Tag: It started with "Ziver". A post-mortem to 16x24 "Daughters", tracking Ziva's journey to save much more than Gibbs' life. Three years is a long time to be dead and there is more to Ziva's agenda than meets the eye.

Claims: This story is canon up to the end of 16x24 with regard to, I think, all major story arcs and characters. But since I haven't been following NCIS for six years, I have also taken creative liberties where they seemed to serve characters and plot. Please excuse and allow them. This is Ziva-centric, as always, because she needs to be granted her due. I own nothing; just trying to weave all the stray ends together.

Story: The story will be comprised of five chapters plus epilogue. They will be posted consecutively.

2019: COUNTERPOINT

** Gibbs: Taking Point **

"Ziver."

In six years she had not heard his voice, nor her name being given his particular inflection. It should have brought it all back, the turmoil of six years ago, her hand quivering, pressing the phone to her ear and failing to explain reasons inconceivable, at the time, even to herself. But it didn't bring back any of it. Instead, she opened her eyes to Gibbs' disbelief and gaping stare, his signature slate crumbled into pieces of emotion.

She had pictured this moment so many times since she had decided to come back — though, decided seemed like the wrong word, too calculated — and come to act (that worked better) on the sudden U-turn in the circumstances of their separate existence. She knew — well, she hoped — it would change everything for her. But so uncertain had she been of his feelings towards her, her surrogate father's, that bracing for the worst possible scenarios had been her biggest comfort. On the car ride over here, down familiar Washington streets, she had swiped through the most brutal silences in her head, had conjured his most hardened glares. Mentally shadowboxing her way through what would have been all valid responses to her return, it had never occurred to her that Gibbs might just be glad to see her.

Then: inhale; exhale. "Ziver."

It put her back in the interrogation room after she had died the first time. After Somalia. After the camp. She had bared her soul to him and resigned a life beyond her control. With a tap of his finger and her name, intoned as only he could, he had taken her back. Permission to live.

"You're home now." He had whispered it to no one but her.

And though so much had changed and her idea of home had shifted since, her face bloomed with the brightest smile. Gibbs looked as though her name felt funny on his lips. She remembered Tony, in a fit of uncharacteristic rage, lamenting the team's collective refusal to speak her name. Her name had faded to become myth, a distant tale to accent a word of caution or a parental rule. In Israel, swaddled in her own self-prescribed loneliness, she had constantly failed to consider how lonely Tony had felt amid all the people they both had loved. Letting her eyes briefly roam the familiar reaches of Gibbs' basement, so very unchanged, she thought that maybe they had all been alone in their grief for one another.

That was the past, though. Circumstances had changed; would change. Allowing herself to cash in on those unfulfilled hopes, Ziva held onto her smile and brushed wild hair back behind her ear.

"Whatever questions you have, ask them," she offered. "But I'd prefer you do so in the car."

"You got a car?"

"Out front," she said.

He nodded and lifted his head towards the stairs, cueing their ascent. "Lead the way."

It felt as easy as that. At the top of the staircase, Ziva granted herself a moment to breathe in the familiar scent of Old Spice, Bourbon and brittle firewood. She took a glancing sweep of the kitchen and the living room that both had provided such comforts to her over the years. Too anxious to investigate on her way in, she now found neither much changed. Pictures of Layla and Amira showed both of them older, steadier, and happy. Ziva was glad to see it, thinking of the pair often. Apart from some novel trinkets and a few inches of adjustment not a lot contrasted the memory she had been carrying with her all this time. Still, she felt a clenching unease, noticing a dark sheen that hung over it all; a sheen she had never known here before.

Then Gibbs suddenly stopped her in the foyer. He was holding a baseball propped up on his fingertips, proffering it to her. When had he grabbed that? She looked at him, eyes narrowing questioningly.

"Hold that for a sec?", he asked.

His request didn't answer the question in her eyes, but she followed it anyway. Balancing the white seamy orb in her palm, hand outstretched and still confused, he just nodded, retrieved it and tossed it onto the couch without much ceremony.

