I wrote this the same day that I wrote Questions & Answers, but it had a lot more creases that needed ironing out, and then I simply forgot about it, and it sat tucked away in Yellow Tulips, a book of poems by James Fenton, whose poems I love, until today when I was flicking though to find a poem and it fell out. So, I typed it up and added bits and took bits away, and here we have it. I do not like the ending, because I had a bit of difficulty with it.
Late Nights and Broken Hearts
It had been happening more and more frequently. A third body in her lab after a case. It had been happening during cases, and during paperwork days, too. A more frequent appearance of her friend's difficult-to-read face. Normally it would be Gibbs coming down for results, or Timmy and only occasionally Tony or Ziva. Never would either of them come down just for company. Gibbs either, which just left Tim.
But recently Ziva had been in her lab more often. And not just for results. She would never give a reason to why she was not up in the squad room, and Abby would never ask. She could see why it was. She had noticed Ziva was down there when Tony was MIA, when Gibbs was threatening unemployment for his senior field agent. And she had seen the silence that settled over her friend when she was not kept distracted. Ziva was no Kate, no sister, but she was a friend, a very close friend, and Abby could sympathise. She had never felt the longing she saw in Ziva's eyes, but she had felt pain and guessed it was comparable.
It had been a dark night as they sat in her lab, the three of them. Not just dark as in absent of light, but dark as in deep and solemn. She felt guilty, as they all still sat in their undercover clothes, makeup still on and hair still done – for her and Ziva at least, McGee had narrowly escaped her suggestion of eyeliner and hair spray. She felt bad. Not for threatening McGee with makeup, but for not seeing it sooner. Not noticing that their victim was in fact their killer. Ziva too was sat quietly, but Abby was certain it had little to do with the case or with the fact they had lost a police officer that night. In fact, she was certain she knew exactly what, or more accurately who, was on her friend's mind.
She was hardly naïve to Ziva's pain, the discomfort she had seen flash across her face when Tony had commented upon how both herself and Lee had looked that night after the mission, but did not even cast a glance towards Ziva. She had seen the betrayal in Ziva's eyes, and the only consolation she could offer was a simple apologetic shrug of the shoulders.
"Hey, Timmy, do you mind getting me a bottle of water? I need to get some of this caffeine out of my system."
"Why can't you get it yourself?"
"Because, I'm still working and you're not."
"Abs…"
"And I'm about to get changed and I don't want you staring at all of my tats." She challenged.
He stuttered slightly before coming up with what he thought was a good answer. "There are only three that aren't already on display." Her raised eyebrows suggested his answer was not so great. "Right. Bottle of water. Do you need anything, Ziva?"
"No, McGee. I am fine." Her answers were clipped and Abby could tell she was starting to slip back into her tortured mind again as McGee scurried off.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"What is there to talk about, Abby?" She kept her back straight as she looked down at her hands.
"We could talk about Tony." She suggested.
"Why would we need to talk about Tony?" Her sigh said it all; she wanted to talk about him, but talking about him would give everything away. "He is going to the Bahamas with her."
There was no need to ask who the 'her' was. Tony's new girlfriend was the only thing that seemed to be on Ziva's mind as of late. "The Bahamas, huh? Well, there's nothing there really, but palm trees and sand and…"
"And a beautiful hotel room on the beach." At Abby's raised eyebrows she explained further. "I saw his computer screen whilst he was booking it. Did you know that Thunderball was filmed partly in the Bahamas? He has never been. He also wants to go to Jamaica, because that is where Dr No was based…" She trailed off. "Sorry. I sound ridiculous."
"No, no you don't." Abby covered her hand with her own paler one. "You certainly don't sound ridiculous." She had wanted to say that she sounded heartbroken, but she felt that that might be pushing it. It was hard enough to get Ziva to open up at all.
"But I am being ridiculous, Abby. He does not care for me, I am nothing to him, he does not even see me, and I do not even know why that makes me feel so…in pain." Her voice cracked despite herself and Abby thought she saw tears in the Mossad officer's eyes.
