Days go on forever
But I have not left your side
We can chase the dark together
If you go then so will I
There is nothing left of you
I can see it in your eyes
Sing the anthem of the angels
And say the last goodbye
I keep holding onto you
But I can't bring you back to life
Sing the anthem of the angels
Then say the last goodbye
Scene Nine — Anthem of the Angels
Gibbs sipped mindlessly at his coffee, not even caring that it was the crappy hospital coffee that he hated. He swirled the contents of the cup, listening to them slosh against the Styrofoam.
You should have moved sooner. Screw her signal. You knew where it was going.
"Gibbs!"
He wasn't surprised when Abby's panicked voice carried down the hall towards him and McGee. He was, however, surprised when he looked up and saw not only Abby and Ducky, but Tony rushing towards them as well. McGee's eyes widened as he jumped up, nearly knocking the coffee out of Gibbs' hand.
"Have you heard anything?" Ducky asked as Abby threw herself into McGee's arms, hugging him tightly. McGee looked over Abby's shoulder, his wide eyes landing on Tony. Gibbs ignored Ducky's question, mostly because he had a negative answer. That could wait. The dead man standing behind Ducky held a little more priority.
"DiNozzo…you have ten seconds to explain why your corpse isn't rotting in the cemetery where we buried it."
Tony swallowed, clearly nervous. "Uh…yeah, boss, Vance was supposed to talk to you about that, actually…"
"Well Vance isn't here. You are. Nine seconds."
If he didn't start explaining soon, heads were going to roll. One in particular. "It was an undercover mission," Tony said quickly. "Agent Conrad and his team, they were tracking a drug ring, we got caught up in it, when I was shot they decided to kill me off to make everyone nervous. And it…it worked."
Gibbs listened to Tony's explanation with a stoic expression. McGee took a different approach; he listened to Tony with a look of growing incredulity. When Tony was done, McGee gently eased away from Abby, stepping around her and walking to stand toe to toe with Tony.
"Yeah Probe—?"
He was cut off by McGee's knuckles connecting with his cheek. "McGee!" Abby squeaked, her voice cracking. As if she herself hadn't punched Tony less than an hour before. Ducky and Gibbs were less surprised than he was.
"Why the hell does everyone feel the need to punch me?" Tony demanded as he straightened up, rubbing what would soon be a very bruised area. McGee shook his hand out, flexing his fingers experimentally to make sure they weren't broken.
"Gibbs?" Abby spoke up, turning to the older man. "What about Ziva?"
Gibbs turned away from Tony, focusing his attention on the woman. "She's in surgery now, Abs. Single stab wound to the abdomen."
"But…how?"
"Just give the signal Ziva and we're there."
Gibbs pressed his lips together, looking down at the coffee cup in his hands before giving up and tossing it into the trash.
"She played me."
"Lost visual," McGee informed Gibbs with a hint of worry in his voice. "He pulled the hair clip out of her hair. Still have the audio."
"Little anxious there, aren't you babe?" They heard the suspect ask. Gibbs and McGee exchanged looks.
"Boss—"
Gibbs was already moving. He threw the car door open and jumped out, taking off down the street, already drawing his gun. McGee was right behind him.
"Federal agents!" Gibbs shouted as he tore into the alley, gun raised. The man, who still had Ziva pinned to the wall, reacted instantly, turning to run as Ziva crumpled to the ground. Gibbs reacted as well; his bullet landed true in the man's leg, dropping him with a shout of pain. Gibbs didn't like when he looked over and saw that Ziva still hadn't picked herself up. "McGee take care of him," Gibbs ordered as he holstered his gun, moving to kneel down beside Ziva. She moaned when Gibbs turned her over; his heart jumped into his throat when he saw the blood stain forming on her dress.
"Damn it! McGee, call an ambulance, now!"
He pressed a hard hand to Ziva's stomach, trying to stem the bleeding and ignoring the pained groan that forced its way past her lips. His other hand found hers, and he squeezed her fingers tightly.
"G-Gibbs," she mumbled, her voice thick and barely understandable. Before she could attempt to say anything else, she started coughing, hard; a wet, gurgling sound accompanied the cough. Gibbs untangled his hand from hers, reaching up and gently guiding her head to the side. As the coughing fit continued, blood spattered against the ground.
"McGee, ambulance!" Gibbs snapped over his shoulder.
"On their way boss!"
"Gibbs." Ziva's voice cracked as she tried again to speak. She raised a hand weakly, resting it over the one Gibbs had pressed against her stomach. "I…I am sorry," she managed to mumble, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Don't apologize," Gibbs said automatically before reminding himself to keep his panic in check. Panic wasn't going to help anyone now.
Ziva laughed weakly; the laugh turned into another painful sounding cough. "Will you be angry if I disobey orders?" She managed to ask as she relaxed into the feeling of Gibbs smoothing her hair back.
