The note is on his desk when he finally shows up for work. It's been weeks since he last saw Ziva, and the reality has taken its time to sink in properly. No matter what they promised, she is not coming back. They both felt it, knew it in their hearts. They never had a future as a couple. Not when they first met, not when she first came to work for NCIS, not when she passed her citizens' exam, and not when he found her after searching for what felt like forever.
The definite nature of it chills him to the bone. Commitment to Ziva was easy, both as a partner and as a friend. Somewhere in the back of his mind he'd always hoped that it would be the same when they eventually crossed that line from friends to lovers.
The very appearance of an envelope still makes him nervous, even after eight years, the fear of dying from Y-pestis is still fresh in his mind. The lingering side effects never allow him to forget. He is calmed by Ziva's familiar script adorning it, his name written in elegant cursive.
His heart is beating in his chest, his palms getting sweaty as he grabs his keys and slices through the paper to find its contents. There's an address printed on a piece of paper, adorned on the other side with the photo of a bench in the park.
Despite being late and the stack of paperwork on his desk, Tony is on his way before he has even taken the time to sit down. He squeezes himself through the gap between the elevator doors and punches in the button for the parking garage.
Tony gets in his car and enters the address into his navigation system while he drives to the entrance of the Navy Yard. The officer on duty glances twice when she realizes that she just let him through on his way in, but probably remembers he works for Gibbs and doesn't ask questions.
His GPS shows that the note leads him to a park, which means something is waiting for him on the bench that was in the photo. He hopes desperately that it will be her, that she changed his mind, that he will find her sitting with her back to him as he approaches, turning around and gracing him with that smile he loves so much.
He knows it won't be. That doesn't take the feeling away. Tony will probably hope for the rest of his life that he will catch a glance of her in the crowd, and know she is home for good.
He parks his car sloppily and gets out, checks in the reflection of his window that he doesn't look like he raced here and broke more traffic laws than Gibbs does in a week. Kids are everywhere as he follows the dirt path into the center, trees all around him, decorated with climbing kids and parents watching from a distance.
Tony stops in his stride as his cell beeps, indicating a text has arrived. It's from a burn phone, and he knows exactly who would be on the other end if he called and she actually answered.
Do not tell her what she needs to hear, tell her what you need to say.
Even now, she still refuses to use contractions. The Special Agent smiles at that, but immediately turns it into a grimace when the words register. 'Her', not 'me'. Whoever is waiting for him is not Ziva, but he has a pretty good idea who is. The words still haunt him, even though they were spoken half a decade ago. Back then, Ziva had given him the opposite advice. She had told him to bear the burden of the lies, today she asks him – orders him – to share that burden. To lighten the weight on his shoulders because he won't be able to carry much more after Ziva's disappearance from his life.
Even from a distance, he has no problem recognizing her. It has been years, but she looks like she hasn't aged at all. Her skin is a tan darker, her hair an inch longer, but every other feature is just as flawless as it had been.
"Jeanne," he says quietly, her name still rolling off his tongue without a problem, like he never stopped calling out for her. The woman looks up from her book, a medical journal that she always immersed herself in so she could get her focus back.
"Tony," she sighs, marking her page and slamming it shut, her finger running over the spine. He takes a seat on the bench, uncomfortable with looking down on her. He makes sure to leave enough space between them, leaning against the metal armrest on his side.
"What are you doing here, Jeanne?" Last he heard, when McGee had to track her alibi down for a case, she had been out of the country. That had been three or four years ago. A lot of things had changed since then.
"Ziva showed up on my doorstep a week ago." Jeanne wants to continue, but Tony doesn't let her. "You're kidding, right?"
He meets her gaze for the first time, but doesn't even see a hint of a laugh or a lie. His partner actually hopped on a plane to a third world country to track down his ex-girlfriend and convinced her to fly back to D.C. Unbelievable. Somehow very much Ziva. She will never stop to amaze him, though he hasn't decided if he actually likes this accompishment of hers.
