"DUUUUUCKY!"
Jen watched as an elderly man came out, waving and laughing. Ahead of him, Abby and Ziva were leaning out of their windows, waving and cheering as the cars pulled up in front of his house.
"Look who we brought!" Abby shouted, waving at the blue Dodge behind them, leaning so far out that only Kate's firm hand tugging on her shirt kept her from falling out.
"Jethro!" Ducky laughed, waving as everyone barrelled out of the cars.
"Duck," Gibbs grinned, clapping him in a close hug.
"I'm glad to see you're well," Ducky laughed. "Very interesting mustache."
Gibbs shrugged, a tiny grin on his face.
"Did we see any action today?" Ducky asked with a big smile, and a huge affirmative cheer went up, followed by everyone chattering at once. "Caitlin," he said warmly as the woman kissed on him on the cheek.
"You should have seen it!" Tony grinned.
"Come on inside," Ducky encouarged. "Where is Timothy?" he asked, waving at the RV.
"McGee will catch up with us," Ziva explained. "We had an accident with the truck."
"Yeah," Tony sighed. "Truck flipped a couple times. McGee took the van; he's waiting for the insurance agent."
"You are very lucky Bingham Insurance will even insure you, given how you drive," Ducky replied, shaking a chastising finger at Tony and Ziva.
"Hey! We only learned from the master," Tony replied, waving at Gibbs.
Ducky peered over at the cars. "You got TOTO back, I hope."
"Yep," Abby nodded. "We put it on Gibbs' truck with TOTO 3. There wasn't enough room for all of us in the RV and TOTO 3."
"Relocating its center of mass was ingenius," Viv put in. "No mess this time - no sensor balls all over the place. It was great."
"Glad to hear it," Ducky grinned, nodding approvingly as he hugged Abby. "I suppose that it is worth that investment of money," he continued, his eyes twinkling at Kate, who just grinned. "Come inside!"
"Make a hole," Kate called, holding up a big frying pan full of eggs.
Ziva looked up, seeing Jen hanging back and McGee just arriving, quickly offered her her seat and a clean plate from the stack in the middle of the table. She then handed McGee an empty plate, pulling up a chair for him next to the redhead. Gibbs came by, sticking his clean spoon straight into the pan Kate held and taking a mouthful eggs. She merely shook her head, stuck a serving spoon directly into the pan, and set it on the table.
"We come here to fuel up," Viv explained as the others happily greeted McGee. "Ducky's housekeeper and cook is the best in the state. Her burritos are to die for."
"Where's Mrs. Mallard?" Abby asked, looking around as she tossed around what looked like a stuffed toy hippo that made...noises.
"My mother went to the senior center this afternoon," Ducky called from the kitchen. "She doesn't remember her bridge partners, or that she goes every week, but she remembers how to beat everyone in the game."
"Look at that sad booboo face," Ziva teased, pinching Tony's cheek. "Does Mrs. Mallard's Italian gigolo miss her?"
Tony made a face.
"You could move furniture," Kate offered with a grin as she speared his steak away and put it back with the other fried steaks. "You can't eat that."
"Awwww, Kate," Tony pouted like a little boy.
"Your cholestrol was off the charts," she replied firmly, replacing it with a piece of chicken. She then spooned peas onto both his and McGee's plates, getting scowling looks from both.
Ducky just laughed. "If she had not done it, I would have."
"No caffeine for Abby," Kate told Ducky. "She had four Caff-Pow!s before we got here and she's going to get another as soon as we're on the road."
"Four?" Gibbs frowned.
Ducky just laughed as Abby joined Tony in the pouting, and patted them both. "It is for your health, you know," he chuckled.
"Aww, Kate," Abby begged.
"None, Abby," Gibbs cut in. "Four!"
"Hey!" Abby protested. "You bring me them, sometimes!"
"I'm going up to take a shower," Kate called. "Leave me some food. Tony, maybe you should go soon after - we've tracked enough mud all over our truck and Ducky's house."
"Is that an offer?" Tony grinned, then received an instant head whack from Gibbs as the older man headed out to the porch with his plate. "Ow!" he rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "I've forgotten how hard those things can be."