"You won't if you know what's good for you," Gibbs informed her dryly. She managed a small smile as she let her eyes flutter close.
"Ziva…hey! Ziva!"
"I knew letting her do this was a bad idea," Gibbs muttered, more to himself than to the people standing around him. He had let Ziva play him. He had known from the start that letting Ziva do this undercover thing would end badly. But he had allowed himself to be convinced.
And this was the result.
"Is she going to be okay?" Abby hiccoughed after a moment, rubbing her eyes. McGee stepped towards her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her tightly.
"She's Ziva. She'll be fine."
Tony watched McGee and Abby for a long time before turning to look at Gibbs, who seemed determined not to give his senior agent a second glance. Ducky was the only one who appeared to be willing to give Tony the time of day.
"Are you okay, Anthony?"
With the questioned posed, Tony realized he was crying; nothing extreme. But there were tears running down his face.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He dragged a hand across his eyes, attempting to dry the tears. After all, DiNozzos didn't cry.
"McGee and I have to get back to the crime scene," Gibbs was saying when Tony tuned back into reality. "Call us when you know something."
"Of course."
McGee glared at Tony before he left. Gibbs didn't even look at him. Tony wasn't sure which gesture hurt more.
It was absolutely painful, waiting to hear news about Ziva. There wasn't a lot of talking; no one could think of anything to say. Abby cried silently, her head resting on Tony's shoulder (she, at least, seemed to have forgiven him). Ducky sat on Abby's left, his eyes on the floor. Tony let his head fall back against the wall so he was staring at the ceiling.
She can't die. She can't die damn it. I can't lose her. Not now. Please.
He wasn't completely sure who he was talking to.
Ziva David was dead.
Even as Tony drained his sixth or seventh beer of the night, the fact still stung. He could still hear Gibbs announcing that the Damocles had gone down, that there had been no survivors. He could hear Abby break down crying, could hear McGee's mechanical, automatic comforts.
Ziva David was dead.
Tony thought about the last time he'd seen her, nearly three months earlier now. When she had been angry enough to throw him to the ground and press a gun to his chest. She had told Gibbs she didn't trust Tony. He should have hated her for that.
He shouldn't care that she was dead.
But he did.
A lot.
"You jeopardized your entire career, and for what?"
"For you."
For her. Everything that had happened, every decision Tony had made since Michael Rivkin had come into the picture, it had all been for Ziva. To protect Ziva.
And yet all he had managed to do was drive her to her death.
"Tony!"
The man jumped as he jerked awake; he didn't even remember falling asleep. Abby and Ducky were standing over him, along with a short, dark-skinned woman wearing blue scrubs.
Tony jumped up, his heart skipping a beat. "Ziva?"
The doctor smiled softly. "The surgery went well, though Ms. David does have a long road of recovery ahead of her. There was an extensive amount of damage to her stomach, and we had to remove part of her spleen. I feel confident in saying she will make a full recovery, though."
Tony's knees felt weak with relief. Abby threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, while Ducky murmured, "Thank god."
"Can we see her?" Tony asked, ignoring the others completely.
"She's in Recovery right now, when we move her into a room, I'll send a nurse to get you."
Tony nodded, his voice failing him. Ducky took over, thanking the doctor before she left and pulling out his cellphone, presumably to call Gibbs. Tony looked at his watch. Five-twenty-three a.m. Six hours, seven minutes, and roughly twenty-five seconds had passed since Tony had first re-entered NCIS.
It was amazing how quickly things could go wrong.
They had to wait another half an hour for a nurse to bring them up to Ziva's room. Tony felt as if his knees were going to give out from beneath him when his eyes found the woman in the bed.
She looked so small, buried in the overwhelming white of the sheets and pillows. Her hair was spread loosely, limply on the pillow, her skin startlingly pale, save for the deep, dark circles under her eyes.
"Oh," Abby whispered, her voice catching. Tony couldn't bring himself to speak. He moved forward shakily, reaching a hand out and resting it over Ziva's own, smaller hand.
Ziva…
Abby dragged a chair over to Tony, and he collapsed into it, wrapping his other hand around Ziva's as well.
Tony felt the eyes on the back of his head long before he called the watcher out.
"Hey, boss."
Abby was asleep, curled up in a tight ball in the chair on the other side of Ziva's bed. Ducky had left half an hour earlier with a promise to return with food.
"DiNozzo," Gibbs greeted the man curtly. After a moment of silence, "I talked to Vance and Conrad."
Tony didn't look away from Ziva as he spoke. "And am I still in trouble?"
A sharp slap to the head was the answer to Tony's question. "Boss—"
"Shut up DiNozzo." Gibbs sounded angry now. Tony tightened his grip on Ziva's hand for a moment before releasing her and standing to face Gibbs.
