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espressomorning: "Nothing Easy, Something Good" - PG-13
Aug. 21st, 2010 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ncisficathonWRITTEN FOR: espressomorning
PROMPT: Abby, Gibbs, and/or Ducky’s POV on Tony/Ziva (HET) post-Aaliyah and into Season 7 (Ziva's return)
TITLE: Nothing Easy, Something Good
AUTHOR: Tielan
SUMMARY: Love and betrayal are common themes of the men in Ziva's life: father, brother, lover. That won't be the case at NCIS.
ARCHIVE: Yes
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: het, friendship, UST, character study, relationship study.
PAIRING: Tony/Ziva (sort of, ish, UST thingamawhatsit)
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, belong to CBS and Belisarius productions, etc. Making no money, don't shoot my bank account!
NOTES: Right, so, this kicked my ass up until the last week of this ficathon and it's been annoying me greatly - what angle to take, what story to tell. Plus, I realised last night, it completely fails the Bedchel test. Bugger! There was going to be this whole section where Abby and Ziva have dinner. But that will have to be another fic, because it doesn't fit the framework of this one. And I have to work Abby out. Ziva I can do; Abby is new ground. Also,espressomorning? I hope you don't mind Tim and Vance, because I put them in, even though you didn't specify them!
Nothing Easy, Something Good
There is nothing simple about Ziva David.
Gibbs knew this the day he met her - Mossad does not breed innocents - but he had the proof when she executed Ari. Whether she did it for her father, or she did it for him no longer matters. They've squared that away. She still killed her brother - someone she loved; someone who betrayed her and everything she stood for.
Love and betrayal are common themes of the men in Ziva's life: father, brother, lover.
--
You're damaged goods. How damaged is yet to be determined.
Leon Vance keeps an eye on the 'newest' member of Gibbs' team. Not just for Gibbs' sake, or even because he needs to be mindful of NCIS and its functions, or because Eli David is still hopping mad that Gibbs has 'stolen' his daughter, but because he's grown fond of Ziva, inasmuch as a man in his position is allowed to grow fond of one of his agents.
They're his agents.
In the bullpen below, there's the sound of paper scrunching as DiNozzo tears a sheet of paper off a notepad, balls it up, and pitches it at the desk across from him.
Her hand rears like a snake, plucking the crumpled wad from the air. "Surely it would be more convenient to simply say your message across the desk, Tony?"
"But it's always more fun passing notes."
A frown creases her brow. "I thought that passing notes was done with subtlety. This," she brandishes the paper ball, "is not subtle."
"But it's fun. And you haven't read it yet."
From his bird's eye view, Leon can just see the expression on Ziva's face, the not-quite-roll of her eyes as she opens out the note and flattens it on top of her paperwork to read it. Her mouth twitches in the faint hint of a smile.
"You could have sent an email."
"I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, Ziva."
"As witnessed by your inability to work any kind of technology." She crumples the note back up into its ball and turns her attention back to her work. A model of dedication and duty - with the hint of a smile playing at her lips. A smile her partner can't see from behind his own screen, and the absence of response seems to annoy him.
"Well?"
"I am emailing you, Tony."
"You could just scribble it down and send it back."
"I could."
Will this be a problem? Yes and no. While agents aren't forbidden to enter into intimate personal relationships with each other, it's generally frowned upon. The reasoning being that you'll risk your life for a lover in ways you wouldn't for a partner. Which, Leon finds, isn't always the case. He loves Jackie and his kids, but he's worked with men and women that he'd kill or be killed for.
Tony DiNozzo was willing to kill and be killed when he thought Ziva David was dead in Somalia. Gibbs was willing to give him enough rope to plan what was both revenge and retribution both. And McGee went, too - and not just because the rest of Field Team Gibbs was going.
Then again, Leon reflects as Ziva types neatly into her computer, he was willing to lend his authority to the strike on Saleem's Somalian training camp. And although his official justification only mentioned Mossad's infiltration attempt in passing, he had spent more than a few moments looking through an NCIS file that chronicled three years in this office and many months of co-operative work before that, and regretting her loss.
