Only the Good Die Young
by Sammie
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. If they were, would Kate be dead? Grr. Title from Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (though I don't like the song)
RATING: K+ (I'm so bad at this)
SPOILERS: Singled Out; Hiatus, Part II; Bait; Silver War; Kill Ari
SUMMARY: "He called Ziva Kate yesterday." (Tony, Singled Out) Ziva POV; Kate/Gibbs
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Ziva's thoughts on the times Kate is mentioned (post-"Kill Ari")
This was written almost two years ago, near the start of Season 4, from Tony's off line in "Singled Out". Just cleaning out the files on my computer, and I found this completed but never posted. Redefines "you snooze, you lose"....
Some people who helped with the story (maybe not directly, but thanks anyway):
- Mindy, for the discussion we were having at the time about memory and Kate's death
- Sundance, for her Hollis Mann Kate/Gibbs FF, which had inspired me to get this done...that many months ago
- Isa, Tate4ever, for her observation some time ago in Season 3 that Gibbs often did his interviews alone beginning Season 3. I don't know if it still holds true. Haven't seen any of the episodes.
- all those fans who continue to read Kate/Gibbs FF and let us creaky, wheezing old-timers know that people still do read Kate/Gibbs FF, or I just would've let this one get deleted
The coffee is cold.
Not that she cares. She's had enough coffee as it is, and right now the brown liquid is just serving as a distraction as she sits on the floor of her apartment, swirling the stirrer around and around in the liquid.
She had always assumed it would happen once. She just didn't think it would happen now. Not after a full year.
It doesn't bother her that much. She is not Kate Todd, and she realizes that no one - besides Abby, unconsciously, and only at first - expects her to be. And she is happy and confident and proud she is not. They are very different women.
Still, it is just a little more food for thought - a little more ammunition in her magazine. She adds that little revelation to her small but significant list of things to ponder, to think over when she has some free time. She knows there is something very important in each of these incidents, but she has yet to unravel the tangled mess and make sense of it - and now she has a new oddity to add.
Gibbs called her Kate today.
"Need his LESes all the way back to when joined the Corps," Gibbs barked at DiNozzo. "McGee, stay on those cell phone records, and when you're done, get down there and help Abby."
Gibbs pulled on his coat, grabbed his keys and started towards the elevator.
Tony and McGee frowned, looking over at Ziva in puzzlement. She was just as bewildered. She was not a newbie any more; she could do something. Why hadn't -
"Kate, you comin'?" Gibbs called over his shoulder.
Tony and McGee froze, exchanging looks with Ziva. The Israeli got her coat nonchalantly, as if nothing odd has happened, and followed Gibbs out.
Gibbs rarely takes one of them with him to interview a suspect any more. He will send his team - sometimes in a pair - to interview; he will interview himself. But he does not bring someone WITH him any more - or rarely.
Which he apparently did often with Kate.
It's not strange, really, being mistaken for Kate. She's seen Kate's photo. Neither of them are very tall nor very short. They both are slim with dark brown eyes. And although her own hair is much darker, longer, and curly, unlike Kate's, Ziva is gracious and generous enough to acknowledge that pulled back, sometimes a passing glance can be deceptive - if one WANTS to see Kate.
Tony and McGee have both accidentally called her Kate, and been embarrassed. Abby has, too, but seems more struck with her own guilt over her dead friend than embarrassment. Ducky has, too, but been most gracious about it. That was all when she was first here, when she first came. But Gibbs never made that mistake; he never accidentally called her Kate, not for a full year.
Why now, then?
It makes no sense. If Gibbs had made the mistake when the others had - early in their acquaintance - the slip of the tongue would make sense. But why now?
If Gibbs had ever called his other female agents by the names of the women before them, it would make sense; but Tony says that Kate was never called 'Viv', the name of the female agent there before her.
It's just a little more food for thought, and right now her pantry of "My NCIS boss and the ghost of Kate Todd" is just a little more stocked.
