Hello Earth! I love NCIS stories about Gibbs and Ziva, personally because romantic relationships are so overdone. I think that there's a very complex dynamic between the two of them, mostly because they are very similar, but come from such different worlds. I watched all the NCIS episodes with Israeli characters, and observed the behavior from Gibbs and decided to write a story. This takes place when Eli David and Jackie Vance are murdered, roughly the night that Ziva gets on the plane to go to Israel. I know the sentences are haphazard in part, but this is supposed to read like someone's train of thought. Tell me what you think!

He hated Israel.

He put his drink down so he could put both hands into the motion of sanding his latest boat. He pushed all his frustration into the wood, pressing so hard that his shoulders started to ache and he let go, surprised, and took another swig from his jar. He wasn't as young as he used to be, he had seen a lot and done a lot and he sometimes felt the years in his bones, in his muscles, in his heart. This was one of those nights, following a very, very long day.

He glanced at the clock. Ziva was probably getting on the plane. The plane to that blasted place. Tony had run out of the office early and Gibbs knew that he was going to see Ziva off. That was good, good of Tony to do. If there wasn't so much anger running through him over the events of the day he would have gone too. But he was in no position to make anybody feel better.

Israel. Bombs and desert and war. The cold place that produced Michael Rivkin. Michael Rivkin. The one who had got between Tony and Ziva and made Ziva choose to stay in Israel. Gibbs could blame her for staying, or Tony, or himself, or Eli David, but if Rivkin had stayed in Israel she would not have been tortured for three months. Ducky had handed him Ziva's medical file when they got back, and he had opened it without much thought. To this day he wished he hadn't. Israel. The place that sent agents on suicide missions.

Israel. The place that had produced Malachi Ben-Gidon. Ziva's commanding officer. That had bothered him, hearing that, because he was her commanding officer, not the smug Israeli who had tried to force her back to a life of suicide missions and assassinations of people who had looked at Eli David the wrong way. The man who had allowed Ziva to walk away, to go on the suicide mission alone and had went back to Israel without any concern for her whatsoever. The man who had come in with his smug accent that made Gibbs want to punch him in the face. Only Ziva's accent felt like music to his ears.

Israel. The place that had produced Ari. The one who had killed Kate, his original female agent. He would always have a special place to hate Ari in his heart. He wondered sometimes what would have happened if Kate had lived. Ziva would have been Mossad and would probably be dead today. So he couldn't really wish to change history. But he still hated Ari, who had had the same father as Ziva and had turned out so differently.

Israel. The place that had made Ilan Bodnar, who had been Ziva's companion and had come into NCIS looking as smug as Malachi and demanded to have answers when he was the answer the whole time, the one that was currently in the wind and the cause of the pain of the agency. When he thought about how easily he could have killed Ziva as well it made his shake and have to put his drink down. She hadn't died. She wouldn't die. It wasn't their job to track Ilan. She was done losing to him.

Israel. If anything, it had made Eli David. If he didn't know the man he would have pity for him. His wife was dead. His youngest daughter was dead. His oldest daughter had killed his son and then left his country for another and despised him. But Gibbs had no pity for the man. Gibbs had asked Ziva when she became a Mossad officer and she had stared at him with the gaze that had seen far too much and said that she had been 15 when she made her first kill. Three years later she had lost her sister, and five years after that she had come to NCIS and killed her brother under Eli's orders. What kind of father did that? Daughters were precious, meant to be protected and treasured and loved.

A year or so after the Somalia incident Eli David had come back to NCIS and caused more trouble. He would have liked to slam the man against a wall and demand reasoning behind the choices he had made, but he didn't. He saw how the presence of Eli made Ziva, nervous like a caged animal. Leon had told him about the argument Eli and Ziva had had outside their car, repeated it word for word, and Gibbs knew it was best for all involved that he hadn't heard the fight himself. He would have probably done some things he would later regret.

That whole ordeal had been exhausting. Just like everything that involved Israel. For the first time, he had saw another female field officer in Liat, and affirmed that it was not Ziva's gender that made her different than other Mossad officers. That little voice kept telling him that Ziva wasn't different than Malachi or Liat or even Ari at one point in her life. He saw the Israeli side of Ziva more when the other Mossad agents were here, the calculating killer side that he so desperately wished she didn't have to deal with.

Sure, he was all for Mcgee and Tony to get right with their fathers, but Ziva was different. Eli wasn't her dad, he was her director, who had seen his young child and made her an asset to him, trained her to be exactly what he wanted her to be. He had lost one daughter to violence and still didn't pull the other from the game. When Jenny had died and Ziva went back Eli had immediately sent her on a dangerous mission. When she was upset and had been basically abandoned by her NCIS family he had tossed her onto a boat without a second glance to be killed in Somalia.

She wore her Star of David and he wasn't bothered. That wasn't her country, it was her religion, and when she had returned home without her necklace, he had casually asked her where it was. She had given him a look of resignation, saying that it was lying broken in her Somalian prison, tossed in the corner after it had been ripped off. In true fashion, he had no words to offer her, but the next day he certainly had a small box to offer with a new chain and charm. When she brought it up, he gruffly got out that it was an early Hanukkah gift and walked away, but the look of joy on her face when she had saw it had made his day. He had always watched her carefully around Christmas to make sure that she was included in her own way, and the team always made sure they helped her observe her own holiday, because they all loved her and respected her religion. No, Judaism wasn't the Israel he hated.

