A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! As you can see, I've decided to make this an actual story. I'm not entirely sure exactly where I want it to go quite yet, but I have some ideas swirling around in my head. Anyways, I hope you enjoy. (:
"Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance."
- The Winter's Tale, William Shakespeare
Everybody Lies, Chapter 2.
Your eyes flutter open and, for a moment, you aren't sure where you are or what you're doing there. Your head is resting on something soft, and your hand is holding onto something warm, and all you can see is silver. Where in the hell are you?
You blink a few times, trying to get the sleep out of your eyes. A yawn escapes your lips and when your eyes are fully opened again, you sit up and look around. And suddenly you remember. This is Abby's lab. You must have fallen asleep on her while you were crying; she must have fallen asleep while you were sleeping. You run a hand through your hair, silently thanking God that you hadn't had any nightmares.
Abby begins to stir, and you scoot back so that you aren't touching her. Her eyes slowly open and she looks around for a minute before her eyes stop on you. Then she stretches, yawns, and pushes herself to her feet. You stand up after she does. You aren't sure what to do, and you hate all of this uncertainty you've been feeling lately. All thoughts running through your brain are looking for an excuse to get out of here.
She gives you a sad smile. "You know, Kate--" she begins, but then her phone rings.
She goes to answer it, saying something about it being important as she turns away from you. She looks back at you while she's talking, and you show her a few hand signals as you back up towards the door. She gets your message and nods, flashing you a small smile, before turning her back on you and returning to her conversation.
You let out the breath you were holding once you are safely out of her lab. You stand outside the elevator, debating whether or not to use it. Where do you plan to go, anyway? You aren't up for an awkward silence, or - even worse - an awkward conversation, in the confined elevator with no means of escape. You don't want to run into anybody, not right now.
So you choose the stairs. You walk up them slowly, allowing yourself time to think. You don't know how you feel about the crying fest you just had on Abby's shoulder. There's some guilt and embarrassment there, but you also feel ashamed and helpless. You know you shouldn't - she had practically offered you her shoulder, after all - but you do. You can't help it.
You wonder if maybe you'd feel better talking to Ducky. He knew, you know that he knew. He had to have known. How couldn't he? You want to talk to him, but you aren't sure what you would say. What if he really didn't know?
You want to talk to Tony, too. But you're at even more of a loss for words with him than with Ducky, and you know that he's mad at you. He has every right to be, so you don't blame him. They're all upset with you, even Abby. You can tell. Except for maybe Ducky, and that's only because he knew.
Plus, you have to talk to Gibbs. You don't really want to, only because you know he's going to ask questions - or maybe not ask questions so much as demand answers - but you have to. He deserves answers, even if you can't give them to him.
You hear the footsteps too late; mere moments after they register in your brain, you are standing face-to-face with Tony. He sees you and he stops, standing as still as a statue before you.
All of those things you want to tell him start to run through your mind. You want to explain yourself, tell him sorry, let him know the truth about Ari, tell him some of the things you've done so maybe he can understand, tell him that you've missed him and have been thinking about him and you don't want him to hate you - anything and everything so that maybe, just maybe, he won't be so mad. So you can try to get back to where you were with him four years ago. It's an impossible dream but it's one you have anyway. But none of these ideas, none of these words that could help you, come out of your mouth. Your head is full of all these words but all you can say is, "Hey."
He still just looks at you. You feel self-conscious under his gaze. What does he keep looking at?
"Tony, I --" you try, but he shakes his head and you stop. He looks at you silently for at least another minute before he says anything.
"You were sleeping with Ari," he says harshly, the disgust and fury evident in not just his tone but his face as well.
It surprises you at first how hateful he sounds. This isn't the Tony you remember, but Director Vance did warn you... You quickly open your mouth to reply as he begins to speak again. You don't want to hear what else he has to say, not before you get your part in. "No," you say firmly. "Well..." Your voice wavers. "Sort of."
Fuck. Now you'll have to tell him. Why couldn't I have just kept my mouth shut? you wonder bitterly.
"'Sort of?'" he repeats. "Just like you were 'sort of' dead? Just like you were 'sort of' going to date me? Just like you were 'sort of' --"
You don't want to hear this. You don't want to listen to him blame you for everything. You can't handle it. You can put up with a lot, but you are not going to let him talk to you like this, even though you've given him every reason to be mad at you.
"He was sleeping with me. I wasn't sleeping with him."
