"What?!?," Ziva nearly shouted as she heard the news. It was impossible.
"Are you sure, Gibbs? It is in fact An..Ant…Anthony Dinozzo that I'll be working with?" she stammered out.
"Yes, Ziva, it is Anthony Dinozzo you'll be working with. I'm sure that you'll be fine." Gibbs was starting to grow impatient. "So I can expect you at NCIS tomorrow then?"
There was silence on the other end. The prospect of working with Tony filled Ziva with immense dread. She barely heard Gibbs say thank you as he hung up the line. She muttered a good-bye sounding extremely distracted. As Gibbs hung up, he could not understand why Ziva seemed to cringe at working with one of his best agents. Sure, he was a womanizer and immature but Ziva could handle him. That he was certain. As a trained assassin of Mossad she had nothing to worry about.
However, Ziva was not feeling so certain. Tony. She thought, actually hoped, that she would never have to see him again. He had broken her heart thirteen years ago. She had been 17, finished high school, and completely and utterly in love. However their relationship all changed the moment that he moved away on a football scholarship. Even with the distance, Ziva was convinced that their relationship could work. He loved her. He told her every moment he could it seemed. But the emails and phone calls that he had promised eventually just faded away into the past after just one year. It was like a knife in the heart. She did not understand. Sure, he seemed more and more distracted with each phone call and email but she had assured herself it was nothing, merely a phase that he was going through. He just needed to get settled into campus life. Or so she thought. She had attempted to talk to him just one more time after he stopped calling and emailing her but she found that he had moved somewhere else, leaving no address or way to contact him. Feeling the worst that she had in her entire life, her sadness and heartbreak at wondering why he would have done this to her, turned to anger. She didn't need him. She had survived for one year, she could last longer. So she moved on with her life eventually joining the Mossad at her father's demands. Her heart slowly hardened with the work she was exposed to each day. But she was satisfied enough. It got Tony out of her life and her heart. And she had been fine with her life until this assignment as a liaison officer had come along and learning that Tony would be working with her. She had expected her father to argue on her side and make her stay but he didn't. He thought that it might be good for her. Get some exposure to American culture again. She still took it in stride knowing that her father's mind could not be convinced otherwise. Taking a sip of the tequila she had poured for herself, she convinced herself that she would handle it somehow, that he could not possibly have an effect on her after 13 years. Yet as she drifted off, dreams of Tony and her persisted in assaulting Ziva.