"All right," Ziva grinned as the gigantic bowl of Mexican rice was set on the table. "You're the best, Elena," she said to the cook. "Love your rice."
Elena laughed, handing her the serving spoon. "So that's the only reason you guys come over."
"Elena makes the best Mexican rice," Abby began, explaining to Jen. "She makes so much of it, too; it's like she's got her own rice p- "
"Don't!" Ziva and Viv cried. Too late.
"Rice paddy dike," Tony snickered right on cue.
"Oh please," McGee groaned. There were moans from around the table.
Jen looked around, confused as Tony continued to laugh. "Pinpin Pula...."
"We need to come up with a code word for 'rice'," Viv groaned, spooning herself some. "Every time we come and we have rice, he has to bring up Pinpin."
"Pinpin Pula?" Jen asked quietly.
"It means 'rice paddy dike' in Tagalog!" Tony grinned.
"DiNozzo, I swear, if I hear you say that one more time," Gibbs threatened as he filled his plate, then headed out to the porch.
"Who's Pinpin Pula?"
"Slime," Tony replied, his mouth full. He started to reach for the steak that Kate had put back onto the general plate when Viv slapped his hand with her spoon. "Hey! You're not Kate! Do that again and you're going to be wearing those mashed potatoes!"
"Be glad it was Viv," Ziva replied, swallowing her bit of potato. "Me, I would have stabbed you with my fork."
"Pinpin Pula was this international researcher in the lab with Gibbs and Fornell from a long time ago," Ducky explained. "He was never quite as good as either of them. He became quite jealous of Fornell when Fornell landed a corporate sponsor, and he was always jealous of Gibbs."
"Me and Abby and Fornell's designer Freeman," McGee explained, "were having a friendly race to see who could get a design like TOTO done first. Pinny didn't have the kind of research we did."
"So he tried to steal designs," Tony cut in. "Freeman had managed to get his design to their corporate sponsor before, so there was no way Poopla could steal it without having a huge corporate sponsor down his back. So he went after McGee and Abby's."
"Fornell caught him," Abby replied. "Caught him redhanded, too, decided to amuse himself by turning him over to Gibbs."
"Who would have beat the snot out of him," Tony began. "Rearranged that pretty little face."
"'Would have'?" Jen asked.
"Good thing Kate was there to stop Gibbs," Viv snickered. "Otherwise Pinny would be sharing a nice new pine box home with the worms."
"Where is he now? I'm assuming that he'd be out of business," Jen replied, clearly disgusted.
"Oh, he says he's still chasing tornadoes," Ziva replied with a straight face. The director looked shocked.
"The many that Maine sees," Abby snickered, and the two women slapped a high-five.
"He wasn't all bad," McGee said thoughtfully. "He liked my jokes. What?" he protested as his teammates groaned and booed. "What? I'm funny!" he insisted. "See, try this one," he replied, turning to Jen.
"Don't inflict your jokes on her," Ziva groaned.
"A three legged dog walks into the bar. He walks right up to the bar, right to the bartender and says, 'I'm looking for the man who shot my paw.' My paw!" McGee beamed. "Get it? Three-legged dog?"
"Boo hiss," Tony hollered as the others moaned. Biscuits flew across the table, nailing McGee in the head and chest.
"Hey!" McGee protested. "That was funny!"
"Where'd you get that joke? JD?"
"Has to be JD," Viv muttered. "He's the only one who tells the same kind of awful jokes."
"They're funny!" McGee protested. He bit into a biscuit. "Hey! They're honey biscuits!"
Jen gave a small gasp and backed away as the team made a mad scramble for McGee. "I want my biscuit back!" "Hand it over." "Gimme my biscuit."
"People who are hungry shouldn't throw biscuits!" McGee huffed, then quickly licked them all. He smiled like a Cheshire cat as they all stopped short, staring at him.
Jen looked disgusted.
"I just lost my appetite," Viv muttered.
"Elena, do you have any more biscuits?" Abby called into the kitchen.
"McGee, you're disgusting," Tony declared.
"I learned from the best," McGee retorted, happily lining up his many biscuits on his plate. He turned to Jen. "Last year, when we gathered on Labor Day, Tony licked his finger and stuck it into the biggest piece of pie so none of us would take it. So Gibbs took his licked finger and stuck it all over the bowl of peas."
