Chapter 3

The next few days flew by quickly.

In the face of bigger criminals and drug dealers, Ziva almost forgot about the young man who had been apprehended for happening to be in the midst of the investigation she was conducting. Her busy life meant she had no time for contemplation, though, and while Anthony's fate would certainly be food for thought under different circumstances, she spared no effort to think about his future—until he showed up one morning on the front steps of the police station.

"You are very brave, to show up here of your own willingness," she teased good-humouredly when she went to meet him, and shyness flashed momentarily across his face.

"Figured I'd let you know I took probation."

She took in his shrug; the affected casualness of his stance. He was nervous, but obviously determined to try not to show it. Reaching out a hand, she touched his arm gently and fleetingly. "Relax," she said. "If you became any tenser, I think you would have a heart attack right here on these steps."

He looked sheepish at that. "I was trying not to show that I was tense."

"Well, I am a detective for a reason," she answered, tongue-in-cheek. "How are things?"

"I got probation," he said again. "And I have a probation officer who wants me to submit to random drug tests and refrain from drinking or possessing firearms, but is pretty lenient apart from that."

"There are no rehab requirements?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Since it was my first offence, and I wasn't found to need counselling…" He stared at her all of a sudden, the colour of his eyes striking in their intensity; in the earnestness with which he looked at her. "I'm really not addicted, y'know."

"I figured."

"I just needed you to know that. For—for sure." His eyes darted away, the bravado seeping out of him. He licked his lips before adding, "If you believe me."

"Of course I believe you." He still wasn't looking at her, so she prodded, "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

He lifted a shoulder and dropped it.

"Anthony," she murmured quietly, and she knew she had taken him aback when he did a double take.

"'Tony,'" he insisted before she could say anything else.

"Tony," she amended and continued her point, "one might argue that you could be lying to me, but I don't believe you are. I have seen a lot of bad people in this world. You do not seem like one of them. I think you are someone who lost his way and fell through the cracks of the society as time moved on."

He blanched. "You might be more right than you thought."

"Yes," she conceded, "but you have a second chance now, even if it came about unconventionally—"

"I don't have a job anymore, Detective David," he interrupted. "They fired me when I didn't show up for work those few days last week, and I don't know where I'm gonna find a new job with the track record I have. I've been living off leftovers so far, but rent is due in two weeks, and I don't know how I'm going to pay it. It's more like I've been given a chance to restart the whole cycle."

She pursed her lips against the weary sigh that wanted to escape her. How was it, she wondered, that things could just be so hard for some people?

"Perhaps," she suggested soberly, tentatively, "your probation officer could help you find a job?"

He shrugged once again. "It's very minimally supervised probation. I don't know if he'll help, and even if he does—what do I do in the meantime?"

She stood unmoving to regard him. It appeared as if he was actually seeking her advice, and that perplexed her; rarely had anyone come to her for anything that was not job-related, and she was at a loss to know what he could want from her. A job at the police station was out of the question, at least for now, and offering him a place to stay would certainly not be a good idea.

First things first, she decided. If she couldn't teach a man to fish, she could at least give him a fish (or however that saying went).

"Come on," she said, beckoning him to follow her down the steps. "I will buy you lunch."

"What?" he questioned in confusion. "Detective—"

"'Ziva.'"

"Detective Ziva—"

"Just 'Ziva,'" she said in amusement, turning around to face him.

He screeched to a halt, narrowly avoiding a collision with her. His face turned red as he took a step backwards, stuttering, "This isn't right." She raised her eyebrows at him, and he stammered, "I—I mean, thank you for your offer, Miss Ziva, but you're a cop. And with all due respect, cops don't—they shouldn't—they mustn't be caught interacting with people like me."

"Oh?" she asked. "And what did you do, pray tell, that was so bad?"

"What didn't I do?" he challenged.

And even though she knew it was rhetorical, she answered, "You didn't embezzle. You're not in the weapons trade. You don't run a human trafficking ring. And this is just off the top of my head. There are a thousand things you could have done, Mr DiNozzo—"

"'Tony.'"

"—Tony, that are worse than what you got arrested for." She stepped closer. "I took an oath to protect the community I serve in. Do you know what this means? If I buy you lunch, you'll have one less meal to worry about, and if you have one less meal to worry about, then you have more time to look for a job instead. I am not asking you out on a date." (He blushed.) "I am merely saying that I can help you, and I am going to. When was the last time you ate?"

