There were only two public acknowledgements that the world as they knew it had been shattered: a small one column article and a story on ZNN at two a.m. that they all only saw after the fact. Abby had the clip, only two minutes long, on loop in her lab for three days straight until Gibbs finally turned it off, Abby collapsing in his arms in tears. The story was in one of the inside pages of the local daily newspaper that McGee had read faithfully after moving into the D.C. The title of the article: Cargo Ship lost at Sea, No Survivors. There had been the name of the ship, The Damocles, and said it was headed for Somalia, and had departed from Jordan. There was no cause listed, other than weather conditions. Tim skipped the article, going straight for the literary reviews. After finding that newspaper a few months after, more like a lifetime after, and looking at the snippet about the accident on the opposite page he was reading, he stared at it for a half an hour. He never threw out that newspaper, instead keeping it in a copy of Deep Six, in between the pages where Officer Lisa was introduced, with the article-side showing.
It was a Monday when they found out. Like any other day, it started with the normal grumbles and groans about the official end of the weekend. The day started like any other, at least like any other when she was gone, with Tony and McGee bantering back and forth, as if they had forgotten that she wasn't just the last one in, but was never coming in again, probably. However, this trance was broken, per usual, when Gibbs came in, informing them of a situation with a rousing "Grab your gear", and no one questioned the empty desk or lack of a female brown haired ninja racing with them to the elevator.
The crime scene was not extraordinarily tame, bloody, gory, beautiful, ugly, or any other adjective that could be used to describe the ones that really stuck out in the minds of the MCRT. It was another Petty Officer-gunshot wound to the torso-in-a-field kind of cases, and even though it sounded crass and inappropriate to Tony, and although he knew and recognized that this was someone's son and maybe father, husband, brother, friend-it just was like so many other cases, nothing special. They investigated the crime scene, one man-or woman in this case- short, and it took them longer than the smooth efficiency that had been perfected shortly after Zi… no HER arrival. It hurt Tony, even internally to say her name.
Later, after they had done the initial background check and Gibbs had given them further research assignments, it happened. A skinny, white haired man walked into the bullpen, with a small wooden box in his hands, flanked by a burly security guard. Even though the team didn't notice him at first, until he was upon them, he was about to deliver a death blow to them. They just didn't know it.
The man cleared his throat, and their heads all snapped up. The security guard and Gibbs shared a look, before the guard left Officer Bashan, a visitor, in their presence alone. Bashan, who had not looked up from either the box in his hands or the guard's back, locked eyes with Gibbs. In his eyes, Gibbs saw sorrow and regret, so he decided to treat him like a victim; tread softly, and not push at first, like he did with children and widows. Even though he knew the man was a hardened Mossad officer, he decided not to take the harsher approach reserved normally for criminals and terrorists.
"Special Agent Gibbs, how can I help?" Gibbs said, in a voice that wasn't gruff, but wasn't kind.
"I'm Officer Bashan, Mossad officer attached to the embassy. Is there somewhere I can talk privately with you? This matter demands delicacy." He said, almost authoritatively yet rehearsed, but with a slight tremble in his voice, invisible to everyone except himself.
He followed Gibbs, only Gibbs, to a conference room off of the main squad room. Bashan looked around him discreetly while walking behind Gibbs, knowing that this was the last place that Ziva had been truly happy in her life. They sat down at the table, Gibbs offering Bashan a drink, Bashan declining.
"So, what's in the box?" Gibbs asked, getting to the point.
Bashan opened the box slowly, cringing slightly. He didn't like delivering bad news to families of the deceased, especially when he knew the deceased personally. And he knew her personally, since she was a small girl. He had hoped her life would've been fuller, and had a happier ending.
In the box, was a dog tag on a chain. Three lines were inscribed in the metal, the first reading a number, the second reading David and the third reading Ziva. The metal glinted in the sun falling through the window, and showed the inscription to Gibbs immediately, whose face fell. There was no second dog tag, like there would've been if she was alive. Gibbs knew immediately what Bashan was trying to tell him. He was in the military, and the Marines had a similar practice. There was only one dog tag if the one that was attached was removed. And that only happened if the solider was dead. Mossad Officer Ziva David was dead.
"How?" Gibbs asked, with an air of finality, acceptance and sadness.
Gibbs hoped it was quick, painless, and she had been unaware. A sniper shot, a bullet to the head while she was sleeping, anything that would calm his mind, so he could say to himself at night when he thought of all the people he had lost "At least so-and-so's death was instant, and they weren't in pain".