When she had first come, she was too busy with Ari and meeting Jen again to notice anything beyond the grief of the entire team.
Her first inkling was the day she began to clean out Kate Todd's desk.
She has done it enough. It happens all the time. Agents die. Their desks are cleaned out. A new agent moves in. She knows the pain intimately enough to be reverent, but distantly enough to know it must be done. It puzzles her that Gibbs - a veteran of some twenty years - has kept that desk empty. He kept it empty on the case before she arrived, too; Paula Cassidy was not allowed to use it, either.
Ziva knows that Gibbs has cleaned out desks before. Tony mentioned it once - within the last two years he did it for a Chris Pacci, and Ducky mentioned he did it for a lot of agents, including a teammate who died. But he wouldn't do it for Kate's.
It had been a few weeks already since Kate's death, and still the desk remained untouched--down to white-out bottle sitting right by the phone, the one out-of-place thing on the immaculate desk.
Ziva kept waiting for someone to come out and clear out Kate's things. She didn't feel it was her place to do; she had never known the woman personally, after all. But Gibbs wouldn't do it, and though she heard Tony and McGee whisper about it, neither made a move. She noticed a few agents passing by, pausing ever so slightly as they passed the desk, but no one did anything. Abby she could see balking at it, but even Ducky didn't make a move to come up to clear out the desk.
It seemed that people were willing to do the action of putting away Kate Todd's things, but no one was willing to offend the gray-haired man who occupied the next desk.
That night, Ziva waited until after Gibbs and Tony and McGee had left. She carefully began to move through the desk, starting from the top drawer.
Kate Todd was neat, but by no means a freak. Her supplies were arranged in an orderly, though not pristine, fashion. She kept some plastic gloves in her desk, and Ziva noticed the empty space where no doubt her gun would have gone while they were in the office.
In the next drawer were casefiles from the most recent cases she had been working on. Some were cold case files she was taking another look at; the one on top seemed to be a casefile that she never finished writing her report for, on some guy who had killed his own stepdaughter and buried her in his nursery. Behind those were some drawings--colored in carefully with crayon, and a child's scrawl on them, with "To Ant Kat' which was then crossed out and corrected to "To Aunt Kate".
She found Kate's sketchpad, and for some reason she is not surprised that a picture of Gibbs is the top one.
That night he came in; she saw it in his face, when he approached the dark bullpen and suddenly noticed a figure sitting in that desk next to his. Even in the dark, she saw that brief moment of disbelieving hope which blinked out the moment she turned on the light, revealing her face.
She wonders briefly why she doesn't resent Kate's quiet, post-mortem presence. Maybe it was because of Hadassah. Hadassah Meir got Tali's desk after Tali died, and Hadassah was sensitive enough to realize the loss and tread lightly. Hadassah was firm enough to be her own person, yet always kind enough to let others remember. Maybe it is because she, Ziva David, is nothing like Kate Todd and so doesn't feel bad being mistaken for her.
The next time she remembers Kate being mentioned is during the school hostage case. Tony had very cleverly used it as a tool to appease the teenager holding his classmates hostage while informing Gibbs of the death of the boy's mother.
It hadn't seemed that strange to hear it, but Tony had admitted later it felt very strange to say it. They had gone out to eat, and Tony had had a few beers, which loosened his tongue enough. Between the stress of the case, the alcohol, and the sudden adrenaline letdown after the whole case was over, he had blabbed a lot more than he most likely had intended.
They sat in silence at the booth, and then Tony suddenly blurted, "It felt weird."
"What?"
"Saying Kate's name. Acting like she was here, working on the case."
"It was an excellent idea."
"Yeah." He paused. "You know," he laughed mirthlessly, "when that boy's mother showed up alive, there was a part of me that suddenly thought, you know, that Kate would be there, standing next to her."
"You associated Agent Todd with the boy's mother during the case. It was a natural psychological reaction."
Tony nodded over his food, and they sat quietly for a moment, and then he said, "I wish she was."
"I thought you said you two fought."
