A/N: This piece has been sitting, mostly written, on my computer since the end of Season 8... but it never felt right. After last week's fantastic episode (Housekeeping), I finally felt motivated to tweak it and get it posted. This takes place post-Pyramid (8x24) and is basically a tag or cut-scene for that episode. Could possibly be continued in the future, as that was my original intention, although I think it may be perfect as is. I hope you will enjoy it.
DISCLAIMER: If I owned NCIS or Tony DiNozzo or Ziva David, the show would be all Tiva, all the time. So I obviously don't own it. Title and lyrics by Garth Brooks.
~o~
Standing Outside the Fire
~o~
There was a tangible taste of victory in the air, meaning the Port-to-Port Killer case was finally closed. After Tony had said his obligatory goodbye to EJ, there was one person he really needed to find: Ziva.
His partner had been in danger again; this time, however, she'd been taken on his home turf, where he could have protected her. She'd been kidnapped, used as a diversion, injured and vulnerable. The thoughts that had gone through his head during the brief period of time she'd been missing had him seeking her out as soon as he had moment alone.
His stomach had taken up temporary residence in his throat.
It wasn't that he needed to find her to talk to her about something specific, exactly, as much as he needed to tell her he was happy she was okay. He needed to see that she was in the office and far removed from the danger of this day.
He needed to confirm was that he was the only having Somalia flashbacks today.
When he finally found Ziva, she in the break room, sitting alone at one of the few tables, and staring at something in her hand that he couldn't see. Her hair was falling over her shoulders, slightly curled towards the ends, not in that straightened style she'd been sporting ever since CI-Ray had been making himself more of a fixture around NCIS.
Which meant that Tony was trying to make himself hate it on principle.
It made her look more Americanized, less herself, less the uninhibited woman that he'd known before she'd moved to America to try and become the real Ziva again. The one he instinctively knew she was afraid she'd lost in the sands of Somalia. The fact that her current boyfriend brought out the conformist in her, that CI-Ray was somehow unconciously encouraging her to leave that crucial part of herself in the dust, only gave Tony one more reason to dislike the guy.
On top of all the other completely valid reasons.
Like how calm the man had seemed while Ziva was missing and Tony turned over every figurative rock to find the other man's girlfriend.
When his loafer squeaked on the linoleum floor, Ziva shoved the unseen object into a pocket and turned a nervous gaze in his direction. After a second of staring at each other without any words, her too startled after being shaken from her musings and him slightly distraught that he'd been distracted by his dislike of CI-Ray yet again, she excused herself and bolted from the room.
One drink in a bar, one disembodied eye ball in a glass, one dead former NCIS agent in a street. It didn't really seem all that long ago they'd been discussing the end of her relationship with CI-Ray. She'd sounded resolute enough, but Tony should have known that was too good to be true.
The fact that he'd been seeing EJ at the time was a valid point, but he was definitely a free agent now. Free to wonder what if; what if that eyeball hadn't been delivered in his glass? What if he'd walked her home that night? Would he have had the courage to take that step after all these years, his brief relationship with EJ be damned? Ziva was definitely the more important woman in his life; the question wasn't really fair. But would she choose Tony over CI-Ray if the tables were turned?
What if they were both single now?
Suddenly Tony's head was throbbing with pain from the questions zooming through his mind. Why was it that every time he felt like there might actually be an opportunity to cross that void between their desks, fate came along and smacked him soundly across the back of his head?
Ziva was trying to convince herself it was ridiculous.
She should not be here. Really should not.
It had been one thing, to sit across from Ray at the table, to allow herself to imagine he was going to propose, to ask him not to go. She had known he would not listen to her, that he would do his job, just as surely as she would always do hers.
It was another thing entirely to allow herself to actually imagine what would have happened if he had taken her up on her request, if he'd stayed. Even worse, she was now allowing herself to panic about it.
She couldn't marry Ray. If he'd proposed, and she'd said yes, she would still be standing right where she was. Where she should not be.
The place where she wanted most to be.
When Tony opened his door, she stormed inside before he invited her. Before he said hello, she was pulling out the damn box and placing it gingerly on his dining room table, as if it would explode if tilted at the wrong angle. She could not look at him.
The air felt charged, thicker than the desert heat of that summer ingrained in both of their memories, the one she wished she could forget.
"Is that-" He cleared his throat, looking as if she'd just laid that imaginary bomb on his kitchen table. "Is that what I think it is?"
She lifted her eyes to his, he held them for a moment as she held her silence. She couldn't trust her tongue at this moment. Once she started to speak... there would be no stopping herself. She had to calm down. To get the panic under control.
Her heartbeat started to slow when his eyes flickered to her left hand, where he apparently expected to see a ring.
Now she felt empty. She didn't feel calmer, though, just hollow. As if someone had let the air out of the balloon that had been filling her chest.
But he had expected to see the ring on her finger.
