Beta: This story has benefited greatly by the awesome beta-skills and input of Arress and I want to extend a humungous thanks to her for all her assistance. And you all know the drill... any boo-boos are my bad :)
A/N Thanks to everyone who reviewed alerted or favourited this story. I appreciate your support and hope you'll enjoy this chapter. Just to clarify, in this story Jimmy takes on the role of narrator and is written in 1st person while everyone else is written in 3rd person pov.
Apologies for the length of this chapter. It's very long and while I thought about splitting it in two to make it easier to read, I didn't want to be killed by irrate readers for pushing the cliff hanger reveal back a chapter :D Actually, truthfully, it would have affected the symmetry LOL. Some people raised some good questions that I hope this chapter will address.
An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everybody Blind
Chapter 3
Jimmy Palmer:
Coming home again after yet another forty-hour shift, which unfortunately is the lot of every young doctor earning their dues, I stopped to clear out the mail box as it hadn't been emptied for a couple of days. Along with miscellaneous bills and junk mail, there it was; the usual weekly postcard. This one was from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and after looking at it briefly, I placed it on the fridge when I entered my apartment. Opening the fridge door, I checked out the rather sparse contents inside and took out a leftover chickpea curry soup. Sniffing it to determine its viability, I decided that it was good to go and placed it into the microwave, nuking it before sitting down to eat. Even though I was exhausted, I knew from experience that this would be another night where insomnia claimed me and I wouldn't be able to switch off and sleep.
Like so many other sleepless nights I've spent in the days, weeks and yes, years since it happened, especially after the arrival of a postcard, I knew that instead of surrendering to the embrace of Morpheus, I would lie awake staring at the ceiling trying in vain to make sense out it all. Trying to figure out if there was a tipping point at which the senseless violence could have been prevented. All the while the ultimate irony isn't lost on me. Though I haven't worked at NCIS for quite some time, it doesn't mean I can stop my brain from torturing itself playing the 'what if' game.
It inevitably leads to a heavy-duty bout of introspection, going back over the years before it happened, pondering the imponderable, asking impotently if Tony hadn't been so comprehensively taken apart in the aftermath of the Frog fiasco, what then? Would he have found the strength to leave the team and the so-called family that he'd out-grown when they started punishing him rather than supporting him through an incredibly difficult period of his life? Could I have made a difference if I had spoken up in his defence?
I can never forgive Jenny Shepard for betraying her position of power and trust just so she could achieve her own petty vendetta. Still, it had been festering canker in her soul for 12 long years. Obviously Jenny had been waiting for the right moment in time to orchestrate her plan of revenge for her father's death. A daughter, grief-stricken over his suicide after he'd been accused of taking bribes from Jeanne's father, Rene Benoit.
I can't help but wonder now, if that was the real reason why she had broken off her tempestuous affair with Gibbs. After she took over as director, Tony had artfully confirmed that piece of scuttlebutt which was doing the rounds by sneakily grilling Dr. Mallard during one of our morning teas not long after Director Morrow had departed. As discreet as Ducky is, Tony easily managed to con him into confirming that they'd been together because he didn't ask Ducky a direct question. He was just gossiping as we drank tea and ate the Scottish Shortbread cookies… um, my bad… biscuits, as Dr. Mallard called them, that his mother had baked.
So, he was sitting there rambling on like some ditzy airhead, gossiping about how the sparks flew when they were pissed off at each other and that just screamed out "exes". And before Ducky could respond to that he'd rabbited on about Madame Director being Gibbs' type since she was a red head and how he felt sorry for her since he was a love 'em and leave 'em Lothario. And then he'd said how hard it must be to have to work in same office as her former lover who'd dumped her, so no wonder she was snarky with Gibbs constantly. That's when Ducky slipped up and corrected Tony, saying it was the other way round and Gibbs was deeply wounded when she'd dumped him six years previously due to her ambitions.
Tony had shot me a triumphant look over his teacup and remained silent and I realised how dangerous his dumb act really was. Dr. Mallard, who normally would never have betrayed a confidence, had just confirmed that Gibbs and the Director had an affair and that she'd broken up with him because of her career. And I doubt that he even realised what he had just revealed because Tony moved onto prattling on about the latest movie that he'd seen.
So now with the benefits of hindsight, I sometimes wonder if the real reason she was so focused on getting to the top had less to do with being the first woman to break through the glass ceiling. Maybe it had everything to do with finally being in a position to avenge her father's death, and she had convinced herself (without tangible proof I might add) that he'd been murdered by Rene Benoit. In which case, twelve years is very a long time to be so focused on achieving retribution, and clearly Jenny Shepard was a woman who had one serious obsession.
Not ever going to be able to excuse what she did since there is no excuse for her behaviour, or the way she was willing to sacrifice Tony and Jeanne to get what she wanted. But at least there is a reason why they were hurt so badly, since the woman was clearly in a world of hate and hurt to have held onto it for over a decade. Suicide, like revenge, is such a selfish act and a horrible legacy for friends and loved ones to have to live with, and for that I can feel a little compassion for Jenny.
Her contemptible behaviour was at least born out of the fact that she was a very sick woman, and no I'm not speaking of the terminal illness that she was diagnosed with either. I'm speaking about the festering vileness that her desire for revenge had become. An unspeakable monster slowly consuming her, taking every good attribute and corrupting it to its own ends of achieving revenge for her father. To have lived with that burning need to avenge for more than 12 years would be enough to destroy many individuals, and there are plenty of people who felt that her disease was a form of divine retribution. Me, I think that Jenny Shepard, not God or karma, with her all-consuming craving to take vengeance for Jasper Shepard's death, corrupted her soul and infested the very cells of her being.
