Perhaps One Day
Part Deux of my 'POD' series. It isn't directly related to Part One, but there are tiny allusions to it. I believe that that may be addressed in a later one shot.
Title: It's good to cry, sometimes.
Rating: K+
Pairings: None ... unless you squint then maybe TIVA (by squint I mean close your eyes and pretend)
Warnings: Spoilery-ness to Enemies Foreign.
Summary: Her father had left her, and she feels like she has just been passed up for something better again. She will never come first, she sees that now.
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She still has those tears in her eyes when he walks back in. She is staring at nothing but the space that her father had vacated sometime before, and she wants to go back to that moment when he was cradling her face in his warm hands so she can tell him that she loves him - she feels like a child, seeking her father's attention above all else. It was a moment of weakness that seized her chest as he stood there before her, and she wants to have that moment back because she feels that she won't get the chance to do so again. She doesn't forgive him for everything he has done, but she can't begrudge him for acting out his sense of duty - she had been the same at one point.
Tony doesn't ask if she is okay, just sits on the edge of her desk and fiddles with the miniature Israeli flag that now adorns her pen-cup. It's something that just fits, looks so right sitting there on the edge of her desk and he wants to get her an American flag to sit nestled right alongside of it because that is what she is now, an Israeli-American. She is an Israeli by birth and an American by certificate – both have intermingled in her heart, and though she sometimes tries to will away her birthright he knows how she feels.
"You okay?" he asks after a second, and he hates the way she jumps at his presence. She has been recoiling from him since he had stated the Israeli's had come back, and he doesn't like it. He wants her to want to be around him, because he wants to be around her. He recalls her words from a few days prior and he feels his heart clench in the way it had been doing since the words fell from her lips.
"Fine," she bristles, wiping away the tears that haven't even fallen out of her eyes because she won't let them. The fact that she is furiously scrubbing her face anyway pains him because she does not allow herself that moment of relief.
"It's okay to cry," he states nonchalantly, and he scoots just a smidge closer to her so that his leg is brushing against her knee. She draws back, and crosses her arms as if she doesn't believe him but it is the distance that really pains him. He guesses that that is okay, because he isn't one to show his emotions often, if ever, and he definitely isn't one to accept help. "It is good to cry, sometimes," he reiterates, and he wants to cup her face in his hand but he is not sure that she will let him.
"When has it ever been okay for me to cry?" she asks in such a harsh tone that he finds his own self recoiling. She has a fire in her voice in that moment, and he wonders just what hidden meaning she is implying. "Every time I have shed tears it has done no one any good," she murmurs, and she wipes at her face once more as though one of the damned tears she is cursing has somehow escaped her notice.
"Did you feel better?" he asks, though he knows he is prying. It is what he does, and if he has to pry to get her to open up to him again he will, he will use a crowbar if absolutely necessary.
"That does not matter," she glares at him, and she pushes at his hip on top of her desk because she wants him to be further away from him than he is. When he doesn't budge she gives up, she is not going to make a scene when ignoring him will work just as efficiently. "I do not need to cry." The word 'ever' hangs in the air unsaid, and he would believe her if her eyes weren't rimmed with red, and she still didn't have hunched shoulders as if she was holding herself back from doing just that.
He tries a different approach, not to cause her harm but to make her understand something he is vaguely sure that she doesn't. "He loves you, you know," it's kind of sudden, his words. She is staring at him again as though she really wishes he would leave her alone but he is not backing down. Not right now, she needs him, though she won't realize it until much later.
"Who?" her accented words curl around the 'h', causing it to flit across the air in an abrupt manner that makes him want to smile. He fights it, now is not the time.
"Your father," he reiterates, and she is closing herself off quicker than he can move and her face is a hardened mask that he is so used to seeing. He wishes she wouldn't bother with him, he can see through her fronts and the hallow hints to her eyes makes him ache inside.
"That is none of your business," it is by no means an answer to his statement, and he realizes that she is simply refusing to acknowledge it because she doesn't know that his words are the truth. He sees a lost little girl vying for her father's attention, and he realizes why she had been so jealous of Liat to begin with. He really hadn't helped matters by flirting incessantly with the young Mossad officer, but old habits die hard and when an opportunity presents itself he can't help but to take it.
"Maybe not," he accedes, and he drops it for now. One day she will see her father's obvious love for her, though the man's intentions were a little skewed, but right now was clearly not that time.
They are silent for a moment, him staring down at the top of her head while she worked furiously at her keyboard in attempt to ignore him. It wasn't long before she shoved the object away from her to look at him with tears in her eyes once more. "Liat reminded me of Tali in a way," she said unexpectedly, and he jolts at the mention of her younger sister. That time outside the Embasero hotel had been the first and last time they had talked about her. "Liat was skittish, though she tried to hide it with her knowledge of the inner workings of Mossad," there was a pause, where Ziva smiled fondly and Tony just knew that the quirk of her lips was not because she was fondly thinking of the living woman. "I could see it in her eyes," she whispered, and she gets lost in her memories as the tears begin to come forth again. She stops them before they can escape the rim of her eyelid, and she hisses as the wetness touches her fingers. She really hates tears, and she hates even more that Tony sees them. She already feels weak enough around him; she does not wish to give him any more ammo.
He finds himself wondering about her impromptu story, there really hadn't been much resolution to it, and he thinks it might have just caused her further pain to remember her fallen sister. He thinks maybe her dislike for Liat might have been a bit more understandable now. Besides the obvious, seeing her sister when looking into the young woman's eyes must have been unbearable.
"My father always did love Tali more," she states quietly, and she is not even facing him anymore.
It breaks something inside of him, and he finds himself spinning her chair back around to face him so that he can see what she looks like. Gone are the shutters that she usually holds in place, and instead he sees the tears making streaks across her skin that she tried so futilely to get rid of before.
The meaning he hears behind her words is painfully obvious, and he wants to tell her that she is being absurd, her father couldn't love Liat more than her. He doesn't say anything along those lines, instead he draws her into her arms and tells her that crying will do her good.
Eventually when her breath stops hitching, and she has seemingly gotten her tears back under control he pulls back from the embrace he had initiated. His fingers are still grasping her shoulders tightly as he looks in her haggard appearance, she looks worn out and tired, and he just wants to hold her some more. That territory is not something he can go into though, not with the way she has been acting towards him.
"You don't need to worry about your father," he states easily, and before she can shrug him off and go back to hating him he continues, "because you have Gibbs' love."
She smiles at him, a big fat watery smile that causes his heart to catch and he can't stop himself from wrapping his arms around her again.
Sometimes it is okay to cry, and sometimes it is okay to love: America has taught her that.
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I hope no one is too upset that this is not in direct correlation to the previous one. This was written after I spent some time rewatching the episodes. This is what I do in my off time of work, well that and clean ... I think we all know which one I like better.
Reviews would be love.
All reviews will be replied to tomorrow, I just got home from work and I have to head back at 4am (yay 4 hours of sleep!)