He tried not to make her a villain. He really did. She was part of the family; part of them. But was she really? He analyzed, the way he was taught in school – the way that he had learned so well from Abby. He thought back on every scenario. Every secret. Every hidden feeling. Every lie. It seemed so often that she thought of Gibbs as a father, the way that the rest of them did, now, too. She had been doing better over the last years, since Somalia, since Rivkin, since "C-I-Ray". Her walls were down more often, she showed affection, and she seemed to really love her place amongst them. He had seen it begin to fall apart after her father was killed. It was expected, to some degree, but not to this.
His mind was whirring at the news. Ziva David was leaving NCIS, only days after they had been reinstated. But she wasn't just leaving NCIS, she was leaving their team, their family, and their country. Of ALL the backhanded things to do! He found anger bubbling up inside him. To leave the people who had accepted her as she was, LOVED her as she was. And she was abandoning it all to return to the place that had broken her not only as an innocent child, but again and again as an adult. Returning to the people who didn't care for her. Returning to a lifestyle of coldblooded assassinations and cloak and dagger missions. Did she really think she would make it in that life again? Despite what she liked to believe, she HAD gone soft. She wasn't the same person she was when she first walked into the orange room with arrogance abounding. She cared. She loved. She hurt. She cried.
And now it was all over. She was leaving, in the morning, and they would probably never see her again. And though he knew he would regret the thought later, he wasn't really sure he could make himself care if he never saw her face again. At that exact moment in time, when he thought of her face, bile rose up his throat. He was actually disgusted by her, by a member of his family.
When he had discovered that Gibbs had murdered Pedro Hernandez, he hadn't felt this way. Or when he suspected that Jenny had had something to do with La Grenouille's murder. Or that Michelle Lee had been the mole all along.
No, this was a new level of betrayal. A new level of pain that had been brought upon his family.
Maybe he wouldn't have felt quite as bad if he hadn't had to hold Abby as she cried into his shoulder, asking the question, "Why?" over and over for hours. Maybe he wouldn't have been as angry if he hadn't seen tears in Gibbs' eyes as his mentor…FATHER…realized that despite everything, he had failed one of his children. Maybe he wouldn't have punched the wall if he hadn't seen the discouragement, horror, and utter defeat clear as day on Vance's face as he realized the other person who had been so hurt by this situation was giving up. Maybe he wouldn't have drank a little too much the night that he had to watch Jimmy drive Ducky home to stay with him for the night to make sure he wouldn't have another heart attack over the news.
Maybe the words hate, backstab, cold-hearted…maybe they wouldn't have crossed his mind as he glared at her and stormed out of the room in a blind rage, going after the man that he considered a brother. The man who currently, even days later, was laying, drunk and desolate, vulnerable, on a couch.
Timothy McGee had never seen Tony DiNozzo so broken.
Tony had loved her; that much McGee knew. Their exact history – what had and had not happened – was always a bit of a mystery, but it had always been clear to the rest of them, at least he had thought, that they were star crossed lovers. Meant to be together one day, but just couldn't get it together quite yet. They had all figured that "Tiva", as Abby had been calling it for the past several years, would happen in the not too distant future. The two of them seemed closer and closer to what their family believed was their destiny.
Now it was all gone. She was gone.
It was difficult not to hate her. Yes she was hurting, and there had to be something said for that. It's never easy losing a family member, ESPECIALLY one you never quite fixed a broken relationship with. But to give up the people who love you the most because of pain that you refuse to deal with? To hurt everyone on the planet that still loves you?
Tim McGee could no longer find it in him to care about her mental state. He was busy trying to keep the rest of his family from falling apart, or in Tony's case, killing himself, however slowly.
He didn't know if he would ever be able to think back on her and see her as something other than a villain. But she had given him something. She had given him the drive to be the glue that would mold his family back together. They were a family before her. They would be a family after her. One day, maybe he would look back and see Ziva the sister, rather than Ziva the fiend.
A/N: Okay, so I realize that this sounds a little bit angry for the most part, and of course I have no idea how they'll write her off the show, but when I first read the news that Cote was leaving, I was angry. The first thought that went through my head was, "They better just kill her off." But despite that, I still love Ziva's character too much to do that. So this is me channeling my anger a little bit.