Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS or any of its characters, but I do have an NCIS hat
"We seriously need to get some new kinds of food here," Tony complained as he looked in the refrigerator of the NCIS break room. "I'm so sick of bagels, fruit, and yogurt!" Settling on a fake-looking red apple, he closed the fridge door and sat down at a table with his blond girlfriend.
"You're right; it was much better in Rota," E.J. agreed. She held up a small cup of yogurt. "You would think that the government would value us enough to give us a real lunch!"
Tony laughed. "I don't think this exactly qualifies as lunch anymore." He pointed to his watch. "It's already 5:30."
E.J.'s eyebrows raised in surprise. She wrenched his watch arm closer to her and made a big show of examining the time before falling back into her chair with a sigh. "I guess that means I should be getting back to my team."
"Aw, come on. You've barely touched your lunch!"
"I know, I know. But do you think that SecNav cares? He wants results yesterday." Tony couldn't come up with a suitable answer and just sat there looking at her. E.J. leaned across the table and kissed him, hard, and then stood up. "Want to go get dinner together tonight, then?"
Just then, her cell phone rang. She whipped it out of her pocket, made a face at the name she saw on the screen, and turned away slightly. "What, Agent Cruz?" E.J. snapped when she answered the call. "I'm coming for God's sake, hold your horses!" She hung up and returned to Tony. "So, dinner tonight?"
It was his turn to sigh. "I don't know, E.J….We've had a lot of late nights lately, what with all the cases that have been piling up, and I'm kind of tired…maybe tomorrow, though."
A hurt look came across E.J.'s face, but it was quickly replaced by annoyance when her phone rang again. Without another word, she turned and stalked off back to the bullpen. Tony watched her walk away, his eyes seeing how her clothes hugged her body, but his mind puzzling over the brief exchange on the phone. What had happened between those two?
Gibbs gazed at the blond-haired woman on the other side of the polished conference table with a blank stare that gave away nothing. She had arrived half an hour ago, while Tony and E.J. were taking a break, and McGee was down in Abby's lab, leaving Gibbs to break the news to the blond woman of her boyfriend's death. She was now sobbing quietly into a white handkerchief embroidered with the initials DJH.
"Ms. Nicholson, when was the last time you saw Chief Petty Officer Harris?" Gibbs inquired quietly.
"Uh, y-yesterday, I th-think," she replied, putting her handkerchief away and attempting to compose herself.
"Had he been acting unusual?"
"A l-little, I guess. I mean, he's usually preoccupied with his work, so sometimes he's a little d-distant…but lately he has…I mean he had been a bit more distant…"
"Like how distant?"
"Oh, I don't really know!" Rachel Nicholson flustered, becoming upset again. Tears started to leak out of her eyes. "He d-didn't really want to do anything, so we j-just ate and watched TV, mostly…"
Gibbs gave her a moment to regain her composure before continuing. When the crying subsided, he switched to a different topic. "Did he ever talk about his work?" If the bureaucrats upstairs wouldn't give him anything, he would have to resolve to slightly cruder methods.
"Not really, no. B-but sometimes, if it had been a particularly bad day, we would talk about it for hours until we both fell asleep on each other's shoulders." Gibbs waited for her to continue, thinking that his next question was unnecessary. "He said his work was confidential."
"Oh, don't worry. I have clearance," he lied slightly.
"He would sometimes complain about the bad decisions the undercover people would make, and how he would've done something different. Usually it didn't really affect the operation, but it generated a lot more paperwork for him to analyze. And then there would be the black ops that he couldn't believe he had clearance to know about, the ones that could have started World War III if anything more had gone wrong." Ms. Nicholson seemed lost in thought, and continued on with her recitation, but Gibbs had heard most of what he needed to hear. CPO Harris had had access to information about any operation ever performed, including black ops. His security clearance must have been equal to that of the President's. Higher, possibly. And if there had been any documents in the missing briefcase…yes, the MCRT had a huge case on their hands, and they were still a man down.
"So what is the CIA guy like?" Abby asked McGee as she worked on cracking the encryption. She had been thankful that Gibbs sent him down here, because there was no way she could work on both the encrypted e-mails and review the security camera tapes sent from where Harris had worked and the cell phone, which was also strangely encrypted. Right now, her head was so full of numbers and letters and symbols that she really needed something else to think about.
"He's okay, I guess. I mean, he and Agent Barrett have obviously worked together before, but it certainly didn't go well," he replied, not turning from the computer screen in front of him. He paused, considering what Abby's reaction would be to his next piece of information about Agent Cruz. "And…apparently he's Ziva's boyfriend."