But I'm not sure what excuse Tony's team mates could claim for treating him cruelly after his cover was blown so spectacularly when someone, probably Trent Kort from the CIA, blew up his beloved car. You know, it's weird! When we thought that Tony had been driving that car and been killed, there was a terrible pall over the whole office. I remember pulling up at the crime scene and there had been this eerie shroud of silence enveloping the block where the burnt out shell of his mustang lay smoking and the blackened shrivelled corpse that we believed to be Tony, was hunched over the steering wheel.
Everyone was in shock, even Gibbs and Ziva, who obviously were no strangers to horrific scenes of violent death, while McGee was frozen in horror as they alighted from the NCIS vehicle. They all acted totally devastated and seemed honestly grief-stricken, so you would have expected that they would be overjoyed to find out that Tony was alive, but the gilt was off the gingerbread, as my mom would say, pretty darned quick.
They all made him their whipping boy for following orders and working undercover and seemed to take much pleasuring in punishing him unmercifully. Gibbs gave him every crap job that was clearly meant to embarrass and belittle him and was damned cold to him. Why Gibbs felt the need to inflict such childish punishment on his 2IC I could never grasp, apart from extracting revenge for not being informed about his mission, even if he told Tony he understood that he'd been following orders. Or Frick and Frack, joining in on the 'kick Tony when he is down game' and making him pay for not only doing what he was ordered to do by the Director of the agency, but being a good enough undercover operative to pull it off without them figuring out what he'd been up to.
I mean, what possible reason could Gibbs, Ziva or McGee have to feel like they were owed retribution for him being undercover? What right did any of them have to make him pay for having to do something he wasn't even comfortable doing in the first place? It killed him to have to lie to everyone, especially Dr. Benoit, who he'd fallen head over heels for, and yet he'd followed orders. He'd believed that what he was doing would save the lives of Marine and Navy personnel, and their families and ultimately innocent US citizens, too. They weren't the ones who had been working for almost a year undercover and coming to work his day job simultaneously and treated like crap either. They weren't betrayed by a CIA agent who was supposed to be on our side, but decided that when Jenny wouldn't back off, it was a good idea to cut off the Hydra's head by revealing Tony's identity and blowing up his car. Nor were they left to deal with the aftermath of having his heart broken while knowing that he'd also broken Jeanne's.
If anyone deserved to feel like he was owed retribution for the damage that was done to him it was Tony, and yet his team mates turned on him as if he had done something unspeakable. I can't for the life of me understand their sense of entitlement in adding to his pain and despair. And even more inconceivable in hindsight was why we… I didn't speak up in Tony's defence and make them stop victimising him.
We could all see how much he was hurting and ignored it. He was more vulnerable and hurt than I'd ever seen him, and in our need to live in the fantasy world of Team Gibbs, Papa Bear and all his cubs, Gibbs and his Gibblets, Ducky, Abby and I turned our backs on him and let the team hurt him even more after Jenny Shepard had comprehensively screwed him over. Woulda, shoulda, coulda… If only…
~ An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind ~
Flashback
Ziva David paced around the Mossad safe-house where she was staying. Her apartment had been incinerated by a manufactured gas leak by her superiors after Tony had murdered Michael and the mess needed to be sanitised of forensic evidence. She had needed somewhere to crash after returning from Tel Aviv earlier today since she was exhausted, not to mention feeling the effects of jet lag, yet she couldn't sleep. Even though she hadn't been able to sleep for more than a few hours ever since her NCIS partner had killed her lover because of his juvenile inability to accept that she was sleeping with Michael, she just couldn't relax enough sleep.
All she could see when she closed her eyes was Michael's as his life-blood drained from him as he lay grievously wounded on her living room floor. Actually, even though she really didn't want to think about it now, she hadn't been getting a lot of sleep ever since Michael had come to stay with her. Both of them had extremely active libidos which were a fairly common attributes in Mossad operatives; it was actually selected for and encouraged as a legitimate tool that could be taken advantage of.
Of course, while they'd been rolling around the haystack, she had been fooling herself that Michael's feelings for her were as genuine as hers were for him. If she wasn't feeling so betrayed by him and her father, she supposed that she could appreciate the irony. A Mossad and Kidon trained agent well versed in all the aspects of sexual seduction for intelligence gathering, being manipulated using said skills by her own colleague and superiors to control her. As it was, she couldn't see anything remotely amusing about being caught in the same snare she had used on numerous occasions herself to gain advantage over others.
Ziva, even while feeling used and cheap, didn't stop to consider that maybe all the other marks she had slept with over the years had felt the same emotions of being exploited and their trust abused as she did currently. Do unto others was not a rule that a Mossad officer working for Eli David could afford to observe while still fulfilling their duties. It was more a case of do unto others before they had a chance to screw you, and introspection or ethical considerations were much despised qualities for an operative to indulge in. According to her father, it was the refuge of the weak-willed or those who didn't have terrorists living amongst them.
She and those Mossad officers like her were merely the sharp end of the spear that others aimed and directed into the soft underbelly of their enemies. They were the foot soldiers who weren't given the benefit of in-depth explanations or strategic rationales, and she had always been fine with that fact before. Yet now in her confusion, betrayal and anguish, Ziva was having a hard time understanding how she had suddenly become the enemy.
She had always been loyal to Mossad. Tony had even called her the dutiful Mossad agent a long time ago, and that still held true, well it had right up until her father had all but admitted that he'd ordered Michael to sleep with her. If he distrusted her so much why the Hades had he let her return to NCIS earlier this year? Why not insist that she remain in Israel? Ziva was confused and it made no sense.
