Chapter Three
The Sword Shall Pierce Your Heart Also.
Timothy McGee kisses Ziva gently, their bodies move in concert upon her bed, their lovemaking tender and unhurried. Others who live more sedate lives might raise an eyebrow at the thought of making love so soon after beginning an investigation into two grizzly murders, but it is the determined affirmation of life in the face of death that brings them to her bed.
But for all their close intimacy, for all their love, there is something missing and their end is far more quiet than the impassioned experiences they have known. It's late, well after 3:00, but that's not the reason. As they slow to where they are holding one another, Tim tells her softly; "Zee, that was the lonliest lovemaking I can ever remember."
She sighs. "I am sorry, my heart is not in it."
"Oh, I could tell."
She looks up at him and not only is there no passion, there's no joy in her eyes. "Tim, if I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?"
He's astonished. In all the time he has known her he's always been honest with her, or at lea t he believes he has. That honesty comes to both their professional and their presently 'unprofessional' relationship. That she feels she has to arrange the truth hurts. "I've always been honest with you, Zee."
"That was before." She sits up, fixes him with a piercing stare "Now, suddenly, part of me is frightened, and that is wrong. I am frightened you will have a motive to lie and this time I may actually be unable to tell because I want an answer I may not get."
"Zee..."
"Gibbs had once told me that you are not like my father or Ari, that you do not know how to lie. Then you had a motive to lie, you were trying to save your career."
"I didn't lie then."
"I know. But now you have a stronger motive, you are more experienced and you know what an investigator would look for and I am afraid."
"Of what?"
"That you will lie and I will prefer the lie so much more than the truth that I will turn off every skill I have and just believe you."
x
He pulls her closer and she lets him. This alone tells him the depth of her distress. She makes no effort to hold him and there is no passion in her. She just lets him do it.
But love is overwhelmed by a darker emotion, so much so that she seems unable to express either. This admission is something he knows has cost her a lot.
"Zee, what are you afraid of?" It's hard for him to imagine this woman being afraid of anything.
"I am worried that – I have seen for weeks what Abby is doing. She wants you, Tim." She feels his body slump, more in frustration than anything else.
"Zee, let me worry about that, please. I know it's–"
"That is not what is bothering me. I mean, that is aggravating as well, and if it were anyone but a fellow NCIS Agent I would wipe the floor with her - yet she is walking a fine line. But I know how you feel, and I trust you."
"Thank you. But th–"
"Is there anything going on between you and Siobhan O'Mallory?"
x
Her rushed words leave him stunned. "No." He pushes away, sits up. "Zee, why would you ask that?"
"I have seen the way you look at her. You got out of bed in the middle of the night to go to her when she called. You brought her into NCIS. You–" He holds up his hand, silencing her rush.
"Zee, whatever I had with Siobhan ended years ago. We're just friends. I talked her into joining NCIS because I thought it was a good thing, professionally, for all of us. But whatever we had years ago endedyears ago. And since she's a Priest it's going to stay ended."
"Episcopal Priests can get married, have families–"
"Not with me," he declares definitely. Romantic thoughts of Shav, romantic memories, are something he is definitely keeping at arm's length, a line he will not cross. Ever since he had seen her, for the first time in years, at the rear of a procession - in his own church - he had decided that 'look but don't touch' is the only rule that can ever apply between them.
"Zee, I can't believe you're asking me this. This is a professional relationship. I am not seeing her socially–" He realizes that telling her what happened at La Chateau Julienne would be a horrendous mistake. There is far too much room for misinterpretation. But to not tell her would not be a lie, just an omission, one that will keep her from distress and him from–.
"Did you have sex with her?"
x
He's stunned; so much so it takes him a moment to realize the point of her impassioned question. "Zee, we were - we were kids; teena–"
She sits up. "Did you have sex with her?"
There is more pain than jealousy behind that explosive demand. "Yes."
"How many times?"
He pushes away to give himself some room. "Around a thousand." He's ready, catches her fist before it can connect. "Zee, it was a different time, different lives. I'm with you, committed to you, and–"
"And you brought your former girlfriend into–"
"Shall I talk to Director Shepherd again, reverse her decision, separate all the Agents of NCIS from potential help and Spiritual Guidance because–?"
"No! Damn it, no."
"Then the real question is not 'am I going to tell you the truth?' It's 'do you trust me'?"
She drops her hand as he lets it go, feeling the strength behind it vanish. "It is just that so many women–"
"Do you trust me?"
