Title: Questions
Fandom: NCIS
Author: Alidiabin
Words:1,789
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings/Spoilers:8x01; slight spoilers for 8x05 and 3x02.
Pairings: none
Summary: After the events of 'The Spider and the Fly', Ziva asks Gibbs some questions about siblings and citizenship ceremonies.
Beta: The ever so awesome Anoymous033.
Questions
Gibbs walked down the stairs of his basement after a weekend of helping his dad fix up his store in Stillwater; he saw the light on his basement. After four months of dealing with the Reynosa cartel, Gibbs could finally breathe easy and relax; he was hoping for a night free of visitors but it seemed other people had different ideas. He saw a figure illuminated by a camping lantern in the corner of his basement; he recognized the woman – she was hardly a stranger to his basement.
"Ziver," he uttered. She looked up at him with a sad look on her face. Her eyes had glassed over, trying to hide inevitable tears. Gibbs suddenly remembered; two days ago it had been Ziva's half-brother Ari's birthday. Ziva did not visit Gibbs basement on the date of Ari's death; she instead sombrely celebrated his birthday with a candle and a song. Gibbs did not question the ceremony of sorts as he knew Ziva would never explain it. She stood in the corner of the basement in the exact spot he had been in when her bullet had hit Ari's head. "I thought you'd have done it already." Ziva put the candle on the frame of Gibbs' latest boat, and nervously flattened over the non-existent creases on her tank top. She shook her head. Still looking down.
"I wanted to wait for you," Ziva said, stepping forward. Gibbs noticed she was dressed in combat pants and an orange tank top, very similar clothes to what she had worn when she first came to NCIS. Gibbs had stood there silently for Ziva's ritual every year; she had found his silent support to be comforting. She had once explained the whole ritual to Gibbs, when the siblings were children they often spent their birthdays apart, so on one siblings birthday the others would light a candle and sing in hope that the first sibling would understand the others were thinking of them. "My brother would not have minded." Gibbs coughed; when it was just them, Ziva did not refer to Ari as 'my brother' but always as 'he' or by his first nameGibbs knew what the 'my brother' meant. Alejandro and Paloma called each other 'my brother' and 'my sister' in Spanish as affectionate terms. Ziva was making a dig at him. Gibbs wondered if he should have anticipated her visit; after all he knew the case would get under her skin.
"This isn't about Ari, is it?" Gibbs said; he was beginning to realize it had to do with the other brother-and-sister duo NCIS had been dealing with of late. Ziva shook her head. There was silence and it seemed like everything had stopped with Ziva's revelation. Ziva gulped and looked around the basement, not staring Gibbs in the eye; almost ashamed of the words she was going to utter.
"Alejandro and Paloma," she said quietly, "What you did to them, would you have done it to me and my brother?" There was newfound anger in her voice. "Honestly," she begged, desperate for an honest answer.
Gibbs looked her straight in the eye. Would he? He wondered. Would he have set Ziva up to kill Ari just like Alejandro and Paloma? No, he reasoned, there were too many differing factors in the whole Ari fiasco; for one thing Ziva had Jenny's trust and Gibbs mostly trusted Jenny. Most importantly Gibbs had known deep down in his gut that he could trust Ziva. It had not been the same with Alejandro and Paloma.
"No," Gibbs said, finally speaking the truth, "I am not Eli." Ziva's body tensed at the mention of her biological father's name. Gibbs wondered why he had added the last sentence, it was so spiteful.
"Really," Ziva uttered in a bitter tone, as obviously her anger had not disappeared after Gibbs told her the truth. "Eli was always great at missing important things in my life; the only ceremony of mine he ever came to was my Mossad swearing-in even missed my Bat Mitzvah!" She shouted angrily. She did not add and you missed my citizenship ceremony but Gibbs knew she meant it.
Ziva then realised the words that had fallen from her mouth in angry haste. Her true feelings had been revealed, something she was still getting used to. She was so angry at herself for being so weak and giving her opponent in this arena something to use against her. Gibbs had gotten her to open up with just a few sentences and now he could see her as weak, and as the woman who still held on to childhood grudges about missed ballet recitals.
Gibbs took a deep breath; he wondered when Ziva was going to ask him about his missing her citizenship ceremony the previous May. He knew that in typical Ziva fashion the question would not be asked directly but with a collection of half-truths and under the guise of another less personal matter. Like any 'father' would, he wanted to wrap his arms around her and make it all better, but he knew she would probably cause him grievous bodily harm if he tried. He honestly regretted missing the ceremony. If he could go back in time and change things he would, but M. Allison Hart had come with her accusations and questions, then the Renoysa Cartel had kidnapped his father, and then Vance had sent Ziva off to Miami and Gibbs never got his chance to at least talk to her. Though he had rather naively hoped she would forgive him and understand, despite his missing the biggest day of her life so far.
