Title: Trading One For Another
Summary: Ziva reminisces on Ari. Ziva POV.
Rated: PG-13
Categories: Angst
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Episode Tag
Warnings: Character Death (canon), Spoilers (Twilight, Kill Ari 1 & 2)
Author's Note: Written for the Weekly Writing Game on NFA, week 10. Pairing was Ziva/Ari, prompt was running.
Trading One For Another
Running. He was always running. From Mossad, from our father, from NCIS, from Gibbs . . .
I do not know what happened to him. He had never been so . . . rebellious before. And then suddenly, he was asking me, as his control officer, to profile an American federal agent. We were supposed to be killing terrorists, not becoming them.
Yet I felt a certain obligation to follow through on his commands. He was my brother. I had been raised with the belief that family was important, and I was not about to give up that belief for someone I did not even know.
I began my profile of Caitlin. She seemed perhaps a bit soft to be working in such a high profile position, but then again, she had been a member of the Secret Service, so she could not have been all that weak. We were not similar women at all; she was quite conservative and feminine, which is pretty much the complete opposite of myself, yet I felt a certain unexplicable draw to her. It was like we were kin. I soon discovered why.
My profiling revealed other interesting information, but not about Caitlin. It was Gibbs. I understood then why Ari had chosen NCIS, and why Caitlin specifically. It was not about her. It was about Gibbs.
Gibbs is an extraordinary man, almost immortal in nature. He is a true warrior, with the loyalty I would expect from a Marine. And for Caitlin to be a part of his team showed me that he saw something special in her, something in her that reminded him of himself. I found myself in awe of him and guilty, for I wanted to meet Gibbs, witness his splendor, but Ari wanted nothing of it. He wanted to weaken the man, make him more human. Even if he would never admit it, he was intimidated by Gibbs. He felt the need to lessen and eliminate that threat and it was my job to help him do so.
He succeeded.
Ari killed Caitlin, and I found myself in the US, at NCIS' request. It was then that everything came together. I met Gibbs and found him to be just as awe-inspiring as I imagined. At the same time, I had a job to do. I needed to keep Ari safe, get him back to Israel. Yet Gibbs . . . I was expected to help rid Gibbs of the man who had destroyed his team. My loyalties were divided; my first choice was to help my brother, keep the promise I made to Mossad and my father. But then I met Gibbs and . . . I began to question that faith I had in Ari. It pained me to think such things, to put a questioning hand on the support system that I had come to depend upon, but in the end, I knew I needed to do what was for the best.
Even now, the memory of that night in Gibbs' basement continues to haunt me. If I had not listened to my heart, I would not be where I am today. I would be in Israel, surely directing Ari in removing the remainder of Gibbs' team. And though I ache for the loss of my brother, to think of the loss of the man I have come to know as a mentor, a teacher, and even as a father of sorts brings me more pain than shooting Ari did, for I know who my true family is, the ones who will be there when I need them, and I cannot imagine my life without my surrogate family at NCIS.
THE END