Dark Chocolate and Red Wine [2/5]
Sep. 18th, 2009 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowdarkred----
The funeral was that weekend. Everyone from McGee to Ducky had offered to go with him, but Tony refused and drove the whole trip alone in his car, retracing the same route that had lead him to her. He felt dry and tried. Absently, he wondered when it would stop, when the women he knew would quit dying. Kate, Paula, Jenny, Michelle. Ziva, alone in Israel.
The turn out at the funeral was bigger than he'd expected. Almost the entire town of Bond was there, and Baylee's parents introduced him to everyone as the out-of-state boyfriend. Her father gripped Tony's shoulder too hard, but Tony didn't care because Baylee was gone and it was all his fault. She wouldn't have been there if she hadn't been driving back from DC. She wouldn't have been on that road when the over-tired semi-truck driver fell asleep at the wheel and swerved into her lane.
The driver walked away. Baylee didn't.
He would have a bruise on his shoulder come Monday, but Tony didn't plan on being sober enough to give a damn. He stayed in Baylee's old room at her parent's house. It smelled like lilac, roses, and honey. He didn't sleep the entire night.
Ciao, mia dolcezza. Mi mancherai. Mi dispiace cosi tanto.
----
Tony showed up late the following Monday. There was new someone sitting at her desk, but he didn't care enough to pay much attention. McGee put a cup of coffee down in front of him, like a Boy Scout putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, and left Tony to himself. Gibbs didn't say anything about anything other than the case and Tony didn't say anything at all.
----
The agent that sat at her desk was gone by Thursday and so were all of their leads on the dead Marine. Tony had quit checking his email Tuesday afternoon and he stopped bothering to turn on his computer after Wednesday. Too much empty sympathy.
He still wasn't going out at night, hadn't since he'd gotten the phone call. Instead, he stayed at his apartment and watched old reruns on TV. The boxes sat around him, filled with his memories. Each one was precisely labeled: Flicks A-Ar. Flicks As-Ax. Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart. Horror 1956-1979. His apartment was beginning to smell like cardboard. Tony sipped Zinfandel, ate dark chocolate, and wondered what Baylee would have said if she knew that he consumed more chocolate than a PMSing girl.
He thought she would have laughed.
----
Two more agents came and went. Tony felt like a storm was coming. Weeks had passed since Baylee's death and Tony had started going out again. He bought more movies and filled up another box, labeling it Post-Baylee. He taped it up, knowing that he would never open it again.
----
Tony went out with Abby for the first time since Ziva left. When he asked what she was doing that night, the Goth had stared at him for a full three minutes without saying anything. Tony had started to worry that he'd broken her somehow when she exploded into a whirlwind of action and sound. She ran screaming down the halls of NCIS, shouting "TONY ASKED ME OUT, TONY ASKED ME OUT!" Which turned quite a few heads.
----
They went to the movies, because it was a Friday, and because Tony had been stamped with club ink so often over the last few weeks that he'd gotten a rash on his left hand. He'd bought an ointment for it and had avoided eye-contact with the busty brunette behind the counter. Tony found himself unexpectedly enjoying the time spent with Abby, and he felt guilt, that ever present bastard, well up inside him again.
He didn't feel like a zombie anymore. Instead, he felt like a walking bruise. Everything hurt instead of nothing. His chest felt constantly squeezed, so much so that he'd actually gone to see Dr. Brad Pitt to make sure that it wasn't an infection. He wasn't sure if he felt relieved or disappointed to hear that his lungs were clear. Dr. Pitt clucked over him for a few minutes, and when Tony had looked up, he found Brad staring at him with a fierce expression on his face. Tony took a deep breath and a running leap.
"Are you doing anything tonight?"
Tony went out with Brad for a week before they both decided that it wasn't going to go anywhere. Tony was too messed up to deal with any kind of relationship, and Brad was still looking for something else, something that he didn't know but Tony did. Love. And Tony was fine with that because he still felt like a bruise.
