Chapter 7: Ghosts
Gibbs: Would you like me to put you out of your misery, Cobb?
- From NCIS Pyramid
x x x x x x
Gibbs kept mosquito-repellant candles on his deck for when he worked outside after dusk. He lit them and they sat down in the flickering light, backs up against the house and plates in their laps, food and a stack of napkins piled between them. Gibbs didn't clutter up his patio with furniture.
He ate a mound of salad and almost a quarter of the pie before breaking the easy quiet.
"What's on this," he pointed to the greens with his fork. "It's good."
"A dressing flavored with pomegranate. It was a favorite when I was young." A little hesitation, and then a gift. "My mother made it for me on special occasions."
Gibbs chewed and swallowed, squinting into the shrubs that lined his backyard without seeing them. He didn't like it when people dug into his personal life, felt awkward doing it to his agents. But he sucked it up and pried like a crowbar if that's what was needed.
"Don't talk about your mom much."
She shrugged and said nothing.
He was almost pleased. He could pry elsewhere and they would put the subject of mothers away. It was another thing the two of them would silently share - not talking about their moms much, together.
Gibbs set his plate aside and picked up the bottle of pills he'd carried out along with her tea. He tossed it at her, enjoying the snap of Ziva's reflexes as she snatched it out of the air.
She sighed, too resigned to be truly annoyed, and twisted the cap off to swallow two of the tablets down.
"You just want to make me sleepy. To get me out of your fair."
Gibbs' lips quirked up. He let his head rock back against the house and reached up to rub his eyes, relaxing completely, finally. Belly full and surrounded by the safety of his home, hidden even from Ziva by the shadows of the warm night.
He should be working on some project or other in the basement right now, not sitting idle. It felt strange, uncomfortable, to let his thoughts run helter-skelter after a tough case. The adrenaline had crashed and his guard was down and it all began to hit him, tangling up in his mind. Cobb, running circles around them for weeks. Gibbs' team - all the work of his life - relegated to second-string. And Ziva, sitting beside him with questions in her eyes, ones she was reluctant to ask. He sensed, without even knowing what they were, that he would have no answers for them. He would be battling Vance again over this assignment, fighting a Director mired in his own insecurities. And Dinozzo was up to something, Gibbs could tell. Pulling away. He depended on Tony, but he wasn't sure he should anymore. Not because he wasn't dependable - the opposite, really. Because it was selfish. Tony should be gone, flown from the nest, running his own team. Gibbs just didn't want to let him go.
He already missed Mike, crusty old pain-in-the-ass cowboy that he'd been. Mike understood him. His mentor was a refuge once, something solid and strong in an otherwise murky world. But he was gone now, another bulkhead washed away.
And tomorrow Leyla and Amira were coming. Coming to him.
Gibbs rubbed a hand through his hair and shook all that off. Reminded himself that it was useless to think about it. He would take it all as it came, one day at a time, like he'd learned to do long ago.
Ziva was looking at him closely. "You are tired?" Her voice was tinged with almost total disbelief.
Gibbs knew his agents thought he could go forever. Through anything. He could, in fact, go for a long time. But it was such an absurd question – and he was so tired. He laughed softly.
She uncrossed her legs and began to rise, the horror of a social faux-pas fixed on her Polite Guest face. "I apologize. I will leave – "
Gibbs flung out a hand and caught her sleeve.
"Sit down."
He opened his eyes and crooked his neck up to look at her.
"Seriously, Ziva. I won't be sleeping for awhile. Those pills are going to hit soon anyway." Maybe they'll even open you up. Cause we're not done. "Sit down."
He let his head fall back again but kept his eyes open, tracking her as she reluctantly settled next to him.
Self-pity - it never led to anything good. He felt a little bubble of disgust swell inside him, that he'd let himself drift in it even for a moment. That his agent had seen it. He turned his attention back to Ziva.
"Mike said you've been writing to Amira."
In his peripheral vision she leaned back into the house, relaxing again. "Yes. Leyla has been teaching her the Arabic alphabet, as well as English, so I write a little in each. Her mother does not want Amira to lose touch with her heritage."
Gibbs mulled that over. Picked the crowbar back up. "How about yours?"
"Hm?"
"You talk to anyone back in Israel, Ziva?"
"Sometimes." Then, off-hand, "Amira is a happy child."
Huh. Guess they weren't talking about Israel. "Yeah."
Ziva crushed the leftover pie on her plate with her fork, her eyes searching for something in the black shadows of the yard. Avoiding his gaze. "Do you think Kai was right? Justified, I mean. To go after the men who made her an assassin?"
