Summary: He likes to think Ziva went down fighting.
Saleem is a dead man.
Tony doesn't doubt it – doesn't doubt Gibbs – but what he sees when he looks at Saleem isn't his dead, rotting, broken corpse at Tony's feet; it's a man, virile and grinning and drinking that damn Caf!-Pow –
(so wrong so wrong because it's Abby's mark, not this sonofabitch's)
– and holding a gun to Ziva's head. Holding a gun – recently fired and reeking with the burning scent of flesh as the dripdrip echoes – and staring down at the broken, wasted, filthy corpse of one beautiful Ziva David. He see's a hell on Earth.
(he sees brown hair, musky and knotted together, stuck to a mucky face with the sweat and blood dripping from her temple. he sees a pair of brown eyes that light up with fire, with defiance that makes him grin, in comparison to those that dull and accept their death and the grin suffers unto a scowl. he sees a woman who fights and fights and fights and crumbles at the sound of a gunshot echoing in the air. he sees Ziva. Dead.)
He watches Saleem leave the room – to get his gun no doubt – and asks McGee, the Probie that followed him, that followed Ziva into the sandy wind and unforgiving desert, if he's OK. He tells him it will be alright, because it will, they will avenge their Ziva and then go back to notliving because there is no life without Ziva.
The dripdrip roars in his ears.
But Saleem brings back something that doesn't quite shock him as much as confuse him, he brings back a person, a body that's bound and covered in cloth and that smells foul and bloody. And an angry fire rises in his chest that maybe, maybe, Ziva looked like this in her last moments. Looked like this person whose entire being is slumped with an acceptance that isn't Ziva. He likes to think Ziva went down fighting, went down like the desert – whirling and dancing and burning. It makes the nightmares endurable.
However when the bag is lifted and Tony is staring into brown eyes the fire that burned with rage soothes his heart and becomes a warming love that fights harder than the vengeance that once drove him.
(because her hair is dirty, and her eyes are dull, and her skin is dusty black with dirt and grime and none of it matters for the only reason that she is alive. since her heart is thrumming under a wounded chest and her blood is pumping and he can feel her breath in the air and she's alivealivealive and the dripdrip of the walls doesn't hurt so much.)
Saleem offers a life for one of them and Tony wants to laugh – even though his throat is raw – because the only one dying here is Saleem.
He tells the man so.
And takes a sick pride in the fact that Saleem is confused, is worried, is falling slowly to the floor, blood dripping down his head, not Ziva's. He wants to whoop and scream and fall in love all over again because it's euphoria.
They escape, they win, they live, and with Ziva standing next to him, looking back at him with brown eyes, he thinks he's damn near Invincible.
(just like Superman, what a classic!)
because only Tony would make a movie reference when the love of his life is alive.
~AU.