A/N: If anyone actually reads this I'd love some feedback. I wrote this over the summer and it's not my finest work, but it's finished, it's been finished and I more or less liked it. And if you were hoping for TMYL, I promise I haven't abandoned it.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. Nor am I claiming ownership. You could sue, but really is my DvD collection and a Great Adventure pen really worth all that trouble. You can totally have the pen.
Title: Rauncy Old Women Still Love Tea
Summary: Bottom line she was interesting. Her life had been well lived, well loved. The kind of past he hoped to look back on, but was more than sure he wouldn't
Long after they've fixed it. When they put these pieces back together again. When they're seated back behind proper desks in their proper arrangement. One that had seemed so wrong at first. But that was then, when Kate was, then.
Anyway it's after. Jigsaw assembled, stars aligned, et cetera.
When he's talking to an elderly woman laying her husband to rest. The inadvertent witness to a grave robbery gone wrong. She's become attached, interested, and so she's here too long. Eventually it didn't matter, a protection detail became necessary and he got the first shift. That's why.
He's sitting on a couch that should have retired with her dead Colonel of a hubby fifteen years ago. She likes to talk, and talk she does. Normally it might have been bothersome. But when someone like her sits down for a chat you just feel obligated to listen. She was a hardened, wizened, military woman. Funny and just slightly inappropriate with the senior field agent. Bottom line she was interesting. Her life had been well lived, well loved. The kind of past he hoped to look back on, but was more than sure he wouldn't.
So she sits him down with her weak tea in her chipped china because in her words, his ass simply wasn't nice enough. And she asks if he'd mind chatting. There's no television. Just walls lined with books and a phonograph in the corner. He offers her a half smile and nods. She starts at the beginning, talks of her time growing up a child of the depression and the city that never slept.
She's witty, sharp, insightful. Pegs him right off the bat. Tailors her humor. Tailors the tales. And oh what tales they are.
He's engrossed by the time she reaches the day it all changed. He asks her if it's the day she met her husband and she just lets out a gravelly laugh. The kind that makes her throw her head back and her cup clatter against the plate. He smiles, the smile you offer when you understand there's amusement to be had but aren't sure of it's origin.
"Lords no pretty boy." She says when her breath is caught. "You've been watching to many of those movies of yours Anthony. Love at first sight was not in the cards for my William and me. Oh no." She gently sips her tea and gives a look that makes him think that if Gibbs had a mother, this is what she'd be like. The kind that makes you sure her bright blue eyes that properly turned heads fifty years ago could read the transcript of your soul.
"You've been in love Anthony. I don't need to explain that part." She says it as a fact, not a question. His return gaze is questioning, but ignored. "Bill and I knew each other for six years before we even thought of such of things." She smiled at the photo above her mantle. Their wedding, he knew, proof of his suspicion when he'd first interviewed her, that she'd captured attention all those days gone by. "No it wasn't me seeing him that first day in his uniform that made me sure. Didn't hurt though." She added with a wink.
He shouldn't be so curious but he asks what they both knew he was going to ask, "How did you know then?"
"Wasn't me that figured it out Very Special Agent." The woman says with a leering glance. He cocks an eyebrow and she just grins. "Bill came to me, said he knew the girl he was going to marry. Back when I thought we just worked for the Corps together. I asked if he was sure. He said he damn well was, did I have to question everything? He knew." She sips again, her eyes back on the mantle. "So I asked him, how did he know? And after telling me she was beautiful, smart, funny, the regulars he got down to brass tacks. Of course now I know he was just buttering me up, making it easier later." She chuckles.
"He tells me that this girl, she's the smartest one he's ever met. By then I knew what he was getting to. He may not have been tactful Anthony, but he was right."
"About getting married?"
"About me being the smartest woman he'd ever met." She states matter-of-factly with another smirk. "Bill didn't marry me because of those things though. According to him it was because I made him better."
"Better? What-" Tony begins but she cuts him off.
"Love is great when you're a twenty-two year old nurse in Pearl Anthony. But it doesn't always last, it isn't always right. Bill had always loved me, according to him, which, he wasn't the most reliable source, a touch romantic for a Marine. No, he won me over when he explained it all. He told me that he knew for us it'd be forever because we pushed each other to be better. Every day we spent together, and we spent a lot apart in the real sense of the word, we drove one another to be better, as a man, as a woman. Always better." She regarded Tony long and hard. "Do you understand my meaning Anthony?"
"You made him a better man." Tony answers, quiet and low, the way this started.
