AN: This story was inspired by the three lines you see at the beginning here. I found them in a post on tumblr and it sort of took on a life of its own:) Enjoy
"Show me your scars," he said.
"But…Why?" she asked quizzically.
"I want to see how many times you needed me and I wasn't there," he whispered, a tear rolling down his cheek.
The pounding had long since ceased and they realized that the silence was far scarier than the noise, because silence meant they were alone.
"How long do you think we have been stuck in here?" Ziva asked quietly.
Tony glanced at his watch. "An hour maybe?"
"They will find us," Ziva said with a conviction she didn't really feel.
Tony hummed in response. "No more elevators for us after today okay? I think being stuck three times is more than enough don't you?"
"I thought you liked spending time with me in close quarters?" Ziva half-heartedly jested.
"I would prefer to spend time with you when Gibbs knew where we were," Tony chuckled.
They lapsed into silence again as Ziva rested her head on Tony's shoulder and he stroked her hair. The elevator creaked beneath them and he wrapped his arms around her waist, sensing the impending drop from the last time they were trapped. There was a loud crack and then the floor shook beneath them. Tony fell into Ziva, but somehow managed to keep them upright during the fall.
"We slipped," Ziva commented as she looked around the old elevator.
"Really? I thought the earth moved," Tony replied with a smirk.
Ziva looked up at him and laughed. "You said that last time too, yes?"
Tony just smiled.
The hours ticked by. And suddenly they had been stuck for two, three, four, almost five hours.
"I do not know how much more of this I can take Tony," Ziva whispered.
"Gibbs is coming Ziva. You just gotta hold on okay? Come on let's think of something else. What was the last movie you saw?"
Ziva groaned, "I do not know, Tony."
"Ziva! That is practically a crime!" Tony exclaimed as he clutched his chest, pretending to be wounded. "When we get out of here I am taking you to the movies and we are going to see whatever's out okay."
"Okay," Ziva agreed, "but only if you read the book I'm reading for my book group."
Tony groaned, "Fine, as long as it isn't some girly romance novel."
The hours continued to tick by as the lights in the elevator began to dim. Six, seven, eight hours, and the emergency lights flickered on.
"We finally lost power," Tony mused.
"I am going to lose it if we don't get out of here soon."
"It will be okay, I promise," he tried to assure her.
"But what if it is not? You cannot promise that someone will save us, not this time."
She spoke so quietly that Tony almost didn't hear her, but she was right. He couldn't promise someone would find them. All he could do was pull her a little closer, holding her a little tighter as they waited for their fate to claim them. Only, he wasn't ready to let fate decide just yet. They had been through far too many near misses and close calls in the past, for this to be how they went out. He wasn't ready. He needed more time.
Nine, ten, almost eleven hours passed, but there was still no sign of help. Tony's heart rate was steadily increasing. He could feel Ziva shaking against him, as he took a few calming breaths. He was not ready to die.
When they hit the twelve hour mark, Ziva lost it. Tears cascaded down her cheeks soaking his shirt, as he struggled to prevent tears of his own from falling. He slipped off his jacket, wrapping it around her shivering form. With her safely tucked into his lap, he murmured nonsense in her ear until she stilled against him.
"Are you okay now?" He asked as he wiped the remaining tears from her damp face.
"I am not ready to die," she confessed.
"I know," was all he could manage in return.
"As a Mossad Agent, I never expected to live to thirty, but this was not how I pictured my death. I always thought it would be quick, you know? Taking a bullet in the heat of a battle, being blown to pieces by a bomb I failed to diffuse. Anything but this."
Tony flinched at the way she described her future, so dark and all alone, but he understood the feeling, of preparing to die. He understood the concept of believing you were meant to go out with a bang, which would refuse to let people forget you.
"Yea me too," he reluctantly agreed. "As a cop, I always thought I would take a bullet and that would be that, you know. This… this is worse, but at the same time, part of me prefers this."
"You would rather die a slow and painful death than an instant one," Ziva clarified.
"No," Tony shook his head. "I would rather die together than live another day alone."
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and still not a word. Their hope was all but gone.
It had been sixteen hours when Ziva brought it up. "You know what the statistics say…"
"We are not a number on a chart, Zee-vah."
"24 hours if you expect to find them alive," Ziva recited
"I know. I've heard it a million times, but you and I both know that oftentimes statistics are wrong."
"We will starve," Ziva concluded.
"No, we will die of dehydration first," he corrected carefully.
"I'm not ready. I need more time. There is so much I did not get to do… So much I never said."
"It's not fair. You deserve all the time in the world, but at this rate I can only guarantee you hours. You should say whatever it is you are keeping inside. You don't want to die with regrets."
She shook her head, "Not yet. I am not ready. It is not time."
