Author's Notes

Welcome to my first NCIS story, and the first story I have written that is not Teen Titans. The story deals with Ziva, who after the events of "Past, Present, and Future" is a disgraced, depressed, reclusive alcoholic hiding in Israel, her mind haunted by the events that had happened in the past year and desperately missing the one man alive that she loves – Anthony DiNozzo. However, she is given a chance for redemption when Mossad director Orli Elbaz requests her for a very unique assignment – to go undercover in a a terror network that rivals the Brotherhood of Doubt in power, and one that has set its sights on NCIS as a result of the capture and death of Parsa.

The overall structure for the story will be a lot like a standard episode of NCIS, complete with the iconic foofs (the black and white shots just after and just before a commercial break) as bookends for each chapter, a bit of foreshadowing for what lies ahead. While Ziva's undercover operation and her desire for redemption will make up the main story, the entire NCIS team (Gibbs, Tony, McGee, Bishop, Abby, Ducky, Palmer, and Vance, plus others) will appear as well in side-stories of their continuing investigations and how it begins to tie into Ziva's undercover mission, bringing Ziva closer to the family she had left behind.

Please review and tell me if you think I have the ability to write non-Teen Titans fan fiction stories or not.

Before we begin, I remind you that I do not own any of the characters appearing in NCIS, the show NCIS, nor the actual NCIS agency. It'd be kind of sweet if I had claim on any one of them, though.

Now, let's begin the story.

Foof. Ziva looks at her guest in shock as she slowly takes the papers being handed to her.

January 2014. It's been eight months since Ziva David resigned from NCIS, a measure taken by herself and fellow members of the Major Crime Response Team Anthony DiNozzo and Timothy McGee to protect their boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs from a Department of Defense investigation led by the ambitious Richard Parsons.

Within the next week of resignation, Ziva had flown back to Israel to think things over when an attempt was made on her life by the Brotherhood of Doubt, a terrorist cell led by Pakistani radical Benham Parsa. It was not hard for Ziva to dispatch the gunmen but it did wound her and she had recovered by July.

Unfortunately, the attack and its aftermath had changed Ziva. She had lost one of her few friends upon her learning that Ziva killed Ari Haswari, her lover and Ziva's half-brother. So, she went towards the house in which she grew up for isolation and to finally sort out what she really wanted.

In October, DiNozzo, who had spent months looking for her, finally found her, but in an extremely painful decision for Ziva, she decided to stay behind in Israel, feeling unable to return to Washington DC after all the events that had transpired starting with the death of her father, Mossad Director Eli David.

Fortunately for Ziva, her dispatching of Parsa's assassins made him realize that a regular hitman operation would be useless and since she was no longer on the grid - no cell phone, no credit card, no laptop, no electronics, which made tracking her down nigh impossible. And her father had left her a sizable trust fund (over 15 million Euros) courtesy of his days in Mossad, so she didn't need to get a job for a while - she could quite possibly be able to retire right then and there.

However, she was far from content with her current life, tedious and isolated. She once again had nobody, no family, no friends, not even Mossad knew where she was.

While she wanted security, it came with the cost of total privacy. As the hours ticked by in her empty home, Ziva realized that she was not hiding from Parsa, but rather from everybody she had come to care about.

It had all started back in 2005, almost nine years ago, when Ziva, under the orders of her father, murdered Ari Haswari, a rogue double agent and gained Gibbs's trust so she could join NCIS as a liaison officer. She spent around three years under Gibbs's tutelage before she was temporarily reassigned back to Mossad in order to help solve a mole problem in NCIS.

However, while on assignment with Mossad, Ziva began a long-distance romance with one of her fellow Mossad Kidon (assassin) comrades, Michael Rivkin, which piqued Tony's curiousity when Michael came stateside on assignment for Mossad, killing several members of a terrorist cell in Los Angeles that were wanted for NCIS questioning.

This wasn't the tip of the iceberg, as even though Gibbs had ordered Rivkin to stay away from Ziva, he still continued to operate in the states, trying to spy on a high-profile poker game, or a "intelligence summit" with the directors of several federal agencies and the Secretary of the Navy, resulting in the death of a federal agent.

Tony figured it out and confronted Rivkin after he killed another terrorist and took his computer, ending with Tony fatally shooting Rivkin in Ziva's apartment soon before Ziva herself arrived, resulting in massive tensions between NCIS and Mossad.

Unable to trust Tony, Ziva resigned her position as liasion officer and returned full time as Michael's replacement on a mission to terminate the terrorist leader Rivkin had been gathering information on - Saleem Ulmann. A mission that went south when Ziva ended up the only member of the team that could continue, and was captured after being embarrassingly outnumbered (around forty or fifty guards against one highly trained Mossad operative). While Ziva was good, she was overpowered and spent the next several months being interrogated and tortured in any way thought possible by Ulmann for information on NCIS.

