Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS.
Ziva all but ran - fashionably late - into the squad room, throwing her belongings behind her desk before sitting at her chair and looking towards her team who were looking at her in confusion.
"Late, Ziva?" Tony taunted.
"Do not ask," she huffed.
"What happened?" he asked anyway. Ziva threw him a deadly look, "okay, okay, forget I asked."
"What are we working on?"
"Nothing for the moment," McGee replied.
"Okay then," she said taking a folder from her relatively small pile of files, "this is just what I need," she murmured under her breath.
"You sure you're okay?" Tony tried again.
"What do you want me to say; everything is fine? Well it isn't," She snapped causing McGee to look up concern for his friend clear in his eyes.
"If you tell us what's wrong then maybe we can help," McGee said.
"I do not need help. If I do, I shall ask," she said.
"Okay, just offering."
"I know," she sighed, closing her eyes and shaking her head at her own uncalled for anger directed at her friends, "I am sorry; you are not to blame."
"McGee's to blame for a lot of things, but why not whatever is up with you? Just tell us Ziva," Tony said.
She sighed again - simply re-enforcing the point she was frustrated, tired, angry or all of them - contemplating whether to share. She didn't want empathy or sympathy, she didn't want help, she didn't really want to tell them but looking into their faces; she knew they would only have her best interests at heart. Even if they all happen to push each others buttons. When it came down to it, they would all be there for each other - through thick or thin.
"The owner of my building sold it, about a month ago. This morning I woke up to the sound of my home phone and got told that I had until Wednesday to move out-"
"Why?" Tony asked.
"He wants to demolish the building, rebuild, make more rooms and make it have better facilities - such as a laundry in the rooms, rather than the building - to make them more expensive."
"Wednesday?" McGee mused, "it's Monday today!"
"I know. I was on the phone to him this morning trying to get a little longer. I will be homeless."
"Go home," Gibbs ordered walking in: "better get packing," he elaborated at Ziva's confused expression.
"If I do that then I might put a bullet through the owner's head," she murmured, "I will be okay for today. I will begin packing tonight."
"Need help?" Tony offered and McGee nodded in agreement to Tony's question. Ziva took this as his offer to help as well.
"No, I should be okay. I do not have that much," she told them, lying slightly.
"Okay," Gibbs said, "if you need our help then you know where to find us," he reminded her, she simply nodded in reply: "gear up," he immediately snapped back into 'boss mode' before rattling off the case and address to his team.
Ziva sighed a sigh of relief at the thought of a case.
"Happy someone's dead, Ziva?" Tony commented on his observation.
"No, I am happy I do not have to sit at that desk all day with the temptation of calling my building and leaving a not-so-pleasant message for the manager," she replied as they quickly followed McGee and Gibbs to the elevator.
"Sure Ziva," he said under his breath doubtfully.
"I am not a cold hearted killer," she told him.
"No, you're just a killer," he stated with a smirk, knowing better than anyone how to get under her skin, but when he looked down at his Israeli born partner and saw the look she was giving him, he corrected himself: "were. Were just a killer."
"Better," he heard her reply.
"Wow, if looks could kill," he murmured under his breath as the metal doors opened.
At first, the crime scene was clean. Well, clean not including the blood surrounding the body of the petty officer who was yet to be identified. The room was eerily clean. The only thing that was out of place was the blood surrounded dead body in the middle of the room.
"The room was booked by Petty Officer Jamison Walter. According to his files, he was thirty-three years old and had just returned from serving in Afghanistan two weeks ago. He was accompanied by another man who was described as tall, pale skin, blue eyes and brown hair in their late twenties. No name was recorded," Ziva informed Gibbs when she returned to the small hotel room.
"Photos," he ordered as Ducky and Palmer walked in.
"Good morning," Ducky said cheerfully to everyone, he received a chorus of murmuring, but Ziva's clear, accent tainted voice was louder, "I heard you are being evicted, my dear?" He questioned setting his things near the body and pulling out the necessary equipment while he heard Ziva unzip the camera bag.
"Good news travels fast," she murmured, "yes, so I guess my morning is just as good as that man's," she corrected herself louder.
"Yours has to be a little better."
"Well, yes," she replied as the flash of a light and the click of the shutter filled the room.
"Time of death, Duck?" Gibbs asked.
"Around three hours ago," Ducky replied.
"Who found the body?"
"The maid; she is outside," Ziva replied and Gibbs walked past her.
"What are you going to do, Ziva, about your apartment?" Ducky asked, picking the conversation up where it left off.
"I honestly do not know, I guess take it day by day, I will go home tonight and while I begin to pack, I'll look for a cheap apartment to stay in until I find somewhere better," She sighed.
"Don't bother offering help, she doesn't want it," Tony said from the other side of the room, "This is ridiculous, there is nothing here," he added exasperated.
"I didn't know you possessed such words in your vocabulary, Tony," McGee took a cheap shot at the senior field agent.
"Funny, McGee, real funny," he returned snidely.
