Rating: T
Disclaimer: None of the characters from NCIS belong to me and this story is purely for entertainment purposes.
Chapter Warning: If you are a die-hard Ziva David fan then my recommendation would be to skip reading this chapter in its entirety because I can pretty much guarantee that it will offend you and elevate your blood pressure. Proceed at your own risk!
A/N Thank-you to everyone who left reviews for the last chapter. It's always great to read your comments. To the guest reviewer who defended me to someone who left negative feedback, thanks :) While not wanting to dwell overly on the criticism that Tony is OOC i.e. too good to be true, I'll try to keep this brief. I make no apology for writing Tony as incredibly capable professionally even though he is flawed emotionally. He is based upon Canon Tony, especially in seasons 1 & 2 but also 3, 4 & 5 to a lesser degree. The Tony who: earned a Gold Shield at a freakishly young age, brought down a Mafia Family again at a young age, saved Gunnery Sgt Bill Atlas while drugged and armed with simply a belt knife still managed to escape and disarm a serial killer who armed with a gun, find stolen antiquities while chained to a serial killer without backup or knowledge that White was a killer, had a closure rate that rivaled Gibbs despite working in a precinct where he was working multiple simultaneous cases, maintained their closure rate when Gibbs left, worked undercover for almost a year without any of his teammates realising, set up the computer systems pre-McGee when they were away from HQ on cases, installed a sophisticated piece of hardware into the telephone line and then single handed apprehended the sniper in One Shot One Kill, took control of a hostage situation and got everyone out unharmed without a shot fired... I could go on but I'd prefer to go on with the story. Oh and I forgot to thank a reviewer that drew my attention to a boo-boo in chapter 2. Thanks, appreciate the heads up :) Hope you enjoy the next chapter.
Finally credits: Arress is beta-ing this story once again and big thank-you for her help and suggestions. FYI who knew that spat the dummy was an Aussie idiom but's that's what Beta's are for lol. Oh and as per normal, all mistakes are my bad.
What a Difference a Day Makes: 8760 Little Hours
Chapter 4
Officer Ziva David, Mossad Liaison to NCIS: 9.5 months later
They had been making preparations to go to the airport so that her lover, Michael Rivkin, could catch his flight to Tel Aviv. Ziva had come home to find her lover, thirteen shirts to the breeze as she stated tersely in her sitrep to her Mossad superior, Officer Hadar. Seeing his confusion, she put it down to him not being au fait with American idioms, which she acknowledged had tripped her up when she first arrived in the US. Although it might have seemed to be easier to use their native Hebrew to communicate, it was SOB to speak in the native language of the country they were working in, to become as fluent as possible. Clearly Officer Hadar could do with the extra practice if he was not able to comprehend simple American idioms.
Anyway, when finally able to grasp that Michael was "drunk as a punk", Officer Hadar had ordered him to leave the country immediately and for the terrorist cell's laptop he acquired to be returned to Israel via Diplomatic Pouch since Rivkin had stupidly attracted the attention of NCIS. This was a necessary measure since he might be detained at the airport as he was travelling on a false passport and they couldn't run the risk of the laptop being seized, too. So Ziva and a very drunk Michael were about to get into Ziva's bright red Mini Cooper with the racing stripe that made her swell with pride every time she drove her beloved car and head to the airport. That's when they were taken into custody, led by that cretin NCIS Agent Adam Hayes, along with a bunch of agents she barely knew and local LEOs, who were all treating her like a criminal. She knew once Gibbs found out he would have her six, since they shared a special connection and he would tear those buffoons a fresh one.
Of course, she was concerned that the laptop that they'd procured thanks to great skill by Michael had been seized as evidence, but her Abba would bring pressure to bear with Director Vance and Mossad would get the Intel and the laptop that they had found. She reasoned that her father must have had just such an eventuality as this in mind when she'd been ordered by Eli David to take out her rogue brother, Ari, and do it in such a way that she won the loyalty of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. She had never been able to understand the purpose of her mission, which she had nevertheless completed with the detached efficiency of an obedient Mossad officer, but she hadn't questioned her instructions.