"I'm not going anywhere," Tony said with a small smile.
Eighteen hours.
"Are you sure you can't get the emergency latch open?" Tony called up to her again.
"I am so sorry," she whispered as he lowered her to the ground.
"No cell phone service either?"
She just shook her head.
"It's not your fault," he coaxed.
She looked up at him with puffy eyes and a watery smile. "It is not your fault either."
He pulled her into a tight hug and stood there until she could breathe again. With twenty four hours quickly approaching, Ziva crawled slowly out of his arms. Tony cocked his head and looked at her, but she just smiled her sad smile and came to sit in front of him. Crossing her legs and taking his hands in hers. She wove their fingers together before speaking.
"Any last requests?" she asked quietly.
His eyes widened and his heart rate jumped. "We still have a good 24 hours," he tried to reason.
"I know, but I do not want to take any chances that things will be left unsaid when we go."
He nodded and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing as he fought back tears. "Okay, same goes for you then. Anything you ever wanted to know, or wanted to say, say it now."
"May I start?" she asked.
He nodded, still not trusting his voice.
"Do you believe in soul mates?"
Tony gulped, but as hard as it was for him, he fought his reflex to joke. He took a deep breath and chose his words carefully. For the first time in his life, he was going to be soul-baringly honest with someone, and the thought was as liberating as it was terrifying. Ready or not he had no choice, because fate had once again screwed them over.
"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice laced with concern.
"I…" he faltered. "Yes, I'm fine."
She smirked. "Ah yes, I know all about fine."
And for the first time since they had been trapped, he laughed and she joined in. It felt good to laugh, even if it really wasn't funny. It felt good to hear her laugh, even just one last time…
"I didn't used to," he answered truthfully, after he composed himself. "But in recent years I think I have grown to believe that mine is out there… somewhere."
"Do you think she knows?" Ziva wondered.
"I dunno," he mused. "I think she has a feeling, or at least I hope she does."
Ziva smiled, "Okay, your turn."
"Why did you never tell me about Ari?" Tony asked.
Ziva's eyes widened. She resisted the urge to draw her hands away in shock. "How did you find out?"
"I always knew he was your brother, Ziva. I realize that back then you thought I was a complete idiot, but I wasn't, well not entirely anyway. I'm an investigator, so I investigated the person I would be tailing around town. Turned out your dad was a deputy director of Mossad and your brother happened to be a rogue agent."
"So you wondered why I did not tell you I killed him," She concluded.
"Yea, I mean we are partners. I… I just wondered why you let Gibbs lie about all those years."
"I was embarrassed, and ashamed. I mean, people don't just kill their own brother for someone they just met."
"But for some reason you did," he said with a small smile. "Why?"
"I realized I was wrong. He did kill Kate, and I was not going to let him kill another innocent person. The man I killed in Gibbs basement all those years ago was not my brother. He was the monster my father created, and I like to think that he is in a better place now; one without suffering…" she trailed off and wiped her eyes.
"I'm glad you did," he says earnestly.
Ziva looked up at him confused, "How can you say that?"
"If you hadn't, Gibbs wouldn't be here," he replied with a simple shrug. "So I have always been grateful that you were brave enough to shoot him that day. That's why I brought it up, because I don't want to die without thanking you for making what I'm sure was one of the most difficult choices in your life."
"Oh," was all Ziva managed to whisper.
"It's your turn, you know," Tony reminded her as he rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs. He watched as a mirage of emotions flashed across her face and her cheeks blushed. Just as he was about to say something else, she finally spoke.
"What is your number?" Ziva blurted before she had the chance to lose her courage to ask.
"My number?" Tony asked in confusion.
"You know, the number of people you have slept with," Ziva replied.
"Oh!" Tony laughed as he ran one of his hands through his hair and ducked his head, so his eyes were no longer meeting hers. He took a composing breath, before he looked up to find her staring at him quizzically.
"I always knew you wanted to know," he jested.
"Shut up and answer the question, Tony!" Ziva slapped his shoulder gently.
"45,"Tony settled on after a moment's thought.
"I didn't just mean in the last year Tony. I meant ever."
"Still 45."
"But…You…You were always with a different girl," she asked in utter confusion.
"That doesn't mean I slept with all of them. It also doesn't mean that I even really went on dates with all those women. I have an image to maintain," he blushed. "I may have embellished my conquests a bit."
"Hmm," she hummed in agreement. "So, then who was the last person you slept with?" she asked, ignoring the fact that it was technically Tony's turn.
"EJ."
"That was almost a year ago!" Ziva exclaimed in shock.
"Hey! I've been a little busy saving your ass."
Ziva smacked him again, "Okay, your turn."
"Who is the best you've ever had?" he wondered as he tilted his head to study her.
