Disclaimer: Well, have you seen the latest episode? Do you think I could've come up with something like it? No? You'd be very right!

Spoilers: Entirely 10x22 "Revenge" and the Bodnar arc.

So ... I definitely wasn't expecting Bodnar to just sail through the air like that :/ it came as a surprise. Thus, I decided to write this as a post-ep :P it takes place immediately after the last scene. It's pretty short and also, warning: It's not fluffy. I mean, it doesn't end fluffily, as seems to be the case with all I write lately. Just so you know :P

Enjoy!

-Soph

End

He found her in the break room nursing a cup of tea and waiting for the arrival of Tom Morrow.

Best thing to do is to turn yourself in, Gibbs had told the Israeli-American, and Tony had been petrified when Ziva had nodded without argument. Not surprised, perhaps, but that hadn't stopped him from wishing he could whisk her away to some remote island and keep her there—safe—until everything just blew over.

They weren't in a soap opera, though, and he couldn't reasonably expect their problems to magically disappear that way. So, he'd simply wrapped a hand around her wrist—still pulsing with every beat of her heart—and led her to the car he had taken to the port. Hers would have to remain there as evidence.

But he'd be damned if he left her there to fend for herself when the investigators arrived, too.

It might not have been the wisest of decisions to take her away from the scene, but now that he was looking at her—her figure tense and hunched over the cup of tea—he found he didn't regret it. Killing Bodnar had not been easy for her, he knew, because no matter how one cut it, she'd laughed and learnt and worked and played and grown up beside the man. Bodnar had been her friend, and in the end he had divested her of the father she could only ever have craved for.

Tony wondered sometimes how she was still standing.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and went up to her table, taking the seat beside her. "Hi," he said quietly.

She'd let down her hair and was now hiding her face behind it. "Hello," she answered.

"How's the tea?"

Her fingers rubbed meditatively against the porcelain of the mug, back and forth, back and forth. "Fine."

"It's gonna get cold if you leave it like that."

"Are you here to tell me something?" she questioned impatiently. "'Cause I would like it if you just got it over with."

He swallowed the bitter taste in his throat. "I'm just checking on you."

"I am not in prison yet; you can save the act."

"Who says you need to be in prison for me to want to check on you?"

She inhaled deeply and tucked her hair behind her ear, seemingly out of habit, but it allowed him to see the ugly bruise starting to pattern the area around her eye.

"Zi!" he cried, reaching out to inspect the bruise, but her hand shot out to clasp around his wrist before he could.

"Don't," she warned. "It is nothing pretty."

He tried to tug his forearm out of her iron hold. "I wanna see it!"

"Why?" she demanded, and the bruise mocked him harshly when she finally turned to glare at him. "So you could see how much blood was spilt?"

He clenched his jaw but relaxed his outstretched hand, and it was only then that she let go. "Fine," he rasped, lowering his hand, and she breathed out. He studied her for a moment before stating, "You regret what you did."

Her blanket of hair curtained her face again. "I do not. But that does not mean I was satisfied with what I did."

"Then why'd you do it? Why'd you go behind our backs again, Ziva? Why'd you leave me out of this?"

"It did not concern you," she pressed out through gritted teeth. "It was my private vendetta."

"I thought we'd got over that in Berlin."

"We got over a lot of things with Berlin, and one of them was almost your life, right on the very day that we came back."

"Ziva—"

"No. We are not talking about this." She held up a hand. "I have done the deed, and I am going to pay for it. I will not shirk from that. But you are not going to involve yourself in this."

"I'm afraid it's far too late for that, princess," he retorted acerbically, and he thought he saw her bare her teeth. "If I'd wanted to get 'not involved,' I wouldn't have turned up at the crime scene—"

"No," she stammered, startling him with both her suddenly emotional interruption and the sheer panic flashing through her eyes. "No, you were not involved, and I'm not going to let Morrow make a case out of you or Gibbs or McGee."

"It's—"

"It is not okay. Don't tell me it is okay! I tried so hard to leave you out of this—"

"Calm down, Ziva!" he barked, and she clamped her mouth shut. He proceeded, "Nothing's gonna happen. Morrow's just gonna look into us, and he'll find that what you did was out of self-defence, and you're gonna be fine and I'm gonna be fine. Okay?"

"Except I drove there with the intention of finding Ilan," she countered. "Do you think he's going to let that go?"

It was obvious, by the way Ziva's glimmering eyes were now staring right into Tony's soul, that he had no answer and that she knew it.

"I didn't think so," she murmured grimly, and then she looked away and her hand, which had been resting those mere few inches from his, was rubbing the ceramic mug thin once more.

And it was over, he realized then. Their entire quest for revenge had taken more than a car as victim; it'd taken them, the collective he and she and then both of them individually, and then their team—… and Ziva's job was no longer the only thing on the line.

Everything was over, and they had emerged none the more victorious for it.