DiNozzo's computer beeps to indicate incoming mail, and he turns to look at the screen.
Her hand pitches the paper ball back at Tony - hard and true through the air...
It's snatched up as Gibbs walks through the bullpen. "Are you having fun? DiNozzo!"
They jump to attention - DiNozzo more than David.
"Boss, I was just about to cross-check the guest list for the party with Hanson's list."
"Then hurry up and get onto it." Gibbs turns and drops the crumpled ball on the desk. Then he lays his hands down on Ziva's desk, palms flat, leaning into her space in the way that he does to intimidate his underlings. "Are you passing notes, Ziva?"
"Of course not. Passing notes requires subtlety, tact. I, as you and others have observed so often, have neither."
She says it unsmiling, apparently in all seriousness, and Leon can't see Gibbs' expression from where the man is, but a grin breaks across his own face. Chutzpah is what Mossad might call it - impertinence, intolerable behaviour towards someone who should be shown due respect - but chutzpah is what it is here in America - admirable audacity.
Gibbs gives her a long stare, then lifts his hands from her desk and goes to his own, a faint smile ghosting about his lips as he glances up at Leon.
They exchange the faintest of nods.
Leon knows that some things will never be the same for Ziva after Somalia. But he's glad to see that other things are returning.
--
There's nothing weak about Ziva.
Tim knew it the day he stumbled out of scrubby undergrowth and found the newly assigned Mossad Liaison Officer kneeling in the grass with three dead people around her. That day, admiration mixed with a little fear - soon to be lost in affection as the newest addition to their team showed herself capable and intelligent and curious. She learned fast, shot true, and kept Tony on his toes in the same way Kate had.
Well, sort in the same way.
--
Abby scrambles into the chair McGee vacated in the van, pulling on the headset he discarded. It gives her a thrill to be out here, in the middle of an undercover op. She doesn't usually get to monitor these situations unless it's down to the wire, and it's quite exciting.
She spins happily around on the chair, and flips the switch that will give her audio to Ziva and Tony's conversation inside the house.
"I'm warning you, Ziva, don't mock the classics!"
"I am only saying that I have seen this before and I did not like it the first time. Give me the remote--"
Abby grins at the sound of scuffles. Tony's grunts and yelps, a hoarse shriek from Ziva, and then triumph. They're so cute when they're tussling over something, like a pair of puppies. And it's good to hear Ziva laugh like that. She's been strange since they brought her back from Somalia. Which she should be, since she was there for months before Tony started moving everything to go after Saleem.
She hasn't asked Ziva what happened in Somalia; it's not something Abby thinks she wants to hear, although that would be less important if Ziva wanted to tell her. But Ziva is Ziva; she doesn't wear her emotions on her sleeve.
"Are you going to let me up now?"
"No," Ziva says as the noises of the background change to another channel with a pre-recorded laugh track.
"Should I lie back and think of Englan--? Ah!"
Tony's yelp and the subsequent panting in her earpiece sounds like something else entirely. Abby's brows rise as she jams her chin onto her hand and imagines them on the floor, Tony with his shoulders pressed to the ground while Ziva sits on him - probably on his hips.
"If we were doing what your body wishes we were doing, Tony, and you were still capable of thought then I would not be doing it right."
"Not necessarily," Tony says, and the grin is audible even through the hoarseness in his voice. "I'm more than capable of multitaski--"
The doorbell chimes in the background.
That'll be McGee, delivering pizza. Well, delivering pizza and their next set of instructions as they wait for the terrorist cell after Lieutenant Command Andrea Spirelli to make a move. It just so happened that the Lieutenant Commander has approximately the same build and shape as Ziva, and her husband the same build and shape as Tony.
It chimes a second time.
"Better answer that, guys," says Abby cheerfully. "Innuendo later. Pizza now."
"Why not both at once?" Tony asks, the huffs of his breath indicating Ziva is climbing off him.
"Because you are greedy, Tony," comes the response.
"And you like me that way!"
The noises of Ziva opening the door and greeting McGee the pizza delivery guy (with borrowed car and uniform) are twinned through the headsets, heard from both McGee and Ziva's mics.
