look. "Three ghosts? Why not send them all at once so we can just get this over with." Was this really how he was going to go out? Out of his mind and hallucinating ghosts?
"You don't believe me." Vance said with the whisper of a smile.
"Oh, I believe you Leon. I just also believe I need to go to the ER as soon as we're done here and have my stomached pumped."
"Ever the smartass." Vance replied and shifted again to lean in close to Gibbs. Vance was even more grotesque up close and he tried not to flinch away as the hallucination neared him. "The fires of hell are eternal, Gibbs. Heed what the spirits tell you this night before it's too late." And Vance disappeared in an instant. It was like blowing out a candle only as soon as the specter blinked out of existence before him the lights came up rather than out and Gibbs was standing beside a tool wall that was as perfectly organized and as dust covered as it had been an hour ago.
Jethro ran a shaky hand across his face and contemplated dragging himself into the ER but imagined it was probably the last place he wanted to be for the next eight hours. His pulse was okay, he wasn't vomiting or foaming at the mouth, so maybe whatever he had been dosed with had run it's course. Vance's ghost had been a hallucination, of that he was completely sure, but the fact that his brain had chosen to conjure Leon's decaying form as the manifestation of the hallucination was disconcerting. He wondered what it meant and chewed on some different ideas as he walked back over to his fire and the familiar high-backed chair.
"Humbug," he muttered and let his eyelids droop just as the clock in the church a few streets over chimed the hour of one.
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Author: water4willows
Characters: Gibbs, Tony and Vance, other characters on the show but not at themselves
Parings: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 20,371
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with NCIS and the characters in this work of fiction are the property of CBS
Summary: In honor of Christmas and one of the most beloved Christmas Stories of all time, I give you: A Christmas Carol, NCIS style :)
Chapter Two
As a little boy and his father made their way through the freshly fallen snow on their way to church, a lone man sat in an empty building trying to warm his hands over a fire that offered no warmth. Leroy Jethro Gibbs had always been a solitary man and that was the way he liked it. People were idiotic; sentimental fools who blindly gave away their hearts and their hard earned money for a stupid holiday he was fairly certain had been invented by the toy companies. Christmas did little more than congest already clogged city streets and fill the sidewalks of his usually no-nonsense town with the foot traffic of the criminally stupid. The crush of people pressing their noses against loud and gaudy storefront windows was enough to make him want to puke and he was glad he had a driver to weave him through it all safely tucked behind the smoked glass of his simple sedan's back windows. It was the one extravagance he allowed himself, that driver, though it angered him to no end every time he slid into the back of that car and knew it was costing him. He hadn't amassed an impressive fortune by squandering money, but even he had to admit the driver was necessary with the schedule he kept. And speaking of the driver and the late hour, Gibbs realized that there was no more business that could be done that day and left his place before the fire to gather up his things to leave.
He had his driver take back roads to avoid the choked main arteries of downtown and he arrived on the quite street outside his home faster than he had expected. Fernando rounded the corner of the car to let him out and Gibbs tossed the man a silver dollar, waiting to see how he would react. The insult would have driven most men to quit right then and there, a silver dollar hardly a customary tip for a family man missing Christmas Eve to drive a client home, but Gibbs had done a full background check on his driver and knew how much the man needed this job.
The ageing chauffer's face reddened a little, but he made no comment beyond a strangled "Good night then sir," as he folded himself back into the driver's seat. Smiling to himself, Gibbs made his way up the impeccably deiced walkway in front of his ageing house and fumbled for his keys in the dark.
Gibbs' home was a two story brownstone in a part of DC that had once been handsome and stately but was now a ghost of its former self. The neighborhood had gone to pot, but the mortgage was paid off, and Gibbs was content to sequester himself away in his dusty rooms while the hooligans and the homeless slowly took back over the streets. He had an impressive alarm system and a 12 gauge shotgun leaning against the wall just inside the front door and the people of the neighborhood knew not to disturb the owner of 112 East 60th Street.
Having no porch light to see by, Gibbs stepped away from the front door to fumble with his key ring when the one he was looking for refused to be found and was not expecting the voice that called his name suddenly from back beside the door.