Unperturbed, he continued, "So where we going?"

"The director is waiting for us," she replied slowly, inviting his challenge. When it came, she let it break as a smile on her face.

"Mine or yours?"

"You have a director, Gibbs. I have old friends."

Though she was keeping her responses and voice light, Gibbs did not budge. She wasn't all that surprised. It couldn't be that easy; it wouldn't be easy. Years had passed. She had left NCIS for her homeland, once again, and silence had succeeded her. She didn't deceive herself into thinking that time had frozen them in place in spite of her absence. She had certainly changed, much changed. If she had taught herself one thing in the past few years, it was not to begrudge herself a past. And so she took a step back and settled in. Linking her hands together, she motioned for him to continue.

"I guess, the most pressing questions need addressing before we can get into the car," she offered.

Gibbs squinted at her. "Why you here?"

"As I said, you are in danger."

"How?"

Ziva tilted her head to the side, appraising him. "Don't tell me, Gibbs—" His unabated stare prompted her to go on, her lips pursed. "Don't tell me you didn't catch on when you found my notebook on the couch and not on the table where you left it. And with the last page missing."

Gibbs shrugged. "Been seeing lots of ghosts round here."

Ziva swallowed her next comment and took, instead, a long, hard look at Gibbs. He had always appeared so impervious to change, so Gibbs, so permanent in time, she hadn't thought to do it before. His air, though, wasn't imposing, as she had expected, so much as exuding real loss and confusion. She allowed herself to acknowledge that what she had earlier thought a mere intake of breath — inhale, exhale — to have been much more than that: the moment hope-beyond-hope of a daughter returning from the dead had materialized at the top of his basement steps. His relief, maybe, had been too great to keep locked inside. It was all a little much.

"I needed that page. I had to make good on my promise to Morgan's mother. She died never seeing her daughter again. I just couldn't let that be," Ziva continued, her face not hiding a tinge of pain. "Even if it meant leaving Ellie to protect a secret that is not hers to bear. I didn't want her to betray your trust while doing so."

Gibbs' mouth gaped for a moment, then exclaimed in uncharacteristic high pitch an innocent accusation. "Could've just shown yourself."

"I couldn't just then. I was still...," she trailed off, searching for the right term. "Figuring things out."

"Figuring. Things."

Ziva watched Gibbs examine her, but held his gaze. "I came here of my own accord, Gibbs. Not on anyone's orders," she said, a proclamation and promise. The grey shades of irony were not lost on either of them, though, having just stood where she had taken her brother's life at her father's behest and of her own volition to save Gibbs' life.

He nodded, then dropped the other shoe out of midair. "You got a daughter now."

Mention of Tali fast returned a smile to her face. "I do," she confirmed softly.

"Then why now, Ziver?"

She took her time, realizing that this, right there, was the first time they had ever addressed each other as one parent to another. "Do you remember, Gibbs," she asked, "What I said to you about my mother? How she never told me what kind of a man my father was?" Gibbs didn't move a brow and she took it as a sign to continue. "I wondered whether she had thought me not strong enough to know the truth. But you said that she was just being a mom. Doing what she had to. Protecting me. You called it—"

"Perspective," he finished for her, remembering just as well.

"Yes," Ziva confirmed. "Trust my perspective, Gibbs. I am doing this for her also."

A beat, then Gibbs stepped aside and held the door open to her.

"Okay."

The car was a simple black sedan, nothing flashy enough to have ever engaged Tony's moods. If Gibbs had expected a red Mini, he chose not to show. Ziva felt like commenting on it at first but, glancing over, swallowed the quip readymade on her tongue. Silence and stares, she knew, were Gibbs' preferred mode of communication. "Functional mute," Tony's voice whispered through a smirk in her head. She had missed the silences, missed the steadfast comfort they provided her, but somehow she felt them acutely today. Maybe silences were not as comforting anymore.

