Making a Choice
By Amanda
An NCIS Fanfic
Ziva-centric
Spoilers for seasons 3-6
Italicized dialogue comes directly from the season 6 finale.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but any original ideas in this story.
{*NCIS*}
The words her father had spoken were still ringing around Ziva's head. "I don't know who you answer to any more. NCIS or Mossad." "I expect your loyalty to me, and only me!" "You return to me, to us! You finish what Michael started!" In all fairness it was a good question. Where did her loyalties lie?
She could remember a time when she put blind trust in her father. He could do no wrong in her eyes. That was part of the reason she so willingly went into Mossad. Why she worked so hard to be the best. Her father expected her to be the best, to be perfect, and she did not want to disappoint him. Her loyalty to him was most of the reason she agreed to be Ari's control officer. She took her father's word at face value and professed her half brother's innocence never questioning the validity of the proof against him. The proof had to be wrong, contrived to give Gibbs a reason to exact vengeance on Ari.
Then she crouched at the top of those basement steps and listened to Ari describe their father. How he put power and control and Mossad above everything, including family. How dear old dad had turned Ari into the monster he had become. Ari had shown their father for the monster that he was. And she didn't want to believe. She didn't want to take this traitor's word over her father's. But Ari didn't know she was there. He was not trying to convince his sister of the horrible man their father was. He was simply explaining how he had become what he was at the directing of his father. He was telling someone that he had absolutely no reason to lie to. And in that moment, right before she pulled the trigger to save a man she barely knew, she saw her father for who he really was.
Going home to Tel Aviv was hard. She did not know how she would look her father in the eye. Not only for what she had done to his son, but for what she had come to know. This man no longer deserved her unquestioning, unwavering devotion and loyalty. Still, she was loyal to the Mossad. And he was the director, so she would be loyal to him for that reason.
Then the offer came from Jenny. Come back to DC and become a part of Gibb's team. This time she refused to give anyone the blind devotion she had to her father. But she had studied Gibbs, compiled a dossier on him for Ari. She knew that he was a good man and she could learn a lot from him. The job started out as just an assignment, a new challenge. Then she came to know and trust and rely on her team. She saw the loyalty they had for each other. There was not one among them that would not do anything to protect the others. She found herself wanting to be considered as one of them. To have that kind of faith in others and have it returned in kind. She saw how each of them earned that trust in their own right. No one, not even Gibbs, was given their loyalty without proving their worth.
When she and Tony had been 'captured' by the assassins on their first undercover assignment, she was surprised at the absolute trust Tony had in both McGee and Gibbs to find them and get them out of the mess. He proved that again when they were trapped in the shipping container. He had absolute faith the Gibbs would find them, before it was too late. And while he was prepared to hold off their captors and leave clues for their boss, he knew that everything would be ok.
She was still Mossad, but more and more as time went on she found herself thinking, no feeling that she belonged at NCIS. She fit here with these people. She trusted them and they trusted her and it was a deeper trust than any she had felt before. In truth she stopped thinking about the possibility of being called or sent back to Mossad. She had fallen in love with Tony, and even though she was sure he didn't love her back she couldn't even imagine having to leave him behind.
Then tragedy struck. The disastrous L.A. 'mission' that cost their director and friend her life. And when the team needed each other the most, when they should have been able to lean on each other to get though the loss of yet another friend, the new director split them up. He scattered them to the four winds. McGee was moved to another building, Tony to an aircraft carrier, and herself back to Tel Aviv. When she was sent back, she never expected to return. It wasn't that she didn't have faith that Gibbs would do everything in his power, and some things that weren't, to get the team back together. She knew that he would pull strings and call in favors and do anything to get them all back home, where they belonged. But she doubted that her father would let her go. She knew that he felt he had lost his control over her, and he was right. So, she threw herself into her work and a relationship with Michael as much to prove her loyalty to her father as to fill the emptiness left by her friends, her family, at NCIS. Four months had passed and she had resigned herself to the fact that she was never going back.
And then one day, she was being sent back to DC, and McGee had been returned to Gibb's team. They were only missing Tony. She was both happy and distressed that he wasn't there. The team wasn't the same without him and she missed him terribly, but it was easier to deal with her feelings for him if he wasn't around. And then Tony was back and it was almost like before. They were strained for a bit, mostly because she insisted on putting space between them that hadn't been there before the separation. And just as things were back where they should have been, this whole mess started.
