A/N: I based this on one of the "Ziva returns" episodes, and what Ziva told Gibbs about getting "back to Tali", (as in, not TONYand Tali) and how she so very easily dismissed Tony as having any significance. I have no idea what the writers actually intended by wording it that way.
However… I almost didn't post this, because shortly after writing it, I saw part of the episode where Ziva first came back, which I'd not seen before. I've only caught bits and pieces of Tony-less episodes . She and Gibbs had a confrontation a lot like the one I wrote, and Gibbs not only questioned her judgment, but asked her what had happened to her to make her go off the rails. She mentioned that it was after she had shot Ari, and then proceeded to tell Gibbs that if she hadn't taken that shot (to save his life) none of 'this' would have happened. 'This' being having to pretend she was dead and go into hiding, blah blah blah.
Long story short, it all kind of spooked me that I'd run parallel to the show writers minds, something I haven't wanted to do for over 15 years. What actually shocked me was Gibbs getting p.o.'d with her and saying "fine, blame me, but do right by your daughter." I stopped watching it after that, because I didn't understand the context of the rest of what he meant. Anyway , I didn't change anything that I wrote. Written in present tense because I felt like trying something different.
Takes place in Gibbs' basement. He and Ziva are squaring off after making sure Sahar is dead and Phineas is safe.
"When we were out in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out what to do and I wanted to do things my way and end it …you said ' The only way back to Tali is if Sahar is dead.' You never mentioned Tony. Just Tali, like he wasn't even in the picture. What happened between you two, Ziver? All this time I've spent being angry at him for breaking Rule 12, and thinking that he knew about Tali and never said anything…never took responsibility for her. And now I find out you not only hid her from him, from us, you treat him like an afterthought. Like I've treated him for years because I believed he'd used you and then ran scared. That wasn't the case, was it, Ziva? He didn't talk you into a one night stand and then run. You did. You played on his weaknesses and emotions to help you have a child. Another Tali, to replace your sister."
She turns and walks away, putting some satisfying distance between them. Gibbs is still at the top of his game, putting together the pieces of a worn out puzzle.
"No, it wasn't like that, not truly…"
"Then what was it like, Ziver? You're going to lie to me, again, and tell me I'm wrong? That it was all his idea? The guy who is so screwed up, screwed over, that all it took was one crook of your finger and he didn't run screaming the other way? All those years, I watched you take turns bewitching him one minute, then trying to castrate him the next. God, you could be cruel! And I allowed it, because I needed him on my team, and I didn't know how to tell you to stop hurting him without making things worse.
"All I did was sacrifice one kid for the other, one who lied repeatedly to me about Michael Rivkin, then broke us all by pretending she'd drowned on the Damocles. You emotionally blackmail me into doing things your way with Sahar by accusing me of not coming to look for you after we were told you were dead. How many times, Ziver? How many times do you get to rip our hearts out and then come back and put us through hell all over again? We risked our lives in Somalia avenging your death. Tony wasn't right for days after that cocktail of drugs Saleem shot him up with. And he never even intimated what he went through before he got tied to that chair and interrogated.
"Is it a drug to you, Ziva? To keep testing us to see how loyal we are, how much we love you? How far we'll go for you? I never thought that there was a line for that, for any of you. You were always my kids to protect and fight for, no matter what. But I'm not your father. Tony isn't Ari. Yet you pitted him against me to prove you were my favorite."
She turns on him with an unexpected fury, her eyes blazing.
"And why not? It was always a competition with you, Gibbs! In the bullpen, outside the bullpen! It started out as a game for me, but then I realized that if I did not measure up, I would be sent back to Israel to do my father's bidding! It was what Tony would call a no-brainer, no? So, yes, I competed with him, for my life! Because my life in Israel, with my father, was no life at all! I was raised to be nothing but a weapon for him! You saw what he did when you left me behind in Israel, when you chose Tony over me!"
"You shouldn't have asked me to choose, Ziva! He did nothing wrong, he defended himself, from a man your father had no business sending here! You heard him when your father interrogated him! Michael was doing your father's work, and you knew it! No one gets to tell me who stays and who goes on my team, not after the crap Jenny pulled! What did you think I was going to do, Ziva? You were damned lucky not to end up on a plane to Gitmo after what went down! You withheld vital national security information, did you even consider the markers I had to call in to keep your ass from getting hauled off to Homeland?
