Chapter 10 - Epilogue

It was a quiet first birthday for Caitlin held in Gibbs' backyard at around 11 am for early lunch. This meant they were able to squeeze in a morning nap and an afternoon nap so Caitlin wouldn't do her Cait-zilla act. They were all there: Uncle Tony, Aunty Ziva, Aunty Jen, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Ducky and Uncle Gibbs. Somehow 'Uncle Jethro' never felt quite right.

Abby and Caitlin were dressed in matching outfits: tartan skirt, white top, black stockings and black leather shoes with matching hair styles except that, to Abby's disgust, Caitlin's hair was curly, a trait Abby was convinced had been inherited from McGee's side (or 'the shallow end of the gene pool' as Abby referred to it).

McGee looked over to where Caitie played with uncle Tony. They had started using the diminutive 'Caitie' soon after she was born. Neither of them had realised how much pain using the name Cait would cause them. In hindsight, thought McGee, they should have perhaps used Caitlin as a middle name in Cait's honour and given their daughter her own name. Like Arwen, the Elf princess in Lord of the Rings. Except he knew Abby would never go for it.

McGee smiled as he remembered the day they had asked Tony to be Caitlin's Godfather. It had been McGee's day to work and Abby had brought Caitlin in at lunchtime for a visit. Tony had grinned from ear to ear. Not only was he happy to be included but he could finally do his Godfather impersonation.

"So can I ….," Tony had started.

"No," Abby cut him off.

"but…"

"No," McGee had backed Abby up.

And thus he didn't wear cotton wool in his cheeks for the service.

Then Abby had done something McGee hadn't expected. She went to Ziva's desk and asked if she would be Caitlin's Godmother. Although they had unanimously agreed that Tony should be Caitlin's Godfather, they hadn't discussed a Godmother

Ziva was, of course, a different religion, but apparently only one Godparent had to have the right paperwork and Tony already fitted the bill in theory if not in practise. McGee thought it oddly appropriate that a girl conceived in a coffin and born in a morgue should have a trained assassin as a Godmother. The same reason he had thought it appropriate one night to use one of Abby's Peruvian death masks as an improvised teething ring.

Tony looked up from playing with Caitlin. "I think someone is making me a little present," he said.

McGee saw Caitlin straining into her diaper. "She's her father's daughter," McGee laughed, "You always give me the.."

"I'll take her," Abby cut in lifting Caitlin high in the air and sniffing her diaper.

"Mmmm, chocolate mini-muffin poo, Yum!" she savoured.

Tony pulled a face as Abby jiggled Caitlin into the house to change her. Although McGee had become quite proficient at diaper changes, he didn't relish the output as much as Abby. She liked to analyse the diaper contents in gory detail and he was sure it was only a matter of time before she brought the spectrum analyser home from work. The most interest he could muster was to remember to remove his tie before he started.

Still the diaper changes didn't worry him as much as he had initially feared. He hadn't factored in the all-consuming love he would feel for the little creature he and Abby had created and those emotions took the edge off the disgust he had when cleaning up the by-products of any one of her many orifices.

Abby brought Caitlin to his arms.

"Dada," she squealed in delight.

It still irked Abby. After carrying this creature inside her for nine months, ripping herself apart to deliver her into this world, feeding her until her breasts transformed from 'perky' to 'size 34 long', the first word her daughter blessed her with was 'dada'.

"What about me?" she had asked her. But Caitlin was daddy's girl. Many was the weekend Abby would find Caitlin sitting on her father's lap holding her own miniature mouse while the two of them played games on the dual-head display. He was even training her in the geek basics: learning to tell the difference between Star Trek series. Caitlin had a definite preference for the original series. Abby didn't mind so long as it wasn't the one she referred to as 'deep shit nine'.

Of course Abby wouldn't have minded if Caitlin was daddy's little girl in the dead of night. Then only mummy would do. It was just as well really as McGee seemed to develop some kind of nocturnal frequency dependant deafness which meant he never woke up to Caitlin's cries.

Gibbs brought out the cake and McGee placed Caitlin gently on the ground so she could totter over on her stocky McGee legs giving her big, if sparsely populated, Abby smile. She had only been walking for a couple of weeks but she seemed to enjoy her new found freedom. Everything in both their apartments had been moved about three feet higher.

McGee offered Abby his arm for the short stroll to the birthday cake and smiling, she took it. On the way over, he picked up the doll Caitlin had been given as a present. With its black pigtails and studded collar, there were no prizes for guessing who it represented. Sensibly, it was soft and machine washable. Ziva had already used it to demonstrate various lethal pressure points to Caitlin and similarly Ducky had used it to illustrate a point about the optimal place to make an incision during autopsy.

Abby and McGee stood side by side as a vaguely off-key rendition of Happy Birthday was sung. They had become a couple mainly through apathy. The first six months had been a whirl of nappies, feeding, no sleep and juggling work but as the dust settled they found a routine that worked for all three of them. There seem to be no time for anything like dating other people. If you weren't working or playing with Caitlin, you were desperately trying to catch up on lost sleep. It was a haphazard arrangement that suited Abby rather better than it suited McGee. If McGee had his way, his entire life would be planned from his birth up to and including his death.

Sex in some ways had become more adventurous. Caitlin's cot tended to be next to the main bed for nocturnal ease but McGee was not keen on having sex in front of their daughter. He didn't even go for Abby's suggestion of covering the cot in a sheet so that it resembled a giant birdcage. This forced them into other rooms of the house and provided Abby with an interesting array of on-hand appliances to try.

Caitlin smiled up at her parents, letting big globs of cake leak out from between her teeth. Uncle Tony squatted down to her level and whispered in her ear to tell her to go and wipe her hands on daddy. Caitlin stood up, walked to the side of uncle Tony and swiped him on the back of the head. Caitlin really had become one of the team.