Stargate Atlantis/NCIS: Wires Crossed

Title: Wires Crossed
Summary: In a tumultuous turn of events, John Sheppard finds himself wondering why the Asgard are on this planet and why his supposed dead friend is up in space, too.
Fandoms: Stargate Atlantis, NCIS
Characters: Ziva David, John Sheppard
Rating: PG
Word count: 3188 words
Cheerleader: Meeko. I wanted to write something and she gave me this pairing and it uh… I guess we’re getting back into this?
Notes: This takes place after the series finale of Stargate Atlantis, and after Ziva leaves NCIS, but before her brief return in the later seasons.

Written for Tropetember on tumblr.

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Different day, same shit, John Sheppard thought as he found himself stranded on an unfamiliar planet without getting in touch with any of his team, or Atlantis. Recently, it was more of a miracle if the mission went off without a hitch, but somehow, Atlantis’ favourite Botanist Dr. Parrish had managed to piss off the universe or something and every mission ended up with at least one of the team lost, only to show up a few days later worse for wear.

And to be honest, Sheppard was not in the mood to spend days in the infirmary again.

He didn’t have to be a scientist though to know that there was a bad storm coming, and he had to find shelter. Fast. It was likely the storm that had cut him off from all communication with his team, and all he needed to do was survive the storm and then see if he could get a pickup.

It was likely, but not a given. This new Galaxy they were in, perched on the edge of Pegasus, was a harsh and unforgiving one with new dangers providing higher stakes than they had encountered before.

Sheppard found a cave hidden behind some bushes, they were always behind bushes when you were in a freaking forest, and it was surprisingly dry. He used the flashlight on his P90 to get his bearings and to check for any critters, but much to his surprise, there was nothing special about this cave. No cobwebs, no droppings, no markings, nothing.

Which, in itself, was special.

Potentially dangerous.

As the sky unleashed its fury outside the cave, the thunder coming down and shaking the ground, the earth underneath him opened up and he got swallowed up by it.

He was falling through a void, accelerating every second. The lights flashing by were not any different than the event horizon and the lights of a stargate, but this journey was uncontrolled and he had definitely not stepped through a stargate. Eventually, the plummeting came to a full stop and Sheppard collided with the solid ground, the force expelling air from his lungs.

“Uh, now what?” he groaned as he sat up and rubbed his neck, looking around, shining his P90 flashlight in the area, casting its beam into the shadows. Sheppard once again found himself in a cave, with peculiar symbols and drawings etched into the stone walls. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn they were Norse runes.

But what if they were Norse runes? What were the Asgard doing here? Wherever here was?

He eventually found his way out of the cave, and through the trees he could see a small settlement nearby. It was dark, and not many people were out in the street, but maybe that was a good thing because the settlement looked a lot like a human village, complete with historic buildings and a town square and he was definitely not inconspicuous with his submachine gun, his uniform and all the gear he had on him.

Sheppard hid his gun as well as he could, making use of the darkness and walked around the town square. He noticed a restaurant called the Mystic Grill, a hardware store carrying the name Mystic Falls, same with the apothecary, a mall, a bookstore, a flower shop… was he in a place called Mystic Falls?

He found an old news paper laying on one of the benches in the town square, the Mystic Falls Gazette, and it mentioned some small town news, mentioned Virginia and some recent news from the US.

There was no way that he had landed himself back on Earth.

The unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked sliced through the air, causing him to freeze in his tracks. The female voice that followed, initially mistaken for Arabic, quickly revealed itself as Hebrew, and it didn’t sound too nice. “I would love to answer you but I have no idea what you just said,” he said as he dropped the newspaper and put his hands up in surrender.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” the woman sounded exasperated, the tension evident in her voice. Sheppard could hear the gun go back on safety before he was being spun around. “Of course it’s you who finds me.”

To say that Sheppard was surprised, was an understatement, and all he could do was look at the woman with his mouth open, completely at a loss for words. This woman, by all accounts, was supposed to be dead, and she shouldn’t be out in space on a planet. “Huh?”

“Who sent you? Was it Gibbs? Tony?” the woman holstered her gun but reached for his ear and pulled him along with her. “Abby?”

“Ouch! No!” Sheppard protested as he was being pulled into a dark alleyway like a petulant child. “Can you tell me what you’re doing alive and in space?”

“Huh?” the woman stopped dragging him and now it was her turn to look at him, dumbfounded. For a moment she considered his words before hitting him on the arm. “We’re in Mystic Falls, Virginia. Earth,” she responded and shrugged. “I think being up there with you is a better hiding spot though…”

Sheppard rubbed his arm as he stared at her. She looked amazing for a dead person. “Why aren’t you dead?” It was out before he knew it. “Not that I’m not happy to see you alive and well, but Ziva, you died three years ago.”

“Well, if that little thing even convinced you…” she said as a matter of factly and then shrugged. “I don’t know, John, I thought better of you.”

“Oh, don’t you start. I looked into your death personally with all the technology we have at our disposal. There was no trace.”