Now she knew that even if they uncovered the leaking of NCIS information to her lover, Gibbs would be a staunch ally, especially when she cried a little about being placed in the difficult position of pleasing two bosses, particularly when one was her father. She would turn up the fire on Gibbs by telling him that he was more a father to her than her Abba was, and if necessary remind him she'd killed her own flesh and blood to save his life. Between her hold over Gibbs and her father's relationship with Vance, she wasn't too concerned about her situation.
She was, however, furious that her preoccupation with Michael's drinking problem had made her sloppy and she'd let her guard down, allowing Hayes to get the drop on her. Of course, tempting as it was to teach him a lesson he wouldn't soon forget, she knew that it would be likely counterproductive, and so she had remained outwardly calm and collected. She'd let the fool take her into custody, but Michael, being rather affected by alcohol, blew his sack and resisted arrest. The result was several broken bones, a fractured larynx and a dislocated shoulder to a number of agents and cops before they descended en mass to subdue him.
Frankly, Ziva was shocked that her lover was so impulsive and dangerous. He really was out of control and perhaps the death of the ICE agent was less to do with unfortunate circumstances and more to do with a lack of judgment and competence on his part. Lover or no, it was her duty to her country and Mossad to divulge these observations to her superiors. Duty must come before personal considerations - even with her father, as he put duty before the welfare of his only remaining offspring. Eli David would expect no less of his daughter, who he'd groomed from middle childhood to be a top notch Mossad operative and his likely successor.
Then Gibbs found out, courtesy of the information on the laptop and then a dump on her work phone amongst other things, that she may not have been entirely straightforward with him, although she hadn't out and out lied to NCIS, exactly. Well, alright, she had lied to that idiot Hayes, but she hadn't told Gibbs any lies; she just hadn't been exactly completely forthcoming, either by word or deed. She could tell that Gibbs was pissed with her, disappointed and probably hurt that she had in his eyes betrayed his trust, so she had used her feminine wiles to push all his emotional buttons.
Those dossiers she'd prepared for Ari years ago were still bearing vegetables, long after his demise. Gibbs had choked up when she told him how she thought of him as a father figure, more so than her biological one, and he'd huffed and puffed trying not to get teary. In the end she knew he was going to try and help her stay in the US so that she could continue to be her father's right hand here in NCIS, even if she wasn't sure exactly why she was here. Well, okay, she could see that it had been helpful for Michael to have inside information when he was working within the US, but whether there was a larger agenda at play she didn't know or care. One thing that she did know, however, was that her father wouldn't be terribly happy that the Americans were aware that she was spying on them and leaking info to Mossad. Abba hated to lose his face.
Then Gibbs came back to interrogation, steely eyed and furious, apparently now aware that she had actually lied to him about Ari and used her subterfuge to win his loyalty and a place on the MCRT. If she thought he was hurt by the Mossad deception that lead to the accidental death of Agent Sherman, now he was enraged, and he took great pleasure in showing her the interrogation tape of his interview of a clearly alcohol impaired Michael. He inadvertently let slip that he was sleeping with Ziva on the orders of Eli David, who wasn't sure where his daughter's loyalties lay anymore. According to Rivkin, Eli felt that she was too soft and corrupted by Western mores.
Despite Mossad using sex as a tool to control their enemies and allies alike, Ziva had never expected as Eli David's daughter, to have their tactics used against her. She had known Michael since childhood and when Gibbs replayed the drunken ramblings of Rivkin for his lover, she had gone still and pale, her expression as cold as ice, enough to raise the hair on the back of the NCIS agents' necks that were guarding her. She'd heard people say many times that you should never cross Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and she understood what they meant now. He had felt emasculated when he discovered that the last four years had been based on a lie, and he wanted her to know what that felt like. She had to hand it to him, he understood revenge and vengeance as well as her father did, and she wondered if they might be related.
Paradoxically, while she felt angry at Gibbs, Michael and her father, she found herself experiencing feelings of rage directed at Tony DiNozzo as well. She had gotten too close to Rivkin when she had been sent back to Israel when Vance split up the team following Jenny Shepard's death. After they were finally all back together, she had reached a decision to stop pussy-toeing around and so she made a move on Tony, admitting her feelings of lust for him, but he hadn't taken the bait. She couldn't believe the man could really be that clueless. After all, even the less than perceptive McGee had picked up on the unresolved sexual chemistry and mutual lust between them and written about it in his wood-chip fictions.