Kai again. Gibbs took a moment to pull back, mentally, trying to evaluate where the hell this was going. Where she was going.
"I think it's our job to stop people from breaking the law," he said simply. Cautiously. "And that's what she was doing."
She gave him a be serious look that actually surprised him. He was totally serious.
"What about when we are the ones to break the law?"
She was either calling him on Mexico or she was in trouble herself. And Ziva didn't really sound like she was in trouble.
Gibbs went back to looking at the yard. "Well . . . we can't bring ourselves in. That would be a conflict of interest." He grinned to show he wasn't answering seriously, not now. He wasn't about to hash Mexico out with Ziva. Whatever was bugging her, his checkered past with drug dealers wasn't it.
Ziva shrugged that off. "Was she right though, do you think?"
Her voice was calm, but coldly serious. She wanted a real answer to . . . some question. What though? When was murder right? Or could it ever be? A tricky subject for the two of them.
He was pulled back to Ducky, hovering over the corpse of that pathetic Marine who'd beaten his wife.
. . . I wouldn't blame her if she did this.
But that doesn't make it any less of a crime . . .
It sounded like Ziva was trying to identify with Kai. Maybe even with him, when he'd been the man who murdered Hernandez.
Was she asking about her own revenge? Or was this one of those steps? She was done with denial - time to move on to anger?
He shook his head again, feeling more helpless than confused. He wasn't a philosopher, didn't deal in gray like Ducky did. Some questions had no answers, not as far as he could tell.
"I think that some situations don't have a right," he said slowly. "Everything about them is wrong. There's just . . . doing the job. Keeping the wrong to a minimum. Moving on."
He didn't say it, but Kai hadn't really been about revenge, or even bringing justice to the men who made her what she was. An assassin like that could have killed everyone responsible for her childhood and retired to a very nice life, sipping Mai-Tais on a beach for the rest of her days, if that was what she wanted. But she hadn't.
Kai had simply lost it. Actually lost her mind, and killed plenty of innocents along the way, just like Cobb. Then again, from what he understood Ziva hadn't been overly choosy about who she killed on the way to Saleem's camp. Now probably wasn't a real good time to remind her of that.
He was navigating a minefield, blind. "What's going on, Ziver?"
"I wanted to know what you thought."
Bullshit.
"Are you in trouble?"
She shook her head and he sat in silence for a minute, studying her intently. "Someone out there you feel the need to go after?" He'd truss her up and lock her in the basement until she came to her senses. Or at least be her back-up.
"Ha. Just one?"
Not exactly reassuring. She glanced his way and grimaced. "Do not worry, Gibbs. I am not going to go on a killing spree. Not another one, anyway." She shoved her plate aside. "It was simply on my mind, after Cobb."
No. Not buying it.
In this sort of situation, he thought wryly, Dinozzo was light years ahead of both of them. He'd managed to get his revenge on Saleem and bring Ziva back to them. The difference was Dinozzo hadn't gone off on his own, hadn't done anything dark, or even borderline illegal. He'd not only had Gibbs and McGee on his six, but also the Director and a whole frigging carrier group waiting in the wings. Sure, Gibbs and Vance arranged most of that, but Tony was the one who'd set it in motion, who assumed doing it with the agency at their backs was the smart way to go.
Gibbs startled himself, and not for the first time, with the thought that there may be certain, unique situations where he should . . . listen to Dinozzo more.
He felt a weird sense of deja-vu creep over him, but not from his own memories. It was something he'd seen in Mike's eyes, back when Gibbs really was a probie. When he'd disagreed with the boss and held his ground and been right about something, about the way it should be. He shivered as a little breeze puffed across his head, ruffling his hair.
You do hear ghosts, probie . . . I believe we make em.
We've made our share . . .
It was Mike who pulled him back from -
He should head slap himself. He was an idiot.
"You're not like them, Ziva."
She turned to look at him. Long shadows were carved under her cheekbones and her eyes were impossible to read, impenetrable dark pits.
"Kai. Cobb," he said. "You and I have both killed . . . more than our share, probably. When we have to. Not because we're driven to it. You're not like them."
The breeze died and the world around them was absolutely still.
"I have come close."
"So have I."
Ziva nodded to acknowledge that. A sniper was not so very far from what she trained to be, and Gibbs had certainly overstepped the bounds of his training at least that once. In Mexico.
She thought of Gibbs as a rock, immovable. A needle always pointing true North. He never seemed to waver, to be tempted or confused. She knew to her bones he would never be a monster. She wondered, though, how honest he was with himself. Or maybe he was just trying to reassure her. She was fairly certain that they had both been driven to kill.
