Disclaimer: The characters and show aren't mine... they aren't even on loan.
Authors Note: A one-shot with 6 little scenes and drabbles from the series from various characters POV basically showing the journey that Tony and Ziva have gone through to get where they now are—which hopefully is an interesting place.
Moments
"You were having phone sex?" Those were the first words that started it all. Simple, easy, and neither were aware that history was made with those simple five words. She was on her way to becoming family with NCIS. Had she have known she may have instead had said "hello". But what was done was done and there she was, a member of a new team, surrounded with new people, having a new direction. And she had a feeling that nothing was ever going to be the same.
But she was there and she wasn't sorry for it. Memories from the dosias that she had created on her new teammates had aided her, and gave her an edge and appreciation for these people that were now as close to her as her own family and growing closer. She looked around the squad-room when she should have been working on her reports: her family were with her. There was Gibbs, ignoring the outside world. Ari had been right, Gibbs was much like her father. But unlike her brother, Ziva saw the good aspects in that comparison--the benefit of being her father's favourite. But in her new family, she knew, that the favourite would always be Abby, the woman who to Ziva would never be fully understood.
With a smile she looked across the room to where McGee was squinting at his screen, obviously at a loss. Unlike the others she felt that she didn't need the prior intel to understand the man. He was an open book. He was to her a puppy, innocent, like a brother. Unlike the others, she felt the need, the want, to keep him that way. He shouldn't have fit with that lifestyle, that job, but he did, he worked. And for that she felt a connection to him and the innocence that she was never allowed, that she had never had before. She had found her little brother. And she would keep him as she found him--whole.
"Come on!" Tony gripped as he slammed the phone done, "I hate cancelling dates. Especially when they don't reschedule."
She smiled, looking at her new partner. Correction, her first partner. Never before had she worked in such a position, with someone on such a regular basis, and never with such a man as Tony DiNozzo. He was one part her brother, one part Micheal, and all trouble. In any other circumstance she would want to sleep with him. Now, working this closely with him he was a threat. There was a potential for more--potential for a broken heart. And that, was not acceptable.
The others were family, potential friends. Tony was different. She liked him, would have slept with him, may come to love him. But he liked to play. Lucky for her, so did she. The only way she new how to react was to strike first. He COULD break her heart. She WOULD break his heart first. To Ziva, it really was the only way.
---
He hated that Kate had been right, even dead. Ziva intimidated him. Tony DiNozzo was put off his game by 5'7" of assassin. His father always said he was a good judge of women. He found himself watching her, closely, and he knew that she was aware of it. He hoped that she thought he wanted to sleep with her. He also hoped that she didn't think he was learning all he could. And he was learning: she was like Gibbs, had the instincts of a cat, had issues with men that he connected with issues with dear ol' Daddy, she could keep her head in any situation, she was in pain and didn't like to let it show, and liked to have conversations in the men's room to throw men off their guard.
He felt better learning about her, especially since she had already shown that she knew so much about him. Yes, he was learning and he would continue to do so until he knew what made her tick. It was only fair.
Yes, he would continue to learn about his assassin partner until he had figured her out. And then he would work on the more important issue... why the hell he felt the need to know her inside and out.
---
Ducky stood with Gibbs and the director on the landing overlooking the bullpen watching on as McGee worked and Tony and Ziva paced back and forth between their desks pitching ideas for possible motives pertaining to their current case. Jen hid her smile when Tony made an inappropriate comment and Ziva ended up twisting his arm, momentarily immobilizing him.
"She seems well suited to keeping him in line," Ducky commented with a grin, "In fact I have never seen two people work as well together," with a final shake of his head Ducky handed off his final report and moved towards the elevator, intent to head back to autopsy where he still had work to do.
"He's only half right," Gibbs began with a small smile, looking at the redhead beside him with a coy look in his eye. It was a look that Jen knew well. "I seem to recall us working quite well together."
Her smile widened, "I remember--both on and off the job. Think they will end up the same way?"
He shook his head, bringing his coffee to his lips, "Nope. Rule 12, remember?"
"Did that stop us?"
"We're why there is a rule 12 Jen. Its too dangerous." He began to leave, pausing behind her, "Or do you forget?"
She grabbed his arm, pausing him, pushing aside the pain that was still in his tone, "I remember Jethro. And I know what its like being in that environment, relying on each other, coming to care, to need. Can you really believe that your rule will stop them?"
