Title: Old Truths, New Confessions
Fandom:
NCIS
Author:
Alidiabin
Disclaimer:
I own nothing
Warnings/ Spoilers:
nothing past 8x10
Parings:
Tony/Ziva,
Summary: A dead Naval Admiral brings old relationships back together, and helps new ones begin.
Notes: Thank you Anoymous033 for being my beta (that being said all errors are mine and mine alone) and sounding board, and ME Woffard for being another sounding board.

Chapter One

The sky was a dark ebony black colour when Rivka Yaakov (formerly David) woke up on the hard wooden deck of the boat she had been sailing on for a few weeks, but the boat was currently docked in a harbour unfamiliar to Rivka. As she woke, she found her head hurt, far worse than it ever had when she had a fondness for pills or when she had young children to care for She squinted, adjusting to being awake and trying to relieve her blinding headache. She had been through worse, she told herself. Her thoughts turned to the other passenger on the yacht, her boyfriend Admiral Leo Black. Where was he? She wondered.

"Leo," she called but got no response, except for the sound of waves lapping around the boat in the harbour.

She slowly sat up, pretending her headache was not as bad as it was. She felt dizzy and cold. She looked down to see what she was wearing: a dark black coat. Under the shining moonlight she saw shimmers of scarlet red. She ran her finger across the red smudge trying to examine what it was. She brought her ruby red-smudged fingertip into her eye line; she realised that it was blood.

"Leo," she cried again, her voice now filled with desperation. She got no response.

She slowly got up; her head pounded. Her neck and back ached with age. She looked up at the moon; the light reflected the grey streaks in her wavy chocolate-coloured hair. It shone over her pale face and her light brown eyes; the light did not heal the hurt present in her eyes which were the windows to a soul broken fifteen years ago by the death of her youngest daughter.

"Leo!" she screamed as tears formed in her pain-filled eyes.

Rivka surveyed the deck of the boat desperately looking for her boyfriend. She prayed that he would emerge from inside the boat with a smile across his middle-aged features; a smile that would light up his icy blue eyes. She looked up at the moon remembering how it shone on his grey hair. She saw a strange hump of something across the deck.

"Le-" she called before choking up.

She rushed towards the hump, desperately hoping and praying it was not him. She reached a spot a few feet away from him and closed her eyes, offering a silent prayer to a God she no longer believed in. She begged and pleaded with God that it was not him, for Rivka had already lost too much.

She turned over the body. God had not been on her side that night. Leo Black's middle-aged face looked back at her, his icy blue eyes closed, his grey hair reflecting under the soft moonlight. Tears fell down Rivka's face. She could not stay, she decided. She rushed off the boat. She rushed into an unknown city.

On her way to get off the boat she knocked over her handbag. The leather bag was open and the contents tipped out like sand out of a digger. A photograph from about twenty years ago fell out. It was of two olive-skinned girls; one aged fifteen, one aged eleven. The moonlight fell on the elder of the curly haired girls.

The silver moonlight fell on Rivka's last living child Ziva David.

XXX

There was a yellow taxi-cab parked across the street from the harbour; it had an American flag bumper sticker and Rivka determined she was in the United States of America. She ran across the black tar road barefoot.

The cabbie was about her age, but had aged badly – he looked old enough to be a great grandfather. He was fast asleep in the driver's seat of his locked cab. He had been on his shift since 0600 the previous morning, and quite frankly was exhausted. A faint but urgent knocking woke him from his much needed slumber. He looked up at what the night had brought him. A woman with grey streaks in her dark hair and dark eyes which had a pained look deeply embedded in them, a pained look the cabbie recognized; he touched the photograph on the dashboard, of his son who had died serving for the US Navy.

He stared at the dishevelled woman on the other side of the glass for a second before unlocking the cab. As she sat down in the backseat, he noticed a golden Star of David necklace hanging from her neck. The voice of his racist father echoed in his mind for a second, before the voice of reason (his late son's) reminded him that a fare was a fare. The woman took a series of deep breaths.

"Where to ma'am?" he asked quietly. She looked out of the windows.

"Where are we?" she asked in response. The taxi driver studied her for a moment; he wondered if she was drunk or high but to be honest he did not really care.

"Norfolk ma'am," he said; she looked at him blankly. "Just outside Washington DC." he uttered. A look of recognition crossed her features. "Where to ma'am?" he asked for the second time.

Rivka let herself think for a second. Washington DC was the capital city of the USA, which meant there was an Israeli embassy there. As a technical Israeli citizen she could seek refuge there, and hopefully get herself out of trouble. Of course, that was all based on the idea that the Mossad official at the embassy had any idea who she was. She played with the golden Star of David on her neck, making a decision. The driver turned on the meter.

"The Israeli embassy please," she said, "And do not call me ma'am." the driver nodded and turned on the engine.

XXX

Michael Bashan, the long-standing Mossad official at the Israeli embassy and insomniac did his nightly walk around the compound of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. Bashan always enjoyed his very early morning walks as they gave the old man time to reflect.

