Consequences of Love and War: Chapter 14
A/N: Previously in this fanfic... Ducky is working on psychological autopsies of both Peter Kirkan and Dr. Alyse Aachen, after Gibbs got an NCIS Intelligence Department dossier on Kirkan. Kirkan, meanwhile, has been going through his conversations with his wife, to try to figure out if there has been anything he missed. In the last chapter (which took place about 30 hours after Dr. Aachen's abduction), Tony and Ziva spoke with NCIS Special Agent Kim Tomblin, the senior field agent at the Bahrain field office, about the Camp Phoenix detainee center and the prospective deal with Mossad Officer Raanan Thal. They're dealing with a lot of government red tape, and DiNozzo is dealing with inadequacy issues confounded by Vance's mind games.
Gibbs was at his desk when he saw DiNozzo and Ziva exit MTAC, and frowned slightly at the sight of his two agents. Seeing Ziva in and around MTAC was nothing new—as he pointed out to her on numerous occasions, she seemed to spend more time in there than at her desk—but his senior field agent was very rarely included in those conversations. He didn't bother to hide the fact that he was watching them, knowing that both were so engrossed in their conversation that they wouldn't notice. Ziva had the determined look on her face that she wore when a case was beginning to heat up and she could see the end in sight, but DiNozzo just looked tense.
Gibbs' eyes were still on them as Ziva touched her partner's arm, succeeding in getting his attention like nobody else could. Their conversation was obviously too quiet for him to hear, but whatever Ziva said, it made DiNozzo relax marginally, his eyes closing briefly as he reluctantly nodded. They opened and he offered her a smile that he gave no one else; a true smile, not the cheesy grin he wore to make everyone think he was a blathering idiot. His hand briefly drifted to her hip before they both straightened and looked away, their professionalism again intact.
He didn't envy their situation—to be in love in with someone and yet rarely allowed to show it—one bit.
Gibbs looked away as they began descending the stairs, their usual masks intact as they went, talking between themselves. As they got closer, their voices grew clearer, and Gibbs realized that something was just a little bit off.
They were speaking Arabic.
DiNozzo said something, stumbling slightly over the word, and Ziva chuckled as she corrected his pronunciation, turning back as she walked past her partner's desk to give him a teasing grin, and in that second, everything became clear—the Arabic, the call in MTAC, how DiNozzo seemed to know how detainees were kept and who was currently in charge of the Taliban around Kabul.
He just couldn't believe he hadn't seen in sooner.
"DiNozzo! My office, now!" he snapped, rising from his own desk to stalk toward the elevator, ignoring the bewildered expression on his senior field agent's face.
"Boss? It was just a—"
"Now, DiNozzo."
Gibbs waited until the elevator began moving before he hit the emergency stop. He still wasn't looking at the younger man when he asked, in an almost conversational tone, "Where are you on the director's short list?"
DiNozzo blinked once and paused as if considering his options: feign ignorance? Deny everything? Make a joke? He decided to go for door number one. "Boss?"
Gibbs' glare was enough to tell him that he knew better. "Not an idiot, DiNozzo," he snapped. "Burley's scheduled to leave Bahrain in about a year."
His senior field agent let out a long breath and looked away. "Yeah," he said softly before he smirked. "As far as the short list… I thought I was pretty damned close to the top. After all, I come with my own Mossad officer." The words stopped Gibbs in his tracks, before he found himself wondering, again, why he hadn't seen it sooner. Why the hell would DiNozzo leave DC, especially for the Middle East, without Ziva? As if knowing what his boss was thinking, DiNozzo first frowned, then smirked again. "What, Boss? You didn't honestly think I'd go to Bahrain and Ziva would stay here, did you?"
Deep down inside, yes, that was exactly what Gibbs thought. He was protective of his entire team; maybe a little bit too protective, but he always knew that there was no permanence to the situation. McGee was destined for other things, other positions that allowed him to use all facets of his training. Every time Gibbs saw something about an opening on an OSP team, he wondered if that would be the time that his junior agent moved on, on to a team with the newest technology and toys Gibbs didn't know existed and blanket permission to hack just about anything they could think to hack. Ducky would someday retire; Palmer would eventually decide to go back to medical school. Abby would probably stay at NCIS, but there was no guarantee to that. He always knew that Tony would someday take his own team, either by choice or by mandate from Vance.