Ziva paced the perimeter of the room, "maybe we should look for prints and traces of blood or other bodily fluids," she suggested.
"I'll dust for prints," McGee said.
The day didn't seem long enough for Ziva, she didn't want to go home and start packing. It seemed too daunting, especially when Gibbs let them go at ten at night.
They had ended up finding evidence at the scene, but most of it was still getting processed. The evidence was small: shards of glass, samples of blood, torn fabric, a few strands of hair, along with fingerprints, furniture and clothing that Abby was going to find more from.
Ziva walked down the almost deserted halls of her building, people had taken time off work to pack their belongings and find places to live. She was one of the only people who hadn't, now she had to do it all in two nights.
She unlocked the door and threw her keys on the bench next to the door as she turned the lights on, before stopping to remove her weapon from its holster and badge off her waist band placing the gun in a safe and her badge next to her keys.
She looked around her main living room; she had no idea where to begin. Her bedroom had to be last or she'd have no where to sleep. The task ahead suddenly struck her and overwhelmed the usually calm agent. She took her home phone and dialled the number to her local pizza place, ordering her favourite pizza before deciding not to procrastinate and just start.
Ziva walked to the spare room that she used for storage and found the boxes she used when she was moving in, unfolding them and sitting on the floor sticky taping the bottoms together so they didn't fall apart when she lifted them.
A silent knock at the door brought her from her boredom and frustration. She jumped up and walked to the door - still in her clothes from work. Flinging the door open and seeing the one and only Tony DiNozzo; her face fell slightly.
"You look disappointed to see me," he feigned hurt.
"I thought you were the delivery man with my dinner," she said leaving the door open for him and walking back to the room she just left.
"From that pizza place down the road? I got it off him and paid him, you're surprisingly unobservant," he stated. She turned around to see him holding the pizza box.
"Can I please have it?"
"What have you been doing since you got home?"
"Packing."
"Hard to tell."
"I was making boxes," she said, snatching the box off him and sat on the floor in front of the flat boxes.
"Need help?" he asked. He didn't give her a chance to refuse before he sat down and began helping put the together.
"I am just going to find the paper; I will start looking for places."
"Okay," he replied.
He felt sorry, not that he would ever admit to her face, for her. She had been through a lot in her life time and now she was being kicked out of a place it took everyone ages to convince it was home.
Since her last apartment had been destroyed and since she had returned to DC, the team had offered to pay the rent for the first few months to help her get back on her feet, also offering to help replace some of the possessions she had lost. She informed them that she appreciated the offer, but it wouldn't feel right and that she would find away to cope. At that time she was trying to get her money from Tel Aviv converted to US dollars and out off her father's possession - which wasn't hard since the bank wasn't faced with a death certificate - and she was trying to get her relatives and friends to ship her photos and other sentimental belongings to Washington. She finally allowed them to help her, but she did admit that it didn't feel like home.
He since believed that had changed, and now she had to find 'home' in another empty place. The place didn't hold many memories, but the memories it did hold were happy ones as far as he knew.
He wanted to help, but wasn't sure how; he was helping her pack so she could get that done sooner rather than later, but it didn't help the fact that she didn't have anywhere to stay.
He walked from the spare room to the lounge room, he saw her on the lounge with a smile on her face while she talked to someone on the phone, "I do not need your help... Yes, I promise. No, I don't have a place to stay at the moment. I will find one thought; I have to," he knew who it was - her boyfriend, Dylan. He was nice enough, but Tony didn't like him, he was too concerned about Ziva's safety and well being to like him – even if there was nothing he had done to make him worry. He reminded himself every time he felt his blood boil around him or when Ziva spoke about him that it was nothing more, but a part of him knew it was something deeper than that.
He coughed to clear his throat to make his presence known.
"Hold on a minute," she said to the phone before looking at Tony.
"What do you want me to do with the boxes?" he asked.
"Bring them out here, I will start with the book case and that part of the room," she told him before turning back to her phone, "that was Tony... I'll talk to you later, I need to keep packing," she hung up.
"Still going strong, I see?" Tony asked when he returned with three boxes.
"Yeah, I guess."
"You sound doubtful."
"No, I just don't see enough of him. Sometimes it is more like I am in a relationship with McGee, you and Gibbs more than I am with him."
"Why don't you stay with him until you find a new place?" Tony asked.
"He lives too far away from work and neither of us are ready for that step," she admitted as she stood and met him in front of the shelf with her dining room chair.
"What are you doing?" he questioned her actions as she stood on the chair.
"I need to get the top so I can get the books," she stated at him like it was plainly obvious before straightening and beginning to remove the books and handing them to Tony who placed them into the smallest box.
"Did you find a place?"
"I haven't looked yet, Dylan rang as I began," Ziva answered.
She carefully climbed down the chair and took the books from the lower shelves, Tony did the same. Once all the books were in a box labelled books, Ziva opened a draw with a smaller box in it.
"What's in there?" Tony asked.
"Some photos from when I was a child," she murmured.
"Can I see?" he asked.
"If you wish," she replied and handed the box to him.
