A/N: Why the hell did I choose to post this three years after I wrote it on a whim? I don't know, I guess I kinda thought it was cool. I wanted to write a fic about Tali, and I struggled with who she should be for a while before I settled on Thicker Than Water. Picks up after the infamous season six finale, NCIS briefly receives a visitor.
The Best of Us
The first time I met Tali David was on a beautiful Tuesday morning. She had taken the midnight flight from L.A. to D.C. without an I.D. or money, just a messenger bag full of mismatched clothes. According to video surveillance, she arrived at NCIS at precisely 0900, just as everyone had arrived at work.
She blasted right past the guard at the front gate, knocked out the two at the front door, used one of their security cards to open it, and proceeded to the elevator. Unlike past intruders, she had no cunning plan, no greater motive. She moved too quickly, and by the time Vance got wind of it, she had made it to the second floor and was closing in on my desk.
I hadn't slept in a couple of days, work was slow, life was slow, I was slow, and everything just seemed to have slowed down since I got back from Tel Aviv. This is my excuse for not noticing the angry blonde woman coming to attack me until she was in my face.
"Where's my sister?" She demanded furiously. She was staring intently at me, bent over my desk with her elbows resting on top of papers strewn over it's surface. She was wearing a skin tight black shirt, dark jeans, and severe leather boots, classic assassin wear. All she needed was a rather large gun to point between my eyes.
Under any other circumstances, I would not have considered her to be particularly frightening. In fact, if I had known she was about to assail me with questions and not bullets, I would have thought she looked like a pissed off kitten. Something cool and calculating in her big brown eyes had scared me, it reminded me of bad memories, and at the moment, she was just plain intimidating.
I looked around, I was helpless. McGee was no where in sight and neither was Gibbs. The squadroom had gone completely silent.
"Uh… me?" I asked foolishly, miserably failing to buy time. The whole floor had gotten eerily quiet.
"Yes, bitch, you." She said viciously. "So what the hell happened to her? Where did she go?"
"Listen lady, just calm down." I told her, more calmly than I felt. "Why would I know…?"
"Calm down?" She asked incredulously. "I'm not fucking calming down until I get some fricken answers!" She roared, pushing everything off my desk. I tried to locate my sig. "She's been here for four years and then just disappears off your database? You can't tell me you don't know where she is!" She grabbed my tie and pulled me towards her so we were almost nose to nose. "I think you know." She said, staring at me. I froze. Ari. Ari Haswari was staring back at me. This completely caught me off guard.
"How did you get past security?" I hissed.
She laughed maliciously. "I'm unarmed!" She claimed. "Oh, wait, scratch that, I do have a knife." She straightened up and reached for an unseen weapon just as Gibbs put the barrel of his pistol to the back of her head. She took a deep breath and put her hands up.
"It's strapped to my side." She sighed. "I'm just looking for answers." He slid the knife out from the hem of her shirt. "Oh yeah? Me too. How about we go talk it out in a nice interrogation room?" Gibbs grabbed her roughly by the elbow. "You'll answer my questions, then, if I feel like it, maybe I'll answer yours."
"Okay, but I'm going to need a diet coke with three ice cubes!" She yelled dramatically as Gibbs dragged her out of the squad room.
As soon as they were out of sight, the floor began to buzz with activity again. McGee stood there, astonished. It took me a while to recover. I wanted someone, anyone, to confirm that it had been a near death experience, and it had actually happened.
"Who was that?" McGee asked, offering no support.
As I put the puzzle of what she said and what I had observed together, the situation only became more and more impossible.
"I thought she was just a disgruntled ex-girlfriend who came to knife you." McGee said.
"She was going to put it on the desk." I corrected him. "And she's nothing compared to an ex-girlfriend." We were both silent for a moment and observed her through the magical interrogation room window. "What do we know about her?" I asked.
"Asides from the fact she likes diet coke and her hair is dyed, nothing. She had nothing but that knife with her."
"You know, I've been interrogated so many times that I've lost count?" She said, staring right back at us moodily and slouching in her chair.
Gibbs entered the room and she didn't budge. For some reason he didn't bother telling her she was sitting on his side of the table. "You don't have an I.D., your knife is a standard throwing knife, you crossed the front gates despite the guard's orders to stop…"
"Yeah, he wouldn't shut up." She smirked. "He's a horrible shot, by the way."
"You immobilized both guards at the door…"
"I would consider getting new ones, they were incompetent."
"You've infiltrated a building full of NCIS agents…"
"Indeed, I have. Impressive, yes?"
"And that is everything I know about you. You might as well start by introducing yourself."