"Tony went home with the whole bowl," Ziva snickered.
"Boss couldn't have chosen something better, like mashed potatoes," Tony muttered.
"That's 'cause he hates peas, and knows you're no fan of 'em, either."
"I understand you're the new NSSL director," Ducky quickly cut in, trying to change the topic. "Tony mentioned it."
"Oh, yes," Shepard smiled. "I am. Only about twenty-four hours."
"And already getting to know your chasers," Ducky chuckled, and the team cheered.
"So how did you all come to work for Je - Gibbs?" she asked, beginning to feel a little more comfortable with the bubbly team.
"Abby and I have known Jethro a long time," Ducky chuckled. "I first met him here many years ago, before he worked in Kansas."
"Oh, with Stan," Jen murmured.
"You know of Stan?" Tony asked.
"Yes." Jen paused. "I worked with Gibbs and Stan in Kansas for a season."
"So you're an old hand at this!" Abby enthused. "You should come chasing with us more often."
"That's, uh, quite all right," Jen smiled weakly.
"Gibbsh foun'me," came Tony's voice, muffled from the food in his mouth.
"Must you talk with your mouth full?" Viv sighed.
Tony made a face at her as he swallowed. "I was doing this and that," he explained.
"He was a TV weatherman," Ziva offered, snickering. "Where was that? Baltimore?"
"I thought it was Philadelphia," Viv teased.
"Or Peoria?"
Tony glared at them all. "But all that matters now is that I'm here," he chirped. "Right in Tornado Alley."
"I joined Gibbs a few months after Tony," Viv began. She shrugged. "My brother Rex - he was a researcher, and he'd always wanted to be a chaser, but he died of cancer about five years ago. That's when I switched from research to chasing."
"I'm sorry," Jen said softly.
Viv shrugged. "It's all right."
"Gibbs offered to take me on after I did a few stints of computer work with them," McGee grinned.
"I'm on a foreign exchange," Ziva smiled. "One of those meterologists from around the world who come here to chase."
"And Kate?" Jen asked. The table suddenly got very quiet, as the teammates exchanged looks. "How did she get into this?"
"Kate started chasing after college," Tony said quietly. "She joined with us shortly after Viv did, but she's chased longer than any of us but Gibbs, and she's been in the Alley from the start."
"She was on William Baur's chasing team when we met her," Viv replied. "She was good, very good. Her..." she paused. "She was seeing one of her teammates, one of the engineers, who was killed in a freak car accident in the middle of a chase we were doing together. After that, it was just a little too much to stay with Baur, so when Gibbs offered her a job, she joined us."
"Oh," Jen said softly. "I'm sorry."
"She and Gibbs - chasing is kind of personal," Tony said quietly. "Gibbs lost his first wife and his daughter. He was away on a chase when their house got hit."
Jen sucked in her breath. "He never told me this."
"He never told us, either," Viv replied in a hushed tone. "Ziva found out when she was looking us all up to see who she wanted to work with. We figure that he knows that we know, but we just don't talk about it."
"His family died fifteen years ago this past spring. Guess it all hit and he decided to retire," McGee said glumly. "He's been chasing so long, too."
"Some bragging rights we had," Abby smiled sadly. "'Fore Gibbs retired, we had two chasers who'd seen F5s."
Jen stopped. "F5," she gasped. They were monsters. It was rare that anybody saw one at all; they appeared less than 1% of the time, and only the most seasoned of chasers had seen them - and from far away.
"It was the Oklahoma F5 in '96," Tony confirmed. "Gibbs saw it at a distance of a little over a mile away. His telephoto shots were really good, though."
"'96," Jen murmured. "NSSL forecasts had lifted indices from minus six through minus ten. Record outbreaks that year."
"Memorable year," McGee said, as if recalling a history lesson. "First time a TOTO flew." There were grins around the table.
"Bill and Jo Harding," Abby grinned. "Their Dorothy - got her her to fly for the first time in a F5 that year. What a way to start a project!"
"I remember that," Jen smiled. "That was hot."
