Negative Space
A Tony/Ziva Triptych
By Liss Webster
Not Sorry
Jeanne Benoit is dead. Ziva knows she should bring herself to feel sorry, even just the natural, disinterested sorrow over an innocent woman killed before her time. But truthfully, Ziva doesn't feel sorry at all. She sits at her desk, surreptitiously watching Tony watch the window, saying nothing. Jeanne was killed during the operation to capture La Grenouille, and Tony feels responsible. Ziva wants to point out that this is ridiculous, that he is dramatising, that with a father like La Grenouille, an early and unpleasant death was always on the cards for Jeanne.
She says nothing. Nobody has said anything, really. It's all been a little sudden, everything seeming to happen at once, and the team is still coping with the fact that Tony, brash, in-your-face Tony, had been working undercover for nearly a year, and none of them any the wiser.
Ziva wonders if he had loved her. They had all assumed he had, when they didn't know who Jeanne was, and hadn't imagined that their relationship might not be all it seemed. Was she a mission, just a woman with an interesting father, a lead with legs? Or had she been a person, a personality, someone loved?
Tony sighs, and runs his finger round the rim of the Starbucks cup Gibbs had placed in front of him, a silent and always-politely-ignored gesture of his affection for the various team members. He hasn't been himself. Not since she died.
Ziva knows she should feel sorry, but she just wishes none of them had ever heard of Jeanne Benoit.
Nothing Else
It's hot and sweaty and rough and possibly some of the best sex Ziva has ever had. Tony's hands are all over her, and she lets herself melt into them, not like the previous time they had shared a bed, as he did push-ups over her and she let out appropriate noises, when Tony getting too close had earned him a well-placed knee to the groin. This time there's no talking, no banter; the usually eloquent Tony DiNozzo is silenced, concentrating on the motion of his body against hers.
Nothing else matters. Outside the confines of the bed, nothing else exists. Ziva raises a hand, caresses Tony's cheek, but he doesn't react, just carries on making l… just carries on fucking her. Ziva's hand falls, and she looks away.
The spell has been broken. Tony finishes, and rolls to one side, asleep almost immediately. Ziva sits up, hugs herself, watches her partner sleep. He needed this, she had told herself. After everything that happened, he needed this. Unthinking, unknowing intimacy, drowning his consciousness in someone else's body.
She just hadn't imagined it would hurt so much.
No Need
It's Tony who breaks off whatever it is they have, and Ziva is ashamed that it's not her. She's the one being hurt by it, after all, and she'd never thought she'd be one of those women who clung to a bad relationship. But in the end it's Tony who pulls away, who shakes his head, who looks sorry.
She's always known, maybe. In her own way, she's chased him from the beginning, mocking him and poking fun, but it hardly needed a degree in psychology to know that that had all been shorthand, a girl begging for a boy's attention. And he'd flirted and taunted her, and she'd wanted to believe – wanted to believe I so much /I - that it meant something, even as she pointed out his mistakes and resisted – or not – the urge to hit him.
In her head, Ziva had been perfectly blunt about their situation. She was the woman he slept with to get over another woman. She was a passing phase. And that was all right. It was OK. She could accept that. She would be there for him as long as he needed her.
And now he doesn't need her.
She should be OK with it. She has always known it would end like this (ignoring the fantasies in her head). It should be no big deal.
She considers returning to Mossad.
Tony doesn't stop her.
Fin.