It takes her a few seconds. "I trust you. I love you." Her emphasis is disquieting.
"Do you trust Reverend O'Mallory?" He stresses, as firmly as he can, her position.
Ziva thinks about it - hard. This is a Priest, devoted to God, even if it is to an interpretation of God that she is not used to. She tries to trust. This woman has, to her knowledge, done nothing to warrant her anger or mistrust. And despite her life with Tim so many years ago, she is not Abby.
"No."
xxx
Abby Sciuto sticks her key into her lock, turns it quietly, but as she opens the door she realizes there's little need for stealth. Late as it is, as soon as the door opens she hears the choral strains of Byrd's 'In Tempore Paschali' coming from the radio on the large bookcase near her black leather couch. She's neither surprised nor does she mind that her friend has 'usurped' her radio for a Classical station.
Much of her décor in this room is black: the curtains, the furniture, even the artwork on the walls are paint on black velvet. In the midst of this Dawn Caldwell, with her long blonde hair and pale blue nightshirt, is a spot of bright color. "Hi, Sunshine," Abby greets her softly, closing the door. It's well after 3:00, she'd expected the younger woman to be long ago asleep on the couch.
"How'd it go?"
"Okay." She doesn't feel up to small talk. "Sunshine, I'm really sorry."
"Hey, don't be," Dawn gets off the couch, the sleep shirt reaching down well past her bare knees, more like a dress on her. She's quite at odds with her hostess, who still wears her black gown. "I had a good time with Mother O'Mallory, we went to Mickey D's."
"That must've raised some eyebrows, the two of you in cocktail gowns."
"It was a blast - everyone stared. And the last time I was here, you were working on my case. I knew before coming that there was a 50/50 chance we weren't going to get all of the weekend together. I don't mind."
Abby reaches out, hugging her friend. "Thank you. I was feeling so bad."
"Don't fret it. Maybe tomorrow, if you have to go in, can you wrangle me a Visitor's pass?"
"Count on it."
They sit together on the couch, Dawn tucking her legs up so the nightshirt tents tightly. "So - if you're all going to be tied up … how long?"
"I wish I knew. This has all the makings of a weird, drawn out one, I can feel it in my bones." The music, coming from the tall bookshelf beside the couch, changes to Haydn's 'The Creation'. Dawn sits back, shifting her legs to curl them so her bare feet are tucked under her, relieving the strain on her nightshirt and she allows the music to guide her to a pleasant speculation.
"I guess that means your delectable Timothy McGee will be tied up too, so it will be hard to have you set me up a date?" The look Abby gives her is pure fire and she draws back apprehensively. "What'd I say?"
"Nothing," Abby sighs. "I'm just tired. It's nothing."
Dawn doesn't believe a word of it. Her friend's tone is completely at odds with her words, and the murderous glare with both. "No, no, I know that look. That was definitely not 'nothing'."
"Just never mind, okay? Besides, he's seeing someone; it wouldn't work out with you. He's a one-woman guy." She sighs and slaps the leather cushion slightly harder than she'd wanted to.
"Yeah, I can see the way he was with that new Chaplain of yours." Dawn says with a lecherous smile.
"It's not like that," Abby tells her, shaking her head. She wishes Tim were fixated on the redheaded woman, it would be far preferable and easier for her own chances. "They're old friends, they used to date a long, long time ago, but he has far too much respect for her."
"Too much respect to date an Episcopal Priest?" Something's wrong with the thought, but she can't place it. "I've heard they can even get married and have kids."
"He has far too much respect for any woman to two-time anyone." She can't keep bitterness from her voice.
"Then you're saying I don't have a shot?" Dawn teases and backs away from the murderous look in Abby's hard eyes. "What?"
"Nothing!" Abby snaps with poisonous bite, starting to get off the couch. Of all things, she never thought her friend would become her competition in a war she was losing.
Dawn grabs her sleeve at just the right moment to make her lose her balance and fall back onto the couch. "What's wrong?"
"Told you, Sunshine, nothing." Abby doesn't want to fight, not her best friend and certainly not over this.
"Then why do you look like you want to bite me?"
Abby sighs. "Look, I'm sorry. It's nothing. I've had a hard evening. Nothing about this weekend is working out like I wanted it to and I'm taking it out on you. I'm sorry. Can we just forget I said anything and enjoy what little of this weekend we can salvage together?"
Dawn looks deeply into her eyes, searches, thinks it over.
