Grieving
by Sammie

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters. If I did, would Kate be dead? (bares fangs)
Rating: K+
Spoilers: spoilers for the new season, "Twilight" (just that Kate is dead), "Call of Silence", "Reveille"; references to some other Kate episodes. Don't read on (the story and the author's notes) if you don't want to know about the new season spoiler.


Summary: Tony turns to someone unexpected for help in dealing with Kate's death and Gibbs' apparent lack of sympathy. No original characters. (Tony-Kate friendship, Gibbs-Kate...something.)

A/N: This came to me, watching "Call of Silence" for the first time the Tuesday after the finale.

As for the spoilers (from a credible source): the new agent is an Israeli Mossad exchange agent, Ziva David. Early spoilers said she takes over Kate's desk and Tony has an issue with it.

It wasn't there before.

Tony narrows his eyes at Kate's desk - it is Kate's desk, and no one else's; Viv (Blackadder, that is) didn't use that desk. Only Kate did. It is Kate's desk.

And that is not Kate's desk organizer on her desk.

It doesn't matter that all it is is a simple black office supply organizer. All it does is hold some pens, some paper clips, a few rubber bands, and it's the kind anybody would find on any generic office desk. Tony has one on his; Viv had given him hers when she had returned to the FBI after the fiasco that had gotten them nearly killed.

But Viv's organizer is on HIS desk, because it was something she gave to him to have. This new...Ziva...is taking over a desk that Kate gave her no permission to take over.

'She would have,' a little voice contradicts him, and the reasonableness of the voice makes him boil over.

"That's Kate's desk," he replies shortly. "That's the desk of a NCIS agent."

He can feel Gibbs' eyes on him, and he hears McGee gulp audibly next to him, but he keeps his focus on the new agent. "That's Kate's desk."

She looks stunned. Good.

"DiNozzo, we're going to talk to Ducky," Gibbs replies sharply. It doesn't occur to Tony right away that there's nothing to see down at Ducky's autopsy room as he gets up to follow his boss, shooting another look at the surprised new agent.

They are barely in the elevator when Gibbs slams the emergency switch off. "Leave her alone."

"Boss! That's Kate's - "

"Agent David will use whatever desk she wants, and she will decorate it however she wishes," Gibbs hisses, and Tony is reminded of his anger when Ari first returned and kidnapped Kate. "And you will treat her with the respect she deserves."

"Boss! Kate's not even cold and - "

"Agent David is going to help us catch that SOB," Gibbs replies tightly. "And I don't care if she's a green alien oozing gray slime all over the desk."

Tony notices that Gibbs doesn't refer to it as Kate's desk. He hasn't even mentioned Kate by name.

"And you will help her in any way you have to until I get my hands on that bastard."

"Kate's dead, boss," Tony nearly shouts. "She's dead. She's not coming back. Haswari" he deliberately uses the man's last name, knowing full well Gibbs' instruction to call him 'Ari' "shot her through the head, and she's not coming back, and you're letting the last bit of her disappear with that woman sitting at her desk. Yeah, at Kate's desk. KATE'S desk. She had a name."

He slams on the switch, and luckily the elevator doors open near a floor, and he walks off blindly.

He has no idea why in the world he is here. But it's raining, and he is wet and cold, and he doesn't want the company of a woman now.

Maybe he's here because he thinks Ernie can help him, although right now he's not sure why he feels that way.

He rings the doorbell again and hopes beyond hope the former Marine is at home. He doesn't know where else to go if the Medal of Honor winner isn't here.

"Hold your horses," he hears the familiar, gravelly voice call, and there's a moment of silence - he must be looking through the peephole - and then the door unlock.

"Hi Ernie," he says softly, shivering in his wet clothes, and suddenly feeling rather like a little boy who just did something he wasn't supposed to.

The man stares at him blankly for a minute, as if in shock. "Come in!" he quickly says. "Tony, right? The one with the baseball arm."

