The Season 16 Finale
The case has wrapped up neatly once Kasie tied the dirt found on the lieutenants hair to the potting mix in the guys backyard. Gibbs watched his team file out of the bullpen before heading home himself. He walked through his front door and put his gun and badge away before heading into the basement to work on the boat. He opened the door to find a woman sitting in his basement drinking his bourbon absentmindedly throwing knives into a beam.
"Ziver…?" shocked though he was he'd ever let anybody see him sweat.
"I need your help."
(End of second to last episode)
The metal door creaked open heavy footfalls landed on the stone floor, 7 steps, Gibbs counted. There were seven steps between him and the door. A sharp pull on his hair forced his head to look up at the man above him. "You know something agent Gibbs, Ziva David took my father from me. I may not be able to retaliate in kind, but I think we both know you make a suitable substitute."
"I'm telling you Ellie, you have not lived until you've seen me tango." Nick said smirking as he walked off the elevator ahead of her, showing off his dance moves as he walked.
The buzz of the bullpen surrounded them as they made there way to their desks, Nick half tossing his bag at his before making his way back to Ellie's. "Well I'll just have to take your word for it Nick, cause there is know way in hell that I am going out to watch you tango with some girl." Nick started dance walking backwards keeping eye contact with her the whole time.
"Your loss." He waggles is eyebrows at her before stumbling backwards into McGee. "Oh sorry McGee, didn't see you there."
"Yeah well I wasn't exactly the object of your attention there Torres." McGee smirked thwacking the junior agent on the shoulder with the file he was holding. He's seen this song and dance about a hundred thousand times before between the two of them and Tony and Ziva before them. "You better get a handle on yourself before Gibbs…".
McGee fell silent, but it wasn't just McGee's silence that was jarring it was as if someone had sucked the air out of the bullpen and every sound had ceased all at once. McGee looked to the elevator, she was tanner than he remembered, her hair curly. She met his gaze with a half-hearted smile.
"Ziva!" he shouted dropping his file on the ground and basically running towards her. He wrapped his arms around her as a few errant tears escaped his eyes. She clung to him the same way before pulling back.
Nick and Ellie stared wide-eyed at the exchange, admittedly for different reasons. Nick looked as McGee hugged this woman, it couldn't be Ziva, Ziva was dead. They had just had a whole case about it not three months prior. Ellie on the other hand felt guilty. When Ziva had left her that note, she assumed the team at least the team she had been a part of knew she was alive. It hadn't occurred to her, at least not until now that she had been keeping the secret from them.
McGee still with Ziva wrapped tightly under his shoulder made his way over the bullpen. Ziva threw Ellie a small smile, just enough to acknowledge that while they had not met, Ziva knew who she was. Nick was entirely lost looking wildly between the grinning teary eyed agents before him and Ellie standing beside her desk looking way less shocked than she had any right to be looking.
"McGee, I think perhaps we should go to MTAC, and get the director in there too." Ziva broke the shocked silence of the room. McGee's smile broke for the first time.
"What's wrong?" he pulled his arm from around her shoulder and turned to face her fully.
"It is not something we should discuss here, upstairs. Yes?" She nodded her head towards the stairs.
McGee gestured at Ellie and Torres to follow and the four made their way up to the eye scanner shutting out the world as the door closed behind them. McGee sent word to the director to meet them there, sent word to Jimmy too. He deserved to know just as much as anyone else. He shot off a text to Gibbs that he was needed in MTAC immediately as well, it didn't seem like the type of news he should get over the phone. They stood before the screen in tense silence. The door cracked open and Vance swept into the room.
"What's happening McGee. Oh my god." The two sentence followed in quick succession, as he noticed the fourth body in the room was not Gibbs but Ziva, with whom he shared a uniquely tragic bond. He fell silent and advanced towards her, hesitating before deciding a hug was more than appropriate.