Michael was in DC and Gibbs and McGee were in LA. She hated lying to Tony just as they had repaired their relationship. She hated being put in the middle, but she had feelings for Michael and it was really none of Tony's business who she saw privately. Then Michael was in LA and 'interfering' with their case and Tony was on edge and she was lying to him and she was still caught in the middle between NCIS and Mossad. She knew that Michael was out of line. She knew that he was out of control, but she couldn't stop him. Instead she called for an emergency extraction for him. But she was too late. Tony had killed him.
She hated Tony for that. She had real feelings for Michael and Tony took him away from her. Had she not lost enough people in her life? She was so consumed by her feelings that she didn't stop to think rationally. There was no way Tony should have won a fight between them. Besides he had no right to come after Michael. She knew that Tony did not like Michael, did not trust him, but it was not his decision to make. And it should never have happened. She blamed herself too. She should have been there. She should have acted sooner. She should have sent Michael home days ago. But it was easier to hate and blame Tony than herself. So she did.
Then Gibbs told her that her apartment blew up, and she knew that Mossad had something to do with it, but she said nothing. She said it must have been an accident or was caused by the fight. She couldn't let it go though; she couldn't lie to Gibbs and violate their trust like that, so she suggested that the method used is one often used by many agencies including Mossad.
Before she knew it they were flying to Tel Aviv. Not just her and Michael's body, but Gibbs, Vance and Tony too. She was vaguely afraid of what they would want to do to Tony. She knew that any conclusive proof to validate or invalidate Tony's account disappeared when her apartment was destroyed. Somewhere in the back of her mind the investigative part of her noted that it was likely that Mossad was attempting to cover something up, something more than what had really happened between Tony and Michael. She saw Tony trap her father into saying that everything Michael had done, had been done on his order.
She was still trapped between her two worlds. She confronted Tony who made a point of telling her "You. Weren't. There." He claimed it was self defense. He claimed he had gone there not to kill Michael, but to protect her. She couldn't help but think he was holding something back from her, from everyone. For the first time since she had met him, she really wasn't sure she could trust him, and that killed her.
Then her father had questioned her loyalty. Had as much as told her that she had let him down, that Michael's death was her fault. That because she had let Michael be killed, she had to finish what he started. She knew that he had used her. He had sent Michael to stay with her, not because either cared for her, but because she was a willing, unsuspecting contact. She thought she was long past blindly being a pawn in her father's hand, and then this happened and proved to her that she wasn't out yet. As much as her eyes had been opened since Ari, she had still fallen prey to Michael's charms and her father's whims.
On the ride to the airport, all she could think about was that she no longer wanted to be in a position where her father could use her. Since the only way that would happen, apparently was her death, she decided that at the very least, she could keep her father from using her against NCIS. She would not put them in the way and she would not let herself be caught in between loyalties again. But she didn't want to give her father the satisfaction of thinking she had chosen him over Gibbs and the team. So she came up with a plan to put the decision on Gibbs.
At the airport she told Gibbs, "I am still not convinced that he has been entirely truthful about Michael's – Rivkin's shooting. I am not sure we can work together. Perhaps it is best if one of us gets transferred to another team. I need to be able to trust the people that I work with." Gibbs had tried to tell her that Tony's word should be enough. He had tried to read her face. He had tried to find out her real motives. She momentarily let her walls down and pleaded with him with her eyes, a silent conversation, to let her do this. She told him without words that this was something she needed to do and she was not really giving him a choice. She knew he would not just split up the team, transfer someone especially Tony, over something like this. That was her way of giving him the out she wouldn't allow herself. He silently accepted her request without making an issue with it. Instead he leaned forward to kiss her cheek before telling her, "Take care of yourself."
She walked back to her father at the car and watched the plane take off. She felt her heart break just a little more, but she had made her choice and had to stand by it. It was too late to change her mind now. As the plane became just a speck on the horizon, she squared her shoulders and entered the car next to her father. She would do her job. She would finish what Michael had started. And she would be even more vigilant against pledging her loyalty to anyone, especially her father. He may desire her loyalty go solely to him, but he would be one of the last she would pledge it to now. Not after everything he had done to her and put her through.