Yet DiNozzo had seemed completely oblivious to her attention. The ultimate frat boy player who lusted after every pretty female had ignored her declarations in Gibbs' "office", and by rejecting her, he'd driven her back into the arms of Michael, who had been more than willing to sleep with her. Now she knew why! It wasn't as if DiNozzo wasn't interested in her, he'd been trying to sleep with her from the first day they'd met. So if he hadn't rejected her advances that day in the elevator, she never would have gone back to Michael.
Okay, Ziva was willing to concede that she might have been desperate to sleep with him, but that was purely physical attraction, nothing more than chemicals attracting and interacting. She did not respect him enough to think that it was true love, since she was by far the more superior agent and they could never be equals. She had exceptional interrogation skills, hand to hand combat, could handle all sorts of different types of weapons and was a graduate of the famed and feared Kidon training.
While DiNozzo would always just be a glorified cop who relied on Hollywood to help him solve crimes, and how sad was that? She'd decided to beat him at his own game and enrolled in a community college film appreciation course looking forward to the look on Tony's face when she solved their cases using scenarios from films before he did but somehow it was more difficult than it look. Of course, when you have very little of worth to store in your brain, it was easy to fill it full of useless and trivial details about mediocre movies instead of improving the mind with literature like she did. It infuriated her that technicallyDiNozzo had been her superior, and yet he was so clearly inferior in so many ways. Of course, he wasn't even that anymore!
Yet in spite of all that, of her training in the fine art of seduction, DiNozzo had wormed his way into her head and she wanted him, even as she wanted him to get out. Ziva knew it was madness, knew it would never work, and told herself that many times, but still she wanted him. She had tried to explain it away as an itch that she couldn't scratch. If only he would just give in and sleep with her just once, she could get him out of her system and move on. Yet the more that she couldn't scratch the worse the itch became until she was obsessing about it and couldn't think clearly. She was certain that if she could only have sex with him, she could forget him once and for all.
After all, she reckoned that all those women that dumped him must have done so because he was a flop in the bedroom, so if she could just confirm that fact for herself, she could put the fantasy to rest for good and move on. The irony was that while she had wanted him, he didn't even 'seem' to know that she existed, although she had trouble accepting that could be so. Ziva was not used to being irrelevant. Hated, despised, feared, lusted after or adored she could handle, even get off on, but never ignored, not when she was actively seducing him. That was an unforgivable insult and she had a long memory.
Still, even after he had packed up his marvels and ran away to play make-believe like the juvenile idiot he was, even while she was with Michael who was a real man, she had obsessed about why she hadn't been able to seduce him. She couldn't let it go, as much as she despised him for insulting her and making her feel inadequate. When she had prepared his dossier for Ari before she joined the team, she had dove-holed him early on. He was the archetypal 'poor little rich boy' who was brought up with a silver spoon by the hired help who were constantly changed whenever Tony's father needed a new mistress. So the young Tony was starved of affection and desperate for validation that he never received and knowing this, Ziva used it against him to control him.
She made it a point to denigrate his achievements, like when he saved Gibbs and a class full of children from a child suicide bomber. Admittedly, she was pissed that Gibbs had left him in charge of the hostage situation when clearly she was the most experienced and qualified. Bombs and hostage situations were everyday occurrences in Israel, yet he'd left a dumb cop in charge. Then with the successful resolution without a shot being fired, thanks to Tony's hobby of watching movies, she'd been desperate to belittle his contribution. She needed him desperate for praise and lacking in confidence.
It was a classic technique, the treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen approach, because she knew from watching Gibbs that he used the same method to control him and make him work even harder for his praise and approval that never came. Since Tony always had females falling over each other to go out with him, rejecting him would make him even more desperate to win her affections. Well. that had been the plan anyway… except when she finally could not deny her lust for him any longer, he'd pretended he was clueless.
In fact, Tony had a lot more than that to apologise for, since Gibbs had been intolerable to work for since he'd run away. Not only had his resigning made Gibbs puce with rage, it had affected the way the team was regarded by the rest of the DC office. As a result they had all lost status, in addition to the scorn that had been generated during the whole Rixon Wells trial. It seemed that a lot of people were cupboard DiNozzo supporters… well, since they didn't have to work on the same team as him, they could afford to be generous.