"What are you mad about?" He demanded, sounding braver then he felt. "Are you mad I went on a mission without clearing it with you? Are you mad I pretended to be dead and lied to you for a month and a half?"
"Yes. Yes and yes."
"Well what do you want? An apology?"
"No."
Tony was starting to lose his patience. What the hell was Gibbs' problem? "Then what?"
Tony cringed as Gibbs hit him again. "I want you to realized the consequences of all this. Think DiNozzo. What did you think you being dead would do to the people closest to you?"
Not exactly the answer Tony was expecting. "I…I figured you guys would be upset, I knew it would probably hurt Abby a lot, but I figured everyone would…move on. Like after Kate."
"And Ziva?"
The question threw Tony off. "Ziva?"
"Yeah, DiNozzo. Ziva. Five-something feet tall, dark hair, brown eyes, former Mossad assassin, lying in the hospital bed behind you because she was stabbed—"
"What about Ziva, boss?" Tony interrupted, losing his patience with the man's dry sarcasm.
"What do you think you being dead has done to her?"
Tony opened his mouth to respond…then closed it. Then opened it again. He looked over his shoulder at Ziva, who was still sleeping under the influence of drugs and blood loss, then back at Gibbs, who was watching him expectantly. "She…She was supposed to just move on," he mumbled stupidly, rubbing the back of his head. "I mean…she's Ziva. How else would she have handled it?"
Gibbs shook his head; if he had looked angry before, it was nothing compared to the look he had on his face now. "You're lucky McGee punched you. Because if he hadn't I swear to God I would have."
Tony was suddenly very grateful McGee had taken the initiative earlier. "What happened?" He finally asked. He was a little afraid to know the answer. The look Gibbs gave Ziva intensified this fear.
"Nothing good."
Tony huffed; well that was anti-climactic. "Can I have an example?"
But Gibbs shook his head. "It isn't my story to tell, DiNozzo. If she wants you to know what happened, then she'll tell you." Tony didn't have an answer to that. "I'll tell you this though — thinking you were dead destroyed her. Slowly. Think about that."
He walked out without another word. Tony stared after him for a long time before turning back to Ziva, unable to think as he watched her.
No.
No. Ziva was supposed to be the okay one. Abby was supposed to cry, Ducky was supposed to tell long, winded stories to cover up his grief, Gibbs was supposed to throw himself into his woodwork, McGee was supposed to throw himself into computers, and Ziva was supposed to be fine. She was the rock, the unmovable one, the one who didn't let anything stop her. She always moved forward. Yeah, she hurt for a little while. But she never let it affect her any more than what was strictly necessary. She wasn't supposed to be hurt. She wasn't supposed to be destroyed.
She was supposed to okay.
Ziva tried not to cringe as the man ripped her hair piece out of her hair, dropping it the ground. She knew Gibbs and McGee were still waiting for her signal, but they would probably move once they realized they had lost their visual.
Damn it.
"Little anxious there, aren't you babe?" The man chuckled as Ziva moved her hands along his thigh, her trained fingers slipping expertly into his pocket without detection, the tips brushing against the handle of the buck-knife she'd known she would find there.
"Are you?"
Her fingers curled around the knife.
The next few seconds were lost to Ziva; the man finally realized she had found his weapon, and jerked away at once as she pulled it out of his pocket, finding the latch and flipping it open. "Bitch," he hissed, reacting differently than most people would when faced with weapon. He grabbed at her, large, iron-tight fingers wrapping her slim wrist and squeezing tightly, twisting her arm up. She gasped involuntarily, her fingers opening of her own accord, the knife slipping from her grip. The man slammed her against the wall, holding there with one hand as he stooped down, grabbing the knife.
Then, he plunged it into her abdomen.
Ziva resisted the urge to moan as consciousness slowly reasserted itself. Pain burned through her stomach, an agonizing reminder that she had been stabbed. She could hear something beeping somewhere to her right; a heart monitor, she realized after a moment of thought. Of course. She was in a hospital. Gibbs wouldn't have allowed her to die.
Not that she had been trying to.
After a moment Ziva became aware of two things: one, somebody was speaking. Two, somebody was holding her hand.
"When do you think she's going to wake up?" It was Abby, of course. But that wasn't Abby's hand holding her, it was too big, too rough…not calloused enough to be Gibbs…but who?
"I don't know, Abs. Soon, hopefully."
If it wasn't for the fact the heart monitor kept going, Ziva would have been sure her heart had stopped. Oh God…oh God…
"It's been hours. Do you think it's bad she hasn't woken up yet?" Abby sounded tearful now. If Ziva hadn't been so focused on the voice she had just heard, she may have felt guilty for worry Abby so much.
"She'll wake up when she's ready. It's just a matter of how long that will take."
