Somebody Else's Name
Author: J.J. Taylor
Rating: PG
Category: Kate/Ducky friendship, episode reaction
Spoilers: Heart Break
Disclaimer: These characters belong to DPB, CBS, Paramount, et al. No copyright infringement is intended.
Webmistress's Notes: This fic was written for Yuletide 2004 for B. Cavis.
The President used to call her Katie. She had liked that, until she realized it was meant to be a joke. Caitlin would have been professional, Kate would have been friendly, but Katie was their way of reminding her that she was a girl among men and none of them would forget it. She might have expected as much from the guys on her team, but from the President, it hurt the part of her heart she was supposed to have closed off when she took the job.
Here at NCIS, she gets the same feeling from Gibbs and DiNozzo and McGee. They respect her--even DiNozzo, under all his taunting--and they trust her, but she remains an outsider in that all-boys world. No matter how hard she fights and no matter how tough she is, she still wears earrings and has curves and turns heads, and that will forever exclude her.
She's used to it by now. She wrestles McGee to the floor in training and laughs about how easy it is. She brushes off DiNozzo's snide remarks about dating life with practiced grace. She's learned to harden her heart in all the right ways, so that when she shoots and kills and innocent man, she doesn't feel anything. It doesn't hurt when Gibbs tells her to get over it. She's even willing to take Gibbs' advice, except it turns out there's nothing for her to get over.
She goes down to the morgue to test herself. To see if she can find a single shred of doubt in her memory of the shooting. If she thought for a second he might be innocent or if she let her feelings about the crime rouse her anger... she knows none of these things are true. The man rushed for Gibbs, she shot him before he could shoot Gibbs. That's all; she knows she doesn't think with her emotions when she has a gun in her hand.
She's down in the morgue long enough to get cold, and for her eyes to hurt from the bright lights and all the stainless steel. She pulls out the body because she just needs to look. To check. He's pasty-white and his lips a thin blue line. He doesn't look either innocent or guilty.
Kate can recall every time she's fired her gun at a person, every time she's shot to kill. They don't add up to many, but there are more than she'd expected. Everyone told her not to think that way; it'll drive you crazy, you won't be able to stop overanalyzing. Kate believes it's the other way around. If she can remember, then she can know when she was right and when she was wrong.
She hears Ducky coming before she sees him, the elevator chime and his tuneless humming. She doesn't have time to put the body away before Ducky comes through the swinging doors. She can't possibly make up an excuse fast enough, so she decides to let Ducky lead. He doesn't seem surprised to see her, which either means he was looking for her or that someone upstairs knows where she's been. She half-expects Ducky to be bringing her a message from Gibbs. "Get over it."
Ducky nods in greeting and picks up their earlier conversation as though it never was interrupted.
"I meant it when I said that we wouldn't see cannibals this far north," he begins. "Columbus' accounts told of a supposedly ferocious group of man-eaters who lived in the Caribbean islands and parts of South America called the Caniba, which gave us the word."
She barely hears what he's saying; she's focused on the body at her side, her inability to move her feet from the spot. Ducky's voice sounds oddly lyrical.
"At the same time that Europeans were condemning various native peoples as cannibals, however, they were practicing a form of cannibalism themselves. Europeans of the period consumed fresh blood as a cure for epilepsy and substances from various body parts to treat a variety of diseases, including arthritis, reproductive difficulties, sciatica, warts and skin blemishes."
Ducky begins straightening up as he talks, adjusting instruments and exam equipment. She watches the casual set of his shoulders, the quirk around his mouth that isn't quite a smile. She rubs her hands together. Her fingers are stiff from the cold.
Ducky looks up at her and their eyes meet, and then he turns to address the corpse. "Well, now, I think it's time we got you back into your cooler here. You've had enough emotional turmoil for one day, and you're causing Caitlin distress that I'm sure, if you had been in a better mind, you wouldn't have chosen." And with one smooth motion, Ducky slid the tray back into the cooler and locked the door.
