Title: Furious Angel
Author: CJ aka WritinginCT
Fandom: NCIS
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Categories: Drama, supernatural
Feedback: Love it? Hate it?
Disclaimer: I don’t own the recognizable characters I’m just inspired by them. Hopefully they’ve had fun playing in my sandbox.
Summary: The smell of fire and brimstone. Why do Gibbs and Tony know it so well?
Status: Complete 1/26/08
Note: Written for the NFA “The Scent Challenge”

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2002
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Gibbs looked down at the body in disgust. They had been hunting the man for weeks after he raped and killed a female petty officer. And when they find him, he's already dead. Cold and dead in a crumpled heap that looked like he died standing up and simply keeled over in the grass of the park. There was an inexplicable scent of sulfur in the air.

Out of habit, Gibbs looked up and scanned the crowd of onlookers, and saw a face he recognized. A face that shouldn't be there. A face it should have been impossible to see there.

Without letting the surprise register on his face, he moved to where Tony was standing with his sketch pad and whispered with his back to the crowd, “DiNozzo, blonde woman, red shirt, your one o'clock, look familiar?”

Tony pretended to laugh at something Gibbs said and pointed to his sketch pad to not alert the woman as his eyes scanned the crowd. His stomach bottomed out, it was impossible.

Trying to maintain the cover of casual conversation, Tony asked, “It can't be, Boss. Unless she had a twin.”

Gibbs sighed, “I know. I think we need to have a little talk with our dead petty officer.”

Casually they both went in opposite directions to circle the crowd, but she was gone. They looked around fervently and Tony spied the blonde head turning a corner a block away.

They took off at a run, guns drawn. They reached the corner where they had seen her last and went two separate ways looking for her.

Gibbs found her in a dead-ended alley. She stood with her back to him, her hands empty and held out from her hips to indicate so. “NCIS, put your hands on your head and turn around.” Gibbs demanded.

Tony ran up a moment later and gawked in disbelief as she slowly turned around. It was their dead petty officer. But she looked different. If he had to name it, Tony would have said she looked sort of wild and untamed, nothing like the prim and proper Navy sailor they had gotten to know posthumously during the investigation.

“You have to let me go.” she said calmly. Her eyes and face cast down towards the ground.

Gibbs stepped towards her and the smell of sulfur reached his nose. “You're not going anywhere until I get some answers. Like how you're standing here when I watched my medical examiner perform your autopsy.”

Tony had edged closer, with his weapon still trained on her. Every one of his danger instincts were screaming and he didn't know why. She was unarmed, but there was something about her that almost frightened him.

“You don't want to know.” her calm voice answered.

“That's where you're wrong, Petty Officer Michael. I do want to know.” Gibbs answered, his calm matching hers.

They heard her take a big breath and exhale slowly. When she lifted her head, both men gasped.

Her eyes were black. Actually it was if she had no eyes and there was just a never-ending abyss where they should have been.

A moment later the two men could feel the air around them crackling with energy and her hair started whipping around as if being blown by some non-existent breeze.

When she spoke again her voice was forceful, and bellowing. Although it was as if they felt rather than heard it, “When that animal killed me I made a deal with the Devil that God brokered.”

She raised her arms and suddenly she changed.

Completely gone was any remaining vestige of their conservative petty officer and standing before them was a vision, of both heaven and hell. Clad all in black leather, with her blond hair flowing around her and her blue eyes so light they almost glowed. She was beautiful, a sultry goddess divine. The enormous, snowy white wings that had appeared from between her shoulders that she was gently wafting, however, screamed the impossibility of the situation. There was a sword belted at her waist that she pulled with a flourish and the two men watched as it burst into flame. The smell of sulfur was almost overpowering in the alley.

“I am an avenging angel. Sent by God and the Devil to deliver up the monsters that prey in the dark. You can not stop me. You will not stop me. Know this, I will only take those that are truly guilty, truly evil. And I will deliver them for their divine judgment and just reward.”

Gibbs finally found his voice, and gesturing behind him toward the crime scene, “You did that?”

“Yes. He is now in the Devil's hands, as was his just reward, where he will spend eternity suffering as he caused others to suffer.”

Tony cocked his head at her words, “You mean you weren't his only victim?”

“No. He has killed over twenty, raped over a hundred. Most of them in the fringes of society, the homeless and prostitutes. I was merely the last.”

Gibbs and Tony exchanged a quick look, and they both holstered their weapons, knowing they wouldn't have any effect on the angel in front of them.

Gibbs asked, “Now that you've killed him, what will you do?”

She sheathed the sword, extinguishing it, and folded her wings gently behind her, “There are more animals like him. Monsters preying on the innocent. The Devil wants them, and God wants them gone. So I will hunt.”

She stepped closer to the two men and placed a hand on each of their hearts, and they both felt powerless to move, “You are both good men. Your hearts are true. We both want the same things.”

