Hi! This is my first English NCIS fic (I'm German) and so please bear with all my mistakes in voc and grammar!
Usually McGee's not my favorite at all, but this story just wanted to be written from his POV. As mentioned, there are some character deaths (not descriptive, though!) as it would be highly unlikely if there were none (At story time, Ducky would be about 110...not too realistic, I think.)
Okay, I hope you like the story anyway, and I'd be dying for some reviews! Thanks!
Disclaimer: No one's mine (pity!), no money is earned (pity as well!)
And now: have fun!
This High Hill of My Old Age
The storms of another winter have almost passed. The last remains of snow are retreating, hiding only in the shadowy little spots beneath the empty boughs of age-old trees. Little islands in a dark sea.
He is alone while he wanders through the empty park, following a path that has begun some corners from here close to five decades ago, and that will run on till it'll meet its end, wherever that may be. It's smoothing out now after many curves and turns and crossings, but he doesn't worry about that. He hasn't ceased to mind it, though; yet the way has retreated to the back of conscious thought, and he now rather likes to think of walking itself. It's exhausting enough these days.
Night is beginning to fall and he knows that he'll be turning soon, going back to his home where his wife is waiting for him. She didn't want to accompany him this evening because the cold hurts her arthritic fingers, and it's been enough of a painful season so far.
He'll probably massage them for a while when he's home, trying to kneed some mobility back into her joints, but he knows as well as her that the effort has become quite useless by now. He'll do it anyway, because he loves her and he still likes to touch and hold her although they've been married for almost forty-five years.
They've grown old, the two of them, he thinks with a fond smile while walking slowly along the quiet path, his hands buried deeply in his pockets to stave off the cold.
He treasures this life that he's had more than anything that's ever been dear to him because it's been so wonderfully long and big and encompasses so much.
He hasn't needed to grow old to understand that. And still it's been seventy-eight years.
Many of his memories have already vanished, and many others are blurring around the edges, some less, some more. Like the way he's shuffling along is getting smoother, past events have lost their edges now as well.
He's ceased to mind that. There was a time when he was afraid of losing all that is dear to him, but then he realized that it wasn't only the good times that seemed to retreat into the shadows of the passing years, but the bad times as well, making their hurts and stings gentler.
He's come to like being old. Things have become easier.
Most times nowadays he's busy with assembling the shards of long gone decades, because he hasn't been busy with anything really since he retired a little less than fifteen years ago. He's come to be content with sitting next to his wife by their fire-place, its warmth curling around their tired bones like the cats their children used to have long ago. They are waiting for the little ones to visit, or to call – though, he has to admit with a fine smile, they do that often enough. They are good kids.
Still, all his wife and him seem to do nowadays, is waiting. Waiting for anything to happen, and for nothing. It's good. They talk to each other, each word slow and carefully pronounced because both of them know that the other can't hear so well anymore. It doesn't matter. This life has become slow anyway, and so they have enough time for all the words they want to say.
Often they talk of their children and their grandchildren, which are their lights in the long road that's been their life. Some events have been mentioned a hundred times or oftener and are still as new and beloved as on the day they happened. The first smiles of Anna and Michael have survived the decades and all the storms of long past winters. Many other things as well.
They can spend hours, and evenings, and weeks talking about them, with the wonderful and satisfying feeling of having someone sitting next to you that's been there since a time you can't hardly remember to have ever been different.
Sometimes they talk about the people that have crossed their path and walked a while with them before disappearing in the woods that linger just next to the pebbled way, or simply turning at another crossing, with or without the promise to return to your own way in some hours, days or years.
He still remembers a time when talking of these people hurt like getting shot in the chest – searing pain – but that has gradually lessened and now the scars of these wounds of so long ago are still a little tender to the touch, but have ceased to hurt.
Now he likes to talk of the people he once knew and of the footprints they've left in the sands of his time as he is certain that one day a mighty wave will come to erase them.
Maybe that wave will drag him into the water as well, and then he'll beg that it'll take his wife with them because he couldn't bear to be separated from her. Probably she'll follow him anyway.
A little he's afraid of that wave, but then he's also come to be curious where he'll end up after the long journey through the ocean depths.