Tony found himself explaining all this to Abby at 03:12 in the morning because he was too drunk to drive, his apartment complex didn't have an elevator, and he lived on the third floor. Abby nodded, and hmmed, and bustled him into her guest bed, where he slept the sleep of the dead and the dead drunk. When he woke eventually up, it was past noon, and his head was killing him with the worst hangover he'd had in ages. Abby made lunch and convinced him that he hadn't slept with her, he'd only passed out. Then she asked him if he remembered the last time he'd truly talked to Gibbs.
He told her he didn't remember.
----
They finally closed the dead Marine case off. The poor bastard had been offed by his own wife, a stay at home mom with two kids and a mortgage. She couldn't stand that she had to hold things together while her husband went off to war. She collected the life insurance and paid off her debts. Gibbs nearly punched her after the confession. The case had rubbed them all raw. McGee spent too much time staring at a computer screen and Tony spent too much time staring at crime scene photos. He was the one who had seen the clue that led them to the wife.
After they closed the case, Gibbs stared at Tony for a long moment before walking away. He didn't say anything. Tony felt something join Guilt in his heart. It tasted like Resentment.
----
Another agent was sitting at her desk. Heather Jacobs was tall, shapely, and redheaded. None of the remaining members of Team Gibbs could bear to look at her, all for different reasons. She threatened to file a complaint for gender discrimination before Agent Ragnel pulled her aside and told her-- something. After which, she stopped complaining and started being overly kind instead. She brought donuts and coffee for them and was generally a pain in the ass.
Tony slept with her after the Awful Coffee and Italian Shoes Incident. He didn't call her back. She left, leaving her desk empty again. He didn't consider it a violation of Rule # 12 because Heather wasn't his coworker. She was just another shadow in a long line of lost women.
Tony didn't know why Human Resources kept giving them female replacement agents. It wasn't going to work out. Too many women had sat in that seat, too many women who were blown away or left behind.
----
Tony thought he saw Trent Kort lurking on the upper staircase one day. He did a double take, but no one was there. He told himself he was imagining things.
----
The next replacement was another woman, an African-American goddess with a feisty attitude. Tony found himself liking her in spite of himself. Special Agent Kacia Noor was no virgin to the law enforcement business. Before she joined NCIS, she was a VICE officer in New York. She was tough and no-nonsense, and Tony felt less like a bruise when she was around and more like a human being. She didn't treat him with kid-gloves the way everyone else had. She told it to him straight and didn't hold anything back.
Abby was slow to like her, because Abby was slow to like anyone new to their torn apart family. McGee held her in something akin to awe. Tony didn't know what Gibbs thought of her, and he didn't really care.
They caught another horrible case that week. A little girl, the daughter of a sailor, was found raped and strangled by the docks. Tony felt sick to his stomach the whole time he snapped pictures. Gibbs was even more terse than usual and McGee had run to the side of the dock and started hurling after taking one look at the crime scene. Kacia just looked at the little girl stonily before beginning to take measurements. Ducky arrived and began to whisper softly to the little girl's corpse. Tony turned away and fought his urge to join McGee at the edge. If he went there, he might not come back.
Tony did throw up when they identified the body. Bailey Johnson was only six years old and some bastard had stolen her innocence, stolen her life. McGee had sent unsubtle concerned looks his way after they found out the girl's name. Kacia followed the looks but didn't say anything. She already knew about Baylee.
Bailey and Baylee. It must have been a cursed name.
Gibbs told the parents. The mother broke down and sobbed so hard that she too had thrown up. The father sat as still as a statue and asked who, who could have done this to my little girl, in a tight voice. Gibbs could only shake his head in reply.
Abby ran the DNA from the rape kit and called Gibbs immediately. They all trooped down to the lab to hear what she had to say.
"The DNA from the rape kit doesn't match any in any of the databases I ran it against," she whispered. Her eyes were red and think mascara streaks ran down her checks. "I triple checked it to make sure."