Tony's face was a mask of ambiguity, showing none of the emotion that would make the conversation that had to happen easier to approach, easier to anticipate. It was so hard to lean over a chasm of uncertainty alone, tied to someone else who has no idea they're about to smack into the ground. If only he could give her some indication that he knew where this was headed, some encouragement to cross their line...
Tony crossed the few feet to the table and opened the box just as she said, "It's empty."
A flicker of relief slipped past his mask before it slid back into place. "Why?"
Taking a deep breath, Ziva strode to the table and lowered herself into one of the chairs, doing her best to seem at ease when she was on pins and needles about what she was about to say. It was best to appear as if this was something they normally did, talking, sharing their day, discussing life-changing proposals their significant others made that may break other precious hearts... "He is working out of the country for a while and wanted to give me something to look forward to, I believe. He said that it was a promise."
He was leaning against the wall in the dining room, trying to appear casual. Years of observing targets she was preparing to terminate told Ziva that his posture was anything but relaxed. He probably knew he wasn't fooling her, either.
With a lifted eyebrow and a smirk on his lips, Tony asked, "Did you smack him around for that? Empty." He shook his head. "Idiot."
Even though she knew he would try a diversion, the question caught her off-guard. "No, I did not smack him."
"Any other girl would've..." The smirk grew into a wry smile. "And they're not trained assassins."
And then he winked at her.
She shook her head to clear it. "This is not the point of my visit, Tony!" Ziva hated the pitch of her voice for raising at the end, but she was trying to have a serious conversation with him and he was acting like it was a game. After years of imagining the way they would finally face this, it was amazing just how unprepared she was.
His tone was instantly serious and the roguish smile was gone. "Then why the dramatics?" He crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged. "If there's a specific reaction you're looking for, tell me what it is so I can accommodate-"
She stood in anger, the force of it pushing her chair back, the legs scraping the floor as she raised her voice to talk over him. "You are supposed to ask what I would have said if there was a ring!"
Her voice rang in the quiet room for a moment, a slight echo reverberating from the walls, the sound waves washed over his face and she could finally see him clearly, could finally read the desolation on his face. Now he wasn't hiding behind his indifferent act and it was obvious how much the thought that she was engaged hurt him.
And Ziva thanked God that the box was empty.
The time had finally come to face their feelings for each other. To find out if Tony had finally grown up.
Averting his eyes from hers when he could no longer take her scrutiny, Tony replied softly, "Playing 'What if' doesn't change anything, Ziva. It doesn't matter."
"I think you know I came to NCIS to build a life for myself, Tony." She sat back down at the table and he joined her without her asking, perched on the edge of the chair like he was ready to run. "Truthfully, I wished for permanence. Something of my own that cannot be taken by my Father as so many things have been." She sighed and picked at the corner of a place mat on the sparsely decorated table. "Ray has been trying to give me that dream and I have been fighting him every step of the way. I have come to know him and, when he comes back, he will want me to know if I want there to be a ring in the box next time."
Tony was avoiding her eyes, had been since she spoke Ray's name aloud, but she had to make sure he heard her next words, heard their deepest meaning, the one that she couldn't quite give voice to, so she reached out and took his hand in hers. Once his eyes snapped to hers, her mind was clear.
This had to happen now. There could be no more running, or hiding, or dancing along the edge of the fire; there was too much at stake. They could not gamble with the rest of their lives.
"If he had asked me today, I would have hurt him, Tony."
She was swimming in his eyes, pierced with the intensity of his desperate need for more information. They were searching her for what she meant, craving the knowledge of whether she was telling the truth. "Why?" The hand she'd been loosely holding was now wrapped tightly around hers.
Ziva took a second to close her eyes and breathe deeply, taking the few seconds to recover from the knockout of his gaze. Then she swallowed and steeled herself to fall back into those pools of questions, opened her eyes, and dived into the truth, their truth, doing her best to hold nothing back, for once. "Because there is something here that we do not face, something that we do not speak about, and until we discover what that is, we will never move on, if moving on is even possible. Please understand me, Tony." She squeezed his hand tighter, staring into his brightening eyes. "The longer I stared at the empty box, the more his 'promise' made me want to run to you. Because I am not mine to give away."
He must have pulled her to him using the hand he'd been gripping during her bumbled speech because she was now on her feet, pressed tightly to his chest with his mouth hot on hers. The shock of perfection tingled down her spine as she wrapped her arms around him, causing her knees to almost buckle. His hands were threading through her hair, scrunching it, causing it to stick out in a thousand different directions.
Years they'd waited for this, countless nights she'd dreamed of how it would feel in his arms, and nothing had prepared her for the soft, cherishing touches or the contoured fit of her body against his. The overwhelming feeling of belonging. Like she was special, treasured... Home.
And this was only their first honest kiss.
Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire
A/N: I hope you liked it. :) Please let me know!