"Oh, okay." She said, bitterly sardonic. "My name is Nataliah Hill, Bunny, if you'd like."
" I enjoy spelunking, romance novels, canoe portaging, building tents out of cutlery, rubbing myself with pesto, and origami. I've also been legally dead since I was 16 and this is Pepsi, not Coke, bitch."
"Go look that up, Probie. Find out whatever you can." I told McGee.
"But I want to hear…" He protested.
"Go! Quick like a bunny, come on! I'll fill you in later." He grumbled, of course, left obediently.
Gibbs sat back in his chair. "Did you have that rehearsed?"
"Nice to meet you." She said in reply.
"I'm curious about the legally dead part, though."
"Oh, you would want to know about that. Are you sure you don't want to hear about origami? I can make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower with four starburst wrappers and a toothpick. Besides, to tell you that I'd have to go back such a long way and somehow I don't think you have the patience to listen to the whole story."
She was teasing him. I couldn't remember anyone ever messing with Gibbs while being interrogated.
"I think you want to tell me." Gibbs commented.
She grinned. "You're right, I do. I rarely get to tell my story."
"So what's stopping you?"
"Trust." She answered regretfully. "There are certain people in this world that cannot ever know that I am alive. I know the chances of it getting back to them are slim, but all the same, I'd like to speak off the record. Why do you need the tapes anyway? I'm not a suspect, I'm sorry about your rental cops but I'm sure they'll make a full recovery."
"I could charge you with lots of things…"
"That I've already admitted to. Besides, you and I both know you're not going to charge me with anything." She said solemnly. "Listen to what I have to say, none of it needs to be recorded, and by the end of my little tale, you'll be confident that it was a good choice to make."
Gibbs leaned back in his chair without breaking eye contact but he didn't hesitate for very long. "DiNozzo, turn off the thinger." I flipped the switch and continued listening.
"How do I know it's off?"
"My people do what I tell them."
"Whatever. I'll just start talking; I'm not going to make you prove it. I'll begin with the last few hours then. I took the red eye from L.A. this morning to get here; I've been living in California for the past 10 years. But as I'm sure you've figured out, that's not where the story starts. I'm originally from Israel…"
"You don't have an accent." Gibbs cut her off.
"Chill, just because I'm from Israel doesn't mean I have to have an accent." She said patronizingly. "10 years in California, remember? I lost the accent. Keep up here. My real name is Tali David, my father faked my death when I was 16."
"How did you…?"
"Shh! Lets stick to why my father faked my death for now, okay?" She paused and then continued. He was ashamed, you see, I was…reckless and made a few too many bad decisions. I was in training for Mossad 10 years and I guess I felt the need to rebel. No wonder, right? Well, one day I walked out, I just left. Stupid of me, I suppose. A black van pulled up beside me and pulled me off the street. I was pretty freaked; you never know what can happen. There are so many dangers in Israel especially if you're a young girl walking alone down a deserted street. Inside, my father was waiting for me." She struggled to summarize the awful memory; she was having trouble finding the words to say.
"He told me… He told me a bomb had gone off in the market downtown and I had died there. He had every intention of making me go on to an operation I knew to be a suicide mission. I guess he wanted to teach me a permanent lesson.
As you can imagine, I hated him for treating me like I was disposable. The worst part was that no one would know he sent me to my death. He had no right to dictate where and how I would die and he did it twice- once for real and once not. Three guesses which one failed." She sat up and continued.
"The objective of that mission is unimportant, I doubt I could recall all the details, I was such a mess. I never went on it anyway. As soon as I was loaded onto a ship with the rest of my team, I snuck back onto the docks and his in the cargo bay of a freighter. It was headed to California where I ultimately ended up. I was nameless; my father was probably the only one that knew I was still breathing. I didn't have any money, no home."
"What did you do?" Gibbs prompted.
She leaned across the table toward him and said; "By training the perfect crime fighter, you create the perfect criminal. It's similar to the use your powers for good instead of evil cliché."
I thought of two perfect examples of this theory, both of which seemed to be related to this girl in the interrogation room.
"Me? I was the perfect criminal. I started with food. All I had was a couple of boxes of crackers from the ship. Then I started boosting expensive wine and reselling it. After that, I robbed banks, convenient stores, stole cars. Ah, the cars. Now, I know you're probably regretting shutting off the tape now, but I promised you a happy ending. I almost never keep my promises, but I'm making an exception. I lie for a living, you see. I'm a con-artist. Or I used to be…" She corrected herself, rolling her eyes.
