Chapter Text
The former Major Case Squad of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service stood almost awkwardly in the bullpen, for the first time in long years unsure of both one another and Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ infamous ability to set things right. To say that life had been set on its head was an understatement at best, but it seemed that a sufficient description for the events of the past two days really didn’t exist. Since leaving the Director’s office hours ago, not a single one of them had found the heart—or perhaps the gumption—to make their way down to the forensics lab and explain to Abby Sciuto that their team was no longer a team, that as if having former Director Jenny Shepard lying in a drawer in the morgue was not enough, her replacement had resolutely dismembered her primary team. Gazes skipped off one another as each of them stood by their desks, waiting for…something, though it was debatable if any of them knew what, exactly.
Timothy McGee, computer genius relocated to the Cyber Crimes Unit, had no reason whatsoever to still be there. Director Vance (as though wanting accelerated proof that his orders were being carried out) had personally sent people to help haul his things to his new desk, and the last box had been moved fifteen minutes ago. But somehow, despite hating the look of his now-empty desk and feeling the battery of the laptop under his arm imprinting itself into his skin, McGee couldn’t bring himself to leave. Perhaps he was waiting for the apocalypse; for a miracle; for a time warp; for an overzealous gameshow host to appear and tell him it was all a joke; but whatever it was, he wasn’t the only one not ready to say goodbye. The entirety of his NCIS experience outside of Norfolk could be tied to that bullpen, to that desk, from his first time TAD under Gibbs to the announcement that he’d been promoted to full-time field agent, to his first kill on the job, to the unforgettable horror of watching his sister be accused of murder, to serving as senior field agent in Gibbs’ absence after nineteen men and the entire Cape Fear had been lost to bureaucratic hypocrisy. Anyone else might have seen fit to call it sentimental stupidity, told him that it was just a desk, but that now seemed irrelevant.
Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David, former senior field agent and Mossad liaison respectively, held their NCIS careers to date in boxes on the other side of the bullpen. The former was shipping out the following morning on the USS Reagan as Agent Afloat; the latter was returning to Tel Aviv to resume her position with the Mossad—or so it was assumed. Tony still looked…haunted, the shadows in his eyes not quite banished, his guilt over Shepard’s death not yet absolved. He held no illusions over his new position: Agent Afloat was a technical promotion; in reality, it was Vance’s way of punishing him for not following through with Shepard’s protection detail, for letting her set herself up to die. It didn’t matter that he had been following orders—hell, the Nazis had said that—and he didn’t need Vance to tell him that was the one set of orders he should have never obeyed. His seven years with the agency under Gibbs, lasting a good five years longer than any of his previous positions, had been weighed only from a political standpoint: Vance had no true cause to demote him and was well aware of this fact, so he settled for a move that would satisfy on paperwork and still serve as the censure he felt was warranted. Tony bore it with grim resignation. He wasn’t arrogant enough to consider himself a martyr; as far as he was concerned, he deserved worse. It didn’t matter that Shepard’s personal vendetta had unwittingly torn his heart out; he knew her now as more than Director, as more than Gibbs’ former partner, for however many ways that could be taken, and he told himself he had gotten a friend killed.
