Mourn and Carry On

[madimpossibledreamer]

This has been gathering dust since approximately forever.
Oh, and I got to see Wrath of Khan in theatres again.  Good thing too 'cause I forgot almost everything.
~Dreamer~

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/NCIS crossover (also DMC because the Redgrave thing => different halloween.  not much impact yet on the main story.)
Summary: Things go wrong.
Word Count: 456
Rating: Gen

        “This job never gets any easier.”  Gibbs hadn’t expected to find anyone in the office this early after they’d run into some rather ugly bureaucratic red tape, but Redgrave’s just sitting in the dark, a cup in his hand, at the desk he commandeered for his own. 
        “You’re young,” he replies reflexively.
        “Yeah.”  The response is only factual, without emotion.  There’s a silence.  Gibbs would like to hate this, this interloper, this meddler.
        He can’t.  There’s no military stint in Redgrave-or-Harris’s file, but he holds himself like a Marine.  He can joke around like DiNozzo, but when it’s time to be serious he’s one hundred percent serious.  Still like Tony, really.  He’s good at his job, he respects the team, he’s honest.  Even when there are things he can’t say, he tries to get around that, tries to at least give a few words to fill in some of the gaps.  His team are just as good as he’d said, since they’d managed to catch a few things in the alley even the trained lab techs hadn’t.  He treats them like they’re family, and they respond in kind.
        The silence stretches out, and then the young man’s face crumples.  He’s trying to keep it together, but it’s hard.  “Two of my Sl—Agents are dead,” he mumbles.  It’s the first slip Gibbs has caught, and even as he feels sympathy move in him, he makes a mental note for later.  “It was just supposed to be a little recon.”
        “Drink?” he asks quietly.
        “It sounds great, but no thanks.”  The only response is a raised eyebrow, but it’s rarely failed, and it does not do so this time.  “I don’t ever want to become my Dad, so.  Starting down that road’s a bad choice.”  It didn’t take much to guess where this was going after the results of Abby’s search came in.
        “Alcoholic?”  Redgrave hadn’t said much of anything, other than jokes, about his life, but the mask was starting to fall out of place.
        “Alcoholic abusive bastard, but let’s not get personal.”  The laugh is bitter, but it’s quickly gone.  “Y’know, the coffee was probably also an eleven, but I went with it anyway.  Now I’m on the verge of babbling like Willow, my heart’s beating at probably about a thousand times a minute, and I’m probably going to shake myself off the planet any second now.”
        That’s enough to put the NCIS Agent on high alert.  “Medical emergency?”
        “Nah, I’ll be okay.  Eventually.”  This time, the smile is real.  “Thanks for the concern, though.”  This isn’t a man used to worry on his behalf.  Gibbs relies on his patience to quiet his anger and goes to get a glass of water for the kid.