Tony smiles weakly, and regrets dripping all over the old man's carpet.

The old man, as quickly as he can, orders Tony into the shower and lays out some dry clothes for him as he washes Tony's wet ones. Sure, everything is too wide and too short, but Tony is not sure he cares right now.

Putting on the too-short pants reminds him of the dead sailor on the shore. He remembers when he dropped to the beach to keep the ocean wave from washing up on the dead commander, and he remembers feeling so frozen and stiff. He remembers Kate's barely contained laughter: "What happened?" And Gibbs' rare grin: "Shrinkage." He remembers Kate teasing him about not having to wear a belt, and Gibbs, smiling again.

He allows himself that moment to miss Kate even more: not just for her, but that chunk of Gibbs that's now gone, too.

He thought he had been dreaming, so he had asked Abby: did Gibbs seem...less intense this past year? The second year Kate was here, did he seem to calm down a little? And Abby's affirmative answer satisfied him. He almost misses that more calm Gibbs, the one who died with Kate.

Tony remembers that case when he followed the Marine, Atlas; how Kate had told him to be careful because she didn't want to be stuck working alone with Gibbs.

He knows Gibbs likes him, and is grooming him to be a good agent, but for some reason he feels that the Gibbs Kate has left behind is worse than the one he would have left if he'd met the same fate Atlas had. Not necessarily that Kate was a better agent, but because she was...Kate. And she meant different things to their boss, things that he and McGee couldn't and things that even Viv hadn't.

He wonders if Gibbs even saw what they did, if Kate realized what they all realized - but no one had the guts to say to either of them.

It would have broken every rule in Gibbs' book, and every SOP he ran by in his life, but coming down those stairs on Air Force One and seeing his boss toe to toe with that 'Secret Service chick' - and seeing Ducky's anxious look at them after Tony gave the pilot's ultimatum...

If he were a man with less scruples (how Kate would laugh at that, he remembers sadly), or if he were denser than he is, he would have thought about asking Kate out, like he had her doppelganger Rachel, and, well, like he did whenever he met a pretty woman who wasn't a murderer. (Or, he is sure Kate would snicker at him, some not-yet-women who he didn't know were murderers.) Kate, though... Kate, unlike Rachel - Kate had the stink of a claim upon her from that moment he saw her the second time, as he stood by the stairwell, watching with the open-mouthed Ducky as she dared his boss. Tony knew then. And Tony DiNozzo didn't move in on taken women.

Besides, Tony used to snicker to himself as he watched them those many cases afterwards, Gibbs needed a social life far more than he did.

He can hear the old man humming in the kitchen, and then a teapot whistles. He is sitting on the couch he slept on when he stayed with Ernie way back then, huddled in the same comforter Ernie had lent him for that night Gibbs made him stay. The old man appears with a tray and a teapot and pours a cup of hot tea. "Drink up, boy."

The tea is very spicy, and Tony isn't sure he can force it down. "What is this?"

"Tea with fresh ginger. Dorothy learned it from one of the Hawaiians. It gets your blood going, helps from getting sick with a chill. Always worked for me. Here, use some more sugar." He indicates the small sugar bowl.

Tony finishes the cup, more out of politeness than anything.

"Now tell me why you were walking around in the rain," Ernie says, and even in his slightly "dotty" mind, Tony knows that Ernie is well aware something is going on.

He doesn't know where to begin, and all he can manage is, "She's dead, Ernie."

"Who's dead?"

"Kate. Kate's dead."

The old man blinked. "The little girl I danced with?"

Tony smiles a little at that. "I don't think she counted as a little girl, Ernie."

The old man hmphs. "To me, yes. I'm old enough to be the father of your boss, that Special Agent Gibbs."