"And then the whole Bodnar shit fest, where we all lost our jobs and risked our lives to go hunt down and kill the wrong guy? Tony tried to warn me and I wouldn't listen!"
"What does Tony know, it wasn't his father that had been murdered, he knew nothing of the situation!"
"Because we kept him in the damned dark about it for weeks! Our way of getting back at him for doing Jen's dirty work behind our backs! We weren't mad at him because he didn't tell us, we were pissed because he did it right under our noses for months, and we were too self-absorbed to get a clue! He was almost killed because Jen decided he didn't need any backup. All that time, going it alone, and he never let on the danger he was in. But we got one over on him with the Bodnar clusterfuck, didn't we, Ziva? Hell, if we'd had half his brains, we'd have let him in at the start, and he'd have figured out we were chasing the wrong guy. You never did like giving him credit for having any brains. And I never did anything to discourage you from treating him like crap."
"So what is the point of all of this? Why are we rehashing what happened years ago? You yourself were cruel to him many times, you knew his weaknesses as well as I did, and used them to get what you needed from him! And I alone am supposed to feel guilty for taking advantage of him?"
"Ziva…he quit his job to care for Tali, he was devastated when he was told you'd been killed in that explosion. And never once did he complain, or get angry that you'd kept Tali a secret for three years. Do you not care what he missed out on in his own daughter's life? Holding her after she was born, watching her take her first steps?"
"He was not exactly father material. He has said so himself many times. His own father is a dismal excuse for parenthood."
"And yet he gave up everything he loved to be there for her, for you, while you were off playing dead, and I never once heard him say one bad thing against you."
"He is loyal. He would not turn his back on his own flesh and blood."
"Like you did, Ziva?"
"I had to do what I did, Sahar would never let any of us live so long as she was breathing!"
"There was another way. But you obviously didn't trust us enough, after all this time, after all we've been through…you didn't come to us for help. You had to do things your way, and worry about the consequences later."
"Rule 18, is it not one of yours? It is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission? I did not need to ask permission. I did what I felt I had to do at the time. It is done. Sahar is dead, and Tali is safe."
"All for Tali. Tony can go swing in the wind? Because if you go back to them, and I find out that you cut his heart out by leaving him and taking Tai? I'll…"
Ever the tell reader, especially when it came to his team, Gibbs doesn't miss the flash of guilt crossing Ziva's face. He thinks maybe he felt his soul rise up out of his body at that silent admission.
"That's what you were going to do. Jesus fucking Christ, Ziva!"
And he feels a modicum of satisfaction to see her flinch at his anger and curse
"How wrong could I have been about you? You manipulate him into giving you a child, hide that child from him for three years, use him as a nanny for three more, and then show up out of the blue and say 'Thanks, Tony, it's been real, but you're not needed anymore?' You really do hate him, don't you? You never got over him killing Rivkin. And I saw what you did to him in Israel. It was one of the reasons I left you standing on the tarmac back then. Who does that to their partner, Ziva? I tried getting him to talk about it and he refused. Didn't want you to look bad in my eyes. Well he shouldn't have taken the high road yet again for you. You've managed to do that all on your own.
"What happened to you, Ziver? You got more love and respect on my team than you could have gotten in three lifetimes of Mossad!"
"My father's death…it did something to me.."
" Bullshit, Ziva! This started before he was killed. And you hadn't been close to him since you were old enough to understand exactly where you stood in his life. I get it, he was a bully who expected way too much from his kids…was it Ari? Did him turning on you start the slide? Or your father ordering you to kill him to get into my good graces?"
He smiles at the undisguised, open-mouthed shock on her face.
"You really think I wouldn't find out about that? Di-rector Vance threw that at me one day to bring me down a few pegs. And by God, it did. Oh, he was proud of himself. That look of getting the knockout on an agent he thought he couldn't touch…but you were already mine, and I let it go, eventually. Didn't ever forget it, just…made myself learn to live with it…but you never learned to live with killing Ari, did you? It ate away at you, it kept the rage and hurt right on the surface."
"I swore I would never be my father's puppet after that day. And what happens? He orders Michael to woo me, so I would fall in… fall for him, as if my feelings were nothing. As if I were nothing. And yes, I did wrong things for him, things I would have never done if he hadn't been in my life again. I loved him, Gibbs. For the first time since I was a child, I had an ally, someone who understood the darkness in me, and how I'd come to be the person I was. Tony took that all from me with his meddling -"
"He was coming to warn you, Ziva!" Gibbs roared, furious that she still couldn't accept the reality of that night so many years ago. "He saw the trainwreck coming, he was looking for a way to help you!"