You danced on the tip of her tongue, but even in the face of eminent death she wasn't sure she could bring herself to say it. She took a deep breath and studied the man before her. The man who had provided so much comfort to her in the past and who was trying desperately to make her feel better now.
"Promise you will not laugh?" She finally asked.
Tony internally groaned and braced himself to hear her say Adam, or Malachi, or Ray, or maybe even Michael, but he isn't prepared when he hears her response.
"You," she said with a simple shrug, as if admitting he is the best sex she has ever had was something she said every day.
"Me?" He asks in utter disbelief.
"Yes."
Tony swallows the joke on the tip of his tongue and opts for the serious approach. "Me too."
Ziva looks up in surprise and gets lost looking in his hazel eyes, which seem to shine in the dim emergency lights.
"My turn," she says quickly as she ducks her head. "Have you ever tried page 57 with someone else?"
Tony chuckled. "Nope, that position was reserved solely for you Zee-vah."
"I'm glad we had that summer."
"Me too," Tony said earnestly, as he kissed the back of her hand.
"Sometimes I wish we could go back to the way it was then. It was simpler, yes?" Ziva revealed sadly.
"Me too," Tony sighed. "Maybe when we get out of here, we can try again?"
Ziva cringed, "Tony, be practical, we will not get out of here. Not this time."
"But what if we do?" Tony asked expectantly, his will to live returning.
"Maybe," she replied with a watery smile, "but it would not be the same. I am… different. You have not been with me since I was in Somalia. I… I am different now. I do not know that you would still want me the way you think you do."
" 'sokay," he replied with a kind smile. "I still think you're pretty great."
They continued to open up to each other in ways they never had before as the hours slowly ticked by. Twenty-four came and went in the blink of an eye. When his watch told him it had been thirty hours, he finally mustered up the courage to ask her what had been gnawing on him for years.
"Show me your scars," he said.
"But…Why?" she asked quizzically.
"I want to see how many times you needed me and I wasn't there," he whispered, a tear rolling down his cheek.
Ziva sat up and moved away from his chest.
"Okay," she said quietly as she searched his face. "Okay," she whispered again as she nodded her head and lifted her shirt off. The air was warm, but she still felt goose bumps begin to form across her newly exposed skin. Closing her eyes she took a deep breath, before she reached around and unclasped her bra. As she let it fall to the side, she watched Tony's eyes water and another tear roll down his cheek.
"Come here," he beckoned quietly.
She moved so she was straddling his hips and closed her eyes as his hands traced the marks on her ribcage. Her breath caught in her throat as his fingers found the marks that crisscrossed her breasts. He stared at her in the dim blue light as the tears he had been hiding all day fell freely down his cheeks. His jacket was spread out on the floor behind her from when she took it off and he gently leaned her back so she was lying down on it. He hovered over her and she felt a cold tear hit her stomach. Slowly Tony brought his head down and began to trail kisses along the path his fingers had been following moments before.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered over and over between his kisses. "I'm so sorry."
He reached the scars along her hips and realized that they dipped below the top of her pants. Gently, he unbuttoned them and slipped them down her legs he continued to kiss his way down her body, as if his lips and his tears might just make all her scars disappear.
Ziva lay there in amazement as she watched the man she had grown to love more than anything turn what should have been such a sexual act, into something so much more. She couldn't remember ever feeling as loved and cherished as she did in that moment. She felt him start to make his way back up on the other side of her body and when he reached the scar on her collarbone she sat up and cupped his face in her hands. Staring into his eyes, she watched as the tears continued to tumble down his face. Wiping his cheeks, she leaned in to kiss him.
Her lips brushed against his in the softest of touches, before he pulled back to look at her.
"You were wrong, you know," he whispered, as he brushed her hair out of her eyes.
"Oh?" she replied with a smile as she slipped her pants back on and clipped her bra back into place.
"Yeah, I still want you the way I did all those years ago," he said lovingly as he handed Ziva her discarded shirt. Ziva smiled and crawled back over to sit between his legs. Tony rubbed circles on her hip and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
"Sleep," he whispered. "I've got you, you're safe."
He felt her slowly relax in his arms. Her breathing evened out, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make his mind stop racing. I failed her. I failed her. Ran through his head on an endless loop. He had promised that he would always have her back, and now he was just as helpless to protect her as all those times before. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall freely down his cheeks. He wasn't ready to die. He needed more time.
Thirty-six hours ticked by, before Tony woke up and lurched away from the wall, knocking Ziva onto the floor.
"Tony, what the hell was that?!" Ziva screamed as she stood up and brushed herself off.
"The wall is hot!"Tony exclaimed in surprise.