The streets were empty, scarcely a car around them. It wasn't until a red light had Ziva slow to a halt and the steady passing zoom of neighborhoods ceased that he suddenly placed a hand on hers when she grabbed onto the gear shift. She felt the calluses lining his palm and dipped her head, the gesture ever so intimate and ever so unfamiliar. As suddenly as he had reached out, he pulled back again and shuffled further down his seat. Ziva sought his eyes, but he wasn't looking at her.

"We missed ya, Ziva," he said, his voice raw.

She smiled. "A lot has happened," she sort of agreed, returning her hand to the steering wheel. The feel of his sudden gesture lingered. She hit the gas pedal and carried on.

"She's beautiful," Gibbs declared at once and she could see him turning to look at her in the corner of her eye, now that she was back focused on the road ahead.

Not quite finding the words, Ziva nodded slowly. She took a moment, then settled for a small smile. "Get my bag?", she suggested.

Not questioning her request, Gibbs arched around her seat and retrieved the brown leather bag from the back. Checking for her approval once more, which she provided with an eager nod, he flipped it open and found it almost empty: a crumpled piece of tissue, her wallet, a keycard, and a white piece of paper, DIN A4-sized and folded in half.

"The paper. Take a look."

He complied and turned it over. It was a child's drawing. The artist had clearly passed the stick figure phase and moved on to mastering two-dimensional corporeality. Two cones, one much smaller than the other, sat atop two pairs of angled rectangles each. The bigger cone had longer rectangles for legs and a larger sphere for a face, with bright green specks for eyes, a brown tousle of hair and tiny dots in the bottom half framing a sizable red smile. The smaller cone was bright yellow, shorter legs peeking out from wavy yellow edges. A heap of thin, brown springs, diligently drawn, crowned another green-eyed, smiling sphere. Their hands — five fingers each, spread wide, and attached to thick rectangular arms — were touching at their fingertips. They were placed on a green slab of grass, with wavy flecks of blue clouds overhead and an orange house with a red roof beside them.

"It's not prudent to have a picture of her on me," Ziva explained. Her voice had gotten thinner. "So I bring a picture drawn by her."

"Got a real artist on your hands there," Gibbs observed, still studying the drawing.

Ziva gave a small laugh, dabbing the corner of her eye with the crest of a finger. "Her teacher says she's quite advanced for her age."

Gibbs carefully slipped the paper back into Ziva's bag. "DiNozzo really stepped up."

"Did you ever doubt him?", Ziva quipped but, glancing over, did not find Gibbs smiling any longer. "You did?", she asked then, genuinely surprised. Whatever happened to Rule #5?

"I didn't know what to think anymore," he said, dropping her bag onto the backseat. "He wasn't happy. Not without you."

Ziva nodded. "He told me as much."

She took a hard left swerve and Gibbs grabbed onto the handlebar above his head. "Before he—"

"After." Ziva glanced over briefly, re-aligning the car on the road, and nodded once more. The moment felt like it deserved more forceful confirmation. "After he left NCIS."

"So he found you."

"Yes, he found me."

She hit the blinker and slowed, coming to rest perfectly parallel to the curb of a residential street. Gibbs processed her words in silence, but his gaze never let up now. Ziva gave him the time he needed, hands in her lap, and watched him in silence.

"Glad he found you," Gibbs admitted eventually. "And Tali."

Hearing Gibbs drop her daughter's name shot through her with a pang of guilt and the searing pain of loss, but she chose to put on a smile instead. "They're both fine, Gibbs," she assured him. "Both happy."

Gibbs nodded. "We gonna keep going?", he asked, jabbing a cursory thumb at the windshield.

"We're here, actually," Ziva retorted, gesturing instead out the window by his side.

They had parked in front of a small unassuming house, a garden with a tree out front, framed by a metal gate and fence. It was coated in white paint just like the houses to its left and to its right.

"One of my father's safe houses. One of his many assets that transferred to me," Ziva explained, already getting out. "I imagine Director Vance is already here. But I wanted to come get you myself."

"Well, I'll be damned," Vance's exclamation hit as the front door closed behind Gibbs and his eyes landed on Ziva. "Guess I should thank you for not beating down my door on a school night. All raised from the dead."