"This is about your citizenship ceremony," Gibbs said as a sad look crossed her face. "You're upset I wasn't there." Ziva looked down at the dusty floor; she kicked it with her left leg like a startled horse trying to find emotional equilibrium. She tried so desperately to hide her feelings.
"Disappointed," she said quietly, "Though disappointment is nothing new to me." Her tone was slightly bitter. She knew she could not hate Gibbs for what had happened as he had always intended to go, and had not given her a yes simply to pacify her, like Eli would have. She had spent many nights in Miami wondering if that was why she was so disappointed; if she had not of expected Gibbs to come she would not have been hurt by his absence, but she had imagined him coming and all of the team celebrating as she became an American just like them.
Gibbs felt his heart sink; Eli had been a dreadful father and Ziva had chosen Gibbs to fulfil the role of surrogate father, yet he had missed a day she viewed as the most important of her life so far. Since she got the letter of acceptance, she had talked about how she would finally become an American and be one of them. Gibbs watched as she looked up at him; her glassy eyes were telling more of a story than her words, and she had the same sad look on her face that he had seen in Kelly when he had been about to deploy. Her lip quivered.
Ziva looked at Gibbs; she began to see how different Gibbs and Eli were. Eli would not have permitted such a conversation to continue for so long. Eli would simply have told her point-blank that Israel was much more important than her. This was part of the reason their contact had been so minimal before he left her die in Somalia, and why it was non-existent now. Ziva and Gibbs stewed in awkward silence; both wanted to apologize and clear the air but both were too stubborn to do so.
"It is unfair for me to compare you to Eli," Ziva finally said; Gibbs tried to butt in but she did not allow him to. "Eli would not have allowed this conversation to happen. He would have shut it down."
"I'm sorry, Ziver," Gibbs said. For a brief second he imagined a young Ziva with wild curly hair; a girl constantly caught between wars, both at home (her parents) and in the streets (suicide bombs). He imagined a little girl walking into her father's study looking for comfort, only to be denied because Israel was more important.
"I thought apologising is a sign of weakness," Ziva whispered, recalling the infamous Gibbs rule with a slight smirk on her face, as she realised the earlier blow-up would and should not cause bad blood between them.
"Not between friends," Gibbs said. Or between family, he silently added. Ziva stepped forward. His arms wrapped around her in a purely fatherly way. After a few seconds they stepped back. "Abby showed me the video; you got every word right, I'm proud of you."
They separated and stewed in silence. Ziva migrated back to her least favourite corner of the basement with her candle. She silently hummed something in a language Gibbs did not understand. Gibbs poured himself some bourbon.
After the song and completion of the ritual she looked around Gibbs' basement, trying to distract herself from her emotions and hide her tears even though they were ones of relief. She spied a rather battered leather glove. She walked towards it; Gibbs looked up from his bourbon. He noticed her staring at the glove.
"What, never seen a baseball glove before?" He said as he put the bourbon on his workbench. The idea of not knowing what baseball was seemed unnatural to him but he was as American as could be; baseball was ingrained into his soul. Sometimes, but not often, Gibbs imagined Ziva as a child; he imagined a little girl with wild curly hair watching her father leave in the middle of the night, and a little girl playing in the park while vigilant parents examined every passer-by with suspicion.
"Baseball?" She said in a confused tone as she tried to recall what it was; she wondered why Americans had to obsess over so many sports, and obscure ones at that. Most of the countries she had visited only had one sporting obsession: soccer. "The men in white and the diamond thing, yes." Ziva said, remembering a movie she and Tony had watched with someone he described as 'the great late Bernie Mac' in it. She turned to face Gibbs, waiting for a response.
"Yeah," Gibbs said as he picked up the glove. "Don't they play it in Israel?" He remembered reading something in the newspapers about a baseball team in Israel.
"Contrary to what you Americans believe, not every aspect of your culture is celebrated and adopted overseas," Ziva said; though she did know of a team in Israel, that had been formed for fun, and she certainly had not played it in high school PE class.
"You're an American too now," Gibbs said as he retrieved a baseball from the collection he had underneath his workbench. "It's about time you learnt." Ziva picked up the battered leather glove and placed it on her hand. Gibbs adjusted it. They walked up the creaky stairs out of the basement. Gibbs uttered a joke of little importance and a soft laugh came from Ziva.
*Phoof (Black/White)*
A/N: So?