His relationship with their Mossad liaison, on the other hand, was different than with other member of the team. It was nothing sexual—he'd have to be blind and probably dead not to notice how attractive she was, but he had never considered himself competition for DiNozzo in that department. No, this wasn't that. It was a relationship defined by mutual respect and mutual trust, by actions of protection and actions needing protection. Ziva shot her own brother to protect Gibbs and a team she barely know. Gibbs lied to her father and all of Mossad to cover that up. She came to his hospital room to remind him of who he was and what he was. He came back from Mexico to keep the Iranians from framing and killing her. When she didn't understand what was going on between her and Tony when they started 'dating', for lack of a better term, he was the one she came to. They understood each other in a way that nobody else did, and he had never conceived of the idea of her leaving.
It was silly and naïve, and he knew it.
"Why?" Gibbs finally asked, fully facing the other man.
"Why, or why now?" DiNozzo asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He was leaning back against the elevator wall in a way that could look casual, but the underlying tension didn't escape Gibbs' notice. His boss didn't say anything in reply, just silently stared at the younger man, waiting for him to continue. He wasn't disappointed. "I'm ready for this, Boss. Hell, I've been ready for years. I cleaned up your mess during your Mexican vacation, did a pretty damned good job at it, too. Only had one conviction overturned for being blatantly wrong." He smiled thinly at that. "I've been offered my own team before." Gibbs frowned, searching his memory for when that happened. Seeming to know what he was thinking, DiNozzo explained, "Jenny offered me Rota. After you decided to come back and stay."
"Why didn't you take it?"
DiNozzo shrugged. "Wrong place. Wrong time. Things were getting started with Jeanne and starting to go well. And I wasn't ready yet."
"You ready now?"
"Yeah." His expression was almost challenging, but his posture hadn't changed. "I'm ready, Boss. You know I am." He did know it; he had known it for years. He could see it in DiNozzo's unorthodox yet effective leadership skills, his ways of making people talk without them realizing that he was doing so, the way he refused to stop until he was satisfied. He could see it in the way the younger man reminded him of himself, the first time he was given a team.
"Why now?"
DiNozzo looked away for the first time, his eyes darting to the side of the silver box before returning to his boss' face. "There was no love lost between Ruthven and the late Director Eli David," he finally said. "I don't know if Director Ruthven honestly thinks that Ziva's job's useless or if he does this to torment her for whatever slight he thought her father committed against him, but all he's done in the last year and a half is play games with her mind. Every six months, he hedges about her future with NCIS and changes her responsibilities and makes vague comments about how much more valuable she'd be dodging bullets in Waziristan or some equally obscure place." He exhaled, running a hand over his face. "She's miserable," he said bluntly, "and she puts up with it because of me. It's the most goddamned selfish thing I've ever done, and it wasn't even my decision in the first place." He looked away again. "It's for her, Boss, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't for me, too." Green eyes locked onto blue ones, and when DiNozzo spoke again, his voice was hard, almost bitter. "Do you know how it felt to come into work and see all of my stuff piled onto my old desk and see you sitting at the one that I had just gotten used to thinking of as mine? Did you even once consider that?" He could feel himself get angry, and knew it wasn't fair. It wasn't Gibbs he was mad at; he hadn't been then, and he wasn't now. His frustrations were with Director Ruthven and the games he was playing with Ziva, with Jenny and the games she had played with him. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. "It's time for this to happen, Gibbs. Whether you think so or not."
Gibbs stared at his senior field agent for another long moment before turning and restarting the elevator, pressing the button for the squad room. "Not disagreeing with you, DiNozzo." Again facing forward, he couldn't see the other man, but he knew him well enough to know that he was now wearing a big, dopey grin. He rolled his eyes slightly as the elevator doors opened and he stepped out.
Ziva was sitting at her desk when they re-entered the bullpen. She glanced up, a curious and slightly apprehensive expression on her face. "Hope you aren't done giving DiNozzo those Arabic lessons yet, David," Gibbs said dryly as he strode past her desk. Ziva's eyes widened slightly before they narrowed, her head snapping from her boss' back to her partner. Gibbs had just sat down when he saw his senior field agent give her a reassuring expression, which was met with a less apprehensive one of her own, followed by a wide grin, which DiNozzo replied with one of his own. The entire exchange could have been measured in seconds, and not a single word was spoken.
And despite how difficult their everyday life was, to have to balance a working relationship with a romantic one, Gibbs did envy them that—the silent communication, the ability to know another person well enough to know when no words needed to be spoken. It had been far too long since he had had that type of connection with another human being.