Title: Illuminated
Author: IronIsraeliButterfly
Chapter Title: Crying for You
A/N: This is for Clairebear who just couldn't wait for another chapter, and all those wonderful people who reviewed. And yes, "Raining" and "The Gibbses, Version 4.0" are being worked off. This chapter gets very… intense. More dialogue than usual. Rated M for language.
"This time was different
Felt like I was just a victim
And it cut me like a knife
When you walked out of my life
Now I am in this condition and
I got all the symptoms
Of a girl with a broken heart
But no matter you'll never see me cry."
-"Cry"
Ziva needed ibuprofen desperately. She rummaged inside her desk drawer, and put her hand on the white plastic cylinder that contained the relief and shook two small tablets into her cupped hand and threw them into her mouth. It was something she had learned in a trench in the army — she had had a terrible splitting headache and she no more water in her canteen. In between refilling her magazine, she would down the little white tablets that promised redemption from the pain.
McGee had wired her computer that she would be able to track Gibbs's returning plane, mile for mile. As she stared at the varying shades of black and the tiny black dot, the past couple days came back at her with a force. Managing the office was not easy. At least Tony wasn't there; he would have annoyed the hell out of her. She sat part of the day in MTAC conferring over the phone with Gibbs, spitting word by word in Arabic to explain to local authorities.Vance was annoyed, she could tell. She had watched him pulverize toothpick after toothpick in MTAC as he struggled to keep his cool. He didn't need a cadaver in Riyadh to mess up relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States. He had half a mind just to make it a suicide so as not to screw up the already delicate communication between the two nations. Vance was also second-guessing himself, sending Gibbs and DiNozzo, who were the not the agency's crème-de-la-crème of diplomats.
McGee came out of the lift, clutching two sodas and a bag. He delved inside the bag and produced a hamburger and slid it across her desk, adding the soda.
She looked up and smiled. "Thanks, McGee."
He bent over her desk. "Ziva, are you going to tell him?"
"I don't…"
"Dammit, Ziva!" He struck her desk with his fist. "You have to tell him!" Ziva had never seen McGee so angry. He actually resembled Gibbs when he was angry. "You walked into this relationship realizing that if it soured then we, as a team, would have to split up!"
"Why are you saying that the relationship is going to end?" Ziva stood up, anger blazing in her brown eyes and she met McGee's emeralds.
"Because if you don't tell him…"
"I'll tell him, McGee. In fact, I'll tell him right now. Oh, right, he's on a trans-Atlantic flight back from Saudi Arabia after being there for four days. And I don't need you, Timothy McGee, to tell me how to run my love life considering that yours is absolutely zero!"
Abby stood in the hallway, listening. She couldn't believe what she was hearing; McGee and Ziva, who were best friends, were arguing. Maybe there was more to their friendship? Abby listened harder. Their words were growing sharper.
Or maybe Ziva was in a relationship with Tony. That would be nice, Abby mused. But then the reality hit her like a ton of bricks. For the past six months, Gibbs had been looking happier. He had smiled more, he had laughed more. Abby had surmised that Gibbs had fallen in love with someone again, and she had asked her nuns to pray that it would be a lasting relationship. Gibbs needed that happiness desperately, more than anyone she knew.
And he had found that happiness in Ziva.
The same woman Tony was helplessly in love with.
Rage broke forth as Abby raced into the bullpen.
"You self-serving, ravenous, insatiable SLUT!" Abby punched Ziva in the face.
McGee gasped. "No, no, Abby, you mustn't fight! You misunderstood!" Why did he always have to be there when the two fought?
"I don't think you know what you're talking about, McGee," Abby said, glaring at him. "Ziva just jumped into his bed, thought she could scam someone else for information, she's using Gibbs. It wasn't enough that you all saved her from Somalia… no, that was part of the plan, wasn't it, Officer Dav-eed? Get us to trust you, get to be an NCIS agent, Mossad gets all their intel from inside. But it wasn't going fast enough, so she tempts Gibbs into bed and he spills everything. Well, I got something to tell you, you BITCH, that Gibbs deserves all the happiness in the world and you're hurting him. And anyone who messes with Gibbs has to deal with me, Abigail Scuito, forensic scientist extraordinaire. I can kill anyone without leaving any forensic evidence."
"Which I think is hardly necessary, Abby," Ducky said, strolling in.
"Ducky — she betrayed us!"
"I heard everything you said, Abigail, and I think you need to draw on your considerable capacity of brainpower and think if what you have just spouted from your mouth makes any logical sense. Do you think that Ziva is really capable of conning Gibbs into such a scheme?" Ziva shot Ducky a grateful look.
"Abby—"
"Don't talk to me you conniving, vicious, vile… whore!"
"Abby!" McGee and Ducky gasped.
