Worth Dying Over
I had no real intentions of continuing this, but your lovely feedback (and a second snow day in a row!) convinced me to do so. That should encourage you to keep reviewing!
So, I attribute thoughts to Ziva in this chapter that there's no evidence of in canon. But really, if you think about it, shouldn't this be going on in her head?
Ziva took a sip of her tea, glancing surreptitiously over the lid at Tony. She had spent so much time trying to forget Somalia. There was so much pain in those memories, so much despair. She had become a person there she was afraid to recognize. And somehow she had blocked out his words too, but after yesterday they won't leave her head.
Even dead, you were worth dying over. You weren't worth living without.
Tony looked up at her and caught her eye. "Out of work, probie?" He grinned ferally.
Ziva rolled her eyes and turned back to her computer. But she didn't pay attention to the report she was typing. She was consumed instead by one thought: even now, at this moment, he loves me. She didn't presume it was romantic love, or that he would ever bring himself to say the words, but the absolute proven truth of it left her quaking inside.
Of all the people in her life, Tony was the only one who had gone to such lengths to prove he cared. After she nearly killed him, knowing she hated him. Tony. She felt like she might explode, or cry—typing was not sufficient outlet for the nervous energy that swept through her every time he spoke. "Coffee break?" or "I'm going to see Abby," or "What kind of babies do you think Delores and Boss would make?" were accompanied by no more than his usual joking smile, but were followed now in her mind by a tag – Couldn't live without you, I guess.
Ziva shook her head, trying to stop it from radically reinterpreting his words. Overwhelmed, she'd told him yesterday, and that hardly began to cover it. To be honest she'd never tried to reconcile her daily life with Tony with his actions to save her until now, and the harder she tried the more impossible it seemed, the easier it seemed to go on pretending that from May until August she'd been right here at this desk.
Except that even if he'd never been forced to prove it, it might still have been true.
Tony's cellphone rang.
She watched as he snapped it open, spat, "DiNozzo." His posture straightened, a tell-tale sign he was talking to Gibbs. Ziva stood and holstered her gun.
Tony snapped the phone closed and sprang from his seat. "Sounds like we've got an address for the bomber. In Bethesda," he told her quickly as he grabbed his own weapon and his coat. "Let's go."
*
This time the bomb was wired the headboard of the bed, taunting them with the imminent destruction of the only evidence that could convict the killer beyond a doubt.
Ziva clambered over the body even as Tony flinched, but frowned in dismay when she saw the explosive. Her disarmament of the bomb yesterday had impressed the killer, and today's was incredibly more complex. She opened her knife, but paused, considering the wires carefully.
Tony set his hands on the headboard, holding it steady so the bomb wouldn't move if she shifted on the bed.
"We've got to stop meeting like this," he said lightly.
Ziva glanced at him, remembering, then forced her attention back to the bomb. "This is serious," she said, trying not to sound frantic.
Tony could clearly read her. "We should go," he said firmly in his senior-agent tone.
She glared at him. "I can do this, just be quiet." She put him out of her mind, narrowed her attention down to just this, this one wire that connected there, to make that happen—hah! One cut wire and the beeping stopped. Ziva eased the circuit board off the top of the bomb, hoping to dissemble the entire bomb and froze at what she saw beneath it. She willed her hands not to shake.
"What is it?" Tony demanded, his eyes fixed on her face.
Ziva shook her head slightly, still staring at the stopped clock. Two seconds. If she'd even spoken three words to him—she set the circuit board down before she dropped it. "Let's get out of here." She swung her leg over the corpse and walked out of the house as fast as she could, out into the cold winter air.
"Ziva!" Tony called after her from the threshold.
She didn't turn. She couldn't talk to him now. She wasn't supposed to have deal with this until she was ready.