"I promise I will explain everything but right now we have other matters." Ziva gestured for them to sit. "Clearly I faked my death, what you do not know is why. When I left NCIS but before Tony found me I was traveling through my past seeing people and places I had not revisited in many years. Along the way I found that while I had moved beyond my past as an assassin for Mossad, the family, the friends, of the people I killed, they had not." She paused before clicking the remote in her hand and bringing up a photo on the big screen. "This is Hachim Kassar, his father Zaid was one of my first targets. For months before the farmhouse fire I had been hearing rumors that someone was out searching for me. Intermediaries, of intermediaries, it was impossible to track them to a source. When the attack was imminent I decided it would be best for everyone to think that I had perished, and for Tali to come here to be with her father. After that the chatter slowed down but it never completely stopped, people asking who I was close to, how I could be hurt, even in death."
She paused again to breathe looking upon the faces before her. McGee and the Director they seemed different then before, just a little Gibbs hardness etched on their faces. Ellie was looking at her intently like she was awaiting instructions, and the other Agent, Torres, his eyes kept flicking to Ellie like he was seeing if she was alright. Ziva presumed this meant Ellie had not told them that she was alive. "Eventually, three months ago I found that Kassar was the one who had been hunting me down. And last week he turned up stateside. Two nights ago I went to Gibbs, so the two of us could take him down together and I could come out of the shadows. Last night at approximately 0300 hours Gibbs was grabbed by Kassar's men." A collective breath in was heard across the room as a flicker of concern and recognition ran across everyone's faces. "I attempted to track him on my own, but I only got so far as Maryland before the trail ran cold. I need a team, and you're the best there is."
Everyone sat in silence waiting for someone to say something. McGee spoke first "Does Tony know? That you're alive I mean."
Ziva sighed "Yes, but I have not seen him, it was too dangerous, not that he listens, he always tends to show up where I am or where I just was looking for me. I was hoping Director that you could send word to Mossad that Tali and Senior are to be kept under lock at key at headquarters, as I am certain when McGee tells Tony I am here, he will commandeer a plane somehow."
Vance nodded at her before swiftly rising and exiting the room to make a call to Orli. Ziva turned back to look at the team before her "Will you help me?"
Torres looked at the two people seated in front of him, he was always game for a fight, but this was their call, and he would follow where they led. McGee and Ellie looked at each other for a split second for confirmation before turning back to Ziva and nodding. "Absolutely."
Ziva turned to Nick who responded I kind, a slight smirk on his lips. She had read his file years ago when he first came on board, she knew they were similar and that this type of assignment was right in his wheelhouse. "Let us get going then."
With that she made her way to the door and the others followed her out. She nearly ran directly into Jimmy who had clearly been pacing in the hallway. "Ziva, oh my god, it's true." He said wrapping his arms around her. She hugged him back fondly.
"It is good to see you Jimmy. We will catch up later but right now I need you to contact the city morgue and request the body of a woman killed in a home invasion three days ago. She owned the shed I rented and I am hoping it will help lead us to Kassar."
Jimmy removed his arms from around her nodding and then running off. The four agents made their way downstairs, the bullpen filled now with whispers rather than silence. "McGee, call Tony, tell him what is happening. Ellie you're with me." Ziva and Ellie grabbed their go bags from their collective desk and headed for the elevator.
Nick looked after them, before turning to McGee who tossed a folder Ziva had given them to him. "Tell me everything she knows about Kassar" he then turned to his phone and punched in a familiar number.
Halfway around the world in Paris Tony's cellphone is ringing on the kitchen counter. Tony smiles as the embarrassing photo of McGee pops up on his phone. "Tali go get dressed for school" he calls to his daughter in the other room before answering the call. "What's up McNeedy, two calls in one week, you must really miss me?"
"Ziva's here." The voice comes through the other line like a lighting strike, he just manages to keep hold on his phone and he chokes on air when he tries to breathe.
"What do you mean Ziva is there." His tone comes out dark, he hasn't talked like that since he shot Trent Kort.
