Disclaimer: *Wails*
Spoilers: None, but there are references to Tiva up to everything Season 8; please take note.
Notes: This is AU :P it does involve, albeit fleetingly, a living Kate. And no, I don't bash her. I can't say what the story will or will not involve without giving the entire thing away, so I can only ask of you to please read with an open heart and an open mind. I hope you enjoy.
Also, I didn't mean to make it end up sounding quite so chick lit *facepalm*.
-Sophie
From the Side Street: Chapter 1
It was one of those all-too-common instances of attraction at first sight.
On his part, anyway.
The lens of his camera glinted in the sun as he raised his hands to take a photograph. Opposite him, his partner snickered, undoubtedly aware of what he was trying to do and being completely disapproving.
"Now, what's wrong with taking a picture of a pretty French lady?" he murmured without lowering the device in his hands. Snap went the shutter—and for a brief moment, the eyes of the exotic-looking brunette at the knick-knack shop across the street from the café he sat in flickered towards him, making him fumble with the camera and drop it into his lap.
Caitlin Todd laughed. "Nothing. Just figured you would be the one to come to Paris just to see the sights."
"I beg your pardon?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at her in affront before casting his eyes back across the street. With disappointment, he noted that the exotic-looking brunette was no longer there. "I am actually here to do my work. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be off to see the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Meet you back here later. Don't be late!"
"I think that applies more to you than to me," Kate retorted as he stood up, and he made a face at her before snatching up the keys to his rented moped from the table.
Just for that, he wasn't going to share his ride with her.
xoxo
He hadn't really expected Exotic-Looking Brunette to follow him.
But at one point, he was just passing by a small side-street and there she was, gazing intensely at him. (In hindsight, it was really kind of creepy.) She pulled him hard into the side-street and, in true DiNozzo style, he worried first about his suit and then about his safety. He was busy flattening down the crumpled shirt collar and trying not to show that he had damp palms when she stuck her hand out unceremoniously.
"I need that photograph you took of me," she said without preamble.
"You're not French," he said dumbly.
"You are not a complete idiot," she answered crisply. "Now, the photograph?"
"But…" he stuttered. "But it's mine. I took it."
"And now I am taking it from you."
"And if I refuse?"
That seemed to perplex Exotic-Looking Brunette, as she tilted her head to one side and furrowed her eyebrows. "You are … ridiculously persistent, aren't you? You took a picture of a stranger who is now holding you hostage in an alley over a photograph, and you are arguing about ownership rights?"
"Rights are important."
Exotic-Looking Brunette rolled her eyes. "I changed my mind; you are a complete idiot. I want the photograph—this is me asking nicely."
"Just out of curiosity, what's it like when you don't ask nicely?"
If he'd just had time to prepare his rickety set of lungs before she slammed him into the cobblestone pathway.
Winded, he gasped up at her, noting rather subconsciously that she apparently had no qualms about sitting on top of him. The conscious part of him was more worried about the gun she had pressed to his chest.
"Camera," he breathed out, nervously pushing the strap that still hung around his neck towards her. She made quick work of deleting the photograph he had taken, he was disappointed to learn.
It would've been nice to have had a reminder of the foreign-foreign lady who had attacked him for a photograph in a foreign country.
Satisfied that she had now removed all traces of herself from his camera, Exotic-Looking Brunette sat up straight. "Your tourist pictures are still there," she told him with a smirk. "Have a good day. Do not take any more pictures of me."
She had already set one foot out of the side-street before he found his tongue. "Wait!" he foolishly called after her. "What's your name?"
She hesitated for a split-second before turning back. "Sophie Ranier," she answered him, and then she was gone.
xoxo
Sophie Ranier.
So-phie Ra-ni-er.
That was a French name, wasn't it? It sounded French.
Was it a fake name?
'Cause she didn't look French.
Then again, he had no idea how the French looked.
Maybe she was an immigrant who was now a French national.
Or her family was French nationals who had emigrated.
(To somewhere very hot, because she was slightly dark-skinned.)
And she had come back to visit.
… But was terrified that someone would recognize her as French, and that's why she beat him up over a picture.
That didn't even make any sense.
Hell, he had just gotten beaten up by a woman over a picture, and he was worrying about where the woman came from?
(It was a legit worry … but only in the sense that avoiding her might be in order.)
"What are you muttering about?" a voice asked him, and his gaze jerked up from the bewildering depths of his coffee to see Kate standing beside his chair and looking puzzled.
