Work Text:
PTSD does not look good on a Special Agent.
Uncontrollable bouts of anxiety, attacks that make her forget how to breathe and how to see and how to be Kate Todd, grappling panic that claws from the inside out and burns leaves her nothing but a shell until the waves pass? That lack of control kills agents.
Kate refuses to admit to that lack of control. Refuses to acknowledge the nights she still wakes up gasping for air covered in sweat, fingernails digging into Gibbs’ back with a shuddering sob: “Kill him. Gibbs, please tell me he’s dead.”
She knows that Gibbs has woken up himself in a similar state, with Kelly trapped on the tip of his tongue. Thought he wouldn’t bring her nightmares into their work place. Thought he respected her too much for that, thought he of all people understood how suffocating these things could be.
She was wrong, and when she stumbled into a conversation between Gibbs and Ducky about her bête noir, (“I don’t know what to do, Duck, she doesn’t want the help.” “Our Caitlin is as stubborn as you are, Jethro. She’ll come around.”) she lost all hope of rational thinking.
There isn’t a time at all in their history she felt that betrayed by him. Felt that hurt and that angry with him. She spit venom, wanting more than anything for a direct hit.
“I’ve done nothing but support you through your past demons! Why can’t you do the same fucking thing for me!”
“It isn’t the same, Katie—“
“Don’t you dare! I’ve held you through those same tears, Gibbs. You’ve trembled just as fiercely in my arms. Am I so disgusting to you when I’m weak that you feel the need to fix everything that’s broken?”
He didn’t have any words to respond to that. Not that she gave him the chance to. She spent the night at Abby’s.
Part of her, and the part of Abby that has always been loyal to Gibbs first and foremost, whispered in her ear as she cried on Abby’s shoulder saying thou protest too much. That Gibbs is concerned because he loves her. That his nights grieving for Kelly and Shannon are much different than her anxiety inducing nights filled with Ari.
That Ari has been dead for months, and she still cannot look Ziva in the eyes. That sometimes she can’t breathe even in the daylight becase she can still hear him, still smell him.
That it has been months. It has been six long months. And Kate is still suffering.
The space of Abby’s place and the misery of sleeping alone was enough to make her willing to seek solace in his strong arms. She was going to apologize – she really was – when she walked into work that day.
But then she saw him smiling with Diane.
In all fairness, Fornell was right there, too. She didn’t know why they were there, but she really didn’t care. She didn’t understand how Gibbs could look so at ease with an ex wife while his current…whatever she was…spent the night away from home.
Add insult to injury when Director Shepherd popped into the bull pen to hand deliver them a case. “Got one for you to handle, Jethro.”
“Is that so, Jen?”
The names thrown between them as easy as a Katie. She really does hate the history and heat he has with these women.
He made quick work of tossing on his coat. “Kate, you’re with me.”
So he noticed her after all.
She still doesn’t know what possessed her, in front of Tony and McGee and Ziva and Fornell and Diane and Director Shepherd and everyone, to flat out refuse him.
“No.”
They have been living together for over a month. They drive to and from work in the same car. They share easy smiles and warm touches here and in the field and everywhere. She knows he told Ducky, and she told Abby. Tony frequently makes inappropriate comments that gets him elbowed (her) or head slapped (Gibbs.) Ziva saw, first hand, how Kate’s things were scattered throughout their home before she even moved in. Saw how comfortable coffee and breakfast is between them.
They all know their relationship, and her refusal, isn’t just a working one. It’s personal.
Except maybe the director. And Fornell. And Diane.
Although, with the way the air was sucked out of the room and thick silence settled around them -- with the way their eyes opened wide and jaws dropped as their gazes bounced between both Agent Gibbs and Agent Todd -- they might have figured out otherwise.
God, she was (is?) a mess.
“Ziva, with me. Now.”
Ziva immediately followed his orders. And with anger (and concern, and fear, and love) in his eyes that never left Kate's, Gibbs left.
Kate would give anything, anything, to take it back. To have been the one there with him when a simple interview turned into a shoot out.
Ziva’s first call was for an ambulance. Her second was to the director. Her third, against protocol, was to Kate.
So now she’s sitting in the hospital waiting room, Ziva scratched up and dirty (and probably needing stitches) at her side. Not that either of them being there is doing any good. They’re his subordinates, not his boss. Kate isn’t his wife.