Of course, it hadn't helped at all that the team's close out rate slipped, although if they'd given her the senior field agent position, it would have been a different story. Frankly, though, she wasn't surprised that McGee couldn't cut it as Gibbs' SFA. He was an exceptional computer analyst and a barely adequate field agent, but he was definitely not leadership material, and certainly not of the MCRT.
Ziva remembered when she'd been preparing those dossiers for Ari on the team, she'd come across a psychological term in McGee's personnel file from his Psych Evals describing him as having a Passive-Aggressive personality. This wasn't a term she was very familiar with, associating it with new age American pop culture balderdash and dismissing it before now as irrelevant. Discovering that it was discussed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM- IV) made her sit down and take notice. In Appendix B it stated "A pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicted by four (or more) of the following:
Passively resists fulfilling routine social and occupational tasks
Complains of being misunderstood and unappreciated by others
Is sullen and argumentative
Unreasonably criticizes and scorns authority
Expresses envy and resentment toward those apparently more fortunate
Voices exaggerated and persistent complaints of personal misfortune
Alternates between hostile defiance and contrition"
Ziva was rather surprised after researching the personality disorder that McGee would be allowed to serve as a federal agent, as he would have been deemed as being unsuitable to serve in Mossad, probably why she was not familiar with the particular label, but she wasn't above making use of his vulnerabilities in the same way she exploited Tony's. With Tim she knew that he would do anything to avoid a confrontation if it was at all possible, so it was easy enough to bully him, especially when his hand to hand skills were barely adequate. Even the hint of whipping his buttocks was enough for him to back off every time. While from her perspective that was a good thing when she wanted to influence him and get her own way, as an agent holding a supervisory position, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Of course, she couldn't respect him, knowing how easy he was to manipulate, so it shouldn't be a surprise she was so reluctant to follow his orders, especially in the field.
Sure, she'd found his less admirable personality traits highly useful in helping her to target and isolate Tony, to weaken him and shore up her place on the team. Especially when she first joined the MCRT and Tony had been so suspicious of her. Tim had skipped at the opportunity to hurt Tony by excluding him from her dinner party when she'd first joined the team. His face when he'd rubbed the SFA's chin in the fact that everyone on the team had been invited and attended her party except for him (well apart from Ducky) had been a mixture of smug cruelty and little-boy glee. Of course, while she knew that Tim would have her six in their little scheme, it had been an unexpected bonus that Abby and Gibbs had taken so much satisfaction in joining in on the teasing. Still, it did confuse her, since they always made such a fuss about being a family and having each other's backs.
She'd finally concluded if it shored up her position on the team, who was she to kiss a gift pony on the lips? It suited her purposes well in making Tony feel unwanted, which had the desired effect of him not expressing his suspicions and doubts about her replacing Agent Todd. Mission accomplished, and she wasn't going to feel guilty that they'd upset Tony.
But the very reason that McGee made an admirable co-conspirator in black-anting Tony's position on the team and making him doubt himself, also made her despise Tim, too. She knew that if it suited his purposes and he saw her as a threat, he would be just as happy to stab her in the back as well. It was like a mistress who wanted her lover to leave his wife, expecting they could have a monogamous relationship once he'd divorced the wife. But what made the other woman think that if he did, that her lover would stay faithful to her? If he'd done it with her, he could do it to her!
So, she couldn't respect Tim and she had no desire to have to take orders from him. It was laughable that someone like him should be put into a position of authority over her. His training, at least apart from his computer skills, was minimal, and while she had been far superior to DiNozzo, he'd at least had somewhat adequate training at the Police Academy, years of education at a military school, six years in law enforcement even before his FLETC training, and over seven years as a federal agent. She'd never felt like he would get her killed because of indecision, panicking or inexperience. McGee was soft, he couldn't lie to save his life, and he had some serious phobias that could very easily get her or someone else killed.
Sure, everyone had fears, even her, but she had been trained never to show them, or more importantly, to never give into them, but what happened it they were hanging off a building and McGee was in charge? Or what happened if they were set upon by aggressive dogs while canvassing a neighbourhood? He was just as likely to turn tail and jog, leaving her without backup. He'd probably run off and lock himself in the car like a frightened child and not even care that he'd cut off her avenues of escape, because he was too scared to think rationally. No, he wasn't fit to be the senior field agent on the premier MCRT, and she wouldn't rest until he was removed, either.
