A/N: Yikes...This is my first ever completed story with a real-live plot, and I am SO excited and yet so oddly reluctant to let it go out into the world. Oh well, I guess we all have to kick our babies out the door sometime. I would never have thought that my first plot-based NCIS fic would be set a bit over ten years beyond Season 7 (as this one is), but this little story just came along and was everything I'd been waiting for for so long and I couldn't exactly turn that away.
This fic is complete - on my computer, that is - so you can count on a chapter update every other day until its over. It's 11 chapters and an epilogue long, and I'm posting the first two chapters today.
If you read, please, PLEASE review - your feedback is absolutely welcome and wanted, including thoughtful, constructive criticism and suggestions.
Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own NCIS.
It's a different kind of quiet, Special Agent Ziva DiNozzo thought to herself as she pushed another cutting board full of chopped squash into the waiting bowl, the kind that comes from peace. A past that had been spent between explosions and the tension that triggered them, horror and the stillness that followed, and the ever-present reticence of distrust and betrayal had done little to prepare her for the life she now enjoyed. She smiled to herself because, even years later, she still couldn't get past the novelty of it, and because this new definition of quiet seemed not to require the actual absence of sound.
Ziva paused her chopping for a moment to listen more carefully to the hesitant flow of piano notes drifting through the basement door. It was not hard for the Israeli woman to imagine the look of concentration that would be gracing her daughter's face as tiny fingers picked their way across the keys, nor the way the young girl's almost-black curls would be glowing gently in the soft light of the space that Tony liked to refer to as his "one-stop entertainment center." For her part, Ziva thought of the finished basement as a defensive stab at an unwelcome legacy; there would be no boats built in the DiNozzo basement.
Glancing over her counter-full of barely-prepared food, she hesitated only a moment before carefully laying down her chef's knife. She was almost to the basement stairs when the doorbell rang and considered ignoring the interruption, but finally sighed and turned back towards the front entrance. Pushing a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear, she surreptitously glanced through one of the front windows as she crossed the small foyer. Narrowing her eyes at the dark-suited, dark-haired man standing on her porch, Ziva barely paused before opening the door.
Perhaps her instinct of suspicion was a little lax, but the former assassin's reaction time hadn't slowed at all. When the man on her doorstep changed from bored-looking-probable-sales-rep-of-some-kind to definite-armed-threat, Ziva launched herself into action without a second thought. Her first target was his gun, and a well-aimed kick quickly separated the man from his weapon. The expression on his face shifted rapidly from aggressive to startled and Ziva knew she had this one in the bag, but, just as she allowed a faint smirk to turn the corner of her mouth up, she heard something that almost broke her concentration. A window breaking, somewhere else in the house. This man that she was about to incapacitate had not come alone.
The knowledge that the threat was bigger than she had first realized drove her next few blows to her current assailant, and within thirty seconds she was lunging over his fallen body to recover his weapon. She charged back into the house without hesitation, which perhaps wasn't the most logical response to the situation at hand, but all she could think about was her daughter - the daughter who wasn't supposed to suffer the way she had as a child - trapped in the basement. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Ziva could only hope that surprise would be on her side.
She encountered the intruders on the threshold of the kitchen and managed to get off two rounds before someone grabbed her wrist and forced the gun from her hand. Forfeiting the weapon, she used his grip on her to drag him off balance and throw him into the wall behind her. In the same moment, she pulled her ever-present knife from the sheath at her belt and prepared for the next attacker.
The next few moments were a blur of adrenaline and action. Her knife bit into flesh, more than once, and she felt the warmth of someone else's blood running down her fingers. She focused on that, and the pained grunts and gasps of the men whom she kicked, punched, and otherwise slammed herself into, so that she wouldn't focus on her own blood trickling down her face, or her own pain as she received her share of blows in return. She would've fought to the death to save her daughter, and her desperately violent attack might have been enough if her attackers hadn't already known her weakness.
The tear-filled, terrified cry of her daughter stopped Ziva in her tracks. "Mommy!" seven-year-old Adina DiNozzo sobbed repeatedly, only loud enough to be heard above the chaos once, but once was all it took. Ziva froze, her mother's eyes finding Adina at once, and her heart jumping into her throat when she saw the muzzle of a gun pressed against the little girl's head. The man holding Adina firmly by the arm did not have to speak to communicate his threat. The former assassin who was now nothing more or less than mother to her child did not resist as the men whom she had just been fighting forced her to her knees and roughly bound her hands behind her back.
"Adi," Ziva said, forcing her voice loud enough for Adina to hear. The girl's cries had dissolved into tears, but her dark emerald eyes stayed on her mother's face. "It's going to be okay," Ziva told her daughter, and herself, but before she could make it a promise, someone hit her hard from behind. As the world faded rapidly into darkness, she heard the renewed cries of her daughter, and she had just enough time to form one thought in her head.
Tony, we need you.
A/N: Roses are red, violets are blue. Reviews are AWESOME, and so are you (you'll be even more awesome if you review, though). :-)