Lately his reflections had been about his former friend the now Mossad director Eli David; the pair had met in Mossad training, and Bashan had become Eli's voice of reason. Whenever Eli had had a reckless idea on how to kill a suspect, Bashan had given Eli the facts and suggested a more conventional way. Bashan was the only Mossad officer whom Eli had told of his illegitimate son Ari, until Ari became a Mossad officer. Bashan had played the 'godparent' role in Eli's three children's lives (this part is a bit tricky because they are no longer friends).

Of course Bashan had also spent the majority of Eli David's marriage with Rivka Yaakov, screwing Rivka. It was that which had caused the end to Eli and Bashan's friendship at about the same time that Rivka broke off relationships with both men, and ran off to Haifa with her children in early 1991. Eli and Bashan's friendship had ended rather violently, with the two men by then in their forties resorting to schoolboy violence in a bar frequented by Mossad officers.

Bashan had been banished from Israel by the director of Mossad and had spent the last twenty years hopping between various embassies in many different countries. Eli, who still trusted Bashan with his children but not his women, had managed to get Bashan assigned to the US embassy when Ari was running wild, to keep tabs on his son. When Ziva became Mossad Liaison Officer, Bashan was ordered to stay and keep tabs on her, and despite her new status as an American NCIS Agent Bashan still sent Eli a selection of photographs each month, mostly of Ziva and very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo at each other's doors.

Bashan reached the edge of the compound, where as expected he found the Ambassador's seventeen year-old son Chaim Likud dressed to the nines, and reeking of alcohol. On the crisp spring night, he had company none other than the scantily dressed fifteen-year-old daughter of the Saudi Arabian ambassador. Bashan found the two young lovebirds lying in one of the bushes sharing what Bashan hoped was just a tobacco cigarette but knew was probably laced with marijuana.

Bashan found himself smirking, remembering the many times he had caught Eli's two elder children doing far worse, as they were just as rebellious as Chaim Likud.

"Hey Bashy," Chaim slurred, using a nickname Bashan did not like, when he finally noticed the presence of the elder man. "Don't tell my abba," the boy said in a desperate tone.

"Do not worry," Bashan said calmly before walking off. Bashan had never been a tell-tale even in school. He much preferred having leverage over people by knowing the secrets no one else knew.

Sadness suddenly washed over Bashan like the red sea washed over golden sands at high tide. The feeling was familiar; he had often felt it after encountering a child. Bashan wondered why he had never had children; of course the reasoning was obvious – he had only ever been in love once, with a married woman who already had children. Bashan had often found himself wishing Tali David had been his child when she was alive. After her death, when he saw how the remaining members of the David family fell apart, he felt guilty for having such a silly wish.

Bashan reached the gate of the embassy. He looked out onto Embassy Row. He watched as the Japanese ambassador kissed her gay lover goodnight; the poor young woman watched the ambassador run home towards her husband and sobbed before driving off.

The German head of security threw an empty vodka bottle into the bushes of the British embassy and stumbled drunkenly towards his embassy. Bashan shook his head, remembering his lone encounter with the man at a security conference; the blonde haired man had smelt like a brewery and been subtly anti-Semitic.

The yellow taxi-cab drifted down Embassy Row. Rivka found herself looking out the window remembering many tedious dinner parties filled with ambassadors and low-level political ministers, where the craziness really came out after a few drinks. The taxi-cab driver stopped in front of the Israeli embassy; the stop broke Rivka from her musings of her past.

Bashan watched as the taxi stopped in front of the gate to the Israeli embassy; he mentally racked his brain for who could be arriving at such a ridiculous hour. He knew the schedule of all the people who worked at the embassy and could not think of a single expected visitor, except for the Ambassador's mother-in-law Gillah Shalev, who was a terrible bore of a woman, and who seemed to have her heart set on Bashan despite being almost two decades older than him, but much to Bashan's relief she was not due for another week.

Rivka slowly emerged from the car, and found herself looking directly at her past. Michael Bashan, her former lover stood behind the gate of the Israeli embassy with a confused look on his face. She slowly walked away from the taxi.

Bashan's mouth dropped open as he realised who was standing before him, in bare feet and a blood-stained black coat.

"Miche," she called, using an old nickname for him. Bashan opened the gate, and Rivka walked towards him focusing only on him.

He walked towards her. They met on the pavement. Bashan's arms wrapped around her slender dancers' body. The driver disturbed their moment by leaning out of his window.

"Hey, I don't know what you do in Israel, but here we pay for taxi rides," the driver said. Bashan handed the taxi driver some money, not caring about the change as he walked off.

Rivka felt Bashan's hand wrap around hers. He led her towards the Israeli embassy. Rivka felt oddly apprehensive as she walked onto what was technically Israeli soil.

A/N: Don't worry familiar characters will return to your screens next chapter. Thank you Anonymous033 for the name.

The old one wasn't working and got rid of my lines.