I'm a DiNozzo

You Don't Deserve To Be Tired (18)

Ellie's P.O.V.

I hadn't known Jenny all that well, and I didn't have a uber personal relationship with her, but when she died I was still sad.

She was my first director. When Leon Vance came into office, I immediately knew I wasn't going to like him much. The first thing he did was split up team Gibbs. He sent McGee down to the computer lab, dad out to sea, Ziva back to Israel, and me? Well, my thing is math. I'm really good at math. So, I was sent down to the math department. Which, first off, since when have we head that? Second of all, there is no light down there. No light as all.

Well, not no light, but not a lot of light either. There's a single good lightbulb on the ceiling in the middle of the room, in which room, there are 4 desks. My desk, was the one to the left of the door. The space was decently large, considering that each of us working down there had a giant whiteboard next to our desk. 

I love whiteboards. They're stupidly helpful. A few days into my new job, people started taking me seriously. See, when I was in 6th grade, I was taking freshman math. And I started college level math in 10th grade.

Some agent from somewhere came in, holding a stack of paper. He walked over to my desk, and was about to place the papers just, somewhere when I snapped. It had been almost 3 months. Dad was gone -he was an agent afloat-, Jack was gone -he was in Russia-, Ziva was gone -back to Israel-, Tim was down with the geeks, and Gibbs was... well... with a totally different team.

"Stop." I said, glaring at him over the rim of my blue light blocker glasses (Which were a gift from Ducky for my birthday last year, which allowed me to look at screens for longer without my eyes dying). I stood up, my open expo marker still in my hand, as my hands helped my stand up. "If you put those just randomly somewhere on this mess of a desk I will shove this marker up your nose."

I very aggressively pointed to the large bin -long horizontally. "You put your papers on the left side of all of these papers, and I pull from the right side. I will get to it, when I get to it. If you wanted it done sooner, you should've gotten it to me sooner."

The agent looked concerningly at me for a moment, before sticking the papers at the end of the bin. He left in a bit of a hurry then.

A few minutes later, one of my coworkers asked something. 

"Square root of 3136," It was something we all just kinda did. We asked each other things like that all the time. If we couldn't remember something or figure whatever out, we would just say it aloud and someone else would tell us the answer.

"Ugh... 56," I replied, after a few seconds of thinking.

"Thanks."

Another few minutes later, I yawned and my vision blacked for a second. I groaned, and Rob Gorman (One of the other people in the math department) chuckled. "You alright Leah?"

"I'm exhausted." I replied, rubbing my eyes.

"You're a teenager, you have no reason to be tired." The oldest one of us in the math department (A woman by the name of Jemimia) said, scoffing.

"Sorry?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

"Teenagers don't deserve to be tired." She insisted, flipping to a new page in her notebook. "You're so young, you have no reason or right to be tired. You've only been on earth for a few years."

"So, if a teenager is at school for roughly 8 or 9 hours, and that they are doing homework for 6 plus hours doing AP classes, and they need at least 9 hours of sleep for their developing brains, then they may have 0 to 1 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, exercise, socializing; which is actually incredibly important for emotional mental, and physical health, as well as the development of skills vital to their future career, and having many romantic relationships among other things; religious activities, hobbies, extracurriculars, medical care of any kind, chores; also a skill or habit development thing and required by many parents; relaxation, and family time? Not to mention that our parents may or may not pressure you to get a job or you might need to get one for economic reasons. And we have no reason to be tired?"

"Yet your parents do all of the actual hard work."

"Really? Do they now? Because I never knew my mother. And my father was working almost the whole time. I took care of myself. Cooked, cleaned, ect. Were you ever tired in high school?"

"On occasion."

"How many coils did you get?"

"4," She said proudly.

"4? Well, congratulations. I got 23 from doing pretty much everything.  I got out of high school at age 17, immediately started working here at NCIS, then got sent down here. I regularly see a therapist; I have for years; I have a romantic and social life, my boyfriend is serving in Russia, and my Dextroamphetamine, Benzodiazepines, and Citalopram make me tired.

"Don't you dare say that I don't- or that teenagers don't deserve to be or have no reason to be, tired. Because we have every right, and reason to be. Sometimes, more so than you, because our mental states are trashed. So really, we're not only physically tired, but also emotionally and mentally tired too."

"And adult's aren't?"

"No, they are too. It's only that we're doing it on top of school. Which in it of itself is tiring and stress educing.

"Bottom line, is that we deserve to be as tired as we are." I insisted, before returning to the graph in front of me.

"Do you want some help with that graph Leah?" Rob offered, a smirk on his face.

"Yeah, sure." I agreed, drawing the graph up on my whiteboard.

:)

Hope you liked it

I just kinda thought it was something that would happen, and... yee!

Real update coming soon, I'm working on Jack asking Abby, so that'll be coming soon, promise! 

Love you guys!

-Eliza <3