In fact, truth be bold, she didn't understand the reasons why her father had wanted to place her on Gibbs' team in the first place, especially considering how reluctant he had been to let her return after the team had been disbanded. Had she already fulfilled her purpose, and if so, what had it been? Nor did she grasp for that matter, why Officer Bashan had reprimanded her for sleeping with Tony DiNozzo in the months that Gibbs had retired from leading the team several years ago. Frankly, she couldn't understand her father's ire about that situation at all. She'd been instructed to win Gibbs' trust and loyalty and she had done it by playing into his unresolved grief over the death of his daughter and first wife.
She knew that trying to manipulate Gibbs sexually wouldn't work, after all she had drawn up the team's profiles for Mossad and Ari, and the fact that Gibbs had gone through three wives - all red heads, and she clearly wasn't was one, was a big clue. But a case early on after she joined the team showed that Gibbs' true vulnerability wasn't women, or even sex; it was children and his thwarted instincts and desires as a father. Watching him with the freakishly precocious and frankly rather insufferable six-year-old child whose father had been kidnapped, had showed her quickly how to take his obligation over her killing Ari and turn his need to express his paternal instincts into being her surrogate dad.
But then all bets were off when he stomped off in a fit of pique at the obese felines willing to suffer some collateral damage rather than tolerate being embarrassed, combined with his unresolved grief, all of which caused him to nut off to Mexico. Once there, he concentrated on pickling himself with alcohol with his mentor as company and drinking companion. She really hadn't expected him to return.
Honestly, Ziva was shocked that Gibbs had been allowed to re-gain such a position of influence when he was clearly compromised psychologically. Americans bemused and sometimes angered Ziva, since they were Israel's allies, and they had such screwed down priorities. They were so paranoid about having soldiers who were gay serving in the military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies because they argued that they could become a national security risk, but to her mind, Gibbs was just as much of a potential security risk if you knew what his vulnerability was. Furthermore, she had proved just how easy it was to earn his trust, and if she could manipulate him as an ally, it was equally possible for America's enemies to as well. They could find out about his wife and daughter just as easily as she had and to set him up with an agent who was a single mother.
The fact he was obsessively secret about his family was a big crimson flag and Ziva was extremely surprised that no one seemed to understand how vulnerable he, and therefore the agency, was. She'd expected when he un-retired that he wouldn't be allowed to resume his place in the field until he had resolved his grief issues. But his continuing obsessive behaviour and extreme anger every time a case came along that involved a wife and children that was even remotely close enough to Gibbs' own experience to trigger his unresolved issues, made it was clear that hadn't happened.
While it made him highly motivated to solve those crimes, it made him ride his team far too hard, and made the chances of him missing extraneous factors far more likely. Essentially, in Eli David's Mossad, he would be viewed as a liability and would be forced to deal with his issues or face mandatory retirement. Of course, in Mossad mandatory retirement often meant something different to what it did in the US. Ari had taken mandatory retirement!
And Ziva could understand why her father might have some jealousy issues with her playing up to Gibbs as his surrogate daughter, and she had to admit that it had really become something less than an act on her part lately. What she couldn't understand though was him going mailman over her sleeping with DiNozzo when he'd become the team lead of the MCRT. She had been furious to find out that she had been under surveillance by her own people and she had reacted with extreme anger, not understanding why it was okay to curry favour with Gibbs and not with DiNozzo. It wasn't logical and went against her training.
It wasn't like she could use the same technique with him as she had with Gibbs when he was in charge, after all, although if she had been a male and older she might have been able to exploit his need for older male approval since he had such an impoverished childhood. She'd figured out when putting together his profile that Tony's currency was attention, preferably positive attention, but any sort of attention since he'd been severely deprived as a child. Usually he found attention through engaging in meaningless sex with a constant array of fresh bingos ever since his rejection by his fiancé and his reluctance to hand over power to any one individual again. So it made sense to curry favour with him by offering to be what the Americans called friends with beneficials. Considering that her people used sex as a tool and technique routinely, she simply couldn't see why her father had such an objection with her having sex with her team leader.
Of course, Ziva hated to admit it, but while she really didn't understand why it was such an issue, she was also sensitive about Mossad spying on her. And for Mossad, read Eli David, and his reaction if he/they knew the truth because although she had thrown herself at DiNozzo, flaunted herself, subjected him to her array of seduction techniques and ended up all but raping the guy, he had ignored her invitations. Every week that they had gotten together it had been for a purely platonic rendezvous as he used his love of the cinema to try and expand her understanding of American pop culture, which he explained rather patronisingly she'd thought, would make her a better investigator. While he was happy enough to snuggle up beside her on her sofa watching movies and eating takeout week after week, and he would even throw his arm around her in an affectionate fashion sometimes, the moment she tried to change it up into something sexual, he always politely froze her up.
Ziva was confused and incensed by his continual rebuffing of her invitations, both as a trained Mossad officer and as a highly desirable female. She had always assumed when Gibbs was in charge, that Tony wouldn't break his precious Rule #12, since he was so busy tying himself in knots to win Gibbs' approval, so she had every expectation that once Gibbs was gone, he would cave in. After months of frustrated attempts to seduce him, Ziva was pissed, since she had never had a seduction failure before. She knew she was highly attractive since many man and the occasional woman had told her so, and they had been more than happy to succumb to her attentions. So Ziva was left with only one possible explanation for her failure, Anthony DiNozzo was merely playing at being heterosexual when he was in fact gay. Of course when she came to this conclusion, Ziva felt relief that her training and skills could not be blamed for her failed attempts to seduce him.