"Pepperoni with double cheese, ma'am. Just the way you like it." Timmy manages to sound comfortably genial, although Abby knows he's grumpy that Tony and Ziva are the ones undercover yet again. "That'll be $15.45." He lowers his voice. "You doing okay?"
"If I do not kill him first." Ziva seems more amused than annoyed, though.
"I can hear you!"
"I am counting on it."
Timmy makes a noise like he wants to say something but is hesitating over whether or not to say it. Abby can hear his thoughts churning in his mind.
"McGee?"
"Nothing. Have a good night, ma'am," he says louder for the benefit of anyone watching.
"You, too."
A few minutes later, when McGee slides the door open and climbs in with his own pizza, Tony and Ziva are busy munching theirs and discussing the sitcom they're watching, comfortably amused. Abby switches off her mic and McGee's. "That was cute, Timmy."
"What was?" His mind's elsewhere - probably on the smell of the pizza in the box he's brought in. It does smell nice - although the extra-large Kaf-Pow sings a more siren call to Abby's tastebuds.
"Asking after Ziva."
"I was asking after both of them." But he's never been very good at lying - not if you know where to look, and Abby does.
"It's about Somalia, isn't it? About what Saleem did to her." Abby's eyes narrow. "Timmy..."
"Look I don't know what they did to her," McGee says after a moment during which Tony makes a noise that sounds almost like 'my pizza' - the protest of a man whose pizza slice has just been bitten into by someone else. "And I'm not game to ask, but let's just say, I don't think sharing a bed is in the program."
Abby listens to the noises Ziva is making as she chews, and grins. Innuendo and pizza. Right on cue.
"Oh, I don't know about that."
--
There's nothing cowardly about Ziva.
Tony knew it the morning she eyed him up and down as though she was stripping him naked where he sat. This wasn't a woman who stepped back from a fight. He's witnessed the courage in her many times since - professionally, personally, privately. And after Somalia, she's still standing, still fighting, still with him. Well, not with him, but with him. She can't afford to trust Tony - not after Michael Rivkin lied to her, not after Tony lied to Jeanne Benoit - and yet she does, as far as she's able.
Will it be far enough? Tony's yet to work that out.
--
The shutter-click of the camera is a background counterpoint to the sound of passing traffic and the sharp back and forth of questions and answers above Ducky's head. The young man he studies hears none of it, beyond all such considerations.
"Although," he says as he inserts the body thermometer, "I imagine you would like to know how you died. You never saw this coming."
"He had a weapon," says Ziva, glancing up from the snapshots she's just taken. "He did not draw it."
"He knew whoever attacked him." Tony peers over her shoulder, frowning.
"And did not expect death to come so suddenly. Or, indeed, at all," Ducky continues. "Note the expression on his face. He had time to be surprised, and that was all." In his hand, the thermometer beeps. "Body temperature indicates he's likely been dead some eight hours, putting his death in the very small hours of the morning."
Tony looks up and down the street. "On his way home, thinking only of a warm bed. Maybe of a warm woman in his bed. Then...bang! One more man who won't be waking up in the morning."
"Yes, well, it's certainly an interesting shot."
"In the head. The centre of the forehead." Ziva adjusts her crouching pose, leaning back a little. "I should say it was done at very close range."
Once again, Tony peers over her shoulder, frowning as he studies the dead man. "How can you tell that?"
"One does not shoot a target in the forehead unless one wishes to make a point, Tony. The torso is larger, presents a better target than the head. Shooting someone in the head is dramatic, but it is overkill."
"Sounds right up your alley, Ziva."
"Do you really wish go down that path, Tony?"
"Will you have to kill me if I say yes?"
"I might kill you anyway if you continue to hover over my shoulder."
"DiNozzo!"
"Coming, boss!" But having glanced up at the peremptory call from Jethro, Ducky catches Tony in the act of tugging lightly on a loose curl that has escaped Ziva's ponytail. It is an affectionate gesture, although a frown flickers across Ziva's features for but a moment. Then Tony is gone and so is the frown. Instead, a smile ghosts across Ziva's lips.