No one will tell them anything.
According to Ziva, Director Shepherd has disappeared with a member of the hospital staff through the double doors and has yet to come back. Kate could kill her for it.
“He is probably still in surgery,” Ziva offers after over an hour of silence.
Kate closes her eyes.
“It did not look so bad. He was conscious. He told me not to worry you, but I figured I would spare both myself and him from your anger to that nonsense.”
Kate grips the arms of the chair so tightly her knuckles turn white.
“They will remove the bullet and he will be woofing orders at us in no time.”
Kate’s ears are ringing. She can’t seem to catch her breath.
“Are you all right?” Ziva hovers over her, all wild hair and kind, dark eyes.
Just like her brother’s.
Kate can’t breathe.
“Stop looking at me,” she chokes out. “Ziva, please, stop looking at me!”
Before Kate can make sense of anything around her, Ziva is taking her hands in her own, bringing them to cover Kate’s face, making the hospital and Ziva’s eyes disappear from her vision. Her face is pressed into Ziva’s chest, warm and soft, and she both hears and feels a soft lullaby in a language she is in no position to place, echoing along with the ringing in her ears. She can feel Ziva’s chest rise and fall with each deep breath.
The lullaby eventually wins out over the ringing, and Kate is slowly able to match the rhythm of Ziva’s breaths with her own. She pulls her head away, her sweaty palms still clenching Ziva’s, to find Ziva kneeling in front of her.
Kate swallows, her mouth is dry. “Thank you, I… I didn’t mean to…your eyes they…”
Ziva slowly nods her head. “I understand.”
“It’s just, I’m worried for Gibbs, and I’ve been, with you it’s just…”
“Kate,” Ziva interrupts. “I understand.”
The profiler in Kate sees that she does, she really does, in far more than a sympathetic way. It nearly knocks her breath away, again, to think that she’s possibly missed that for so long. “You do.”
“Do you think it is easy for me to look at you? To see you and remember him?” Ziva says. “I have not exactly been trying to get close to you. I suspect that we have made things easy for one another to avoid.”
Kate closes her eyes. “We didn’t meet under the best circumstances.”
“That is an understatement. You think it is my fault.”
Kate realizes she’s still holding Ziva’s hands, and she squeezes them tightly. “No. God, no, Ziva. It’s not… God, none of this is rational or okay. I don’t think badly of you. I don’t.”
Ziva smiles. It’s a slow smile that reaches her eyes, though Kate won’t look into them. “Tony is… an idiot. Observant and smart…and funny and sweet. But if I wanted to, I could take him out. McGee, too. No issue.”
Kate pulls her hands away. “Is that supposed to comfort me?”
“They do not intimidate me. They never did. You, on the other hand? Agent Todd, you’ve been terrifying from the start."
It's the soft way Ziva says it, her voice smooth and her mouth lifted in the corner in a smirk that Kate is sure is trying its best to shield Ziva's vulnerability. "Gibbs always says we could be a partnership to be reckoned with if we wanted."
Kate loses her breath halfway through her sentence, has to close her eyes. Gibbs. Gibbs is in pain somewhere in this hospital and she doesn't know what the damage is, doesn't know if he is okay, doesn't know if he knows she isn't angry with him. Never was, not really.
It’s just, God, it is so much easier to lash out than to ask for help. To admit she needs fixing to the one person she trusts with the broken pieces.
"You love him." Ziva doesn't question the things she already knows.
“I need to see him. I need someone to let me see him.”
Ziva purses her lips and squeezes Kate’s thighs, standing up and straightening her shoulders. “Okay,” she says, and Kate stares at her as Ziva turns on her heel and strides over to the hospital front desk. Ziva, all dark and “ninja scary”, as Tony prefers to call it, leans over the counter, her nose inches away from the poor nurse’s. Kate can’t hear what she’s saying, and on a good day she would jump up and intervene – mostly for the poor nurse’s sake.
But it isn’t a good day, and when Ziva comes strutting back jutting her chin in the direction of the double doors that nurses and doctors keep disappearing through, Kate could kiss her. “Room 207,” Ziva says, and Kate leaps out of her chair.