"Franks had picked up the storm around the same time, but they didn't have a TOTO. They just got photos - Gibbs' telephoto shots were some of the best. The Hardings' team was really busy with the Doppler stuff, so they didn't get as many good photos and as good video coverage."
"We've all been building off the Harding design," McGee replied. "Trying to get one that deploys faster, with less damage."
"The idea to recenter the center of mass was Kate and Gibbs' idea," Ziva added. "They were visiting her oldest brother in California, and one of their kids' toys is this little bird that, when you push over, it rocks back and forth until it rights itself."
"It's a center of mass toy," McGee explained. "Since they've relocated the center of mass farther down in the bird than in the middle, it'll right itself on its own. Kate and Gibbs came back, asked if it were possible for us to design something like it, to keep TOTO upright after getting knocked around by debris and wind."
"The Harding model was a really good prototype," Abby offered, "but it was kind of clumsy and took forever to prepare for deployment. Plus, it was by some ingenius fixing they got her to fly. The whole pack was too light to reach the core. We're trying to fix all that. Get closer than ever."
"Still," Viv replied. "The Hardings got her to fly for the first time in a F5. There's not much beating that!"
"That must have been so sweet," Abby sighed. "I want to see a F5 sometime!"
"So," Jen looked around at them. "If it wasn't Abby, who else saw a F5?"
Kate dried off her hair, twisting it up into a quick ponytail. She pulled on her loose fitting jeans and a clean blouse, then slipped her hand into her bag and pulled out the small red velvet box and opened it to reveal the garnet rose she'd been given earlier that day.
She stood in front of the mirror, slipping on the chain and taking care to clasp it properly. She ran her fingers down over it, smiling a little.
There was a knock on the door. "Caitlin?"
"Come on in, Ducky."
The door opened as she latched on the clasp. Ducky smiled as he looked down at the rose. "It's beautiful."
"It is," Kate said softly, an unconscious smile spreading over her face. "Thank you."
Ducky shook his head, waving it off. "They really wanted to do this for you," he said with a small smile. "Once they found out you sold your things to help finish TOTO. You kept a good secret for half a year."
Kate just shifted uncomfortably.
Ducky sat down on the bed nearby, then said softly, "I was surprised to see Jethro." He watched as Kate's eyes flickered down at her bag, away from hers. "He looks well."
"Yes," Kate replied shortly, shoving her things into her bag. She handed Ducky the wet towel. "Thank you."
"Are you all right, Caitlin?" he asked gently.
"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked, shrugging.
"You don't look fine," Ducky said quietly.
"The accident was just a close call."
"I'm not talking about the accident," the doctor said gently. "I'm talking about seeing Jethro." She didn't say anything, so he gave her arm a fatherly squeeze. "You don't work together for five years, date for three of those five just to throw that all away."
Kate gave a short, resigned laugh. "I didn't throw anything away, Ducky."
"But you think he did."
Kate looked at him steadily. "And you don't?"
"He still is working in tracking storms," Ducky muttered, but his reluctance was a giveaway to his true feelings. He paused, then said, "I understand he came for you to sign the financial papers. That he needs to cut ties with a specific team in order to work at his NSSL job."
Kate snorted. "That's what he said."
"You don't believe him?"
"Please," Kate muttered. "How long do you think this job will last? A couple months? He can't stand being behind a desk. He can't commit to it. He'll break it soon enough, just like he broke his commitment to TOTO."
"TOTO's done, Caitlin."
"Not until we get it to fly."
"Caitlin - "
"You know as well as I do," Kate snapped. "He can't commit. No - he won't commit. He's a d-mn perfectionist. He won't commit to anything unless he can be assured of getting what HE wants."
"Is that so wrong?" Ducky asked gently. "Kate, it was the fifteenth anniversary of his wife and his daughter's deaths."
"So?" Kate shot back. "Fine way to remember them, to quit chasing tornadoes. He left the one job that makes up for their deaths because he feels that he doesn't have anything to show after fifteen years. Because we haven't achieved what HE deems to be progress."
"Kate," Ducky said gently. "We haven't made that much progress in twenty, twenty-five years. NSSL has been building TOTOs since the eighties, and of all the Vortex teams on the ground in '95 and '96, only the Hardings managed to get their Dorothy into the air. And who, since? That early warning system has stalled for ten years. You know that as well as I."