Ducky feels he should glance away, concerned that perhaps he is witnessing something that they might not wish him to see. But when Ziva looks up, she catches him watching and her brows rise - in question or challenge? Given that this is Ziva, it may very well be both.
"I was thinking," Ducky says, choosing not to pick up that challenge now, "that this seems like an execution."
Ziva glances down at the dead man again, her trained gaze sweeping across the scene. "Yes," she says and her voice is distant in the way that she now becomes whenever her past is recalled. "That was my thought, too. He died at the hand of someone who knew him."
"Perhaps, someone who felt he had betrayed them?"
"It is entirely possible."
"You know, I saw this once before - when I was in the Balkans during the Bosnian conflict. Seven young men were found in a shallow grave, their bodies discarded. Each had a bullet hole through his forehead, precisely placed - rather like this poor fellow, actually. It was believed they'd been declared traitor by whichever side they were on, and executed. But all I could do was catalogue them and record what details were there in the hope that their loved ones might someday recognise them from the description."
When he looks up, Ziva is watching him, a question in her eyes.
He flashes her a brief smile. "A particularly unpleasant old memory, my dear. They accumulate with age."
"Or with experience," she says quietly.
Ducky grimaces - at his own unintentional reference to Somalia. "Are you...? Forgive me for asking, but, are things...?"
"Things are fine," she says after a moment, her tone frank, but kind. "They are not perfect, but they are...better than they were."
"And..." Ducky knows he shouldn't ask, but he can't forbear from this much curiosity at least. "You and Tony...?"
"Are friends," she says immediately. "There are...trust issues after Somalia. But we are working through them in our own way."
"I see." And Ducky does see. They are close to each other, born of absent mothers, children of distant fathers, both adopted by Jethro in that way he has of finding protégés to mould in his own image - and yet, they hold so distinctly to their own personalities, to their own selves, even under Gibbs' tutelage.
Is there more between Tony and Ziva? He would say 'yes' but Ziva's phrasing suggests not. It's none of his business, perhaps, other than holding a certain fondness for both agents, and yet...
They are both solitary, Tony in the midst of a social crowd as he is, Ziva in her separation from friend and stranger alike. It would be no surprise for them to find solace with each other. It would not be the first time agents and partners became more to each other, crossing lines that the authorities would rather they did not.
Ducky has nothing to say on that matter, other than that he trusts them both as investigators trained under Gibbs. They will do the job at hand, no matter what.
And he wishes them happy.
--
There's nothing easy about this situation.
Gibbs knows only too well what happens when you get involved with your co-workers, your colleagues, your partner. He has memories he doesn't regret, but there were bridges burned along the way, roads that couldn't be untravelled.
Rule #12 - Never Date A Co-Worker.
Of course, Tony and Ziva would get around this by arguing that they're not dating, they're just hanging out. Possibly with sex. Whatever they call it, it's happening; it's there. Gibbs can't stop it. He's not sure he would, even if he could. Maybe he's just getting old and maudlin.
Tonight, Tony chivvies Ziva along because, "We're late for the game - Ohio State against Minnesota. You can't become an American citizen if you don't understand The Game. It would be like not eating hotdogs."
"I do not eat hotdogs either, Tony," Ziva points out, and something like a laugh twitches her lips.
"Right. Well, you are going to learn football."
"Because you say so?"
"Because I say so. And because you're not allowed to become an American citizen until you can recite all the stats I give you to learn. 'Night, boss!"
"Goodnight, Gibbs."
He watches them go, half-smiling, half shaking his head. Maybe there's nothing easy about this situation, but there's definitely something good.
- fin -
FEEDBACK: Is always welcome! *noms*
espressomorningPROMPT: Abby, Gibbs, and/or Ducky’s POV on Tony/Ziva (HET) post-Aaliyah and into Season 7 (Ziva's return)
TITLE: Nothing Easy, Something Good
AUTHOR: Tielan
SUMMARY: Love and betrayal are common themes of the men in Ziva's life: father, brother, lover. That won't be the case at NCIS.
ARCHIVE: Yes
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: het, friendship, UST, character study, relationship study.