Ziva, for all her badgering to double-check Shepard’s location and safety, blamed neither Tony nor herself. That didn’t in any way lessen her desire to murder Vance, but two years in America had tempered her assassin’s instincts. Though she was still inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, she had gotten better at tempering her trigger finger when necessary, adapting to a system that didn’t stop just because a suspect was dead. Her time under Gibbs, a political play Shepard had chosen in the aftermath of Agent Caitlin Todd’s death, had slowly been accepted, a process slightly expedited once she’d learned to stop drilling her teammates like they were fellow Mossad. Now, standing in the bullpen staring at the people she had been shocked to realise she had come to care about, to like, she found herself wishing she could find a way to stay. Of course, as circumstances would have it, she and Tony had lost their hold on the Director (or perhaps it was the other way around), and now the whole team had been—at least metaphorically—hanged. But where her partner—former partner, she amended silently—felt guilt, she was left with resignation and anger. Resignation because what was done was done, and she had been taught the hard way that dwelling on the past made it no different; anger because of needless death and the vindictive retribution that served only as a power play. That play was trying to sever her ties to America, because she knew better than most that the chances of her returning to the States were slim at best. If she returned at all, it would be for the Mossad, and there was little in their structure that made room for socialisation. She found herself wanting words for almost the first time in her life. Actions had usually suited her purposes, whether to gain information or eliminate an enemy; in this case, knowing that though the others could see one another, her chances of the same held far poorer odds, she sought something to say that would make a suitable goodbye. Unfortunately, there was no such thing, and it did not matter at all whether she tried in Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, Turkish, French, or German.
“What are you all standing there for?”
Gibbs’ gruff comment broke the silence, surprising them all. Eloquent he was not, but they were all on some level expecting something…different, something that acknowledged tomorrow would not see them together. Gibbs surprised himself on some level, but he was abysmal at communication (there were reasons he’d been divorced three times). Normally, Tony would have bounced back first with some snappy comment or obscure movie reference meant to restore equilibrium. Today, his face remained painfully impassive, to the point of blankness, and though Gibbs never appeared to look up, he noticed. If he noticed nothing else, he noticed the silence.
McGee, uncharacteristically, spoke first. “Uh, just…thank you, boss.”
“Not your boss anymore, McGee,” came the almost mild reminder.
“Right.”
The simple statement seemed to thrust the younger man back into speechlessness, but before he could find his tongue again, the former Marine stood, pushing back his chair and coming around his desk. He stopped and looked to his youngest charge, meeting his gaze but refusing to say “you’re welcome” because it sounded too much like “goodbye”. The look in his eyes all but screamed what he could not bring himself to say aloud, begging him to make things right. And somehow, Gibbs, down to the second “b” for “bastard”, didn’t have the heart to tell McGee that this time he wasn’t sure he could fix everything. Instead, he just gave a minute nod, and the relief, the hope he saw was almost painful.
Ziva stepped forward then, catching his attention before he could speak aloud, before he could headslap McGee and ask why he was still standing there, before he could try to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with this day and his agents didn’t now belong to someone else.
“We are even this time, Jethro,” she said softly, stopping just in front of him.
“We are, Ziva,” he answered with another nod, accepting her statement for what it was: thanks, assertion, questions, farewell.
If enough strings could be pulled, he’d see her stay in the States, but he would not promise what he could not guarantee. Her measured, dark gaze shifted until it held his, searching for answers he did not have. She dipped her head in an abbreviated bow, suddenly, surprising him.
“I shall see you again.” Because you will fix this. It went unsaid, and, as with McGee, he simply nodded, because right now he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, either.
“Gibbs?”
The bullpen froze collectively, like a synchronised swim team that had been practicing for years too long to count, as Abby bounced in and stopped, a bemused expression flitting across her features. Even in mourning, her irrepressible energy pushed through to the surface, and she had been the one spot of normalcy in the whole damn building. They had wanted to keep it that way, but if the look on her face was any indication, there wasn’t much success to be had in that department.
Gibbs turned slowly to face her; in any other man, the move could have been called hesitant, but the word would never fit him no matter what he did, so “slow” it remained. The last time, when he’d left, he’d said what he couldn’t say aloud with his hands on her shoulders and a kiss on her cheek; this time, he wasn’t the one leaving and he had nothing he could say. There was no gesture that would suddenly make this okay, that would make her understand, and suddenly he found himself glad that Ziva and Tony were blocking the most obvious path to Vance’s office. If they weren’t, Abby might well go and kill him herself once she found out.
“Abbs,” he started softly, both unable and unwilling to pretend nothing was wrong, at least to her, but she cut him off.
