Hello, readers! This is NOT, as the title seems to state, a silly story. It is, in fact, quite serious, and I would appreciate any constructive criticism you have to offer. It will also be short, probably less than ten chapters. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: I do not (nor do I claim to) own NCIS.
It was nine o'clock in the evening on December first, and all was peaceful in Washington DC. Well, almost all was peaceful. There was one street where all of the dogs were barking up a storm, and a blue Jetta was idling in the street. It was on this street that Rachel Johnson stopped to deliver a package, and it was the mansion behind the idling car that she went forth to. She strolled casually up the path, paused to text her boyfriend, put her phone in her pocket, and approached the imposing doors before ringing the doorbell. When no answer came, she knocked loudly. There was still no answer. Frowning, the young woman peered into the window and screamed. The dogs on the street barked and howled with her ongoing terror as she dropped the package and stumbled away from the sight of the dead, bleeding body. She turned and ran back to her truck, and the bright blue Jetta almost ran her over. She caught a glimpse of the license plate. It was personalized, with one word and one word only…
MIST.
Then a gunshot echoed, and her world went dark.
Ziva had arrived to work early on the morning of December second. A flurry of snow was coming down, which had slowed her driving slightly, but regardless of delays, the Israeli had arrived in time to get some online browsing done. She had purchased quite a few gifts already; all for her family. Her family...her Israeli family and her American one. They ran together, and she could never determine which was the more valuable to her heart.
"Good morning, Miss David!" Tony walked in, cheerful as usual. He sat down and kicked his feet onto his desk, knocking down a stack of paperwork. Ziva rolled her eyes. Her partner may have been the most senior field agent, but he certainly wasn't the most mature. He was, some would state, the most immature; he certainly played the part quite well. Ziva, however, knew that beneath that playful, teasing exterior there was a mature, sensitive man...she simply didn't have enough time to go digging through his vast heaps of movie jokes, sexual references, and basic immaturity and find him.
"Good morning, Tony. May I ask why you are up so…early?" she asked curiously, wondering about her partner's intentions.
"Are you saying I'm usually late?" he asked indignantly, and she gave him a knowing look. "Okay fine. My girlfriend dumped me this morning when she got up early and found out that I called you that one night," Ziva paused to think, having to take a moment to remember.
"The night when you were drunk and needed a ride home?" it had been in October; Tony had been out to a bar and had drunk himself out of his car keys (the bartender had confiscated them for safety's sake), so he had, barely sane, called Ziva and begged her to bring him home. On the way, he had spilled out his heart to her, about his team and his girlfriend and his family and her. He had been babbling on about them all, rambling about their qualities, but Ziva had come up most frequently.
"Yeah, that one," Tony derailed her train of thought.
"Well, your girlfriend is clearly a…" Ziva found her mental English dictionary useless, "you know! If she broke up with you over that. And why was she looking through your phone?" she was bewildered. Any relationship was based on trust. Why would a relationship be built without trust? How could a relationship be built without trust? The idea was baffling to her.
"I have no idea," he derailed her train again.
"Hey guys," McGee walked in and sat down at his desk, immediately turning on his computer.
"Hello, McGee," Ziva greeted her friend and coworker with a friendly smile.
"Good morning, Elf Lord!"
"Tony, can't you let things go?" he asked.
"Hm, lemme think about that…no."
"Tony, you are being very immature," Ziva pointed out the obvious elephant in the room.
"What else is new?" Gibbs walked in and answered the wildly ringing phone on his desk.
"Hey! Boss, that hurt," Gibbs ignored Tony, preferring instead to mutter an affirmative into the phone and hang up.
"Gear up; we got a dead Marine," the boss stated. The team immediately obeyed his command and headed out.
"Is there any other kind?" this earned Tony a nice Gibbs slap on the way to the elevator.
After proudly (and, frankly, quite easily) defeating Tony in a brief wrestling match, Ziva had driven to the crime scene. She was now photographing, bagging, tagging, and otherwise being a federal investigator. She heard Ducky say that the "poor fellow" had died at about noon yesterday, and that there was something lodged in his throat.
