Last chapter, finally! I promise the next story won't be published until it's written, so no awful delays between chapters. A million thanks for all the reviewers, PMers, and silent readers. I enjoyed reading your ideas and thoughts, even though I didn't have time to reply individually. I hope this chapter is a satisfying end to this story. Thanks to Binky for her feedback, and to Scouse for her beta reading (which left me embarrassed at the amount of punctuation that I'd mangled!). Made some changes after she tidied things up, so any booboos are mine and only mine. In celebration of the end of this story, I'm passing out thick slices of a delicious virtual six-layer French Silk chocolate cake. I get to lick the empty plate though. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: just borrowing them for a little fun.

Chapter 28

McGee backed up, eyes wide, frightened as Eli David's eyes tore into him, "I do not believe you. Ziva would never have behaved that way. You and your N-C-I-S agents have caused this. Her life is ruined now, no future, no purpose! You have destroyed a Mossad officer – one of the best. You have destroyed my daughter. I will make you pay for your actions, Agent McGee." McGee's back hit the hallway wall, and he froze, unable to move.

Just as the Mossad director had moved close enough to reach out with his hand to grab McGee's throat, Tony slipped between the two, nudging McGee aside. Eyes narrowed and hard, he returned David's angry glare, "Are we going to have to go through this again?"

As David's anger rose even higher at the sight of DiNozzo, he raised both hands, reaching out for Tony's neck. Tony's expression became icy cold and hard as he stepped forward until he was inches from the Mossad director's face, "Don't even think about it," he spat out in warning, matching the other man's glare in return.

Eli David, breathing hard, hands reflexively clenching and releasing, refused to back down. "You are why my daughter is in that room, crippled, broken. I will kill you for that."

Tony raised an eyebrow and bit back, "Your daughter has no one but herself to blame for her condition." He refused to budge, a small satisfied smile rising when Eli didn't attack him. "And you know it, don't you."

Shaking his head, Tony snorted softly before he relaxed and said in a quiet tone only he and David could hear, "Take her home, Director. She's your daughter and she needs you. Don't make her live like this, alone and without your love."

Seconds went by slowly, thirty seconds, a minute, before Eli relaxed minutely, "She should never have come to the US. This is a toxic country; it made her careless, unguarded. She forgot her training, her self-reliance. You tried to mold her, force her into working as a member of your team, damaging her."

Tony snorted, "Really? I wasn't aware that Kidon teams were just a group of individuals working on their own. I thought they were a highly trained integrated and cohesive unit. I feel better now knowing that she didn't know how to function in a team environment."

Eli rocked back on his heels, knowing he'd been caught out again by this damn agent. With the tiniest snort of his own, he relaxed and leaned back. Damn. He'd once again misjudged this man. Before he could reply, the elevator at the end of the hospital corridor opened and the air filled with sounds of an angry woman.

Tony could see the look of dread on McGee's face out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to look at the small group descending upon them. Leading the pack was Deputy Secretary of State Elliot, steam virtually coming out her ears from anger, eyes fastened on both the NCIS agents. Bill Garcia, the liaison from the AG's office brought up the rear, rolling his eyes and shrugging as he caught their eyes.

Drawing up in front of Eli David, she said in a reassuring voice, "Director David, I am so sorry for what has happened. The Secretary extends his deepest sympathies for your daughter's problems, and has asked me to reassure you that he will do his utmost to help you in whatever way he can. This is a tragic event, and we wish to assure you that we will do our utmost to bring those responsible to justice."

With that, she pivoted to confront DiNozzo and McGee, who had edged slight behind Tony by now. "Both of you will consider yourself under investigation for what has happened to Ziva David. You will make yourself available for a special investigative committee appointed by the Secretary to answer for your crimes. The Secretary is taking this very seriously. The damage your actions have caused is…."

Tony glanced at Bill who shook his head minutely and shrugged again, before breaking into her tirade, "Madam Deputy Secretary, I suggest you take this up with either the AG's office, the FBI, or Director Vance. This is not the place or the time to discuss this."

Moving to stand in front of him, she continued, "You will be silent and do as you're told. You're in enough hot water to send you to prison for…."

Tony turned slightly and met McGee's eyes, "Do you want to do the honors again, Tim?"