"You called us down here for that?" Gibbs said curtly. Tony felt a stab of anger at Gibbs for being an ass, and he put his arm around Abby's shoulders. Rape cases were always tough on an emotional level for all those involved, especially the rape and murder of a child. Abby was too sensitive to handle the crime scene photos as well as an Agent. Hell, Tony hadn't handled the crime scene photos well, and he'd seen plenty of gruesome things over the years.
"No," Abby shot back, her temper flaring. "I called you down here because the DNA is similar to that of the victim's. Too similar." She showed them the DNA signatures overlapped. "The bastard who did this was the related to her."
Tony felt a cold hand around his heart, and he thought of Harold Johnson sitting in his living room while Gibbs told him his daughter was dead. He hadn't looked surprised.
----
They pulled Chief Petty Officer Johnson in for questioning and presented him with the evidence. Tony and Gibbs double teamed him, and it was Tony who revealed that the DNA showed that whoever raped Bailey was closely related to her. Johnson stared at him for a minute and said it was impossible because Bailey wasn't his daughter. His wife had cheated on him seven years ago while he was overseas; "that bitch" was not his child. He would never rape his own daughter.
"You bastard," Tony growled. "She was your fucking daughter. You raped her. Your own daughter!"
"That little bitch is not my daughter!"
"DNA doesn't lie," Tony said, slamming the evidence in front of the petty officer. "You raped her."
"She deserved it," Johnson started to say, before Tony cut him off by punching him. He was across the interview table and on the bastard before Gibbs could do a damn thing about it. Tony sank his fist into Johnson's gut and listened as the air whooshed out of his lungs. He pulled back his fist and started to throw another punch when Gibbs hauled him backwards, throwing him off of the petty officer. Kacia held onto him while Gibbs arrested Johnson and McGee stood uselessly in the doorway. He kept muttering nonsense to Tony, about how everything was going to be okay, it was over, calm down, everything will be okay.
Everything will be okay.
----
They made Tony see a shrink, and he did, filling the fifty-minute hour with useless banter about playing sports in college and joining the police force. Dr. Ashley Hitchder nodded and took notes and said yes when Tony asked her to dinner. They wound up at her place, an old townhouse overlooking the bay. Tony left the next morning tired and hungover, but with the knowledge that he had passed his psych exam.
----
He found Trent Kort sitting outside his apartment complex. Kort didn't say anything, merely handing Tony a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a bagel bag. Tony raised his eyebrow and accepted the offerings. Kort gave Tony a razor blade smile.
"You want to come up?" Tony found himself asking, because Kort wasn't bad looking, and Tony felt empty.
"Sure," Kort replied. He followed Tony up the three flights of stairs to his apartment and waited for the federal agent to unlock the door. Tony's apartment was still full of boxes, and Tony hadn't bothered to dust in a month. He was almost never there anyway. The walls were bare of pictures or posters, and the rooms were framed by deserted bookcases.
Kort said nothing. He followed Tony with his eyes as Tony downed the coffee (just the right amount of nutmeg and cream—Kort had done his research) and shoved the bagel bag into his almost empty refrigerator. He watched as Tony slid off his jacket and tie and slowly started shedding his clothes.
----
Being with Kort was nothing like being with Baylee or Jeanne or Brad or Heather or Ashley. Where they were soft, Kort was rough, full of sharp edges and jagged words. When he woke up the next morning, Kort was gone, but there was a fresh Styrofoam cup of coffee on his kitchen counter and a movie ticket for the following Friday. There was no note.
Tony thought about relationships as he took a shower, brushed his teeth, and stripped his bed of its sheets. Kort didn't talk to him, but then Tony was tired of talking. The silence they had had last night was a comfortable one, more comfortable than Tony had experienced in a long time. Maybe Kort had somehow known about the Johnson case and reacted accordingly. Maybe he just knew Tony.
Tony felt Gratitude join Guilt and Resentment. He slipped the movie ticket into his pocket.
Part Three---->>
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