The ride to the agency was silent.
The abandoned building Cobb had lured Barrett's team to had yielded no clue as to where Cobb might have gone. But according to Levin—who'd gotten away with a shoulder wound while Cade and Barrett had a bullet to the thigh and a severe concussion, respectively— Cobb was injured.
The bastard was shot, and now sporting either a concussion or a broken rib or, at the very least, a significant bruise. If he knew Cobb, and he was now beginning to believe he did, Gibbs figured he would be holing up somewhere, patching himself up and resting before he tried to finish the job.
Cobb would try to finish the job. He was compelled to, courtesy of the training he'd received from their friends at the CIA.
Gibbs slid a concerned glance to the woman sitting in the seat beside him, the car's only other occupant.
Ziva had been quiet, ever since she'd seen Franks on the autopsy table. She'd been shaken, and he hadn't been surprised. Franks had become a friend to her—she'd even visited Mexico on her own, for the sole purpose of catching up with the crotchety old man and the young ladies he shared a bungalow with. He was family, and now he was gone.
Gibbs knew that she was thinking of Leyla and the baby, wondering what would happen to them. No doubt she was even making plans to help provide for them. Leyla had gotten a job in the cantina, but the money wouldn't be enough to support both of them. And now that Franks wasn't around to watch Amira, it would be even more difficult for her to work.
But there was something else weighing on her. The shadow in her eyes was more than grief—it was doubt.
The videos from MTAC flashed through his mind, and his heart sank like a stone. The CIA had been making assassins, and Ziva—despite her reluctance, or lack of choice—had been one for Mossad. Had she gone through training like that? Had she been brutalized, even tortured, to shape her into the perfect instrument of death?
He wanted to believe even Eli wouldn't allow that to happen to his daughter, but deep down he knew that Eli was unlikely to have intervened. If that kind of training was part of the regimen for potential Komemiute officers, then Ziva had gone through it.
Dread settled in his gut like a cement block, as he reached out and gently gripped her hand in his. She squeezed back, but her features remained heavy, and she didn't look at him.
"Mike went out with his boots on, Ziver." He voice was gravelly, betraying his own lingering grief.
She nodded. "The only way he would have been happy with," she agreed, her words thick. "Do you remember Leyla's story? About the dog?"
Yeah. He remembered. All too well.
"Leyla told me that Mike had…" Her voice trailed off, and she cleared her throat. "He told her he didn't want to be that dog, Jethro. He wanted to go out with a fight. He didn't want to just lie down and die."
She swiped viciously at the moisture trailing down her cheeks. "But it doesn't make it any easier for the rest of us."
Gibbs sighed, and held her hand tighter. "No… It doesn't."
It really didn't.
For a long, long moment, silence fell over them. Punctuated only by her mournful attempts to hide her tears, the quiet rang in Gibbs' ears, and before long, his mind urged him to ask the question he really didn't want to know the answer to. As she calmed, the urge grew stronger, and in a moment of uncharacteristic impulse, he spoke.
"Ziver…"
Sensing the shift in tone, she turned to face him, twisting uncomfortably in her seat to do so.
He hesitated, but powered through his apprehension. "Kort showed his footage of Cobb's training… what he went through to become what the CIA wanted him to be." Her eyes darkened even more, and Gibbs saw the walls start to come up. "Did you…?"
He tried, but he couldn't voice the words he needed to.
"Training is rigorous for any military," she stated, her voice hard and clearly resistant to sharing details.
The brusqueness of her non-response suggested that his suspicions were correct—but he'd experienced the same reluctance to share with other Marines too. Gibbs was prepared to let the subject rest at that, but a moment later, Ziva's features softened, and she sank back into her seat, drawing in on herself.
"I do not remember much of my training," she admitted softly. "The lessons stay with you, but the methods…" He knew what she meant. He remembered everything he learned in basic training, but the horror stories… not so much. "I don't know whether I simply pushed it from my mind, or…"
"You were too young." The words burned him as they slipped from his lips, and he hated himself even more when she didn't refute him.
She shrugged. "Whatever the reason… the truth is that I could have just as easily turned out to be exactly like Cobb. I was like Cobb. He hunts people—I hunted people. He's an assassin, just like me."
"You're—"
He meant to say 'nothing like him', but another epiphany exploded in his brain with nearly blinding intensity. Because she was right—horrifyingly right. Everything fell into place, and the confusion as to why disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Cobb wasn't researching him. Promotion had nothing to do with it. Cobb didn't feel a kinship with him.
It was Ziva.
The visits to NCIS, the recon outside his house, it was to learn more about her. Somehow Cobb had discovered their relationship, and knew that she was going to go to Gibbs' house that night. The kinship was assassin to assassin, wounded bird to wounded bird. He was Ziva, and Ziva was him, comrades in arms.
"Jethro?"
Her voice broke through his revelation, and the sound of it nearly made him sick. But he gripped her hand tighter, clutching her like a lifeline.
"Jethro, please… you're scaring me…" A cool hand cupped the back of his neck, bringing him back to her.
He looked to her concerned brown eyes, and swallowed thickly.
"We need to talk to Vance."
A/N: So... this story is kinda like Swan Song, wherein Barrett's influence is little more than exposition, while Team Gibbs displays all the substance. :D Teehee, I'm evil, kinda...
