DISCLAIMER: Not mine. If they were, would Kate be dead? (bares fangs) Dr. Andrew Havsy is mine.
RATING: K+ (I'm so bad at this)
SUMMARY: After the post-Ari tension of "Twilight" (with Kate alive), Director Morrow orders Gibbs' team plus Ducky and Abby into group therapy. Gibbs, of course, is oh-so-VERY amenable to the idea.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
~ I suppose it was inevitable, watching a TV show which is the remake of the 1960's western which is the remake of a Japanese movie. Consider this a sort of remake in a different fandom.
Many thanks to celeste1, the author of the wonderful "Analyze This" for "The Magnificent Seven" fandom. Her far superior story is always hilarious each time it's read, and I am DEEPLY indebted to her fic for ideas and inspiration. She has given me email permission to post mine, which I would not have done without her go ahead. For any fan who wants to read it, it's story ID #448607 at www.fanfiction.net
~ Thank you to my beta for this story, Em. All mistakes still here are mine!
~ In reference to "The Good Doctor": now, PLEASE don't think I hate doctors and psychiatrists. I don't, really. I believe, unlike Gibbs ;-) , that they have a valuable place in society. These stories just happened to work out this way.
"It's not a choice, Agent Gibbs."
"Director, with all due respect, we do not see a psychiatrist."
"Jethro. Both Ducky and Kate have been kidnapped, Kate twice; you and Gerald each got a round put through you - all by Ari, and not counting this last fiasco. And your team has faced other dangers, too, including the Y. pestis and the Iraqi artifact smuggler with Tony."
"Sir."
"Your team has been turning on each other, Todd and DiNozzo and McGee, even Ducky and Abby. Agent Todd lashed out at YOU the other day! The only reason she wasn't written up was because you didn't write her up. You all still have a lot of pent up emotion."
"It wouldn't be bent up if that bastard were dead!"
"We need Ari."
"Like I need another wife."
"I think you need to see something." Director Morrow led his agent out to the balcony overlooking the bullpen and pointed below.
"Tony, that's absolutely disgusting. No! No! I don't want to hear any more of that disgusting dreck."
"Hey, why is it that half the time, you're the one who brings it up!"
Kate glared. "We're supposed to be working on a case! You're the one who dragged Abby up here to look at the evidence again."
"Evidence we've ALL looked at," Abby snapped uncharacteristically. "Tony, I don't know what you think you're going to find after I've been over it a dozen times!"
"All right!" the generally calm medical examiner shouted. "All right. This will not help us. We need to figure out what was missed."
Morrow and Gibbs watched as Cassie Yates frowned, looking from one to another and then back down at the folder in her hands.
"What?"
"Um, this blood test isn't from the vic," she replied gently. "It's Agent Todd's after you were exposed to the Y. pestis."
Ducky uncharacteristically snatched the folder from the agent's hands. The other three watched his face as it fell.
"AAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!" Tony shouted, throwing himself into his chair. Kate groaned and covered her face with her hands in frustration. Abby banged her head on the screen of the plasma.
Cassie made good her escape.
Morrow turned to Gibbs, with an expectant look in his eye. "Monday."
MONDAY
Director Thomas Morrow - yes, his name is "Tom Morrow," and I find the jokes about his name rather childish - has handed me his best team. They have been in-fighting for the last two weeks, and Director Morrow is worried they will come to blows, which might do irreparable damage to them, if it hasn't already to a case.
Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs is one of NCIS's finest, and Director Morrow is deeply concerned about his agent and the team he leads. They have suffered through several traumatic, nearly fatal experiences within the last year, and it appears that each has just piled stress upon stress and has begun affecting their intra-group cooperation.
My task is to unearth this source of tension, and I hope to heal the hurts they have suffered and set them back to rights. At the same time, I believe I can provide them a deeper feeling of trust and companionship, thus strengthening and reinvigorating them. I hope to return to the NCIS and to Director Morrow a better and closer team than they had before. It would be an honor to serve my country thus.
Director Morrow also said something about missing the usual team joking, but for a serious director like Director Morrow, I suppose he meant it sarcastically. No serious professional would say such thing in all seriousness.
"Hi, everyone, I'm Andrew Havsy, the NCIS psychiatrist and counselor," the man smiled, speaking slowly and deliberately. The smiling expression on his face never moved. "But I prefer to see myself as a facilitator. I'm here to help you to discover your true emotions concerning this trauma you've been through."