She walked between them, her wings brushing them as she went by causing both of them to shiver. And as she reached the end of the alley, between one blink and the next, she was gone.

Tony and Gibbs simply stared at each other, silently agreeing to never talk about this again. Because who would believe them?

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2004
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“Grab your gear, someone just found our stalker.” Gibbs barked.

Tony grabbed his knapsack, “I can't wait to see you interrogate this dirtbag, Boss.”

Gibbs sighed and punched the down button in the elevator, “Sorry to disappoint you, DiNozzo but our dirtbag is dead. Local LEO's found him in an alley.”

Tony groaned, they had been searching for this guy for weeks. He had been stalking a female Navy Lieutenant, terrifying both her and her children. And they connected him to three other cold cases where the stalking victims had been murdered.

The alley was taped off and the team ducked under it. The officer securing the scene warned them, “Sorry about the smell, we have no idea where it's coming from.” As they approached the body they understood what he meant, the smell of sulfur was overpowering.

Gibbs and Tony instantly looked to each other, but didn't say anything. The alley experience from two years ago was never discussed.

Ducky was examining the body and quipped to the corpse, “How fitting that you end your days with the smell of brimstone in the air, if there truly is divine justice then you'll be smelling it in the afterlife as well.”

Gibbs and Tony walked back towards the alley entrance and saw a familiar blonde walking away. As if she knew they were watching she paused and turned around and gave the two men a little bow of her head and a smirk before turning on her heel and turning a corner out of sight.

They didn't follow, knowing there would be no point.

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2006
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Gibbs was in a fury. There was an animal that had taken the four-year old daughter of a Navy Captain. There was no ransom demand, and the suspect that they believed responsible was a convicted pedophile. She had been missing almost twenty-four hours and with each passing minute the likelihood of finding her alive grew more and more slim.

The entire team was scrambling, trying to find any scrap of evidence that would lead them to the girl. Finally Tony found a mention of the suspect's aunt in one of the court filings from his previous conviction. She had put her home up to cover his bail bond. It was an old farmhouse about a half hour outside of town; and Tony had also found out that the aunt was now in a nursing home and that the suspect was taking care of the house. It would the perfect place for him to take the little girl.

With a hastily signed warrant, the team, with Gibbs driving, practically flew out to the farmhouse. They broke in the door and started searching the ground floor. Gibbs sent Ziva and McGee down to the basement while he and Tony went to the second floor. They paused outside a closed door and heard a woman's voice softly singing Amazing Grace. Gibbs quietly opened the door and their noses were immediately assaulted with the smell of sulfur. A pair of downy wings gracefully folded around her, the angel was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing the curls of the sleeping child as she sang. The body of the suspect was in a heap on the floor, a look of pure terror frozen on his face in death.

When she had finished the song she stood and faced Gibbs and Tony. “She was not harmed. I was able to keep her safe. She's sleeping now.”

Before either man could say anything a little piping voice from the bed said, “Angel, are you leaving?”

A gentle smile crossed her face and she turned back to the child, “Shhh, love, go back to sleep, you will see your mother soon.” She bent and planted a soft kiss on the little girl's forehead.

Turning back to the men, she said, “I must go. My work is done here.”

Gibbs found his voice, “Thank you for taking care of her.”

She nodded in acknowledgment.

Tony wanted to know something, “How long will you be doing this?”

She smiled sadly, “Until I am not needed any longer.”

“That could be a really long time.”

“Yes. But the price is worth the reward.”

He thought about that for a moment, “Yeah, I guess it would be.”

She stepped up to Tony and took his face in her hands, her wings cocooning around them, he felt his head bowing and she placed a kiss on his forehead just as she had the girl. She whispered to him, “You are strong enough, never doubt it.” He could almost physically feel his resolve inside strengthen, the resolve he needed to fight the ugliness they saw everyday.

She turned and did the same to Gibbs, and she whispered as they were cocooned in her wings, “You will see them again, Jethro, they are waiting for you. But they know this world needs you a while longer.” And when she kissed him, all of the cobwebs surrounding his memories of his family disappeared and he could see their faces as clearly as if they were standing in front of him.

She left them standing there and walked out of the bedroom door, and was gone.

When the EMT's arrived to check over the little girl, she kept talking about seeing an angel but no one would believe her, even with the snowy white feather she clutched in her little hand.

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2007
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As the team reached the crime scene tape and they ducked under it the overwhelming smell of sulfur permeated the air.

Ziva complained, “What is that smell?”

Gibbs and Tony just looked at each other and then to the crowd gathered and they both instantly spotted the familiar blonde in the middle of the crowd. And with a little wink and a smirk she turned and left the crowd to simply disappear.

Gibbs' and Tony's eyes met again and they just shook their heads then grinned. And Gibbs replied to Ziva, “Fire and brimstone, Ziva. Fire and brimstone.”

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the end.