A/N: yet one more chap came from all of your reviews and pms. Not beta'd, sorry for any mistakes.
A shout out to Alex DN and her friend Trixie67 for Fornell's name for Ziva's new series. Also, thanks a million for all your reviews and pm's regarding this fic.
If Gibbs had wanted to throttle DiNozzo before they'd left for Berlin, he well and truly sought to murderize him now. Of all the damned times to take a hike, his loyal Saint Bernard suddenly chose now? And where the hell was Tobias Fornell, he had needed the Fibbie for intel and all he'd gotten from him was his voice mail. The bastard had not once returned Gibbs' frantic calls, and now what was left of Team Gibbs dragged themselves into the bullpen to sort out exactly what the hell had gone so wrong in the last week.
Arriving around lunch time, they weren't surprised that no one was there with a welcoming handshake or hearty clapping like the time they had all trouped in from their Somalia rescue victory. In fact, they had even gotten some glares from Security and other passers by, and well, Gibbs just wasn't used to being on the other end of them. What the hell was wrong with everybody lately, was Venus still in retrograde or whatever the hell crap Abby had spouted to him last week?
He threw his go bag on the floor behind his desk and collapsed into his chair as he watched McGee do the same. The kid was a shambles, barely hanging on after the free-for-all they had just extricated themselves from, and he carried what was left of his beloved laptop clutched to his chest, muttering incomprehensible things that sounded to Gibbs like 'tatts', and 'stupid SFAs' and maybe something about 'going back to MIT to get his PHD. The lead agent couldn't really make it out, and cared even less about finding out what he was actually saying. He had paperwork to do, big, huge stacks of paperwork, a lot of it being what DiNozzo would have done up for him in the wee hours of the night, IF DINOZZO HAD ACTUALLY BEEN THERE! The stinkin' cowardly dog.
Gibbs looked over at Ziva's desk in desolation and sighed. It was just like when Cate had died, except not really, 'cause Ziva was still alive, but he liked the drama of it anyways. The little tart had decided to shack up with that equally stinkin' dog Trent Kort, having been in communication with him the entire time Kort been in Tel Aviv. It had been highly rumored that Ziva's former lover C I Ray had been enlisted to 'do away' with the loathsome black ops man, but, save for having Kort's eyeball in a jar in Abby's lab, no physical evidence was ever found to prove he had been 'taken care of '. And really, Ziva couldn't hold a grudge against the man, because she had wanted to do the same thing to Cruz, and just hadn't been able to get her slice and dice hands on him yet.
Yet, the little bih...girl who was like a daughter to Gibbs had said nothing of her plans to the rest of her team, and happily led them on a grand chase through Germany and beyond to finally ensnare her father's killer and stomp the life out of him. In the end, he had seen her approaching, wild eyes and hair askew, and tripped off the curb into an on-coming tour bus, which had been exceedingly gruesome, but had done the job, none the less.
Angry and humiliated that she had not been the bus to run him down, Ziva stormed off into the crowd, leaving Gibbs and McGee at a loss as to whether to search her out and comfort her or keep as far away from her as possible for the next few weeks. Ultimately, they really should have tracked her down, as she had made it back to the hotel well before they did, and cleaned them out of their cash and traveler's checks. Gibbs had a credit card with not much left on it, and McGee did not even have that. They had not wanted to leave a paper trail so they had not bothered with taking anything that would leave one.
Great. Not even money for a cab to get back to the airport.
Gibbs had tried getting the consulate to help, but with no NCIS identification, no one would believe who he was, and he had no one to vouch for why he and McGee were actually in Germany in the first place. He got angry about it, (seriously?) and the angrier he got, the less anyone wanted to help him. McGee finally volunteered to try to help, but knew no German whatsoever and could find no one willing or able to speak English with the two ugly Americans.
It turned out that their reputations preceded them, as they had all caused quite the upset in several hotels in several cities each time Ziva was sure that she had spotted Bodnar lurking in the shadows, and they had given chase to him, knocking innocent bystanders down, shooting out lights and priceless artwork, and generally wrecking the place before deciding Bodnar 'had escaped', or, as McGee was starting to suspect, had never actually been there.
Gibbs had called Fornell repeatedly and for some reason had continually gotten the man's voicemail, although a couple of times Gibbs could swear he heard the ocean in the background and voices laughing before the line went dead. He'd finally given up, and he certainly wasn't going to call his craven Senior Field Agent, who after all this, may have been smart in high tailing it to Maui with discretion being the better part of valor. Damn it, Gibbs hated it when the guy was right, and DiNozzo was spot on more than he wanted to admit. All that whining and bitching about being left out of the loop yet again, and Ziva doing something she knew she wasn't supposed to be doing and having it come back on the rest of the team, and sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, and something about a sign saying 'Kick Me' on his back, and yabba yabba yabba!
So what? It wasn't the first time Gibbs hadn't listened to the only person on the team with any sort of moral compass. Well, McGoo had one, but he kept letting himself get led around by his arrow, so that wasn't a whole lot of help, either.