Tony groaned out loud and slumped in his seat.
The psychiatrist blinked, then continued, "Now, let's talk about the team interaction and tense feeling. How do you feel about it?"
"What tense feeling?" Tony replied, daring the psychiatrist to contradict him.
The others looked at the man expectantly.
"None of you feel that there has been...unease since your last...major case?"
"I really don't know where you're getting this," Kate replied firmly.
"Yes," Abby interjected. "Yes, there is a lot of tension," she replied affirmatively, even as the four agents turned to glare at her.
"Miss Sciuto, please go on."
Abby ignored the dark glares Gibbs sent her way, and the much less lethal looks from Kate and Tony. "There is the very common debating and bickering between Agent DiNozzo and Agent Todd, and the common initation period for any new agent, but this has gone beyond that."
"Abby!" Kate exclaimed, and Tony looked at Abby, betrayed.
"Do you have something to say, Agent Todd?"
"No," Kate snapped. "I don't. Tony and I have our differences, but we get along fine."
"Your tone implies that maybe it's not so fine," Havsy pressed.
"Maybe you need to let off some steam," Tony suggested with a big grin. "Like Panama City, spring break wet tee - " Gibbs leaned over and whacked Tony on the head. "Ow!"
"Agent Gibbs, such violence is really unnecessary," Havsy exclaimed in surprise. When the sharp blue eyes turned on him, he winced and sat back. "Perhaps you would like to talk it out?"
"No."
"Maybe, Agent Gibbs, you'd like to express how you felt about your team in danger?"
Gibbs glared.
"Gibbs, maybe you should talk about it," Kate said pointedly. "You don't have to be so closed to the idea of talking." She turned to the psychiatrist. "This is how it is. All the time."
The team leader turned to her, his eyes narrowing as he enunciated, "'Closed'?"
"Right now, Gibbs. Right now. And that time in the car. Closed. Just admit you were worried about Tony!" she exclaimed impatiently.
"You were worried about me, boss?" Tony perked up, sitting up straighter.
"Just talk about it! What's it going to do to you! TALK!" Kate insisted.
"If you don't mind my saying so - "
"We mind."
" - these are some of the symptoms Director Morrow was talking about. The yelling, the tension." The team stopped and stared at him.
"It's all your fault we're here," Tony grumbled.
"Uh-oh," Abby murmured, exchanging looks with McGee.
"Agent Todd," the 'facilitator' said, turning to the open-mouthed brunette, "this a safe environment for you to express how you feel. It seems that you have a lot of pent-up anger."
"I second that!" Tony called, shifting his seat over out of Gibbs' arm's reach.
Kate sat up and pinned the psychiatrist with a glare that did Gibbs proud. "Excuse me?"
"You seem to...have a lot of pent-up resentment and hurt," he said gently. "Resulting in anger."
"Hold on a minute," Kate said slowly, pinning the doctor down with her eyes. "You're accusing me of pent up anger?" She took a deep breath to calm down, and the next words out of her mouth were as gentle as she could make them. "Dr. Havsy, you have no idea about the people I work with. When I was offered this job, I took it with the understanding that I would simply be investigating crimes associated with the Navy and the Marine Corps.
"Instead, I got dumped in the middle of...of...the NCIS zoo. And that would be fine, IF THEY'D CONTROL THE WILD MONKEYS," she said pointedly, looking at Tony. "But every day, they dump this insane male crap in my lap. 'What's the point of being a federal agent if you can't drive fast?' How should I know, I'm too busy trying to keep my stomach from falling out. And this obsession with cars. They refer to them as 'she'! And this is when they're not clipping their nails or CHANGING in front of me, and this includes my boss."
Kate took a deep breath to calm herself and said to Dr. Havsy earnestly, pleadingly, "How would you like to sit through a one-man Tony debate about tattoos? MY tattoo! 'Which butt-cheek is it on?' 'It's not a butterfly, is it? You don't seem like a butterfly kind of person.' And it doesn't stop there. It gets egged on. 'It's not a rose,' Gibbs tells him, like he actually SAW it. So of course Tony asks, 'Really? Did Gibbs see it? How does he know it's not a rose?'
"And it's not just Tony. I end up with protective duty, and as any natural bodyguard does, has nightmares about the protectee getting killed. So I dream once that Gibbs has throat slit. I wake up, and Tony has to go, 'You were dreaming about Gibbs?' And although I tell him NO - "
"Technically you were," Tony muttered.