"I wish Kate was here. I wish Ari killed you!" Ziva's mouth dropped open. "Oh, that was part of your plan too? I HATE YOU, ZIVA DAVID!"
Ziva began breathing hard, but maintained her composure. She looked around the office and saw the faces of Ducky and McGee, shocked and silent. "I see. Abby, I'll leave on the next flight back to Israel." She went into her drawer and pulled out her Sig and badge and placed them on her desk. She pulled out her various personal effects and placed them in her bag, grabbed her coat, and exited the bullpen.
When Ziva got to Gibbs's home to pick up her few belongings, there was a light on. She lifted her spare gun and opened the door, which was unlocked. Gibbs was sitting on the sofa. Ziva walked straight past him.
She could hear the sofa creak when he stood up. Stupid sofa, she cursed it. Gibbs couldn't even fix that. She had hated it… one more thing that she wasn't going to miss.
"Honey, what's wrong?" he appeared in the doorway. She pulled a suitcase out of the closet and started dumping her clothes in it.
"You're not… leaving, are you?" he asked, the words stuck in his throat. It couldn't be. The woman who he truly loved, the woman he trusted was leaving him. "Honey, we can work this out…"
Ziva got up and started pulling things from the next drawer and placing them in the second suitcase. "Don't make this harder than its going to be." She crossed to the closet and pulled out her clothes, throwing them and gathering the shoes.
"But, Ziver, we can at least talk about this, can't we?" he pleaded. She wasn't leaving. It couldn't be. She crossed to her lock box and pulled out her documents and deposited them into her bag.
"No, Jethro, we're not. I'm leaving. I'm going back to Mossad. I'm going back to where I belong. NCIS was a mistake."
He sat down on the bed and breathed heavily. "Was I a mistake?" he asked, watching her. She zipped her bags and rolled them to the door, and turned around to him, her eyes full of tears.
"No… no…" he raced after her, "Ziva, no, don't go…" but the rain pounded out his screams into the black night, echoing the despair he felt inside.
When Gibbs entered the bullpen the next morning, he lingered for a while at Ziva's former desk. He opened the drawers, hoping to find some leftover personal item… but all he found was two pencils, a pen, and a highlighter. All he had left from her was the badge and Sig she had once used, and her photo ID. He had her ID in his interior jacket pocket, as some sort of memento, like some proof that she had actually existed and not just walked through his life.
Abby scrutinized him like he was sickening from some rare illness when he walked into her lab that morning. He was expecting her to be upset that her friend, had left. Rather, she had seemed on edge and a bit angry, and even though she didn't mention the absent Israeli, it felt like Ziva was the source of Abby's anger.
Ziva landed in Ben Gurion Airport, the scorching Israeli summer reaching inside the state of the art terminal via the skylights. Malachi Ben-Gidion was standing there, looking handsome as ever in his neat dress shirt and slacks, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his toned arms. He enfolded her into a loving embrace. They had been together for a very long time, serving in the army and then he being her CO. Now, once again, they were together again.
He saddled her backpack and took her suitcases onto a cart and led her out into the brilliant Israeli sunshine, talking to her about what life had been like since she had left. And now she had returned, to re-join what the struggle truly was.
Eli David leaned back into his chair and surveyed his daughter thoughtfully. "But there is no truth in what Miss Scuito said, Ziva, so why did you take offense?"
"I cannot work in such an office where I am not trusted one hundred percent."
"The feeling of mutual cause and trust, I believe, is unique to Mossad. I can re-instate you under Malachi. He has been missing you, Ziva. Liat is not as good as you, I am afraid. But as a father, I might be prejudiced. I insist that you call Leon though and tell him you bear him and his agency no ill will." Ziva nodded.
"And Ziva?"
"Ken, Abba?"
"It is good to have you back."
Gibbs looked at the framed picture on his end table of him and Ziva on a beach, both smiling at the camera. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back. An intense sort of melancholy settled inside of him.
In the past few days, he had learned what had transpired in the office that had made Ziva decide to leave. He had no idea what to say to Abby. He had tried to call Ziva several times, but there had been no answer. Abby had pleaded with him to try and make things better.
He sat at his desk and opened the blue velvet box and stared at the ring inside. A ring he would never be able to give her. He would never be able to tell her how it would be. He never was able to tell her how much he loved her.
"How about this, Ziva," Vance said, pushing aside his toothpick. "I'm going to count this as personal leave and your desk is open for the next year. Just call before coming. Okay? Okay. Send my regards to your father."
Vance set down the telephone.
"Gibbs… you need to go to Israel and get her back. I don't care what you do, but we need Ziva in this agency. And I suspect that you have… uh, personal motivations. You have until this date of next year to get Ziva back. Do you hear me? One year."
Gibbs nodded. "Will that be all?"
Vance sighed. "You're our one chance, Gibbs. I trust that the second b in your name will become less pronounced."
And Gibbs smirked.
