He was standing in front of her, looking tired and dishevelled and broken. Her hair was messy and dirty. Her forehead teamed with sweat even though the winter night was particularly brutal outside. Dark circles were forming under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn't slept in days. To be fair, she probably hadn't.
"What do you need?" he asked her, taking a few steps closer. Her fists were clenched at her sides, so her hard that her knuckles had turned white. He could see a visible pulse in her neck. Her shoulders were hunched. But her lip quivered when he finally spoke, a sign that underneath the façade she had been hiding behind the past few days she was still a scared girl, who felt alone. The same girl who had lost her sister, her brother and her mother, and now her father, too. It hardly seemed a fair amount of grief for a person with such a kind heart. Then again, maybe that's why her heart was so very kind when her exterior was taken away.
"Revenge," she answered coldly. This was not the Ziva he knew. Her eyes were unusually cold and distant. It scared Tony to see her like this, for the woman with the face of an angel and the heart of gold that sat six feet from him every single day was not here. This was a different person. A Ziva in mourning needed comfort and support. Or so he had believed. Perhaps this time those things were not enough for her.
He understood her blood lust. Hell, he'd travelled all the way to a terrorist camp on the Horn of Africa for the same reason, hadn't he?
He had seen her when she found Eli. For a minute he had wanted nothing more to go over there and pull her off of him and kick the bastard because even in death he was causing her pain and as far as Tony was concerned, people weren't allowed to do that. Not to Ziva. She didn't deserve it.
"Then I got your back," he answered, because, in the end, it was one of the only sure truths that lie within him. "Whatever you need, whoever you need me to put a bullet in…" He held up his unloaded SIG lazily in his right hand. "I will do it for you."
"No bullets," she replied. Then silently, she reached out, and lowered his hand. Her fingers lifted his own from the gun with surprising gentleness, one by one, until the weapon slipped out of his hand and on the floor. He didn't bend to retrieve it. He watched her, instead. She lifted his hand now to the small of her back, and his eyes still locked with her own. Then, she brought her fingers to his cheeks, his chin, she grazed them over his lips. She watched him, but the gentleness that he always saw in her eyes had disappeared. They darted wildly across his face, and she wasn't teasing him like she so fondly had the past eight years. She was assessing him. Her trust had been betrayed and it had cost her. He didn't blame her. He could only be there for here.
Her fingers were still on his lips when she stood on her tiptoes and moved her face close. Their bodies were touching. But she didn't kiss him. She fell into his arms, like a girl that simply needed a friend. And he held her as tightly as he possibly.
Holding her was heaven and hell all at once. Whatever longing he had felt once, however, was pushed aside, because this was about her and not him. Her body quivered with sobs and he just held her tighter. Because, hopelessly, that was all he could do for her. And whether or not her tears would leave a wet spot on his suit was the last thing on his mind.
His strong arms cradled her, and one of her hands rested against his chest. "Your heart is beating so fast," she whispered.
"Well, we got fight ahead of us, right?" he replied.
She stepped away, and her facial expression hardened again. "Are you scared?"
He just stroked her cheek, not knowing what to say.
"Me too," she whispered back.