"He was looking for a fight with Michael, and he found one! It should have been…it should have…"
" Say it, Ziva! It should have been Tony dead on that floor! And you couldn't shoot him without me coming after you, so you kill him from the inside out. No matter what he did for you, you found a way to turn it against him. To turn us against him. And I let you. I stood around and did nothing, while you killed him one day at a time. One piece at a time. Was any of this real, Ziva? Was Sahar really after you and Tali, or was it just an elaborate scheme of yours to destroy Tony?"
"You think I would leave my own daughter for years just to hurt him?"
"You shot your own brother through the head, Ziva. To ingratiate yourself onto my team. You lure Tony into your bed to have a child he feels obligated to care for after finding out you're dead. What am I supposed to think? Goddammit, you use people like pawns on a chess board! You're no better than your father! How deep does your hatred go, Ziva? Do you even love Tali? Are you even capable of loving her?"
"How dare you accuse me of not loving my own child! She is everything to me, everything! You could not possibly know the pain of being separated from your child for so long!"
He blinks, completely flabbergasted by her words. His voice is dark and low when his eyes bore into hers.
"Would you like a few minutes to think about what you just said, Ziva?"
"I - of course you would know, I - Gibbs, I believe we have said what we needed to say, any further discussion will only lead to more hurt feelings, and I wanted this to be a happy time, a time to wish each other well before I left, and to thank you for helping me. We are cut from the same cloth, Gibbs. Our pasts inexorably shape our future, with little hope of breaking the patterns that we've come to live by."
"You're wrong on both counts, Ziva. We may have both lived by the gun but I've tried to put that part of me behind me. Yeah, I have to carry one for my job, and use it sometimes, but it's not who I am anymore. It brought me more grief than it was worth. And just because we have that in common - doesn't absolve either one of us from the crap we've done. We've both stepped over the line one too many times - a fact that makes both of us resent DiNozzo. He's everything we're not when it comes to knowing how far to bend that line between justice and vigilantism.
"We can't go back and fix our pasts. But we can work on not repeating them. I get the feeling that you can't get unstuck, and that you don't want to. It's served you too well for too long. Becoming an agent on my team didn't change anything. It just taught you that you could serve two masters and get away with it."
"We do not 'mellow out' as we get older, Gibbs. The longer I have immersed myself in death, the more I have become a part of it. I cannot separate the two at times. Thus the pills that I take to help me fight that battle."
"And I'm sorry that it's come to that, Ziver. We don't all get the choice to walk away from it. I'm still not there yet, so I understand the battle. But I'm not so far gone that I can't see the good in my life, and what I've lost when I let my past take over my judgment in the present. I made bad choices, hurt people I loved. Tony was one of them. Out of everyone I drove away, he's the one I miss the most."
"I was not aware there was any rift between the two of you. He left to care for Tali, no one has said anything different."
"They're protecting me, and I don't deserve the protection. I came back from an op where I almost died, and I let it put me in a really bad headspace. I blamed Tony for a lot of shit that he had nothing to do with, it was all on me. He was on that op with me, saved my damned life, again, getting me medical attention before I bled out. I didn't do right by him after he dragged Maddy and me out of the Potomac…and I did even worse by him after that op. Yeah, he left to take care of Tali, but he was on his way out the door before Orli ever showed up with her. I made it impossible for him to stay. I took everything I knew about his gawdawful years with Senior, every weakness I could find, and beat him with them until he could barely look at me. I ignored him, isolated him, belittled him, put him on crap assignments…Tali was just a good excuse for him to get out of Dodge before he committed justifiable homicide."
"He is a difficult man to work with, no one would argue that."
"Do you hear yourself, Ziver? The times we went off script, the things we let friends get away with, the stuff we did to suspects, to him…we were way out of line. I can't change that, or ever begin to make it up to him. But if I ever actually meant anything to you as a friend, as a surrogate father…do me at least the favor of not ripping Tali out of his life. He didn't have to take care of her. He could have told Orli that being kept in the dark for three years canceled out any obligations he would have concerning a daughter he knew nothing about. Hell, he wasn't even sure she was his."