The mention of Gibbs sours Tony's mood, and whereas he didn't know what to say first, it all comes pouring out now. "He let the new female agent take over Kate's desk," he says, voicing his most recent hurt. "She's already got her things on Kate's desk, and Gibbs doesn't even care. He doesn't care! All he cares about is catching the man who shot her. He won't even say her name. It's 'Kate.' It's 'KATE'!"

For the first time, he's not embarrassed about crying. If Kate could be Ernie's little girl, he could be Ernie's little boy, and he lets the old man put an arm around his shoulders as angry tears of frustration emerge.

It's not even that Kate is dead, but it's that Gibbs won't even acknowledge it.

McGee mourns with Abby, and Ducky, and he does a little, too, but he, as usual, relies on Gibbs to lead. And Gibbs won't lead. He just acts like Kate is on an extended vacation caused by Ari - like Gerald, or something. He acts like she's coming back in a little while.

As if reading his mind, Ernie says, "He's not ready to grieve, that's all."

"By the time he's ready, there won't be anything left of Kate to mourn," Tony retorts snippily.

Ernie acknowledges that with a nod, but then says, "He's a Marine." He sighs. "His battle isn't over. He can't mourn until his battle is over."

"And what if we don't catch him?" Tony asks reasonably.

Ernie just smiles sadly at him. "Your war's different from mine," he says softly.

"Ernie, if you don't mind...what happened after Wade died?" Tony asks quietly.

He sees the emotions flash over the man's face, and he instantly regrets his question, but before he can change the subject, the old man says in a soft voice, "Nothing, really."

Tony blinks.

"It wasn't over yet," Ernie replies quietly. "There were still Japanese all over the island. It wasn't over yet. There was no time. I had to get the guys who blew up Wade's legs first. Before they got somebody else. And for Wade."

It suddenly occurs to Tony that Ernie is so much clearer about what happened with Wade since they were able to prove to him what he did that night. That the memories, the unwarranted guilt removed, have become far clearer in his mind, even if other parts of Ernie's mind are still "dotty."

"We lived day to day," Ernie says softly. "We just tried to live to the next day. We couldn't think about anything else, not when we were on the field. We never planned for next day - our officers did that. We just tried to stay alive, keep our buddies alive. If it weren't for Dorothy, I maybe never would have come out of that. I know some fellows, especially after Vietnam, who never came out of it.

"I didn't get to mourn Wade," Ernie says softly. "There wasn't time or energy or any of that. Not with the war still going on."

"War is not fair, and we are at war. Until I relieve you, which may be any moment now, you will fight that war, 24 / 7, and that includes sleeping, eating and taking a cr-p, you got it?"

"I got it. May I say something?"

"Only if it has to do with me catching that bastard."

Suddenly Tony understands. Gibbs can't even deal with the fact that Kate is gone. He's entirely focused on the task at hand, and until Ari dies a painful death at Gibbs' own hands, he won't be convinced that Kate is gone. Maybe Gibbs is even using this to try not to remember that Kate is gone - that as long as he's concentrating on catching her killer, she won't ever really be dead, and he won't have to bury her.

He wonders what would happen if someone else killed Ari. If, for some reason, Ari is shot by someone else - for example, if Tony himself had to shoot him to save an agent...even Gibbs. What would Gibbs do? Would he become even angrier for having had his revenge taken from him?

An even bigger question: what will happen when - he has no doubt Gibbs will hunt Ari until one of them dies, even years in the future, so it's really a question of 'when,' not 'if' - what will happen when it's over, and it all hits the older agent that Kate is really gone?

And while it doesn't ease the pain of losing Kate - the closest thing he's had to a sister - Tony feels even sorrier now for Gibbs.

He never thought that real-world Gibbs, so much more experienced than he, would be, in a sense, even more in denial than he is, even if it is his Marine training kicking in temporarily to keep them all alive. It was a necessary tactic in war, Tony can acknowledge it, but he never thought Gibbs would employ it here.