“Tony? Ziva? What are you guys doing with those boxes?” She glanced at McGee, her voice rising in both pitch and volume until it bordered on hysteria. “McGee? Why’s your desk so empty?” Panicked grey-green eyes turned back to Gibbs, begging for some sane explanation. “Gibbs? What’s going on?”
He paused, trying to find a tactful way to explain, but Tony saved him, breaking in quietly from where he was.
“Abby.”
Her attention caught, she swung around to focus on him, eyes demanding that the truth not be possible. He couldn’t give her that, but he already had her attention, and it was too late to shut up now.
“Vance split the team, Abbs. Ziva and I are leaving DC; everyone else stays at headquarters.”
“What? No!” Backing up a step as though putting distance between herself and Tony would somehow lessen the impact of the truth, she walked into McGee instead. She was preoccupied enough that she didn’t notice his wince when she stood squarely on his toes. “How could he? Where are you going?”
“USS Reagan. Tomorrow morning.”
“Tel Aviv. The same.”
Somewhat desperately, Abby latched on to the first thing that presented perspective: Ziva’s flight plan. “How’d you get a flight so quickly?”
“Ah, the Director had to be in touch with the Mossad to explain the terminator of my position,” she answered, looking almost embarrassed at the sudden spotlight. “They are sending an agency plane.”
And objective went out the window, because everything led back to the damned white polar bear currently inhabiting NCIS.
“Terminated, Ziva,” Tony corrected her, and this time the tiredness might not have been affected. “The Terminator’s a movie—Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1984. He’s also California’s governor.”
Trying not to ponder how much she’d miss that, Ziva paused, then nodded. “I stand corrected.”
The simultaneous normalcy and complete absurdity of the exchange almost helped ease the tension. Almost. Then Abby turned to McGee, and he answered, “CCU, under Agent Pantelo,” and the reminder slammed them all back into the surrealism of their current reality. Again.
“This is because the Dir—Director Shepard died.”
It was a statement, not a question, and Tony for a moment looked as though he’d been slapped; a fleeting expression of what might have been pain crossed Gibbs’ face; Ziva glanced away; McGee flinched. All of it was aborted quickly, but the damage was done.
“Yeah, Abbs,” Tony answered finally.
She sat down hard on the edge of McGee’s desk, staring at the floor. “This is all wrong,” she muttered, half to herself. “She shouldn’t be dead.”
This time it was Tony who flinched, but no one saw it except Gibbs. They were all staring at Abby like she was the timer on a ticking bomb; only this time, no one really knew how to disarm it. Then her gaze locked on Gibbs like a compass needle on North.
“You’ll fix this, right? You have to fix this, bossman!”
For a long moment, he just looked at her, for once thrown by being put on the spot. Lying to Abby was out of the question—he never had and never would—but he wasn’t sure how to tell her he didn’t know if he could fix this, no matter how many strings he pulled or the number of people he yelled at.
“How’s he supposed to do that, Abbs?” Tony saved him again. Sort of. He didn’t answer the question, but he did pull Abby’s focus away.
“He will!” she insisted. “He’s Gibbs!”
“And if he can’t? If it’s not tomorrow?” The questions were gentle, not meant solely for Abby, an attempt to pull some of the weight from Gibbs’ shoulders and channel expectation into anger and redirect it at himself. It worked, perhaps too well.
“Just because you couldn’t even keep track of the Director doesn’t mean—”
The bullpen went silent at the accusation that didn’t even make sense. The two of them had been friends for years, once they’d gotten past the initial tension when Tony had joined Gibbs’ team. When he’d comprised the whole of that team, a mutual appreciation of one another’s quirks had arisen and eventually resulted in a surprisingly sibling-like relationship. For Abby to lash out at him, especially when it wasn’t warranted, was…unheard of. Even when he’d been framed two years ago, her faith in him had never wavered.
