"Where's the boat?" Emma asked as she walked down the stairs of the basement.
"Not building one now. You should be asleep." He responded plainly.
She sighed, "Can't sleep. So what are you building now?"
"Not sure yet. You gonna ask how I got the boat out?"
"Nope. You might just tell me, and I don't want the mystery of it to be gone. And everyone told me that you'd never tell, anyway."
Gibbs laughed, "Yeah, what else has my team told you?"
"Uh, don't mess with your coffee, you've been married four times, and you have your own rules. Oh, and you're a Marine. But I could already tell, even though your hair's kinda long!" She chuckled.
"Did you come down here just to judge the length of my hair?"
Emma thought for a moment. She did want to change the subject- her mind was far from this small talk. "So, my mom was on your team for almost two years…" She waited for Gibbs to tell her more.
"Yeah. She resigned from the Secret Service, so I gave her an open spot on my team. This was way back when it was just DiNozzo and I."
"Why did she resign? Secret Service is a pretty sweet deal."
"She was romantically involved with a coworker and Secret Service has rules against that."
"What was she like?"
"Headstrong, smart, stubborn. Liked to prove herself, especially to men. A feminist, super anti- sexism, a great profiler, and an artist." He opened a drawer and pulled out a sketch pad. "This was hers."
He handed it over. Emma held it as if it were made of god, or the most delicate China. She looked over every sketch carefully, absorbing every pencil stroke her mother had made.
"You should keep it." Gibbs urged.
"No, this is yours. Aunt Rachel gave me my mom's necklace. Now, you said you've met my dad, too?" she prompted.
He'd seen this coming. The older man looked at where she was standing- the exact spot where Ari had been killed. After tipping back some bourbon, he carefully started to explain. "It's complicated. Everyone else is gonna try and avoid this subject, but you've got a right to know. Ari Haswari, your father, was Ziva's half-brother. Their dad raised him to be a mole for Mossad in Hamas and Al Qaeda. It backfired, and Ari became a terrorist full time. He infiltrated NCIS, shot Ducky's assistant and held them and your mom hostage. I went in and he shot my shoulder. I… was out for his blood. A year later, we were trying to stop one of his attacks and…" He paused, wondering how he should carry on. So he continued. "We were on a rooftop, and he shot… he shot Kate in the forehead from a nearby rooftop."
Gibbs waited as a series of expressions crossed Emma's face. Finally, she asked the million dollar question. "What did you do?"
"I lured him into my house and-"
"I shot him from right here." Ziva interrupted from the top of the stairs.
"He was standing right where you are." Gibbs closed.
Emma stared at the ground beneath her feet for several minutes, taking it all in. As she started to walk to the stairs, she shakily said, "I-I think I'm g-gonna turn in now…"
Once she was out of earshot, Ziva rushed by Gibbs. "Is she mad?"
He turned to her. "Ziva, since when have you been so insecure?"
"Gibbs, this is completely out of my element. I do not know how to care for a child!"
"She's not a child."
"Exactly, she's a teenage girl, which is worse. She is old enough to think on her own and with teenagers, you never know how they will react."
"I thought you had to take care of your sister?"
"It was- it was not the same. Tali…was my sister. We were closer in age and we knew each other well. But with Emma, I barely know her. Her situation is far from normal. Her mother was killed by her father who was killed by his sister! Do you hear how crazy that sounds?"
"That's your common ground. You know how to get to through tough times, an she needs someone like that right now."
"Yes, she needs her father's murderer to help her out!" Ziva almost shouted, eyes tearing up.
"Ziver, you did not murder Ari."
"Oh, what would you call it, then?"
"I wouldn't call it anything. Ari would have died no matter what. Nothing you could have done, it would've just been done by someone else's hand. You said so yourself, you did it to protect him. All you can do now is help his daughter see him how you saw him, not how the rest of us did."