Author's note: set in the Rizzoli, Isles & Todd universe, which currently consists of Rizzoli, Isles & Kate and rizzles & kibbs.

Chapter 1

Scuttlebutt traveled just as quickly through the Navy Yard as anywhere else, and Abby Sciuto was firmly embedded in the grapevine. She wasn't mean-spirited, but she did enjoy hearing - and sharing - good, juicy gossip...and she used it to keep tabs on, and help, her second family at NCIS.

Today, scuttlebutt was dominated by the new director and one of her first official directives.

Abby knew all about Jenny Shepard, and her drive to make her mark. In two weeks, Jenny had visited Abby's lab twice, frowned at the gothic motif of the lab, suggested Abby would look really good in pastel (!) and said more than once there was room in the budget for up to three forensics assistants.

Abby didn't want to change the decor of her lab, she certainly didn't want to change her outfits, and she darned well preferred to work alone.

All of that irked Abby.

What made her mad was the new director's insistence that a new member be added to Gibbs' team.

Not Kate's sister, Julie, nor someone else from Julie's team in L.A. Not Stan Burley. Not somebody from a random NCIS field office. Not even Vivian Blackadder.

No.

Jenny made Gibbs hire Ziva David, the sister of the man who tried to kill Abby's team. Abby's family.

And Abby didn't like it one bit.

Kate Todd, after learning of the director's decision, knew she shouldn't judge, she should give people the benefit of the doubt, and she should be grateful to the young woman who saved her own life, along with those of several other people.

If Ziva David had stayed with Mossad, or gone to work for another federal agency, Kate wouldn't have had any problem with her.

When Jenny announced to the team that Ziva was their newest teammate, Kate couldn't hear the accolades and gushing recommendations Jenny gave the Mossad officer.

Kate only saw the face of Ari Haswari and heard only his voice.

Kate asked Gibbs what Jenny was up to, if she had lost her mind, why she would do this to their team. Gibbs was grateful for Ziva's assistance and sacrifice - she helped the feds track her dearly loved brother, and killed him herself - and Kate could tell how torn he was over the situation. He owed Ziva a great debt of some kind, yet felt she belonged somewhere else and felt almost helpless in how it affected the rest of his team.

Tony drooled over Ziva's beauty, but Kate could tell he wasn't certain about Ziva being permanently assigned to the team. Kate thought McGee was being too polite, and knew Abby wasn't at all happy over the situation.

Ducky seemed to be the most accepting - almost as much as her priest would be.

"It was a Protestant, not a Catholic, who asked the question 'What Would Jesus Do?'", her current priest once told her. "It's a great question, and a great way to look at a given situation."

Jesus, Kate decided, would fully embrace Ziva and treat her like part of the family.

Well, that's better said than done, when I still have nightmares about her brother pulling the trigger and sending me into black nothingness.

Ziva understood her new team was going to have problems fully accepting her as one of their own.

Her understanding of the situation didn't make it less difficult to endure.

In another life, Ziva might be graduating from university, or beginning a career as a ballerina, or starting a family.

But she is not living another life. She is living her own life, her reality, with a group of Americans who appreciate her sacrifice in so far as it saved two of their own.

They do not know my life, why I decided to leave Mossad and come here, she thought. They'll never understand what I truly gave up, how it tore me apart to take Ari's life, nor know the kind of man he once was and perhaps still was deep inside the sociopath that consumed him.

Only Jenny and Gibbs understand why I had to walk away and take this...leap of faith.

Ziva was certain only of a few things: the director's trust and faith in her and their friendship; her disgust with her father - who she holds responsible for the madness that these agents lived through; and her desire to start over and get away from Israel and Mossad.

She's much less sure of her new boss, Gibbs, who she dared to think might eventually become a second father. At present, Gibbs is a man she feels some kinship with, and senses his uncertainty over her long-term status on his team.

Ziva is more uncertain about her new teammates: is DiNozzo really drooling over me or trying to figure me out? Does McGee really welcome me as part of the team? Is Ducky merely being polite and keeping his own suspicions to himself?

And do Caitlin and Abby tolerate - or despise - me?

Over the next several weeks, Team Gibbs got back to its normal routine of investigating cases.

Ziva found that McGee and Ducky's overtures of welcome were genuine. Each time Gibbs got on her case, she fell back on their conversation in the elevator, where he told her he absolutely trusted her, and wanted her there, and had to be hard on her to the rest of the team.

