Disclaimer: NCIS isn't mine, no matter how much one can wish! :(
It's really short but it only took me 5 mins!
"What was your mother like, Tony?"
The question was innocent enough; they had been discussing her mother, but it seemed to catch him off guard.
McGee, who had been listening to Ziva's childhood memories from behind his computer screen, swiveled his chair towards Tony. He knew that this would be one of those rare occasions that Tony would share because it wouldn't be fair on Ziva.
Tony's forehead creased and he perched his mouth, thinking back more than two decades.
The silence seemed to drag, and Tim grew skeptical that he would ever answer.
"She was happy."
Tony wasn't in the bullpen anymore. It was obvious.
Vague clips of his mother ran through his head.
When he was ill and she used to talk to him until he fell into a restless sleep.
"She has the most beautiful voice."
When she would hug him when he had a bad day.
"She smelled like Lavender and soap and…"
When he would hug her when she had a bad day.
"… brandy"
The times she caught him drawing on his fathers' documents.
"She was always trying to keep me out of trouble."
And then his father hit her, and it was his turn to keep her out of trouble.
"She would always smile around me, no matter what mood she was in."
He ran out of his good memories.
"And when she found the lace underwear, she didn't even shout at him!"
But he sure as hell shouted at her.
"She would tell some real funny stories!"
With the help of her close friends: Jack Daniels, Whiskey and Vodka.
"She really hated the outdoors!"
He found that one out when Senior locked her out the house in winter.
"She could throw pretty hard too!"
She threw a brick through the window that night when it started to snow.
"Then she got sick. I don't remember her after that."
He repressed the memories of her ill, grey-colored face.
The way his father shouted at her when she fell asleep on the couch.
When she started coughing blood and told him not to tell anyone.
And when he walked into her room one morning to find her in bed after 10 o'clock. How he tried to shake her awake but her body was cold and stiffened. How he threw-up next to her lifeless body before fainting.
"But I'd like to think she was happy."