Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS.
Characters: Tony, Ziva, slight cameo-esque appearance of Rachel..
Summary: An idea for Season Nine that has since been thrown out the window - to some extent - thanks to all the teasers and such that have been appearing on the internet. But this does take a couple of them and turn it into a little one-shot you may or may not enjoy.
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She stood around the corner from the psychiatrist's office, located in a wellness center just across the Virginia line. She took a deep breath and shrunk back behind the corner when it opened, revealing a brunette she knew pretty well. Or, at least, she did.
Right up until she suffered this self inflicted identity crisis, decided to date a C-I-asshole who not only did her wrong, but was working with her father - HER FATHER! Of all people to do some "damage control" within the US government. That didn't matter, she forgave her father for the last time, when she saw him face to face in Washington, last year. She wasn't quite sure who she had become, but last time she checked, she still had all the qualities she did before she was left in Israel after Rivin's death.
Sure, she was a little wiser, a little broken up inside, and completely violated, but that came with the territory, as Gibbs had gently told her in the months after her return to the United States. That didn't mean she had to hide in her hole like a timid rat because the world bestowed tragedy or chaos. It meant that she had to embrace herself - and that meant ALL of herself, ninja assasin, death bringer, scared victim, law-enforcer, and any other fragment of herself strewn along the highways of her life.
So, when Anthony DiNozzo stepped out of his ex-partner's sister's office throughly shaken up, she counted to five in her head, without thinking, and followed him automatically.
She knew why he was here. Sometimes talking to someone - especially someone who was so close to someone you care for, who could channel that spirit and give him advise none of his friends could bestow, was the healthiest thing for a body in distress. Ziva knew that EJ Barrett really messed him up, what with her double life, leading a team for NCIS, all the while leading him on, while she and her now dead partner(Levin) were actually moles for Al Qaeda, and even then, she pretended to be the victim, putting him in a situation where he was obviously enamored with her. And of all tragic endings, Tony was the one who learned about EJ the way Ziva had Ari. The rest needs not be said, even though it came with a twist.
It wasn't easy, not when you care about someone, no matter how evil they may have been, to accept, to feel, to grieve, and to move on.
Especially when she herself had been well aware of the situation before he had, and NCIS had him tracking her - because obviously they disguised themselves by giving away information to Israel and her father through her name, correspondance linked to her. Out of all things, they tried to disguise themselves by nearly taking her career, her citizenship, and her life. It was so, so incredibly nice of them to do it under Ziva David. What an alias, she remarked to herself.
Even if it did make her father an enemy and quite possibly a terrorist himself.
It was a shame that she had confronted Tony, and the roles had been reversed. They had come so unwraveled as partners that he did not trust her word versus Barrett's, until Ziva's sig had been in the blonde's hands, finger poised on the trigger. She was, however, glad that she had killed the bastardly woman, sparing Tony the agony of having to kill someone he had loved. She wondered if Rachel had told Tony that, and if it would have eased the tension on his troubled soul. At the last minute, Tony stumbling upon their confrontation had thrown EJ's attention away from the ninja assasin she held at gunpoint, and Ziva took that opening to produce her secondary weapon, a similar handgun, placing a precautionary round through the woman's head.
Ziva watched and blended into the mass of people walking on the Virgina street, becoming a chameleon in a sea of faces, knowing that getting caught was not the object. No, she wasn't following him for a mission.
This was purely out of friendly concern for her partner.
Not like it would be constrewn as that.
Many nights over the past few months, staring down a half empty bottle of liquor shared between herself and her newfound father-figure had left her reconsidering herself, much like stated above, to include all of herself. The Ziva she had been post Somalia was too thin, like a puff of air would blow her away. She was messed up, obviously. She was an assasin to the core. Pretending to live as something she was not, and forgetting the part of her life that gotten her through that hellish desert was nothing more than a coping technique. She was not a shadow. She was human, and she was damn strong. She wasn't secondary to any man, she was an individual. And she was over that tearful.. thing she was four months ago.
After all, it had taken Gibbs and McGee to pick Tony up from on top of her, pinning her incase Gibbs and McGee were letting their emotions rule them, and Ziva was in fact guilty of treason.
It was half an hour later that she watched Tony turn into a parking lot that was actually within a block of the wellness center, and she almost thought she had been caught when she caught his shoulders sink with a sigh before he reset his features to a fake chesire grin and firmly raised shoulders.
Oh, Tony, she thought was a sadness she wasn't used to having. The man was really ripped apart inside. And sure, it was better - she knew Gibbs had intervened at one point after the mission, ripping his house apart and throwing out every bit of liquor and every medicine beside two tylonol for his hangover the next morning. She knew, after everything, she was to hang back, stay out of his way, cope how he needed to.
Gibbs had headslapped her twice when he found out she was following him to his meetings with Rachel, once for being in DiNozzo's personal space, and once for not telling him. She wasn't as heartless as she had been before, knowing that her partner's well being was as important to her as any other member of their team and her make-shift family.
She slid her headphones in her ears, turning the volume down low enough for her to hear what was going on around her, and pushed her sunglasses up to her eyes before turning around to blend into the crowd once more. He sped past her in a new red mustang, something she was glad he invested in.
It was practically slow motion a second later when the world in front of her turned black and white, and moved in slow motion.
She saw the men pull up behind him at a light, one man roll down a tinted window, and pull out a machine gun, aimed at the agent driving the car in front of them.