Ziva gave him a wary look before she brought the back of her hand to the wall to gauge the temperature, only to find Tony was right. She could feel the heat radiating off the walls.
"The building must be on fire," She assessed.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Tony let out an exasperated sigh and slumped down on the floor in the middle of the elevator.
"We need to stay away from all the walls," Ziva said him quietly, as she came to sit in the middle with him. "The floor will not get hot because there is no room for the fire to be below us since we slipped, but the walls will only get hotter as the fire increases."
Tony lay back on the floor and pulled her down to lay next to him. "Heat rises, Ziva. It will be colder down here."
She merely nodded and rested her head on his chest. "We have less time than we thought," she informed him sadly after a long moment of silence.
"We are going to run out of air, aren't we?" Tony concluded sadly.
"Yes, we are trapped on the last floor of the building in a metal box with a fire all around us, we probably have two hours?"
"Okay," he choked out. "I love you, Ziva."
"I love you too," she whispered as she leaned up to capture his lips in a passionate kiss. They finally broke apart minutes later gasping for air, with tears streaming steadily down both of their faces.
"I wish we had more time!" Ziva sobbed.
"I know," Tony soothed as he pulled her back down to his chest. "Trust me, I know."
At thirty- eight hours Ziva felt Tony's arms fall from her waist as he slipped into unconsciousness. Ziva fought back a sob as she burrowed deeper into his arms, and counted his heartbeats as she waited for sleep to claim her too.
There was a loud bang as a firefighter tried to wedge the doors open. "And you're sure they are in here?" he shouted as the tool fell out again.
"I'm positive. They weren't in the rest of the building and that agent said they were in the building before the fire started," his partner reminded him as he leaned into the clamp.
"Got it!" Steve exclaimed excitedly as he felt the doors begin to give way.
His partner John leaned in, and slowly the doors creaked apart. They jammed them open and peaked inside. Sure enough there were two people laying on the floor of the elevator that matched the descriptions they were given.
"Are they dead John?" Steve called to up to his partner.
"The female has a pretty weak pulse, and I'm not finding one for the male," he said helplessly.
"Try and resuscitate her, I'm going to radio for a backup."
Steve placed the call to his superiors and climbed into the elevator. As He searched for the man's pulse, Steve noticed the way they were lying there in each other's arms and he felt his heart clench.
"Dammit," he mumbled as he searched desperately for a pulse. "They look like Tommy and Lisa."
"Tommy and Lisa died though, she isn't dead yet," John reminded him. "Keep looking."
"I found one!" Steve shouted after minutes of tense silence. "He isn't breathing and the pulse is weak and inconsistent, but it's still there."
"We can't do breaths, but you can start compressions." John ordered as he continued to listen to the woman's faint heartbeat.
"They're 10 minutes out," Steve said sadly as he looked at the couple on the floor in front of him.
"They are going to die if we don't get them oxygen sooner," John nodded helplessly.
Steve looked down at the man by his knees and was once again reminded of the partners he had lost a little over a year ago. He took a deep breath before he slipped off his mask and placed it over Tony's face.
John watched his partner start the chest compressions, making sure take steady deep breaths so he could breathe without the mask. He looked down at the lifeless woman lying before him and wordlessly John slipped his mask off as well.
"Hold on," John whispered to her as he tightened the mask on her small face. "Help is on the way."
Ziva finally came to in the ambulance. Panic flashed across her face as she reached up to rip the oxygen mask off her face, but John held her arms down. "You've gotta keep that on if you want to breathe sweetheart. We're taking you to the hospital. You are going to be okay." Ziva desperately wanted to ask about Tony, but she couldn't find the words. Moments later, she slipped back into unconsciousness again.
Ziva woke up in the hospital to the sound of beeping heart monitors and the smell of disinfectant. Her head was pounding. Her vision was blurry. Blinking Ziva looked around the dimly lit hospital room. She could see the city lights filtering in through the flimsy white curtains, and the moon was high in the sky, casting a beam of light on the bed next to hers. Slowly she rolled over to take in the man lying next to her. He was asleep with an oxygen mask secured tightly around his nose and mouth, but his heart rate was steady and she could see his chest rising and falling.
Looking around she noticed there was a vase with flowers at the foot of her bed and a chair tucked in the corner with a cup of coffee sitting on the table next to it. Gibbs must be around here somewhere, she thought to herself. Ziva reached out and tried to grasp Tony's hand, but he was too far away. She sat up and grabbed her IV bag hanging on the wall. Careful to keep it above her head, she walked slowly over to his bed. After clipping the bag back on to the wall, she crawled into bed next to Tony. Avoiding all the wires from their IV and the heart monitors, she snuggled under the covers and his embrace. She smiled when she felt his arms tighten around her waist.
"Looks like we had just enough time after all," she whispered into his chest.