She saw him three years after the fact, the case hazy in her memory. He was silently cleaning the floor in a coffee shop in the minutes before it closed, not looking up as she rushed in with minutes to spare on a coffee run for what she was sure would be another all-nighter at work. She rattled off the order tiredly to the teenage girl behind the counter who seemed more interested in watching the play of muscles under his t-shirt than her job; Ziva shot an irritated look his way, only to blink in surprise and recognition. The former corporal Damon Worth, who she had last seen in a Marine Corps dress uniform on the way to receive a Silver Star commendation, who had once had perfect posture and a high-and-tight haircut to match his clean-shaven face, who had been built like a tank and carried himself with the assuredness of one, was now in jeans and a t-shirt, mopping a coffee shop floor. His hair was still short, though no longer militarily so; he had slimmed down, no longer needing to meet the military requirements. Though still solid and muscled, shoulders still filling out his black t-shirt deliciously, he was on the narrower side of strong-looking, his arms a little thinner, stomach a little softer.
The girl at the counter handed Ziva her coffee order, pulling her out of the fog of recognition. She took the tray soundlessly, nodding to the girl, and started towards the door, unsure of if she should approach Worth-- would he remember? The fight they'd shared at Walter Reed; how he'd had her pinned to a door and at his mercy before falling victim to sedatives; the sadness she was sure had been obvious in her eyes as she stood watching Gibbs prepare him for the ceremony, warring with the edge of disappointment that he'd cheated his way into the military?
She paused by the door, tray in hand, before chastising herself for uncharacteristic uncertainty-- something she hadn't felt since Ari-- and turning around, letting the door fall shut with her still inside. She made her way over to where he still mopped the floor, unable to ignore the sadness she felt in her chest at the sight of his tired, slumped shoulders that had once been so broad, so straight, so proud.
"Corporal," she said softly, standing an arm and a half behind him, annoyingly paranoid that he may still be as dangerous and triggery as he had once been.
He froze in his actions, tension appearing in his shoulders, obvious through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He didn't turn around, instead standing stock still and mumbling "I was discharged," before returning to his mop.
"Corporal," she said again, setting the coffee tray down on a table and moving in front of him. "Damon Worth. Do you remember me?"
He stubbornly kept his head down, focusing on the mop in his hands. Ziva inhaled silently, actively fighting her impulse to stand defensively and at the ready for an attack; instead, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against his forearm.
He finally stopped, looking up to meet her eyes. "Of course I do, ma'am," he said quietly.
"I thought you might not," she said, pulling her hand back. "It's been a few years."
"I know," he said. His hands were tight on the mop handle, knuckles tinged white.
"How are you?" she ventured.
"Well enough, ma'am," he said.
"I'm not your officer," she said softly. "I daresay we're practically equals."
He shook his head, eyes clouded. "No, ma'am."
"Yes," she said sharply, stepping closer. "All other factors ignored, you're still a hero. Steroids don't make a man brave, they just make him strong. The drugs weren't what made you a good soldier, what made you go back for your men."
"I was discharged," he said again, an edge of sullenness in his voice. "Honorably, but only to save the senator's ass. It should have been a dishonorable discharge, for conduct unbecoming."
"And it would have been incorrect," Ziva challenged. "I am a Mossad agent, corporal. I've been in more combat situations than you want to know. And I know what makes a hero." She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and stepped a little bit closer. With only the slightest hesitation, she raised her hand and rested her fingertips over his heart. "It's all in here. And steroids can't change that."
She left silently, with naught but a nod and an encouraging smile sent his way, an immature but nonetheless satisfying smirk sent to the jealous barista, and a tray of coffee in her hands. He stayed where he was, unmoving, watching her leave, and the clouds in his eyes thinned the tiniest bit.
He showed up at NCIS one night, when only Ziva and Gibbs remained, splitting leftover Chinese as she helped him work on a favor for Vance dealing with Israeli smugglers. Worth was escorted off the elevator by a security officer, looking rough and uncouth with day-old stubble and a paint-stained sweatshirt next to the very definitely Navy MP. Gibbs spotted him first, eyebrows raising imperceptibly as they always did as he stuffed a wad of lo mein noodles in his mouth before striding over to meet Worth. Ziva watched through hooded eyes as Gibbs dismissed the security officer with a nod and drew Worth over to the nook at the base of the stairs; she could hear the hushed tones of their voices as she absently finished her rice and cracked open a fortune cookie.
As she was cleaning up the cardboard containers, Gibbs reappeared, materializing at her elbow. "Talk to him," he murmured in her ear, a hand resting on her shoulder comfortingly. "He needs help."
"From me?" She was unable to mask the surprise in her voice.
"He asked for you," Gibbs said simply. "Besides, you had a feeling then, remember?"