She almost reaches out to hug Ziva, but she’s not quite there just yet. She smiles a “thank you”, hoping it’s enough.
Ziva smiles back. Her eyes sparkle with kindness. Kate does not think of Ari.
Everything is a blur, and suddenly she’s bursting into room 207 as if she’s on fire, and maybe she is. Maybe everything that burns from the inside out is because she needs to see him, needs to touch him, and let him put it out and love her.
Director Shepherd stares at her as she stands in the doorway, but Kate could care less. Her eyes find Gibbs, looking older and frailer than she ever remembers seeing him, his face pale and his body limp and surrendered in the bed.
But his eyes are bright when he sees her. His smile is wide and carefree. “Heeeeeeey Katie!”
Kate’s eyebrows reach her hairline, and she looks to the director for an explanation.
“He’s on quite a lot of heavy painkillers,” she explains. “How did you get in here?”
Kate ignores the director’s question, focuses only on the uneasy shaking arm that Gibbs holds out in her direction. “Katie, my Katie. You are so mad at me. So mad. Din’t know if you’d come.”
It breaks her heart, and she’s crossing the room and grabbing his hand in both of hers and squeezing and pulling it close into her chest as tears roll over her cheeks. “I’ve been here for hours. They wouldn’t let me in.”
Gibbs closes his eyes, as if her words are washing over his face like a wave. He’s so open, so honest, his expressions completely unguarded. When he opens his eyes again, he looks over at Director Shepherd, who Kate forgot for a moment was even still there. “I broke rule 12, Jen. But it’s okay. It’s Katie.”
Kate feels her face completely flush. Not that after this display (or the one earlier in the bull pen) she would be able to deny anything, but she really needs him to stop talking. Even if it is really endearing.
“Yes, Jethro. I can see that.” She raises an eyebrow at Kate. “I’ll leave you two alone and go talk to hospital personnel. He’ll make a full recovery; they removed the bullet with no real internal damage. He’ll be sore, and has to spend the night for observation, but he should be released tomorrow. I can assume you’ll handle that?”
Kate nods.
“And I’ll see you in my office first thing on Monday, Agent Todd.”
Kate’s eyes snap up to the director’s. She assumed there would be a discussion and lecture regarding a serious relationship between agents, but getting in trouble (see: good Catholic school girl) still gives her chills and practically makes her break out into hives.
Only, when she meets Director Shepherd’s gaze, she sees the smile in it. “Yes, ma’am,” Kate agrees, and the director is out the door.
“M’ happy you’re here,” Gibbs says, practically purring at her.
“You’re on some good drugs here, Gibbs,” she says. “You’re being especially nice to me.”
He reaches his other arm out towards her face, though he misses and practically pokes her eye out before she uses one of her hands to help him reach her cheek. He runs his thumb over her tear tracks. “Love you. Don’t want you mad. Just want you okay. You’re so hurt. I don’ like feelin’ helpless. ‘Specially with you.”
It doesn’t take a heavy dose of pain medication for him to express these things to her. Maybe mostly in his actions and a lot less words, but she knows these things. She has for a long while.
She bites her lip, takes a deep breath. “I need help, Gibbs. I feel so weak.”
“Ain’t weak, Katie,” he slurs. “So strong. So so so strong.”
Out of all his words, these mean the most.
“Willya stay? Hospital s’not comfortable. But need you anyway. Last night sucked. You make me sleep better. Forgot how to without ya.”
She laughs through her tears. “God, Gibbs. Don’t let a suspect ever know how much you’re affected by medication.”
His smile is so wide. “Not the meds. Just you.”
“Of course I’ll stay,” she tells him, leaning her body into his hospital bed, needing to be closer, closer, closer.
He pulls her so she stumbles onto the mattress, and she’s careful not to touch him anywhere that might hurt. He pulls her so her ear is next to his mouth as he says, “of course I’ll help you, Katie. You’ll be just fine.”
He kisses her cheek (well, he misses and kisses the side of her eye) and she curls gently into his side. “Will I?” she asks, muffled into his neck.
She doesn’t think he hears her. Thinks he’s fallen asleep.
But his grip gets tighter. He aims a kiss in her hair. And there is such conviction, such honesty and love and fierceness when he says, “yes.”
For the first time since Ari entered their lives, she believes it.