"What if it takes us years and years to develop this new warning system?" Kate replied softly, almost to herself. "What if we don't succeed? Maybe we can't get a result now. Maybe we'll be long dead before they figure it out enough to get us a system. It doesn't mean we give up." She rubbed her arm in frustration. "But he will. Look at his job. Look at the team. Look at TOTO."
"Look at his relationships?" Ducky said wisely, and Kate fell silent. She picked up her bag, starting to head out. "He chooses his battles, Kate," Ducky said gently. "He won't fight unless he can win. He doesn't fight to take beatings. He plays to win."
"Yes," Kate agreed, turning at the doorway. "But he can't win if he won't play." She disappeared out the door.
"Kate was engaged to a fellow storm chaser," Ziva said quietly. "She and her fiance, they'd met in college. They'd dated for two years, were going to marry as soon as tornado season was over."
Tony looked around, checking to make sure Kate was not there. "He'd gone to check out the damage path from one of the tornadoes his team had just tracked, and she was going out to meet him," he explained. "The cell from that tornado merged with another nearby, made the F5. It came in wthout warning, picked him up before he got a chance to get away in his car."
"I thought you said her Baur teammate and boyfriend died in a car accident," Jen frowned.
"Oh, Tim Kerry died in the accident," Viv clarified. "We're talking about her fiance, Paul. How old did you say Kate was, then, Ziva?"
"Fresh out of college - 22. Her friend Marcie said Kate'd been chasing with Baur's team for three months when it happened." Ziva snorted, shaking her head.
"That was one busy F5," Tony muttered. "It's big benefit was picking up Dorothy, of course. But it killed Kate's fiance, Jonas Miller, and three families."
"The F3 he was checking out jumped back into the clouds and seemed to have left," Ziva continued, "but it was just merging with another cell. The first thing that F5 did was drop straight down on him, even before Miller got sucked into it and long before the Hardings got to it."
"I think that baby was on the ground for a good forty minutes total," Abby said thoughtfully.
"Since her fiance, Kate hasn't dated a stormchaser until Gi - " Viv stopped short, avoiding Jen's gaze as her eyes drifted towards the porch. "Anyhow, until...him, Tim Kerry's was as close she's ever gotten to dating somebody in this line of work, and even then, he was an engineer, really."
"I'd be gunshy of dating chasers if my fiance were sucked into a vortex right in front of me," Abby muttered.
Jen turned white, her fork coming to a standstill over her food. "Kate saw it?"
"We're not sure on the details, but Marcie said that Kate drove out to meet him," Ziva replied. "They'd been trying to reach her by cell phone. Given the last tower to pick up a wireless signal from her phone from where she was, they figure she was less than half a mile away, close enough even to see her fiance's car twist up into it."
"Close enough to be killed herself, if she wasn't careful," Tony put in.
"We're 99% sure it's all the same F5, but Gibbs doesn't want us to pester her about it," McGee replied. "Doesn't want to dreg up bad memories, I guess."
"That makes Kate the only one of us who's seen a F5 up close," Viv said somberly. "Even Gibbs only saw that one from a mile away."
Jen shook her head, having lost her appetite.
The door slap-banged shut, and Gibbs was quiet. Kate had come out to sit on the front steps, leaning against the right-hand railing, poking at her plate of food. She finally sat down on the top step, entirely oblivious to his presence on the porch swing.
He watched her for a good five minutes, watching the slight wind pick up the hair in her ponytail and toss it about her shoulders. "That's for eating," he said with amusement, indicating her plate of food. "Not for poking."
She looked up sharply. "How long have you been out here?"
"Longer than you." He sat down a few feet away at the other end of the top step, leaning against the other railing.
They sat in silence for awhile, and then he noticed her mischievous, dimpled smile with a little alarm. "Nice truck," she grinned, and he knew instantly what she was thinking of. "Insured?"
He didn't need for her to say any more than she had for him to guess where her thoughts were going. "You can't have it," he retorted immediately, but he couldn't help the tiny grin crossing his face.
"Well, if it's insured," she pointed out.
"Liability only because full coverage on a new truck would have been too much," he replied.