Ziva thought it was pretty ironic that when she decided to destabilise McGee, it was using many of the passive-aggressive techniques she seen him use in the past. Not passing on messages when he wasn't at his desk, taking credit for info that Tim had found by getting to Gibbs on the sly, lots of hurtful comments that she pretended were friendly jokes, but were targeting all of his insecurities, excluding him at every opportunity, annoying Gibbs so that he took out his anger on his SFA. Then there were the time honoured techniques that Abba had taught her. Subtly changing his requisition forms by moving a decimal point or a couple of zeros or changing details on his reports on occasion to make him look bad or incompetent, not that he wasn't doing an excellent job of it on his own.
The silly fool had decided to get his revenge on Tony by murdering him in his book and all Hell had broken out with Thom E. Gemcity's fans, many of which were as crazy as a spoon. Then when Gibbs had learnt about the chapter in McGee's last book, Subterranean Ten, where Agent McGregor engages L.J. Tibbs in a BDSM relationship and taught him to embrace his sub nature, their boss had gone undomesticated. He was making McGee's life a misery by making him train in hand- to- hand combat with him every day so that his bruises had bruises. She honestly wasn't a bit surprised when he lost it and had to be committed to the crazy ward. At least the director finally saw the error of his ways and demoted him, but she couldn't believe when she was passed over again and the position had been given instead to the appalling Adam Hayes.
Now as she sat on the wrong side of the interrogation table figuring out how long it would take for Eli to get her out of this mess, she could hear people shouting and running around. Knowing that something was happening, she was frustrated that she didn't know what it was. Pulling out her set of lock picks and shaking her head, disgusted that no one had searched her properly, she made short work of the locked door, emerging in the hallway to absolute pandemonium. Forcing her way to the second interrogation room, she found people crowded around Michael who was lying on the floor. Dead! While Vance was yelling at McGee and Adam Hayes for not finding the suicide pill when they search him, Ziva let out a howl of anguish at the sight of her dead lover that chilled everyone present. Fixing Adam with a hate filled glare, she hissed at him in Hebrew that it was his fault that Michael was dead and she would make him pay.
Later when the shock had worn off a little, Ziva realized that she was going to do a great deal of fancy foot toil to get out of this one and remain in the US. She would do anything to avoid having to go back to Tel Aviv, because with Michael now dead, Eli would blame her and demand that she take Michael's place on his mission to the Horn of Africa to find Saleem Ulman. Essentially, it was a suicide mission, and she would do anything to avoid that. America suited her just fine.
It was clearly time for desperate measures. Perhaps she could seduce SecNav to be her candy daddy. She had heard whispers from her contacts that the man had a sweet tooth for younger women and his tastes were anything but vanilla ice cream, and she'd excelled in the class using whips and chains.
7 Weeks Later:
Ziva sat on her bunk in the narrow confines of her cabin aboard the Damocles' wondering how she ended up on this flea pit. As she suspected, her father had been incensed at the loss of Michael Rivkin and her part in his downfall. Which Ziva felt was rather hypocritical, seeing he had ordered Michael to sleep with her, but apparently she was to blame for not neutralizing Adam Hayes before he arrested the Kidon operative.
So determined was he that Ziva should go in Michael's place that he called in his debt with Leon for saving his life during his first mission in Amsterdam. When she'd pleaded her case with SecNav and offered to do anything to stay at NCIS, the bastard had slept with her and then loaded her on a transport flight back to Israel. It seemed that Eli either called in a favour with Davenport, or more likely, had something to hold over his head, which was definitely Abba's style, quite frankly. Now, she was on her way to attempt to locate the terrorist training camp and kill Ulman. When she returned… if she returned, she would track Philip Davenport and Adam Hayes down and make them pay, but right now she could hear a lot of shouting and running… something bad was definitely going down!
Next chapter: We finally get a glimpse at what Tony's been up to.
End Notes: I had too much fun writing Ziva-isms for this chapter. I think my fav was kiss a gift pony on the lips :D Look forward to hearing which ones other people liked most. And because I don't have people correcting the Ziva-isms in this chapter since she is thinking the,m I would like your thoughts on whether you would rather that I italicize her malapropisms to make it clear that they are in fact intentional murdering of idiom, not boo-boos?