“And that should have been a clue,” Ziva pointed out. “I have been looking for those responsible since it happened.” She pushed him against the nearest wall. “But I swear, if you tell a soul that you’ve seen me here, so close to everyone, I will kill you, John Sheppard.”

“You have a lot to answer for.”

“Perhaps,” Ziva said with half a shrug, keeping Sheppard pushed against the wall. “But I have my reasons and those reasons are known to Tony.”

Sheppard gently cupped Ziva’s face and smiled at her the moment that he detected a chink in her emotional armor. “I’m glad you’re not dead, Ziva, but if you’re in trouble, you should have reached out to me,” he said softly.

She turned her face away from him and withdrew from his touch as she took a step back. Ziva took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t want you to die. This is my battle.”

“My duty is up in space, Ziva,” Sheppard retorted, slightly frustrated. “I deal with space vampires, zombies and all sorts of cosmic threats. Our botanist pissed off the universe and everytime we go out, we risk dying even more,” he berated her. “So don’t use the excuse that you don’t want other people to get killed because of your battle.”

She grumbled and grabbed him by the sleeve as she pulled him along to her temporary residence. “I’m heavily relying on my network of people to plan what I’m going to do next,” Ziva told him. “Occasionally I find Tony and Tali and watch them from afar, but never too long.”

“What is going on, Ziva? Can I help in any way?”

“No. You need to get off the streets,” she motioned at his outfit. “And then, you’re going to stay the night, in the morning you can phone up your friends to come and pick you up, after I leave.”

“If you’re really in danger, you could come with?”

“Not without Tony and Tali,” she countered. “And I will not allow my daughter to grow up on a– space station.”

“Atlantis is more than that, you’ve been there.”

“I know, and I don’t want Tali to grow up there. She’s safe, with Tony,” she opened the door to her small home and locked it with several locks. “Sorry, I don’t have a bed,” Ziva motioned towards the couch that was strategically set up to see all entry points and corners of the home.

Sheppard walked a circuit around the room, peering out the windows through the curtains and glanced over at her. “Maybe you should tell me what exactly is going on,” he eventually said, realizing that he was dealing with a Ziva who was scared and wanting to protect what was hers. It was unlike her to be scared.

“I don’t need your help,” she insisted as she watched him.

“I know, but maybe it will help if you could talk to a friend who lives mostly up there,” he pointed to the sky as he sat down next to the coffee table and unclipped his gun, placing it on the table. The next thing he lost was his vest. “And you know I don’t talk to your friends much, I’m pretty sure Gibbs still wants to shoot me for that time where I did take you to my home without telling him and you returning with a new scar.”

A small smile appeared on Ziva’s face as she sat down on the couch, remembering the event fondly. “Did it bother you learning that Tony and I…”

He let out a breath. “Of course, but I also wasn’t under the assumption that you and I would last. Tony was always going to be your end game, so as long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“Good, because I thought—”

“But you’re not happy,” Sheppard pointed out and scooted up a little so he was closer to her, still sitting on the floor. “And I promise, I will not help, but maybe it helps to off load your burden a little. I could offer a new perspective on whatever you’re doing.”

Ziva knew that her old friend made sense, but she could feel the fear in her heart. The only thing she knew for certain was that the farmhouse explosion should have claimed both hers and her daughter’s lives. Only through divine intervention did she manage to escape with Tali before that actually happened.

And while she was far from being happy, at the moment, she held on to the hope that it would return once she discovered the mystery behind the threat against her life. “I wish I could, John,” she confessed. “But I have gone over everything found on the scene. Every rapport, every piece of evidence from all agencies involved.”

“Even the SGC?”

“No, of course not, I don’t have access to that, nor do I have friends who—”

“Wrong,” he interjected. “I am still your friend, and you know how to reach me. So, give me your laptop,” he requested, extending his hand to receive what he asked for “Knowing you, your laptop is armed to the teeth and secure to make a connection with.”

“Really? You’re going to give me access to classified government material, the freedom to snoop around and even see if there are aliens at Area 51?”

“There are no aliens at Area 51, Ziva,” he responded with a playful eye roll. “I’m going to download the file and send it to you, before logging out.”

“I may have a keylogger on my laptop, you never know,” she quipped with a smile as she produced her laptop from underneath one of the couch cushions. “I may have picked up a trick or two from McGee.”

“And I’ll be back on duty tomorrow where I can change my password,” he pointed out. “It will be fine.”

With that, Ziva handed him the laptop, and he began the process of accessing the information that Ziva could use to shed more light on the mysterious event of her nearly losing her life. Ziva, meanwhile, went over to the kitchen to make some tea for the both of them.

“Have you had any contact with a friend during these last few years?” he asked as he logged into the secure server and went looking for the reports they had on the explosion. “Aside from texting Tony?”

“No.”

“Aren’t you lonely?”

“It’s worth it,” she replied as she set out two mugs and put tea bags in them. “Because in the end, everyone will be safe.”

“You don’t have to do this on your own, you know,” he repeated, but he also knew that if Ziva had an idea in her head that it was difficult to take her off of it. He glanced back at the laptop, then added with a nonchalant shrug, “But alright, it appears you’re on the hunt for a woman.”