Both of them decided on the transport home, the one they had (sort of) commandeered at (sort of) gunpoint, that they were both done with women, at least until the next red head strolled across the bullpen or Abby promised to show McPussywhipped her latest tattoo. Even if it was on her ankle.
And they were definitely done with Ziva, whom Gibbs decided really not only needed her own team, but her own spin-off. He had been so sure she was cured of her need to be in charge, to be the boss, to be the one in control, to...she had assured him that her loyalty was to him now, her surrogate abba, and that the rest of the team was her family, too. Her days of snap-judgments and impetuousness were behind her, her need to draw and taste blood a thing of the past, her determination to berate, scorn and belittle her SFA gone along with her hatred of him for killing her lover, the one before C I Ray, Michael Rivkin in self-defense, although she still argued angrily to herself and with anyone who would listen that DiNozzo could have just rolled out of the way and got up and run screaming like a little girl from the apartment instead of shooting the enraged Kidon agent.
Well, she had made her bed now. And who was counting how many beds, anyways? Just because Tony was constantly the butt of ridicule for having a new gal every week, didn't mean that she and Abby needed to be held up to those standards, nor should their crappy judgment of who they picked up be scrutinized. DiNozzo was a male ho, that was all there was to it, and they felt better about themselves when they accused him of being one.
But holy Geezus, did it have to be Trent Kort? Well, birds of a feather, Gibbs sighed again as he thought about the two together, plundering Europe and toppling governments like Bonnie and Clyde on steroids. He couldn't even begin to think very deeply about the consequences of that match made in hell, and speaking of hell, DiNozzo had just waltzed off the elevator, getting high fives and hand shakes from several employees seemingly there just to greet him.
"WTF?" thought Gibbs. McGee and I come back from tracking and targeting a – well, he wasn't really sure what Bodnar was considered by the alphabet agencies. The CIA called him an invaluable informant. The FBI called him...well, the same. He didn't care what the other agencies called him, it had become his and Ziva's private (sort of) sanctioned obsession, and they were both used to getting their way when it came to their 'killing them and letting God sort them out later' point of view. It always served them well, no need to stop now just because they were Federal agents funded by American tax dollars.
DiNozzo flashed his million dollar grin, and it was even flashier with the back drop of a knock-out tan behind it. He looked relaxed and refreshed, and he glad-handed the crowd of well-wishers around him.
Gibbs bristled all the more, and gave him his patented 'straighten up or else' glare, which Tony totally ignored. He wasn't on work time, he could afford to be insolent to his boss.
"DiNozzo! If yer done with the ass-kissin', maybe you can get to work and help us with our reports!"
''Au contraire, Gibbs, I'm not back from vacation yet, I just stopped by to pick up some papers from my desk! How was your flight, you look a little frazzled! McBrown Noser, how's it shakin', you look like your favorite computer got run over by a bus!"
"It did! I set it down after Bodnar got run into and the stupid bus driver backed over it! This is all that's left of it! And then Ziva decided to -"
"McGee, shut it. Like Tony said, he's still on vacation, he doesn't need to hear about work, got it?"
"Uh, yeah, boss, I -"
"So what the hell is everybody shakin' hands and shit with you, DiNozzo, you win the lottery while we were gone?"
"Well, sort of, but actually, they were congratulating me for having the balls and good sense not to follow Ziva to Berlin on her Avenging Angel mission, even though I would have been a hell of an asset to you guys. Do you know I also speak a smattering of German, learned it from one of my room mates in boarding school. But anywho, no matter now, all's well that ends well, and hey, where's the Zeevster?"
"She's gomknkkenld." Gibbs mumbled into his coffee cup.
"She's what, Boss, I didn't get that."
"She's still in Europe with Trent Kort planning the next Inquisition!" the angry man shouted, loud enough for the entire floor to hear and then answer back with guffaws and snickers.
"Ahhh, more like the Dark Ages, I think, or maybe the Blitzkrieg, but to each his own. Gotta go, Toby's waiting for me outside, he's double parked."
"Tobias is here, where the hell has he been?"
"Around, Jethro." Fornell announced cooly, stepping off the elevator with his own healthy tanned glow. "Gotta admit, it sure would've been fun to be with you guys and watch everything going sideways, but hey, had some time off I needed to use up before I lost it. Still got a few days off, I'll see ya around next week. C'mon, Tonio, let's get going, we're gonna be late for the first pitch, and I don't wanna miss it."
The two new best friends stepped into the elevator and disappeared, chatting and laughing as the doors closed on them and the disbelieving faces of Gibbs and McGee disappeared.
"So, what'd you come up with for a name for Ziva's new show while you were waiting for me, Toby?"
"How about...Naval Criminal Investigative Self-Servers: Committing Treason, Perjury and Federal Crimes Against our Country? NCIS: CTPFCAC?"
"Cit-pif-cack. Mmmm. Maybe too long, but certainly tells the whole story. I've got a shorter one, one that harks back to the good old days...how about, 'Leave It To Ziver'?"
the end?