"Gibbs!" Ziva called as she took a photograph and held up a Santa-shaped card with cursive on it, written in blood. It had been hidden in the firewood within the chimney. "'Dear NCIS; I hope we meat again very soon –Mist' but the writer spelled 'meet' wrong," she was slightly proud of herself for noticing the error, which she might not have caught when she had been merely a liasion officer. "Perhaps a foreigner?"
"Bag it and tag it," was the reply of the ever-unwavering Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
"Where's the witness?" McGee asked.
"The actual witness is in the hospital; got shot in the head. She's stable, but in a coma. The other witness I already talked to; he didn't know anything," Gibbs replied. "Name!" he then barked.
"Petty Officer Thomas Mavis," McGee reported.
"There are no defensive wounds, Jethro, nor any signs to suggest that any bindings were used," Ducky spoke up.
"So he knew his killer?" Tony asked.
"Possibly, but looks can be deceiving," Ducky cautioned.
"What was in his throat?" Ziva asked curiously, staring at the bag with the clump.
"Mistletoe!"
"What?" asked a very confused McGee as Abby planted big, wet kisses on everyone's cheeks before pointing at a wad of mistletoe dangling above their heads. Ziva immediately stepped away, as did Tony. McGee was soon to follow. Gibbs didn't budge, seeming to somehow know that he would be the only one left standing beneath the dreaded plant.
"But seriously. That stuff in Petty Officer Mavis' throat? It's mistletoe!"
"That's good work, Abbs," Gibbs gave her a Caf-Pow.
"Oh but there's more! The letter? It was written in the petty officer's blood. Oh and I also know why he has no defensive wounds; he was drugged with enough flunitrazepam to sedate Bert. That is, if Bert was a real hippo," she squeezed him, and a flatulence noise echoed through the lab. Ziva chuckled.
"Rohypnol," Gibbs translated Abby's lab speak. She nodded affirmation.
"So he didn't know his killer," Tony said.
"Possibly," Ziva replied, just to confuse him. Tony glared at her, and she smirked. Gibbs slapped them both.
"Hey! Minds on the case," he snapped.
"Sorry, boss!" they chorused.
"McGee, help Abby. Tony, Ziva, find anything you can about this 'Mist' person. I'm going to check on Ducky," Gibbs walked out, followed loyally by Tony and Ziva.
In the bullpen, Ziva was hard at work while Tony snacked on a sandwich. While Ziva tracked down any security footage within a five-mile radius and tried to estimate which car would be Mist's, Tony was chowing down on turkey and cheese.
"Gibbs, I may have something!" Ziva exclaimed rather suddenly. Tony spat out a bite of his sandwich, clearly shocked that she had actually found a possible lead in the Mist case.
"Yeah?" the boss asked, entering the squad room.
"A black sedan with no plates was parked one block away from the scene of the crime. Shortly after two distinctly different gunshots, a hooded figure with a rifle ran to the sedan, sat in the driver's seat, and took off. I tracked the car to a dealership, and the very helpful owner gave me some security footage from earlier that night. I found that this man," she put a photo of a Caucasian male with green eyes and brown hair on the screen, "Jacob Harding, stole a black sedan and later returned it without a bing."
"Ding."
"Excuse me?"
"It's ding, Bing is a search engine," while Ziva frowned at Tony's comment, Gibbs patted her hand.
"That's good work," he told her. "Take DiNozzo. Bring him in."
"Well, here we are. So where's Harding?" Tony asked.
"According to the schedule his manager gave me, he should be arriving any—" Tony leapt out of the car.
"NCIS! Freeze, Harding!" but of course, he didn't preferring to take off into the Wal-Mart in which he worked. Ziva ran in and split left, running parallel to Harding until she was ahead, when she took off down an aisle and tackled him. Tony, panting, appeared as she handcuffed the man and read him his rights.
"You and Gibbs," he wheezed. "You and Gibbs."
"You'll never find her," Harding said with a grim laugh. "Mist is everyone and no one, everything and nothing. Mist is here and yet still nowhere."
"And you just told us that she is indeed a she," Ziva pointed out. She and Gibbs were conducting the interrogation. Harding shut up pretty fast, Ziva noticed.