They met him standing amid a fully furnished living room, with shelves and shelves of books lining the walls around a set of two couches, a coffee table and a floor light that was bathing the scene of their strange reunion in a faint orangey glow. The furniture looked uncannily lived-in, down to the scruff marks on the carpet and empty glasses on the counter of the open kitchen unit.

"I thought this would offer more privacy," Ziva half-quipped. "And you know this address well."

Vance nodded. "One of Eli's aces."

Gibbs paid no heed to their conversation, though, and charged out from behind Ziva at once. He stopped only for Vance's face. "Did you know, Leon?", he demanded, his voice low.

"I suspected just like I know you did, Gibbs," Vance responded, holding his senior agent's glare. "No body found, no hair out of place on that little girl. But I didn't know."

"He didn't, Gibbs," Ziva confirmed, stepping between them, if at a distance. "I lived as a ghost these past three years. No one— That is, good as no one knew."

The last sentence visibly piqued their interest and they turned to her in unison. Gibbs released Vance from his glare and stepped back. A curt nod told her to keep going.

"Before you start, though," Vance raised his hand to stop her. "It's good to see you back, Special Agent David."

"Ziva," she retorted with a smile, nodding in appreciation.

"Now," he continued, his hands buried in the pockets of his coat. "Tell us what the hell we're doing here."

"I have information that Gibbs' life is in danger," Ziva explained almost absently, rummaging through her bag to retrieve the piece of tissue.

She carefully unfolded it and stepped forward. Holding the tissue open in the flat of her palm, she used a fingernail to produce a small tear in the uppermost layer, right by the ridged company logo. When she offered it to Vance under the light, he saw what she had just exhumed: a tiny microchip of less than a quarter of a square-inch.

"What'll we find on it?" Vance slipped a letter from his pocket. The paper visibly bore Ziva's handwriting and signature. She dropped the chip onto the dried ink of her words and he safely returned it all to its envelop, putting both swiftly away for safekeeping.

"Names, dates, movements, supply networks."

"Whose?"

Upon Gibbs' question, Ziva turned to address him. "A couple of weeks ago your case involved vigilantes operating out of the US, yes?" He nodded a quick confirmation. "It's much bigger than you think, Gibbs. Much bigger than what you've been finding it to be."

Vance looked between the pair, now locked in a stare that spoke untold volumes. "What am I missing here? Gibbs?"

Gibbs eyes were set in a defiant squint, his lips a thin line, so Ziva chose to answer in his stead. "Gibbs has been going back to the files on the vigilante case as they pertain to Navy personnel."

"Their commissions, you mean?"

Ziva nodded, still staring at Gibbs, whose stance was as stoic as ever. "Whether any of them were cases we were involved in. Whether the perps were still out there."

Realization dawned on Vance's face and he turned on Gibbs. "You're operating a side-show."

"Haven't got the team involved," Gibbs clarified defiantly, then posed his question right to Ziva, ignoring Vance. "How do you know?"

"It started out unrelated. But our investigations crossed paths about a week ago. Maybe a little more."

"How?", Gibbs repeated.

Ziva frowned. "I had more resources at my disposal than you."

"Whose resources?", Vance asked, adding a quick afterthought, "Not ours."

"You're ruffling all sorts of feathers, Gibbs," Ziva pressed on, evading the question. "In places yet unknown to you."

"Which places?"

Gibbs had been studying her all this time; not once had he taken his eyes off her, and only her. Ziva had let him, leading him further and further to the circumstances he had probably suspected to be true from the start.

"Mossad," he surmised.

"So the guy who delivered your letter to me earlier tonight," Vance continued, catching on to Gibbs' line of thinking. "One of Elbaz's men?"

Ziva nodded. "Have McGee take a look at it," she said, pointing at the microchip stowed away in Vance's pocket. "You will know more by the morning."

Vance nodded, but the look on his face changed into something else entirely. "So, after all this," he said, nodding vaguely at the leftovers of Eli's heritage all around them. "It's Orli who sent you."