He shifted on his feet. "Um, yesterday evening?" he suggested cautiously.

She highly doubted, given his reticence, the truthfulness of his answer. "Then what is there to consider?" she pressed.

"But … Ziva, I can't just spend your money like you didn't earn it. I know the value of a dollar. I can't expect you to waste it on someone like me—"

"I am not wasting it," she said indignantly.

"No, but—"

"Are you not a living person, Tony?" she interrupted. "What gives you the idea that your life is more dispensable than the others'? Do you not think that if you could be fed, you deserve to be?"

"But—"

"No 'buts.'"

She froze at the shininess that glimmered in his eyes for the split-second before he blinked it away. She breathed out deeply, softening.

Nodding, giving him permission to speak his thoughts, she said, "Go ahead."

His reply was halting. "There are just … people who deserve this more than me."

"Like who?"

And there was the casual shrug. "People who have done more."

"Or people who could come to do more," she said, her voice low. "Like you."

His startled eyes met her face.

"You are a bright man," she continued. "And an honest one. A decent one. I see no reason not to give you the little help you need."

He looked away again, scuffing a shoe against the sidewalk. "What if I end up disappointing you?"

"Again, I am a police officer," she answered with a wry smile. "I am not in this for personal reasons. There is no way to disappoint me."

"Oh."

"Just for the record, though, I do not think you will disappoint me."

He smiled shyly. That, in turn, drew a chuckle from her.

"Come on," she repeated, tugging on his arm. "You can tell me over lunch what kind of jobs you're looking for."

He ended up accompanying her.

xoxo

"My suggestion is transitional housing," she told him as they walked back towards the police station.

Instead of sitting down in a comfortable café for lunch, he had opted to grab sandwiches from a deli instead, and had fidgeted the entire time he was there. It appeared he really wasn't comfortable with even something as simple as being treated to lunch; just from that, Ziva guessed that housing assistance would be a hard sell.

Sure enough, he stopped in the middle of taking another bite. "Transitional housing?" he echoed, looking as if he had lost his appetite.

She nodded. "It is just temporary, as the name would tell you. I think it would be beneficial in helping you get back on your feet. A number of them offer services like job training, and certainly most, if not all, of them are low-cost housing."

"But … halfway houses."

"Yes."

"But that says I can't afford my own place. Are you saying I can't afford my own place?"

"You cannot," she pointed out bluntly.

He stood still, suddenly looking so very small and vulnerable, as if she had attacked him. And in a way, she supposed, she had; even if Tony was barely keeping himself afloat, it was clear that he had taken pride in being able to fend for himself ever since he had been left to his own devices. Then again, perhaps that had been his downfall—he had no social support system, either through his own design or others' indifference to him—and it would, in all likelihood, continue to be his downfall until he accepted that things could not simply stay as they were or progress to become worse than they already were.

"It is a stepping stone," she told him carefully. "If you could save on rent while working a job, you could eventually save enough to get your own apartment, or at least rent a better one. You could save enough for other things you wanted. Job training means that you could get a better job, too, and that translates to a higher quality of life. Do you not want that?"

He looked away from her, visibly blinking back tears. "'Course I do."

"Then, think about it." She gave him a small smile. "You do not have to do it if you don't want to—it is just a suggestion. But I want you to know that there are options."

"Just…" He paused. "Just feels like a step back, y'know? I had my own place, and now I'm about to … not."

"It is not a step back," she chided him gently. "Think of it as a step towards a better place. You're doing this so that you won't still be here five years down the line, Tony."

"Can't I just—I don't know—find a new job," he said desperately, "and keep my old place?"

"Of course you can. But you have to think about what it means in terms of cost."

His shoulders slumped.

"Do not feel so defeated," she told him softly. "If push comes to shove, just know that you have a way out, okay? And it's not drugs. Don't do drugs. They're expensive."

He laughed before clapping a hand to his mouth, looking embarrassed. She grinned at him. It was quite fetching to see him laugh, really.

"Walk me the rest of the way?" she proposed.

His eyes twinkled just the littlest bit. "That sounds reasonable," he returned, his smile wobbling as he tried, and failed, to keep it off his face.