Sure it was humiliating to have to admit to herself that she had been hoodblinked by DiNozzo into believing he was straight. However it was far less damaging to her psyche than having to deal with the knowledge that she wasn't sexually desirable, or for that matter, as skilled in sexual persuasion as she had been led to believe. Ziva had never failed to seduce anyone before and didn't handle her failure well, but if it was because she simply didn't have the anatomical equipment to arouse him, then she hadn't really failed in her task. So, then when it became increasingly obvious that Tony had fallen head over soles for a woman and was planning on living with her, it felt like a kick in the mouth. Even when she found out that Jeanne Benoit was a mark in an undercover mission, it was warm comfort seeing as DiNozzo was blatantly infatuated with that spoilt, silly Barbie doll.
That was probably why she took so much satisfaction in making him pay for not telling them about his undercover mission when it all went apple-shaped, never missing an opportunity to put the shoe in about him keeping secrets. The rest of the team were just as humiliated as she was at being fooled, well maybe not, since they hadn't been turned down in favour of an overly indulged daughter of a drug dealer. But Gibbs was furious about being deceived too, although he said that he understood Tony was following Jenny's orders not to tell them about his mission. That said, his actions spoke louder than his words and he treated Tony like faeces or ignored him. Tim had been irate thinking that he would have been much better suited at posing as a college professor, or maybe he thought that a doctor should go out with a computer genius, and he made sure he never missed the opportunity to make comments that would hurt DiNozzo.
As she sipped at a cup of jasmine tea, hoping it would relax her enough to get some sleep, she thought about their return to the office earlier on. Ziva winced as she thought about how Abby and McGee had greeted her when she arrived, and she was angry. It was as if they no longer trusted her, like she an outsider rather than a trusted member of their team, and she jumped up and grabbed her keys and wallet and headed to her car. She was so furious, and she had to do something about it. It was Tony's fault, and he had no right to go poking his eyes in her business with Michael or Mossad, especially when he had kept secrets from the team and her. Talk about the pot blackening the kettle's reputation!
Obviously, he had not only been deceiving the team, sneaking around spying on her, but he'd been deluding himself. Clearly, he was obsessed with investigating her private business because he was jealous about her being with Michael. More than likely he was regretting the fact that she had once again offered to have a sexual liaison with him and he had turned her down. She had thought that he was ready after she had gotten up close and personal with him while they were hiding in a cupboard at the Marine facility. Although he'd acted like an emu with his head in the sand when she made her move and pretended to be angry with their superiors, he was clearly afraid to accept her offer because of Gibbs idiotic Rule #12. But when he found out about Michael, it was obvious he couldn't deal with his jealousy any longer.
Ziva knew that she couldn't forgive Tony for betraying her and killing Michael. He'd made people suspect her loyalty, and her father had already told her that her ability to be an effective liaison between Mossad and NCIS was jeopardised. All because of Michael accidentally killing the ICE agent, Thomas Sherman, but you couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few legs. Still, her being caught harbouring him when she should have made sure he left the country was probably not the smartest of choices. Yet it had been handled and the case had been closed without Michael's involvement being discovered, until Tony couldn't let sleeping dogs snooze.
Eli was furious, already arguing that she hadn't handled her team effectively and that she'd let DiNozzo kill a highly valued Mossad officer. He'd also hinted rather blatantly that she should volunteer to take Michael's place on the mission to take down Saleem Ulman in Somalia, to prove that her loyalty was to her father and Mossad not NCIS. Ziva knew that Eli was bringing every trick to bear, trying to force her to take the mission that was supposed to be undertaken by his prized Kidon operative. Her father was a master of manipulation, especially when it came to his eldest daughter.
Under normal circumstances she would have acquiesced to her father's implicit order to take on Michael's mission without question. Yet upon hearing him admit to an oh-so-smug DiNozzo when by some fluke he had tricked her Abba during the interrogation, into admitting that he ordered Michael to sleep with her because he didn't trust her, she refused to volunteer. It would take a direct order from her father to force her, and fortunately for her, Abba hadn't made it a direct order… not yet anyway. He was so sure that she would do what he wanted, and she saw his face when she followed Gibbs on the plane when he'd been expecting her to stay in Israel. Yet she could still be pulled back to Mossad at a moment's notice, so she needed to gain back the trust she had achieved at NCIS, making it more difficult for her father to justify recalling her.
For that to happen, she needed DiNozzo to get thrown off the team. She didn't trust him after he killed Michael, but also because without him on the team, she was certain she could make everyone trust her again.
~ An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind ~
Gibbs was sitting in his basement trying to lose himself in a bottle of bourbon as he came to terms with the fact that Ziva had lied to them. Oh, sure, he had known before getting on the transport to Tel Aviv that she had deceived them about her relationship with Officer Michael Rivkin. He'd tried to ignore the consequences it had for the death of a federal agent and two terrorists by protecting Rivkin, because he could tell how much she was hurting over his death and he couldn't bear to see her suffering. When the revelations that she had been passing confidential information to Mossad came through while they were in Israel, he still hadn't confronted her, even though it cut him to the quick. Gibbs was certain if he showed her he had her six she would confess what she had done.
