ncisficathon | Fic: Defensive Wounds {End}

Title: Defensive Wounds
Prompt: Something/Someone returns from Ziva's past to haunt her. How do the team help her through? Pairing isn't neccesary but Ziva/Gibbs if one is to exist.
Genre: Gen.
Pairings: None.
Rating: PG-13.
Author's Note: I do sincerely apologize to all that it took me so long to finish posting this story. There were a few different reasons, and even though this fall was a very busy time of the year for me (Back to School + the High Holy Days), it was still my responsibility to finish posting in a timely manner, and there is no excuse for delaying it this long.

( Chapter 1: The Suspect ) ( Chapter 2: Breaking Point ) (Chapter 3: The Translation ) ( Chapter 4: The Touchstone ) (Chapter 5: Test Results )

Chapter 6
The Verdict

When Ziva and Tony get back to the Navy Yard with the gun, their murder weapon, Gibbs shakes his head and says that there's no point in Abby running a ballistics test on it today. She already ran the blood sample from Tamir, and it isn't a match to the blood found on Corporal Ericson. In the next breath, he tells them to head home. The rest of the case can wait until tomorrow. The guys don't object - it's been a long day and too much has happened - but Ziva just stands there for a moment, staring at Gibbs, wondering if maybe she misheard him.

Gibbs is mildly surprised when they all come in early the next morning. He wanted to go to Ducky and ask him if he knew of a way to get Ziva to open up; he figured that he would have plenty of time at this hour, but he barely beats his team to the bullpen. Ziva walks in briskly, her head held high and shoulders thrown back. She probably convinces the guys that she's fine, but Gibbs notices the faint dark circles under her eyes. He shouldn't have let her go home alone last night. How she would've despised him if he had sent someone home with her. But it was like Ducky said - sometimes he has to do things that his kids hate, for their own good.

Ziva follows him when he heads down to Abby's lab. First thing this morning, she ran prints and a ballistics test on the gun that they recovered from the house, but she isn't able to glean much information.

"It's the muder weapon, all right," Abby tells them, moving her mouse around as the computer program analyzes the angle of the shot. "The bullets in it are a match to the ones Ducky pulled out of Ericson, and based on the trajectory and the location of the gunshot wound, our killer is definitely right-handed." She pauses, glances apologetically at Gibbs, then rushes on, "Of course, something like eighty percent of the population is right-handed, so I know that doesn't narrow it down much, but - "

She's been so quiet this morning, her lips pressed together in a thin line - as if she wants to talk, as if she's bursting to, but won't let herself. Ziva is the only one of his agents who can catch him off-guard like this, when she interrupts Abby and says the last thing that he expected to hear from her.

"Tamir could not have killed him."
_____

"Tamir could not have killed him."

Ziva regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. Abby turns away from her computer and glances over her shoulder at her, puzzled and apprehensive, then looks to Gibbs because she's unsure of how take this. Gibbs studies Ziva hard, and she hates to guess what he must be thinking. Stockholm syndrome. Svengali. He was thinking that she was so damaged that she sympathized with one of her tormentors. She was actually defending the same man who had hurt her, who had -

Stop it, Ziva scolds herself, and she quickly brushes her necklace, her touchstone, with one hand. It's still there, which means that she's still here. Gibbs gave her this for Hanukkah last year. He would never think things like that about her. He knows that she isn't defending Tamir. She adds, grateful for how calm she sounds, "Tamir is left-handed."

Gibbs tilts his head slightly to the side. "You're sure?" he asks. His voice is casual, but Ziva can see the thoughtful look in his blue eyes.

"Yes" is all she says, forcing herself to maintain eye contact with Gibbs.

There's a pause then, no more than a few seconds, and Ziva expects Gibbs to ask her how she's so sure that Tamir is left-handed. She waits for it, her muscles tense, because she doesn't want to explain to him how she knows.

But the moment passes, and the question never comes. Gibbs just nods and looks away from her, back to Abby's computer screen, and Ziva's throat aches when she realizes that he isn't going to press her. She swallows down the mixed emotions - gratitude, relief, and sadness too, because she knows that Eli would've questioned her if she had passed him information like this. He would've pumped her for more information. Her own father had never trusted her like Gibbs does.

"Doesn't matter," Gibbs says quietly, and Ziva can tell that he's talking to her, even though his eyes are still on Abby's computer. "He confessed to being a member of a terrorist cell. We still got enough to put him away."

Her lips start to smile at the thought of Tamir in a federal prison for the rest of his life. That's what she wants. She would never admit it - because her team would never look at her the same if they thought she was defending him - but deep down, she doesn't Tamir to be killed. But he isn't going to be killed. He's going to prison for life, and soon this whole awful mess will be behind them.

That's when Abby adds, "Yeah, and besides, he's got a pretty ugly case of HIV. I'd guess that he doesn't have more than a year or two left."

Ziva's pulse freezes in her chest, creating a loud, icy roar in her ears. Abby's words replay inside her head. Tamir is HIV positive. That means... but no, it isn't possible. Is it? Ducky told her that she was clear. He ran the test on her three times, when he examined her after she came back. She knows that much. She mind-checked out of the situation after he asked her to take her shirt off and still only remembers pieces of it. The cold metal of Ducky's stethoscope against her bare chest and back. All three of the tests coming back negative.

Her mouth is so dry, and she licks her lips nervously, trying to figure out what to say. She doesn't want to say anything at all, certainly not enough to imply what happened, especially not in front of Abby, who's so emotional and so naive about... certain things. But she has to know.

Gibbs saves her. "You said he just contracted it recently, right, Abs?"

"That's right," Abby replies. She types something on her keyboard. "Let me pull up that analysis I ran on his blood sample... here it is. He contracted it recently, just within the last few months, but it's a really aggressive strain."

Ziva quickly puts one hand on Abby's lab table for balance, because she's so relieved that for a second it feels like her legs will give out from under her. She hopes, vainly, that Gibbs and Abby don't hear her loud sigh, and for a second, it seems that they don't. But then Abby, without ever taking her eyes from her computer screen, gently lays her hand over the back of Ziva's on the table. And just like when she touched McGee and Tony, the part of her that's been angry and scared since she saw Tamir unclenches.

Just before she and Gibbs leave the lab, Ziva turns her hand over beneath Abby's and squeezes her fingers. Abby catches her eye, smiles, and mouths something. It's okay. Ziva repeats the words in her head, all the way back up to the bullpen. It's what she's been trying to convince herself since she returned from Somalia, but now, they have a ring of pure truth to them. This time, she's not pretending. She's not lying to herself. She's okay.

FIN