Ziva wasn't like Gibbs. Oh, she had never really been tempted by evil. But she was her father's daughter, and Ari's sister. When she was pushed she'd become confused. Twisted. She lost her way in Somalia and now she knew it was possible. Somalia had shown her the limits of her control. Ziva wasn't a rock.
She did not want to be a monster. But Cobb hadn't either, had he? Neither had Kai. It was why both of them sought their own deaths, in the end. They did not want to be what they had become.
"I am going to Spain, Gibbs. Because I am an assassin. Like Cobb." And I was ready for death, too, wasn't I? But you pulled me back.
He looked up sharply.
Well, Ziva reasoned, Vance would probably tell him eventually anyway. And she just didn't want to face it alone.
"Bryce Leitner has returned there."
"The Port-to-Port suspect?" Gibbs searched his memory as he spoke. "Your source said he had alibis for the murders."
"Yes. Leitner could not have been the killer because he was already under surveillance when the murders occurred. He is a known mule for the Syrian government."
Ziva sat forward, until her face was in the candle light. "But he was in several cities at the same time as the murders. Leitner had definite contact with at least two of Cobb's victims."
They looked at each other, read the same words in the other's eyes.
There is no such thing as coincidence.
Cobb's voice wove through the back of Gibbs' mind. I thought I was being trained to do what was right.
So serious, so earnest. He must have been an easy personality to manipulate. Right up until he'd gone insane. Or had he? The MO fell apart at the end, the weird habits of the precise serial killer melting away. So how much of it was real?
Gibbs ran his fingers through his hair and didn't manage to raise his head out of his hand when he was done. "The murders weren't random."
"We do not know for sure. But it seems at least some of the men Cobb killed were guilty of treason, and perhaps more. I am to trace the connection between Leitner and the first victim. Identify any other . . . unusual contacts Cobbs' victim had in Spain. Perform the same research that Cobb would have, if the murder was a targeted hit."
Gibbs let his head fall back again, his mind buzzing with the implications. What an unholy mess. "He said he thought he was trained to do what was right." Were the kills sanctioned?
"Yes, the Director said. But Gibbs, eventually Cobb murdered Mike, and Agent Levin as well. Whatever his intentions starting out they became twisted. Like Kai. And . . . Ari."
He really was an idiot. There was a question in her voice, and all that earlier stuff made sense now. Struggling to understand Kai, and Cobb. Even her brother.
She was looking at him. Waiting. "Yeah."
What would be the humane thing to do, Agent Gibbs?
You do hear ghosts.
Ducky, whispering to him. You and I both know Mike Franks might have picked a fight . . .
Cobb was in his house. That meant he knew Mike was sick. And Levin, they didn't know a damn thing about him, did they? Except that he had been killed by a precision shot.
He'd thought he finally caught up with Cobb when he killed him. But it looked like Cobb was a step ahead even in death. And Vance was sending Ziva. She would be the one agent at NCIS most able to think like Cobb. To follow in the footsteps of an assassin.
"Don't assume anything," he reminded her. "About any of his kills."
"Alright."
Don't get lost in that. You're not an assassin anymore.
She wouldn't hear him if he said it. She was obviously already feeling lost.
Ziva yawned hugely and slumped down even farther against the wall.
"How's the head?"
"Hurts." She went still suddenly, after she said that. Probably shocked she had.
"C'mon." Gibbs stood, feeling old as he worked awkwardly around his bum knee, and reached back down to haul her up. "There's a cot in the basement."
She nodded and used his hand to pull herself nimbly to her feet, then slipped out of his grasp and tipped lazily toward the house. She was about ready to crash through the plate glass of the patio doors when he reached out and seized hold of the back of her shirt.
Looked like the pills had kicked in. "Steady on, sailor."
She leaned forward, easily touching the glass, and Gibbs suppressed a shudder. If she'd gone through that window Ducky would have had his ass.
Once, soon after he'd started working with Jenny in Europe, Gibbs had gotten them into a bad scrape by taking a series of . . . well, stupid risks was the only way to put it, really. He wasn't used to being responsible for a less experienced partner and they'd just barely gotten out of it with their lives. Ducky was over there with them at the time and knew all about it. He'd waited until he and Gibbs were on an airplane together. It was a little puddle jumper and they were wedged into bucket seats half an inch apart. No possibility of escape. As they taxied down the runway charming old Ducky began a story about vivisection that went on and on. And on.
