A/N: Hello! I'm finally posting something...and admittedly not something I should be posted :-p. I should probably try and finish a couple of my other stories, but this has been bugging at my brain for the past couple of days, and I needed to get it out. This is sort of in the vein of the first chapter of It's Not Over.
Summary: Tony had thought he'd left his old life behind. He was wrong. And when he finds himself facing down an old colleague, he has some difficult choices to make. He's already made one mistake, can he avoid making another, especially with the mysterious organization now looking at NCIS with curious eyes? After all, it's not just his life that's on the line anymore.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, regrettably. :-(
I stared at the woman now sat beside the rifle one of her hands was resting on. I knew I should arrest her, but if there was one thing I'd learnt in the years since I'd become Anthony DiNozzo again, it was never arrest someone from your past. Especially when it was someone from your unknown past.
"What's it going to be?" she raised an eyebrow. "You going to take me in? Let me near your team? Or you going to let me go?"
I hesitated as she stared back at him, eyes amused, curious to see my response. I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet. This wasn't the kind of situation I got into often. (Read: Never). In fact, this was the first time I'd seen anyone from my old life since I returned to my original name.
"You pull that trigger," I warned, "and I promise I will take you in. I swear I will, that guy shouldn't die. It's not his time yet."
The woman stared at me for a long moment, and leant her head on one side, leaning even more towards the rifle. I tensed, there was something off about the way she was reacting, instead of getting wary of me, her eyes were getting even more alive, even more amused. It made me wonder: had she finally snapped?
She burst out laughing. "And how would you know what he deserves darling?" Her accent hadn't faded. "You don't know who I work for. Not anymore anyway."
I frowned. She wouldn't have left the O'Reilly's… No O'Reilly hitter left the O'Reilly's. For two reasons. One: being one of the O'Reilly hitters meant that you had really made it in the world. Two: their boss was an utter bastard who would hunt down, torture, and then murder any of his people who decided they were going to branch out without his blessing.
"How'd you get that one? I know he won't have let you out of the fold. He wouldn't have let me out if he had half a choice in the matter."
Her laughter didn't let up. She was practically bent double in her seated position, her breath coming in slight gasps between her gales of hysterical laughter. I watched her, if she had snapped, she was probably at her most dangerous when she was laughing her head off. I wanted to know what had happened that had changed her this much.
"Oh you crack me up lover, and it was probably a bloody good thing he didn't have a choice in the matter. You'd be dead if he had."
I could only stare at her, the way her voice had gone flat, all hilarity fleeing her voice, her eyes darkening, and her hands reaching towards the trigger of her rifle, and the Beretta on her hip. Now I really wanted to know what had happened to her. She used to be such a good friend.
"What happened to you? You never used to be like this. Now, you're practically bipolar, all laughter and hilarity one moment, completely bitter the next. What happened?"
Dark humour lit up her eyes, still darker than the bright light that had inhabited them earlier. She seemed to be debating whether or not to answer me truthfully, or to take my own normal defence mechanism and deflect the questions away from herself, onto another…'safer' topic. (And I hesitated to use that word under the circumstances).
"You don't want to know. It's a long, and mostly boring story. Needless to say, after a hell of a night, it ended in a way I wasn't…"
She trailed off, her eyes being drawn, almost magnetically, over the edge of the roof to where the stage was set for some or other Admiral to give a speech about something or other. To be honest, I didn't even have a clue who the hell she was after. I'd just figured it better to check the roofs.
"In a way you weren't what? What happened? C'mon, you can trust me kid, you know you can, you always have before. So why not now?"
She looked back at me over her shoulder, a faint smirk on her lips, a faint smirk with a faintly evil overtone. She shook her head and turned to settle against the edge of the roof, her eyes tracing someone's movements across the ground, her fingers tapping out a rhythm on the butt of her Berretta and the stock of her rifle.
"A lot of things have changed. I don't know you anymore, and you don't know me. The trust we might have had, is long gone. Believe me."
My sharp eyes finally caught sight of the dog-tags hanging off her belt, they must have fallen out of the pocket of the tight leather trousers she was wearing. (She'd never been in the army that I knew of). She'd always been able to pull off tight clothes, nothing but skin, bones and taught, wiry, muscle.
"What're you on about? Of course we know each other. People don't change that much. Not as much as you obviously believe that we have actually changed."
A bitter laugh escaped her lips and I wondered whether or not she was planning on getting out of this situation, why was she keeping me talking, and why wasn't I arresting her? Oh yes, that was it…if I arrested her, the chances were, she'd spill the beans about who I was.
"Welcome to the masquerade then. You said yourself, I'm practically bipolar now. As for you? You're not much better than me. You joined the bloody American government!"
I really didn't know what that had to do with the situation, but I watched as the slim woman settled herself down, checking the ground with her scope. She probably didn't even need a scope from this distance. From what I remembered, she was one of the best shooters the O'Reilly's had – scope or no scope.
"Not the American government, an American government agency! It's not as if I went and betrayed the whole damn lotta you. Which, for your information, I haven't!"
The rifle moved almost lazily as I watched, and I wondered why I wasn't trying to stop her from taking the shot, why I was just stood here, staring dumbly at her ass. It wasn't a bad ass to stare at. The answer was plain: I didn't think this new woman would just be killing for no reason.
"You probably should've. Would've been safer for you in the long run. Besides, why America? There are other options out there. Plenty of other better options."
There were? There hadn't been when I had left, running, after my wife's death…nothing had seemed important after that, except one thing. The woman had meant nearly everything to me, so I'd taken their infant son and run. It was the best thing I'd ever done. We should've done it sooner, then maybe she'd still be alive.
"Not when I left there weren't. I had to get out, I had to get Dante away. I couldn't just stand there… You understand that don't you?"
She nodded slightly against her sights, and I could hear the sound of the speech beginning. I had to stop her pulling that trigger. But I couldn't move. Why not? Did I owe this woman something more than to stop her and take her in? Yes, yes I did, she'd always looked after Dante when me and his wife couldn't.
"Yeah, I guess I do. You still should've betrayed our asses. That way, we wouldn't be here right now, would we? This mess wouldn't 've happened."
I shook my head. If it hadn't been this, it would've been something else, something possibly worse. At least I knew where I stood with her. We'd been friends, good friends, despite the age difference. She was nine years my junior, and had still been one of the best we…the O'Reilly's had had in her teens.
"I don't think that's true. And I don't think you think it's true either. Something would've happened. They would've found out somehow. That's just how it is."
I could see the smile on her face and saw her settling further into her rifle, ready to pull the trigger. I went to move forward and stopped. I would have to arrest her if she pulled the trigger…but I could always say I'd been on my way up to this roof when the shot had been fired and just had the good luck…
"Maybe it is. But here's what you're going to do now. You're going to arrest me, take me in, and we'll see what happens from there. Comprendi?"
I didn't respond as she pulled the trigger, the shot rang out. She stepped back from her rifle, lifting the Beretta out of it's holster and setting it beside the rifle, and then laying several other weapons beside it (I doubted it was her full complement, just the ones a search would find). She turned to me, hands up in the air.
"Yeah Shan, I understand."
And she smiled.
So...tell me what you think? :-D.