"No one sent me, Director," Ziva insisted. "Once we started putting together the information and I saw the connection to Gibbs, I made this mission my own. I chose to do this." She turned back to Gibbs. "I chose to come here."

Gibbs remained as unreadable as ever. Had she earlier found confusion and loss on his face, he had buried it again. He nodded, a half-nod, just his chin rising. He remained still. Then he turned.

"You'll catch up your man?", Vance called after him.

"Always do."

"I have a car here," he continued, challenging Gibbs to a response.

He just offered a sideways head toss. "Got a ride."

Vance attention flipped to Ziva who had said back, remained unmoving. "How'd you know? Eli's signal?", he asked, a flat palm pressed against the pocket that held her letter, now the chip.

"I've had a long time to—", the word escaped her and she squinted her eyes. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Unbury my father's legacy."

He folded his hands behind his back, nodding. "I will see you in the morning, Ziva."

She tipped her head, heard Gibbs open the front door. "Good night, Director."

For a moment it appeared to Ziva as though Gibbs was considering making a break for it, turn right, down the sidewalk, wherever it led. She chose that moment to push the button for the car to unlock. Illuminated by the yellow blinking bleeps sent through the side mirrors, Gibbs eventually got back into the car, eyes stubbornly focused just straight ahead.

"Stop at a store?", he requested when she got in beside him.

"Do you feel like some late-night shopping?", Ziva retorted.

"Not gonna be much of a meal with nothing in the fridge to grill."

"Are you expecting guests?"

"Can't have you stay in a hotel while there's a spare bed in the house," he said gruffly, adding before she could protest, "You still got family here, Ziva."

She didn't know if he had meant it as invitation or reprimand, but this wasn't the time to ask. She conceded with a nod and a small smile.

"Thank you."

Waking up in Gibbs' spare room, Ziva immediately checked the burner phone she had equipped for her stint in the US. She was surprised to find the powers of Gibbs' house still working on her. At a little before eight o'clock, she had slept well past what her current state of alertness might usually allow. The house felt silent around her. Deciding not to dwell too much on thoughts she could not yet bear to face, she slipped out of bed. Grabbing a new outfit from her duffle bag, she stepped out into the hallway. Familiar wafts of freshly brewed coffee invaded her. She imagined them sticking like aromatic clumps to the sawdust that perpetually coated the air around the house. She found Gibbs' bedroom door wide open, his bed not slept-in.

She took a while in the shower. Bracing her forearms against the wall under the shower head, her hair swept forward, she let the water drum against the muscles that stretched in tense strips over her neck and shoulder blades. They were by far not the ones giving her the most trouble now, at 37 years old. The twitches of pain in her lower back more and more frequently joined stiff joints where breaks had not rightly healed. The taut skin of scars and welts on her body now resisted movements that had felt nimble and easy only a few years ago. They were almost daily reminders of a life, and half-one borrowed, spent fighting and wounded and tortured.

When she finally made her way downstairs, she stopped herself halfway between the hall and the living room. Glancing out the window, the empty space by the curb was giving her pause and she wavered between disbelief and amusement.

"Gibbs isn't here," an unfamiliar voice called to Ziva. "He was being all growly and silences on the phone this morning, so I sent him to the office early."

"In my car?", Ziva asked.

"His is still in the shop, I think. He said he'd be back later to pick you up."

Ziva nodded slowly. "I'm sure he did."

Abandoning both window and further thought, Ziva finally faced the newcomer. Before her stood a tall, blonde-haired woman who she didn't recognize, emitting a battle-worn air that she certainly did. The woman was wearing black-rimmed glasses and dressed in slacks and a t-shirt. She had her arms crossed, holding a cup of black coffee balanced in the crook of her elbow.

"Gibbs mentioned you don't drink coffee, so I put the kettle on when I heard the shower", she continued, already returning to a seat at the kitchen table.

