A/N: I don't own anything I'm not supposed to. The characters, some dialogue, titles + anything else all belong to whomever. Please don't sue me - it is just fun. The rest came out of my brain.
I wanted to see if I could write the other characters - so I did Tiva from the pov. of the rest of the team. Each chapt. is sort of a one-shot. There's no real order and no overall 'story' - except T & Z. The cases fragments are not relevant- just filler so you'll never find out what happened.
I used the visit of Ziva's Dad 'cos I needed a focal point to tie them around. It is not connected nor a continuation of my other story about Eli.
The quotes have no real bearing on the story - I just picked ones I thought suited the character's view of Tiva. Except I couldn't find one for Palmer...
I'm not sure it worked. It didn't come out like I thought it would in my head + I've a couple of angsty tales roaming my head that kept trying to make an appearance in this one - only I wouldn't let them. This layout might be a little confusing. Sorry if that's the case!
"Oh DiNozzo, You Have No Idea."
Silver War: S3
Five Years Ago.
It was inevitable. Ziva David was going to have a dramatic effect on the team. Leaving aside the obvious: that she was a foreign agent. That she was the handler for the man who had murdered their colleague, Kate. That Ari was her half-brother; that she had, essentially, executed Ari; saving Gibbs' life and exacting retribution for Kate. Leaving all that out of the equation, she still meant waves - Tsunami-sized ones.
They were a good team, the best. Gibbs had made them the best. He had bullied, coaxed, threatened, coached and tested them. Using his own formidable abilities, he'd taken their individual skills and forged them into a seamless, highly effective unit. They had lost Kate, the third leg of the stool and they had wobbled.
The director had thrown Ziva into that carefully balanced machine – filling the gap with an unknown entity. In their world, Ziva knew nothing. She had a remarkable skill set: languages, the experience of numerous covert operations informing her actions. She was disturbingly comfortable with sinister interrogation techniques, equipped with the fighting abilities of a Special Forces soldier, a weapons expert with deadly accurate aim. Ziva was neither an investigator, nor a seeker of truth, nor an upholder of Justice. She was an operative; given a target or an objective to acquire by whatever and all means necessary. She was an assassin; a fearless, finely-honed, and utterly lethal weapon.
Ziva David was unlike any woman Tony had encountered. She was a beautifully exotic combination of contradictions: confidence with a curious vulnerability, sometimes brutal honesty versus reticence, reckless yet always tightly controlled and with a bewitching, mercurial temperament. Ziva fielded whatever Tony threw at her without batting an eyelid. Then she'd return it with interest, daring him to up the ante. Ziva affected and possessed Tony on a level he'd never believed existed; he was captivated.
For her part, Ziva couldn't ever quite figure Anthony DiNozzo out. He was an extraordinarily charming puzzle – a bewildering mix of the straightforward and complex. Too many layers to pin down: intelligence masked by the playboy, sensitivity disguised by cavalier disregard, integrity hidden by arrogance. His personality wouldn't conform to any of the profiles dictated by her training. Tony got under her skin and invaded her psyche. He had the seemingly effortless ability to read her like no-one else ever could; forever keeping her off balance, challenging her.
Despite several diversions, their attention always reverted to each other; it was a titanic struggle. And consequences were inevitable.