"We did. But this is different. We fought a lot, but I wish she were back. It's like when your mom or your sister dies." He paused, and after an alcohol-induced slowness, he groaned. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean - "
"It's fine."
"Yeah."
There was another long silence, then a snicker. "I bet you two wouldn't get along."
"What? Why not?"
"Well, you're all...me...and Kate's...all...prissy."
"You don't think I can get along with people who aren't like me?" A thought clicked in, and a laugh. "Or you want to see a catfight?"
Tony grinned. "That would be hot." He paused, then added soberly, "Kate would probably have chastised me or slapped me in the head for that comment."
"As would Gibbs."
"Yeah, boss would have bopped me for that one." He paused. "No, I guess you two would get along."
"Why?"
"Because you get along with people all right. And Kate gets along with a lot of people. She got along with Abby like a house on fire."
"Abby? Really?"
"Uh huh. Abby took to her even faster than she did to me." Tony pouted.
"So why didn't you two get along?"
"Because I liked to push her buttons." Tony grinned. "She hasn't got a lot of buttons. But I pushed 'em all the time." His head bounces in two very exaggerated nods. "Lotsa fun."
"I can see you doing that."
He paused. "She got along great with Gibbs."
"We HAVE to get along with Gibbs."
"No, I mean she got along with Gibbs," Tony insisted.
"How?"
"She got along with Gibbs," Tony repeated firmly. "Like." He took a long time to think. "She rarely let him get away with anything."
"On the case?"
"On the case and personally." Tony shook his head. "I'd overhear them fighting."
"You just said they got along."
"Not fighting like me and Kate. Fighting like...well, usually Gibbs would be really worried about something and would just get all grumpy and mean like he does, and Kate would call him on it. Privately. I don't know how often this happened, because, well, Gibbs gets grumpy a lot, and Kate never did it when she thought other people were listening. But I overheard it once. Myself. And once McGee and I were standing right outside while they were fighting."
He shrugged. "Maybe it was just me. But I always felt like Gibbs would lighten up just the tiniest bit after that. Be less grumpy. Smile a little more." He sighed. "None of us really had to worry about Gibbs about that when Kate was here."
The next day had been a flurry of paperwork for the case, and Jen - Director Shepard - coming down to congratulate them on the case and, to Ziva's eyes, flirt a little with Gibbs, who seemed to grin and receive it amiably. At five, with nothing else to do, they had all gone home.
She had gone home, eaten, watched some television, and then discovered she had left her cell phone at headquarters. It was very late, but not wanting to be without it, she had driven back.
Maintenance was taking advantage of the empty office to work on the elevator, so she sprinted up the stairs to the office. As she wandered among the dark office areas, she noticed a single light on at Gibbs' desk. He sat there, quiet and silent, and she noticed Kate's sketchpad out on the desk in front of him.
He had suddenly seemed to sense someone there and scrambled to put the pad away. Ziva quickly pretended as though she were just coming in, and noticing him. There were curt hellos as Gibbs quickly put away the sketchpad and left.
Ziva nodded as Gibbs got out of his chair and left. It wasn't until then that she noticed his computers and everything had already been shut down.
She smiled a good-bye as he disappeared down the stairs and headed over to her desk. She got out her phone - good, no one had called - and started to go when she noticed something on the floor between her desk and Gibbs'.
She picked it up - it was a photo of the team from roughly two years prior. It appeared to have been taken on a team outing - a relaxed gathering at a bar and restaurant. Perhaps they were celebrating - perhaps an especially tough case they closed.
Her eyes drifted to the figures on the left - Kate was looking at Gibbs, listening in rapt attention as he was speaking.
She flipped it over, noticed some pencil lead powder on the back. Perhaps he had been keeping it in the sketchpad, and it had fluttered out when he had hastily put it back.
Not wanting to embarrass him by showing that she had seen the photo, Ziva carefully slid it inconspicuously under his desk in a place that she knew he'd see it when he came in the next morning, but which was not noticeable from any of theirs.