Ziva struggled to win over Abby as a friend. Kate was an absolute pro on the job, and polite, and not at all interested in doing 'girl' things with Ziva like she apparently was with Abby.

Things went smoothly enough until the first major blowup.

Abby

Carol,

...I finally got to work with Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian Museum! She's this awesome, rock-star forensic anthropologist I was telling you about-hey! You know who she is, too! What am I talking about? :)

Oh yeah, Bones! That's what everyone calls her, or that's what she let me call her. Her team calls her Dr. Brennan. Anyway. We got this case involving a dead female Marine recruit, she went AWOL and they found her in Rock Creek Park, half buried. Gibbs made McGee and Tony dig her up - and when they did, they found a skeleton - and get this: Bones' team happened to be working nearby.

Long story short: the skeleton Tony and McGee recovered was the wife of a Marine major, and the Marine major was uncovered by Bones and an FBI agent. No, not Fornell ;) His name is Seeley Booth, and he's cute! :D and Tony worked with him during that Ari mess last year.

Gibbs was grumpy, but Fornell talked him into a joint case with Bones's team. So we're working together, and I gotta tell you about Dr. Brennan's lab...

...something crazy happened the night before Gibbs and Booth caught the killer and I'm glad it was just our team there to see it.

McGee and Tony came across a piece of evidence pointing to the killer and Gibbs told them to take it back to the lab - my lab. The guy was there, and apparently almost made McGee! I was so glad McGee made it out in time, and was telling him that and about to slap Tony for being Tony.

While I was telling Tony how brave McGee was, Ziva and Kate got into an argument. At first we didn't think anything of it - as I said Tony - and I LOVE Tony, don't get me wrong but sometimes he's too hard on McGee - Tony was making jokes at McGee's expense. (To his credit, McGee rolls his eyes and isn't letting it get to him anymore, not that Tony's intentionally being mean, or too mean.)

Anyway...one second I'm talking Tony into apologizing, and the next second me and Tony and McGee are staring at Kate and Ziva, who are in the loudest, most intense argument I've ever seen either of them in.

Tony made some crack about how long Ziva would take to kill Kate - and both of them stopped to glare at him. Ziva said something to him and I thought that was the end of it...then it started right back up.

Ziva had the nerve to put down Kate and tell her she didn't know what in hell she was doing, that she (Ziva) was a Mossad officer and had more experience with guys like these in her first week than Kate had in her entire life. Kate called her lady a dozen times and said she knows when to hold back and wait for the right time to move in instead of mowing right in and killing people..then it got worse - somehow Ari got mentioned and Ziva got mad and started defending Ari, and Tony tried to butt in and before he could do so Kate and Ziva SLAPPED EACH OTHER, over and over and OVER. (Tony ran over and threw himself in the middle and caught a slap in the face from Ziva and the back of his head from Kate)

I could tell Tony was trying to talk Ziva and Kate down and...I saw that look in Ziva's eyes and I don't know if she was hurt over whatever was said about Ari, or if for a moment she might have snapped Kate's neck right then and there. I know they were both WAY mad at each other.

Thank GOD Gibbs walked in at that moment.

He grabbed them both, told me to finish processing the evidence, ordered Tony and McGee to follow a brand-new lead on the killer, and took Kate and Ziva with him. Tony says they were on the elevator for over an hour, and then Gibbs put Kate with Ducky and Ziva with Tony and went up to the director's office for another hour.

Then - after he and Booth found the guy and arrested him, while Dr. Brennan and her assistants Angela and Jack were down in my lab - Tony said Gibbs pulled Kate and Ziva into the director's office and Jenny read Kate the riot act - then Gibbs went back in, said something to Jenny, and Jenny read ZIVA the riot act to make it even.

The two times I've been up there since then? Tony's still cracking jokes with Ziva but is keeping an eye on her. McGee's being polite but not as social with Ziva as he was. And Kate and Ziva BARELY make eye contact.

And Gibbs is being more cranky than usual - he left a cup of coffee for me this afternoon instead of my Caf-Pow! Imagine that!...

...I really wonder if this Ziva thing that the director forced on Gibbs is going to work out. I know she's not like her brother...but that look in her eye scared me.

Kate

Rachel,

This week was as close as I've come to quitting this agency. Before you say anything, I know I shouldn't be writing this, but it isn't anything I haven't already told Gibbs or the director, and nothing that would compromise security.

That case you saw in the news regarding the Jeffersonian and "the feds"? That was us - and the FBI agent who works with the Jeffersonian and Dr. Brennan.