PAIRING: Tony/Ziva (sort of, ish, UST thingamawhatsit)
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, belong to CBS and Belisarius productions, etc. Making no money, don't shoot my bank account!
NOTES: Right, so, this kicked my ass up until the last week of this ficathon and it's been annoying me greatly - what angle to take, what story to tell. Plus, I realised last night, it completely fails the Bedchel test. Bugger! There was going to be this whole section where Abby and Ziva have dinner. But that will have to be another fic, because it doesn't fit the framework of this one. And I have to work Abby out. Ziva I can do; Abby is new ground. Also,
espressomorning? I hope you don't mind Tim and Vance, because I put them in, even though you didn't specify them!There is nothing simple about Ziva David.
Gibbs knew this the day he met her - Mossad does not breed innocents - but he had the proof when she executed Ari. Whether she did it for her father, or she did it for him no longer matters. They've squared that away. She still killed her brother - someone she loved; someone who betrayed her and everything she stood for.
Love and betrayal are common themes of the men in Ziva's life: father, brother, lover.
--
You're damaged goods. How damaged is yet to be determined.
Leon Vance keeps an eye on the 'newest' member of Gibbs' team. Not just for Gibbs' sake, or even because he needs to be mindful of NCIS and its functions, or because Eli David is still hopping mad that Gibbs has 'stolen' his daughter, but because he's grown fond of Ziva, inasmuch as a man in his position is allowed to grow fond of one of his agents.
They're his agents.
In the bullpen below, there's the sound of paper scrunching as DiNozzo tears a sheet of paper off a notepad, balls it up, and pitches it at the desk across from him.
Her hand rears like a snake, plucking the crumpled wad from the air. "Surely it would be more convenient to simply say your message across the desk, Tony?"
"But it's always more fun passing notes."
A frown creases her brow. "I thought that passing notes was done with subtlety. This," she brandishes the paper ball, "is not subtle."
"But it's fun. And you haven't read it yet."
From his bird's eye view, Leon can just see the expression on Ziva's face, the not-quite-roll of her eyes as she opens out the note and flattens it on top of her paperwork to read it. Her mouth twitches in the faint hint of a smile.
"You could have sent an email."
"I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy, Ziva."
"As witnessed by your inability to work any kind of technology." She crumples the note back up into its ball and turns her attention back to her work. A model of dedication and duty - with the hint of a smile playing at her lips. A smile her partner can't see from behind his own screen, and the absence of response seems to annoy him.
"Well?"
"I am emailing you, Tony."
"You could just scribble it down and send it back."
"I could."
Will this be a problem? Yes and no. While agents aren't forbidden to enter into intimate personal relationships with each other, it's generally frowned upon. The reasoning being that you'll risk your life for a lover in ways you wouldn't for a partner. Which, Leon finds, isn't always the case. He loves Jackie and his kids, but he's worked with men and women that he'd kill or be killed for.
Tony DiNozzo was willing to kill and be killed when he thought Ziva David was dead in Somalia. Gibbs was willing to give him enough rope to plan what was both revenge and retribution both. And McGee went, too - and not just because the rest of Field Team Gibbs was going.
Then again, Leon reflects as Ziva types neatly into her computer, he was willing to lend his authority to the strike on Saleem's Somalian training camp. And although his official justification only mentioned Mossad's infiltration attempt in passing, he had spent more than a few moments looking through an NCIS file that chronicled three years in this office and many months of co-operative work before that, and regretting her loss.
DiNozzo's computer beeps to indicate incoming mail, and he turns to look at the screen.
Her hand pitches the paper ball back at Tony - hard and true through the air...
It's snatched up as Gibbs walks through the bullpen. "Are you having fun? DiNozzo!"
They jump to attention - DiNozzo more than David.
"Boss, I was just about to cross-check the guest list for the party with Hanson's list."
"Then hurry up and get onto it." Gibbs turns and drops the crumpled ball on the desk. Then he lays his hands down on Ziva's desk, palms flat, leaning into her space in the way that he does to intimidate his underlings. "Are you passing notes, Ziva?"