Mossad didn't rescue her from the camp, but thanks to the dedication of NCIS, Tony and McGee infiltrated the camp and rescued Ziva from Ulmann. Following these events, Ziva resigned from Mossad only for her father to try to pin the murder of a Marine she had encountered traveling to the camp on her. Upon being cleared, Ziva cut her ties with Mossad and her father, officially becoming an official NCIS agent and a citizen of the United States.

Her past, though, refused to stay buried as Eli arrived in DC over a year later for a conference with NCIS Director Leon Vance, dealing with the mission that had launched their careers, and came back to try to kill them. Surviving it, Eli partially reconciled with Ziva before returning to Mossad.

This would not be the last time they met as two years later, in 2013, Eli supposedly returned for the Shabbat, but it was actually arranging a peace with Arash Kazmi, his old friend and Iranian equivalent, and had inadvertently killed a journalist who discovered he was here.

Shortly after Ziva confronted him about the murder, a gunman proceeded to assassinate Eli as well as Jacqueline, the wife of Director Vance, leaving Ziva angry and heartbroken, feelings that only grew when Eli's protege, Deputy Director Ilan Bodnar was revealed to have hired the hitman.

When she was not on duty at NCIS, Ziva spent her free time using all of her contacts to track down Bodnar, in spite of several government agencies (namely the CIA and Homeland Security) warning her not to, eventually finding him trying to flee to South Africa with a fortune of uncut diamonds, and murdering him by throwing him off a ship he was trying to escape from, which NCIS labeled as self-defense when she tried to apprehend him.

This incident led to the investigation of NCIS that resulted in her resignation and departure from the life she had once known.

Now, completely alone, Ziva spent her days tending around her house and drinking alcohol at an unnerving pace as she tried to wash away the painful memories that now haunted her, the good and the bad, trying to become a new person.

But, no matter how drunk she got (she frequently downed an entire bottle a day), her mind still remembered everything. Her ability to sleep was impeded by these memories, surfacing themselves as nightmares of things that could have been, normally pleasant dreams that disturbed her to no end. And her alcohol consumption was definitely not helping her sleep.

It was another day for the ever depressed Ziva, and more than once, she had pondered suicide. She pulled out her .38 hammerless revolver, her old back-up gun from NCIS and opened the cylinder, unloading all the rounds inside save for one.

Speaking to herself, she muttered as she pointed to an unloaded chamber with her thumb, "He loves me." Moving her finger to the only chamber with a live bullet in it, she continued, "He loves me not."

Putting the cylinder back in her Smith & Wesson, Ziva spun it to an unknown chamber, of which she could not tell if the chamber had a bullet or not. Pointing the gun underneath her chin, Ziva pulled the trigger, waiting to see if her life was about to end.

And just like always, the gun clicked empty as no bullet was present in the chamber. Tossing the gun away, Ziva slumped down on the chair she was sitting in and began tearing up over everything that had happened to her, that nothing would be right in the end, that she was utterly irredeemable.

However, fate had something else in store for Ziva rather than misery.

It had been yet again another monotonous day for Ziva David as the ex-assassin turned federal agent, as she had woken up from her slumber on a half-made bed. Ever since Tony had returned to the states, she hadn't felt much need to make it as she could seldom stay asleep anyways and there was nobody there.

Slipping out of her clearly worn blue nightshirt and pants, Ziva went to take her shower, washing off her body and taking care of her hair, which had since grown down to her waist from months without a cut.

After the shower, Ziva got dressed in a simple black shirt and jeans, which evidently had been used several times without a wash. There was a lot Ziva was no longer doing since she basically abandoned everything about her life.

Now dressed, Ziva went to her kitchen, pulling out a pita bread and a bottle of wine, pouring herself a glass as she began taking bites out of the bread. She would have to go shopping soon - she was almost out of food.

After breakfast, Ziva walked out onto the patio and simply rested, waiting for what was next in her increasingly vanishing world, quickly turning into the house she grew up in - and the painful memories that accompanied her life.

As the hours ticked by, she soon retreated back into the house, taking care to lock the door behind her, keeping a handgun on her at all times. She may be retired, but she didn't want to be caught off guard. As she headed into the house, she returned to the kitchen and grabbed the open bottle of wine, taking another swig before setting it down.

Taking a seat on her chair, she simply looked at the empty bottles of alcohol laying around the floor. I have to clean these up - I do not want to be walking on broken glass.

As she simply sat, she began staring back at her wallet, which had been open and revealed a picture of her and Tony back during their undercover operation at the Marine Corps Birthday gala. She gave a ghost of a smirk to it as she remembered some of the fondest moments she had with her companion "hairy butt". How the two fooled the FBI agents watching them by appearing to have sex (though, admittedly they did have sex, very real sex which even McGee could not refute as acting).

Then came the time inside of that shipping container - what a stupid idea in which they found themselves locked inside while getting cover from gunmen. Only through pure chance did they manage to make it out alive and catch those responsible.

