Have your back
Summary –"Is this what you call taking care of yourself?" TIVA friendship
Disclaimer – NCIS characters are CBS's not mine.
"Come on in" he said just to let her know that he had realised she was there.
She had tried to enter the room silently but maybe she was not as agile as before or maybe she was just too nervous and he had heard her coming in. That does not however explain how he knew it was her. Hearing her come in was not difficult in the stillness of his room but knowing it was her was pure instinct. Who else would come?
It had been a hell of a day, well a hell of a couple of months to say the truth. Keeping everything from them was difficult and deep inside he was glad that they had figured out something was wrong. They knew him, understood him. But he was still following orders and couldn't risk putting them in too much danger. He would protect them as much as possible.
He contemplated the fact that they were his family, as Kate's sister put it, while hearing her nervously approach his bed. Family has a different meaning to him than everyone else. His family abandons him for the prospects of new wives and business. No he did not consider her his family. But if he had to define his team as a cell of people close to him then yes, they were all he had.
He was reminded of her presence by the scraping of a chair. Something was bothering her; he knew it but did not call her on it. They read each other like open books but never learnt how to properly communicate with one another.
"Is this what you call taking care of yourself?" She asked abruptly. It seemed she was gathering the courage to talk to him and once she started nothing could stop her. "I specifically asked you to take care of yourself, to avoid ending up here. Do you have any idea how worse this could have been? You went for an arranged meeting on your own! For crying out loud Tony you could have been killed!"
She stopped to breathe and at that moment Tony noticed the stubborn tears in her eyes.
"Ziva-"
"Don't you dare tell me that you're fine or that everything will be fine. Just shut up and promise me."
"Promise you what?"
"That you will let me do my job and have your back."
"Ziva, there's no need-"
"I will decide what needs to be done. Stratton came back to finish the job Tony. I will do what is necessary."
As she said this she seemed to finally run out of steam and sagged in the chair close to his bed. She looked exhausted; it had been a long time since he'd seen her that tired.
"You need time to lay low and to recover. You should reconsider my holiday offer."
This really came as a surprise to him, he had thought that her initial offering was just some kind of joke. They never did something like that together outside of the job but it seems that she was being honest. They had come a long way from the first coffee and pizza offering in the rain and after all that had happened between them , it felt good to know that he could trust her and call her a friend. And he knew that it couldn't have been easy for her to lose herself so much and admit that she cares for him, for his life. So he took her hand to show her how much she appreciated it.
"Yeah, I'll think about it."
Just a little post-ep of the season premier. I felt after watching the episode and especially after Tony and Ziva's conversation that there was something missing from the episode. For me that missing part was any one apart from Gibbs and Dr Kate's sister visiting Tony at the hospital. After the fifth season's opener we know how Ziva reacts when Tony is in mortal danger so where was her reaction this time around? Or Tim's or Abby's?
So assuming they could not visit Tony for 'legal purposes' being that he was under investigation , here is what I felt happened when the lights went out.