Title: Broken Places
Fandoms: Supernatural and NCIS crossover
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen
Word count: 1364
Spoilers: Up to end of season 2 of SPN, up to season 3 of NCIS
Warnings: Read the prompt below
Disclaimer: Own nothing, not being paid
A/N: Written as part of the 'fics I'd never write' meme on LJ for heylittleriver. Prompt below. Thank you to starrylizard and lunardreamed for the beta.
Prompt: The one where Dean and Ziva have angsty talkings over/about killing brothers. (Obviously, Sam is dead. Apparently I like having one of the boys kill the other.)
Summary: Ziva and team investigate a man killing sailors and find two of the FBI's most wanted.
Ziva is careful as she squeezes silently past the crate.
"Please, Sammy… please don't."
The pleading voice of the man on the floor silences as the man towering over him – presumably Sammy - kicks him hard in the stomach, hard enough to force him onto his back. She's close enough to hear the low groan as the air is pushed out of him. The way Sammy holds the gun in his hand and moves with a fluid grace screams military training to Ziva. She sees a flicker of movement behind the two men on the other side of the warehouse that could be Gibbs or Tony. Sammy gives no indication that he's noticed the movement.
She glides forward to another crate and gets a better angle on the scene. Sammy has been repeatedly kicking the man while she moved and the man sprawled on the floor is still.
"You should have stopped me, Dean, when I asked you to. You're my brother; you should have stopped this. I didn't want this, but no, you couldn't do what I asked you to. It's too late now."
There's a thin undercurrent of something to Sammy's voice that chills Ziva's blood. It's not madness but it's close. She has her gun trained on him, but with how close he is to the man on the floor – Dean – and the way that he holds his gun she's afraid to fire yet.
She hears a sound from the other side of the warehouse and it's enough to make Sammy look up and around. He turns in a slow half circle, making sure to keep his gun still on Dean. "I can see you," he says with a smirk in her direction and her hand is suddenly straining to hold her Sig in place. For some reason she wants to put her gun to her head and fire, but she fights it, knows she doesn't want it, that these are not her thoughts. Sammy's smirk turns to anger as her hand steadies on the gun and it stays pointed in his direction. It's insane to blame what has just happened on this man, but she's got no other explanation.
There's a loud bang and Sammy falls backwards, hitting the floor hard. She looks over to where she's fairly sure Gibbs and Tony are, but the trajectory doesn't make sense. It's not until she looks back at Sammy that she realises.
Dean is holding a gun still pointed at his brother's body.
Ziva moves slowly out of hiding, making her way toward the men lying on the floor. She can now see another body lying off to the side.
"Put the gun down, now." Gibbs' voice rings out across the room and Ziva keeps her Sig trained on Dean. He shouldn't be conscious, not with the injuries she can see. His eyes are almost swollen shut and she doesn't know how he saw to aim. Dean's body is rigid, his hand is shaking and Ziva isn't really that surprised when the gun turns and points at his head.
"Don't! Put the gun down, now!" Gibbs shouts again. There are four guns pointed at Dean but only one likely to kill him. Dean's eyes fall shut, his hand tightens on the trigger and there's the sound of a gunshot. Blood blossoms, spreading around Dean and the gun falls to the floor.
They all rush forward, Tony kicking the gun away from Dean's hand, Gibbs checking on the sailor and Sammy, leaving Dean as Ziva's responsibility. His eyes are open and staring at the ceiling and blood is oozing out of the wound. She checks his neck for a pulse and is relieved when she finds it.
"Dean, my name is Ziva," she says softly as she checks him over. She presses down hard on the bullet wound in his arm – better than one in the head at least - as Tony calls for an ambulance. "You're going to be okay."
His swollen eyes finally focus on her and tears slide down his face. "I just ki-" His eyes squeeze shut for a second, before opening again, filled with a pain that she can understand. "I just killed my brother. It'll never be okay."
Ziva has no words to give him. She knows that nothing can make this better, nothing can make this right; any words she offers will be empty.
"I had to save him," Dean whispers, "but I couldn't. I failed." His eyes slide shut. "I'm so sorry, Sammy."
He doesn't move again and she checks his pulse. He's still alive.
Ziva sits in the hard chair beside the bed, noting that the guard outside has moved so that he can see her. Either being an NCIS agent doesn't mean anything to the FBI or they're afraid that the man restrained to the bed will somehow leap up and kill her. Considering the information in Dean Winchester's file, it could be either.
"I've read your file," she says. "I am sorry that you had to live that life."
Unlike the FBI, she does not believe that the Winchesters were soulless killers. There are too many things that don't add up in the files – witnesses who say that the Winchesters saved their lives, deaths that started before they arrived in a town and stopped after they left, the fact that there is a man buried in St. Louis who is genetically identical to Dean Winchester. There's also the fact that her hand had moved of its own accord in that warehouse, like Sam Winchester was forcing her to try and kill herself. She has mentioned it to no one. It is something that she cannot explain and would usually dismiss out of hand, but for some reason she can't.
"I understand." Ziva rubs her eyes, feeling the burning that has never quite abated when it comes to thinking about Ari. Dean is still looking out the window, seemingly paying no attention to her. Her experience tells her, though, that he is listening on some level. She takes a deep breath. "I killed my brother." She waits for a few seconds, gives herself some time to recover from the words. The last time she said them she was in tears trying to get Gibbs to remember anything. "His name was Ari and he killed good people, so I killed him."
She's had too much experience with keeping her tone matter of fact. It's too easy for her now, too easy to hide what she really feels.
"People always say that you get over a death of a loved one, but you don't. Not when you're the one who killed them. How can you get over that? It doesn't matter if what you did was right and you had no choice, it'll just…it never leaves you."
Dean hasn't moved, hasn't indicated that he's heard what she said. He hasn't said a word since he passed out back at the warehouse; he's just been lost in his own world. Ziva has seen the video footage of Dean's 'confession' in Baltimore and he seems to have lost the indefinable something that made him that cocky, vibrant man.
She sits and watches, looking for some clue as to what is, and was, going on in Dean's head. All she can see is his brother's death on replay, circling around and around time and time again, replacing everything else that makes Dean who he is with its reality. She can't see the psychopath that the FBI says is hidden by the very good looking exterior, all she can see is a man who has lost the only thing that he had left - and that's something that could make him more dangerous than any psychopath, a danger to both himself and the world at large.
Ziva sighs and stands. She knows that there is more to the Winchesters then the FBI suspects, but it can't outweigh the evidence from the bank robbery or their prison break. No matter what they can find to explain the Winchesters' behaviour, Dean is destined for a long time in prison or the psych ward.
He's still staring into nothingness when she leaves.