I know I said no more one shots until number 50, however I need to fill up the last four before number 50 and I was to impatient to wait for more of number 50 to be written up. Actually, I have not written any in almost a month… Oops.

This is TIVA, at the end, but Tony is not in it. It is McGee and Ziva talking.

Enjoy!

Not Just A Line

McGee grumbled quietly to himself as he struggled to type up his report. Tony had, by some small miracle, finished his reports first, and McGee had a feeling it was all to do with the fact that Ziva had in fact taken half of his pile of paperwork to do whilst he was not looking. They had all been looking worn down recently, all exhausted from their little adventure to the Horn of Africa, Tony especially so, and he reckoned that Ziva had picked up on this. She had the uncanny ability to read their partner like a book when nobody else could. The woman herself was still sat at her desk, working studiously without pause, her stack of papers barely indented from their height at the time Gibbs had called it a night and headed in the direction of boats and bourbon, three hours beforehand. He muttered again as he typed the wrong thing, the tiredness finally getting to him, attracting the attention of the Israeli-soon-to-be-American sat across from him. She smiled slightly and stood, cracking her neck and knuckles before walking over to him and sitting on the corner of his desk. Her gaze drifted to the stacks of papers that still littered his workspace and she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Go home, McGee. Sleep. I will finish your paperwork." She seemed infinitely older than she had a year ago, her time in the desert having aged her almost beyond recognition. McGee tried to think back to when they had first met, when she had first turned up on their doorstep as a young, wild Mossad officer, not even 23 years of age, and had difficulty in comparing the two, old and new. Ziva, who had always been the baby of the group yet still the wisest and most mature, would now be hard to pass off as youthful. Her eyes, that had already seen too much before they met, we're now dark and heavy, filled with memories that she wished to forget and relived every night when the darkness of sleep enveloped her. At first they had all tried to make certain that she was not the last to leave, usually meaning Tony would stay until the dead of night, when he would turn her desk lamp off and pick her coat and bag up, guiding her to the elevator and walking her to her car. But then they all realised that she would still be in work before them, no matter how early they got in. And that was when Gibbs ordered them to stop babysitting her, because she was using work as a way to forget. When she had first moved to America, they had all visited her apartment within a month, but this time after four months none of them except Ducky and Gibbs even knew her address, and even then they had only seen the main door to her building. She barely mentioned her apartment, and it seemed to McGee that she tried to spend as little time there as possible.

"I can't do that. I can't leave you with all that work." He shook his head, rubbing his eyes and allowing himself a rare moment to lean back in his chair and survey the dark office.

"What else am I going to do, McGee? Go home, get some sleep, do something relaxing and, to use a DiNozzo term, do something McGeeish."

He smirked slightly. "And what do you suppose is 'McGeeish'?"

She shrugged. "You could write another book. It has been so long since you have had anything published."

"Yeah, well, I stopped doing that." He looked over to the dark windows, avoiding her gaze.

"Why?"

"You all hated me writing about you." He shrugged and looked at her.

"That is not true. Tony liked the attention, and I liked seeing how you portrayed us. We gave you grief because we love you." It was a big admission from Ziva, and the old Ziva would never have been so bold. "I miss reading about the team. Why did you really stop?"

He looked at her eyes, looked at the splinters of pain that still flickered through the molten chocolate depths and sighed, shaking his head in a mix of exasperation and desperation. "How can I? After everything? After all you've been through, how can I make light of that with silly, childish stories?"

She paused and considered his point, her eyes focused on a non-existent point in the distance. She was silent for so long that McGee was certain that she had drifted off into some other world, possibly one resembling Somalia, and gotten lost. But, as cliché as it sounded, just as he was about to snap her out of her day dream, she began to speak, very slowly and very quietly, but speak all the same. "I think, McGee...I think that that is what we need. Not so much making light of it, but putting it into perspective and getting it out in the open, in some way or another. Write the mission, through your eyes..." She paused again and. It her lip, as if building herself up for what she needed to say. "...from the moment Agent Tommy kills Officer Lisa's boyfriend to the moment where Agent McGregor and Agent Tommy heroically bring back a less than grateful Lisa, to the moment when forensic specialist Amy will not let Lisa out of her sight. Do what you are good at, McGee. Write what you see."

"You didn't mention Agent Tommy and Agent Lisa's relationship. What do I write about that?"

She chuckled softly and looked down at him warmly, cupping his cheek with one hand. He was expecting one of the light, painless, playful slaps that he was so used to her giving everyone but Gibbs and Tony, but instead she leaned forwards and pressed her lips to his cheek. The simple kiss was so much more gentle than the powerful, energetic ones he was so accustomed to Abby dishing out, and it came as a shock to receive such a delicate gesture from Ziva. She pulled away and smiled kindly at the pink blush that rose in his cheeks, rewarding him with the gentle tap that he had been expecting. She collected the papers on his desk and carried them over to her own, placing them on the already uneven pile.

"Ziva, what if I don't do it justice?"

She was silent again, her lips pursed in consideration, before she turned to face him. "I believe in you, McGee. So does everyone else here, particularly Tony."

He nodded, gathering his things and making his way to the elevator. He stopped when he passed her partitioning wall, leaning over. "He missed you, you know. When you were gone, he was...gone, too. It wasn't just a line." She frowned at his retreating form as he walked to the elevator, resigning herself to the fact that she would never know the meaning to his cryptic words, just as the elevator doors opened and he turned back to face her. "He really can't live without you."

I am probably going to be super, super busy for then next couple of weeks, and so I do not know when I will actually upload anything. Sorry about that, you will just have to be patient. Sorry.

For my reference: 46th NCIS fic.