"Blow the Man Down" for anr (NCIS, PG-13)
Title: Blow the Man Down
Author: incir
Recipient: anr
Fandom: NCIS
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Beginning of season six
Warnings: suprisingly sappy for the end of the world
Prompt: Gibbs/Abby, a "naturally occurring" apocalyse
Summary: How the boat left the basement ...
She was still sorry, all these months later, that Tony hadn’t been there to see it. They had all speculated and joked, but none more than Tony, at how the boat was going to get out of the basement. And it had been quite the sight to see. Gibbs and Timmy and Palmer all going at the basement walls with sledgehammers. In the rush and panic she hadn’t immediately considered that Tony would have loved to know the answer to the boat in the basement conundrum, but now she was sorry he didn’t know. He and Ziva had been out in California looking at a body that seemed to relate to their latest case in DC. They had never made it back and now Tony didn’t know about the boat.
“Good morning, my dear. And what is so fascinating to you this fine morning?” Ducky interrupted her solitary gaze off to port. “Have you spotted something on the horizon?”
“No, just thinking”
“About what?”
“Tony”
Ducky’s gaze was suddenly softer somehow, “Ah, you miss him as well. We all do, even Jethro, although he won’t talk about it. I remember the first time that I met young Anthony. It was just a week after Jethro had brought him down from Baltimore. The case was a young lieutenant who had been strangled, but he showed no signs of having struggled with his attacker. It was curious given the placement of the ligature marks. Tony was convinced that it was something called ‘auto-erotic asphyxiation’ that had gone wrong. He was so…”
“Ducky, I wasn’t missing Tony. I was just sorry that he and Ziva weren’t around to see how we got the boat out of the basement. He is going to die when he hears the story. Now, I should go fix Gibbs his coffee. You know how the boss man gets without his coffee.” She flashed him a smile and got up pigtails swaying.
As she walked back towards the galley she heard Ducky sigh and whisper, “Oh Abigail, of course you were missing him.”
She skipped across the galley humming as she made coffee. That was her responsibility now. It was the only thing they let her do in the galley. Gibbs, Ducky and Palmer rotated through making the meals, but she and McGee weren’t allowed to. They had decided that the second week on the boat. The first week on the boat had been all frantic escape and survival. No one had really believed the environmentalist wackos who said that the polar ice caps were able to start into a rapid decline and melt over a course of weeks, not decades. Too bad they were right. That level of ice melt had wrecked havoc on world weather patterns and submerged large portions of the inhabited world. DC, her apartment, the Navy Yard, the bowling alley where she met the nuns, her hearse, everything that she had owned was sitting underwater. And it went without saying that her childhood home in New Orleans was totally gone. Everything she had in the world was what Gibbs had let her grab as he hauled her up the stairs out of her lab. Well, that, and what they had traded for later.
The small coffee maker dinged at her. She grabbed two cups and took one over to where Gibbs lay sleeping.
She leaned over and kissed him. Of all the vast changes in their lives - the boat as home, the cities covered by the deep, the end of their professional lives - this is the thing he has found most difficult to accept. That she loves him, wants him. The first day when he’d been trying to get them far enough out to sea and she’d been shaking, from cold or shock she didn’t know, he had thrust her into McGee’s arms. It had taken her some time to convince him that wasn’t what she wanted. Even now he still wasn’t convinced. He seemed to be humoring her when she curled next to him at night, but his arm always slid around her in the dark and held her tight.
He woke quickly when she kissed him. His eyes sprung open and he looked just as if he had been up for hours. It was left over from being a Marine. Ever vigilant, ever ready - he needed no extra minutes to shake the sleep from his eyes. He grabbed the coffee and quickly pecked her on the cheek before getting up to move to the helm. They expected to get to land in the next day or possibly two. It was the sixth time they had come into port since the flood started. The first two had been the peaks of the Appalachians, once in what was New Hampshire and once around what was left of Charlottesville. Those had been quick supply trips. The whole world had been too shocked at what had happened to have any coherent response and things in the remaining pieces of land had been chaotic at best. Gibbs hadn’t wanted them there for very long, so they just stopped long enough for some supplies.
After those two North American stops they had stayed at sea for a long time. They saw other boats some and exchanged news. That was how they knew to go to Switzerland next. It figured that the Swiss would keep things organized even at the end of the world. From there they drifted south stopping through the Italian Alps before crossing the Atlantic. They made landfall again in Mexico. Now they were headed north, toward what--Gibbs wouldn’t say, except that land would come soon.