Without hesitation, she sprung into the street, heading out into the middle of the street blindly, getting hit by a car not yet stopped at the intersection. She bounced back from the car's front end, rolling forward at the impact, in obvious pain, but fully alert. The car was stopping anyway, so it hadn't hit her with nearly enough force to break anything. She watched as the light turned green, meanwhile the car behind her was still stopped, the driver's eyes most likely wide with shock at hitting someone.
She lifted her head from the asphalt, feeling the sting of a brushburn on her forehead, now bleeding. Her hands instinctively went to her side, drawing her sig and aiming at the car in front of her. The bullet had pinpoint accuracy and within fractions of a second, the car behind Tony had two blown tires. The first caused the man with the machinegun to end up with it pointed at the sky, shooting it accidently. This had caused chaos, and people scrambling to get inside.
Meanwhile, Tony, ahead of the obvious terrorists - who else would be following a federal agent known for kicking terrorist buttocks - immediately peeled out, and if it weren't for him expertly swinging his car sideways and getting out of it, gun drawn over the hood and just a fraction of his head peeking out, Ziva would've thought he had been shot.
The men began to speak in a language Ziva was somewhat familiar with. They weren't screaming of Allah, but instead cursing their luck. They were definitely not middle eastern men. In fact, she considered for a moment that they were speaking in Portugese. Her language skills were no longer of use however, as she noticed more weaponry appear. Instinctively, she, as one man of three raised his arm and his gun, shot again, using the next three bullets in the reserve to peg two of them in the heart and one in the head.
It was a moment later, when her piercing eyes re-examined the whole scene before her and acknowledged the danger to be over, that she dropped her pose, propped up on both arms brasen with road rash, breathing heavily as she rested on her forearms and flipped her wild hair over her right shoulder.
Tony approached her slowly after taking in the sight of the three dead masked men.
"Z-Ziva?"
She looked up at him from her location on the ground. People were starting to gather around now. She wasn't thinking about how she had killed three men who had attempted to come after the senior field agent, but that she had followed him around for the past three hours.
It was all she could do to push that aside, and push her arms against the ground, geting to both knees.
"Give me a hand?" She asked, casting a wry smile. His eyes were glassy with concern, and he wasn't laughing. She sighed, and got to her feet with more effort than she would have liked, Tony too concerned to offer assistance as he took in her injuries. "Come on, you have had another brush with death and have remained unscathed. You should be cracking a joke right now, Toh-nee."
He grunted and grabbed her hand, pulling her up. "It's not funny, Dah-veed. You could've died."
"You as well."
The cops chose now to appear on the scene, immediately drawing their weapons and coming toward them.
"Put your hands where we can see them and drop the weapon!"
Ziva looked at them, refusing to drop the gun, and pushed the unbuttoned blouse aside at her waist. The shirt underneath was tucked into her dress pants, and attached to her belt was a badge. "We're federal agents."
"Drop the weapon, miss."
"Oh for joe's sake."
"Pete's, Ziva."
"Same thing. Ziva lowered her gun to the ground, and an officer approached them. She took her badge from her belt, and flipped it to reveal her NCIS identification. "Special Agent David, and this is Special Agent DiNozzo." She didn't wait for them to accept this information, instead grabbing her sig from its location on the ground, tucking it into the hoster at her waist.
A few moments later, they were both in Tony's mustang, heading back to NCIS, aware that they were most likely in the midst of a new case, as situations like that had to come from somewhere.
"You were following me," Tony stated evenly.
Ziva looked away, before looking back at his pointed gaze. "I was." She put her hands up, sensing his tension. "Look, the last few months have not been easy."
"We don't do well over the summer," he responded.
"No," She agreed. "We do not. " He took the thruway ramp as she continued. "But we are partners, and things like these happen." He looked at her from the corner of his eyes, wondering if he was talking about today or about his girlfriend nearly putting a bullet in her chest. She felt his gaze and looked over. "We are still changing, figuring ourselves out. And nothing has been easy. Not for you, and not for myself either. I have come to terms with myself, and you need to do the same."
"Ziva, this isn't what we are talking about."
"It is." She sighs and looks at him. "It happened."
"I thought you were betraying us, Ziva."
She sighed. "I know Tony."
"No, you don't!" It took the last of his rational thought process to pull the car to the side of the interstate. "I thought you were working with CI-Douchebag to tell your father national secrets. I didn't trust you. And I should have."
Ziva shrugged. "I have not always trusted you," she pressed. "That does not mean that I will continue to distrust you." She sighs. "We all make mistakes."
Tony's eyes were wild. "You don't know. I could have done something terrible. I could have taken away everything you worked for."
She shrugs. "You did not, Tony, so relax."
"That's easy for you to say."
"No, it was not. But it is over, and you made the right choice."
"Ziva, you shot her. There was no choice. You made it when you put a round through her head."
"So? I just eliminated the bad choices." Her smile was radiant, and she took his hand gently. "You are not a bad person. Bad decisions are just stepping stones. You either learn from them and move on, or you stay out on a stone with water all around you, and nowhere to go but back."
His silence urged her on. "We are always going to be partners Tony."
"Vance could split us whenever he wants, Ziva."
"I guess," she concedes. "But I will always have your back. You never gave up on me, and here I am, alive, in the flesh. I will not give up on you, Anthony. You have my word."
With that, he pulls his mustang back onto the interstate and heads back toward NCIS.
They weren't quite back to where they needed to be, but they were definitely going to get there. And though the rest of the ride back to NCIS was spent in silence, Ziva's eyes never left his face, and Tony's hand still rested in hers. They are partners. When one half of the equation falls behind, the other picks up the slack and waits for them to catch up.
And they always do.