"Giiiiiiiiiibs," a faint voice murmured as if brought up onto the porch by the wind, only there wasn't any wind tonight and Gibbs tried to swallow his heart back down out of his throat. A former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marines, his brain immediately clicked into battle mode and he fell into a crouch and peered into the gloom of his porch, trying to find the source of the whispered name. The light from a nearby street lamp was faint and his aging eyes might just have been playing tricks on him, but there appeared to be something hanging from the handsome lion door knocker that was now tarnished and unrecognizable and sat at the center of his door. Thinking himself safe, Gibbs straightened popping knees and cautiously walked over to inspect whatever it was.
His heart was beating madly away in his chest as he advanced, hand yearning to grip the cold shotgun just out of reach on the other side of a thin wall, and he squinted into the gloom trying to make out what it was that was affixed to his front door. Each careful step forward seemed to bring the object into further definition until he realized it was a face; some kind of powdery, corpse like Halloween mask that had an uncanny resemblance to his old friend and mentor, Leon Vance, who had been dead these seven years. It was someone's idea of a joke and Gibbs found himself laughing in relief when he reminded himself a plastic mask was hardly a threat and wouldn't attack him, but then the eyes of the mask opened revealing dark pools of black so ebony Gibbs stumbled backwards and cried out.
"GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIBS!" The face wailed and Jethro did the only thing he could think of. He struck out at the moving, writhing thing hanging from his door with the briefcase he still had clutched in his other hand and beat mercilessly at the door with eyes tightly closed. When he was fairly certain that whatever it was had to be dead, he opened his eyes again and searched the porch for the corpse. Only there wasn't anything there and he leaned in to inspect the door knocker for any evidence of what had just happened. But the doorknocker looked like it always did and Gibbs stood for a long moment just listening to the night around him. If it had been some kind of practical joke the perpetrators were certain to be around somewhere, but the night was completely still and not even the vagrants were out and about.
"Stupid kids," he sniffed, at last sliding the right key into the door and gaining entry into his house. He closed the heavy front door behind him with an irritated snap and a grumbled a "humbug" as he flipped on the light of the foyer. A lone empty and naked bulb swayed from the center of the ceiling in the gust of cold air Gibbs had brought in with him from outside and the swinging light cast strange shadows around the bottom level of his house. Nerves already frayed, he talked himself down when his brain began to imagine all manner of creature hiding in the dark ready to attack him, and scolded himself for being so childish. Darkness was not something he feared but rather embraced as an old friend.
Lighting a candle and not bothering with any more lights, Gibbs descended the stairs down into the basement of the house and to the little living area he'd created for himself down there beside an old unused woodshop and the decaying skeleton of an unfinished boat. Gas was expensive and frivolity he'd never allowed himself, so he lit a fire in the wood burning stove he'd dragged down there years ago to warm himself and the basement up and set an old camping kettle to boil. He pulled the half eaten remnants of his lunch from his briefcase and settled in to a high backed chair that had been in the basement when he'd bought the house. It was quiet and secluded, and Gibbs liked it.
The flames of the fire were especially warm and Gibbs found himself nodding off earlier than he usually did which surprised him, but those thoughts were forgotten when one of the dusty tools on a far wall of the basement shuddered against the masonry wall and clattered to the floor loudly enough to make Gibbs jump. It was the second time that night his heart had migrated to the back of his throat and he chastised himself for being so easily startled.
Pulling himself up out of the chair he went to inspect the source of the noise. It was an old wrench lying rusted and weathered on the floor and he picked it up and placed it back on its nail, seeing no obvious reason for why it should have fallen and furrowing his brow at the puzzle. But as he turned to leave the noise repeated and this time the wrench came to rest right behind his left ankle, bouncing a little off his foot as it stopped. Gibbs turned around slowly and bent to pick it up again only this time more tools started jingling on their nails and Gibbs backed away with eyes as wide as saucers as every single tool on the wall began to vibrate and kick up plumes of dust. The cadence of the colloquy built and built until Gibbs was covering his ears with his palms and falling to his knees on the floor. And with one more brutal swell of sound, every last wrench, vice, screw driver and nail fell from the wall and crashed to the concrete floor at his knees. He blinked stupidly at the mess, clouds of dust rising from the floor as if the pile of tools were on fire, unable to process what had just happened and turned his head without thinking when his name again was spoken.