"Ziva's here, she and Ellie just went out into the field, someone took Gibbs. Mossad is on their way to you to take Senior and Tali into protective custody in Israel, and the Director has a military jet on the tarmac at De Galle waiting for you." Tony tried to take a deep breath but his body wouldn't let him. He knew she was alive, she had left him clues enough to know that, but he hadn't see her, hadn't heard her voice in six years, and here it was all there for him a plane ride away. "I'll be there in seven hours, tell Vance I need a gun and a badge, cause I intend to behave as if I have one whether he gives them to me or not." Tony hangs up the phone, as a knock comes on the apartment door. Six Mossad agents flash their badges at him and file into the apartment just as Tali comes running out with her backpack slung across her shoulders.
"Abba?" she asks quiet concern in her voice.
Tony beds down to pick up the little girl and shouts for his father to come into the living room. "You aren't going to school today Tali, you and Senior are going on a trip to Israel to see Orli. Does that sound like fun?" Tali nodded her head enthusiastically.
Senior strolled into the living room to the sight, "Junior what's going on." Tony put his daughter on the ground with instructions to pack her things.
"Dad, you and Tali are going to Israel, Ziva is in D.C.. She needs me." He looked into his father's eyes, the person who had been there to watch him try to chase Ziva around the world.
"What the hell are you still doing here, get going kid, I've got the munchkin, we'll be fine."
Tony leaned him and wrapped one arm around his father "Thanks Dad." He grabbed a go bag from beside the door, it was a habit he had never managed to break and hauled ass to the airport.
Ellie sat in the passenger seat of the car borderline clinging to the door handle hoping it would save her when they inevitably got into a car wreck. "Where was the last place you tracked Gibbs?" she asked open file on Kassar in her lap.
"I know they got on the beltway and the headed east into Maryland. I believe they are headed towards the coast. Kassar grew up near a harbor so it seems he would be most comfortable there." Ziva swerved aggressively across three lanes to take an exit towards Annapolis. "Kassar won't kill Gibbs without me being there to witness it." She grimaces as she speaks.
"Why not?" Ellie asks
"When I killed his father, Kassar was there." She hesitated a moment before continuing "I always tried never to let children see when I killed people, but Zaid, he was an immediate threat, he had another Mossad agent as a hostage and I dropped him right in front of Hachim, he was seven."
Ellie looked out the window, the file in front of her told her Ziva had been nineteen when she killed Zaid. Barely more than a child herself. "This isn't your fault" Ziva scoffed in response "I know it doesn't feel like that, but people make their own choices in life, my partner Nick, a few months ago we had a case about a contract killer, it struck close to home for him, they had known each other, they were very similar. But what made them different in the end wasn't the amount of lives they had taken, those were about the same, it was why they had taken them. One of Nick's cases even got his sisters husband killed, nearly his sister and his niece too. What he did, and what you've done, you did that with the right intentions, Hachim can't say that, and that's something." Ellie looked to the side for the first time to see an unfallen tear hovering in Ziva's eye.
Just as quickly as it had been there Ziva had wiped it away. "You're an analyst right? Where do you think he would've gone."
Ellie smiled slightly and turned back to the file in front of here. "He's motivated by emotion, he would go somewhere that matters either to you or to him, best case somewhere that matters to both of you. Where were you when you killed his father?"
Ellie flipped through the pages of the file trying to gain as much insight as she could. "A factory, they made uh, steel brackets, hinges, that type of thing."
"Okay maybe McGee can find a place like that."
McGee's phone was ringing in his pocket in autopsy. "Hey Ellie, any leads."
"Hey McGee is Jack there?"
"Yeah let me put you on speaker." McGee switched the phone to speaker and put it in the middle of the autopsy table. "Okay you've got me, Torres, Kacie, and Jack. Jimmy is on his way back here with the body."
"Hey Jack, when Ziva killed Kassar's father they were in a factory that made steel brackets and hinges. He seems to be motivated by revenge, so we were wondering if he would seek out a similar place to hold Gibbs."