Maybe he'll see Kate again, whose memories have hurt for so long, and who's been dead for almost fifty years now. She never knew his wife and if he's honest he can't really remember her, either. He's sure that he felt comfortable around her, and that's just about everything that's still alive of the woman he called ‘friend' so many decades ago. He'd like to see her again, and look into the face whose expression has been lost among the heap of memories of so long a time.
He remembers more of the others with whom he worked together because none of them had to die as young as her and their paths were the same for a longer while.
His friends.
His companions on a road through the decades, who have sometimes carried the burden on his back, and whose burdens he sometimes helped to shoulder as well. Walking is easier that way.
He smiles as he thinks of them. Of the whirlwind that was Ziva.
She stayed in the US for seven years only, he remembers, and though she left to return to Israel again, he's kept in touch with her for almost three more years. Then she got married and had two children of her own, and one month one of them forgot to call and the other forgot to call back six weeks later, and so they've grown apart. Sometimes he misses her. In her own way she was a dear friend, and he's sorry now because he'd like to know how she is and how she has fared.
His last call four years ago went unanswered. He's sure, though, that she's still alive. And maybe she's walking through the streets of Jerusalem right at this moment just like he's strolling through the park here. He'd like to see her now, with white hair and all that energy softened and less explosive. Still, he can't picture her sitting in her stuffed chair as his own wife is wont to do, knitting some socks for their grandchildren. But he'd like to know. Maybe he'll call her once more tomorrow. Or maybe not. It doesn't really matter any longer. Soon he'll be seeing her anyway.
He smiles a little as he watches the cold trees amidst the shadows around him, his slow breath hovering in the air.
He's looking forward to seeing them all again. Maybe Ducky will be in the midst of telling one of his stories when he meets him because he was always doing that. It never changed. Not even after he finally retired from NCIS just after Ziva's return to her own country. They met up with him often in the following years and it was a shock to them when one night he fell asleep and wouldn't wake no more.
He died a happy man, he remembers, because he told them so, and didn't regret anything. It was a strange kind of sadness they all had felt standing at his grave; you could have mistaken it for some kind of glad melancholy if you hadn't known him or them. Ducky had lived a long, good life, and went easily. No pain. It was a worthy and dignified end.
Fond memories have made him survive in the hearts of his friends, and they've all missed him for a long while but his death was easy to accept. Eighty-eight is a good age to die.
Another ten years for him. He doesn't know whether he'll reach it or ever wants to reach it. It doesn't matter.
He looks up for a moment. Night has now fallen completely and stars begin to blink in the black depths of heaven above. He's walked for a long time and he should really be turning. His wife is only going to worry about him and he'll still be able to tread the road of remembrance on his way back. The mind doesn't need his feet going forward to go backwards itself. It's all it ever does nowadays anyway.
So he casts a glance at the trees in front of him, at the snow in their crowns, and at the path that seems to end there in the dark shadows. He doesn't want to walk to that point. Not yet. One day he'll go on and stand in front of the cross that marks the way there. Or maybe it doesn't mark the end, but only a crossing where the lonely traveler can change to another path if he likes. One day he'll see. For now he turns back. Homeward to the fire-place to warm his fingers.
His breath ghosts in front of his lips and he lets his mind take its own path again.
He remembers that it wasn't long after Ducky's funeral that their team – their old team – was finally breaking apart.
Gibbs' retirement day. Their boss lastly left NCIS because he felt he had done enough. Rightly so. Almost four decades he had worked there and after Ducky was gone he knew that he had to go, too. It wasn't his to change the world.
They had visited him from time to time in the village he had moved into, had even gone sailing with a boat that finally got finished. It was the point he realized that Gibbs had done well in leaving. Burying the past by building a boat.
Sailing had been nice, and he'd never seen Gibbs so relaxed before as with the wind in his now grown out hair. He had returned home, missing his boss but glad that it had been a good decision for him to retire. They had often spoken in the following years and through their calls he got to know a different Gibbs. Sometimes their new relationship reminded him of the one his boss had had with Ducky. It was a good feeling that warmed his heart.
