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When Kate Todd decides to allow her heart to win out, nothing can hold her back. She cares deep and hard, with an intensity that is just as fierce as any other determination. It is a character flaw that has gotten Kate and her team in trouble now and then, but one that Ziva admires nonetheless.
Kate was the one with hesitations from the start, but who dove in to their relationship with her heart on her sleeve and in Ziva’s hands, while Ziva is the one who carefully takes each step forward. Ziva knows too well that everything given to you in this life is temporary – like Talia, like her father’s love, like Gibbs and Ari – and she keeps her feet planted firmly on the ground so she is ready for when the other shoe is inevitably going to drop.
She loves Kate, is afraid of that love, and she fights for it with each touch of Kate’s skin, each sound out of Kate’s mouth. She memorizes the curves of Kate’s body, tracing them with light fingers as Kate sleeps naked in her bed. Learns the exact song of Kate’s pulse points, the exact rhythm of the beats and how they flutter in her neck and under her chest.
Ziva knows too well that they are two women who should have never gotten the opportunity to get here. Knows that she could never say that everything they went through to get this point was worth it – knows that Kate would never sacrifice Gibbs a second time around for this, knows that she would have done everything in her power to save Ari before he went too far.
Ziva stays awake at night thinking about how if second chances were real, they would never be.
Still, Kate, with her morals and big open heart, is here and hers now. Sometimes Ziva feels unworthy of Kate’s affection, wonders how disappointed Kate would be if she knew all of Ziva’s past – all of the gray area decisions she’s made in her lifetime that would go against everything Kate’s wired to believe.
But when she hovers over Kate’s body, the star around her neck dangling and getting twisted up with the cross around Kate’s, with Kate’s body pushing up into her own and dark eyes that shine with warmth and desire, Ziva believes that maybe she can have faith in something again. That maybe she can become worthy. That maybe Kate could see her that way.
Nevertheless, everything in life – at least in Ziva’s – is temporary. She just never assumed the reminder would come by way of an unfinished boat.
“He wanted you to have it.”
Kate looks as though she could either cry or laugh with any tip of the scale. “Is this some sort of joke? One last obnoxious move to confuse the hell out of me? What the hell am I supposed to do with that monstrosity that, by the way, is basically stuck in his basement?”
Ziva knew the moment the man introduced himself as Gibbs’ lawyer that she should stay silent but steady at her desk, neither hovering nor getting involved but keeping her presence close for Kate to lean on. She keeps her eyes on her paperwork, but her ears on her lover, listening for cues in Kate’s voice that only she can read that might say help me or I need you or even piss off I’m Special Agent Caitlin Todd and I don’t need a thing.
Kate is stiff as she signs the paperwork that gives her the right to the “unfinished monstrosity” as she mutters “bastard” under her breath in that warm tone that says she means the opposite. Tony and Tim watch the ordeal with concern in their eyes – they are first and foremost a family, secondly a team – but the lawyer leaves and Kate sits at her desk and when she feels their eyes on her, she snaps. “Don’t you all have something more important to do than stare at me?”
They get back to their own work, because Ziva never worked with Gibbs, but she hears the talk of how Kate filled his shoes and then some. She can be hard to work with, can even sometimes be an outright tough bitch, but she is a strong leader who cares for her team and gets the job done and they all respect her for it.
Everything is temporary and Ziva can feel something shift and settle back down into a different place, but she’s the only one who does not take her eyes off of Kate, who does not let the snap in Kate’s voice give her pause. Tony will sometimes tease, but only Ziva matches Kate’s fire for fire, because Kate is not invincible and no one knows that better than Ziva, and sometimes someone needs to call her out on her shit.
So when Kate finally looks back up, her eyes meet Ziva’s that never back down. They don’t need words to have the conversation that says are you okay? with the response I will need you later.
Ziva should have known that later meant in a basement she’s only been in once, where she shot her brother and stood broken with Kate. In a basement where everything changed once, and she can feel the potential for change again.
A text from Tony: I can be there in five if she needs. Or if you get bored since Gibbs lived like a squatter.
A missed call and voicemail from Abby: Hey! McGee told me you’re at Gibbs’ with Kate. I miss him so much. Give her a hug from me. Love you both, call me later.
Ziva does not respond to either.
Ziva is in no way a tall nor big woman, but sometimes Kate looks so small. She stands at the center of the basement, big wooden frame of a half-built boat standing intimidatingly high before her. It is always strange in these moments to see Kate like that, to realize how tiny and vulnerable she can be. Ziva sees Kate as nothing but strong and capable every single day, sees the American woman who could give any Mossad man a run for their money.
Nothing – absolutely nothing – is too terrifying for Special Agent Caitlin Todd.
Kate’s hand hovers in the air, reaching out but not touching his boat. Ziva hovers by the stairs, not intruding nor glancing anywhere near the spot Ari died. She could almost laugh at the thought that this basement, this lonely man’s attempt at distraction by way of hand tools and wood, seems to haunt and frighten them both.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
Kate has been quiet for so long, Ziva almost doesn’t realize when she speaks.