"Nothing," he answered. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah."
He threw a couple of bills onto the aluminium table, hopped onto his moped—Kate hopping on behind him—and resolved not to think about Exotic-Looking Brunette aka Sophie Ranier any longer.
It was killing him, all this thinking. His heart raced way too fast whenever that face flashed through his mind.
xoxo
Ironically enough, it was at the airport that he saw Sophie Ranier next.
He was just sitting there with Kate and the witness they were escorting back to the States to testify in a case when olive skin and luscious brown hair walked by in his peripheral vision.
With incredulous disbelief, he turned his head. And there she was—he was sure of it. She walked exactly like Exotic-Looking Brunette, after all.
"Sophie Ranier!" he exclaimed loudly before he could stop himself. "Sophie Ranier!"
The woman's steps faltered for a moment, but then she continued walking quicker than before, and he swore as he shot out of his chair.
"Head. Use," he explained telegraphically to Kate before chasing after Exotic-Looking Brunette. He thought he'd catch up soon enough, but just like the rest of the airport, the Departure Hall was packed, and he watched with disappointment as Exotic-Looking Brunette's back grew smaller in the distance.
He wondered briefly if he should just search every gate for her, but that would be taking it a bit far.
With a dejected sigh, he turned back towards where Kate and the witness were staring agape at him.
He and Exotic-Looking Brunette just weren't meant to be, it seemed.
xoxo
The rude nudge of an elbow against his side irritated him. Already upset to begin with, he looked up, ready to snap at whomever the elbow belonged to, when he stilled at the sight of two sad chocolate eyes.
"Sophie Ranier," he breathed.
"That is not my name, actually." Her gaze drifted off to fix somewhere in the proximity of the floor. "But I cannot believe you actually raced through the airport calling it."
"I thought it was your name," he answered defensively.
"I know," she said. "What I cannot believe is not that you thought it. What I cannot believe is that you remembered it, and actually thought enough of it to use it."
He did not have an answer to that. Any answer he could produce would be slightly creepy.
Exotic-Looking Brunette took a deep breath. "My name is Ziva David. I am Israeli."
"Huh." He paused, unsure of what to say. "Israel's our friend."
"I know, and that is why I chose to tell you. If you were to remember me, you might as well remember the right thing."
"You're gonna be the woman I wake up fifty years from now thinking about as, 'That one I got beat up by…'"
Ziva snorted indelicately. "Please."
"Tell you what," he proposed, "you give me your email, I'll give you mine. That way, we'll see. Or is that something you're gonna have to hold me at gunpoint over, too?"
A grin made its appearance on her face for the first time. "It might be," she told him, "but I will give it a risk. Hold out your hand."
He did, and she materialized a pen out of nowhere before he could even pat his pockets for one. Each other's email addresses written down, she capped the pen and he closed his palm.
"Where are you headed, anyway?" he asked.
"Israel. I have some business to attend to."
"Oh. I'm going back to the U.S."
"You still haven't told me your name."
"Anthony D. DiNozzo. Junior. Although I'd rather you ditched the 'Junior,'cancelled the 'D.,' and added 'Very Special Agent' in front."
"That sounds like a very long name."
"It befits an NCIS agent," he protested in as dignified a manner as he could muster.
"NCIS?" she questioned.
"It stands for Naval Cri—"
"I know," she interrupted his recitation. "I am just surprised at what an NCIS agent is doing here. Are you on vacation?"
"Just picking up a whistleblower. How come you know so much about NCIS?"
"I am well-read," she merely said. "I have to go now; my flight will be here soon."
"Ziva?" he called lightly as she stood up, and she looked down at him with what appeared to be surprise.
"Yes?"
"Have a good trip."
"You, too," she wished him, and her answering smile was the tiniest bit fond.
xoxo
Tony got the alert that he'd received email the moment he turned on his cell phone at the Dulles International Airport in Virginia, USA.
Ziva had sent him the email she promised.
Arrived in Israel. I hope you're safe, it merely said, and he felt a warm flutter in his heart because that was extraordinarily sweet when he considered that it came from someone who was a stranger, relatively speaking.
He still had a job to do, though, so he tucked his phone back inside his pocket, walked with his partner and the witness to where their car was parked, and promised himself to get back to Ziva as soon as he had a moment to himself.
Things were looking up, already.