She thinks about that incident a lot.
She guesses the last one is the real kicker. She knows it is. She knows Tony is somewhat hurt about it, as is Abby, and although Jen tries to hide it, she's a little hurt too. Ducky is too generous to be hurt about it, and McGee seems neutral concerning the whole matter.
Gibbs recovered her memory because of her - the newest member on the team.
Well, that's what the others think. She knows better. She knows Gibbs didn't recover his memory because of Ziva David,per se, although she had a role; Gibbs recovered his memory because of HER.
He didn't remember Tony, or Abby, or Ducky, or Jen, or McGee - either by sight or by name. All he wanted was his wife and his daughter.
She supposes it was a providential inspiration; she wouldn't have thought of it otherwise. Coming full circle, in some ways. When she'd first come to NCIS, she was the only one that tied Kate's death and Abby's near-shooting death to his wife and his daughter, the only one who understood that tie - after all, she was the only one who apparently knew about Shannon and Kelly.
"Ari killed Kate. And I...I killed Ari!"
"Your brother."
"Yeah."
"You killed your brother? To save me."
She accompanied him to the squad room, then looked at them all. "He's totally back. He will remember you absolutely."
She knows that they joke that perhaps she pulled a gun on Gibbs to get him to remember. She knows that they're hurt that she, of all people, could make him remember.
What is it, they think, that makes him listen to Ziva David, who's been here less than a year? Does Gibbs like Ziva better than he likes them? Have they done something to make him distant? Why - why Ziva David?
But she's not going to tell them how she got him to remember. It's private - very private. She doesn't think HE's ready to know, and she's not sure that she understands fully. She only understands at this point that the memory of Kate Todd is particularly powerful when it comes to Jethro Gibbs. His memory revolved around two points: the death of his beloved wife and his adored daughter and the death of this one particular agent. She doesn't understand why, but she knows it is so.
She also knows that it's too private for Gibbs to share, and perhaps he doesn't even know it consciously, so she will keep his secret.
Ziva pauses, looking at the photo on her laptop monitor, downloaded from Kate's file. Kate's pretty, to be sure - five foot seven, shoulder length brown hair, and the deepest dimples she's ever seen. She's dressed sensibly in straight-leg, dark pants, black boots, an off-white shirt with a blazer over top.
Well, she's not a redhead.
Ziva isn't sure what the attraction is for a man who was clearly obsessed with redheads. She isn't sure what the connection is. She isn't sure what the relationship was. For someone who likes clarity, it's frustrating, not knowing. Were they seeing each other privately, and that's why Gibbs won't say anything - because it was against regs? Were they former lovers before they started to work together? Had they dated once and it didn't work out? Or maybe Gibbs and Kate weren't even sure, caught in a limbo that never got resolved before she died.
Ziva mulls over that thought.
She walks into the office. "Morning," she greets cheerily.
Tony is too busy stuffing his face with a Krispy Kreme doughnut to greet her verbally; he waves. McGee approaches to try to sneak one out of the box; Tony shoots him with a hand-held Nerf gun. "Hey!"
The phone rings, and Tony picks up, trying to swallow as fast as he can. "Uh-huh. Okay. I'll be right up." He hangs up. "Director wants to see me."
"Getting fired?" McGee grins.
"Very funny. McGee, I'm counting these doughnuts, and if a single one is missing, I'm going to kill you." He bounds up the stairs and disappears into the director's office.
McGee pouts.
"Well, you know," Ziva offers, coming around with a mischievous grin. "We could take more than one."
"He just said he'd kill me if one's missing!"
"Yes, but he said a single one. If we...take two or even more, you could reasonably argue that since more than a single one is missing, he can't kill you."
McGee brightens. He rips off the top of the box and puts half of the remaining doughnuts on it and hands them to his coworker, then bounds off with the others - no doubt to share with Abby.
Ziva settles in to enjoy her doughnuts when she notice a flashing light on her desk phone. Puzzled, she picks up the receiver and pushes the voice mail button, then enters her code.
