The betrayal was always a bitter wine to swallow and it left you emotionally unbalanced. At worst it made you weak, unless you were already prepared to be disappointed, never trusting anyone; not even yourself if you could help it. And the closer to home it was, so much worse was the betrayal.
But then if you were wise enough and knew what this job and their world sometimes was like, you'd start looking at it through the reality of 'that's just her job '. Her loyalties simply laid elsewhere. Was it really any different from the times he went undercover? Where he gained the trust and sometimes even friendship or—God forbid—love, knowing all the while that he would soon have to betray that trust and whatever positive feelings and thoughts they'd had toward him until then. Perhaps this was a payback for all the times he had left someone feeling this way after his own undercover works and when the truth finally came out. So maybe now he finally knew how they had felt. It was still bitter, but he would accept it and just like her do his work according to his loyalties, which were to his own country. The world was mad and they were merely a very small part of it. So while he understood it all perfectly, the bitter taste never left his mouth.
Tony stood quietly in the shadows, observed and listened quietly as Ziva shared her latest intel with her father through the phone he had never seen her use before. He wondered what she would say if she knew he understood Hebrew perfectly. He wasn't fluent when it came to talking it himself, but he understood perfectly. And what he was hearing, it was dangerous. Good thing he lately always carried his small recorder with him...
The End