All the disclaimers for all my faults:
1. So this is the first thing I've written for any show. I assumed I'd have pop my fanfiction cherry with The X-Files or Doctor Who or ER or Parks and Rec or House, but here we are. Be gentle.
2. My timelines and knowledge of old plots may be a little off, and I'm sorry. Consider it au if you want. As it stands, this is all conjecture based on theories I've read online regarding 'Shiva' and my foggy memories of past arcs.
3. I'm not too keen on the ending but I'm too lazy to figure out how to fix it.
4. I own my laptop, and that's pretty much it (so basically I'm not trying to steal, this is your usual "don't sue me" line)
5. Probably nobody will read this anyway, but I ain't even bovvered. I had to put this somewhere.
weird american work family
She still clearly remembers the feel of her father's body's cheek as she kissed it good-bye in the morgue. He was not cold yet, and her boss was there. He offered no information on the locations of her colleagues, and she didn't ask. And she didn't protest against him gently leading her out of the building and in the direction of his truck, nor when he said simply that he couldn't let her stay alone tonight. Maybe he had said other things. Maybe she had too, but she does not recall. She does not care. She feels nothing.
She walks in through his front door. Gibbs steps in behind her, shuts it, and passes in front of her toward the kitchen. He opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. Motions for her to take a seat at the table. She stands her ground.
"And Jackie?" She has to know.
He shakes his head. "She didn't make it, Ziva. Died on the table." She has always liked that about Gibbs. He never sugarcoats things. Why should tonight be any different?
But that doesn't make reality any easier to swallow. A fresh surge of grief threatens to overtake her, but she pushes it down. There will be time, when she is alone, for these things to take their course. Gibbs walks up to her, opening the bottle. She's not thirsty, but takes a few sips anyway. The water is cold, of course. Colder than a corpse, she morosely guesses. When life is gone and it is days, weeks, months dead, what is a body's temperature? She will have to ask Ducky.
Ziva purses her lips, miming a grin in compensation for the drink. Gibbs acknowledges her with his own weak smile. She drops her eyes, and he returns to the kitchen, then calls out behind him if she's hungry.
"No, thanks. If it is okay, I would just like to go to bed now."
"'Course, you know where the guest room is," he nods his head toward the staircase. "An' I'll be here, Ziva. If you need anything. But please," and his voice is firm, "don't do anything stupid tonight. Just… just rest. I'm expecting you to stay in this house 'til the morning." Orders. She can follow orders.
And she hadn't been planning on leaving, anyway. Justice can wait until morning because she is tired now. So very tired.
Ziva jerks awake at half-past four, sweat pooling on the pillow and making the sheets damp. She doesn't remember a dream, but surmises that may be for the best. She spends the next fifteen minutes shifting in her bed, willing sleep to come again. Willing herself to not dwell on her father or Jackie Vance. After counting to one hundred in five different languages, she abandons any hope for slumber and gets up.
She puts her decades of training to use, and silently makes her way to the master bedroom. She's unsurprised to find it empty, instead shifting gears and heading for the basement.
A faint light greets her from the doorway, confirming her suspicions. She forces herself to ignore the memory of the first time she crept through this house, over seven years ago. A Mossad weapon, a pure killing machine. That was the day she murdered her brother, per her father's demand. What a case she would make for a psychiatrist, she thinks. She forges ahead and stops on the third step.
Gibbs is focusing intently on his boat, sanding a flexed piece of wood at the bow. It takes him about half a minute to notice her presence.
"Ziva," he sounds surprised, almost. "Um, I'll come up there, just let me…" and he tosses his sandpaper onto the nearest workbench and strides across the room, to the stairs. She knows he must remember the night Ari Haswari died. But she perishes the thought and begins her short ascent, finding her way back into the kitchen. She sits down, and he claims an adjacent chair.
Elbow on the table, Gibbs repeats her name, questioning, clearly ready to listen to whatever she has to say. She takes a moment to compose herself because she needs to be detached. En garde because she's unsure how he will react.
"A few years ago," she begins, "Tony and I," (and there is no returning after this) "well, we have been seeing each other. For about three years. Though there were some rough patches that you might recall." Rivkin and Somalia are at the top of that list. She picks up her pace, so he can't interrupt. "And it was not serious, we never wanted it to interfere with the job, and we knew that it would not be approved of and we did not want to even get together in the first place for that reason but some things are inescapable and -" she has to take a breath, lest she pass out or lapse into Hebrew. She uses the break to examine the older man's face, looking for any sign of anger, disappointment, anything. She finds nothing.
"That true?" he asks. She nods quickly. His face is still unreadable. But she needs to keep going.
"There is more." This is the main event. Ziva steels herself again, takes a deep breath. "I am." This was harder than anticipated. "I am pregnant, Gibbs."
Gibbs' coughing startles her. He blinks a few times, squints, then stands up and turns away. A definitive reaction. It's a long moment before he faces her again, and she rises from her seat to better meet his gaze.
"Please say something," she does not want to beg. And she doesn't want to cry in front of her boss, circumstances be damned. But he's more than just her boss at this point, isn't he? Like family, he and all her colleagues. Traditional in their nontraditional Americanality (is that her first neologism? On any other night, she'd be proud).
"Ziva," his voice is soft as he breaks her from distraction. It matches the look on his face. "How far along?"
He's calm and she doesn't think there will be an argument, but still proceeds cautiously. "Two months. I have only known for a couple of days. Tony does not know yet. My father… Nobody knows yet."
Her tears begin to fall without warning, before she can even attempt to stop them. And Gibbs moves swiftly, wrapping her in a tight hug. He presses his lips to her hair, and a sob rips its way through her body and out of her mouth, and suddenly she's shuddering, gasping for breath, crying uncontrollably. The pent up emotion since the shooting, since her father died, and Jackie died, and her one lead committed suicide right in front of her, rises up like bile. Everything from the past day is racing through her mind, evoking emotions she wasn't sure she even had anymore. She's clinging to Gibbs like he's a buoy and she doesn't know how to swim, and he doesn't make any attempt to let her go. He only pulls her in closer, anchoring her into place until her wails have subsided and she's quietly hiccupping. Her face feels hot and wet, and her nose is running. For a while, there is silence.
And then she scoffs and backs away from him. "You are not going to let me get away with this, are you? I mean, I broke a Rule." She feels offended. Angry. "You cannot let me off the hook, Boss, because I am in clear violation of Rule Twelve. If you do not believe me, just wait a few months." She places both hands gingerly on her lower abdomen, belying the harsh tone in her voice.
"Hey," he replies, and she can tell that he is not even remotely angry. "Now is not the time to discuss what to do about this situation. Someday soon, you, DiNozzo, and I are going to have a talk. We'll figure this out, but try not to worry about it right now. We'll get there when we get there. And when that time comes, we all are gonna be here for you. Tony, me, Abby, McGee, Ducky. Forget the rule for a minute and remember that you are loved."
She is completely thrown by his admission, suddenly acutely aware that Eli David's is the latest in a long line of deaths in her dwindling family. But for Gibbs to actually verbalize that what she'd felt about the team for so many years was in fact reciprocated… Suddenly her rage is gone. Calmly, she returns to her seat.
"I know. And I thank you." Then a wave of hunger hits her, and she asks what Gibbs has to eat.