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"What on earth is this, Mr. Palmer?" Ducky asked as he accepted his cup of tea from his assistant. "It's a most unusual color."
"It's a novelty tea I thought you might like to try: this one is eggnog flavored," he explained. "They also had ones called 'Kiss Under the Mistletoe' and 'Lump of Coal.'"
"Mistletoe is poisonous, Mr. Palmer!" Ducky exclaimed.
"I know that doctor, and I checked the ingredients. No actual mistletoe, or other poisonous plants in any of them."
Ducky harrumphed, but took a sip of his tea anyway. It wasn't particularly good, but it wasn't undrinkable. Still, he wasn't sure he wanted to try the others any time soon. Kiss Under the Mistletoe? What on earth would that taste like, shrubbery? And a Lump of Coal?
It might be fitting, actually, for Ducky to share some of the latter one with the former MCRT. Of course, it would take him a while to track them down, now that they were no longer with NCIS.
No, if one discounted young Anthony, way off in the Pearl Harbor office, only Ducky himself and Mr. Palmer remained of Jethro's team and those who had worked closely with him.
Even now he recalled that meeting almost two months ago, when Leon had sent for Ducky and quizzed him on a good number of things he could only have learned from Anthony. Ducky was ashamed to admit that he had allowed Jethro to steamroll over his medical instructions for the boy, and was quite surprised, looking back, at how far things had come.
It had happened little by little, with one small change leading to another, until even Ducky hadn't realized how much they had ignored. And then there was the last case young Anthony had worked for them. Ducky was ashamed to admit that he too had engaged in the banter about movies, knowing that it would frustrate the boy, and only seconds after telling him he wasn't allowed to speak.
Back many years ago, Ducky, Jethro, Abigail, and Anthony would engage in that kind of friendly banter, and he had missed the fact that along the way it had become decidedly unfriendly. He had also missed the fact that young Anthony had been isolated from the team, to the point that one joke from Ducky himself was no longer a single smack against the parapet of Anthony's self worth, but indistinguishable from the rest of the landslide.
Leon had never been Anthony's staunchest supporter until that morning, and Ducky had often wondered how that change had come about. Still, he was quite grateful that at least someone was looking out for the boy, when the rest of them had forgotten. And Ducky was more than willing to sign off on the new regulations regarding working hours, meals, and overtime for all NCIS employees.
Regrettably, those regulations would not apply to the rest of Anthony's former team. Ziva and Timothy had both been charged with gross negligence and depraved indifference towards Anthony's life on their last case. Once he found out the full extent of their actions, Ducky had been so upset with them that he didn't even have words for it.
Finding out about Ziva's espionage and her vendetta against Anthony had been unbelievable, and hearing her threatening his life in interrogation was something he had never expected.
On the other hand, Ducky was well aware of Timothy's book, and how upset it had made Anthony and Mr. Palmer, but Ducky hadn't realized the extent of his folly. Using NCIS cases, and not doing a very good job of anonymizing them! Jennifer, of course, had glossed everything over when it happened, but once Leon pointed it out, it was indeed obvious to Ducky that the close descriptions of the MCRT did put them in danger when they went undercover, as did Jennifer's foolish decision to have Ziva, Abigail, and Michelle appear with Timothy in public.
Ducky was just ashamed that it had taken young Anthony leaving to get those wrongs righted. Especially when they learned that Timothy had continued to write new novels, all using classified cases, and had added characters representing Breena, Ducky's mother, and Leon.
Charges for breaching his confidentiality oaths had been added to those for the Military at Home case, and JAG was predicting that Timothy would spend a minimum of 20 years in jail once the trial finished. Ziva had already been whisked off to a deep dark hole to be questioned about her espionage.
Abigail was the one that Ducky was perhaps the most disappointed in. In the course of her questioning and the audit of her previous work, it came out that she had ignored evidence in several cases. While most of them were to the detriment of young Anthony, there was also the shocking instance of her covering up for a murder Jethro had committed decades ago.
Leon had threatened to fire her, but there was too great a risk that any case she had worked on in the last decade could be called into question. JAG simply didn't have the manpower to retry the hundreds of cases that would result, and no one wanted any criminals to walk free on a technicality — least of all Abigail.
Instead, she had signed paperwork to the effect that she would never work in law enforcement again, have no contact with her former coworkers at NCIS, and do several hundred hours of community service. The last Ducky had heard, she had moved back home to Louisiana and was working with a non-profit construction company.
Jethro had been forced to retire, very much against his will, using the same logic that had been applied to Abigail. Though he hated to believe it, Ducky had to admit that Jethro's thinking had been compromised since he had taken that blow to the head. His return from Mexico had been handwaved by Jennifer, and despite Ducky's own work behind the scenes trying to bring Jethro back up to speed, not everything had fully taken root.
Young Anthony was quite correct that Jethro's thinking had changed, and his anger had become more prominent. Had he submitted to the proper psychological testing all those years ago, he might have eventually healed and been cleared for duty. Instead, he had pushed himself, and suffered numerous other bumps and bruises in the intervening years, and now the damage was beyond repair.
He simply could not continue to work without endangering cases, and without calling into question every case he had worked on since his return. Like Abigail, a quiet retirement was the only way to protect innocent families and keep criminals from being released on a technicality.
He hadn't been happy with it, but Jethro had accepted the necessity. Eventually.
And so, only Ducky himself and Mr. Palmer remained of their little NCIS family. Young Anthony was off at Pearl Harbor, with his fiance, turning that flagging unit around. And of course, Rick Balboa made a fine SAC here in Washington, while his former second, — Lorraine Martinez — and Devon Green from Norfolk ran the two new MCRTs.
Ducky had no interest in visiting his former coworkers — he firmly believed that they were only reaping what they had sown — but he could admit that, wherever they were, he hoped that someone delivered them a little lump of Christmas coal for their past behavior. They'd certainly earned it!