Standing at the top of his basement stairs, dressed in the same clothes they had buried him in, stood the spectral vision of Leon Vance. Gibbs brought a hand up to cover his mouth as it hung open in shock and Vance began descending the staircase, the wall beyond visible through his opaque form, a mass of chains and lock boxes, heavy padlocks and keys following along behind him like the tattered remnants of a shredded wedding gown.
Gibbs made himself get to his feet and backed away from the advancing specter until his back hit the old wooden frame of a long abandoned boat.
"Leon?" He sputtered, cringing at the sight of his long dead friend standing before him, decaying and molting before his very eyes. "But your dead."
"Astute observation Gibbs," the ghost intoned, sounding enough like Leon to give Gibbs the courage to pull himself away from the protection of the boat and stand tall.
"You can't be here Leon, it's impossible!"
"Oh it's possible Jethro." The ghost replied, spreading its arms and rattling a length of chain in the process. "I'm as real as you are."
Gibbs shook his head as much to deny what he was hearing as to try and shake himself away from whatever nightmare he'd fallen into. There was something seriously wrong with him. He had to be hallucinating or something. "Someone got to me, didn't they? Poison? Some psychotropic nerve agent?"
"No, Gibbs, I assure you, I'm quite real and you're just fine. Well, physically anyway."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You're doomed Jethro and someone up there must still like you because they let me come back and warn your sorry ass." Vance smiled, teeth visible through the holes eaten through his lips by decay. "So listen up cause I'm only going to say this once.
You see these chains? They're mine for all eternity Gibbs because of the life I chose to lead on earth. After my wife was killed I let the darkness eat away at me until I became a monster and now I'm paying the ultimate price."
"You weren't a monster, Leon." Gibbs interrupted, pained to hear his old friend speaking of himself that way, even if it was just a hallucination. "You did what had to be done, made the hard calls when no one else could."
"Well I shouldn't have, Gibbs. I should have stepped aside and let more qualified men run NCIS."
"That's bulls..." but Vance raised his hands, clanking the chains hanging from them loudly and bellowed.
"LET ME FINISH!" And Gibbs flinched back from the force of his anger.
"You've gone hard Gibbs and you've forgotten what it means to love your fellow men, and you're forging yourself a chain that's already twice the size and length of the one I now carry! If you don't turn from the path your on, it's into the fires of hell with you!
You will be visited tonight by the ghosts of three spirits. Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one."
Gibbs shook his head and eyed the hallucination before him with a contemptuous look. "Three ghosts? Why not send them all at once so we can just get this over with." Was this really how he was going to go out? Out of his mind and hallucinating ghosts?
"You don't believe me." Vance said with the whisper of a smile.
"Oh, I believe you Leon. I just also believe I need to go to the ER as soon as we're done here and have my stomached pumped."
"Ever the smartass." Vance replied and shifted again to lean in close to Gibbs. Vance was even more grotesque up close and he tried not to flinch away as the hallucination neared him. "The fires of hell are eternal, Gibbs. Heed what the spirits tell you this night before it's too late." And Vance disappeared in an instant. It was like blowing out a candle only as soon as the specter blinked out of existence before him the lights came up rather than out and Gibbs was standing beside a tool wall that was as perfectly organized and as dust covered as it had been an hour ago.
Jethro ran a shaky hand across his face and contemplated dragging himself into the ER but imagined it was probably the last place he wanted to be for the next eight hours. His pulse was okay, he wasn't vomiting or foaming at the mouth, so maybe whatever he had been dosed with had run it's course. Vance's ghost had been a hallucination, of that he was completely sure, but the fact that his brain had chosen to conjure Leon's decaying form as the manifestation of the hallucination was disconcerting. He wondered what it meant and chewed on some different ideas as he walked back over to his fire and the familiar high-backed chair.
"Humbug," he muttered and let his eyelids droop just as the clock in the church a few streets over chimed the hour of one.
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