"There was an accident on the mission she was assigned to by Director David in Officer Rivkin's place. They were to take a cargo ship to the terrorist camp, The Damocles. The crew, who they had an understanding with, mutinied against them, and it turned out the crew had ties with the terrorists all along. Officer David was shot in the abdomen in a fire-fight between her team and the crew, during which the ship was thrown off course and sunk. Ziva couldn't swim the shore with her injury, and drowned. There were no survivors."
"Was her body recovered?" Gibbs said, sighing and rubbing his face with his hand. Another daughter, lost. How would he tell the team, the people in her life that loved her most?
"It was recovered yesterday. Her body washed up on a beach in a small coastal town in Somalia." Bashan said to the man who was clearly distraught. "Her body is being buried in Tel Aviv next to her sister's. This dog tag is yours. The one that was broken away when she was found is being kept with her body, and the one in her boot is with her father."
Gibbs took a deep breath shakily and nodded. He asked Bashan if there was anything else he should know. Bashan said that she had bled out significantly before she was swept away; so much so that they had yet to determine if she had in fact had drowned first, swept under by the pressure of a sinking ship, or had bled out first.
"It would probably best if she died of blood loss, ironically. Although drowning is painless and Ziva loved being one of the boys …Ziva always hated being drenched in water." Bashan said.
Bashan stood up and shook Gibbs' hand, exchanging the customary pleasantries before showing himself out, using the agent that had stationed himself at the door as his escort. Gibbs sat at the table in shock, collecting himself. Gibbs knew that Ziva dying in the line of duty was a possibility, if not a likelihood, when he left her on that airstrip in Tel Aviv. Hell, she had once told him, shortly after Ari died, while they were alone in his basement that Mossad Officers didn't normally live past the age of thirty, or thirty five, if you were lucky. He picked up the box in the middle of the table, holding it in his rough hands. This was Ziva's legacy, all that they would have in the U.S. of her last moments. The rest were just memories. He placed the box delicately in the inner pocket of his jacket, next to his heart, and walked out of the conference room, the weight on his shoulders feeling twenty times heavier than it had in a long time.
Gibbs walked out of the conference room, wondering how he was going to break the news to the team, the people she loved most, and he loved like they were his family. Since they all had dysfunctional or nonexistent biological families they were like their own family. One that Ziva was a part of. He looked at his colleagues, his family, who had once again lost a member, by for now were peacefully and normally working away: McGee on the computer, Tony on the phone, Ducky and Palmer in autopsy, and Abby testing something in her lab, most likely. He debated on telling them apart, letting them all process the news on their own. But, selfishly on his part, he only wanted to say it once. They all deserved to know first. But he decided not to do it there, in the bullpen, at work, in a public space. This was different than Kate, different than an on the job death, it wasn't something they had to investigate. This event, comparatively, was over, her killers were unknown, but they were dead and drowned. Just like Ziva.
Gibbs, after giving a brief explanation to the director, who gave his condolences, took the liberty of transferring the case to another team and taking a few days off for everyone before leading them all out of the building collectively. Although Gibbs did not know if they all would rather want to be together or apart after the news, he knew that they should not be actively working, trying to find closure for another family's loss when they should be mourning their own.
He herded them into a grassy park area in the Navy Yard, adjacent from the NCIS building. Today, being a weekday during normal business hours, it was deserted except for some coffee vendor a while out. His team followed his lead, intimidated and slightly frightened by the stoic poker face that he had been wearing since Bashan's appearance. He had not really spoken a word to them, and had kept eye contact to a minimum. Gibbs sat down on a bench, avoiding everyone's pry eyes and Abby's incessant questions. He took a sip of the coffee in his hand, tasting the bitter brew that seemed a little harsher than it did previously. Abby sat beside him, with Ducky on his other side, Palmer hovering behind the respected doctor. Tony and McGee were on Abby's other side, leaning on the park bench and looking at Gibbs expectantly. Gibbs took the box out of his breast pocket, and took a deep breath before opening it a sliver and slipping the cold, lifeless tag out of its box. He toyed with it between his fingers, before opening his palm to reveal it to the team.
"Ziva…" Tony breathed, almost inaudible like it was a part of the wind.
There was a moment of silence where Gibbs considered how to proceed. Finally, he decided on a way that he would want to be told that his close friend and coworker, his family, had died alone, drowned in the ocean. Directly, he thought, like ripping off a band aid or pulling a bullet directly out of the bullet hole without anesthetic.
"She was aboard a Jordanian cargo vessel. Her squad was going to track terrorists. The crew was the terrorists' allies. There was an altercation, the ship went down. No one survived."