'If it weren't for Dorothy, I maybe never would have come out of that.' Tony looks at Ernie, and feels his heart sink into the floor. "Ernie?" he asks, almost timidly. "Ernie, what if it had been Dorothy who died and Wade who lived?" His voice falls into a whisper.

For a moment, the Marine looks almost angry as he tries to turn the words over in his head. "What are you talking about?" he asks sharply.

"It's just hypothetical - it's just a 'what if' thing," Tony reassures him, and the man calms, and Tony asks again. "What...what do you think you would do, Ernie, if Dorothy had been killed and Wade lived? I know Wade was your best friend, but Dorothy...Dorothy meant different things to you than Wade did, didn't she?"

For a moment the old man looks at him carefully, and then he asks, "Is that what happened to the gunny?"

Tony swallows hard, Ernie smiles sadly at him, saying nothing more. The old man gathers a couch pillow from the chair nearby and sets it on one end. Tony will sleep here tonight.

McGee's eyes are glazing over, and his typing is turning into gibberish on the screen. It's only midnight, but the team hasn't slept in the last two days. He blinks awake temporarily, reads the nonsensical passage, and deletes it to start again.

The elevator dings, and he recognizes the big African-American security guard from the door - Henry. It's odd to see him up here, but Henry says quietly, "There's someone watching the door for me."

He moves aside, and McGee is even more shocked by whom he sees next: Cpl. Ernie Yost. "Mr. Yost?"

"Hey kid," the old man greets him.

"It's 12 am!" McGee exclaims.

"Found him downstairs," Henry explains. "Kept insisting he needed to see Gibbs."

"Agent Gibbs is..." McGee can't remember.

"He's teleconferencing with the FBI," says the new agent, who stands and moves over. "I'm Ziva David," she says warmly.

"Ah, the new girl," Ernie says as he smiles at her, and for some reason 'girl' doesn't sound derogatory or condescending coming from his mouth. "I'm Ernie Yost."

"Sir."

Just then the door above opens, and Gibbs appears, coming down. "Mr. Yost?" The surprise is evident on his face. "Henry, thanks for bringing him up." He turns back to the old man. "You're out very late."

Ernie nods, and Gibbs begins to lead him away, calling to McGee over his shoulder, "Did you find Tony yet?"

"Sorry boss."

Gibbs curses under his breath. When they are some distance away, he turns to Ernie. "You shouldn't take the train out here this late by yourself. I'll have McGee drive you home."

"You needn't worry about that Italian kid," Ernie says, drawing out the "i" into a long "i". "He's at my house."

"What."

"He came to my house. He was walking around in the rain."

"He went to your house?" The tone is incredulous.

"He's right, you know," Ernie sighs. "Maybe his way is better."

"What way."

"He told me about your Katie," Ernie says quietly, in the same tone as he used in describing his Dorothy. "He told me how she died. And he is grieving."

"He doesn't have time for that. He's needed here." Even the gentle tone reserved for the veteran is gone, tightening and pulling away, though certainly not because of the elderly man himself.

"I never got to grieve for Wade," Ernie sighs. "I got picked up and taken home, and I never saw Wade. Never saw his body. Never saw nothing until they brought his body here in '68. I never got to grieve. It was just too dangerous then, I guess. But maybe it's better Di - Di..."

"DiNozzo."

" - that's right. DiNozzo. Maybe it's better his way. Because he won't end up like me. He won't need someone to help him be sure that he didn't kill little Kate. He won't have nightmares about her. He will miss her, and that's it."

The old man sighs and looks absently at the area where Gibbs' team had their desks. "Your Katie was a real peach," he says gently and sadly. "But Tony has accepted she's gone, and he's trying to hold on to what he can remember. He should be allowed that, Gunny, even if we aren't ready."

Tony wakes up and is slightly disoriented. The room looks familiar, but why is he at Ernie Yost's...?

The night's events come back in a blur, and he sits up. He sees his muddy Italian shoes, and they confirm his suspicions.