"For now," he assured her. "She doesn't trust him, not with things more important than her life."
"Her life isn't important?"
He rolled his eyes, "She's Mossad Jen, she's trained to believe it isn't. She isn't ready for love."
"And Tony?"
"He isn't ready for her." He paused, looking at the pair who were then standing toe to toe, staring each other down, sharing in a conversation that didn't need words. "But they will be, some day. Until they are, Rule 12 will keep them from making the same mistake we did, and ruining what could have been a great thing."
She smiled at him, her expression softening. Her mind went back, playing over the past, wondering exactly what would have happened if they did had that stopper, a Rule, to force them to move beyond their physical need for one another. Would they have been more? She didn't know, but she liked to think that they would have been. "Jethro... it still was great."
He looked over his shoulder on his way down the stairs, the same smile she wore displayed coyly on his face, "Yes Jen, it most certainly was."
----
Ziva saw the man she wanted to love, and the man she needed just when she lost him. It was then that she realized that he was more than a partner and friend. He was what she needed. But, the agent in her knew, when she saw his car explode, that even if it wasn't for the other woman, she would never be as close to the new man she saw her longtime partner to be. She would never have him to herself, never be open and honest, never have the normal life they sat on the periphery of every day and on every case. They lived a life of secrets and lies where at any moment they could die or be put under cover or tortured or asked to sleep with someone or...anything. She didn't want a normal life, she wasn't born to want it.
But living in America made her appreciate why it was wanted, and why it wasn't wrong for her to miss it now that she saw that, had she wanted it, it was now impossible for her to get.
---
The last thing he expected when he found her...when he was captured and tortured and injected with something that made him wonder how Arnald had managed to do so much ass-kicking while suffering its affects, was to hear a truth that he hadn't had time to wonder over before. He had missed her, true. He had missed her guidance, her anger, her ability to sneak up on him, the safety he had felt knowing that she was watching his back, and the sense of pride he felt every time he correctly guessed the actual origins of the idiem that she always seemed to get wrong. He hadn't expected during their partnership and arguments and fights and conversations that she would sink her way under his skin and become a part of him. It was a part of him that, as he found out in Africa, he had unknowingly been missing after he thought her dead.
It was his sense of self. It was the part of him that was growing up, and that needed her to ground it within his unsure psyche. She was his conscious and he knew in his gut that she needed him as much as he needed her. It wasn't something large, and it wasn't something that most people noticed. He didn't even notice it was gone until she was facing him again and the words were rushing out of his lips, "I just couldn't live without you I guess".
Then it hit him. The man he was becoming, the man he had been proud of becoming, the one that could lead, that could be sensitive and strong couldn't survive without her guidance, without her needing him to be that man. She was the key to him. And even though he didn't know where they would stand now, and knowing, if he was honest with himself, that they could never be more than what they had been, he was glad to have her back. He needed her. And watching her when she got back when Abby held her and avoided his eye, he knew, deep down, that more than ever, she needed him as well.
He would be that man again. She needed him to be it more than ever.
---
Gibbs stood on the balcony looking over the squad room focusing on the bullpen where, even late into the night, his soldiers were still working hard. In the dim light he watched as McGee left to the lab, needing the presence of Abby to jump start his genius, leaving Ziva and Tony alone to work the different angles of the case. Slowly they were coming back to common ground that had long been missing between them. They teased and flirted and watched one another with the same intensity that they had before Somalia and Micheal.
He smiled to himself, coffee slowly making its way to his lips. His mind went back to the conversation he had had with Jenny what felt like a lifetime ago.
"Well Jenny, they're half way there," he mumbled into his cup.
"Only halfway?" Her voice asked in the dark recesses of his mind. It was light and teasing and like a breeze of fresh air that both annoyed and relieved him that he could still remember with such clarity. She always did live under his skin, "Looks like more than that to me. DiNozzo..."
"Caught on quick. Ziva will take time. But he's there, waiting."
"She loves him..."
He glanced over, wishing that she really was standing beside him, instead of in his memory, "Love isn't always enough Jen. You taught me that. But she'll come to trust him enough to deal with the hell that comes from loving a field agent. They will be as good as we were."
"No Jethro. She knows my mistakes. They will be better..."
---
Okay that's all. Please let me know what you think. Pretty please?