Jack flipped through the file. "It's certainly possible, it was a traumatic and formative experience for him as a child, he never moved away from his hometown so he is clearly sentimental, possibly to the degree that he would seek to recreate the experience in the same way but with him as the perpetrator."
"Hey Ellie, it's Kacie. If you can give me any kind of direction I can try and make a list of similar facilities in the area."
"That'd be great, Thanks Kace, I'll text you an area now." The phone fell silent when the call disconnected. Kacie's phone buzzed with a message a second later and she ran down to the lab to track down factories.
The autopsy door swung open as Jimmy wheeled the woman's body into the morgue. The three agents looked at each other. Jack nodded the other two out of the room and with that McGee and Torres texted Kacie to give them half the locations when she had them and headed into the field. Jack stood beside Jimmy looking over the woman's body.
"Any preliminary observations?" Jimmy looked at her a heavy look in his eyes.
"The M.E. thinks she was tortured for several hours before she died, Probably trying to find out something about Ziva." He set to work unzipping the bag.
Jack nodded "I'm surprised how well you're all handling her showing up again."
Jimmy began scrubbing up for autopsy "We've buried so many friends and colleagues over the years, you can't not jump at the opportunity to get one of them back, however else you might feel about it. Besides it's not any of our places to decide how we feel about this."
Jack looked up from the personal effects before her quirking an eyebrow at the statement. "Whose place is it."
Jimmy finished putting on his gloves. "It'll be Tony's, the two of them. It's a long heartbreaking story, and they get to put whatever spin and ending on it they want. They've earned that."
"You sound like you really respect them." Jack smiled at him.
"There's no one shy of Gibbs that I respect more. If you could've seen them, you'd understand. Can you run those personal affects down to Kacie for me. I'll let you know anything else I find out."
Jack nodded and headed to the elevator outside the autopsy doors.
"Hey Kacie, What have you got?" Jack said walking into the lab.
"There are 9 factories that fit the bill for a place Kassar would hold Gibbs, 3 of them are abandoned. I suggested they should check those ones first." Jack deposited the items on the lab table before making her way over the computer.
"How long will it take them to check all three?"
"Ellie and Ziva have the two along the river. And McGee and Torres have the one inland. I would guess three hours to check them out. Then putting together some kind of plan back here. Hopefully he'll be home for dinner."
"Let's hope so, we've had enough tragedy."
McGee and Torres slung there bags towards there desks and made there way down to the lab to meet up with Jack and Kacie. They hadn't had any luck with their factory and the girls had called to say they came up empty too. Tony had texted McGee to say his flight was landing and they were hoping a new set of eyes would help.
"Please tell me you have something." Torres said sitting on the rolling stool and sliding up next to Kacie at the desk.
"I think I might, Jimmy brought me down these particulates from in the victims hair, they're a steel compound used in making hinges." Kacie gestured to the changing screens with results.
"But we've checked the abandoned factories, there's nothing there." Torres said "Unless they have secret underground tunnels."
"Got to be careful with Labyrinths, that's how you get turned into a goblin forever." Tony said striding into the room.
"Tony" McGee said giving his friend a quick hug.
"Hey McGee, where's my girl?" He asked looking around the room.
"Out in the field still, we're hoping Kacie finds something that helps us out." They all looked to Kacie.
"Yeah like I was saying, the iron dust Jimmy found hasn't oxidized, that means it's not that old, certainly not old enough to have come from an abandoned factory that was deserted years ago." Jack looked at the screen.
"Of course, Kacie do any of these factories close on the weekends." Jack moved to crowd around the computer and everyone else followed suit.
"Just one, Weston Metal Components in Eagle Harbor Maryland. Right next to the water." Jack, McGee, Nick, and Tony all took off for the elevator as soon as she finished reading off the name.
"I'll task a satellite, you and Nick go meet the girls. They won't wait for you once they know where they're going so step on it." The elevator opened in the garage and Nick and Tony took off running the elevator doors closing behind them.
