It was almost midnight.
He sat alone at his desk, finishing up paperwork Gibbs had ordered him to do ages ago. McGee had left much earlier, worry lines on his face as he left his partner to return home for the night. Gibbs had packed up and left only moments ago.
He glanced at Tony as he picked his keys up off his desk. He followed his senior agent's glance to the desk across from him, where he has been staring for the past twenty minutes. He sighed as he moved around his desk, approaching his agent.
"Tony," he said.
It took a moment, but he looked up, the bags under his eyes darker each day, the permanent lines beginning to form across his head. "Yeah, boss?"
"Tony, go home," he said softly.
His face remained unchanged. "I'm fine, boss. I was just gonna finish a case report from a few weeks ago, you know, the one with the Marine shot by an old lady?"
Gibbs looked at him solemnly. "DiNozzo, you can do those from home. You don't have to be here all night."
"I don't mind."
Gibbs look at him once more, sadness on his face, knowing there was nothing he could do for the agent. "Alright then," he started as he headed towards the elevator, "G'night DiNozzo."
"'Night boss," he heard quip behind him.
The silence was deafening. Save for the occasional noise of the copier off in the corner, the squadroom was empty. He remained alone, surrounded by the quiet, and looking at the desk.
The desk.
The desk that belonged to her. He couldn't even bring himself to think of her name. Just, her. He thought of her there, how she used to sit there when they worked, how she bit the end of the pencils and pens she used when she got stuck, how she frowned at him in disapproval whenever he said something suggestive or referred to a movie.
He thought of their looks. The glances they shared across the room, merely sitting at their desks, that meant so much, yet nothing at all. The conversations they had at that desk, and how he moved his arms around her once or twice to pull something up on her computer. The desk where she said he was "in her life", and pointed out they were both romatically dysfunctional.
The desk where he spent every day falling more in love with her.
He wished he could have said goodbye. He wished there was something, anything he could say that would bring her back to the team. But he knew there wasn't . She was gone, hiding out somewhere, in another country, under another name. She could never return to the US. She couldn't even contact anyone she knew. Including him.
He moved his glance away, and reached down to his desk drawer and pulled it open. Lying on top of all the junk he kept in there, was a small Israeli flag. He took it out. He rested his elbows on his desk and spun it around between his fingers, so familiar with the way it looked after staring at it for over eight years.
He faintly smiled through the pain of his loss, and glanced over at the desk, her desk, one more time.
He voice was quiet and soft when he spoke.
"Shalom, my Ziva."
He took a breath
"Shalom."