"She told me it was real, that all of it was real. She said you loved me."
Tony can't shake the memory from his eyelids. Like a movie, it replays in his head. The only lie that mattered. He'd said 'no'. He implied with one word that she had been nothing more than an assignment. Countless days where he couldn't wait to have her in his arms again, watch more movies together than he usually did in a year, loved and cried and laughed and lived for any time he could spent with her, no matter how short. He'd forced her to believe that all of that was an act, that he was a different person.
Honestly, Tony DiNardo had only been separated from DiNozzo by three letters and a job description. He'd looked into her eyes and seen a future, and was foolish enough to think he could have it. Being DiNardo full-time wouldn't even have been a problem, but leaving behind the only family he had ever known had been.
He'd wanted to introduce her to them. She would've ganged up on him with Ziva and given McGee the confidence boost Tony had never been able to give him. She would have loved listening to Ducky and taken one look at Abby and respected her because Jeanne never judged a person by their appearance. And Gibbs, well, who knows? He'd hated Wendy for what she'd done to his Senior Field Agent. Maybe he would have liked that Jeanne had convinced him to commit for the first time since his fiancée left him at the altar. Maybe not.
Ziva's text weighs heavily in his pocket.
"I do love you, I did," he admits. Tony is not sure that love ever really fades. Maybe the flame of passion reduces to embers, but a little care and it can always flare back up.
"Why did you lie?"
"You accused me of murder." He remembers that with perfect clarity. " I hurt you so much that you invented a memory in which I killed your father. You were in so much pain that you convinced yourself I murdered a man. I saw it Jeanne. You believed your own lie so much that you thought you were telling the truth. Telling you that I meant every moment, that I loved you and that everything was real? That wouldn't have done either of us any good."
"Who are you to decide that? I saw you everywhere I looked. I had to flee the country to even try to build a new life for myself. I couldn't get you out of my head. Why couldn't you give me the truth?" Her voice raises steadily with each word until she is nearing a shout.
"I wasn't ready." There, he'd admitted it. Back then he'd needed to forget Jeanne even existed. He'd been furious for so long. He'd felt betrayed, even though she had never lied to him, and he'd only met her because Jenny had given him a photo and a staging area for the first time he saw her for real. "I didn't think we would ever recover from the truth, so I made sure at least one of us would. That you would."
"It didn't work," she snaps. Tony laughs. He doesn't mean to, but it just slips out. A strange woman had shown up in her life and told her that her ex-boyfriend needed her and she'd flown a couple thousand miles to meet him in a park with no guarantee that he would even be there.
He'd known exactly who would be at the 'X' on his map and he'd never even considered turning around. What was Ziva even doing? Was this just an opportunity for closure, or is she offering him his ex-girlfriend on a plate?
"You know, I accepted it. I wanted you to come with me and start again, without the lies. Why couldn't you?" He'd asked that himself over and over again. Even after he burned her letter and made his decision. What if's had haunted him every time his life took a turn for the worse.
"NCIS is the only family I've ever known, I couldn't let that go. They are the only part of me I ever hid from you, and also the only part that is essential for me to live." Even now that his father and him are sort-of on speaking terms and the gap between him and the team has been growing, like an infected wound that keeps on spreading and he can't heal. "Loving me is loving them, and I needed you to be a part of that, not a separate choice."
Jeanne grabs his hands and entwines their fingers. She looks straight at him. "Ziva said you needed me. Was she right?" She pauses, gathering her courage and asking before she can chicken out. "Do you want to try again?"
She might have had a week to consider this, but Tony is overwhelmed by the next one-eighty his life is throwing at him, which Ziva is throwing at him. This time though, it is by far the easiest that he has ever encountered. He goes for the given solution.
"How about we go watch a movie at the theatre and take it from there?"
He gets a brilliant smile in return.