Disclaimers: I do not own NCIS, or its characters, those belong to CBS. Promise to put them back when I'm done playing with them :)
Warnings: Tony/Zoe, Spoilers for "Troll"
A/N: Another Tony, Zoe and Kaitlin one-shot. This one is a little bit on the angsty side but it's been bumping around in my head ever since that last scene in "Troll". Seeing how I'm no where this time period in the "Raising Kaitlin" series, I wanted to put it out there now. Hope you like it :)
Not So Lost After All
Zoe held tightly to the little girl's hand at her side. It was rare for Tony to call her to go and pick up Kaitlin—actually he had never requested that she go and pick up his daughter from daycare. But when the call had come in, his voice shaky and on edge she knew that something had happened.
Crossing the street towards Union Station where they were to meet up with Tony, Zoe glanced down at Kaitlin. Her golden brown hair sparkled in the sun, freshly cut to shoulder length for the summer months ahead, and she was wearing a pair of denim capris and a teal tee shirt that read Daddy's Princess in purple, glittery letters. She must have sensed Zoe's eyes on her because she turned her face towards the woman and smiled. Zoe managed a weak smile in return, but to be honest she was worried about Tony. Her eyes scanned the crowd of tourists and commuters for him outside the station.
He was standing off to the side, almost hidden but not from her trained eye. He had taken his suit coat off, unbuttoned the top button on his white dress shirt, and his eyes, normally bright, were dull. Zoe tightened her grip on Kaitlin's hand as they approached, and the little girl shouted, happily, "Daddy!"
Tony dropped the suit coat in his hand and scooped his daughter up into a tight embrace. Kaitlin didn't see it, but Zoe did—the tears in his eyes as he pressed his face into his little girl's soft hair and gave her a kiss. "Hi, peanut," he whispered, before securing his daughter in one arm and reaching out with the other for Zoe. She went to him, burying her face against his shoulder.
Immediately she smelled the smoke, the ash, the gasoline on his fabric—the gunpowder. Zoe turned her head towards the side and rested her cheek against his chest, looking at his facial expressions while he listened to Kaitlin talk about her day. There was a sense of pain, sadness in his face that was making him look older than he really was. "Tony."
He looked down at her, those tears still in his eyes. He saw the frightened woman on the bus, the little girl crying, screaming…. Gibbs voice ringing in his ears trying to coax the boy off… "Not now," he told her with a shake of his head. Not with Kaitlin here. He kissed his daughter's temple once more. "How about I treat my girls to dinner?"
"Daddy… it's Wednesday. Pizza and movie night," Kaitlin reminded him.
"Let's move pizza and movie night to Thursday this week," Tony replied.
"We don't have to move pizza and movie night, Daddy. Can't Zoe join us?"
Zoe searched his eyes. Pizza and movie night that was their night. The one night a week that he devoted solely to his daughter. Tony glanced at Zoe for a moment, then back to Kaitlin. He smiled, softly then, and said, "Sure. Why not?"
Kaitlin slid down from her perch in Tony's arms and took Zoe's hand. After Tony had picked up his suit coat, she reached out with her other hand and grasped his. They walked like this for a few blocks, the little girl between them and for just a few moments it washed the horrors of that afternoon away. Until he was sitting down in a booth at their favorite pizza parlor and footage of the burnt out shell of the bus, the explosion, was being broadcast on the news.
Tony's entire posture changed. He was thankful that Kaitlin was sitting on the other side of the booth with Zoe, her back to the TV so she couldn't see the all too familiar faces of her father's NCIS team nearly getting blown up. And he was also thankful that she seemed so engaged in conversation with Zoe that she didn't see the distress her father was in.
Zoe, on the other hand did. She turned slightly to see what he was watching and caught a glimpse of the headline. NCIS evacuates bus, fails to talk down suicide bomber. It would explain the smell of gunpowder, gas, smoke and ash on his clothing. She watched as the bus exploded into flame, sending two familiar figures flying backwards. Gibbs and Tony.
His sudden depression, the intense silence that he had settled into that so unlike him, suddenly made sense to her. Gibbs had tried to talk the kid down, Tony had been there to witness it all and both agents nearly, probably should have, lost their lives in the explosion. Luck certainly had always been on Tony's side, even dating back to when they were partners in Philly. And Tony's guilt... that was not anything new as well. He took everything to heart.
"It wasn't your fault."
"You weren't there, Zoe."
"No. But… Tony… stop feeling guilty and just… thank God you're here."
He glanced at her, at Kaitlin coloring while they waited for their pizza. "There was a girl on the bus. Katie's age. Crying. She took my hand when she got off, briefly before the others led her and her mother away. Could have been… Zoe, it could have been her. That kid could have chosen a bus that my daughter was riding."
She instinctively rubbed the little girl's shoulder. He was right. Zoe had taken the bus over from the daycare to get to Union Station. "But it wasn't. And no one else was hurt…"
Tony had told himself that over and over again the rest of the day. "He was sixteen, Zoe."
Zoe felt her heart skip a beat. Sixteen? So young, so tragic. What made a sixteen-year-old boy blow himself up on a bus? "And this is why it's bothering you. He was a child."
"A lost child. He… he died thinking he wasn't a good person. Twisted. Brainwashed."
"Young children are the easiest to shape and mold into what you want them to be."
His eyes fell on Kaitlin once again. Someday his little girl was going to be sixteen and he always believed that his biggest fear was going to be boys—now, this case had opened his eyes to all kinds of evil in the world that could harm his child. "Even into killers," he whispered.
She watched his face cloud over with a darkness, a fear, and followed his eyes to Kaitlin's innocent smile. "Tony… she isn't him. She isn't like him. She isn't a lost little girl… she never will be as long as she has you."
"Daddy, look, I drew you, and me, and Zoe," Kaitlin said, holding up her place mat.
"You did a good job," Tony told her with a sad smile. "It's refrigerator good."
Kaitlin giggled as their pizza was brought to the table. She gave the picture to Zoe to put on her refrigerator. Zoe gladly took the gift and noticed that a much easier expression was on Tony's face now. "Are you okay, Spider?"
Tony reached across the table and ruffled his daughter's hair before kissing Zoe's hand. "Yeah. I am, now." He grinned at his girls, "I mean, who wouldn't be happy to be spending the evening eating pizza and watching a movie with the two most beautiful ladies in all of D.C?"
Zoe grinned at him, sweetly while Kaitlin giggled again. Tony locked eyes with Zoe and a silent communication passed between them. She saw his gratitude for helping him, for guiding him through his emotions... his strengthening feelings for her... and somehow they both knew that, eventually, it would okay because like she had said, this sweet little girl was never going to be lost as long as she had Tony. And Tony would never be lost as long as he had Zoe and Kaitlin.