"Of course not. Passing notes requires subtlety, tact. I, as you and others have observed so often, have neither."
She says it unsmiling, apparently in all seriousness, and Leon can't see Gibbs' expression from where the man is, but a grin breaks across his own face. Chutzpah is what Mossad might call it - impertinence, intolerable behaviour towards someone who should be shown due respect - but chutzpah is what it is here in America - admirable audacity.
Gibbs gives her a long stare, then lifts his hands from her desk and goes to his own, a faint smile ghosting about his lips as he glances up at Leon.
They exchange the faintest of nods.
Leon knows that some things will never be the same for Ziva after Somalia. But he's glad to see that other things are returning.
--
There's nothing weak about Ziva.
Tim knew it the day he stumbled out of scrubby undergrowth and found the newly assigned Mossad Liaison Officer kneeling in the grass with three dead people around her. That day, admiration mixed with a little fear - soon to be lost in affection as the newest addition to their team showed herself capable and intelligent and curious. She learned fast, shot true, and kept Tony on his toes in the same way Kate had.
Well, sort in the same way.
--
Abby scrambles into the chair McGee vacated in the van, pulling on the headset he discarded. It gives her a thrill to be out here, in the middle of an undercover op. She doesn't usually get to monitor these situations unless it's down to the wire, and it's quite exciting.
She spins happily around on the chair, and flips the switch that will give her audio to Ziva and Tony's conversation inside the house.
"I'm warning you, Ziva, don't mock the classics!"
"I am only saying that I have seen this before and I did not like it the first time. Give me the remote--"
Abby grins at the sound of scuffles. Tony's grunts and yelps, a hoarse shriek from Ziva, and then triumph. They're so cute when they're tussling over something, like a pair of puppies. And it's good to hear Ziva laugh like that. She's been strange since they brought her back from Somalia. Which she should be, since she was there for months before Tony started moving everything to go after Saleem.
She hasn't asked Ziva what happened in Somalia; it's not something Abby thinks she wants to hear, although that would be less important if Ziva wanted to tell her. But Ziva is Ziva; she doesn't wear her emotions on her sleeve.
"Are you going to let me up now?"
"No," Ziva says as the noises of the background change to another channel with a pre-recorded laugh track.
"Should I lie back and think of Englan--? Ah!"
Tony's yelp and the subsequent panting in her earpiece sounds like something else entirely. Abby's brows rise as she jams her chin onto her hand and imagines them on the floor, Tony with his shoulders pressed to the ground while Ziva sits on him - probably on his hips.
"If we were doing what your body wishes we were doing, Tony, and you were still capable of thought then I would not be doing it right."
"Not necessarily," Tony says, and the grin is audible even through the hoarseness in his voice. "I'm more than capable of multitaski--"
The doorbell chimes in the background.
That'll be McGee, delivering pizza. Well, delivering pizza and their next set of instructions as they wait for the terrorist cell after Lieutenant Command Andrea Spirelli to make a move. It just so happened that the Lieutenant Commander has approximately the same build and shape as Ziva, and her husband the same build and shape as Tony.
It chimes a second time.
"Better answer that, guys," says Abby cheerfully. "Innuendo later. Pizza now."
"Why not both at once?" Tony asks, the huffs of his breath indicating Ziva is climbing off him.
"Because you are greedy, Tony," comes the response.
"And you like me that way!"
The noises of Ziva opening the door and greeting McGee the pizza delivery guy (with borrowed car and uniform) are twinned through the headsets, heard from both McGee and Ziva's mics.
"Pepperoni with double cheese, ma'am. Just the way you like it." Timmy manages to sound comfortably genial, although Abby knows he's grumpy that Tony and Ziva are the ones undercover yet again. "That'll be $15.45." He lowers his voice. "You doing okay?"
"If I do not kill him first." Ziva seems more amused than annoyed, though.
"I can hear you!"
"I am counting on it."
Timmy makes a noise like he wants to say something but is hesitating over whether or not to say it. Abby can hear his thoughts churning in his mind.
"McGee?"
"Nothing. Have a good night, ma'am," he says louder for the benefit of anyone watching.