"Now you are being ridiculous. You are his partner. His friend."
"But I am better than this, Abby. I was trained to be better than this."
"You can't train emotions, Ziva. This is not something that you can coach your body not to feel. These feelings aren't just going to go away."
"I do not want to care about him and her," her voice grew sour, and quieter, as she said the 'her', as if she could barely bring herself to say the three letters, "but I cannot help it. I cannot help but want to know what she is like, why he likes her, why he does not like me." Her teeth were grit together and her breathing seemed heavier, as if she were physically straining against the emotions that overwhelmed her. "I just want to know what is wrong with me…" To Abby, her voice sounded like a little girl's, so desperate and alone, pleading for someone to save her from the emotional pain that was drowning her.
"There's nothing wrong with you, Sweetie. Absolutely nothing at all. Any man would be lucky to have you. Isn't that right McGee?" She asked as she heard him walk back into the lab.
"Uh…" With Abby, there was always the possibility of trick questions, and this sounded like one of them. But, light reflected off of Ziva's cheeks. "Of course. Don't know a single man who wouldn't want you, Ziva." He cringed. "Not that I, or any other man see you as, I mean, I don't, but I don't know about others, and I, that…are you crying?" Definitely a trick question. Certainly the wrong thing to say. She was going to kill him. But she did not. She simply stood up, dried her eyes with her thumb, quietly thanked Abby and wished them both a good night before walked out of the lab.
"McGee! What the Hell were you thinking?!"
"I wasn't." He mumbled, proffering the bottle of water as a gesture of peace.
"I don't want it."
"What? But you just sent me to buy it?"
"I just wanted to talk to Ziva alone. She was hardly going to talk with you sat right there, was she?"
"Oh." He nodded slowly. "So did she talk?"
"Yeah." Abby sighed. "Why does Tony have to be such an ass of the time? I mean, he's hardly blind to her pain, and yet he does nothing. I used to think he had the biggest heart of anyone I had ever met after Gibbs. And you." She added as an amendment. "But now all I can thing is that he's an idiot. I mean, it hurts to watch, McGee, and I don't want to have to see her so tormented by him any more."
"Maybe he really loves this girl, Abby. What then?"
"Then he should at least have the decency to tell Ziva that!" She snapped, suddenly angrier than she had ever been with Tony. He was like a brother to her and she felt so disappointed in him. "Then maybe she could try and move on, rather than letting her mind torment her!"
"Maybe we should just let nature run its course, Abby."
"What, and watch her die for him whilst he doesn't care a mite? No, McGee. The sooner whatever little thing he has going on with his mystery woman ends, the sooner the natural balance of the squad room can return and the sooner she can stop torturing herself." McGee sighed at how upset Abby was getting over it all. Admittedly, he was starting to find it difficult to ignore the usually calm and collected Mossad officer's growing distress, and he had to agree with Abby. The sooner Tony's fling either came out into the open, or ended, the sooner they could try and help Ziva.
Tony often joked about him being a lost puppy, with their dysfunctional family at NCIS being the only place that he fit in, but he wondered if Tony could see how much he was destroying that, breaking the family apart and ruining the little safe-haven that he had developed, around people he loved.
So, I made a bit of a mistake. I did not really think until I updated my spreadsheet to tell me that I have uploaded this one that it was my 49th NCIS fiction. Now, I am hoping that some of the maths geniuses out there will be able to work out that that means that my next fiction must be my 50th, and like I promised I do not want to upload it until all of the chapters are complete. However, some of you may also know the date. It is two days until the 15th of November, which means that it is two days until It Takes Two will be a year old, which is a scary thought, since it has taken me a year to write only 58 mediocre standard chapters. But I had something planned for the 15th, as a sort of birthday present to the story, which means that I would have to upload that as my 50th, which I do not want.
The obvious solution is to simply not upload this, but it has been waiting around for so long and I do not want it to get forgotten again, so I want to upload this now. And, since I only have three more chapters to write, it means that I think I will upload the first chapter of my 50th either tonight or tomorrow.
For my reference: 49th NCIS fic.