After all, she had earned his trust when she'd saved his life, and when he gave his trust it was for life, since he didn't give it to just anyone or easily, if it came down to it. Semper Fi wasn't just some trite phrase; he lived and breathed it with his whole being. So, despite the fact that she had betrayed his trust and his renowned gut had somehow led him astray, which was incredibly galling for the former Marine who prided himself on his ability have the measure of those around him, he waited. Waited and hoped that she would come to him, ready to finally be honest with him about what she had done. And now he wondered if he would have to make the first move, since she hadn't turned up as he'd expected.
And where did it leave him now, apart from conflicted? Questioning himself and his abilities in his basement, and that was always a painful process, particularly for Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Especially since Ziva had become a surrogate daughter to him, since she chose him over her own flesh and blood and killed her half-brother to save his life, in this very basement. So many pivotal events had taken place in his basement; it was where he came to de-stress, sleep and find solace when his soul was troubled. When he needed to untangle the facts of a case, this was where he retreated to puzzle it out.
Since his girls left him, the basement had become the epicentre of his home, so it seemed absolutely fitting that he finally heard his front door open and close as Ziva finally made her way through his house and would inevitably find her way down here so they could have that inescapably awkward discussion about the events of the last few days. Hopefully, Ziva would be able to give him a valid reason for her lies and deception that threatened their relationship. Gibbs was sure Ziva was now ready to take the first step in repairing their fractured father-daughter bond, and he was relieved.
As he waited for her to descend the stairs, he tried to ignore the memory of the SecNav here in the basement, expressing his distrust and doubt that Ziva should be working at NCIS. That was a conversation that had taken place literally days before. Had it really been such a short time ago? So much had happened in those few days, and he tried really hard not to think that perhaps she had managed to fool him successfully for the last three plus years. There must be a reasonable explanation, yet he had been taken in by that whole situation with Langer and Lee, too. Where the Hell was his famous gut then?
Hearing her footfalls on the stairs, which weren't as stealthy as normal, he spoke without turning around, "Why are you here, Ziver? I thought you'd be sleeping by now."
"I cannot sleep, Gibbs." The Israeli reached the bottom stair and crossed the floor to stand close to him for a moment before her anxiety and rage prompted her to start pacing.
He could see her looking at him bemusedly and he realised that although he had used his special nickname for her, he had been brusquer with her than he normally would be. He knew that she had had a bad couple of days, what with the death of Michael and the discovery of her father's deceit and mistrust. It had to have destroyed her, but damn it, she owed him an apology, and he knew that he needed to ask her some very hard questions.
Yes, damn it, not just an explanation, not simply a justification, he wanted, no, he needed an apology! It wasn't hypocritical of him to want her to say that she was sorry. It wasn't a sign of weakness when it was offered between friends and family, and he wanted to think that they were both. Moreover, there were some transgressions that were too damned huge to simply overlook, and lying to him was something he could not easily forget or forgive, although for Ziva he was willing to try.
But he wanted, no, needed her to make the first move, since she was the one who had deceived him. And yet with her here with him in his safe place, he could see the pain and suffering etched on her face and her exhaustion, and he could feel his heart start soften in spite of his hurt and anger. So, knowing what he needed before he could move on, he deliberately hardened his heart and he waited.
Jethro knew only too well what it is like to lose the one you love, even if he wasn't sure that Ziva had really loved Rivkin in the truest sense of the word, and definitely not in the way that Gibbs loved Shannon. She had been his soul mate and the mother of his child, while Ziva had known Michael since they were children and were colleagues, which made for a close knit bond, special in its own way. Then to find out that the louse was sleeping with her on orders, well, it made him want to kill the bastard for hurting her, and he wished he'd hurt him when he had the opportunity in LA. He also really wished he could rip out her father's entrails; that man didn't deserve to be a father. He would never have done to Kelly what Eli David had done to his precious daughter.
But he needed her to come clean with him about what she had been up to so he could begin to rebuild his trust in her. She owed him some honesty, so as much as it hurt him, he waited. The father in him wanted to take her in his arms and tell her everything would be okay and chase away her demons. His stubborn, wounded male pride resisted, challenging the part of him that had been Kelly's dad and would always want to chase away the monsters for his pseudo-daughters, Ziva and Abby, and dry their tears, since he couldn't bear to see them cry.
Willing her to speak and confess that she had been lying to him, he watched as she paced, and his gut clenched tight. Finally, after watching her pace with hatred burning fiercely in her eyes, she made eye contact with him and spoke the words he was longing to hear from her. "We need to talk, Gibbs." Seeing her struggling to begin, he gave her an encouraging half smile.
Finally, she seemed to marshal her thoughts. "I think it is best if I simply speak from the heart," she began, and his heart swelled with a combination of love and relief. He had deliberately not asked her to explain herself so far, and when she began to give him a defiant explanation in the bull pen when he came back from her blown-up building, he'd shushed her. Partly because he didn't want a half-baked apology or lame excuse why she had lied to him. Not when she was so damned angry, knowing it would be neither heartfelt nor truthful, and partly because her home had been ripped out from underneath her and his heart broke for his kid.
Looking at her with all the love and understanding he could summon, he replied, "Well, yes, it usually is." He steeled himself for her confession about her lies that she had told them about Michael, about her knowledge that Rivkin had been responsible for Agent Sherman's death. To admit to him he had switched the terrorist's computer and disclose that she shared confidential NCIS data with Rivkin as one of his informants. All of these things demanded that she explain herself and he was pleased that she decided not put it off any longer. So, he was completely unprepared for what came next.
"It's Tony, I am still not convinced that he been entirely truthful about Michael's… Rivkin's shooting." She said.
Feeling shocked and disappointed, he stared at his liaison officer sternly before responding. "He gave his word."