McGee looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes widened. Straightening himself, he faced the Deputy Secretary who had stopped in mid-sentence, expression surprised and affronted. "Madam Deputy Secretary, stick it!"

At that, she flushed and Tony wondered if she really would start spouting steam out her ears. He kept a grin off his face as she exploded again, "That's it. Both of you will be unemployed by the end of the day. I don't know what you think you're doing, but this insolence will not be tolerated."

Tony held up a hand to stop her, and in a lecturing tone said, "Madam, our boss is Special Agent Gibbs. His boss is the Director of NCIS. The Director's boss is the Secretary of the Navy. The Secretary's boss is the Secretary of Defense. And the Secretary of Defense's boss is the President of the United States. Now…I don't really see the Secretary of State or anyone working for him in that chain of command, do you? I'm afraid you can threaten and express your opinions and desires to whomever you wish, but I'm afraid you're powerless when it comes to issuing orders or affecting our employment status."

After a long moment of open-mouth staring, she said coldly, "The Secretary is not powerless, Agent…"

Tony interrupted her again, "And neither is the Secretary of Defense."

Looking around, and almost grinning at Bill's closed-eyed expression as Bill fought to suppress a laugh, he continued, "This is a hospital, and we are disturbing the patients here. If we need to continue this discussion, perhaps we should take this to a lounge and stop interfering with the medical staff who need to do their jobs."

Eli David broke in before Elliott could say anything further, "I wish to visit with my daughter, and I have many details to take care of before we can take her home." With a grudging nod to DiNozzo, he stepped back into Ziva's hospital room and closed the door. His security guards stationed themselves on either side of the door, ensuring there were no interruptions to his visit.

She pivoted to face DiNozzo and McGee, but they were already on their way towards the elevator, collecting Bill on their way. She called after them, but was ignored. Fuming, she stood among her aides while trying to decide what to do about this entire situation. Finally she took herself off to her office to make some calls.

-000-

Tony stood in front of the hospital, lost in thought. He'd found McGee on his way to visit Ziva earlier and they'd gone to her room together. Ziva has been sleeping when they entered the room, and both men had stood looking at her in silence.

The woman in the bed seemed diminished and small, her long hair brushed out and framing her face. Her head, face, and limbs all twitched and jerked randomly, and even asleep she looked like she was in pain. The doctor's had said she was suffering from severe headaches, trouble balancing, and memory loss. Meningitis, bacterial and resistant to the first of several antibiotics the doctors had tried, had ravaged her. It'd been two weeks since she'd been admitted, and the damage done to her system during that time was profound and suspected of being permanent. The bacteria had done irreparable damage to her left knee and both wrists, and possible amputation was still a possibility if the infection continued to eat away at it. Enough of "Ziva" was left to understand what had happened and to realize that her life as she knew it was over. Depression had been added to her list of medical issues.

A small infected cut had been found on the sole of her foot, and the doctors thought this had probably been the gateway for the bacteria to enter her system. A key in her pocket had led to a seedy hotel room where she'd been holed up, and sampling of the shower surface had revealed the deadly bacteria growing there. DC health officials had been chasing previous occupants down to determine if they too had been exposed to the disease, but so far no one other than Ziva had been infected.

All of her old team at NCIS along with Ducky, Abby, and Palmer had been to visit her, but she had been either asleep, drugged up, or had refused to see them. Finally her father and doctors had put an end to the visits since they had upset her.

It'd taken several visits to Ducky for advice, and even more head-slaps from Gibbs to enforce Ducky's lessons, to drive home that what had happened to Ziva had been no one's fault – just a result of wrong place, wrong time and cosmic injustice. Ultimately, as Vance had pointed out, if Ziva hadn't escaped from the FBI, she would have never ended up in that hotel room, so she really had no one to blame but herself. She'd be living out the consequences for the rest of her life.

It took another week before the doctors decided Ziva was strong enough to fly to Israel via an air ambulance. Once there, she was admitted to a hospital to continue battling the effects of the infection. Eventually, she was moved to a rehab center close to the family home where she continued to work on recovering from the terrible disease.