" - he goes and tells McGee I woke up screaming Gibbs' name. And what does McGee do? 'Reaaallly,'" she imitated. "Pigs! I work with pigs! This is how they blow off steam!
"But can you blame them? Have you MET Gibbs? Mr. I Won't Admit I Need Glasses But Hear Like a Bat? And his gut. Most of us use science and Abby's lab results to find stuff. All Gibbs has to follow is his gut feeling. 'My coffee-filled gut says he's guilty.' 'My coffee-filled gut says to bet on the horse in the third starting position.' And before you crack a joke about indigestion, guess what, he's never been sick. Never had allergies. Never had food poisoning. Never had indigestion. Want to know why? Because even the tiny cold microbe is not stupid enough to come within ten miles of him! Look at him!" she exclaimed, waving at the man sitting next to her. "If you were a flu virus, would you want to go near him?!"
"And the worst of it is? He's got some kind of...sick...mental control over Tony and McGee," Kate replied, her hands demonstrating a strangling motion. "Tony always follows his lead. He even acts like him when Gibbs isn't around - just ask Abby. Like the rest of us need that kind of pressure! I'll tell you where the tension is," she exclaimed, standing and pointing at Gibbs. "Gibbs is like an dog with an old bone. He gnaws at the old bone until someone throws him a steak, and when he's done with the steak, he goes back to the old bone, and a Mossad agent is that old bone. And guess what? He chokes on it. EVERY TIME."
"Hey, she stole that from me!" Tony protested. "That old bone stuff, that was my idea."
"Shut up!" Kate exclaimed. "You wonder why I have a little pent-up emotion? You try working with the Three Stooges day in and day out for just a month - just a month - and then accuse me of pent-up tension."
She sat back down in her chair, ramrod straight, and smoothed out her skirt.
Abby patted her on the back consolingly.
Dr. Havsy blinked.
Tony grinned. "See, Kate's the yeller."
"Abby, back me up here."
"Well, Kate, you know, that is why we go out to the spa," Abby pointed out sheepishly.
Kate turned around, staring at her friend in betrayed horror. "Abby!"
"Well, let's see if we can't locate where the source of this...tension is coming from," the psychiatrist tried to say as calmly as possible.
Tony, safely out of Gibbs' arms' reach, tilted his head towards Kate.
"Agent Todd," the psychiatrist said, pointedly ignoring Tony. "Have your other relationships been going all right?"
She narrowed her eyes at him, the the doctor scooted backwards a little in his chair. "What." It was more a dare than a question.
"May I say something?" McGee spoke up. "In...In Kate's defense - "
" - thank you, McGee."
"You're welcome. In Kate's defense, you know, she's like this nice, uh, normal girl. With, uh, normal relationships." Kate nodded in thanks. "And we're guys," McGee continued, "and so...that might make her a little" he paused "testy. Sometimes! Only sometimes!" he quickly added, seeing Kate narrow her eyes at him.
Tony slapped McGee on the back of the head.
"Thank you, Tony."
"In real defense of Kate," Abby spoke up, glaring at the two junior male agents, "I'd just like to say that sometimes...I am glad I have someone of the same sex working with me. There's very few of us women, and we have to stick together."
"Thank you, Abby."
"You're welcome."
"Doctor, do you want the real reason for the tension?" Ducky finally spoke.
The psychiatrist latched onto the medical examiner like a drowning man onto a life preserver. "By all means."
"There." Ducky pointed to Kate, whose mouth fell open in protest. "Right there. He" he pointed to Gibbs "hired her" he pointed back to Kate. "And his greatest nemesis knows him well enough to use her against him like an emotional bargaining chip, and he" he waved at Gibbs "can't and won't deal with it in a healthy manner."
The six fell silent, Abby and McGee with expressions of wide-eyed horror as Tony and Kate sat with their mouths hanging open. Gibbs' (former) oldest friend lowered his arm and sat back in his seat, satisfied and looking quite pleased with himself.
The psychiatrist stared. Gibbs glared.
"Hey, is it time for lunch?" Tony asked.
Story Notes:
Posted to ff.net 9/18-9/23/05.
Author's Chapter Notes:
After the post-Ari tension of "Twilight" (with Kate alive), Director Morrow orders Gibbs' team plus Ducky and Abby into group therapy. Gibbs, of course, is oh-so-VERY amenable to the idea.
Chapter End Notes:
Posted to ff.net 9/18-9/23/05.