"Boss? One short?"
"Good to go."
Tony's head dropped back against the wall of the plane as the back hatch closed, cutting them off from the scorching Israeli sun. The engine roared as the plane began to taxi down the runway. They were really leaving her behind. He swallowed hard, biting back the bile rising in his throat.
"Hold on tight," Gibbs instructed, and Tony grabbed hold of the red netting at his back just in time, as the plane took off with a deafening roar.
This had all spiraled out of control so quickly. Things hadn't been right between them in months. A year really. They'd left on reassignment a year ago so close—so close—and come back with a huge rift between them.
Michael Rivkin. Even the name brought a sour taste to his mouth. Tony liked to think he'd have been able to deal with Ziva having a boyfriend if the whole situation hadn't been surrounded by a web of lies. She had lied about Michael, yes, but Michael was lying to her too. On orders from her father. The whole thing was so fucked up it sounded like the kind of thing that could only happen on TV.
"You jeopardized your entire career, and for what?"
"For you."
Gibbs had called him out on it too. He broke protocol to try to protect her. And he would do it again. He had to give her a chance to explain.
That's all he really wanted that night: to talk to Ziva. To put her on the spot, and make her finally answer—or at least acknowledge—his questions. That was the whole point of the trip to her apartment. He was fully prepared for an argument with her, but she needed to hear the truth of what they'd discovered on the laptop.
He wanted to know what she knew and fully expected her to blow up at him, perhaps even violently. Ziva didn't take well to being lied to. Or being wrong. By now, it seemed like she'd realized that she was wrong about Michael, but she was too upset at being lied to by everyone around her to acknowledge it. That was clear when she'd pushed him to the ground and pressed the barrel of her gun to his chest.
He hadn't lied to her. He'd told her the truth, as much as she didn't want to hear yet.
"For some reason you thought it was your job to protect me?"
"I did what I had to do."
The plane hit a patch of turbulence and Tony slammed into the wall of the plane at his back. His arm throbbed in protest. The pain was almost welcome. It gave him something else to focus on other than how differently this could have all gone down.
Gibbs tossed a stick of gum at him. "Chew that."
Tony nodded, and complied, unwrapping the silver foil. The ache in his ears—that he hadn't even noticed—began to go away as he swallowed away the pressure. If only there were such a quick fix for his heart.
Even with all that had happened in the last few days, he'd still expected her to get on the return plane with them. Whether that was her choice or Gibbs', he wasn't sure yet, and he didn't have the energy to ask. Even Vance seemed surprised.
He could feel Gibbs' eyes on him. "Get some sleep, DiNozzo, it's a long flight."
Tony sighed. Sleep seemed unlikely. He just couldn't stop thinking about everything that happened, and that she should be on this plane with them, returning to DC.