"Hey! Harding!" Gibbs snapped. "Where is Mist?" Ziva observed his body language. He was confident. He knew that Mist was safe.
"I thought she told you," Harding let out a grim chuckle. He was telling the truth.
"Told us what? What's going on, here?" Gibbs asked sharply.
"What's going on? You're the agents here. You figure it out," Harding laughed.
"Abbs, tell me you got something," Gibbs said.
"I got something."
"And…?"
"Ziva, lie down," Abby ordered. Ziva obliged, lying on her back on the lab floor. "Now Tony, kneel over her and kind of…sit on her abdomen," Ziva glared at the scientist.
"Oh, like this?" Tony forcefully pressed his weight against Ziva's lower stomach. She resisted the urge to punch him.
"Yes! Now act like you're holding a gun to her left temple," Tony held a finger gun to Ziva's head, delight written across his features.
"You will be dead for this," she whispered in her native tongue.
"Why Miss David, I believe that was a threat," Tony teased. Ziva narrowed her eyes.
"Good! You two can get up," Ziva slithered out from beneath Tony and stood hastily. He smirked at her. "According to the results from that, there should be some sort of residue from Mist's clothes left on those of our petty officer."
"How did he die?" Ziva asked.
"He was forced to ingest large amounts of mistletoe before he was shot at point blank range in the left temple," Abby answered.
"Ouch," Tony winced. Gibbs glared at him.
"Ya think, DiNozzo?"
"Didn't mean it, boss! We were just going back up to track down Mist, right, McGee, Ziva?" he dragged them to the elevator before another word could be spoken.
"So, what're everyone's…holiday plans?" Tony asked in a deep voice. Ziva chuckled.
"I would not tell you," she replied.
"Why? Would I laugh? You spending it with a boyfriend?"
"You know very well that I am not going solid—"
"Steady, the term is going steady," Tony interrupted.
"—whatever, with anyone," Ziva finished her train of thought for what had to have been the first time that day.
"Oh you're not? Is that an offer?" while she glared indignantly, McGee spoke.
"Well I am proud to say that I will be spending the holiday season with Abby and her family."
"Oh? You two going solid, as Ziva says? Eep!" Tony yelped as a knife impaled itself in the wall beside his head, proud courtesy of Ziva.
"No, of course not. But we're close, and I'd like to take the chance to get to know her family," McGee replied.
"Ooh. Was that a slight McGrowl in your voice?" Tony asked.
"She invited me and I accepted. What more is there to it than that, Tony?"
"Only that which you want to be there, Tim."
"Harding gave up a lead," Gibbs walked in.
"Thought he wasn't talking?" Tony asked, a befuddled expression upon his features.
"Which is why I'm only sending you and David; it could be a dead end. McGee, go back and help Abby!" Gibbs ordered.
"On it, boss!" they chorused, with Tony stealing the car keys from an indignant and angry Ziva's back pocket on the way to the elevator.
"I am telling you, I have never heard of a Mist before!"
"Hey! Tell the truth or I'll have my partner here cut out your tongue and feed it to your nice koi fish," Ziva held up her knife threateningly. The Japanese storekeeper gulped. "Now have you heard of her?"
"Y-yes. No. Maybe so. I am not sure!" Ziva drew closer. "B-but I have heard rumors that something large is happening this month…at the Washington National Cathedral!"
"Yeah, okay, and what else, you think the sky is falling? Come on, Chicken Little," Tony handcuffed the drug dealer and read him his rights.
"No one in the DC area listed with 'Mist' as a surname," McGee sat back.
"Nor first," Ziva copied him. "Only Misty," she added as an afterthought
"Or middle," Tony followed suit.
"So we got nothing," Gibbs summed up. His agents nodded sheepishly.
"We're missing something…"Abby said. "Something important," she threw out her few details.
"I feel it, too," Ziva put in.
"Yeah, we're all psychic!" Tony joked.
"Gibbs," the boss answered his desk's ringing phone.
"Where has she gone?" Ziva asked.
"She could've gone underground?" Tony suggested. Gibbs hung up, a dark expression on his face.
"No such luck, DiNozzo. There's another body. Same MO. Same calling card. We've got a serial killer on our hands."