Vulnerable
A/N: In the wake of the sad news we all have gotten recently, I have actually gone back to the very beginning of Season 3 and the muse decided to play some games and this is what happened. If anyone knows what D.C. is like in winter, you'll understand. D.C. is built on a swamp, much like London or Chicago. While it doesn't get hideously cold in the winter (like Chicago), it is a bone chilling cold. Imagine that when you have grown up in a desert your whole life...
This is intended as an infant relationship of the Gibbs/Ziva father/daughter and a soft beginning of Tiva...though Tony needs to watch himself since Y Pestis.
It was a third day in a row that Mossad Liaison Officer Ziva David woke up feeling awful. She was undeniably cold, no matter how many blankets she piled on her bed or how high she set the space heater that Ducky gave her a month ago.
She rolled over and looked at her clock. 4:45 a.m.; time for her morning run. Ziva dragged herself out of bed, ran a brush through her curls, taming them by putting her hair in a ponytail, finished getting dressed and then ventured into the cold, damp, December morning, just days away from Hannukah. The air hit her already aching lungs, making her cough violently, making her chest and back ache even worse. After catching her breath, she began to run her regular route. About a mile an a half into her routine, she had to stop. She couldn't breathe and her chest and back were a mass of stinging nettles. She held onto a mailbox and allowed the stinging and burning to settle down before she chose to push herself further. With frequent stops and starts, she made her usual 5 miles, ending up back at her Silver Springs apartment a little before six. Cursing in Hebrew under her breath, she showered quickly, texting McGee to please get her a breakfast burrito when he picked up his and then broke several traffic laws getting into NCIS on time.
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She was seated at her desk, going over emails, when McGee strolled in a little after 0700. He tossed her her usual breakfast burrito of eggs, cheese, mushrooms, onions, garlic and green peppers. He placed a large ruby red grapefruit juice on her desk. She looked up at him with questioning eyes as she fished out the money to pay him back.
"You've been looking a little under the weather lately and I know you'd enjoy the juice," he said, hoping his judgment wouldn't be taken the wrong way. While she normally threatened Tony when she felt misjudged, slighted or wronged, and she had threatened him a couple of times and, frankly, she scared him shitless.
Her features scrunched in incomprehension. "Under the weather? What does that mean, Tim?" she asked, genuinely curious.
McGee shifted nervously, knowing she could take his explanation wrong. "I mean that you look like you're still not feeling all that well, given the fact that you're still getting over that cold and the change of climate from Israel and it being a desert country and all and this kind of cold and damp can be really hard to get used to and-"
Instead of taking insult at his statement and sentiment, she said, softly, "Thank you McGee. That was very thoughtful of you, but I am fine. I do appreciate the juice, though. Ruby red grapefruit, yes?"
McGee smiled at her, "Yeah. I remember you said you liked it."
He was rewarded with her most beautiful of smiles as she handed him his money and began to open her burrito. McGee felt himself flush a little and realized once more, what a beautiful young woman his new friend and teammate was. She already fascinated him with the wealth of "spy" knowledge she possessed in the very short time he had known her. She wasn't just some assassin, but an intelligent and capable operative, flexible in her thinking, funny whether she intended to be or not and an amazing cook. He already valued her as a new friend and trusted her completely at his back. When she told him that she had his six, he knew he was safe. He trusted her. Who best to protect his six, but a trained assassin on his side?
After sitting down at his desk and logging into his email account, he began to watch her, observing. She still looked under the weather. She ate listlessly, almost mechanically, yet drank her juice with passion. Every few minutes were punctuated by coughing and her hand drifting up to rub at the center of her chest as if it hurt. McGee was rapidly becoming concerned about his newest teammate. He felt a new kind of protectiveness begin to burn in hs chest. She was still sick.
The elevator dinged and Gibbs strode out, his signature first coffee of the day in hand. "David, McGee, where's DiNozzo?" he asked, eying his Mossad Liaison Officer. She looked like hell.
"Right behind you, Boss!" Tony piped up, exiting the stairway.
"Glad to see that you could make it," Gibbs said. "David, you okay?" he asked with a gentleness in his tone. She was pale and her breathing seemed to be off again. She was still clearly ill.
Ziva's head snapped up from her computer screen. "I am fine, Gibbs."
"Okay, just wanted to check since it's your first winter in D.C." He said. "East coast winters can be extreme on the toughest native of us. The cold, the damp and the Nor'easterners can take their toll. You need anything your first winter here, you just let me know and I'll help you find it."
She stifled a harsh cough as pain flared in her chest. She took a long sip of her juice. "Thank you, Gibbs."
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The call came out at 09:27. Dead Petty Officer in Triangle Park. Ziva couldn't help shivering against the frigid morning. Her lungs, back and chest were almost brittle with pain as she processed the site. She processed the scene slowly, often taking large swallows from her water bottle in an effort to calm the fire burning in her chest. It always worked in Israel. It was not working now. If anything, she began to feel worse. She could barely breathe without pain and a sense of...of...breaking bubble wrap in her chest. It was like having lungs full of seltzer when she breathed and it hurt.
Suddenly, the killer was flushed and she, McGee and DiNozzo took to the chase. Ziva ran less than 150 yards before she couldn't draw enough breath and slowed, her heart pounding, her lungs searing. She dropped to her knees and then onto her side as she wheezed and struggled to draw breath. The icy, wet air did nothing to help her and Gibbs dropped to his knees next to the young Officer.