"You sure they're in the right mindset to be out in the field." Jack asks turning to look at McGee.
"They're partners, they should be together. Besides they are definitely not in the right frame of mind to be running logistics." Jack smiled and nodded. Two men in love running on panic and adrenaline is not a recipe for success in logistics.
"Okay, yeah thanks Kacie." Ellie hung up the phone and turned to Ziva "Eagle Harbor, a place called Weston Metal Components, its about 45 minutes from here."
Ziva swung a U-turn and took off heading south "I can make it in 30."
Tony's hands were clutching the steering wheel so hard his hands were turning white. Nick sat beside him loading guns and stashing knives in his socks.
"You really think they won't wait for us?" Nick asked trying to fill the silence.
"Ziva won't, but she'll tell Ellie to stay behind, she won't want anyone else caught up in this." Tony said his hands relaxing. Nick was Ellie's partner, he wanted to put the guy at ease, the two women were very different and Ellie would likely be fine.
"Ellie won't let her go in alone." Nick unloaded and reload his gun for probably the twelfth time. "She's self-sacrificial to the point of stupidity, always running headlong into danger no matter how hard I try and stop her."
Tony smirked a little to himself. He knew that worry, that's not partner worry, it wasn't alpha male worry either, it was something deeper and more primal he knew all too well. Following a woman into to dumbest of situations just so she wouldn't do it alone. "I followed Ziva up into the scaffolding of a warehouse to defuse a bomb once. Tried to talk her out if it, but there was know stopping her. I didn't even help, I just didn't want her to be alone. They'll be fine."
"Yeah we're an hour and a bit away and they're 45 minutes they won't be that far ahead of us." Nick said nodding to himself.
Tony's eyes widened slightly with a thought that hadn't struck him in years. Ziva was an insane driver under the best of circumstances. His foot ticked down on the gas a little harder in response.
Ziva and Ellie had made even better time than expected making their way to the factory. The boys were at least 30 minutes behind them if not more. It only took about half a look between them to decide they were going in now.
The factory was large brick building, it very much reminded Ziva of that op back in Jordan all those years ago. There were three doors around the outside of the building. Ziva opted for the side door while Ellie had decided to take the back. The picked the locks and synced their watches to breach simultaneously. Light came pouring in through the doors the dust visibly swirling through the air. Neither came upon someone they had to put down and they quickly met each other in a common hallway.
"Look" Ziva whispered gesturing at footprints left in the metal shavings on the floor leading down a corridor. The two advanced silently and carefully checking behind every opening, but they found no one. Ellie held her hand up gesturing Ziva to stop.
Both fell silent and held their breaths. A grunt, faint but there could be heard through the walls. A soft muttering they couldn't make out accompanied it. Two more grunts. Ziva recognized the spacing. A beating. And it had to be bad to have Gibbs making a sound.
The two crept up the stairway. Peering around the corner. A man stood at the top of the stairs looking down the hall the other way. Ziva slowly bent down to grab the knife from beneath her pant leg. She nodded to Ellie and spun around quickly firing the blade to land directly in the back of his throat severing his windpipe. She ran up the stairs to soften the mans' fall so a thud did not alert them to their presence.
Ellie followed quickly gun held out in front of her ready to lay down cover fire. The sound of the grunting had gotten closer. The two headed down a hallway to the right.
"She'll come for you" they heard a voice say. "and when she does, the last thing she'll see is the body of the man she claimed as a father."
Ziva looked to Ellie, some sign language passing between them. Kassar thought she was working alone. That gave her the upper hand.
Ziva placed her gun back in her waistband as Ellie moved into the doorway across the hall. One final nod shared between them. Ziva pushed the door open hands outstretched.
"Kassar!" She called out into the room. "This is between you and me, let him go and you can take your revenge properly." She stepped completely inside the room. Only Kassar was inside the room, the others must have been elsewhere in the building. She saw Gibbs sitting defiant tied to a chair eyes wide looking at her shaking his head no. There was no way to communicate the plan to him, no way to get him to play along. Except maybe.