Abby was silent for a moment before mumbling, "I don't know if she'll ever be ready."
Silence fell again. Ziva's mind was racing. No, no, no. It wasn't possible. It wasn't…he was dead. She had watched him bleed out under her hands. She'd watched the life leave him in degrees. She'd gone to his god damn funeral. He was dead.
"Ziva?"
That was Abby, and Ziva found some relief in that. Abby. Abby was alive. It was okay for Abby to be talking to her. But the hand that brushed itself against her cheek, wiping away the tears she hadn't realized were falling…that was not Abby.
"Ziva, hey…Zi, open your eyes. What's wrong?"
She was hallucinating. That was the only explanation. Ziva choked on a sob as the realization came to her. She was only hallucinating.
"Ziva—"
"It's you," Abby interrupted abruptly. "She doesn't know…I think you're scaring her."
Silence followed Abby's words. Suddenly the hand that was holding Ziva's pulled away, leaving her feeling strangely exposed, and Abby was speaking again, fast, as if what she had to say was too important to wait. "Ziva I know this is really weird, but something happened, something that you should really know about because things will make so much more sense when you know, so please…please just open your eyes."
She complied unwillingly, forcing her eyes to open, blinking a couple of times when she realized tears were still blurring her vision. And there was Abby, leaning over her, smiling, a bit teary-eyed herself, though for an entirely different reason.
"Abby…" Ziva's voice cracked as she spoke, and she cringed inwardly. Abby's smile widened a bit.
"Don't try to talk, okay? Just…listen. Because I'm probably going to do a really bad job at explaining this, and Gibbs should really be the one to do it, but I don't know when he's coming back and you really need to know—"
"Abby."
Abby blinked as Ziva cut her off. "Right. Just explain." She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment. "Ziva, there's something you have to know…about Tony. When he…died," Ziva tried not to cringe at the reminder, "it wasn't…it wasn't what any of us thought it was. One of the other team leaders, Agent…Conrad or something, he concocted this entire plan to use Tony getting shot as a way of furthering an investigation they were conducting. The…the plan was to pretend that Tony died, and use it for…something, I don't know, I kind of tuned out at this part in the explanation…"
Ziva stared at Abby for a long time, processing this information. "It…you mean…he…" She couldn't finish the sentence.
"Ziva."
She turned her head slowly. It seemed to take her eyes forever to find him.
He was standing against the wall, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, his green eyes watching her with concern and guilt; when their eyes met, a small smile pulled at his lips.
"…Hey."
His voice slammed into Ziva like a steamroller.
"Come on, don't gimme that look. You think this is going to kill me?…You can't get rid of me that easily anyways…"
Ziva's breathing sped up as the memory hit her. Tony took an uncertain step forward, reaching a hand out to her.
She collapsed to her knees at the funeral, sobbing her heart out in front of colleagues and strangers…she threw Agent Timmons against the observation window, wrapping her hand around his neck and seriously contemplating killing him for the slight…she meticulously destroyed her apartment bit by bit, taking her anger out in the only way she knew how…she broke down sobbing over the picture of the two of them, the only thing she had left…she moved into his apartment, surrounded herself with everything about him…she overdosed on sleeping pills to escape reality…she went undercover, deliberately put herself in danger, tired of only half-living…
"Stop."
Tony froze, his hand inches from Ziva's hair. Her voice was cold and rough, like nothing Tony had ever heard before, not even when she had been at her angriest. Even Abby was shocked by the tone.
"Z-Ziva?"
It hadn't been real. The thought danced in front of Ziva, taunting her, every bit as tangible as the hand still hovering over her head. As tangible as the very much alive man standing in front of her. None of it had been real.
"Get out." Ziva pushed herself into more of a sitting position, trying not to wince as pain lanced through her stomach. She refused to look at Tony, though she could imagine he was gaping at her, trying to figure out the best way to respond. "Get out. Now."
"Ziva, I—"
"Get. Out."
It took everything Ziva had in her not to call him back when he finally left.
Author's Note: So I was absolutely astounded by the response I received last chapter. Thank you so, so, so much. I knew a lot of people were going to be very unhappy with Ziva getting hurt/possibly dying, so the fact that so many people reviewed was staggering. Thank you :)
Anyways, I know there are a lot of things that people want to happen. Some of them will at some point, some of them won't. Example: no Gibbs chewing Vance's ass out. As cool as it would be, I don't think I can do that kind of scene justice without making it totally OOC (which wouldn't be out of the norm considering this entire story, but…). I really would love to have a scene like that, but I'm not very good at writing Vance anyways — I'm sure you've noticed the lack of him in this story, despite the fact that he was running what would probably be considered a fairly big operation. Anyways, bit more Tony/Ziva next chapter, angst abound which I'm sure the masses are looking forward to. Review please? — Sam