At first everything was going well. Abby was having a great time, being in the presence of one of her forensics heroines - and I'm pretty impressed by Dr. Brennan myself, and especially how well regarded and respected she is by her team and that FBI agent...

...everything was going well, until the night before we found the murderer.

Tony and McGee told us that they found the killer unexpectedly. Actually, McGee nearly ran into him - they weren't supposed to engage, just observe. He narrowly got away before the guy saw him.

That's what Ziva and I ended up arguing over, in Abby's lab.

I suppose it was inevitable - although we both tried to remain professional, which we did.

Until that afternoon.

Long story short: she said McGee should have engaged him. I replied that he should have done exactly what he did - which is what Gibbs ordered them to do.

She then proceeded to insult my professionalism - and I reminded her that I was in the Secret Service, protecting the President himself, and am a trained federal agent. SHE kept mentioning her Mossad credentials...and it disintegrated.

When she mentioned Ari - I lost it. I yelled at her. She yelled back.

Then she slapped me, hard, and I returned it in kind. I thought she might kill me, for a moment, though I know now she wouldn't have.

Probably.

Next thing I remember is Tony getting double-slapped by the both of us, and Gibbs rushing in and pulling us away.

After that...Gibbs yelling at us both in the elevator, we defending ourselves to him and to the director, then the director telling me in no uncertain terms that if this ever happens again I will be suspended indefinitely and seeing Ziva, her golden child, suppressing a smile...Gibbs telling me to step out of the room, then overhearing the director say the same thing to her.

Since then, we've gotten along just fine. I haven't said a word to her outside of work and she's done the same.

Remember you telling me not to let Gibbs and Tony intimidate me a couple of years ago? Well...to their credits...Gibbs and Tony stuck up for me, in their own way. Made me feel good, especially after confronting the director's golden child put me in her crosshairs. And standing by me when Ziva apologized and I apologized to her. We shook hands, made up, and as far as the good director is concerned, all is well.

Except it's not, but we're not killing one another. Just back to the way it was.

So I'm not quitting.

I might get FIRED first, but I'm not quitting. I've survived Tony, survived Gibbs, and I can survive this :)

Ziva

Schmiel,

I wanted to thank you for speaking with me on the phone and helping me think through things. I want to give you an update.

I apologized to Caitlin, and she to me, and as far as Jenny is concerned, as she put it, "everything is good."

Except it is really not good.

I am aware, every day I arrive to NCIS, how much the specter of my brother hangs over the team. How they see him, when they see me. How they feel when Jenny moves to help me, not meaning to coddle and protect me, although that is how they come to see it.

I see how all of the team is learning to trust me, in their own ways. Ducky is the most trusting, Caitlin the least. Tony is the most social with me. McGee is kind, Palmer doesn't really say much. Abby is polite, and takes her lead from Caitlin, who up until the incident and afterwards has kept a professional distance.

Gibbs is supportive, in his own way, but I know he has had conversations with the director on her perceived favoritism towards me.

All of this in spite of the fact that I saved his and Caitlin's lives, by killing my only and beloved brother.

They do not know Ari the way I knew him. Yes, he committed atrocities. Yes, he murdered women, in Israel and America, and had to pay for his crimes.

Yes, it tore me apart. I do not support what he became. The mere fact that I do not know two of the women whose lives were disheveled over his actions, like Caitlin and Gibbs know them, does not make me dismissive of them or supportive of him. I do not understand fully how his actions upturned the lives of Caitlin and Gibbs and the others, but that does not mean I feel nothing about them nor does it mean that I support what Ari did.

Ari is the bear in the zoo, the elephant in the woods or whatever that American idiom is supposed to mean! Because I have not loudly denounced Ari, I am somehow still seen to be implicit in his actions! Because I still remember the kind, loving boy he was, the boy they will never, ever understand.

I understand the sacrifices director Shepard had to make to get me into the agency as a liaison officer. I understand my father's conflict over mine being here in America. As long as I regard this as a long-term mission, I am fine.

When I see these people as...people...and I think of why the director asked me to come here, I think of how badly I am doing in regards to being trusted, and respected, of being one of the team.

I did not understand how important that is to me until the incident.

I do not wish to return to Mossad. My wish, to pursue a different path than the one my father laid out for me, remains.

I fear that after this incident, that it is all but apparent that my destiny is, and has been, in my father's hands. No matter how much I wish otherwise.

Kol Tuv, my friend. L'hitraot.

Ziva