"Why would he say such a thing, of course she is his!"
"Well, it seems there was this little matter of Adam Eshel. How would he know for sure? He wasn't dumb, Ziva, he was far from it, you and I both know that. He had every right to suspect. But he didn't walk away. A little girl needed an abba, and he needed someone who didn't act like they loathed the sight of him."
"Adam and I…we…what we were is not important now. But I can assure both of you that Tali is his child."
"Again, trust but verify. He had no reason to trust any of us at that point, or even now, for that matter. He had Abby run a DNA test. And I can't say I blamed him."
She sighs loudly, as if their conversation is exhausting, an inconvenience.
"I do not regret what I did. Tony ruthlessly killed the only man I ever really loved. We had plans, of marriage, of children…Tony stole that from me. It is only right that I exact some measure of tzedaka from him!"
"Justice? You use a child to get revenge on him? What the - "
He spins around, away from her, too shocked and angry to spit out what he's thinking. He can't look at her right now. Of all the asinine reasons to have a child…
"If it means anything, Gibbs, I am sorry for the pain that I caused you with my actions. I'm hoping that we can still be a family somehow."
He turns and stares at her, stares past her, his mind and gut both churning furies.
"I'm pretty damned sure that ship sailed when you left the agency, Ziva. When you made that choice to cut us out of your life. And for what it's worth, we managed to cut you out of ours, for the most part. You don't get a do-over on this one, Ziva. I'm done. I gave you what I withheld from Tony, what he quietly begged me for, what he deserved, and I withheld it from him because I just loved playing the bastard so well. He took every piece of crap I dished out to him while I sucked every last bit of joy out of him, because I couldn't handle the fact that he was gonna take my job away from me. A job I hired him for, trained him for - only for when it came time that I should've let him take the reins, I acted like a stubborn, unprofessional ass. Told myself he wasn't ready, when I knew how big a lie that was. I wasn't ready, in spite of my body and my gut telling me otherwise. And I punished him for that, on a daily basis.
"So maybe we're cut from the same burlap, Ziva. Neither one of us deserve friends, or family, for the way we treat people who have only ever tried to help us. If I can do only one thing to make it up to him, I'll beg you not to keep hurting him. I'm calling in my markers from the shit fests that were Rivkin and Bodnar. You know I've got eyes all over the world, just like you do. I'll know what you do from here on in, and it'd better not be putting Tony through any more pain. He's had enough, from all of us."
"Are you threatening me, Gibbs? As if you can actually do anything to me if I step out of line?"
He advances on her in a heartbeat, his eyes narrowing to near slits, and she knows him well enough to be afraid of that move.
"Don't you test me, Ziva. I've changed some in the last few years, but I won't hesitate to take you down if you cross me one more time. You've used up all of your goodwill with me telling me what you've told me today. You might have felt like confession was good for your soul, but what you did…you would've been better off leaving me out of this mess you made."
"This is not my fault, Gibbs, was I to let Sahar come after Tali, myself, she is all that I have left!"
"You were supposed to have contacted me, I would have helped you before everything got so out of hand!"
"I could not. I could not let - I - "
Her sentence trails off when she realizes that her former boss knows exactly what she was going to say. The sadness, the deep disappointment in his eyes is more than she can bear and she closes her eyes. In all her years with the team, in watching the give and take between Tony and Gibbs, she never once saw that look directed at the Senior field agent. Impatience, quite often; annoyance at times; and very occasionally, almost paternal pride at something Tony had said it done. But never disappointment. As hardened as she had become, it still hurt. And as jaded as he had become, he couldn't be bothered to feel sorry for her.
"You put everyone through all of this just so Tony wouldn't find out about Tali. How'd that work out for ya, Ziva?"
He sighs tiredly, not waiting for an answer.
"If I were him, I'd run so far and fast with her that you'd never find a trace of us." Rubbing hands over his stubbled face, he gives her an uncompromising look. "We're done here. Whatever debt you think I owed you for shooting Ari is paid in full for this. Go find Tony and at least pretend to be grateful to him for giving up a job he loved to care for your daughter. He might have gotten to where he couldn't work for me, but there were other team openings that he was more than qualified for. I should've made him take Rota when Jenny offered it to him. Should've done a lot of things I didn't do. Shouldn't have done even more things, but I did, and I can't take them back. Everything that was our team is broken beyond repair anymore. Go. And don't pick my locks if you think of sneaking in here without me knowing it. You'll be in for some surprises."