Kate would have rolled her eyes and comment about not needing such expensive shoes. He smiles a little, and for the first time, he feels sad but he doesn't feel pain at the thought.

Ernie's shoes look wet. Tony frowns.

"Heya kid," greets the old Marine as he comes out with breakfast. "Go ahead and get some coffee from the percolator, have some breakfast."

"Ernie, I can't thank you enough, but I gotta go," Tony exclaims, jumping out of the couch. "Gibbs will kill me."

The elderly man just smiles sadly and shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, kid. Sit and eat first."

Tony shows up at work in the same clothes he wore yesterday, but clean. He smiles to himself when he remembers that Kate would have ribbed him about it.

He sits down, and when he looks across at Kate's old desk, he sees that Ziva David has quietly removed all the things she brought. The desk is bare.

For a moment, he feels a pang of remorse. Ziv - he wonders if she'll allow him to call her that - couldn't have known that he would react that way, and it wasn't fair for him to lash out at her like he did. He feels her eyes on him, and he manages a tiny smile of thanks, and she just nods quietly, sympathetically.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Gibbs is sitting at his desk, working intently. He has dark bags under his eyes, and his trash can is filled to the brim with coffee cups. He's had that much coffee since 5 pm the night before, when the janitor comes around to empty all the trash cans. Tony thinks he looks exhausted.

He is no longer angry at Gibbs' apparent lack of respect towards Kate's memory...it's been replaced by an awkward sense of...he doesn't know what. Pity?

He saw how Ernie was when his beloved wife died (in her sleep, too), and he doesn't really want to imagine what the old man would be like if Dorothy had been killed suddenly and he carried the guilt of feeling that it was his fault. Sure, the circumstances were different, but Tony can't help the feeling in the pit of his stomach that it might not be as different as he thinks. He hopes he is wrong, and he doesn't want to imagine it, but he knows he doesn't have to. He's witnessing the opening stages of it.

The thought of Gibbs becoming as old as Ernie is already so incredibly alien to Tony. He can't imagine it, maybe like the way many adult children sometimes struggle with the thought of their parents aging. But the thought of an elderly Gibbs wandering into NCIS, and laying down his old Sig Sauer and fuzzily telling a new NCIS agent he killed his beautiful young subordinate years ago - it almost kills Tony to think that way. But he doubts that anyone on Iwo would have ever thought Ernie would reach the point he did, with the guilt so clouding his mind he can't remember clearly.

There is a nagging thought that, when Gibbs is finally alone with just his boat, without work to distract him, he will inevitably think about Kate. Tony doubts he will be able to think about her objectively - Gibbs was, from the start, more interested in her than was normal for a mere boss. He remembers how he was treated when he first joined, how Gibbs never shook his hand, even now; and he remembers the handshake sealing the Secret Service-NCIS deal between Gibbs and Kate. He recalls Stan Burley's story about how Gibbs called him 'Steve' for years - and then he remembers how Gibbs knew Kate's shoe size on her very first case with the team. He isn't jealous of Kate. He knows he's a good agent, and deep down, he knows Gibbs is proud of him and of his work. But Kate...Kate was more than just a good agent to Gibbs.

Tony is sure now: Gibbs will never be able to remember her in an unbiased way, and Gibbs most likely will never be able to remember her shooting as objectively as he himself will. And considering how Gibbs blames himself for everything under the sun, Tony wonders if he even blames himself for offering Kate a job at NCIS.

"Tony, I'm worried about him."

"Kate. Determined is good in a cop."

"Not when it turns into obsession."

"Kaaaate. Gibbs is like a dog. He'll gnaw at an old bone until you throw him a steak, and when he's done with the steak, he goes back to the old bone. The terrorist is Gibbs' old bone."

"Let's hope he doesn't choke on it."

Tony sneaks another peek over at Gibbs' desk, with the coffee cups in the trash, and the weight he's lost, and the pale look he has.

Too late.

END