He opened the box and found a few photos, some were distinctly her. She looked almost the same aside from she had lost the babyish features, she had become more shapely and more slim than her childhood photos showed her as.
"Who is that?" Tony asked looking at a photo that didn't look like Ziva at all.
"That is my sister," she told him before looking into the box and pulling out another photo, "and that is a photo of my mother."
"Your sister and mother look alike."
"Looked," she corrected, "they are both dead."
"Sorry," he murmured, not pressing the topic.
He found a photo of a small Ziva standing on her toes to pear over the edge of a cot, "this is my favourite."
"Really, why?" she asked.
"Because that is just something you'd do."
"What? Look into my sister's cot?" she asked as she placed pictures and various other things into a box.
"Yeah. You, wanting to know everything that's happening and protecting your sister, I'm guessing."
"This one is my favourite," she said looking at the picture she held in her hands.
This one was framed in a deep grey, intricately weaved metal frame where the colour turned from grey to black the closer it got to the outside of the pattern, the pattern weaved so it looked as if it was the branches of a plant that clung to supports to grow. It was a photo of the team at the bar they frequented when they needed to get away for a while, to forget about their jobs or to discuss a case in the confidence of their booth at the bar. The night it was taken was different; it was Abby's birthday, so naturally Gibbs joined them - which was usually rare. They were all sitting close together; the booth was small and surprisingly just allowed them all to sit there. Abby had snatched Ziva's camera and demanded the first passer by to take a photo of them.
There was two photos taken, but the one handed to him was where no one aside from Abby was expecting it, they were all doing their own thing. Gibbs was talking to Ducky, McGee was listening in to their conversation and while Jimmy sat across from Tony, looking a little awkward while Tony cracked a joke at his expense and Ziva was laughing a long with him at Jimmy. Abby was smiling at the camera.
"Do you have the other one?"
"Yes, but this I like because of the way it capture us," she replied with a soft smile, "the other one shows us all happy, which is good, but I like this one better."
The seconds ticked by, turning to minutes, turning to hours. It wasn't until almost one when Ziva sat against the back of her lounge.
Her living and dining room was almost packed, meaning the smaller things were placed into boxes and things that didn't have a home as of then was thrown wherever it fit at that moment. It was a mess to say the least.
"I have one more day to pack all this," she said looking around what was her home.
"Why don't we call in tomorrow sick and finish packing it?" Tony suggested as he took a seat on the floor next to her.
"We are in the middle of a case, Tony," Ziva pointed out.
"I'm fairly sure that you being homeless and losing all your possessions is the priority."
"Oh, god, I have to look for a place too," she let her head fall back, "a little notice would have been good," she complained.
"Just concentrate on getting it all packed," Tony recommended.
"And what happens when it is Wednesday? When I have to move out with nowhere to go, huh?"
"Why don't you simply focus on packing then you can stay in my spare room until you find another place that you like, that way the only pressure you're under is to get packed. You can stay at my house for as long as you want," Tony offered.
Ziva looked at Tony, "no, Tony, that is your place, I cannot just walk into your place. I do not want to disrupt your life."
"You won't be. Your boyfriend isn't offering, and I doubt you will disrupt my lifestyle. No rent, just do your share of work."
"And if you have a date over?"
Tony shrugged: "stay out of my way?"
Ziva laughed: "yeah, because that will be hard. You will be in your bedroom the entire time."
"Then what's the problem?" He asked.
Ziva thought for a moment, "I'm not sure about the not paying rent. Your building's rent is higher than this one."
"Pay me half then. I pay the full sum and then you pay me half of that. My rent is direct debited from my account every two weeks-"
"How did you work out how to do that?"
"You don't know?"
"I know, I was asking you."
"McGee helped me," he said.
"And yet you are still so mean to him," Ziva shook her head.
"C'mon, Ziva, you have nothing to lose. And it's only until you have found a place you want to live."
She contemplated it for a moment before: "okay, I will live with you."
"Okay and what about the rest of your stuff?"
"You win, okay, we can have the day off tomorrow," he smiled in success, "only if I can go to bed now," she smiled.
"Want company?" He asked suggestively.
She chuckled slightly as she stood: "I think I will be okay. I will call McGee and Gibbs in the morning. Goodnight Tony," she smiled as he stood and she walked him to the door, "I will see you tomorrow."
First off, I have been gone a month because I have been participating in National Novel Writing Month... I did write 50 000 words in a month and this is only 3 000 words of that. This is what I have been working on. Its not finished yet, and what I have written needs to be edited and fixed to take out some of the stuff that is really not needed. So, this will get regular updates and even more so at the moment because its holidays for me. I will be disappearing again in August and then again in November because I will be doing the same thing :)
Secondly, this wasn't meant to be a crime story, but it ended up that way.. It took over.. so I have it listed as a genre, but that will most likely change when I read through and add more Tiva or team stuff to it and take some of the crime out.
Lastly, can someone please explain to me what this 'Moderate Reviews' is? PM me or leave it in a review or something if you know..
Please tell me what you think :)