"By the time I was 18 I was convincing people vitamins were miracle drugs, they could buy into Warren Buffet's stock for a fraction of the price and investments in an offshore oil company would triple in a week. All they had to do was wire money to my offshore account in Guam or get me the cash by a certain time. By the time they realized they had been scammed, I had disappeared. I was forging checks by the boatload; people gave me their money without a second thought.
I was running all the time, from Seattle to San Diego to Las Vegas and back to Portland in a matter of days. I did what I was trained to do. I was the only one in training who could consistently fool a lie detector test and stand my ground in interrogation. I was full of so much promise with Mossad! It was too much for my little heart to take when I realized what they were training me for and that the world wasn't all puppies and optimism and people puking up daisies. I'm surprised it took me so long to see, especially where I grew up. I must have been blind."
"You said there was a happy ending."
Tali exhaled loudly. "You're going to have to listen to the sobs if you want the real story. Well, I got caught. I would still be out there if it hadn't been for that one car in the IHOP parking lot on a breezy Friday night." She shook her head. "It belonged to one Detective of the OCPD. Do you have any idea how scary it is to be charged with 48 counts of grand theft auto and 26 of larceny at the same time? Along with money laundering, identity fraud, illicit offshore banking, forgery and being in this country illegally?"
"I can't say I do." Gibbs replied humorlessly.
"It's hell. And that even those were the only things that they had substantial proof to charge me with. But this detective guy, Walter, listened to my story with a kind and caring heart and decided I deserved a second chance. Even though I faced being deported, he told me he could help get me government protection. Of course sly Walter had ulterior motives. In return for getting me community service and parole, he wanted me to work in special ops at LAPD. I could have escaped, but frankly, I was tired of running. I like to hide, which is what I'm doing now."
"What did you plead?"
"Well, according to my shrink I have anger management issues, I'm a compulsive liar, and I'm dependant on alcohol! And there's your happy ending. My name is now officially Nataliah Hill. Most of the time you'll find me answering phones at LAPD but I usually get called in on special cases. I live with Walter and his family now- when I'm not in rehab. I've been twice and relapsed twice. Well, I guess it's not considered relapsing when you never really stopped. At least now I'm not dependant, I just abuse it."
"How did you know Ziva was here?"
"Four years ago she popped up on your database and I've been watching her ever since. Which brings us to your piece of our bargain."
"Just one more thing," Gibbs interjected. "How do I know if any of what you just said is true?"
"You don't." She shrugged. "I regret that you can't believe anything I say now. People either choose what to believe or are told what to believe. I'm tired of telling people, I'm leaving it up for you to decide. Of course, I'm sure you could verify everything I've just said. I assure you everything is well documented at LAPD."
"And this detective, does he know you're here?"
"You said that was the last thing, it's your turn."
"I'll take that as a no." Gibbs noted. "We'll be in touch. I'm guessing you used his credit card to get here?"
She glared at him. "You might as well start with your name."
"Call me Gibbs."
"Okay then, Gibbs. Now that we're clear that I'm a friendly intruder, I think it's safe to say that it's nice to meet you. I've had many names, but Tali is my first and best. I know I shouldn't, but I want to trust you and somehow I feel like I am among friends here, so call me Tali."
Gibbs paused for a moment. "Ziva is back in Israel."
"Oh no. No no no no no." She buried her face in her hands.
I was surprised; I thought she would really make it through the whole interrogation without showing genuine emotion. Her expression at the moment summed up everything I had been feeling in the past few days- hopelessness, guilt.
"Anywhere but there!" She begged. "Our father is poison! We are not his children! To him we are recruits. He claims to want what is best for us but if he actually does he sure does have a creative way of showing it! Ziva clung to his every word, she never disobeyed him. She loves orders and I bet orders are what sent her back. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found out she was here. I figured she had escaped, you know? All my peace of mind is gone now. She's still his puppet. Who knows what my brother is doing now."
"Rotting," Gibbs replied with some satisfaction.
"He's dead?" Tali let out a choked laugh. "Of course he is. It was to be expected. I am surprised you know who he is, however. What happened?"
"Oh, you can read the file later." Gibbs smirked.
"I'm looking forward to it."
I wondered if that was a good idea. After she read the report, Tali might care more than she did before.
"Tell me though; I stopped being my father's puppet when he killed me. When Ari died, was he still a puppet?"
"No, and Ziva killed him because of it."
"Oh Ziva," Tali sighed, only allowing herself to sound distraught for a moment, but somehow not surprised. "You have to get her back Gibbs." She pleaded quietly.
"We want to." He told her sincerely.
"She can't stay there. I'll help however I can, just please. You have to get her back."
I have no intention of continuing this.