Abby let out a sniffle, and then a quiet wail that gave way to tears rushing down her face. A young ensign tried to approach, thinking that something was wrong with the young woman, sent and alarmed look their way and started sprinting towards her. Giving the ensign a stern look and a nod, Gibbs sent the man sternly away. They sat there for a moment, shocked, passing the dog tag back and forth between them, touching the last part of Ziva they had.
Gibbs had later found out that the terrorist cell was taken out by another Mossad unit, dispatched shortly after her and her unit's death. She had dispatched useful information, he found out, information called "invaluable" by the beta unit. After hearing that information years later, of course, as it was too classified at first, Gibbs drank a bottle of bourbon witling a small wooden boat, inexplicably. The boat, with a Z elegantly carved onto the stern, found its way onto one of his shelves above his tool bench.
Tony went home in a daze, feeding Kate more than he necessarily would have on a normal day and shoving a piece of cold, day-old pizza in his mouth. Lying down in his twin sized bed, he stared at the ceiling, throwing a stress ball from some training that had found a home on his nightstand up into the air and catching it on its descent. He took a shuddering breath, which to others would sound more distinctly like a sob. He allowed the ball to fall onto his face, touching the tear tracks that were beginning to makes his way down his face. Tony fell asleep that evening, thinking how Ziva died alone, just like Jenny.
Days, years, life changed. Ducky slowly changed from taking out two teacups when he took tea in the morgue to hesitantly taking out only one. He could never stop making enough water for just one cup, always sighing and pouring out almost a full cup, while sighing and fighting back memories of Ziva. Palmer sighed as he opened McGee's latest book, not a Deep Six crime novel, although that was set to come out this summer, but a book of short stories and poetry. The dedication inside the book read: To my team who holds me together, and to Ziva, the woman who changed us and tore us apart. Palmer opened to the poem that McGee told Palmer to read first, although it was chronologically last: The poem "The Fearless Warrior Queen".
She marches into battle
Tall, Strong, and fearless.
Rearing her head
Curls flying in the wind
Raises her sword, prepared for battle
Ready to die, ready to sacrifice,
Although never expendable.
For a moment she is there,
Armor gleaming in the sunlight,
Like a vision of fierce beauty.
Then in a moment, sprouts wings
Takes flight towards the sun, and is gone
Leaving devastation in her wake.
Palmer set down the book on the doctor's desk, and took a deep breath, looking at a picture of the team that rested there in a silver frame. Ziva was in the middle, happy, laughing and alive. Palmer picked up the book and flipped back to the beginning.
The Fearless Warrior Queen & Other Missives was the least successful of McGee's career, making it to number one on the bestseller's list only because of his loyal fans and not because of general public interest. Although everyone knew this, McGee said in a Thom E Gemcity interview that it was the work he was most proud of, because "The stories and poems in the novel are very personal, and it came out of a very emotionally raw time, that turned into something beautiful, that she would be proud of." Although everyone always asked who the "she" was, and the rumors were that it was his lover, he always just shook his head and said "Someone very special, even though she wouldn't agree."
Abby took off her shirt, leaving her only in a sports bra. She lay on the table, waiting. A knock sounded on the door, and she called out for him to come in, ink pots and tattooing machine being rolled in front of him on a sterile-looking cart. She watched Max, her tattoo artist, replace the needle, put on sterile gloves, and open the new pots of ink before laying the outline on her skin. Abby nodded, approving the placement, and took a shallow breath before the familiar hum of the tattooing machine started and she felt the familiar pinches and stings of the needle on the tender skin above her ribs. About an hour and numerous shallow breaths later, the tattoo artist, wiping away the last small drops of blood, allowed Abby to slowly get off of the table and see the new piece of art adorning her body: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." over a light blue Star of David. Abby took a picture to send to her family, and cried silently, mascara running down her face, as the tattoo was treated and wrapped. When Abby was researching a particularly hard compound for a case, or when she was almost to the point where she was falling asleep standing up in front of her computer, she would trace where she knew the Star of the David quote was under her shirt and think of the quote, and gained some extra strength and extra juice, like she had just drank and extra Cafpow!
The stars still rose in the sky; they were just dimmer for them. The days passed. Grass covered with snow, grass grew back in the spring. Seasons changed, the leaves changed colors and fell off their trees. Years passed. Hearts became patched and healed over with lumpy scars as they had with other tragedies they had faced. The bullpen regained its laughs, though they were shallow. They had not changed and they had changed because time had passed, people came and left, and things had changed. It was never the same.