Ziva rolled her eyes and cursed Tony and McGee for their big mouths, resolving to punch one of them the next time she saw them. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?" she said, eying Gibbs as he tore open the wrapper on his own fortune cookie and gathered his coat.
"Yep," he said simply after swallowing. He shrugged into his coat and strode off quietly.
Taking a deep breath-- and then another, and one more-- Ziva strobe over to where Worth stood with his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt, staring at the office reflection in the window.
"Hello," she said quietly, standing next to him.
"Hi," he said. His voice was hoarse, and she glanced over at him. His cheeks were hollowed, his eyes underlined by black so dark it looked like he'd been punched.
"How are you?" she asked eventually, carefully not looking over at him.
He laughed quietly, bitterly, head dropping as he stared at the toes of his shoes. Combat boots, she noted, scuffed and dirtied.
"That well, I see," she said. She felt a sad smile cross her lips. "Are you still working in the coffee shop?"
"No, ma'am," he said automatically. She watched his reflection in surprise as his posture improved with the simple utterance of "ma'am". "One of my buddies from basic got me a job painting houses."
"I see," she said. "Do you like that?"
He shrugged imperceptibly. "Work is work, ma'am," he said. "I don't see that I have any right to complain."
She smiled, finally turning to face him. "That's a good attitude to have, Damon," she said. She didn't even realize until he started, glancing at her in surprise, that she'd called him by his given name for the first time. "What are you doing here?"
He breathed in deeply, exhaling painfully slowly. Ziva pushed her own hands into the pockets of her jeans, forcing herself to relax in his presence.
"Did you mean it? What you said about heroes?"
She cocked her head to one side, surprised that she found herself surprised at the question. "I did," she said after a hesitation. "Why do you ask?"
"It seems too easy," he said slowly. "Heroes should be more... more something."
"More than what?"
"More than this," he said, gesturing to the paint splatters on his sweatshirt, the holes in his jeans, the stubble on his cheeks.
"Why should they?" She leaned back against the window, facing him fully now. "I disagree."
"Because... I cheated to get to where I was," he said. She winced inwardly at the self-recrimination in his voice, the clouding in his grey eyes.
"But once you were there," she said slowly. "You did more than any person could have expected of you. You saved lives."
He shook his head. "He said that, too. Your boss. 'You run to the gunfire,' he said." He scoffed. "It can't be that simple."
"There is no reason why it cannot be," Ziva said easily. "I have found that it is a rare case where one's good acts may erase their bad ones. But I feel that, in this case, you have redeemed yourself for any cheating that you may have done because you acheived far more than could ever have been asked of you." She paused. "That you are working as a painter now does not mean you are no longer a Marine. Gibbs has been out of the Marines for almost twenty years, and there isn't a single person who would say that he is not a Marine."
He stayed silent, shoulders slumping once more, and stared out at the window. Ziva remembered how it had felt to hold him against her after he collapsed in the hospital, cradling his head protectively, and her fingers itched to catch him once more as she watched him fall back into the clouds in his eyes. He did not speak again, meeting her eyes only briefly to offer a courteous nod before he shuffled off. She watched him go, unable to stop herself from remembering how it had felt to fight him, the explosive and volatile power in his arms, the speed of his hands as they struck her, the undeniable strength in his shoulders, and swallowed the unexpected wave of sadness she felt welling in her throat.
It was another two and a half years before she saw him again. The tumult that had overtaken her life, from Morocco to Michael to the Damocles and weeks of imprisonment that she tried so hard to forget, had all but erased the former Corporal Damon Worth from her memory. It had taken weeks for her assuredness and familiarity in her actions to seep back into her mind, and weeks more before she had allowed anyone to talk to her about the details of her captivity; she finally let Abby get her drunk one Friday night and confided in the scientist the morbid and macabre she had kept from everyone else.
One Friday, she returned from an evening run, music echoing in her ears, to see someone sitting on the steps to her apartment building. Paying the figure no heed, she jogged up the stairs, pausing to pull out her keys. As she juggled her keys and iPod, she heard someone call for her to wait.
Whirling around, she came to face-to-face with Damon Worth. He stood on the steps of her building in a black suit, tie pulled loose; he was once again clean-shaven, his hair cropped short, and his shoulders had straightened out again. His eyes were clear and sharp; the first time she'd ever seen them as such. Ziva blinked in surprise, automatically pulling her headphones out of her ears.
"Corporal Worth," she said.
"Ma'am," he said. "How are you?"
"I am well," she said. She cocked her head to one side. "And you?"
"I'm good," he said. He tucked his hands into his pants pockets, and she caught a glimpse of a gun holster and a badge clipped to his belt.