His unspoken message was clear, 'DiNozzo doesn't lie,' and he was biting his damned tongue trying not to say that she of all people was in no position to be questioning anyone's integrity, especially Tony's.
"I am not sure that we can work together. Perhaps it would be better if one of us gets transferred to another team," she stated carefully and dispassionately, but there was something tightly tamped down about her under the surface that made his gut ache.
"Transferred?" Gibbs repeated, hoping that Ziva wasn't asking him what he thought she was. After all this time, surely she knew him better than to try to back him into a corner, to issue him with an ultimatum? He understood that she was distraught over Michael's betrayal and death and her father's manipulations, but after all, Michael Rivkin had been ordered to sleep with her.
How could she still have feelings for him knowing that he had been using her and spying on her? It wasn't as if Ziva wouldn't understand how it worked, since she had admitted to sleeping with people to gain an advantage on a case, and has even been trained in how to do it successfully. Why was she being so irrational about DiNozzo?
Ziva stared at him intently before looking over at the spot where Ari had been standing as he prepared to shoot Gibbs four years ago. The same spot where she had shot him down like a rabid dog and Gibbs had learned that Ari was her half-brother. "I need to be able to trust the people that I work with. I know that you more than anyone understands that."
Damn it, she wasn't just giving him an ultimatum, but she was trying to force his hand by reminding him that he owed her his life. If only she had come to him and admitted that she had been deceiving them; that she had lied to him and to DiNozzo about Rivkin. If she'd just confessed that she had protected Michael and failed to speak up about his responsibility in the death of the federal agent, maybe he could have overlooked it. Instead she'd let them chase their tails through the whole investigation where another ICE agent was almost blamed for Sherman's death, which was inexcusable. If she had confessed she had been feeding Rivkin details of NCIS investigations and explained that she didn't feel comfortable working with DiNozzo, it might have been a different story.
If she had simply 'asked' for his help, he might have reacted differently. After all, if he wasn't such a selfish bastard he probably should have encouraged Tony to accept a promotion several years ago, since he was more than ready and qualified, but he didn't trust anyone else to have his six like he did with DiNozzo, not even Ziva.
On balance, Ducky's observations before their trip to Tel Aviv when he was struggling to deal with her disloyalty, that to spilt her loyalty between Gibbs and her father, between her country and theirs, must be a difficult, almost impossible situation. And he was well aware that he and Eli were engaging in a pissing contest over a bone and its name was Ziva. But as much as Gibbs acknowledged how very much he owed to Ziva, he was an alpha male down to his bootstraps.
If someone told him he had to do something, he damn well did the opposite, just to prove that no one forced Leroy Jethro Gibbs to do anything that he didn't want to. For a subordinate to try and force his hand, meant that he had no choice but slap her down and slap her down hard. He could only hope that she would come to her senses and come back grovelling and ready to explain her behaviour and convince him he could trust her again.
He stared at her steadily before leaning across and kissing her left cheek once, knowing that this was going to hurt him almost as much as it hurt her.
"As you wish, Officer David! I'll talk to Director Vance tomorrow about getting you transferred to another team ASAP. Go home, Ziva, and take care of yourself."
Gibbs forced himself to ignore the pain, disbelief and anger that he saw mirrored in her eyes before he turned his back on her and walked away. Ignoring her and the maelstrom of emotions he could feel radiating off her even without looking, he picked up a set of blueprints for a new boat. Examining them in minute detail, he snubbed her, unable to trust himself to say any more to her without either throttling her or hugging the shit out her. He was trying not to think about the fact that Ziva would see his rejection as another betrayal by a man in her life. Hell, she predicted he would betray her, too, after she beat up Officer Hadar for blowing up her apartment.
Finally, after more than five minutes she was still there, waiting for his resolve to weaken, but in the end it was Ziva who cracked. Her voice quavering even as she tried to control her emotions, as she tried to regain the upper hand. "Please, Gibbs, you are more of a father to me than Eli, do not betray me, too. I saved your life. I chose you over my own flesh and blood. Do not turn your back on me, I am pleading to you."
"Go home, Ziva," he growled without turning around. "Director Vance will be in touch." Trying to ignore the almost silent sobs as Ziva made her way across the basement and up the stairs, he waited until he was sure she was gone before he picked up the half full bottle of Jack Daniels and threw it, wishing it was Eli David that was being hurled against the wall and shattering into hundreds of pieces.
God damn the man, he didn't deserve to have children, and Gibbs was worried that he'd just pushed Ziva back into the bastard's arms when she forced his hand. He couldn't protect her from Eli David if she decided to return to Israel. He felt as if she had broken his heart.
~ An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind ~
Ziva wasn't sure where she was going; she only knew she had to get away from the scene of her latest failure. She had failed in her bid to regain what she had lost after Tony had destroyed the carefully constructed world she had built in America. And because of that jack-mule, she would probably have to go back to Israel since no one trusted her anymore, not even Gibbs, as evidenced by him choosing DiNozzo over her. How could he choose that joke of an agent over her when she had saved his life and killed her own brother to do it? He owed her everything. Tears of rage leaked from her eyes even as she violently swept them away.
Unable to see the irony that even as a highly trained Mossad operative, she was not immune to the same weaknesses that she had berated her partner for in the men's toilet after the CIA had blown Anthony DiNozzo's undercover mission with Jeanne Benoit. She, too, had begun to believe in her own cover story that Gibbs really was her surrogate father instead of her father's mark, and as she drove away from Alexandria and Gibbs' basement in her typically erratic fashion, she was not even aware of what she was doing. Ziva was on autopilot!