"Another area of debate," Ducky continues, "is whether cannibalism spreads infectious diseases. Animal studies have suggested that cannibals may be at greater risk for being infected by parasites and diseases from members of their own species than from other prey. One famous study associated human cannibalism with the spread of a fatal viral disease called Kuru in highland New Guinea."
"Ducky," she says, coming back to herself and cutting into Ducky's monologue.
"I'm trying to distract you, Caitlin. If you'd prefer to stay down in the morgue alone with your thoughts, then I'll leave you." It's suddenly plain on Ducky's face that this lecture is entirely for her benefit and he could take or leave the subject just as quickly as he could close a cooler door.
"I did come down here for a reason," Ducky adds, "other than to be your source of information on cannibalism, of course."
It's then that she sees he is holding a pair of tickets in his hands. Opera tickets--obviously meant for Ducky's now impossible date with the doctor. She feels sad for Ducky, who seemed to have found instant camaraderie with this woman until she suddenly turned from physician to suspect to culprit.
Kate thinks Ducky must be trying to get rid of the tickets. She doesn't know what she'll do if he tells her to take Gibbs. Probably blush. What she doesn't expect is for Ducky to invite her to the opera with him.
"It would be a shame for them to go to waste. And it has been some time since we've seen each other outside of these walls."
She says yes before she can even think about how to respond or where this might be coming from. If it's anything other than it should be--friendship and escape--she doesn't want to know.
She goes home to shower and change. Ducky is picking her up in an hour. She pulls out the dress she bought but never had the chance to wear when she worked for the President. She kept it in her closet on the off chance she might attend some event that didn't require her to wear her Secret Service windbreaker.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she wonders what would happen if she showed up to work dressed like this. McGee would probably stutter, DiNozzo would probably wolf-whistle, and Gibbs might not even notice, or simply tell her she had better have a change of clothes in the car in case they got called to a crime scene. She trusts Ducky would only note how well the muted red suited her.
She likes that about Ducky--he's not one of the guys, but neither is he an outsider. He's kind and open in a world where she's guarded, and it's hard to have both of those exist at the same time. She wonders if it's because the weapon he carries is his wit and his medical knowledge. He's formidable and reliable, but he'll never be the one in a stake-out watching your back.
She wants Ducky to be her friend, but she knows Ducky has been Gibbs' friend longer, and it's another line she's wary of crossing.
His relationship with Gibbs is hard to pin down in the first place. They act like the oldest of friends, but they haven't known each other for that many years. She's found their interactions to be a whole lot more subtle than she'd ever imagined, with many levels of brotherhood and intimacy. They way Gibbs touches Ducky's shoulder when Ducky's given him the answer he wants. The way he asks for Ducky when he needs something, like no one else will do.
Gibbs doesn't withhold physical affection, offering claps on the back as rewards and smacks on the head as reprimand in equal measure. But when he touches Ducky, it's deliberate. There's a current that moves between them that she doesn't understand. Like Gibbs is making contact to close the circuit.
She wonders if they've ever kissed. She almost drops her earring down the sink.
At intermission, she still hasn't been able to tell if Ducky's flirting with her. Well, that's not true. She knows he's flirting but she's not sure why. They drink champagne from golden glasses as they wait in the lobby. Kate forces herself not to scan the crowd, locate the fastest egress. Even when she's not on security detail, the instinct is hard to ignore.
"Should we take our seats or would you like more champagne?" Ducky asks close to her ear.
"We don't have to sit yet, Ducky," she says, and then stops. "Would you prefer I not call you Ducky when we're outside of work? I don't think I've ever called you Donald."
"You can call me whatever you'd like, my dear," Ducky says, smiling widely. "So long as it isn't somebody else's name."
He takes her empty glass and he disappears into the crowd. She wonders if her feelings for Gibbs are written all over her, like scars.
Later, when Ducky he takes her hand in the middle of his explanation about how the larynx of an opera singer differs from a normal larynx, she lets him.
"Trained opera singers are able to manipulate the resonator to produce sounds at 2,500 Hz, allowing the singer's voice to be heard above an orchestra," he says.
He presses his thumb into her palm, massaging the muscles of her trigger finger.
