He stood. He stood and he watched her go, and it killed him that it was all he could do, that she wasn't his and he wasn't hers to hold strong together against this. They were a team, partners, and shared a friendship that went far deeper than the usual meaning of the word, but after all these years there was still a line between them that they didn't cross. He'd told her she wasn't alone and he'd meant it, but the truth was that more and more frequently he had been feeling the agonizing aloneness of standing on the opposite side of that line from her. She boarded the plane, bag in hand.
"Get a grip, Tony" he told himself. The smell of her shampoo was still clinging to him, making his grip harder to hold. Harder to want to hold. She had clung to him so tightly, so desperately, and all he wanted to do was all he'd ever wanted to do – to protect her. If there was one thing he'd learned about this particularly bewitching ninja assassin over the years though, it was that there was very little he could do to protect her. Bullets he could and would step in front of, but life kept tossing things at her that he couldn't shield her from. It didn't help that she fought every attempt he made to help her with the same passion with which she mourned the "slings and arrows of misfortune" that kept coming to break her down. "Since when do I think in Shakespeare?" he thought to himself. The plane moved into position and began its taxi down the runway.
The only thing he could do now was be here to pick up the pieces. If she would let him do even that; Ziva was very private in her grief. And often angry. He'd take the anger, though, if that's all she could give him. He didn't know how much longer he could take this, this togetherness that was never really together. He'd known for a while now that she was it for him, and he almost wished he'd never come to realize it. Now he had to live with that knowledge, and every day it was getting harder. Sometimes he was so sure, so absolutely sure that she knew he was it for her too, but at all times he was also painfully aware of the fact that she wasn't ready yet to face it. To face them. "'Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune,'" he whispered to himself, "'or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?'" She was his only trouble, but she was enough to fill any sea. "She'll come to me eventually. One day she'll come" he said to himself, his words more sure than he felt. The plane took off. She was gone. He stood and watched her go.