Ziva had fought hard to get away from her father, and he still came and caused her pain and left the flag at her desk. For days he had looked at the little flag in anger, how with a seemingly kind gesture Eli had made it known that she still belonged to Israel, and he had slipped in a slightly bigger American version, which had made her smile when she came in.

Eli came back to the US. He had almost been killed the first time around and the second time he had been, taking Jackie with him. Gibbs felt bad for being thankful it hadn't been Ziva hit inside that house. When he had heard her desperate cry for her father he had understood. Of course Ziva still loved him, because they were family and he was all she had left. He had known the first time Eli came to the US that Ziva still loved him, which was what bothered him so much. Eli David was worthy of the funeral and respect he would receive in Israel for his service. Not even Gibbs could argue against his loyalty. Even Gibbs admitted that Eli had led Mossad well. However, he wasn't worthy of the woman that was crying into his shoulder and sobbing in Hebrew that he wished he understood. Had he really not bothered to learn any of her native language in all the years she had been here? He thought of her not being able to speak in her native tongue ever on a daily basis and had a new appreciation for how much English vocab she did get right. He knew that she probably would love to speak in Hebrew to the Mossad officers who came to NCIS. That when Malachi accused her of killing a marine that she could scream and curse at him in a language she didn't have to think about, but she hadn't done so. She had kept the conversation in English for his sake, which was what she always did.

He had left the house because he couldn't see her cry like that over a man she should hate, a man she had every right to hate. He had quietly asked Tony where she went after they got the news on Jackie, and he had responded that she had went home. That night he had driven past just to make sure she was home, and she was, until he realized that it probably wasn't safe for her to be home alone and had made her go with DiNozzo. All his agents had enemies-it came with the job, but Tony and Tim and himself didn't have the list Ziva had. She had a list of the families of people she had killed, matched with people who would hate and target her on principal because of her last name, and a list that he had to drink to try and forget about. So many people who would try and take her away.

He shouldn't have let her go alone. He had been so caught up with Leon and NCIS that Ziva had slipped through his mind. The whole NCIS family would be there to support Leon and his children, but who was there for Ziva? DiNozzo the love bug. Oh, to be young and dumb in love. But Tony should have gone with her. It was Gibbs's own selfishness that didn't allow him to ask Tony to go with her. Every time Ziva went to Israel he was nervous until she came home. He didn't want to risk losing two of them in the awful place that was Tel Aviv. He was afraid every time she left that she would be stuck there with Mossad and the type of missions she had completed when she was there. He couldn't risk two of them.

At that, more unwelcome thoughts entered his mind. If she died, where would she go? Would she get the full NCIS funeral that Kate and Jenny had gotten, and a gravestone alongside other brave American heroes? OR would her coffin be draped in blue and white and flown to Israel? They wouldn't be invited to go, and if they did they wouldn't understand the language spoken. Where would Ziva want to be buried? Should he ask her? Ducky probably knew. Again, he drank. Ziva wasn't going to die, so he would never need to know the answer to that question.

Where was her home? Her family was in the USA, but Israel would always be her home. He hated it. Ziva David deserved the United States, where you didn't have to drive fast to avoid roadside bombs and where the common citizens were not bombed on the daily. She deserved to be able to understand every idiom and feel like she belonged there, but she never would. The country she was born in would always call to her, even if the people there did not. In response to his earlier questions, he knew that Ziva probably wanted buried there. No matter what the country had done to her she would pick it as home. Even if she picked NCIS over Mossad, himself over Eli, and living in the US as opposed to living there, Israel still won in the long run. No matter what, she loved it. Just like she had loved Eli no matter what. That was the primary reason he hated the place. Because it had Ziva's love and it didn't deserve it. It had made her kill people when she was 15 and had killed her mother and sister, and trained her to be the best assassin Mossad had had in years, and made her kill people who hadn't committed any crimes and kill her brother and go on suicide missions and get tortured and raped and made her feel like she didn't belong anywhere. But she still loved it, and it wasn't fair.

Why was he getting so worked up? It was her life, and she was in the US with them, essentially, not in Tel Aviv. He knew why, it was because he loved her, loved the woman who was like a daughter, even if different blood pumped through their veins. He didn't know anybody else with baggage like her, and yet she carried it better than anybody else could. She had come into work in makeup and fixed hair the day after she lost her dad ready to work. She had been tortured and had come back with no PTSD and no breakdowns. Her baggage didn't make her weak.

He hated Israel, in its secrets and protocols and backwards systems. He hated their shady officers who walked with an air of superiority and contempt, who hardly spoke. He hated when they rambled in Hebrew, and why didn't he ever learn any Hebrew words for her sake? So he could make her feel better, to hear her native tongue, but he hadn't even tried to comfort her in English after she lost her dad. He knew that he was no better than the Israelis but he still hated them. He hated Ari and Malachi and Liat and Michael and Ilan and Eli. Nothing about Israel was a good thing.

He paused in his thought. That wasn't true. He had told Ziva that she was who she was in spite of her father, not because of, and he believed that. But something about her childhood and her homeland and the people there had made Ziva David. Israel had made Ziva David. And for that, he would always be in debt to the country he hated.

Fin