The truth was that she had thrown the dice, so certain she would win and that Gibbs would choose her, and now she had lost out, spectacularly. She was off Gibbs' team, and when her father heard about her latest failure, he would order her home for sure. Once more, Ziva found herself as second best, and this knowledge fuelled her fury.
Her father had always chosen Mossad, Israel and his intelligence work over his family, his wife and over his daughters. Her half-brother, Ari, had chosen hatred of their father and vengeance for his mother and her people over his love and loyalty to her, damn him. Then Michael had chosen allegiance to her father over his childhood friendship with her, and DiNozzo? He was too afraid of losing Gibbs' approval to acknowledge his real feelings for her and tell their boss to nail his ridiculous rule #12. But the one man that she had been absolutely sure would take her side tonight had picked DiNozzo over her, and now everything she had achieved was lost. And Tony DiNozzo was to blame for it all because of his jealousy and inability to mind his own damned business!
She wondered if Gibbs had talked to Director Vance yet and if her father already knew. If so, she would very soon be getting a call from Eli recalling her to Israel, and she thought about what her life would be like. She would have to complete Michael's mission to find the terrorist training camp in the Horn of Africa, if the intelligence pulled from the terrorist's laptop was to be believed, and she would be forced to become an assassin again. She didn't want to go back, she liked living here and all the simple freedoms that these Americans took so much for granted. Maybe, though, she reasoned, all wasn't completely lost and she could still rescue the situation. If the one common denominator in this mess wasn't around anymore, then things would go back to normal and Gibbs would fight for her to stay in the US and on his team.
Anyone with eyes in their face could see the out and out animosity between her father and Gibbs. One thing she knew, when Gibbs was challenged he would fight to protect her, she just knew it. Perhaps it had been foolish to try and twist his hand, but she had been desperate and she panicked. Now it was time to make things right; to finish what she had started back in Tel Aviv. It was time to visit one of the safe houses that she'd kept from back when she had been handling Ari, to collect some equipment she had stored there. She needed some things that would not be traced back to her.
As Ziva drove to the storage locker she'd continued to pay for in cash since her days as Ari's handler so there'd be no connection to her or Mossad, she was planning her moves carefully. This needed to look like a home invasion and she had to leave enough clues to make sure that she was in the clear, since she would probably be considered a suspect. That was why she needed weapons that could be easily traced back to local gangs and drugs dealers. And she also needed to borrow a car because her own Mini Cooper was too distinctive.
As she finished making plans for yet another hit, her thoughts returned to her half-brother, which wasn't all that surprising, really, since this place was irrevocably linked to her memories of Ari. But it was a topic that she'd tried very hard not to think about since he died at her hand. Her father was pleased that she had followed his orders and eradicated his 'problem' that was highly damaging to his position. It it had also given her the opportunity to ingratiate herself with Gibbs and worm her way into NCIS, just as Eli had decreed. Not that she'd ever really understood the purpose of Mossad wanting her embedded in such a minor intelligence agency. In fact, it seemed an odd way to way to treat an ally, but then her father never appreciated anyone questioning his actions.
Yet she hadn't killed her brother because he was a traitor to Mossad and Israel or because of her father's orders or even because he was threatening Gibbs, who at that moment in time was an arrogant, annoying stranger. If she was completely honest with herself, she had killed him because she was overcome by a murderous rage. At the moment in time she reacted because he had betrayed her, deceived her, his sister who loved him fiercely. She had defended him to her father and to NCIS, adamant that Ari was not a traitor. Ziva, who had been taken and moulded into a super assassin at an unforgivably early age, had become accustomed to being a super-spy savant who was never wrong. Unable to deal with the fact that her own brother had betrayed her, had comprehensively fooled her and made her look like a joke, she had killed him a blind overwhelming rage.
Yet as that old saying went, if you act quickly, you apologise in laziness, and that was true in this case, too. That was mostly why Ziva tried not to think about her brother, that and the hateful things that had spewed out of his mouth about their father. Mainly because if she spent too long thinking about it, she might have reached the same conclusion that he had valid cause to hate their father. But even more disturbing was the thought that if she had even stopped to consider the possibility that Ari was a rogue agent, she could have set up a trap where she apprehended him. Instead, she ended up having to shoot him down like some rabid dog.
She had been so sure that Ari was loyal to Israel that she never even entertained the possibility that he might be guilty of the charges levelled against him. In the end, she had no choice but to do what she did, even if she would relive it over and over again as long as she lived. That was, whenever she allowed herself the luxury of thinking about what had gone on down in Gibbs' basement. But it was pointless to think of what if.
Sure, killing Ari was what her father had demanded and what NCIS felt was fitting punishment for the death of one of their own, and they hadn't lost any sleep over his demise. But he was her brother and she loved him, and killing him stole a huge chunk of her humanity, and she ended up pretty much hating the world because of it, including herself. And now because of DiNozzo, she was reliving that nightmare that she had worked so hard to lock down tight in that place where she banished all her demons. She should have killed him back in Tel Aviv when she had the chance. It was long past time to correct that situation.
~ An Eye for an Eye Leaves Everyone Blind ~
By the time Ziva found herself outside of Anthony DiNozzo's apartment building, she was driving a customised hotted up car that belonged to one of the local ganghangers. She had hotwired it, knowing that people would remember the car rather than the driver, if any witnesses were around at that time of the morning. Dressed all in black BDUs and a ski mask in her pocket for her to don when she was inside the building, she checked to make sure she had the weapons collected from her storage locker.
