Title: Constructive Destruction
A/N: Something else I found whilst cleaning out my files. I think I never published because I wasn't sure about the ending, but it's been months and I haven't come up with anything better, so thus it shall remain. Can I just say how annoyed I am that canon never dealt with any of the issues that would inevitably have arisen after a team member/friend/love interest was captured and tortured for four months?
Disclaimer: If they were mine, I would be giving them far better treatment than they are currently receiving.
She left NCIS with the intention of going home. A run, perhaps, to clear her head, and then maybe a bubble bath. Two minutes into the drive, however, she spotted the team's (if you can call them that anymore) favorite hangout, and she realized that she was being naïve. Runs and bubble baths are cures for minor aches, slights and dings. This day called for copious amounts of alcohol. So she entered the bar with the hopes that a few shots would help ease the pain of this day, the last in a series of long, painful days.
There were few patrons on a Wednesday evening, which made him easy to spot. At a table in the back, staring into his beer, he looked almost as depressed as she was. She cancelled the shots and took a beer instead, and headed back to where he sat. The moment he noticed her, the second it was too late to change her mind, she regretted her decision. He was the cause of her bad day, and she was choosing to tempt fate by spending more time with him. She briefly considers, as she has before, that she may be some sort of twisted masochist, feeding off of emotional pain. Then she sits down across from him.
She begins tritely. "Drinking alone is never a good sign."
He makes a show of looking around the sparsely populated bar, then back at her. "And you're here with who, your invisible friend, Binky?" he responds flatly.
"Well, now at least neither of us is drinking alone."
He takes a sip of beer in response, and goes back to staring into the amber liquid. She swallows hard, wishing more than ever that she hadn't done this. She opens her mouth half a dozen times, only to fill it with her drink when words fail her. She does not dare to begin to toss a banal comment out as though everything is fine, but for the life of her, she has no idea what else to say. The relationship is broken, and it is becoming more and more clear that that is all there is to it. Words fail her because words are not enough.
Tony refuses to fill the silence that he started. He's angry, about so many things, for so many reasons. Most of all, he blames her. For everything, for all that went wrong and all that is broken. Team Gibbs is fractured, and he blames her. He's lost his best friend, and he definitely blames her. And even though Ziva herself is among the casualties, bearing ugly, painful scars both inside and out, he still blames her. He feels as though he shouldn't, but until he can sort it out in his own mind, he will not release it to the outside world, not just to fill a silence.
He finally decides she is never going to speak, and is about to give up, go home, and finishing getting drunk, alone, as he had intended.
"I miss you."
He looks up, startled. By the look on her face, she can tell the words are something of a shock to her as well, but she composes herself quickly. Deciding this is as good a chance as any, and possibly the only one she will get, she continues.
"Do not tell me you are right here. You are not." She raises her chin, forcing herself to look him in the eyes.
The foggy pain in Tony's head interprets her tone as accusatory. "How can I be? How can you expect me to be?"
She is determined not to flinch away from the anger in his voice. "I don't," she says quietly. "I guess I just want you to know."
He remembers being teased about phone sex, being woken up by the contents of a water bottle being emptied onto his head, being threatened in at least four languages. He remembers being oddly proud the first time she correctly quotes a movie, and the first time she flubbed an idiom just to amuse him. The movies they've watched, the alcohol they've consumed, and the fights they've had, outnumbered only by the meals they've shared, the secrets they've kept, and the lives they've saved. He remembers her saving his life more than once. And now he's left with nothing. Secrets he carries that he cannot talk about with anyone now; a fridge full of the beer she loves that he can't stand, and a bottle of wine waiting for her to cook some unpronounceable Israeli dish; feelings for a woman who barely exists anymore.
"We were so close, Ziva. We were right there."
As though to prove that she is not so far gone from who she once was, she replies with no explanation needed. "I know. And I was terrified. I had no idea what to do. So I turned to the familiar, just for a moment, to get my footing, and… I had no idea one bad decision could lead to so much ruin. And I could not get myself out of it. Every chance I had, I threw away. My defenses went up, and every Mossad lesson I had unlearned in three years came back. 'Trust no one.' 'Protect your country, then yourself.' What I thought was solid, familiar ground was suddenly falling away. I've known Michael since we were children, and if he could turn out to be so far from the man I thought he was, how could I believe in anyone else?"
As soon as she admitted fault, all the anger Tony had been clinging to fell away. Hearing her take responsibility for the entire fiasco was apparently all it took for him to forgive her. Now he looks at her, and sees not a wounded warrior, injured in an unfortunate and unforeseen kink in her otherwise well-calculated scheme, but a woman who has been rushing headlong toward a painful end since the day her father first handed her a gun and told her that dying on behalf of her country was the ideal way to go. Her fate was signed the day she was born, sealed the day her sister died, and delivered with the bullet that killed Ari.
He is going over in his head all the moments in the days leading up to when Gibbs left her on the tarmac when things could have changed. All of the chances that she claims she threw away were his chances too. But he was angry, confused, betrayed. And not just a little bit jealous. Then he was angry at himself for being jealous, all of which had led to fighting and secrets and mistrust. Perhaps it had been her ill-advised decision to see Michael that had lit the fuse, but she had not built the bomb, nor placed it, nor armed it.
He has been silent too long. Words were not enough. She swallows back tears, something she's found herself doing much more often than she would like, and prepares herself to leave with dignity. Masochist that she is, though, she cannot help but offer one last plea.
"I know this does not constitute reason for forgiving me. I do not expect you to. But please know that this… this mess, this is not what I ever imagined for us. I am sorry for hurting you. This is never what I wanted."
With that, she stands, leaving her half-empty beer on the table, and turns to go.
He murmurs something, so quietly she thinks maybe she's imagining in order to give herself an excuse to stay. Desperate, she turns back, only to find him standing mere centimeters in front of her. She steps back to look him in the eye, questioning.
"I'm sorry, Ziva. For turning away when you needed me before, and for not being there for you after. I knew you'd been through hell and I was too selfishly involved in my own version of events to even try to talk to you. And if I'm hurting, it's my own damn fault, and if you're hurting, that's partly my fault as well. But Ziva, I can't do this again. Another three years of growing closer, only to be set back by a comment or a mood swing or a badly-timed joke. I don't have it in me."
She can barely breathe, unsure of what he is getting at. "I do not think we can pick up where we left off, Tony," she points out.
He laughs ruefully. "No. No, I don't think that's likely. Or even a good idea, really. But we could pick up somewhere else."
"Well, I am not angry at you, and you are no longer angry at me. I would say that is a perfectly good place to start."