Shortly before his death twenty years ago they had seen each other for the last time. Gibbs had been old by then, softer around the edges like his own memories, and they had spent the whole weekend reminiscing about the past. They talked about all these years that had been lost even then, and later, as he had been about to leave, Gibbs had given him his boat to care for, along with a set of keys.
They opened a safe that held the last photographs of Gibbs' first wife and daughter, and he had cried then, realizing what a great friend the boss he had feared so much in the beginning had become.
Their pictures, along with Gibbs', sit now on his mantelpiece as if they'd been friends he'd known long ago. In a way, they'd been, though.
He's still paying someone to look after the boat and sail with it from time to time as he himself has become too old to use it how it is supposed to. It was too great a gift to be left rotting at some dock. In the same way he still ensures that Gibbs' grave is tended to. He saw to it that he was buried next to the ones he loved most. Just like he himself will one day rest next to his own wife. Together until there are no more winters on this earth.
He blinks back a few tears. They come so easily nowadays, unbidden and quick. A cold hand brushes over a cold cheek. He'd like to be home now, in the presence of the one his heart has belonged to since the very first time he saw her.
It's not far anymore. Literally and in all other senses of the word.
After Gibbs' retirement there was no team any longer and so he was quickly reassigned to another one, where he slipped into the position of team-leader. His own team. A long way he had come from that day on since he first stepped over the threshold of NCIS headquarters. Yet, though he'd done a good job, or so he's been told, and become friends with the new colleagues, it was different, and never the same again. Something had been lost.
Tony had always said the same.
His friend had long before been made team-leader as well, but hadn't been able to stay in Washington. He'd gotten transferred to Los Angeles, and visits to the capital became scarce and infrequent. And so, over the years, they lost contact though they had sworn to forever stay close. He doesn't really remember who broke that oath first. It might have been him, it might have been Tony.
The only thing he knows that losing touch with Tony is one of the very few things he's come to regret in his life. They had really gotten close in all those years they'd been working together. More than twenty. The brother he'd never had.
He'd been thinking about him a lot, and about the old times, and about the few meetings that always left him with a strange pain in his heart after they'd separated again. And then, just about when he'd worked up the courage to finally call him tomorrow, he'd seen the short notice at the NCIS blackboard. A bullet had taken Tony's life. Death had sought and found him.
Abby and him had flown to his funeral, both of them devastated at the loss that had actually happened years before.
Fifteen years have passed since that day, and he's made sure to see Abby each week in all those years. Or at least call her.
She's the only one who has remained of these dear friends that he had so long ago, and who knew him better than anyone except for his wife.
Now it's only him and Abby.
They have managed.
They've grown old and have changed, and though there was a time when he'd never have thought to see her lose her pigtails and black clothes, that day has come, too. Even Abby has now grandchildren, whom she adores. Sometimes his and hers play together in the sandpit and then the two of them are a little reminded of the old times when it was still the six of them. Every once in a while he or she starts to cry a little, but that usually also passes again.
Memories have grown blurred and old hurts softer. It's worked for her and him, and most of the time they are content. They can go to their wife and husband, and sit in front of the fire-place to have their aching joints warmed. It's a good life, still.
He smiles. The stars seem very bright tonight, he thinks as he fumbles the door-key out of his jacket. He loves to walk these paths from time to time, and to lose himself in the tangled webs of fond and not-so-fond memories. They all belong to him and he'd never trade them.
His life. A path, interwoven with so many others, steadily following only one of all those that were there once, and that have been lost in the passage of time.
"Darling," he says to his wife as he presses a kiss to her silvery hair.
"I'm home again."
She simply covers his hand on her shoulder with hers.
"I know," she says with her comforting voice. "Come and sit. The fire reminds me of that day when Anna…"
He smiles and complies the bidding, embracing her frail but dear body for a moment.
"I love you," he whispers.
He isn't sure whether she's heard him, but that doesn't matter. She knows.
The End.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
A lot of decades have passed and McGee has gotten old. One winter evening, he walks through the park near his home and remembers his friends of long ago and what has become of them.... Oneshot, no slash, character death (but not descriptive!)