"Ziva, are you hit?" She shook her head.
"Cannot breathe," she managed to whisper before coughing hard enough to nearly black out from lack of oxygen.
Gibbs was at a loss. "Do you have asthma?" She shook her head and coughed again.
"I cannot breathe," she said again and started to black out.
Gibbs called for an ambulance immediately. Whatever was happening to his young Officer was scaring him very badly. She couldn't breathe. She was pale and shaking, sweating, despite the cold. He took off a glove and felt her forehead. She was burning up. Something was very, very wrong. Up to this very moment, all he knew of her was to be a wildly strong slip of a girl. Intelligent, fearless tough and frighteningly invincible. Close enough to a Marine to earn his deep respect. Not knowing what else to do, he raised her head and shoulders and rubbed her back, trying to clear any blockage that might have settled there. She coughed violently and let go of a mess from her respiratory tract in the snow. It was stained pink.
Her breathing eased somewhat. "Thank you," she rasped. She lay her head on his shoulder. She felt so weak that it frightened her. The last time she felt so awful was when she was seven and had Scarlet Fever. She had nearly died. "How sick am I, Gibbs?"
"I don't know. The ambulance is on it's way and we'll find out," Gibbs said in the softest voice he had. He stroked back her hair and suddenly realized how very soft it was; the softest part of this impossibly young Mossad Officer he had come to know of her. He gazed at her and realized that she was not much more than a teenager, perhaps just out of college age, still, very much a kid. He felt paternal instincts beginning to stir in him toward her. So young... "Just try to relax and don't worry about the investigation. DiNozzo and McGee can handle it. You just get better. I don't want Jenny to have to explain to your father why we didn't take better care of you. You're getting checked out in the hospital. When you get well enough you have a head slap the size of the Grand Canyon coming to you for not telling me that you didn't feel good at the very beginning."
Ziva grinned up at him and coughed hard, holding her chest. "Promise?"
Gibbs raised his hand in a mock threat. "Oh, David, for this scare, I promise."
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Ziva lay quietly, an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose and an IV feed in her arm. Antibiotics were being pumped into her as Gibbs sat at her bedside, holding her hand as she slept peacefully.
The door opened and a doctor walked in. "You are...?"
"Her boss," Gibbs said. "NCIS. She almost got herself killed on a crime scene today because she's sick and collapsed. What's she got?"
The young doctor eyed the silver haired man for a moment before speaking. "She has a severe case of pneumonia. How long has she not felt well?"
"This morning."
"That can't be right because the infection took hold too fast."
Gibbs stared at the woman. "Could be since she was raised in a desert climate. She doesn't know what it's like to be wet and cold for days on end."
Doctor Webber stared at Gibbs. "Desert climate? She from Arizona or New Mexico?"
"Israel."
Doctor Webber made notes in her chart. "That makes everything different. She obviously has no immunity to this."
Gibbs became irritated. He stared hard at the physician. "What does that mean?"
"That means that we need to be more aggressive in her treatment. She has nothing in her to fight this. If she grew up in a climate that had wet, cold winters, she'd have some immunity. I can wager that she never even had much of a cold in her lifetime."
"She had one a few weeks back," Gibbs supplied.
The doctor nodded. "That helps to explain the severity of this. Pneumonia often presents worse after a cold. Her lungs have little to no defense against it because her immune system hasn't had a chance to return to normal yet. Being from a country that doesn't get real winters just adds to it. Mr. Gibbs-"
"Special Agent Gibbs," he interrupted.
"Special Agent Gibbs, I'd like to keep Ms. Da-"
"Officer David."
"Officer David overnight for observation and close monitoring," Dr. Webber said, duly corrected. This was Bethesda, after all. "Not only is her breathing very labored right now, but I do not like hearing the amount of congestion in her lungs. Are you sure she only complained that she was sick this morning?"
"Nope. Never complained. Officer David doesn't know how. She's Israeli Mossad, Kidon, and will never complain," Gibbs said, enlightening the doctor. "The cold she had, a couple of weeks back, would have sidelined any of the other agents on my team, yet she just grabbed tissue, some extra vitamin C and kept going, even though I could see she was miserable. She wouldn't admit to it and wouldn't stand down, even when ordered. Wouldn't even take half a day off to let herself feel miserable. She's one tough kid."
The doctor shook her head. "That toughness might have cost her."
"What do you mean, doctor?"
"She just didn't get sick overnight. She's been suffering for a few days. Didn't you know?"
Gibbs stared hard at the doctor before speaking. "I told you that she didn't complain and wouldn't stand down. She looked off, but wouldn't admit it and I couldn't make her go home and rest, and I tried. I ordered her to and she just gave me the death glare back and continued to work. She's Mossad and only our Liason Officer and I officially have no official control over her at this time. Goin' on respect. If I did, I would have relieved her of duty. You get this, doc?"
Doctor Webber nodded, having time dealing with Marine Elite Units coming back, broken and the only thing they had was courage and determination and devotion to their brothers. Mossad couldn't be much different, right? "She's too determined and proud to give up her teammates, or sacrifice them just because she needs to fight through."
Gibbs gave her a half smile for trying. "Yeah. She's one tough as nails kid. She's a fighter."
Suddenly, alarms went off in the room and Ziva arched and then lay very still.