He finished the coffee swiftly and went to relieve McGee at the wheel.
“Still on course, Boss. I haven’t moved it off the heading you set it on last night.” McGee gave his report.
Gibbs didn’t say a thing, just nodded. He expected nothing less than that from his team.
“Boss, it would be nice to know where we’re headed and why.”
“You’ll know when we get there.”
McGee stared for another moment wide-eyed and somber, but he finally turned and walked away. Abby settled herself on the deck next the Gibb’s feet and began to mend fishing nets.
Around mid-day they spotted another ship on the horizon. They changed course slightly to come closer to it. Most of the ships they’ve met are friendly, but it pays to be cautious. They saw that the other ship has put up the yellow and blue ‘K’ flag indicating they want to talk. Gibbs grabbed the megaphone and went toward starboard.
After they exchanged names of boats, not people, and said where they were from before the waters rose the other boat gets down to why they wanted to talk. They have a warning.
“We just made landfall about a day’s sail from here.” The slim bearded man yelled across, “Place used to be up near Yosemite, but I’m not sure the town had a name before. They call it Mountain Haven now, but its no haven. The guy who runs that place - he’s mad. Totally insane. Wouldn’t take fish or maps or anything normal in trade. Didn’t want us to work either. He wanted my daughter. She’s only 13! Sick fuck! I should have known there was something wrong when all the dock workers were men, but sometimes that’s just the way it is. I didn’t realize until later that I didn’t see any women at all. We high-tailed it out of there, but I talked to a guy before we left. He claimed that the leader has all the women locked up. He uses them for himself and his cronies and gives them as rewards for good behavior in the others. You’d better steer clear of that place. If you keep sailing another two days past it you’ll come to a little place that used to be near Tahoe. They were nice. Took a lot of fish in trade.”
“Thanks for warning,” Gibbs called back.
McGee looked a little shell shocked, but straightened up and looked at Gibbs, “Well, what do you think the new course should be?”
“We aren’t changing course.”
“What? We have to change course. He said that man was a monster. What about Abby? We can’t take her there.” McGee so rarely questioned Gibbs that everyone seemed startled by it.
“Not changing course, McGee. Abby will have to stay below.”
Ducky quietly intervened when it looked as if McGee would protest again. “It will be fine Timothy. We are quite capable of keeping Abigail safe - you, Mr. Palmer and I. Jethro can go and have a look around while we stay on the boat. And Jethro, you must realize that she is capable of taking care of herself even in extreme circumstances.” Gibbs didn’t answer, just stalked his way back to the wheel.
Later that night, Abby sat with Gibbs as the faint lights of a settlement could just be seen on the horizon. Leaning her head onto his shoulder she asked, “Are you sure it’ll be safe for you to go there alone. Maybe you should take Timmy with you?”
“I’ll be fine Abs. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s what Ducky said about me, but I’m not sure it’s true.”
He straightened slightly. The rough of his shirt scratching her cheek. “Wasn’t talking about you.”
“What?”
“Ducky wasn’t talking about you.”
“Then who was he talking about?”
“Ziva,” He paused, waiting to see if she would comment. When she was still silent he continued, “This landfall is the closest place still above water to where Tony and Ziva were. That’s why we have to go. I have to find them.”
“Oh, because you can’t leave any of the team behind?” She seemed cheered by his loyalty.
“Partly, but mostly because you can’t.” His voice was low, far-away and he wouldn’t meet her eyes when she lifted her head. “You won’t admit that you miss them, but I know you do. I’ve seen you before when someone on the team was in danger or gone. When Vance broke up the team you counted the days. You seem fine on the outside now, but you need them back to be fine on the inside too. I have to find them for you.”
She sat silently watching the approaching lights for a moment and then whispered, “Why would you do that for me?”
A small smile quirked his lips and he finally turned to face her. The intensity of his eyes almost made her gasp. “Because I love you Abs. I’d do whatever it took to make sure you were happy.”
“And if bringing Tony and Ziva home to us is what it takes?”
“Then I promise we’ll find them.”
“And if being with you is what will make me happy?” she dared to ask.
“Then you’ll get me.”
She sighed and slung her arm across his chest to hold him to her. He placed a small kiss on the soft spot behind her ear. She grinned and tilted her head up towards him, all mischief in her eyes. “What if I want both?”