Gibbs receives a phone call and McGee can tell instantly that something is wrong, very wrong. He starts pacing, and his face becomes angrily incredulous. Flashing a quick glance at the junior field agent, he bites back curses for some inconceivable reason. Don't swear in front of the children.
"Damnit, Vance, what the hell do you think you're doing? You can't think that he's gonna be able to cope with this just fine. For God's sake, man, he's barely let her out of his sight this entire time! And now Director David, your old friend, just waltzes in here and destroys everything DiNozzo's done, completely undoes all the progress she's made, and for what? For what? So he doesn't feel like he's failed, as a father? Well, too late, Leon. He's already failed. And she knows it."
The phone snaps shut, tight as a clam and taut with tension. Gibbs barks an order at McGee – flinch, wince – and they stride down the corridor.
"Boss, I mean, uh, boss, what's happened?" And for once, there is no clever reply, no withering look. There is only the hard, flat truth of it all.
"Director David thinks now would be a good time to start giving a crap about his daughter. He's arranged to have her moved to their family home, with private doctors and nurses on hand. According to our dear Director, he thinks she will recover quicker in familiar surroundings."
"What about... what about..." and he doesn't say us, he doesn't say NCIS. "What about Tony, boss?"
And Boss, Gibbs, Jethro, stops and looks with set and steely eyes. "Did I say that I'd given my permission for this to happen, McGee?"
And oh, everything will be just fine.
In the room, Ziva has been crying. There is a stale desperation in the air and Tony looks defeated, and sights like this break the hearts of men called Gibbs more than any bullets or blades or blood have ever done. She pounces. Savage.
"Gibbs, my father has arranged – the nurses have told me – he's having me moved, taken back to his house (and oh, she doesn't say home) and apparently Vance has ordered you back to D.C., back to NCIS, without, without – me – and I don't want to, he can't make me, I don't want to stay here without you, not again, please-"
"Are you quite finished, Special Agent David?"
Have you ever seen a room explode into something more than flames and death? Something more than cheering and confetti, and smiling hands and dancing feet? Into silence and disbelief and a dawning incomprehension, a broken man who looks up from worn, tired hands with green eyes burning? A girl with accusing bones and a obstinate little heart that goes beat beat beat whether she likes it or not? It's so curious, so beautiful and curious, how little things can change so much, how words like 'love' are exploited into meaninglessness, yet words like 'officer' and 'special' and 'agent' are charged with something so pulsing, so utterly and irrevocably alive, that to contain them, to control them, would be to fail.
She knows then, quite completely, what her family is, and where they are going to be, and that she is going to be there too. There is a time and a place for a breaking heart, and this is it.
Vance has sent a helicopter, industrial and functional and not perfect for a recovering flicker of life like Ziva, but in times of emergency one must be thankful for little blessings. The pilots are soldiers, fighters, hard-worn and brutally callused, and they do not much care whether three or four people board. And so four do.
And in that flying bunker, that little pocket of khaki and grey, steel and metal and bullets and death, there is laughter and excitement, a rising expectation and a hopeful bubbling of the blood, as home grows closer.
And, finally, there is something ambiguous, something that trembles in and out of existence far too quickly to be caught, to be isolated and named. But perhaps we should attribute to it a meaningless, exploited little word.
Yes, perhaps we will.
So sweet is a time of genuine welcoming. There are tears, tears mingling with smiles and tears that drip into coffee, tears that bleed into shoulders. An odd and noticeable group of friends gather, clasped tightly together, in the middle of a bleak and stained stretch of tarmac. Men in uniforms – so many of whom will die – gaze upon the scene with smirks on their lips but hope, well hidden, in their hearts, and pray that their day of reunion will take a similar form.
There is an old man, a young girl, a boy with round glasses and an awkward grace. And, stepping into the watery, blinding light is a stammering, wildly grinning probie, a changed and tender green eyed ghost, and a man with silver hair who has seen far too much blood in his life.
And their frail and precious winnings.
Oh, to be home.
Ohh, I quite like this chapter. I guess quite a lot changes, which is good, but more importantly I hope you all like it as much as I really love writing this whole thing. As always, reviews are loved. Cherished, in fact. And I'm gonna make a mid-June resolution, that for every review I get I respond directly to say thank youuuu. :) Enjoy.