"Ziva David" Kassar sneered at her. "Guns on the floor all of them, knives too, and kick them over to me, or I end this right now. Ziva removed the gun from her waistband and her pantleg. The knives joined them on the floor.
"Don't you want to know how I found you?" Ziva asked hands raised backing further into the room, forcing Kassar to rotate towards the door to keep parallel.
"I confess I am curious" He looked her up and down older than he remember but he supposed she would say the same about him. "You were not supposed to find me until tomorrow when I gave you directions to the exchange. Though I suppose this will end the same."
"I used to work with some really top shelf people." She began "Back when you and I met I was mostly alone, working for the Israeli government. But things changed and I became an American, became part of a team, part of a family. That family it has changed a little since I left, still has all the important parts though, the scientist, the leader, the politician, the brains, the guts, the muscle. See the thing that is interesting is when I left I thought I could never be replaced. Turns out I was not as necessary as I thought. You see Hachim, normally I would say I am the wildcard." With that's Gibbs eyes opened slightly wider flashing back to a similar conversation halfway around the world a lifetime ago.
"I am the person who looks at the reality in front of them a refuses to accept it." The two continued to rotate. Around the room until Ziva came to rest opposite the door and Kassar was right in front of it. "But I'm not the wildcard on this one," Kassar tilted his head slightly to the side amused.
"I am the bait."
The sentence didn't even have time to register in his brain before a bullet came through it. The sound echoed through building and Ziva heard a commotion start further down the hall likely his men coming.
Ellie ran across the hall to join them as Ziva collected her knife and a gun and cut Gibbs loose. Before moving to the door to join Ellie laying down cover fire. Gibbs came up behind the two of them limping but otherwise fairly alert.
"This building is wired to blow, I heard them talking about it. We have to move now!"
Gibbs grabbed the second gun Ziva had brought and fired it off three times towards their adversaries moving backwards down the hall, Ellie followed after him laying down her own cover fire, with Ziva bringing up the rear. The three made there way back to the exit firing off shots behind them as they went. They had made it to the fence when the building blew the shockwave knocking them to the ground but leaving them otherwise unharmed by the blast.
With Gibbs injuries he needed to be seen now and so they all loaded into the car started heading for the hospital before Gibbs grunted out that he would go to a hospital over his dead body and to just take him back to the Navy Yard, Jimmy could stitch him up fine.
Ziva and Ellie shared an amused look and Ziva started the car. Ellie looked at the woman beside her, someone she had never met who was by all accounts the most capable person on this earth had put herself up as bait and left the work to Ellie. A swell of pride rose in her chest as Ziva swung the car back towards the main road. She texted Torres that they had Gibbs and were bringing him back to the Navy Yard.
You two are insane, and you're not ever hanging out alone again the reply came.
Back at the Navy yard the Boys had made it back to the Bullpen where Tony had taken up residence at his old desk. He swiveled back and forth in his chair adrenaline thrumming through his veins. Ziva was coming back, his Ziva. His Ziva he hadn't seen in six years, who he was desperately in love with, and with whom he shared the most incredible daughter.
The elevator door binged announcing someone's arrival. His feet kicked up onto his old desk he turned to watch as Gibbs, Ziva, and Ellie stepped off the elevator to the applause of everyone who could see them. He watched as Nick ran to give Ellie a hug he's certain he would claim was professional, and Gibbs gave a look to Jimmy and they both disappeared back into the elevator to be stitched up down in autopsy.
Ziva met his eyes from by the elevator and made her way over to him, at a normal pace but to him it felt agonizingly slow. But he had had some time to plan this and he was doing it right.
"Hi" He said smirking up at her "I was just killing time before I go clubbing." He saw a smile flash across her face as she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. "And you are?"
She fought to keep the smile off her face "Ziva David"
"Mossad?" He questioned keeping his eyes on her as she made her way over to Gibbs' desk and sat in his chair. She shook her head no.