"New truck, new job, new girlfriend - " she pointed at the mustache " - new hair. It's like a whole new you!" she joked.
"Kate," he sighed.
"You have to admit this is a little awkward," she said pointedly.
"I will that," he conceded.
They fell back into a comfortable silence as the sun began to set. After a long moment, she said in a friendly tone, "Jen seems nice."
He glared.
"Uh-oh," Kate replied, the corners of her mouth twitching. He knew she was enjoying this exchange. "She's not nice?"
Gibbs took a deep breath. "She is nice."
"That's good." Gibbs waited - he knew in a second her curiosity would get the better of her. He looked at her steadily, waiting.
"Where'd you meet her? At headquarters?"
"Kate!" Gibbs sighed. "I don't want to fight."
"Fighting," Kate laughed. "I fight with Tony. Now that's fighting. This is just making conversation. Warming you up for driving with Jen. I'm not sure she likes silence any more than anybody else does."
Gibbs ran a hand through his hair. "Kate - ! Fine. Yes, I met her at the NSSL headquarters."
"And what does she do?"
Gibbs coughed. "She's...the new director."
She stared at him for a moment, completely shocked for a moment. He could see her lips trembling with barely suppressed laughter.
"Don't say it."
"Did I say something?" she asked, her face radiating innocence.
"You were going to say something!"
"I wasn't going to say anything," she replied without a hint of a guilty look. "Director Shepard...think you can get her to have NSSL give us head starts on information?" Her eyes twinkled.
"Kate," he sighed.
They finally fell silent as she finished her dinner. The rays from the setting sun shone on the rose, illuminating it beautifully. Gibbs checked his impulse to reach over and touch it, sitting there on her neck.
"Your rose," he finally said. "Very nice." He paused. "Bit smaller than the previous one."
She frowned. "It's my garnet rose. You haven't seen it in awhile," she said vaguely, turning to look up at the sky.
He frowned, more than a little upset that she obviously was not going to tell him about how she'd come up with the money.
"Tony told me," he said neutrally. "Told me you sold the garnet rose your father gave you to pay the difference to finish TOTO. Later told me you sold your jewelry and some of the antiques in your apartment. All of it?"
"All but my grandmother's pooka shell necklace. It wouldn't have brought a lot of money, anyhow," she said shortly, then gave him a sharp look now, a look that promised to kill Tony later for breaking that confidence. "It had to be done."
He nodded slowly, still watching her. She looked back, a neutral expression on her face, waiting for him to comment.
"Even the engagement ring Paul gave you?" he asked after a long pause. He knew he was being a coward, not quite willing to hear her direct affirmation that she'd happily parted with HIS gift to her - pink diamond stud earrings on her latest birthday.
Her gaze never waivered, but her lips set into a thinner line. She blinked once, then started to get up to go.
"It was TOTO or a girlish fantasy about keeping jewelry - engagement ring, necklace, or earrings," she replied shortly, turning at the door. "And I thought it was a better remembrance of any stormchaser," she said, deliberately vague on the identity of the chaser, "that TOTO be finished." She opened the door and disappeared inside.
Jen lay in bed that night, staring up at the ceiling of her room. Ziva was on the other side of the room, snoring away on one of the many airbeds the team kept stashed in their RV.
Kate quietly left her room, where Abby and Viv were already asleep. She slipped down the dark stairs, stopping to look into Ducky's family room. The boys were sacked out there on the couch, on the airbeds. Her gaze drifted over them - McGee, curled up on his side; Tony, happily sprawled out on his airbed; Gibbs, sleeping on the couch, his arms crossed but his face peaceful.
She moved to the kitchen, turning on a tiny light in the corner breakfast nook. She read over the forms Gibbs had given her that day. Next to her sat the envelope, already with her handwriting on it: 'Leroy Jethro Gibbs'.
She checked off all the forms that needed to be filled out, releasing Gibbs from his financial obligations to the team he'd built, releasing Gibbs from any further concern with the team, just like he had wanted.
Kate looked at the bottom line. Company financial representative.
She brought up the pen. 'Caitlin Todd', and then she refolded the papers and put them in the envelope, then left it on the dining room table. He'd see it in the morning.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.