"He made me a better woman." She continues. "Love has to be there Anthony. It's important. But in the end, what matters most is what effect you have on them. Happier, stronger, safer, more able to fulfill their purpose." She looked back to her photograph, that faint smile returning. "I gave him what he needed to be a man. Sometimes it was my affection, sometimes it was a swift kick to the ass, or maybe just me being there. And he did the same." Her eyes scanned the picture. "And he was the only person who could be as big of bastard as I could be an evil bitch." The last word makes him snort, he hadn't expected that particular noun.
She pauses again and then returns her attention to him. "You find the girl who makes you a man, just by standing at your side Anthony. Not the girl who can find the place marker."
He sharpens his gaze on her, unsure, hoping to decipher her expression the way she obviously has him. Her tone is knowing, amused, and implying that she already watched the ending of the DiNozzo Chronicles. The conversation continued to less serious topics of troublesome children and grandchildren. But the comment stays with him for two weeks after the thief is caught.
So after they fix it and find that elusive rhythm, so long after, when he's sitting at his desk thinking of Caroline and her words of advice. He's so lost in his own head space that he doesn't register Ziva and McGeek entering the bullpen, packing up for the night. He gives the kid a distracted farewell, leaving just him and the Officer.
"Are you alright Tony?" She asks coming out to stand behind his desk. She searches his face for some sign. If he were more perceptive, which he isn't, he'd have seen her stop herself from touching his forehead. "If you're planning your next 'move' on Petty Officer Lynn I must remind you that she is twenty-two and obviously incapable of multiplication. Also, possibly a murder suspect, and with your trick record-"
"Track." he corrects absentmindedly.
"Right. She is most likely our culprit. You must have noticed you have a certain tendency to flirt with the felons. Besides, she already claims to have a boyfriend so it is a futile effort. Like nailing pudding to the door."
"Jell-O to the wall." He says.
"I thought Jell-O was pudding? And what difference is a door or wall?" Ziva asks, part genuine curiosity, part defiance.
"Jell-O does make pudding, but they also make Jell-O, and I'm not sure why it's a wall. Less letters, more likely to be nailed."
"So you are saying that a door is not as promiscuous as a wall?" She questions with a smile. Tony laughs and takes his feet from the desk she leans against, sitting up and meeting her bright gaze.
"Well I'd agree with you, if doors weren't always been knocked on, by all those strange people."
"Walls are also knocked on."
"True."
"Are we really debating the virtue of furnishings?"
"Yes." He concludes, nodding his head. "Yes we are."
Ziva pushes herself up and walks back to her desk to grab her bag and coat. "I am still right." Tony follows her lead, shutting off his computer and collecting his necessary possessions.
"Thinking you're right, and actually being right are two different things Officer David." He throws back as they walk together to the elevator.
"As you have yet to prove me wrong, I am comfortable with my assumption." She retorts as the doors close.
"So you admit you're assuming."
"The Petty Officer is most likely our killer Tony. And your attention only solidifies my theory. McGee and Abby agree also."
"I thought we were still talking about the Jell-O." He says it almost as a gauge. He finds himself doing that more often now, tempting her response, because he only recently noticed that there was a response. Though he's not sure what they mean. Her face flashes something akin to discomfort and she changes her stance.
"You have a tendency to pick the wrong girls Tony, and one day one of them really will get you killed. Statistically I am surprised it has not already happened. You also have had too many near mixes. A car bomb, Y-pestles, the accident last month. You may not have many get out of hail free cards left." She shifts again, not returning his gaze. "You are not a cat."
"It's misses." He starts quietly. She finally looks at him. "Not mixes. And get out of jail free." He searches her face briefly, and she stiffens.
"What?"
"If you're worried about me Ziva that's all you have to say." His tone coy and amused. She smacks him in the back of the head.
"It is not worry, I just would not like to have to train a new partner. And if you would stop trying to date homicide suspects and perhaps look for a more long term, less life threatening girlfriend I would not have to smack you so often. It is not my fault you are slow learner."
He opens his mouth to retort when that switch is flicked. In a flash he remembers his conversation with Ziva in the bathroom, right after the dissolution of his relationship with Jeanne, she had been right then, had pushed him to…And then, after they had seen her and his ex had accused him of murdering her father, she had told him to…Or when he had balked during the talk of moving in together, or when he was unsure about…
There were others, all in the span of a few seconds. All the times she had shoved him forward, made him, well…huh. He looked over Ziva again, shock on his features, and something new in his eye. She was more than confused by the sudden change and immovable attention.
"What?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. He cleared his throat and searched her face once more.
"Just thinking about something Caroline said."
"The woman from the grave robbing?" He didn't need to confirm the answer she knew. "What did she say?"
Tony shook his head, as if to shake his thoughts away with it. He pushed to light the elevator panel again, though redundant and cleared his throat yet again. "Nothing. I just thought. Nothing." He knew she wanted to press so he quickly continued. "You're probably right. Walls are much sluttier."