The monotonous sound of typing that had filled the room recently suddenly became much quieter. "You're kidding, right? He's here and she isn't?"
McGee just nodded, his attention having turned back to the black-and-white security film running in front of him.
"Yes!" Abby cried, and turned to exit her lab. "Cover for me, Timmy, I must go meet this guy!" she suddenly stopped before he could even reply. "McGee, is he better than…" Abby couldn't even bring herself to say his name. McGee temporarily left his work and moved to look at her. "I don't know, Abs. But I really hope so, for her sake."
Tony sat at his desk, finding himself again looking across the aisle at his partner's empty seat. Apparently EJ's phone call from Agent Cruz had involved them going off to talk to Vance and the director of the CIA.
Tony wondered what had gone on between those two agents. Why was there so much bad blood between them? He could ask EJ herself, but she was like Ziva in the way that she didn't really like to talk about her past.
And that Agent Cruz…he seemed pretty nice, but there was just something Tony didn't like about the man, whether it was the fact that he assumed the fact that he could sit at Ziva's desk, or merely that he worked for the CIA.
Deciding that since no one was really going to tell him about Cruz and EJ's history together, Tony turned to have the McGeek research it. But of course, the probie was down in Abby's lab, doing whatever the heck it is they do. Huh. Now that he thought about I, no one really does know what transpires in that lab. Maybe…
Tony pushed the thought out of his head, and turned back to his computer. He opened a new search, and was about to type in his query when his mind flashed back to an event about two years ago…
He pulled the trigger, once, twice, four times, sending a deadly quartet of bullets into the Israeli man's chest. The traitor was dead, and Tony's months of researching the man behind everyone's backs had finally paid off. She was safe now, no one would betray her or harm her. He hadn't quite meant to end up killing him when he came here, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Then…
An enraged Ziva had him pinned to the ground, her gun pressed to his sternum as she yelled at him, her eyes a fiery storm of pain, anger, and grief over the death of her boyfriend.
Tony didn't want to interfere with one of her relationships again, not after those disastrous consequences. And he didn't think EJ would appreciate him digging into her past, either. But his natural curiousity and the suspicion that this job had given him propelled him to cross-reference the two names.
Here goes nothin'…
A figure is thrust into a derelict room containing nothing but a thin mattress on a small wooden bed frame. A bag loosely covers the figures head, and rough rope binds its hands together. THe door to the room slams shut, and only then does a low moan escape the figure. With a quick movement, the bag is thrown off the figure's head, revealing a disoriented woman with dark hair, tan skin, and hazy, mahogany eyes.
Ziva.
Tony leaned back in his chair, his eyelids heavy and brain hurting from a combination of sleep-deprivation and the stress of an important case. Gibbs had come and gone, not an unusual occurrence. McGee, the dedicated little probie, was probably still down in Abby's lab.
The search that he had begun about four hours ago had been interrupted by the other back-grounding required for the current case. With Ziva absent and McGee doing his thing, Tony had to do the work of three people. EJ and Cruz had their own set of orders to follow, mainly liaison stuff between the agencies but also looking into what precisely had been in the briefcase, from what Tony had been able to hear from across the divider.
But, he decided it was time to check up on his personal search.
Exhausted yet alert eyes began to read the document on the screen, after a quick clearance check. Some of the text had been blacked out, but it was obviously a case report from a few years back. There was the mention of an undercover op in a Middle Eastern country, an op that had resulted in the death of a Marine temporarily residing at a US embassy. The Marine's name was blacked out, as well as the name of the country in which he had been killed. EJ had been a senior field agent at the time, and her team, specializing, in overseas investigations had been the NCIS team following leads. Cruz had been part of the CIA delegation. However, there had been some disagreements between the two teams, epitomizing when some of their collective intelligence had been leaked to their prime suspect, and the man fled. There was a huge blacked-out paragraph following this information, and then a simple sentence stating that each team had blamed the other but no one was convicted.
The search revealed nothing else, and Tony was much too tired to really think about what he had just read. He put it off until morning, and left for his apartment.
Tony fell more than sat down onto his couch. He didn't understand why he was so tired; he had worked a much longer day before. Wondering if he was getting to old for his job, his barely-focused gaze wandered over to his movie shelf. It was then that he saw a shadow hidden in the corner. The shadow held a raised gun. Then the shadow pulled the trigger.
Author's Note: The story will continue in Déjà vu, Part 2!
And I know I have been awful at updating this story, so I promise that Part 2 will updated at least weekly. (It helps that I have already written Part 2)
Enjoy your summer!