"You, too."
A few minutes later, when McGee slides the door open and climbs in with his own pizza, Tony and Ziva are busy munching theirs and discussing the sitcom they're watching, comfortably amused. Abby switches off her mic and McGee's. "That was cute, Timmy."
"What was?" His mind's elsewhere - probably on the smell of the pizza in the box he's brought in. It does smell nice - although the extra-large Kaf-Pow sings a more siren call to Abby's tastebuds.
"Asking after Ziva."
"I was asking after both of them." But he's never been very good at lying - not if you know where to look, and Abby does.
"It's about Somalia, isn't it? About what Saleem did to her." Abby's eyes narrow. "Timmy..."
"Look I don't know what they did to her," McGee says after a moment during which Tony makes a noise that sounds almost like 'my pizza' - the protest of a man whose pizza slice has just been bitten into by someone else. "And I'm not game to ask, but let's just say, I don't think sharing a bed is in the program."
Abby listens to the noises Ziva is making as she chews, and grins. Innuendo and pizza. Right on cue.
"Oh, I don't know about that."
--
There's nothing cowardly about Ziva.
Tony knew it the morning she eyed him up and down as though she was stripping him naked where he sat. This wasn't a woman who stepped back from a fight. He's witnessed the courage in her many times since - professionally, personally, privately. And after Somalia, she's still standing, still fighting, still with him. Well, not with him, but with him. She can't afford to trust Tony - not after Michael Rivkin lied to her, not after Tony lied to Jeanne Benoit - and yet she does, as far as she's able.
Will it be far enough? Tony's yet to work that out.
--
The shutter-click of the camera is a background counterpoint to the sound of passing traffic and the sharp back and forth of questions and answers above Ducky's head. The young man he studies hears none of it, beyond all such considerations.
"Although," he says as he inserts the body thermometer, "I imagine you would like to know how you died. You never saw this coming."
"He had a weapon," says Ziva, glancing up from the snapshots she's just taken. "He did not draw it."
"He knew whoever attacked him." Tony peers over her shoulder, frowning.
"And did not expect death to come so suddenly. Or, indeed, at all," Ducky continues. "Note the expression on his face. He had time to be surprised, and that was all." In his hand, the thermometer beeps. "Body temperature indicates he's likely been dead some eight hours, putting his death in the very small hours of the morning."
Tony looks up and down the street. "On his way home, thinking only of a warm bed. Maybe of a warm woman in his bed. Then...bang! One more man who won't be waking up in the morning."
"Yes, well, it's certainly an interesting shot."
"In the head. The centre of the forehead." Ziva adjusts her crouching pose, leaning back a little. "I should say it was done at very close range."
Once again, Tony peers over her shoulder, frowning as he studies the dead man. "How can you tell that?"
"One does not shoot a target in the forehead unless one wishes to make a point, Tony. The torso is larger, presents a better target than the head. Shooting someone in the head is dramatic, but it is overkill."
"Sounds right up your alley, Ziva."
"Do you really wish go down that path, Tony?"
"Will you have to kill me if I say yes?"
"I might kill you anyway if you continue to hover over my shoulder."
"DiNozzo!"
"Coming, boss!" But having glanced up at the peremptory call from Jethro, Ducky catches Tony in the act of tugging lightly on a loose curl that has escaped Ziva's ponytail. It is an affectionate gesture, although a frown flickers across Ziva's features for but a moment. Then Tony is gone and so is the frown. Instead, a smile ghosts across Ziva's lips.
Ducky feels he should glance away, concerned that perhaps he is witnessing something that they might not wish him to see. But when Ziva looks up, she catches him watching and her brows rise - in question or challenge? Given that this is Ziva, it may very well be both.
"I was thinking," Ducky says, choosing not to pick up that challenge now, "that this seems like an execution."
Ziva glances down at the dead man again, her trained gaze sweeping across the scene. "Yes," she says and her voice is distant in the way that she now becomes whenever her past is recalled. "That was my thought, too. He died at the hand of someone who knew him."
"Perhaps, someone who felt he had betrayed them?"