But it seemed they were both as surprised as everyone else: Abby had cut herself off midsentence and was doing a fairly good goldfish impersonation; Tony had carefully schooled his features back into blankness. She made a move like she was about to step forward, but Tony…recoiled from her: though he never actually moved, the increase in distance between them was apparent. Under ordinary circumstances, she probably would have kept going anyway, pushing until he understood she hadn’t meant what she’d said and she had erased the hurt her temper had caused. But nothing about the day had been ordinary, and now was apparently no time to start, as Vance added to his record of impeccable timing during his tenure as NCIS Director by appearing on the bridge.
That’s Jenny’s spot. The thought ran through both Tony and Gibbs’ minds like a squad car with flashing lights and screaming siren, but neither of them bothered to say it.
“Miss Sciuto.” The man’s voice was too damn loud. “Do you have the test results I asked for?”
When Abby opened her mouth, it was readily apparent to anyone with two firing neurons that she wasn’t planning to bring him up to speed on whatever tests she had running. Before Gibbs could even start to consider a preemptive strike—or the catastrophe that could result from her voicing her thoughts—McGee stepped in front of her.
“She just came up to ask for my help. We were on our way back down.”
McGee tipped his chin up, silently daring their new director to challenge his assertion with a look that rivalled the one he had worn when he’d told the US Deputy Secretary of State to stick it. By this point, Vance had made his way to the bullpen, and for all the descriptions that could have been attributed to him (ass, bastard, ersatz, soi-disant), “stupid” was not really one of them: the man nodded once and let McGee guide Abby back to her lab. CCU’s newest agent tightened his grip on her arm and muttered something for her ears only before she could utter any protest, and then they were both gone. One crisis at least temporarily averted.
With two gone, Vance turned his attention on the remaining two, since they were in his direct line of fire and there was only so much he could do about Gibbs. “What are you two still doing here?”
“Well, sir,” Tony drawled with a perfectly straight face, “our new assignments don’t begin until 0800h tomorrow. We’re well within our rights to remain until then, and it may well take us that long.”
There was no actual disrespect in his tone, and though the refusal of titular address did not go unnoticed, Vance could only glare: he couldn’t technically kick them out until they were in violation of direct orders, and what was he going to do? Give DiNozzo a slap on the wrist for calling him “sir”? Unlike Shepard with her not-entirely-unreasonable hangup about “Madam Director”, he couldn’t claim impudence. So he took the only smart option open to him: he left, heading back upstairs, where he could at least proceed with rearranging his new office.
Once Vance was out of the way, Tony simply closed himself off: there might as well have been a wall erected around him. Ziva made a few attempts at conversation, but when she received only polite, minimal responses as he began to gather his things, she gave up and did the same. Gibbs made himself scarce, disappearing long enough to get another cup of coffee and timing it perfectly: when he exited the elevator, Ziva was there with her last box in her arms. Two and some years ago, he’d honestly thought he’d seen the last of her when she’d been standing in his basement over the body of her half-brother, and that idea hadn’t bothered him much. Now, toe-to-toe with her (as she regarded the second coffee cup he held in his other hand with some measure of confusion), he found himself wishing he knew how to keep her there. But those were answers to be found in another Pandora’s Box somewhere, and he couldn’t afford to unleash any more plagues until he found the cure for the current one.
“Ziva.”
As she stepped into the elevator, she murmured in response something he could neither hear clearly nor understand. “What?”
Turning, she leaned against the frame to keep the door from closing, and repeated, “ ‘In this business we have to hang on to each other—or we may hang next to each other’,” this time in English. “It is something the head of the Mossad Academy said to my cadet class.” She hesitated then—only a hairs’ breadth of a hitch in the flow of words, but one Gibbs noticed easily—and he shot her a look. “I told that to Jenny when we were in Europe. I do not think she ever truly believed that.”
And so it came true. Neither of them said it, but they both knew it.