She had several knives and a gun – a .38 special that she had taken from a young pair of skunks last year that thought she was an easy target for a mugging. They had gotten a nasty little surprise and she had some untraceable weapons that along with some trace amounts of cocaine that she had made sure to coat the knives and gun with, would further throw off the police when she left behind the murder weapon at the scene. She preferred to use a knife to do the job if possible because it was silent and gave her more time to flee the scene, but even if Tony was not an exceptional agent, he was still trained and it would be foolish not to take him seriously, hence the gun.
Ziva was cursing the fact that she'd never been inside DiNozzo's apartment, which meant she was effectively going in blind which was not optimal, but it could not be helped. She wondered why she'd never been invited to his place since he was always ready to share so many inappropriate details of his life, so she thought it was odd. Hopefully, he would be asleep and not watching his mindless collection of movies in the living area since it would be much more difficult to sneak in. But that said, she was Mossad trained and of course it was doable.
It appeared that he was sleeping since all the lights were out in his apartment that she could see from the street. Actually, there were no lights on anywhere in the building, but at 0322 hours, she wasn't all that surprised. Stopping to make sure she cut the power to the entire building, she pulled on her ski mask avoiding any security cameras as she made her was to the entrance and moved into the stairwell. Climbing the three flights of stairs using a small pen shaped flashlight to light the way, she moved with the stealth that Tony always described as her 'Ninja moves'.
Exiting the stairwell, she crept along the hallway to his front door. Pulling out her lock picks, she set to work on opening the door, working as quickly and quietly as possible. When she felt the lock give, she clicked off the penlight and pushed open the door a fraction to listen and make sure no one was moving around inside. Pushing open the door silently and slipping inside, she switched to a tiny flashlight similar to ones on a key ring to check that Tony hadn't fallen asleep on the sofa, before once again using the pen light to find her way around the apartment.
Moving up the hallway toward what must be the bedrooms and the bathroom, she didn't notice the trail of clothes on the floor which Tony had shed on his way to his bed because he had entered his home too exhausted to place them in the clothes hamper, and had been feeling utterly grimy from being in the one set of clothes the whole time they were in Israel. He had simply shed them on his way to the bathroom. Although Ziva silently cursed the slight rustle that ensued when she stumbled over his shirt and trousers, she was confident that it wouldn't be enough to wake him up. Since he was injured from his fight with Michael, he'd probably taken some pain killers the moment he got home anyway.
Bracing herself as a part of her screamed out that this was wrong and not to do it, she deliberately imagined Michael lying on the floor of her apartment with four rounds from Tony's gun piercing his body and his life blood pouring out of him as she held him, begging him not to die. She pictured them in bed together, and also the many hours they'd spent with each other as children, the dreidel game they played at Hanukkah and endless games of hide-and-go-seek in the olive groves. Then with the rage burning bright again, she hardened her heart. She also remembered that Gibbs had chosen DiNozzo over her and that she would soon be off home to become her father's dutiful assassin again. Taking a deep breath she opened the door, prepared to use the ganghanger's knife, only to see gleaming porcelain, and so moved on to the next door.
Finding her heart rate elevated way more than it had been in the past when she had engaged in her occupation as a sanctioned Mossad killer, she dimly realised that it was because she was conflicted about what she was about to do, which was not something that she had experienced in the past, nor was it something one wanted just before a kill. Ignoring that feeble voice inside her head telling her it was wrong and focusing on Tony shooting her friend and lover instead, she opened the door next to the bathroom smoothly, she saw the bed, and instead of calmly assessing the situation, she reacted blindly, which was utterly out of character for the Mossad killer.
Throwing the heavy and badly weighted knife, she aimed just below the pillow that she had subconsciously noted before throwing the weapon. She was confident that it would pierce her target's cardiac muscle, resulting in a quick death, unlike what he inflicted on Michael. Almost instantly, Ziva realised by the sound it made as it found it's mark, that it hadn't hit flesh and bone. She'd failed! Using her penlight, she quickly ascertained that the bed was empty, but her spidey-sense told her that DiNozzo was definitely somewhere in the room.
Adopting a firing stance with the .38 special at the ready, she used the flashlight to search the room rapidly, spying someone lying on the floor on the left side of the bed. Almost automatically, she realised that he was also aiming a gun at her and any hesitation that she may have felt disappeared as self- preservation kicked conscious thought to the kerb. Ziva fired off a volley of shots, even as he let go three shots in rapid succession. Time seemed to freeze as a random thought popped into her head that perhaps she should have thought about this a bit more thoroughly before she executed this particular kill.
Endnotes:
Someone suggested that I should list all the Ziva-isms and their translation at the end of the chapter and I thought that was a good idea so here it is:
rolling around the haystack/a roll in the hay, truth be bold/truth be told, the obese felines/fat cats, to nut off/to bolt off, screwed down /screwed up, crimson flag/red flag, going mailman/ going postal, bingos/bimbos, friends with beneficials/friends with benefits, froze her up/froze her out, hoodblinked/hoodwinked, fallen head over soles/fallen head over heels, kick in the mouth/ kick in the teeth, apple-shaped/pear shaped, put the shoe in /put the boot in, to go poking his eyes in her business/ to go poking his nose in her business, the pot blackening the kettle's reputation/ the pot calling the kettle black, like an emu with his head in the sand/ like an ostrich with his head in the sand, you couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few legs/ you couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, let sleeping dogs snooze/ let sleeping dogs lie, jack-mule/ jack-ass, to nail his ridiculous rule #12/ to screw his ridiculous rule # 12, eyes in their face/ eyes in their head, if you act quickly, you apologise in laziness/ act in haste repent in leisure, ganghangers/ gangbangers, skunks/ punks.