She flash-forwarded to when she was beginning to see Michael Locke and how Tony suspected him of being the apprentice or copy-cat of serial killer Andrew Hoffman. Ziva never doubted his innocence and was proven right when Locke's fingerprint didn't match those found on the knife, but it resulted in her having to break it off with him as he could no longer trust her. Then came her disastrous affair with Rivkin, how she thought she loved him to point where she nearly killed Tony because of it. How foolish she was, and it nearly got her killed.

Now it came Ziva and Tony's assignments in Paris, where they never divulged who slept on the couch, if anyone, and lastly Berlin, where they went to apprehend Bodnar, but caught Yaniv Bodnar, Ilan's brother instead. It took Berlin to make Ziva realize that perhaps she was in love with Tony, truly in love with him, but she was not sure if he reciprocated.

His last time seeing her validated those feelings, but it was too late, leaving Ziva heartbroken.

As she reminisced about her lost flame, she began to sense that somebody was coming towards her. She raised from her chair and pulled out the SIG-Sauer P229 handgun she kept on her person, slowly and quietly heading for the door in which she was hearing the intruder.

She aimed her SIG at the doorway, slowly opening the door while keeping the gun ready, and yelled, "Hands where I can see them! Do it or I shoot!"

Suddenly, she felt the faint trace of a gun pointed at the back of her own head. The intruder remarked, "I'd have expected better, Ziva. You've gotten sloppy."

Ziva knew that voice and turned around to see who had come into her house, not flinching in the face of the gun now in her face. "Director Elbaz?" The intruder was Orli Elbaz, director of Mossad and successor to her father, the former director of Mossad up until his assassination.

"Nice to see you too Ziva." Elbaz lowered her Glock 17 and holstered it, proceeding to walk towards Ziva's couch holding a briefcase. Ziva asked her, "If you came in from behind, who came at the doorway?"

"Another Mossad officer who needed some experience. Come, sit."

Ziva lowered her own gun and headed towards her chair and sitting down in it, facing Orli Elbaz, asking, "What are you doing here? How did you even find this place?"

"We're Mossad, Ziva. We never keep our eyes closed. We've known where you've been for months."

"Tony?"

"We figured it out on our own and respected your privacy."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because of certain developments that have arisen." Elbaz opened the briefcase and soon revealed a mound of files and pictures inside. She began to explain as she pulled out the first picture, "Benham Parsa, leader of the Brotherhood of Doubt, the terrorist organization responsible for the assassination of Clayton Jarvis and the attempt on your life."

Ziva asked, "What is all of this about?"

"Let me finish, and you won't have any questions. Anyway, Parsa had been running a low profile, conducting several attacks in the United States in cooperation with several corrupt businessmen. While Jarvis's murder made Parsa number one on the Navy's most wanted list, what sealed the proverbial deal was an attack on a Department of Defense gala."

"McGee had a girlfriend named Delilah, she was DoD. What happened to her?"

"From what we can make out, she was at the reception and while she survived, she was permanently paralyzed. Parsa managed to escape the country before the authorities could apprehend him. However, he was ultimately intercepted thanks to the work of Eleanor Bishop, an NSA analyst who had been assigned to work for NCIS."

"Gibbs?"

"He requested her. Bishop was an expert on Parsa, having studied him immensely, and been taunted by him just as much. Parsa was brought on board a Navy ship for interrogation, requesting Bishop to perform said interrogation, but he wanted her so he could finally finish her off, having become just as obsessed with her as she was of him. Gibbs killed Parsa before he could finish off Bishop."

"Okay, not that this story had been informative, but why are you telling me this?"

"One of our operatives in Pakistan discovered a massive terrorist organization, one that rivaled that of Parsa. With his death, said organization is beginning to claim power over the forces in the region. We're looking at a force north of twenty thousand men just in the Middle East. Their power will grow beyond our control, and will spread to the Americas. We need your help, Ziva."

"To do what?" Ziva was skeptical of Elbaz, unsure of just where this was going, though she had a vague idea of what exactly it was.

"Go undercover in the organization and bring it down. If they become too powerful, they will not be stopped. We could be looking at a third world war, nuclear war."

"Why me? Why not Eschel, Malachai, or Liat? I'm not Mossad anymore, remember?"

"That is true, but they are all occupied with other assignments. You were one of the best, Ziva. You're the only one that can succeed."

"What makes you so sure? I haven't been part of Mossad in close to five years."

Elbaz pulled out several more documents, revealing very familiar pictures. "If they succeed, their first targets will be NCIS." Ziva could only stare at the pictures of Gibbs, Tony, McGee, and Bishop at their homes, the photos having been taken at a distance. Then came pictures of Abby and Ducky, along with Palmer and Vance. She couldn't let anything happen to them, even if she wasn't NCIS anymore.

Elbaz handed some more documents to Ziva, noting, "The details of your assignment." She already knew that Ziva had accepted.

Ziva stared in shock at Elbaz as she slowly took the papers being handed to her.

Foof.

Okay, that ends the first chapter of Ziva David: Redemption. The next chapter will serve more of Ziva getting back into the game before her assignment, as well as giving us a look at our favorite NCIS agents. More detail is to come on the antagonists, and many familiar faces will be joining the game.