Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up! It ends rather abruptly, but I didn't want to include any of what comes next because then the chapter would be really long and I wanted to get at least this to you all.
Enjoy, and please comment!
In the aftermath of Ari's death, there is paperwork. Piles of it. A foreign operative killed a terrorist with whom the FBI had been working. And the members of the MCRT are the only witnesses. High ranking people want answers.
One of these people is the Mossad Deputy Director. Gibbs shoots Tony a look of warning as Eli David introduces himself via video conference. Tony feels an overwhelming urge to reach right through the screen and wring the sonofabitch's neck.
Eli expresses concern about his daughter killing a fellow Mossad operative and mentions her possibly confused allegiances. Tony doesn't doubt Eli knows exactly who he is and that that pointed comment is meant for him. He fumes silently and lets Gibbs do the talking.
That is, until Eli makes a casual but purposeful remark about recalling Ziva to face the repercussions of her actions. "After all," he says, the video feed briefly distorting his face, "We do not have definitive proof that Ari was fully aligned with al-Qaeda or Hamas."
"Are you kidding?" Tony explodes. "He stole a drone and tried to blow up members of our military and their families. He killed two sailors. He shot Kate and tried to blow up Gibbs -." He stops short when he sees Gibbs' icy glare.
Eli smoothly denies that there is enough evidence to prove Ari committed those acts. Gibbs shakes his head and gets impatient, and the call ends rather abruptly.
"Way to keep your cool, Tony," Kate says as they exit MTAC, Gibbs striding away to the director's office without a word.
Before he can sit down, his cell buzzes, signaling that he has a text. I am outside your office.
She hands him coffee as he walks up to her. She is no longer wearing the blood stained clothes from before and she looks freshly scrubbed. The look on her face hasn't changed, however. The overwhelming sadness in her eyes that Tony doesn't fully understand until they sit on a bench and she starts talking.
Ari Haswari was her half-brother. Her father's son, born to a Palestinian woman.
The pieces all fit together now. Ari's name, her defensiveness about him, Eli's denial of the evidence supporting Ari's betrayals, her tears over killing him.
He clenches his fists as she continues talking, telling him about how she and Ari were raised together, even though her mother was clearly uncomfortable with this arrangement. Eli taught them both how to fight, how to survive in a world hostile to Israelis. Rivka, Ziva's mother, argued against this and successfully shielded Ziva's younger sister, Tali, against Eli's often brutal tactics. But Ziva always idolized her father and did everything he asked of her.
Eli raised her to be the "pointy end of his spear" at Mossad. He had raised Ari to be a spy within Hamas, the greatest of Israel's enemies. "Before he… died," she adds, "I asked him why he hated our father so much. And he told me that our father had ordered the bombing that killed his mother. I do not know if it is true or not. But it could be true, because that is the type of man my father is."
Tali, of whom Ziva had never spoken except to say that she had a little sister who died, died in another bombing when she was 16. Ziva was undergoing Mossad training, and she was not allowed to leave to attend her funeral. "Tali was the best of us, and my best friend. And now Ari is also dead." She sighs and looks into the distance, emptied of those words that seem to have been weighing her down.
She killed Ari, but only because he would have killed her. Tony tells her this, puts his hands over her cold ones, tries to make her feel better even though he knows that's impossible. If he could, he would gladly wring Eli David's neck.
She shakes her head. "I confronted him. It did not have to happen then and there."
"If you hadn't, Kate would be dead. Me and Gibbs, too, probably." Before he can say anything else, his cell phone rings. As soon as he picks up, Gibbs barks in his ear to get back. And to bring his girlfriend with him.
For the first time, Ziva goes up to the bullpen with him. He holds her hand in the elevator but drops it when the doors open.
Gibbs is waiting for them. "Ziva, if you go to Israel, you're not coming back," he says, foregoing any type of greeting.
"Yes," she agrees. "But if I do not go willingly, my father will have someone uh, escort me."
"Won't let that happen," Tony chimes in. "Right, Boss?"
Gibbs ticks his eyes toward his senior agent but does not disagree. "We need you here to answer questions," he tells Ziva. "There's no way your father would let us talk to you if you go back to Tel Aviv."
"I agree. But what am I to do? Hide?" she asks.
From her desk, Kate pipes up. "Protective custody."
"Yeah, but the director isn't going to approve keeping a foreign operative in protective custody against that agency's will," McGee says.
"Morrow wouldn't," Gibbs says. "But he's not the director anymore." Collectively, they all stare at him. "He stepped down to be Deputy Director of Homeland Security. Told me today."
Tony is the first to recover. "Who's replacing him?"
"Me," replies a female voice from behind him. The whole group turns to stare at the newcomer, a woman with red hair.
Ziva exclaims, "Jenny!" and immediately reaches over to give her a kiss on the cheek.
"You two know each other?" Gibbs asks.
"Kind of an awkward greeting between strangers," Kate cracks quietly, but no one responds.
"We worked on a mission together in Europe a few years ago," Ziva explains.
"We'll set up your protective custody," Jenny tells her before turning to Gibbs. "You look well, Jethro."
"You too, Jen." He gives her a loaded look. Despite the seriousness of the current situation, or possibly because of it, Tony can't wait to figure out just how well the boss man and the new director know each other.
The new director had made the protective custody sound easy to set up. But as they are ironing out details - Tony insists being part of her protective custody detail and Gibbs, surprisingly, doesn't say anything against it - Eli calls Shephard and gives her an earful. He asks her where Ziva is now and she lies, says she doesn't know. He tells her that Ziva's cell phone was tracked to the NCIS office and asks where she is again. Shephard holds firm and Eli hangs up angrily with a last threat.
Ziva stares at her phone in her hand, then says, "I should not have left it on." She turns it off, but Gibbs takes it from her anyway.
"You can have it back after this all blows over," he tells her. "In the meantime, you'll stay at my house."
Tony protests. "I was thinking she would stay with me."
Gibbs shakes his head. "Your apartment is the first place they'd look for her."
"I'm staying with you too, then," Tony responds stubbornly.
"I got plenty of room," Gibbs says, shrugging.