It was as horrifyingly gruesome as it was boring, and about halfway through the flight Gibbs got the point. Finally, just before they came into land, he'd . . . well, he hadn't apologized exactly. But he expressed regret for endangering his probie and promised to avoid doing it so cavalearly down the road. Ducky had smiled and patted his knee and said, "Good lad. Do try to look after yourself as well, won't you?"
And that was the end of stories about dissecting bodies while they were still alive.
He had a feeling that Duck would look forward to giving him an even more . . . vivid experience with vivisection if a stitched-up, concussed Ziva came to catastrophic harm in his house, right under his nose. All because he'd shoved Ducky's own pain-killers down her throat and then neglected to look after her.
"Gibbs." She set both hands on the wooden frame of the door and pushed at it ineffectually, drawing out every letter of his name as if it were its own syllable. "I put honey in my tea."
"Yeah?" No kidding.
"Are you not tired of being nice to me?"
Are you not. Only Ziva. She'd been here long enough to pick up contractions. He was pretty sure she just considered them lazy.
He shifted his grip to her arm and reached down with his free hand to turn the handle. "I think your radar for nice is a little off."
The door swung inward and all of Ziva's weight lurched forward to follow it. Gibbs' grip kept her standing until her other arm came up to rest on the nearest wall, pushing her upright. Once she'd steadied she turned and looked at him seriously.
"You did not answer the question."
"No."
No, he was not tired of being nice? She considered that as he propelled her through the back hall, toward the kitchen and the basement steps. Her body was a little floaty, but her mind was still sharp enough, she was certain.
"I do not believe you."
"You'll get tired of it first," he assured her.
She was like a noodle, muscles relaxed and going every which way. Almost disturbing flexible, like babies were. She must do a lot of stretching. Every woman he'd ever known who worked out regularly was obsessed with stretching.
"Tony does not like it when you are nice," she said. "McGee told me so."
Seemed she had a hang-up about that. He propped her against the kitchen wall to open the basement door. "Neither do you."
"But he likes you. And you like him!" she cried out, totally out of the blue. She leaned toward the open doorway, moving forward just as confidently as she spoke. He grabbed her arm and controlled the fall down to the first step, pulling back on her upper body while the rest of her swayed forward, as if the stairs were a pool she was determined to dive into.
"Not as much as you." He nudged her slowly down the steps. The two of them were a tight fit.
"Gibbs!"
He grinned. "Which is kind of interesting, actually. What's your boyfriend think about that?"
"Gibbs!" He almost laughed. She might have been trying for serious, but they weren't being serious, and she was too doped to fake it. Her voice was a mix of scolding and reproach and cheery, floppy sing-song, a semi-offended warble she could only have picked up from Abby.
"I am boozy. Woozy! Tony and I are - oh, whoops!" He grunted. She'd staggered and managed to step on both of his feet at the same time. "Professionals. And that was . . . below the felt. Um, belt."
They'd finally reached the bottom.
"Better not be," he muttered, and set her against one of the walls, way back from the tools. He turned to drag the cot out.
Ziva sighed – the only word for it – lustily. "We follow your rules."
He grinned. "I know."
"Of course you do."
She went on mournfully, totally over the top. "You know, in Mossad we were not so prudish. I slept with several of my partners," she said airily. "And commanding officers."
That last bit was definitely sultry. Gibbs laughed out loud. She watched him, grinning ridiculously, proud she'd gotten him to crack.
"It was not the end of the world. Very good for stress-relief, actually. And you like him," she reminded him. "I do not see the projection." She shook her head and then put up a hand to hold it. "Ow. Objection. In principle."
Well, he'd only slept with one partner, but it'd been a damn hot mess by the end. He'd given up wondering if he would have seen Jenny going off the rails sooner, if he hadn't held that old loyalty to her. Gibbs shook out the blanket and spread it over the cot.
"Yeah? How'd that work out for you?"
Ziva looked at him as he turned to face her. "O-kay, Gibbs. Yes. One or two may have betrayed me. To my father, which is disturbing. More disturbing, I mean. But!" She flung up a hand, pointing a righteous finger at him. "I knew I could not completely trust them from the get-set anyway. The get-start!" the finger stabbed again. "Um . . ." she frowned, righteous finger hanging in the breeze, forgotten.
Looked like she'd be puzzling that one out for hours.
"The get-go."
"Yes! So it did not matter."
Right. And not completely trusting the team had only taken him five years to undo. Not to mention it was distrust of her partner that set the stage for Somalia.
It was the sort of silence that said what he was thinking louder than any words possibly could.