-000-

McGee had been invited by Gibbs and Vance to terminate his probation early and return to Gibbs' team, but he had declined until the human trafficking case he'd been working on with the DC police had been solved, and even then he found himself asking to continue as a liaison with Metro on an on-going basis as needed. Vance said he'd consider it on a case-by-case basis. While Vance was surprised at McGee's desire to maintain contacts he'd made on the force, he had at least listened to McGee's explanations of the skills and talents of the local LEOs as they complemented NCIS's skills. It took McGee standing up to Gibbs more than once in defense of Metro before Gibbs grudgingly begin to revise his opinions of them.

Detective Mary Farmer returned to Metro, but within a year, she'd applied for a job at NCIS as a field agent. Tony didn't think it'd take long for her to be assigned to a team, especially when word had gotten around that she'd worked with Gibbs' team and had survived.

Jane Anderson, aka: Delta, had been a good fit for the team, and by the end of her probation, Gibbs and Tony had to start fighting off poachers intent on getting her to defect to other NCIS teams. She spoke "Gibbs" almost as good as Tony, and had started to help defuse Gibbs when he was on a tear or in a bad mood. While it was accepted that McGee would eventually move on to lead his own team at some point in the future, Tony was starting to view Delta as a possible SFA on the team when Gibbs retired and he took over as team leader, and had started grooming her for the position.

With Gibbs reluctant blessing, Vance started borrowing Tony to help develop additions to the formal training courses required at FLETC for all agents, focusing on developing better tradecraft and out of the box thinking. Gibbs found more than once that Vance had temporarily assigned a promising probie to DiNozzo for "advanced training" for a few weeks before moving the agent on to their permanent assignment.

Fornell was the one who finally lost his temper with the ongoing efforts of Deputy Secretary Elliott to get everyone fired who'd been involved in the "Ziva" affair as she dubbed it. He and Gibbs put their heads together, and with their bosses carefully looking the other way, quietly pulled some strings, called in some markers, and put a few plans in motion. It took some time, but eventually the Deputy Secretary found herself perplexedly unemployed. Last anyone had heard, she was applying for management positions with the US Forest Service Facilities Maintenance Department.

And life went on…..

The End

Epilogue: Abby had unhappily toed the line at work and found the boundaries around her slowly loosen as she demonstrated she could restrain her more flamboyant side. She still wasn't thrilled with her "new" boss, but decided to let him live for the moment….until one night when….

Abby pulled Tim along by the sleeve, with Palmer bringing up the rear, towards the newly opened Black Velvet Steamer Club where they could already hear the music thumping from inside. Entering, they eventually found an empty booth and settled down with drinks to look over the interior's steampunked theme décor. After a careful look-see, Abby nodded happily, "Yup, this place nailed it."

Bouncing up from her seat, she pulled on McGee's arm, "C'mon, let's dance. I need to get all these stuffy Labby-Land vibes off of me."

After several dances, hot and sweaty, grinning, they made their way through the dance floor crowd heading for the bar for fresh drinks, when Abby stopped dead in her tracks in shock. McGee bumped into her, then looked over her shoulder to see why she'd halted.

Abby stared wide-eyed, mouth open in a perfect "O", at the man in front of her who stared back at her in surprise. He was dressed to the nines in steampunk gear, slightly flushed with beads of sweat from the last dance on his brow.

During a long, awkward pause, Abby looking the man up and down, not able to reconcile what she was seeing from what she knew of the man.

The man meanwhile very slowly broke into a smile, then a laugh. Extending a hand and with a graceful bow to her, he asked over the music, "Dance?"

Tilting her head to one side, Abby studied him for another long moment before a matching smile slowly appeared. With a glance over her shoulder at McGee, she waved him on toward the bar, "See you in a bit, Timmy!" Grasping the man's hand, she disappeared back into the crowd on the dance floor.

McGee shook his head, not sure if he quite believed what he was seeing either, but shrugged and stopped at the bar for two beers before making his way back to the booth.

As he sat down and took a swallow, Palmer looked at him in surprise, "I….that man, was he…?"

Nodding, McGee shrugged again. "Yup. Ed Davies – Manager of the Forensics Department. Looks like Abby's work life might have just gotten a bit more interesting," he finished with a grin. "Whoever would have thought..."

The End For Real This Time