A/N: I also added more to Chapter 3, which I had previously left out because I was concerned that it might offend some people. Thanks to M.E. Wofford for convincing me not to censor myself too much. :)


"Why don't you like immigrants?"

Where had that come from? He couldn't believe she had just asked him that.

Had she not been paying attention at the cab company? He was one of the good guys. He was trying to protect those taxi drivers, most of whom were immigrants and refugees, from being exploited.

Their meeting with Bayliss at the cab company had made him feel ill. That man had no conscience. He was exploiting new immigrants and refugees for his own profit.

Tony was angry. He wanted to expose Bayliss for the small-minded criminal he was.

Didn't she see that? That he was trying to help?

No. Ziva always focused on the negative when it came to him. It really bothered him.

It didn't help that there was a lot riding on this case. It only added to the tension between them. This particular case they were working on was not only racially charged, but politically as well. Multiple African-American men had been shot execution style and would continue to be unless they figured out how to stop it. It might not just be limited to refugees from Burundi. Whoever these people were, they weren't taking any chances. They'd kill all of the men they thought might be Thomas Zuri, just to be sure he was really dead and no longer a threat to them in any way.

All the passengers riding in the cabs were also in grave danger. These extremists were ruthless and would go to any lengths to make sure that their target was really dead and that there were no witnesses who could identify them. No matter how many people they had to kill.

They needed answers, and they needed them now. Their talk with Mr. Abaka had given them some leads, but it wasn't enough.

When they'd questioned Abaka, he'd thought they'd been doing the whole "good cop, bad cop" thing. Ziva had seemed more sympathetic to Abaka, so Tony had figured he'd be the bad cop this time. It was how Abaka was bound to perceive them, anyway. Ziva was a woman and an immigrant herself. And Tony was a white, American man in a position of government authority. He figured he might as well use it to his advantage and play the tough one for once.

His instincts had told him something was shady about this guy. Why was he so willing to talk to them when none of the others would? What if Abaka was just trying to get information from them, to sell or use for his own purposes?

He'd had a bad feeling about the whole thing.

Ziva had picked up on it too. But then she'd somehow managed to twist it all around and accuse him of not liking immigrants. He'd bristled at her loaded question. And had also cringed when he'd realized that she'd actually used a contraction in that question. Come to think of it, she did know how to use contractions. She used them all the time. It had been a stupid thing to say.

He didn't have anything against immigrants. Quite the contrary. But he recognized that not all immigrants had good intentions and could not be treated uniformly. He was just trying to sort out who was who so they could bring the bad guys to justice and protect the innocent.

He could be more sensitive, he had to admit. Sometimes he just didn't think before he spoke. He certainly hadn't meant to offend anyone with that comment about the Romanian orphans. How could she think that? He'd only been trying to poke fun at McGee.

But Ziva always attacked him, jumped on every little thing he said wrong.

He wasn't perfect, but he wasn't a bad person. He was definitely not a racist. He took offense at that. She'd accused him of being prejudiced, and it had hurt more than any physical blow she could have delivered.

He felt unfairly blamed. Just because he was a white man didn't mean he had to feel personally responsible for everyone's suffering, did it? Yes, white people had oppressed black people and other minorities for centuries, and he sometimes felt guilty about that, but how could it possibly be his fault?

He was so sick of hearing about "white privilege" and "male privilege," and how they helped him get ahead. He hadn't had the world handed to him on a silver platter like a lot of people thought. He'd had to start working when he was 12! His parents hadn't coddled him. Truth be told, they hadn't done a very good job of parenting him at all.

Tony valued Ziva's opinion and wanted her approval, but no matter how hard he tried, it just wasn't good enough. When she treated him with cool indifference, or worse, disdain, it hurt. It hurt so much that he couldn't even put it into words.

He felt so frustrated with her sometimes. She was better than him at most things, and it rankled. She showed no weaknesses. All he had left to criticize was her less than perfect command of the English language, which wasn't really even a weakness. She could communicate just fine, and her mistakes were actually charming. Cute, even.

It was the only thing he could make fun of with her, but even that fell flat. It sounded so petty. It was petty. He knew that.

She was so competent at everything that it made him feel like a fool most of the time. She was skilled at surveillance, martial arts, cooking, dancing, shooting… and the list went on and on. She had a photographic memory, could pick any lock, de-fuse bombs, break into cars within seconds and take down half a dozen men unarmed. She had more combat experience than he would ever have, spoke five languages, had traveled all over the world, and always had a quick retort to his jokes.

She could even get the damn vending machine to accept a wrinkled-up old dollar when he couldn't.

She always showed him up, and it made him feel incredibly insecure.

(To be continued in Chapter 5…)