"What can I do for you Ms. David?" He said removing his feet from his old desk and placing them on the floor facing her.
"Nothing, I'm just imagining my old partner." She smirked at him raising her eyebrows seeing how far into this conversation they would go before one of them cracked.
"Naked?" He asked rising to his feet and making his way towards her sitting on Gibbs desk.
"Very" she mutters barely above a whisper before their lips crash together. Its physically the same as the one they had shared years earlier on an airport tarmac in Israel, but the emotions behind it were all different. Tony pulled back from the kiss resting his forehead against hers.
"I missed you." She smiled wrapping her arms around him burying her head in his neck.
"I missed you too."
"Dinozzo! David! Stop making out on my desk!" A sharp thwap came across the back of both their heads as Gibbs brushed by them to sit down at his computer. They didn't move a single millimeter apart, he smiled to himself careful not to show it to anybody else.
"Sorry to bust up the reunion," Vance called from upstairs "we can continue in a moment, but I need Gibbs, Bishop and David in my office to explain why there is an exploded building and half a dozen bodies in Maryland to the State police."
Tony sat in his chair still swiveling back and forth, Torres sat to his right filling out paperwork. Tony had put in a call to Orli to have Tali and his father flow out to D.C. They're flight would be landing in time for dinner at Gibbs' house the next night.
Nick sat at his desk typing up a report of what happened, about how Ellie and Ziva had played chicken with a psycho with no back up. He let his head drop and hit his desk and groaned in annoyance.
"Look I don't know you but can I give you some advice anyway." Tony called out to him from across the bullpen. Nick picked his head up and looked over at him nodding.
"Ziva and I, we did this whole thing mind numbingly out of order because we were scared and confused and about a hundred other things over the years. But if I had done something about it when I first knew I loved her, well that was more than ten years ago. Ten years I won't get back. There are worse things in this world than the wrath of Gibbs." With that Gibbs and the girls came out of Vance's office and made there way down the stairs. Ziva made her way over to Tony and reached out her hand which he happily took.
"Hey you two don't forget dinner tomorrow, Five-o-clock don't be late. Or better yet be early." Gibbs called after them as they made their way to the elevator.
Gibbs had headed home himself not much later, and McGee had followed suit leaving Ellie and Nick in the bullpen. "Done!" he heard Ellie call out to him "How about you?"
"Yeah, I'm all set too." The two of them stood and made their way to the elevator. It dinged signaling it's arrival and they got on pressing the button for the parking garage. The elevator started making its way down when Nick reached out and smacked the stop button.
There was a long pause where neither of them spoke. "Is everything okay Nick?" Ellie asked looking up at him.
"Yeah sorry, I just needed to say something," Nick paused again trying to decide how to phrase it. He looked at the ground in front of her feet and leaned back against the elevator wall for what felt like an eternity. He finally met her eyes and opened his mouth "…it can wait." He smiled at her and the hit the button to start the elevator again.
As soon has it had started it had stopped again when Ellie had slammed her hand into the button. She stared at him silently for a moment "No it can't."
Nick stared at her again for a moment raising his hand to rub the back of his head. He opened his mouth again to try and speak but words failed him. He reached out and cradled her cheek in his hand and pressed his lips against hers. She kissed him back, and they stood like that for a good long while before pulling apart.
She smiled at him and hit the start button. He smiled even bigger at her and turned to face the doors again.
The next evening Gibbs house was as raucous and packed as it had been in years. Vance had brought his kids over, McGee, Delilah, and the twins were there with Jimmy, Breena, Victoria, and Ducky who had come into town for the occasion. Ellie and Torres showed up together, he did them the favor of pretending he didn't see them sneaking looks and touches when they thought he wasn't looking. Jack had been there most of the day helping him cook, Kacie came early too. And lastly Tony, Ziva, Tali and Senior came in after a run to the airport.
He couldn't keep track of anyone's individual conversation cause there were about twenty going on at once. But he supposed he didn't have to know everything.