BLACK ORCHID (4/13), GIBBS/ZIVA (NC-17)

[zabby]

Title: Black Orchid
Author: Victoria (starshines)
Fandom:NCIS
Genre: Het
Pairing:Gibbs/Ziva
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Last Man Standing, this actually occurs post LMS
Summary: Someone's out for Ziva. Will Gibbs be able to find out who before its too late to save Ziva?
Warnings: Reference to rape and torture, steamy love scene
Disclaimer: NCIS, all characters belong to the big D.B. Though I might wish otherwise...
Feedback: Yes, please! Love constructive criticism, just be nice. It's my first.
Special thanks and love to Bree for the beta!

Chapters: Prologue / Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Epilogue


Chapter 3


Impatiently pacing the floor of the forensics lab, Tony awaited the results of the DNA extraction from the blood and hairs he and Agent McGee had discovered where Ziva had been dumped. The crime scene, he corrected. Tony was trying desperately to separate his personal feelings from this case, but he couldn’t. This was Ziva, his work and verbal sparring partner. She was always the warrior, the one the team leaned on. Even Gibbs would lean on her.

“Abby? Do you have any results back? Anything on the blood or the hair samples?”

“Tony, I am only one person. I am working as fast as I can,” Abby stated. She was just as agitated as the rest of the team, worried sick over the Mossad Agent. Though it had taken Abby a bit of time, they were finally friends, more like strange sisters than anything else.

“The results are coming soon, I promise.” Putting her hand on his arm, she added “We’ll find him, Tony. We’ll find whoever did this. We have to. It’s Ziva! Why don’t you ask McGee if he has anything from her cell phone records.”

“McGee!”

“There’s nothing, Boss…I mean, Tony.” McGee winced. He hated when he slipped like that. Tony always bragged over him, about being a Senior Agent, about women. So when Tim blundered like that, Tony always used it to lord over him.

Smirking, Tony replied, “Oh, Boss is just fine, McGeekle. Now what do you mean by nothing? Her cell phone is missing, McGee. There’s got to be something.”

“I mean nothing, Tony.” He put emphasis on the name. Tim was not about to add onto Tony’s enormous ego. “There has been no activity since the email she sent to the director.” Having an idea, he swiveled around in the chair towards the other agent.

“Tony. Do you think Ziva even sent that email? I mean, that doesn’t seem like something she would do. Abby? Yes. Me. Yes? But Ziva? Normally, she would just call into the director, send in the forms via a mail carrier or just the normal mail. Could it have been the man who took her?”

Tapping his pen against his chin, Agent DiNozzo considered his idea. “That actually sounds like a good notion, Probie. We should go to her apartment, search for evidence of an invasion, her computer for clues.”

“Go, guys. Find me something to get this scum with. We need to protect Ziva. We need to find who did this to her,” Abby declared.

“We will, Abbs,” Tony assured her. “We will. Then we’ll give him to Gibbs.”
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He came out from behind Abby’s second computer. Going through the back set of sliding glasses doors, he wiped his hands on a rag. Overhearing the last part of the conversation, he had to hold back a giggle.

They still have no idea it’s me, he thought with glee. Though he enjoyed this cat-and-mouse game between him and the rest of the NCIS team, he couldn’t wait to get Ziva back home where she belonged. It hasn’t even been a day, and I ache for her already. I will have you home soon, my treasure.

“Ma’am?” he asked politely, trying to show his good manners.

“Not ma’am, Special Agent. Just Abby,” she responded.

“Sorry, ma…Abby. Your computer is all set up, updated with the new agency software. You should have no problem connecting with everyone in the building.”

“Thanks!” she exclaimed. “I appreciate it,” she ended before turning back around to her friends.

Smiling to himself, he walked out of the lab, practically skipping with his happiness. And so, the game continues.

As the door of the elevator started to close, he looked up, finally allowing his smile to show and a tune to come as a whistle.

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When he returned to the exam room, a nurse walking by told Gibbs that the woman inside had been admitted and moved to a different floor. Quickly finding out her new room, he headed up in the elevator to find her. When the doors slid open, he moved towards the hall her room was in, the heels of his shoes clicking loudly on the linoleum floor. The quiet of this wing was a somber counterpoint to the loud emergency room he had just left.

The doctor was inside talking with Ziva, discussing her current situation and the treatment they were going to be following. Taking a deep breath, Gibbs waited outside of the hospital room, giving them some privacy. Though he tried to prevent eavesdropping, he could not help but overhear their conversation. However, nothing Ziva was saying was loud enough for him to hear. Taking note of the doctor’s concerns and follow-up treatment and appointments needed, Gibbs sought to remember what was going to be required to ensure her rapid and thorough recovery.

As the doctor changed to asking her questions about what had happened to her, questions she wasn’t asking, Gibbs closed his eyes and sought strength from the gut everyone else seemed to rely on for answers. He needed those answers now. Would she still be the assassin warrior Abby had nicknamed her? Would she still have the strength to fight through this? Or had the bastard broken her?