“Oh?” Ziva carefully poured hot water into the mugs before carrying them to the table. “How do you figure? All the evidence yielded nothing, no DNA.”

“True,” he said as he showed her the information. “Don’t worry, I’m in the process of copying this to your hard drive. We have technology capable of detecting energy signatures, capturing scents, or essentially providing a snapshot of past events. It’s not foolproof,” Sheppard explained as he watched her take a seat beside him, “but if this represents you and Tali,” he gestured to faint purple streaks emanating from the cabin, not very distinct but still discernible, “then this might be the person you’re after. The color has faded with time, but…”

“That even looks like a woman,” Ziva said surprised, almost crawling into John’s lap as she looked at the picture closer. “I mean, if you squint.”

“Yes. I mean, all the information is in the file. Like you said, we didn’t find anything of substance, and without a DNA signature it’s hard to determine who this person was.”

“But at least it narrows down the list of suspects!” Ziva’s excitement bubbled over, and she impulsively grasped John’s face with both hands, planting a kiss on his lips before realizing her actions and hastily pulling away. “My apologies.”

Sheppard couldn’t help but to smile at her enthusiasm and the brief moment where the walls she put up came down. “Don’t worry about it,” and she shouldn’t. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t done it before, although now things were slightly different with her having chosen Tony and having a child with him. “I just hope all of this helps.”

Ziva played with the tea bag in her mug before discarding the tea bag. “I shall dive into this tomorrow after I found a new place to stay.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“I’m most definitely going to leave because of your pick up,” she pointed out, not looking up from her mug, a bit of red on her cheeks. “Drink you tea, have a shower if you’d like. Take the couch, I’ll take the floor.”

“I’ll take the floor,” he said as he made sure to remove all evidence of him having been on Ziva’s laptop.

Ziva let out a frustrated whine. “John Sheppard, you are impossible.”

“No, you are,” he winked at her before closing the laptop and drinking his tea. “Come on, you’ve missed this, some normal, human interaction.”

She opened her mouth to say something back, but opted against it and changed the subject instead. “If you were up … there, how come did you end up… here, of all places?”

“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest,” he said, propping himself up on his hands and leaning back slightly. “Possibly Asgard involvement; there were some Norse-looking drawings in that cave.”

“Ah,” Ziva responded, taking a sip of her tea. “I do believe this town has a history of Viking settlers.”

“Damn,” he muttered.

“Rule 39, though,” Ziva pointed out. “Maybe it’s something your people can look into.”

Sheppard thought for a moment, the rules. Gibbs’ rules. Ziva had made him memorize them and whenever there was an update, she had emailed him with the new numbers and rules. Something about coincidences. That there weren’t any. “Oh, they will after I give them my after-action report, especially considering this hasn’t happened before to my knowledge, and why here, now, and all that jazz,” he nonchalantly waved his hand in the air.

“You’re not remotely interested?”

“Who do you think is going to take a science expedition back to where I fell through the universe and hope that nobody else is going to fall through the floor and end up here?” Sheppard said with half a chuckle. “It’ll be fine. It’s not… life threatening like your situation is.”

“I’ll be fine, like you,” Ziva smiled at him, rose to her feet and settled on the couch, knowing that John didn’t need blankets, much like herself. “Good night, John.”

“Night, Ziva,” he replied, returning her smile. They shared a silent understanding that neither of them would likely get any sleep tonight, and Ziva was probably going to make her exit as soon as he closed his eyes.

“What?”

“We both know we won’t be sleeping.”

She propped herself up on her arm and lazily smiled. “What are you suggesting?”

Sheppard shrugged.

Silence settled between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had seen their fair share of chaos and had learned to appreciate the moments of calm, even if they were in the most unusual of circumstances.

As the hours ticked by, they continued to talk and shared stories. The bond between them grew stronger, a reassuring constant in a world where everything else was uncertain. And even though sleep eluded them, the night was not entirely lost.

Sheppard hadn’t given up on Ziva, knowing her quite well. Her transition from the couch to the floor had been a quiet and unspoken invitation, one that he readily accepted. Carefully, he adjusted his position to make her more comfortable, cradling her in his arms as she settled in.

Ziva’s breathing soon became steady and deep, a clear indication of her exhaustion. Sheppard didn’t dare to move, not wanting to disturb her fragile slumber. He knew that she had likely gone without sleep for a very long time, and this moment of rest was a gift for her and he didn’t want to ruin it.

Ziva wasn’t his. She was never his, despite them having some fun in the past. They were good friends and he was doing her a favor by giving her the comfort she needed. He wasn’t supposed to be here, but he was, and Ziva was happily snoring in his arms.

That being said, she was most likely going to beat him up when she woke up later, but for now, the little scared ninja could feel some safety and not so alone.

The following morning when Sheppard woke up, Ziva wasn’t there anymore. Her belongings, gone, except for a cellphone that had been wiped clean, but in the notes of the phone he found a note to him saying ‘thank you’.

Smiling, Sheppard dialed the number of General O’Neill and requested a pick up from Mystic Falls.

Oh boy, this was going to be one long debrief.