"No."
x
"What?"
"Come on, Vampirstein," Dawn is the only one who can use that nickname with impunity, "you've been there for me all my life - this Summer even more so. You risked more than I can know to help me when I needed you, riding to the rescue and facing down God knows what to save me. You got suspended because of me."
"I didn't really."
She won't be put off. "We've both spent enough in long distance phone bills to own pieces of Cingular. I know you as well as you know me." She comes up on the couch, turns to kneel on the cushion beside her friend and she presses her hands to Abby's shoulders, trapping her. "What's wrong?"
Abby sighs, giving up. "I'm in love," she admits morosely.
x
Surprise makes Dawn ease her pressure on her friend's shoulders. "That's bad?" She'd expected a far more tragic revelation.
"It is when the guy who's keeping me from sleeping, eating or anything else used to be hotter than fire for me - so hot it scared me off and I had him cool it. And now he's dating someone else and I realize I was a colossal jerk to send him away and now he loves me like a sister."
"Ohhh," Dawn groans, letting go of Abby and sitting down on the black couch beside her. "There is nothing worse than being loved 'like a sister'."
But there is and it's in the bomb Abby drops. "Then I wrangle a dinner invite without her and he brings his former girlfriend, who he has managed to talk the Director into hiring into NCIS as our Chaplain."
Dawn is stunned as the full concussion of the bomb hits her. "Holy shit," she breathes, recognizing the principle players in this lopsided rectangle. "Now that is screwed."
x
"And I certainly can't blame Siobhan - Reverend O'Mallory - who's a wonderful person and is so far out of his life that she'd never even think of it."
Dawn is not about to undermine that confidence. "What are you going to do?"
"He's been dating Ziva David from work for months, you met her at Clarkston Lakes; she's the one who Interviewed you, the one you saw on stage."
"I didn't like her." She'll always remember that Interview with particular distaste.
"I doubt I ever did, long before she stole Tim away from me, snatched him up while I was on vacation. But I've told him how I feel, shown him how I feel. I've been fighting for him and scoring some pretty good victories. I almost won him back–" she stops, unable to endure the embarrassment and unable to lie to her best friend. She had not won anything; only utterly humiliated herself and him as well. "But he's asked me to stop and I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't do what he asks and just be happy for them."
"You'll never be 'happy for them'." Dawn knows her far too well. When Abby Sciuto sets her heart on something, particularly romance, she does not give in. "But I've met these people only a few times and then from your stories. I can see things from an 'informed outsider's' perspective; so maybe I have an advantage."
Abby shakes her head and her voice is heavy with irony. "This from the Munchkin who came to me for advice about a training bra."
"I haven't needed a training bra in a lot of years," Dawn reminds her.
"No, you haven't." That little girl is long ago gone. The woman beside her teaches girls like that now. "So what's your advice?"
"Let him go."
x
She holds up her hands against Abby's anger. "What are you doing except hurting yourself and looking for ways to hurt them and their relationship? That is not the Abby I know and love. You're driving him away. Take a step back; let it be. If they're wrong for each other, it'll die on its own and you'll be there to pick up the pieces. If they're right for each other, nothing you can do can break it and they'll just come to resent you for trying. And if you succeed - well, I wouldn't want to be you when that happens."
Abby understands her friend's inner message. She had not said 'I wouldn't want to be in your shoes facing the consequences of that split'. She had said 'I wouldn't want to be the kind of person you would be to do such a thing to two friends'.
"Neither would I," she admits softly.
xxx
Jimmy Palmer enters his apartment, barely able to keep his eyes open well enough to find the keyhole. It takes him two tries to get the key in. Pushing his door closed, he leans against it and yawns hugely. Too tired to focus on his clock, not wanting to know the time, he pulls his shirt and tee shirt up and off, both flipped inside out. Walking, he shoves his shoes off with each foot, then tugs off his pants; about to let everything drop one by one on the path to his bedroom.
But 'reeducation' by his girlfriend has almost cured him of that bachelor habit. Leaving his shoes on the trail and his pants draped over the back of a chair - he hasn't been 'cured' by that much - he takes the shirts to his walk-in closet, opens the door, turns on the light, puts them into the hamper, nods to Michelle Lee wearing a tiny sheer red bra and thong, turns off the light, closes the door and walks toward his bedroom.
x
He gets four steps and stops with the sense that something out of the ordinary has happened. There's something his sleep-shrouded mind is trying to tell him. Thinking about it, concluding he has to be wrong but deciding he ought to check, he turns and goes back to the closet and opens the door, not ready to believe in what he thinks he's seen.