Following her, Ziva noticed a stack of boxes that hadn't been there the night before when Gibbs and her had ended up grilling steaks on the fireplace. They had mostly enjoyed each other's presence and the comfort it provided. She had answered a few questions about her time right after leaving NCIS, and had told him about entering therapy and traveling around Israel until pregnancy had put her on strict bed rest. He didn't press her any further and she appreciated it. In turn, he had answered all her questions about the changes to the team, especially in the wake of Tony's absence. It was from those descriptions that Ziva had a pretty good idea who had been sent here to watch over her.

"I didn't expect Gibbs to even have tea in the house," Ziva remarked, choosing some loose-leaf jasmine tea by mere scent from an assortment of five unlabeled boxes. "Let alone a tea egg."

"I think he dropped by Ducky's when he got these from storage." Ziva followed the casual wave of her hand that indicated the boxes by the fireplace. Yet she felt overcome by suspicion that she might not have been the first person Gibbs had asked to come over. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.

"So, you're Sloane," Ziva ascertained as she took a seat and placed the cup in front of her.

Returning her smile, Sloane reached a hand across the table. "Jack."

"Ziva." They shook hands.

"You're a psychologist's dream, you know?", Jack smirked. She leaned back in her chair and took a sip from her coffee, hand in her hair, elbow balanced on her knee. She was looking at Ziva through wide, curious eyes.

Ziva gave a small laugh. "I am?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. "Left your mark on everything and everyone there."

"Death will do that to things. And people," Ziva retorted, slowly dipping the tea egg further and further into the water and watching the translucent liquid become color. When she looked up, Jack was still smiling at her but had inched forward, now considerably closer.

"Look, Ziva. I'm sure you have to clear the air with some people here, but that's not for me to judge." She had abandoned her coffee and placed both of her hands, palms down, on the table. The gesture felt oddly intimate to Ziva, and open. "As far as I'm concerned, you did what you had to do. What you thought was best for you and your little girl at the time."

It wasn't meant as absolution from a stranger, to whom Ziva admittedly felt no attachment other than what they were forging in those very moments. But Ziva didn't think it to be. She wasn't even that surprised that Gibbs, the tight-lipped functional mute, had shared such tender details. Or maybe Jack had just picked them up, put them together. She seemed like someone who would be well capable of doing so. But Ziva recognized in the other woman techniques habituated over many years of therapy and nodded her head, appreciating the open playing field.

"Also, I know there is more to this than you're telling people right now. That's your right," Jack continued. "I just wanted you to know that things haven't been easy for Gibbs these past few months. You might want to… Exercise some caution." With that, she returned to her coffee and settled back into her chair.

Ziva nodded and got up, breaking their connection via Gibbs' hand-crafted table. She discarded the tea egg in the sink and reached into her pocket for what looked like a snuff box. She retrieved a white pill, placed it on her tongue and tossed her head back, swallowing it with a first, hot sip.

"Does Gibbs know?", she asked, eyes narrowed inquisitively. "How much you care?"

"Frankly, when he called last night, I just really wanted to meet you," Jack shot back brightly, her foot fluttering up and down. "They tell all sorts of stories about you. And the leaderboard down in the NCIS gyms? You're such a great conversation starter."

Ziva laughed again. "Don't tell me I'm still on them after six years."

"Like I said, you left a lasting impression," Jack retorted, shrugging. "Though I did beat your ring best the other week."

Ziva arched an eyebrow. "Psychologist you said?"

"Army Lieutenant. In a previous life."

"Ah," Ziva drew out her moment of realization, then tipped her head in acknowledgement and returned to her seat. "Maybe we can go a few rounds one of these days?"

Jack smiled, returning the gesture. "I'd like that."

The front door opening gave them both a start and they looked up to find Gibbs standing in the entry way to his living room. He looked frozen for a moment, processing the strange circumstances that had placed Sloane and Ziva in the same frame, joined in conversation.

"You're back."

"Good morning, Gibbs," Ziva greeted him, suspicion thickening her voice.

Gibbs just nodded in return, grey eyes settling on Ziva. "You got some explaining to do."

Chapter 2: [M'Gee] - Chapter 3: [Eleanor] - Chapter 4: [Ziva] - Chapter 5: [Tali] - Chapter 6: [Epilogue]