"It is entirely possible."
"You know, I saw this once before - when I was in the Balkans during the Bosnian conflict. Seven young men were found in a shallow grave, their bodies discarded. Each had a bullet hole through his forehead, precisely placed - rather like this poor fellow, actually. It was believed they'd been declared traitor by whichever side they were on, and executed. But all I could do was catalogue them and record what details were there in the hope that their loved ones might someday recognise them from the description."
When he looks up, Ziva is watching him, a question in her eyes.
He flashes her a brief smile. "A particularly unpleasant old memory, my dear. They accumulate with age."
"Or with experience," she says quietly.
Ducky grimaces - at his own unintentional reference to Somalia. "Are you...? Forgive me for asking, but, are things...?"
"Things are fine," she says after a moment, her tone frank, but kind. "They are not perfect, but they are...better than they were."
"And..." Ducky knows he shouldn't ask, but he can't forbear from this much curiosity at least. "You and Tony...?"
"Are friends," she says immediately. "There are...trust issues after Somalia. But we are working through them in our own way."
"I see." And Ducky does see. They are close to each other, born of absent mothers, children of distant fathers, both adopted by Jethro in that way he has of finding protégés to mould in his own image - and yet, they hold so distinctly to their own personalities, to their own selves, even under Gibbs' tutelage.
Is there more between Tony and Ziva? He would say 'yes' but Ziva's phrasing suggests not. It's none of his business, perhaps, other than holding a certain fondness for both agents, and yet...
They are both solitary, Tony in the midst of a social crowd as he is, Ziva in her separation from friend and stranger alike. It would be no surprise for them to find solace with each other. It would not be the first time agents and partners became more to each other, crossing lines that the authorities would rather they did not.
Ducky has nothing to say on that matter, other than that he trusts them both as investigators trained under Gibbs. They will do the job at hand, no matter what.
And he wishes them happy.
--
There's nothing easy about this situation.
Gibbs knows only too well what happens when you get involved with your co-workers, your colleagues, your partner. He has memories he doesn't regret, but there were bridges burned along the way, roads that couldn't be untravelled.
Rule #12 - Never Date A Co-Worker.
Of course, Tony and Ziva would get around this by arguing that they're not dating, they're just hanging out. Possibly with sex. Whatever they call it, it's happening; it's there. Gibbs can't stop it. He's not sure he would, even if he could. Maybe he's just getting old and maudlin.
Tonight, Tony chivvies Ziva along because, "We're late for the game - Ohio State against Minnesota. You can't become an American citizen if you don't understand The Game. It would be like not eating hotdogs."
"I do not eat hotdogs either, Tony," Ziva points out, and something like a laugh twitches her lips.
"Right. Well, you are going to learn football."
"Because you say so?"
"Because I say so. And because you're not allowed to become an American citizen until you can recite all the stats I give you to learn. 'Night, boss!"
"Goodnight, Gibbs."
He watches them go, half-smiling, half shaking his head. Maybe there's nothing easy about this situation, but there's definitely something good.
- fin -
FEEDBACK: Is always welcome! *noms*
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 04:09 am (UTC)And nice reference to Ohio State. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 06:48 am (UTC)I think that, as things become more tense between them, and fans become both more shippy and more anti-shippy, it's harder to slip these bits in as though they're just friends, without setting off bigger ripples in fandom.
Hm. That would be highly ironic: in demanding more/less Tony/Ziva, Gibbs/Tony, Tony/McGee, Whoever/Whoever, the fans have lost the character dynamics that they fell in love with in the first place. (I seem to see a lot of complaining about the recent seasons and their interactions...)
I'm glad I got the characters down, though! Always important.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 10:25 am (UTC)But I'll definitely keep her in mind. :)
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Date: 2010-08-22 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 05:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-21 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-22 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-24 08:36 pm (UTC)And, from the hints of his past we've received, Vance knows what it is to be cut off from your past, whether by choice or not. There'd be a certain sympathy there, I think.
Thanks for leaving a comment - it's much appreciated!
no subject
Date: 2010-08-25 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-28 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-09 06:09 pm (UTC)