She walked forward and sat abruptly on the cot. "Jenny was right. You are one of those . . ." she waved a hand and - nothing. Trailed off.
Gibbs stiffened a little. It was easy to forget that Ziva and Jenny were friends, before everything. They'd deliberately made it easy to forget, to avoid the hassle of teammates and subordinates seeing the two women, both new to NCIS, as a unit.
Gibbs wondered, not for the first time, exactly how much Jen told Ziva. How close were they, before NCIS? How close had they remained? Did she know he was with Jenny for awhile? That it was Jen who pulled away? That she was sick? Did Jen confide in her? Ziva could be incredibly discreet when she wanted to be – she'd certainly kept her share of secrets from Gibbs before.
Maybe he'd find out a few new ones. "One of those . . . ?"
"One of those men," Ziva nodded. "Right. Irritating."
He frowned down at her and she grinned at him lazily.
"Ah. Perhaps it was, 'Irritating when they are right.'"
He leaned against a saw bench and grinned, too. He could hear Jen's voice saying that. 'That's what makes you so damn irritating, Jethro . . . '
For a moment her memory was a tangible thing, hovering there between them. Like a ghost.
You do hear ghosts.
He heard too many.
"McGee says you were kind to them after Kate was killed."
Fucking hell.
"But after Jenny you were angry."
His eyes slid from hers until he found himself staring at the floor. Ziva was tired, doped up. Swinging from laughter to pain in the blink of an eye. It wrenched at him more than it usually would, with Jenny in the air between them. And him tired too.
This was where he would walk away, if it was anyone else. If he hadn't all but promised Ducky . . . if she wasn't crashing through plate glass in her mind. Wasn't a raw wound, somewhere.
Something was wrong though, had been since Mike died, and he sensed she was finally closing in on it. Trouble was it felt like she was taking him along with her this time. Up till now most of the pain had been hers. Things that only cut at him second-hand, because they had hurt her. This was different, though. He had his own scars here.
"How do you do it?"
She was looking at him. Waiting for an answer.
tbc, of course . . .
a/n: Thanks once again for all of the reviews and suggestions, folks! I really appreciate them. A few people don't have a PM option on their review handles and may yet leave response-inducing comments, so I'll just impose on this general space and respond in lengthy fashion here.
Someone with the very cute handle of 'snail' (snails are cute - don't tell me they aren't) suggested in his/her thoughtful review that Ziva would tell Gibbs about her secret mission from Vance without so much hesitation because she trusts him enough to share classified stuff. That got me thinking, which is always pleasant, so thank you, snail.
Well, Ziva did tell him in this chapter so I kind of agree, but I actually think this is me changing Ziva's character slightly, making her closer to Gibbs and more willing to share information with him than she is on the show.
Here's my interpretation: I think Ziva trusts Gibbs but I don't think she's been very into sharing things, even with him, unless she's almost forced to do it. I've always thought that Gibbs and Ziva keeping so many secrets - even from each other - is one of the things they have in common. Actually, I wonder if it isn't something that Gibbs sort of encourages his whole team to do, even if he doesn't realize he's doing it, since he's so secretive and he's their role model.
It's all open to interpretation, which is part of the fun of the show, but I read both Ziva and Gibbs as being pretty tight lipped. She kept the details of Ari and of Rivkin a secret from him. She also kept what happened on the Damocles a secret until she was forced to give it up, even though it was bothering her, and in 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' said to Vance, "I cannot comment on Mossad operations!" even after she'd resigned from Mossad. I think that policy of not revealing things about her work for Mossad extends to Gibbs. And when she finds out from CIRay that the current P2P suspect has an alibi, Ziva tells Gibbs that she has info but insists "I cannot tell you how I know this and you cannot ask." She's protecting Ray, even from Gibbs.
For Gibbs part, remember in 'Judgement Day' when Mike and Gibbs are sitting in a diner discussing what happened to Jenny and Mike Franks brings up a classified operation that only Gibbs is supposed to know about? Gibbs looks a little green and Mike rolls his eyes and says, "Relax, probie, classified went out the window.' I took that to mean that Gibbs doesn't even tell Franks about classified stuff, or only does so reluctantly. Gibbs sure didn't tell Tony about Barrett's connection to SecNav, and I think the show sort of hints that Gibbs knows more about her than we or the rest of his team knows with that "Anything else you'd like to tell me, Barrett?" line from the last episode.
So I guess I think that it could go either way, that everyone on Team Gibbs trusts everyone else enough to reveal secrets if they need to, but they're all still prone to keeping their secrets anyway. Of course, wondering about all of those secrets is part of the fun . . .