"It's not a one person ga--" Tony stops short, cutting off the last half of whatever he was going to say as realization covers his face. His lips part slightly as his jaw goes slack and his eyes widen, and he goes back to just looking at you. He almost looks guilty, or ashamed, of what he had just said. "You mean, he...?" He won't even look at you in the eyes now. Should you be feeling as bad for him as you do?
"Yes."
So much for lying.
He keeps looking at you. He opens his mouth a few times but no sound comes out, and you shift your weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. You want him to say something, but you know there's very little that he could say and very little that you really want him to say. Honestly, you just want to forget about it. You want to push the memories as far back in your mind as possible.
"I'm sorry," he finally says, his gaze focused on your shoes. You really wish he'd look up, except for the fact that you don't want to look him in the eye that much, either. Your shoes aren't that interesting, though, and you move your feet in the hopes that maybe he'll stop looking at them. He doesn't.
"Don't be," you say simply, briefly wondering how many times in one day people will tell you 'sorry' and you will tell them not to be. Sorry is a word that you can honestly say you hate; it's overused and holds barely any meaning, and you find yourself resenting the word more and more every time you hear it. "It's not your fault."
"Yeah, but--"
Can't he just drop the damn subject?
"But nothing." It comes out harsher than you intended, but you don't want to talk about it anymore. You want to talk about something else, anything else. And so you try a lame, "How have you been?"
Tony finally lifts his head back up to look at you, but it's not at all like you wanted. If you had seen him looking at someone else like this you would have thought that whoever he was talking to had grown a second head. He opens his mouth and starts to speak but quickly stops his sentence. You figure he was going to say something sarcastic - "You mean after I got over your death?" or something - then thought better of it. He takes another moment to respond, maybe trying to figure out what the best answer is so that you don't get mad.
"Fine." Really, now? You hate that answer just about as much as you hate 'sorry'. 'Fine' is the word you use when you run into someone on the sidewalk that you don't really like and don't really want to talk to, but you have to at least acknowledge them and pretend to care. You aren't some person on the sidewalk that he doesn't really like. Right?
"That's good." You don't know what to say. You still have all of these thoughts flying around in your head at a million miles per hour but you can't vocalize any of them - hell, you can't even hold on to them long enough to rationalize them. "So, uh," you start, thought you still aren't sure how to word what you want to say, "have you found - gotten - I mean... Have you settled down yet?" God, if he didn't already think you were an idiot for showing up...
He tenses, and again he avoids your gaze. He hasn't said anything and you don't know how you're supposed to take it. It could mean yes, he's found someone he thinks he can commit to, but now that he's found out that you're alive he feels guilty about it. It could mean no, he's suddenly turned gay (though you doubt that). Or it could mean no, but he's done a bunch of stupid shit that he knows you wouldn't be happy about.
It feels like years have ticked by and he still remains silent. "Tony?"
He looks back at you. "Yes."
For a moment you don't know if he's saying yes trying to be sarcastic because you called his name, or if he's saying yes to your earlier question. But the way he looks back down after a second tells you without a doubt that he was indeed answering your question. He's moved on.
It shouldn't bother you. He thought you were dead. They had warned you about this sort of thing when they told you that you were going on the assignment. They had told you that everybody would think you were dead and that they would move on. It hadn't bothered you then - no, that's a lie; it had bothered you, you had only forced yourself to get over it - but at the same time you thought that you really would end up dead. You weren't supposed to return. You were supposed to die there, and they would have done God knows what with your body, and if it weren't for the cover story you never would have gotten a proper burial because nobody would have even known you were dead.
You aren't mad about it. Not at all. You aren't really sure what to call what it is that you feel right now. Your heart feels like it's about to beat right out of your chest and your hands are sweating like no other and your head suddenly feels empty. All of those thoughts that were there just a few moments ago are suddenly nowhere to be found. You can feel another headache coming on and you really, really need some Tylenol or ibuprofen or, better yet, something that will knock you right out. You don't want to think or feel right now.
You wish that you hadn't asked that question. You wonder why you did in the first place. What did you expect? That he hasn't looked at anyone in four years just because the woman he shared one kiss with and had one dinner date plan with had suddenly died? You shouldn't feel so lost and empty and heartbroken. You may have had very little to do as far as dating goes in the past four years but he sure as hell didn't, and you can't be upset because he moved on. You can't. You can't let yourself.