“We have different principles at the Mossad than you do, you know,” she continued. “They do not even let us use the agency’s name—we call it ‘the office’, because we are constantly told our operational principles are, ‘by way of deception, thou shalt do war’.”
Though he was the only one within earshot, Gibbs found himself wondering how much of that she wasn’t technically allowed to say. She had always been closemouthed about the Mossad, albeit understandably so, letting the reputation of assassin precede and define her, and he wasn’t entirely sure why she was telling him this now.
“You Americans do not follow so much of deception, of lying, of crafting personas and covers for everything you do—at least not officially or universally in this profession. Because of that, you are all vulnerable. But you are also at an advantage, because you ‘hang on to each other’ by choice, not requirement. And that, Gibbs, is why I say I will see you again.”
She didn’t let the doors close, and he met her stare for stare—time had taught him that where words made themselves unavailable, staring would often suffice—finally saying drily, “We’re all liars and crackpots in this country, Officer David.”
A small smile turned up a corner of her mouth, but as he began to walk away, she called out his name again. He turned, shooting her a questioning look.
“Tony,” she began, but he waved her off as best he could with both hands full.
“Go. I’ve got it.”
Dipping her head just once, she backed up, but left her foot in the doorway. “Thank you.”
He knew full well the thanks were not limited to her concerns about Tony; he chose not to acknowledge that. And though he would have much rather have not answered, he’d had enough of leaving things hanging lately. “You’re welcome.”
In answer, she just gave him a look—one that said she knew what he meant but would not accept it, and then she let the doors slide closed. Taking a sip of coffee, he just watched them for a long moment, then turned to reenter the bullpen, where Tony was preparing to grab the last of his things and leave. He stepped up to the side of his senior field agent’s desk—because they would always be his people, damn it, no matter what political ass tried to say otherwise—and set the second cup of coffee on down.
“Boss?” Tony looked up, green eyes confused.
The words of correction that had come so easily when addressed to McGee stuck in his throat this time, so he settled for, “Transfer’s a bitch, DiNozzo. You’ll be up all night.”
The glance bounced off him and skittered away, though the cup was used as an excuse for the lack of eye contact. Gibbs refused to buy it, but he also wouldn’t embarrass his agent by commenting.
“Thanks, boss.”
A long glance later, during which the younger man tried to look everywhere but at him, he finally said quietly, “She’s going to hate you for a while.”
“Better me than you, boss,” came the immediate answer, and Gibbs didn’t quite manage to hide his surprise, because this time Tony met his gaze squarely. “I’m just her friend, Gibbs. But you—you she needs to believe is invincible right now. Better the blame fall on me than her faith in you shatter, even temporarily.”
“So you take the blame for something that’s not your fault?”
A small, bitter smile quirked his agent’s lips. “It’s a no-win situation; I picked the lesser of two evils.”
“Did you really?”
He got a raised eyebrow and an incredulous look. “Since when do you ask cryptic questions?”
When they’re necessary, Gibbs wanted to say, but he couldn’t, because he knew how that would sound. It’s not your fault, he thought. The words wouldn’t come for that, either, and he wished he’d said them earlier—like when he’d first made it to California, instead of back in Abby’s lab. Something else sparked in the younger man’s eyes: regret, maybe; sadness, certainly. Then the chance for words was gone, and he just smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Abby and I have been through worse. We’ll…we’ll figure it out eventually.” He picked up his last box and slung a backpack over his shoulder, though one would have thought he’d have done so the other way around. “You’ll see McGeek more than I will, so tell him not to forget how to shoot, will you?” Walking the long way around his desk, he neatly avoided Gibbs. “Break in your new team gently, boss. Scaring them off only works so well.”
As if on cue, the elevator dinged open to release a woman who might have been a secretary, and with one last nod, Tony was gone. Gibbs was left standing by the desk, facing a set of files on three people he didn’t at all care to get to know, since there was no way they could ever outdo their predecessors, and wondering why an almost full squad room felt so damned empty.
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