The smell of fresh cut lumber hung in the air, familiar as a friend's voice, as Gibbs set out a pair of sawhorses in his basement. It had been a long time since he had been able to walk the length of the area. With the boat finished and gone, he had tried to start a new project, but none held his interest very long. After recent events, he had no desire to make another boat. He laid a long slat of wood across the sawhorses and straightened it unnecessarily, waiting for inspiration to arrive.
Instead, he heard the door open and close upstairs and footsteps approach the basement. A moment later, Ducky opened the basement door and came down the steps.
"You know, you should just move your bed down here and save your knees the trouble."
"Don't think I haven't considered it."
Ducky stood at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in a solemn black suit. "I'm getting ready to go to the bar. Would you like to ride with me?"
"I'm not going," Gibbs said, not looking up from his aimless repositioning of the board.
Ducky stared at him. "Jethro, Ziva isn't going to get a proper funeral, especially not in this country. This wake, however impromptu, is the best we can do for her. Are you really going to sit this out?"
"Never been much of a social butterfly, Duck."
He could feel Ducky's anger without turning around. "I understand that you have always had your own way of dealing with situations like this, but everyone else who cared for her is going to be there. You know how hard this has hit your team. Abigail especially, after already losing Caitlin. I don't know what passed between you in Israel, but if you won't go for Ziva, will you at least go for them?"
Gibbs walked over to his tool bench and picked up a tape measure. "Give Abby a hug for me."
Ducky watched him in dark silence for a moment before nodding. "Very well. You know where to find us if you change your mind."
Gibbs didn't answer. He heard Ducky's footsteps as he returned upstairs and saw himself out, then silence returned but for the clack of the tape measure as he considered the dimensions of the empty space around him.
He walked around for a while, picking tools or pieces of wood up, reconsidering, and putting them down again. His mind drifted, never settling on anything for particularly long. He had too little motivation to start, but too much to sit still.
The quiet, usually welcome respite from the urgency of work, hung over the room like a shroud now.
"You're really not going to go to my wake?"
Gibbs looked up to see Ziva leaning in the corner, watching him. He stared for a moment, then glanced at his bourbon glass, wondering how many times he'd refilled it this evening. Looked like it was going to be one of those nights.
"I suppose I am not surprised," she continued, pushing off the wall to walk closer. "Neither one of us likes being around too much emotion. But are you still that mad at me?"
Gibbs started sanding the suspended board noncommittally. "You lied to me."
"Once."
"How do I know that?" He felt the anger burn in his chest with the bourbon and sanded a bit harder than necessary.
"Yes, I did not tell you about my father's orders. But we knew each other for four years, Gibbs. Do you truly think I lied to you for that long?"
"I don't know anymore."
She moved to stand directly across the board from him. "When you had amnesia and I reminded you about Ari and Kate, when I cried in your arms, do you think I was lying then?"
He had begun to wonder, which was part of what hurt so much.
"All the time we spent together, every stakeout, the long nights at our desks, everything you taught me, could I have faked all of it?"
"The basis of why I let you on this team was a lie. It changes everything else."
"Really? Or do you just want to believe that so you can hate me now? Does that make it easier?" She put an insubstantial hand in front of his sandpaper, forcing him to stop. "Because I think this is about more than trust. You cared about me. I was not Kelly, but I was lost and hurt and I needed a father. So you tried to be that. You trained me and worried about me and made me part of your team, and one day, I chose the same father who treated me badly over you. And you lost another daughter."
She held his eyes with hers. "I died, Gibbs. That is why I am here now. Because now you will never get to have this conversation with me, and you will never find out why I lied. And there will never be a chance to forgive me and return things to the way they were."
Gibbs crumpled the sandpaper in his hand and stepped back from the sawhorses. Alone in his empty, silent basement, he sat down on the steps and looked at the scattered pieces that he couldn't form into anything meaningful. And for the first time since leaving Ziva in Israel, the anger parted and he cried.