"Hi." Michelle's voice burns the air as she steps out. She's 'wearing' the outer frame of a scarlet bra, only the thinnest of red strands cuddling each of her breasts in an 'X', holding a tiny heart covering each pink nipple. An equally thin thong reaches down to spread, teardrop fashion, to cup her shaved vulva before disappearing again. The room and her tone are equally torrid as she puts her arms about his neck and draws him down.
"'Chelle, what are y–" Her red lips keep him from asking what, he realizes, is an astoundingly stupid question. Putting his arms about her scorching body as she presses close to him, he knows he can forget about sleep.
He doesn't mind one bit.
xx
Jimmy feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. "Come on, it's time to get up."
He peels his eyes open. Without his glasses, everything is a blur and he reaches for his night table, finds where he'd set them against the dangers of the night and pulls them on. The sight of Michelle sitting on the bed beside him, her bare body glowing in the bright morning sunlight, her hair artfully disarrayed and his remembrance that he is responsible for that disarray, are the only things that make him willing to face the light of day. "I've been up," he reminds her.
"I know, but now it's time to get in."
He reaches for her shoulder, tugs her down onto her back beside him, moving to cover her. "I'll say."
She giggles, having known exactly what he was going to do and very much in favor of it. She doesn't stop him as he holds her down, his lips first pressed to hers, then slipping down to light upon her pink nipple. "But I mean to work," she admonishes uselessly, moaning as a flare of pleasure shoots from his tongue all the way to her toes.
"This is work," he tells her, slurring the words around his working tongue. "I touch naked bodies almost every day." He sucks lightly, licks and feels her nipple harden between his lips as she moans. She's gasping as he reaches for her vulva, pets her lightly with his fingertips. "Not one of them responds like you do," he assures her, words muffled by her breast.
She laughs. "Aren't you glad about that?" She moans as he does something particularly skillful with his tongue.
"Oh yeah!" He pets her as he seeks her most sensitive nub. She spreads her legs wider to give him more room, welcoming him. "You're the only one I want to respond when I do this!"
She gives a sharp, high cry; exactly the one he'd hoped for, so he does it again, more slowly, more sensuously, making her writhe under him.
xxx
Carla Stratton jogs out Gate 3/3A of Naval Station Norfolk, waving to the Sentries in the booth before starting along the side of Interstate 564. She feels her muscles loosen as she runs, feels her blood quicken. She'd started this daily routine long before Boot Camp - it was one of the things that had gotten her through that ordeal twelve years ago. Since then, every morning between 8:00 and 9:00, rain, shine, blistering heat or heavy blizzard she's out here, or outside some other base, running. That in a USN gray half halter and blue painted-on gym shorts she risks causing multi-car pile-ups – well, people need the mental discipline to concentrate on their driving. She's only testing that discipline.
It becomes interesting, however, to realize that in the summers she gets to recognize the same cars that pass at particular times of the morning. She's wondered occasionally just how many drivers actually work in destinations reached via this highway.
She keeps judiciously to the far right edge. She'd nearly been clipped too many times, particularly in the hotter mornings, by cars that for some reason tend to drift toward her side.
The warm-up completed, she increases her pace, lets the road slip by under her. She enjoys the feel of her muscles loosening, flowing, her movements becoming more fluid as she runs. Increasing her pace, she slips into her fantasy of actually challenging the cars and trucks that shoot by her at 65 miles per hour, maybe someday winning.
She hears another engine behind her, particularly loud and distinct from the rest of the traffic, approach fast. This one's a motorcycle coming up quickly, skimming the traffic in her lane as she increases her pace, hugging the far right, knowing he's going to zip past her. She glances back at the onrushing vehicle, makes sure it'll pass far enough away to avoid hitting her. He'll get a treat as he passes, the sight of her bouncing breasts not quite restrained by her sports bra and she wonders if he'll stay on a straight course ahead.
There are distinct advantages to her position on the base.
The engine comes faster, louder as she runs harder. It flashes by and agonizing pain sears her back, shoots through her. The staggering impact drives her forward, she flies off her feet.
Airborne, she can't believe the long bloody steel blade jutting out of her chest. She crashes to the pavement but never feels herself bounce and roll wildly.
The pain was a brief thing.
She'd been dead with her first impact on the asphalt.