Her shoulders slump, not at the fear of whatever he can come up with to deter her breaking into his house, but with the finality of the threat itself. She's no longer welcome without invitation. And she's pretty sure that invitation will be a long time coming, if ever. She had counted on him taking her side once more, not Tony's. She'd done everything she could think of in her time on the team to alienate the incompetent man from his team, from Gibbs especially, and still it had not been enough. Her plans for taking Tali and hiding again from the child's father would have to be reconsidered. Knowing Gibbs as she does, he would hunt her down wherever she was and drag her back to where at least Tony had shared custody of their daughter.
"Wish things had turned out differently, Ziva. Always thought we would keep family ties even if we weren't still working together. It's what I get for not following my own rule of never getting personally attached to coworkers. I did fine 'til DiNozzo came along."
"Yes. So did I, Gibbs. So did I."
He watches her head up the stairs, and another part of him shrivels up inside of him. She had been a daughter to him. He had allowed her to fill some of that empty space in his heart that Kelly had left. She and Abby, his girls, and Tony, Tim, his boys. No one left but McGee now, and as close as the younger man was to him, he didn't fill that empty space in his heart that Tony had left. That he had created by his own twisted psyche that couldn't admit that his body and brain had had enough trauma and that maybe it was time to let go, let the boy from Baltimore take the lead. The boy whom he'd dragged to D.C., all rough edges and cocky cleverness and had in just a few years of tutelage, become a fine special agent and second in command, while still holding on to some of that youthful exuberance.
After three disastrous marriages, and several failed relationships, Gibbs swore he was done wrecking other people's lives in his own misguided pursuit of some sort of normal life. It hadn't worked. He'd managed to drive off one of his most stalwart friends, a friend who had rescued him for more dumbass decisions than he could count, literally risking his life more than once.
Worse yet, he had hurt Tony deeply, and while being able to say he was suffering the aftereffects of another near-death experience, it was absolutely no excuse for him to take out his frustrations on a man who had only ever been a loyal, patient subordinate, taking the older man's bad moods and tantrums in stride. Gibbs had turned a blind eye to Ziva's bi-polar treatment of Tony, expecting that his SFA would eventually put her in her place, yet hoping he wouldn't at the same time. He'd felt sorry for her, for the way she'd been raised, for the life she'd been forced to live by her power-mongering father.
He saw a wounded little girl, not a cold-hearted assassin. He'd been wrong. She was wounded, yes. But those wounds had made her hard and brittle and given no quarter to empathy for others just as damaged. And he knew beyond any doubt that Tony was damaged, broken beyond repair in some aspects of his psyche. He understood why after meeting DiNozzo Senior. What the hell kind of father and human being left his twelve year old in a hotel room halfway around the world to chase an expensive skirt?
And yet he'd sacrificed Tony's feelings and emotional well-being to keep a surrogate daughter in his team, where he could protect her from all the monsters lurking out in the world. But who protected Tony from the monster that was Ziva David? If he ever gets lucky enough to talk to DiNozzo again, he is damned well going to ask him how she'd coaxed him into her bed. What had she promised him? And why had he thought it was a good idea, regardless of Rule 12?
He turns and puts away his tools. He's not in any mood for contemplating the mysteries of life through wood grain. He's not actually in the mood for anything other than getting falling-down drunk and shooting out street lamps, but he's not a kid anymore, and tomorrow is a work day.
'Hell, Jethro, you're the one that wanted to keep your job so damned bad, man up for Christ's sake! Yanked it back from Tony TWICE, when you had no fucking business even stepping into the building either time. Too bad if your knee still hurts and your back feels like it's been twisted by a sumo wrestler. Ducky tried warning you to let Tony take on more responsibility so you could ease out of team lead slowly, and you ignored him. Deal with it. You got what you asked for.
He headed up to the kitchen for some coffee, with maybe a shot of something stronger in it just for spite. He hadn't felt this cold and empty in over a decade, and he had no one to blame but himself. The job and his weaknesses had finally consumed him, and he had been a willing victim, never taking the time to look behind him and recognize the demons that were chasing him. All these years, Gibbs had ragged on Tony, in his head anyway, about joining that men's support group, and now he was considering asking the agency shrink for self-help pointers. The kid was always five steps ahead of him whether he wanted to admit it or not. It was time to catch up.