Ostracize

Unbeknownst to Ziva, her actions as a traitor had started making the rounds of the NCIS agents. Vance had been having briefings with all team leads in NCIS headquarters to make them aware that she was not to be trusted and slowly it was trickling down to the agents under them and out amongst the rest of the building.

Ziva had never been overly popular with the other NCIS agents as her arrogance had kept everyone at arm's length so she never made any real friends except possibly Abby. However, Ziva was starting to notice that they treated her even worse now. Any time she entered a room, every agent in the room would get up and leave.

If she didn’t know better, she’d think they were purposefully ostracizing her but they couldn’t possibly do that. She was the best there was. They would be stupid to ostracize her and lose out on what she could do for them. Anyway it didn’t matter what they thought of her. It was of no importance. She would still complete her mission and then she would figure out what to do about her father. Their opinion of her would not impact her mission one bit. She didn’t need them.

Gibbs had been against Vance’s plan to inform the masses knowing that it would make it more likely that Ziva would realize she was on to them, but fortunately Ziva’s pride did not seem to let her realize that anybody was on to her. Lost in her own head, Gibbs knew that it would take something big to break through her fantasy world.

He wondered if the plans he’d overheard would be enough to shatter her delusions or if she’d still hang onto them in the face of everything. Tony would probably know more as it seemed that almost everyone had been touched by Tony in some way and they were extremely supportive of him. Even people he probably wouldn’t consider friends seem determined to back him on this.

Gibbs had heard at least some of the plans and he knew there was no way Tony instigated them as they weren’t Tony’s style at all, but he hoped that they would get through to Ziva. He truly had considered her like a daughter at first and the part of him that thought of her like that, still wished for her to realize that what she was doing was wrong and to turn herself around. Although, he held little hope that it would happen after her behavior so far.

He just hoped that this would not make things worse for Tony as Ziva was likely to place the blame for everything on his shoulders since she couldn’t seem to see that there was any part of this that was her fault. The ostracization that the masses were now doing was only the first step into the shallow end of the pool, the plans he had heard were all the way in the deep end of the pool.

Only time would tell, but he hoped it at least helped people feel that some justice had been served as he wasn’t sure that actual justice would prevail in this case because he didn’t think Ziva would ever see that she had done anything wrong.