It's a message from last night, and it's from Gibbs, only it doesn't sound like him. The voice is very small and sounds exhausted. 'David...just realized...yesterday - I may have called you by {cough} a wrong name. I know you're not her. {pause} Yeah. Good night.' {click}
Ziva smiles softly as she deletes it and hangs up. It's not an apology in the strict sense of the word, but, coming from Leroy Jethro Gibbs, it counts as much. She wonders what makes him do something so soft and generally uncharacteristic of the normally hardnosed man, then shrugs it off. She knows.
She wonders if Kate was just as confused about her odd relationship with her boss. She's had a heck of a time just trying to figure out what Kate and Gibbs' relationship was, and she's an impartial third-person observer. How frustrating - and now they'd never know where it would have gone, or what it could have been.
Ziva breaks off a piece of the donut and puts it in her mouth, letting the sugary glaze melt on her tongue. She turns in her chair to look at Tony's desk - which used to be Gibbs' - and wonders idly how often Kate did this while she was here, turning to look at her boss and to wonder what they were supposed to be, or if there would be a "them". And maybe how often he'd look out the side of his eye to look at her, wondering.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!" *
END
* John Greenleaf Whittier
Story Notes:
Ziva's thoughts on the times Kate is mentioned (post-"Kill Ari")
This was written almost two years ago, near the start of Season 4, from Tony's off line in "Singled Out". Just cleaning out the files on my computer, and I found this completed but never posted. Redefines "you snooze, you lose"....
Some people who helped with the story (maybe not directly, but thanks anyway):
- Mindy, for the discussion we were having at the time about memory and Kate's death
- Sundance, for her Hollis Mann Kate/Gibbs FF, which had inspired me to get this done...that many months ago
- Isa, Tate4ever, for her observation some time ago in Season 3 that Gibbs often did his interviews alone beginning Season 3. I don't know if it still holds true. Haven't seen any of the episodes.
- all those fans who continue to read Kate/Gibbs FF and let us creaky, wheezing old-timers know that people still do read Kate/Gibbs FF, or I just would've let this one get deleted
Author's Chapter Notes:
"He called Ziva Kate yesterday." (Tony, Singled Out) Ziva POV; Kate/Gibbs
Chapter End Notes:
Ziva's thoughts on the times Kate is mentioned (post-"Kill Ari")
This was written almost two years ago, near the start of Season 4, from Tony's off line in "Singled Out". Just cleaning out the files on my computer, and I found this completed but never posted. Redefines "you snooze, you lose"....
Some people who helped with the story (maybe not directly, but thanks anyway):
- Mindy, for the discussion we were having at the time about memory and Kate's death
- Sundance, for her Hollis Mann Kate/Gibbs FF, which had inspired me to get this done...that many months ago
- Isa, Tate4ever, for her observation some time ago in Season 3 that Gibbs often did his interviews alone beginning Season 3. I don't know if it still holds true. Haven't seen any of the episodes.
- all those fans who continue to read Kate/Gibbs FF and let us creaky, wheezing old-timers know that people still do read Kate/Gibbs FF, or I just would've let this one get deleted
This was written almost two years ago, near the start of Season 4, from Tony's off line in "Singled Out". Just cleaning out the files on my computer, and I found this completed but never posted. Redefines "you snooze, you lose"....
Some people who helped with the story (maybe not directly, but thanks anyway):
- Mindy, for the discussion we were having at the time about memory and Kate's death
- Sundance, for her Hollis Mann Kate/Gibbs FF, which had inspired me to get this done...that many months ago
- Isa, Tate4ever, for her observation some time ago in Season 3 that Gibbs often did his interviews alone beginning Season 3. I don't know if it still holds true. Haven't seen any of the episodes.
- all those fans who continue to read Kate/Gibbs FF and let us creaky, wheezing old-timers know that people still do read Kate/Gibbs FF, or I just would've let this one get deleted