Hearing the doctor say farewell to his patient, Gibbs opened his eyes, prepared for the worse, but still hoping for the best. Nodding a greeting to the man coming out of the room, Gibbs moved sideways and proceeding into the room.

She was laying on the bed, not moving, hardly breathing. Staring at the ceiling, she failed to even acknowledge his presence. Her hair was fanned out against the pillow, a stark black contrast to the white bedding beneath and around her.

Walking next to the bed, Gibbs gently said her name. “Ziva?”

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She lay on the stiff hospital bed, staring at the ceiling. Though the doctor had come in to discuss her situation, Ziva had hardly paid attention. She was desperately wracking her brain, trying to remember something new, something to help the investigation. But her mind was still the endless black ocean, undulating back and forth, showing nothing but brief glimpses of light; the same glimpses she had seen with Ducky.

Gibbs will want to know what happened. He will want to know anything and everything I can tell him. But what can I tell him? Nothing. Nothing to help.

Sighing, Ziva finally allowed herself to blink. The blankness of her mind was disturbing, disheartening. For one so used to being in control, her lack of memory made her feel like she was breaking apart at the edges. She needed to pull the parts of herself together, but she did not know how.

Hearing her name suddenly spoken caused a few little bits to come together. She allowed her head to move from the still position she had held it in to the location of the voice. Wincing slightly at the stiffness she encountered, she answered in her roughened voice.

“Gibbs. You are still here.”

“Of course I am, Ziva. I needed to make sure you are going to be alright.”

Sighing, she returned to her observation of the ceiling. “’All right’ is a word subject to interpretation. I will live.”

Making a comment on her study of what was above her, she said “Did you know that there 68 tiles on this ceiling?”

Pulling up a chair next to the bed, Gibbs sat down next to her. “Ziva?” When she did not look at him, he put his hand on hers. “Ziva look at me.”

As she finally turned her gaze to his, he slipped his hand underneath hers. Feeling the coldness of her skin, Gibbs pulled it towards him, holding it to his chest. She stared at him with blank, hollow eyes, not even remembering to blink. The fire, so close to her surface, was banked and hidden away. The vacancy alone frightened him more than the injuries she sustained. He knew better than most that the scars of the mind were more damaging and healed slower than the injuries of the body.

“Ziva, it’s me. It’s Gibbs. You and I, we’ve gone through so much together. Let me help you with this. Let me help you like you helped me.”

Finally, her lids fluttered a few times, a sign of her responding. Quietly, she began to speak. “I do not know how to let you help me, Gibbs.”

Closing her eyes, she faced her head upwards again. Only then did she reopen. A single tear fell down her cheek, leaving a glistening trail in its wake.

“I am afraid. Afraid of what I do not remember. Afraid to remember what is hidden from me. What happened to me? Where have I been? Why did no one miss me?”

Every word uttered from the normally stoic woman was a dagger to his gut. The blame for this settled across his shoulders, a weight he had carried before. Reaching out with his other hand, he cupped her cheek, using his thumb to wipe at her trail of tears.

“Ziva, I am so sorry that I failed you. I should have pushed when the director told me about your email requesting leave. I should have pursued when you didn’t contact any of us, not even Abby. I have always trusted my gut, Ziva, and I let it fail you. You are part of my team, a friend, someone I…care about. I should have protected you, and I failed. Ziva, I am so sorry.”

The warmth of his hand invaded the cold spaces she was trying to hide from. More pieces of her unraveled soul began to shudder into place. Turning into his hand, Ziva sought the warmth that did not threaten, the peace to her tortured body. “I thought that one of your rules was to never apologize.”

As he started to object, she stopped him. “Gibbs, this is not your fault. Nothing you did or did not do could have changed what happened to me. Of that, I am certain. He would not have stopped the kidnapping, nor would he have let me go any sooner.”

Her lashes shimmering with the rest of her unshed tears, she finally spoke of the only true weakness of her body and her soul. “I need you, Gibbs. I need you to tell me everything is going to be okay, that you will find the person who did this. I need your strength now, or I do not know if I can get through this. I need you, Gibbs.”

Leaning in, he kissed her forehead, a soft meeting of his lips with her skin. “You have me, Ziva. I’m here.”

Caressing her hair with one hand, and clutching her hand to his body with the other, he tried to give her comfort, to share his strength. “You are going to be okay, Ziva. Your body will heal. And I will, we all will, help your mind and soul to heal as well. And I promise you, Ziva, I will catch the bastard who dared to harm you. And he will pay. Hurt for hurt, pain for pain, he will pay.”

She closed her eyes with his speech, feeling a semblance of harmony enter her soul. Gibbs will protect me now. I will be safe with him. As his hand stroked her hair, words and sentences of their conversation started to drift through her mind.

Her eyelids snapping open, she asked “What was that you said about an email?”