"FBI?" she said in surprise.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. She felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips at the quiet note of pride in his voice. "Your boss put in a good word for me with Agent Fornell, and he pulled some strings to get me into training at Quantico. I'm working my way up on an organized crime task force."
"I'm proud of you," she murmured, and was surprised to realize that she was. He had come quite far from the slumped shoulders and stubble of two years ago.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said. A shy smile graced his lips, and he ducked his head politely. Ziva realized that it was the first time she'd ever seen him smile.
"Damon," she said after a brief hesitation. "Not that it isn't good to see you, but… what are you doing outside my apartment?"
A slight flush tinged his cheeks, and he cleared his throat. Looking up to meet her eyes, he straightened his shoulders before speaking. "I wanted to thank you," he said simply. "I don't know if you even remember, but we spoke a few times after my discharge—"
"I remember," she interrupted. Something made her feel it imperative that he knew that she never forgot about him.
"You talked about heroes," he continued. "You had to know I was in…well, a not so great place. And you reminded my why I became a Marine, and I figured out that it really would be conduct unbecoming to keep cleaning coffee shops or painting houses when I could still do something good."
"You're welcome," she said. "I think you could have figured it out alone, though."
"Maybe so," he said. "But you still pushed me in the right direction. I owe you."
"Not in the least," she said dismissively.
"I do," he insisted. "I'd like to make it up to you, somehow."
"You really don't have to do that," Ziva said. She tried to ignore the warmth she felt spreading in her chest at his gratitude, his sincerity. It had been so very long since she had felt as much for anyone else, since Michael—Tony and McGee were nice, but coworkers; Gibbs an older brother; Abby, a friend. She chastised herself internally, though she knew it was not wrong to want something more than coworkers and an older brother and a friend, regardless of who she wanted it from.
"I want to," he said simply. "Can I at least buy you dinner sometime?"
The warmth spread, and she felt her cheeks burn; fervently, she hoped that the blush was covered from the flushing from her run. "Very well," she said, unable to keep herself from smiling at his own grin. "But you may not call me 'ma'am'," she said sharply.
He matched her smile, nodding. "Officer David, then?" he offered. Ziva found herself shocked that he had not only remembered her title and name, but that he pronounced it perfectly.
"I'm just an NCIS agent now," she said. "But I do not care for titles. Call me Ziva." Without thinking about it, she offered her hand. He took it, shaking it firmly.
"Damon," he said. "It's nice to meet you, Ziva."
"You, too," she said.
Twenty minutes later, she shut the door to her apartment, unable to stop smiling entirely. Plans were finalized—he would buy her dinner the next night, complete with reservations and picking her up at eight—and she found herself wondering if he was really the same man who had shuffled into NCIS two years ago, slumped and paint splattered and tired.
There were times when his eyes would glaze over, filled with clouds and memory, and Ziva knew that he would be thinking of his past: that initial rejection from the Corps, or the torture he overcame, or the rage that consumed him as the steroids took control. When the clear grey of his eyes became murky and weighted, she would put her hands on his shoulders and force him to look her in the eye and tell him that what mattered know was what he was doing to help the world, not his misguided attempts to help the world in the past; she would kiss his temple and brush her fingers through his hair and tell him that mistakes mattered only insofar as they were learned from, and that his mistakes did not matter to her. She would tell him that he was a hero in her mind and that that would never change, regardless of anything.
There were times when she would wake up in the middle of the night with her teeth clamping down on the inside of her cheek to silence the screams echoing in her dreams, the taste of blood in her mouth and the smirking visage of Salim burned into her eyelids, the overwhelming feeling of helplessness and hopelessness and complete, utter apathy pinching at her heart. When she would dart out of bed and try to soothe her frazzled nerves by going through every martial arts kata, Tai Chi routine, and meditation technique she knew, he would eventually find her and wrap one arm around her shoulder and tell her that it was all over now and she was safe; he would take her hand gently and kiss her knuckles and tell her that no one would ever hurt her like that again, and even if she knew he couldn't promise that she appreciated the words anyways and let them lull her back to sleep. He would tell her that she was the strongest person he'd ever met and that no one could ever come close.
Gibbs had been surprised, but took it in stride. McGee had been puzzled, but offered his congratulations. Abby had squealed like a little girl and taken to prodding Ziva for details. Tony had started by making snide comments about age differences and maturity, and only kept them in check when Ziva twisted his arm behind his back and almost broke it.
It was true that he was younger than she was. He had documented mistakes and misjudgments. He had cheated his way into the Marine Corps, and had almost killed her twice because of it. But after it all, he had pulled himself back together. He was a good FBI agent—something else that Tony liked to comment on—and was moving up through the ranks steadily. He was strong, stronger than she'd thought possible when she first found out about the steroids. He was simple—he didn't work with her, he didn't work for her father—and he loved her, and that was all that mattered.