“I mean, why would he leave this to me?”
He loved you, is what Ziva thinks. Who wouldn’t? “It was important to him, yes? Perhaps so were you.”
“Or maybe he just liked to get me fired up. God, he was always testing me. Pushing me.” Kate’s voice reaches high with a tinge of desperation. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
The answer seems obvious to Ziva. So many things in this life go unfinished. Ziva can barely comprehend something as solid as this boat. She moves from the stairs to stand behind Kate, the warmth and tension of Kate’s body a comfort in the cold room. “You finish it, Kate.”
Kate turns slightly, and her eyes are huge in her head with the shimmer of her tears. She leans back into Ziva, who is there to support her weight. She runs her fingers up and down Kate’s arms, teasing goosebumps out of her skin. “I wish you could have known him. He was a bastard, but God, I loved him for it.”
Ziva laughs, her chuckle buried in Kate’s neck. “If he had lived…I would not have ever met him, Kate. I would not be here. The only way for him and me to coexist would have been for Ari to strike someone else. For Ari to prove that he is a betrayal to both our countries.” Ziva lifts a finger to Kate’s chin, needing to look in her eyes. Needing Kate to understand what she has grown to know for sure in the weeks that followed Gibbs and Ari’s deaths: If it was not Gibbs, it would have been Kate. “That is not a risk I am willing to so much as imagine.”
Kate breathes a kiss onto Ziva’s jaw. “I would have, I should have, risked my life that harder that night. Especially because I know Gibbs would have taken care of you. I feel confident that I’d have left you in good hands. The team would still love you.”
“But I would not get to love you.”
And maybe she’s never said it out loud before. Maybe Kate had no idea her feelings ran so deep – that this small sassy but tough Catholic American girl could possibly break through the ice around this broken Israeli Mossad trained Agent’s heart. But the look on Kate’s face, the shimmery wide-eyed wonder and hope in those big brown eyes makes Ziva feel like for once, maybe she won something, maybe even deserves it.
If she could have one thing, just one permanent thing in her life, she would choose this. This look, this feeling, of Kate’s face – the warm wet kiss she presses to Ziva’s cheek.
Kate settles back into Ziva’s embrace, both of them focusing on the wooden monstrosity that now belongs to them. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Ziva doesn’t know what Kate means by this, knows it could mean so much considering where they are and how they got there. She goes for simplistic: “You just start.”
“But how?”
“I will help you.”
“Build a boat? Do you even know how?”
“No. But, as you already know, I am very good with my hands.”
Ziva cherishes the blush that works its way up Kate’s necks, staining her cheeks and ears pink. Just one more testament of how they should not mesh, but how much Ziva enjoys the differences anyway.
Kate turns around in Ziva’s arms, burrowing her face into Ziva’s shirt. She tugs at a wild curl that fell out from Ziva’s ponytail and twists it around her fingers, something Kate has done since the first night they tumbled into an intimate embrace. “I love you too, you know.”
The words are muffled, and Ziva tenses.
This is news.
Kate looks up, and Ziva doesn’t think she would need to be a trained profiler to see the gobsmacked reaction her words have prompted. There is a question in Kate’s eyes, and Ziva falls back on old truths: “Nothing has ever been permanent. I do not know how to keep you.”
Kate bites her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth. “I thought I would have Gibbs in my life forever. Maybe not how I wanted him to be, but there. His strength, his loyalty. His arrogance and stupid smug smile.” She gestures wildly behind her. “Instead, I have this. And you. And I love you, and I loved him, and I know there was a time when you loved Ari.”
“Life is full of losses.”
“And we can drown in them, right? Like I could have drowned in my grief for Gibbs. Or right now, with this stupid boat. I thought… God, I thought I could have passed out in the middle of the bullpen this afternoon with his lawyer. I thought this would be…impossible to face.”
“Is it?”
Kate looks at the boat. Looks at Ziva. Looks back at the boat. She bites her lip again, though this time to keep from smiling. It doesn’t work, and Ziva wants to keep that dimple on her face forever. “It’s ridiculous, but all I can think about right now is how bad we’re going to be when we get this thing in the water.”
“Forget the grief, we may very well drown for real.”
Kate laughs, full and beautiful, and Ziva could cry at the sound of it. Because she was right, things are shifting and altering, and everything is temporary – but perhaps, this time, it can change into something good. Into something better.
“I do have one serious concern, though.”
Kate looks up at Ziva.
“How exactly did he expect us to get it out of his basement?”
Kate laughs again, and if Gibbs and his boat is the reason for this feeling, for them voicing their love and for Ziva’s decision – right now – to hold onto this, to Kate, as long and as permanently as she possibly can… well, he must approve, yes? He must be okay with Ziva, with Kate and his boat and Ari and all of it.
And if he’s not? Well, Ziva expects they’ll sink when they finally get it in the water. It’s a chance she decides she’s willing to take.
The way that Kate is holding her is so tight, the necklaces of their faiths are going to get tangled to one another and become nearly impossible to separate.
Oddly, that seems perfectly okay.