"Good. I'm glad for you." You keep your voice as steady as you can, but you still notice that it was shaking slightly at the beginning. You don't need that; you don't need to make him feel guilty for living his life. You don't want to lie, but you can't tell him the truth, either. It's for his own good. It's for your own good. Hell, it's for the good of everybody if you just let him and them keep going on with their lives. They've taken a hundred steps forward. You can't make them start walking backwards.
He doesn't say anything. He just shoves his hands in his pockets and swallows hard. You know he feels bad. You run a hand through your hair as you try to think of a way to make this easier for him. It might make it harder for you, but that's a risk you've just got to take.
"That's good, Tony," you repeat softly. "It's good that you moved on."
"Why couldn't you tell us?" he asks, his head snapping up and his eyes finally meeting your's. The sudden question catches you off-guard. You hadn't expected it - you should have, but you didn't.
"I couldn't, Tony. I wasn't allowed to." If it's possible your heart starts beating even faster, and your hands have once again latched themselves on the cross around your neck. It was so much easier to hide your nervousness when you didn't have anything to fiddle with.
"You could have found a way," he argues. "You could have found some way to sneak it to us. You could have let us know you were still alive. We could have known and then none of this would have had to happen, not like this."
You're surprised to see the passion and the hurt in his eyes. You're even more surprised to feel the anger rising in you.
"No, Tony, I couldn't have."
"You could have, though, Kate! You could have written a note. You could have left some kind of hints. And then I would have waited for you, and we could be here right now like we would have been four years ago, and everything would be... Everything would be the way it was supposed to be."
You swear there are tears in his eyes and it makes you want to cry, too. But he's accusing you and blaming you and putting it all off on you and all you can think about is how angry he's making you.
"You don't get it, do you?" You had tried to keep the anger out of your voice and speech but that attempt seems so futile now. That's just another thing you've failed at. "I shouldn't be here right now! There shouldn't have been anything for you to wait on. If everything had gone the way it was supposed to, the way everybody thought it would, I shouldn't be looking at you right now. I shouldn't be breathing. None of you should even know that I didn't die four years ago because I should be dead anyway! If I had told you, Tony, and everything had gone the way everyone predicted then you would be waiting on a fucking corpse, because chances are nobody would even know I had died. That's just the way it was. I should be dead right now but instead I'm standing here listening to you tell me I should have told you!"
He doesn't say anything and you suddenly feel bad for blowing up like you did. You could have said and done worse and you know it, but the look on his face and the way he's resorted back to not even looking at you makes you feel worse than you have in years. You want to cry and have him hold you or just disappear again, or find some way to apologize, but you can't. You can't do any of that because you know crying won't fix it, him holding you will just make things complicated, disappearing would just make things harder on you and them, and apologizing never does any real good, not in the long run.
"Tony, I.." You don't know what to say or do and you feel bad about that. You want to make things better, you want to tell him that you were supposed to live all along and you don't know why you said that you were supposed to die. You want to tell him it was all just one big, stupid lie that you didn't mean.
"You were supposed to die?" he asks hesitantly. His voice cracks and you know, you know that he's trying hard not to cry. "They sent you even though they thought you would die? How is that right?"
You shrug even though you know he won't see it. "Yeah. But they send soldiers to Iraq all of the time, too, and --"
"That's not the same, Kate."
"I know."
You don't know why you even bothered to say it. It's not the same, it really isn't. There are similarities, sure, but it's still different, and it's not like it would help anyone feel any better.
You both turn as footsteps echo through the stairwell, waiting in silence for whoever it is to reach you. Finally Ziva appears. She steps up beside Tony and you notice him tense slightly. She stands just close enough to touch him, her arm pressed lightly against his.
She looks between the two of you. "Is something wrong?" she asks, and you shake your head even though you know she was talking to Tony. You want to give him time to clear the tears out of his eyes before he looks up at Ziva - except to him she's not just Ziva. You know this now. She's his girlfriend, if not more than that. You hope it's not more than that.
"I was just leaving," you say after a moment. You walk up to Tony, and debate whether or not to touch him. Your hand is out and ready to rest on his shoulder when you decide not to. It falls limp beside your hip and he just looks at you, a silent, wet apology in his eyes. You force a smile onto your face and start to walk up the stairs.
You've gone up maybe three or four stairs before you turn back around. "I'm happy for you, Tony," you tell him softly before starting up again.
Everybody lies.
