A/N: The chapter in which they finally get the hell out of dodge. Also, you'll notice that the chapters will be longer from here on out.
Nine.
The train shudders to a stop. Ziva nimbly gets to her feet and opens the boxcar's door, allowing in a rush of salty smelling air. Tony is much slower to stand. His butt is numb, the knee that ended his basketball career is predictably sore, and he has the train equivalent of sea legs. Before she can jump off the train, however, he puts his hand on her arm and draws her to him.
"Hey," he says. Before she can move away, he kisses her. It is a brief, gentle kiss, and in it, a promise of more.
She smiles up at him, her eyes soft. "Come, we must get over to the airport to catch our flight," she murmurs. She jumps out of the train and offers him her hand, which he takes with no shame. He's getting old and he kind of resents it.
He comforts himself with the fact that his mind is as sharp as it has always been.
To his surprise and relief, he realizes the airport is a stone's throw away. He was anticipating a long walk. Instead, he can see the plane waiting on a runway. With their bags in hand, they walk briskly over. "Shalom," an IDF officer greets them. He and Ziva go back and forth in rapid fire Hebrew. Tony pretends to follow along. Finally, the officer nods and Ziva signals to Tony to follow her.
They step onto the plane and this is familiar territory to him. It looks like a standard military flight. They are surrounded by cargo but are able to find seats in which to strap themselves. "They will land at the military airport in Furbara, along the coast," Ziva debriefs him. "There is a train station near there. A normal one, not a freight train," she adds when she sees the look on his face.
"That's a relief. I'm not sure I can handle any more bumping around on my ass," he responds. He rubs his backside and winces to illustrate his point.
His show of discomfort makes her smile. "From there, we can go anywhere."
The airplane engines roar to life and she has to yell to be heard. "I suggest we try to get some rest now and we can come up with a plan once we land."
He gives her a thumbs up and a smile in response. His original mission was to save her, essentially, and now she is taking over. It is typical Ziva. He wonders how in the world he made it more than two years without her.
A week ago, he was sitting at the same desk he had sat at for years, thinking about his next career move. He was unsatisfied about the lack of a personal life as well but had given it up as a lost cause. He was also unsatisfied about the trajectory of his career but at least he could control that. If only he knew what he wanted to do.
But now with Ziva back in his life, he knows he will be fitting his career around his relationship with her. Although he isn't exactly experienced in the area of long term, serious commitments - at least when it comes to the personal - he knows once Jacob Scott is apprehended and the mission to keep Ziva safe is over, their relationship won't be so easy. He is thrilled it is going so well but he's enough of a realist to know that they still have a lot of things to work through.
He looks over at her. She has her eyes closed but he cannot tell if she is asleep or not. She could be snoring but over the engines, he'd have no way of knowing. He takes the moment to look her over. Her delicate features are the same, her hair untamed.
Before his eyes can continue their journey across her body, her eyes open and she looks straight at him, eyebrows slightly raised. He smiles at her warmly, letting his affection for her show. She smiles back at him, then closes her eyes again. He shifts in his seat, trying to find a position that doesn't piss off his body any more than it already is, and closes his eyes as well.
Before he can start drifting off to the soothing noise of roaring engines, a startling thought comes to him. She seems more at peace with everything, but is she really? She barely reacted to her father's house - her childhood home - burning down. She has been extremely busy with classes and doing research for Schmeil.
Has she just substituted NCIS with classes and exams and research papers, at the expense of finding herself?
He frowns to himself. He knows he should trust her to make her own decisions and find her way, and really, he does. And she seems more balanced, more at peace. But when the danger ends and they can stop running, what if she pulls away again? He is not sure he can handle losing her again.
His eyes close again, but he knows sleep won't come. He promises himself that he will not let her shut him out.
The flight over the Mediterranean is thankfully uneventful, and they land in Italy with no problems. As they wait to get off the plane, she hands him an ID and passport. He reads the name and cracks a grin. "Jean-Paul Ranier. Sweetcheeks, you just loved being them, didn't you?"
She smiles at him. "I had the documents created years ago for us, in case something happened. Mon petit pois," she adds teasingly.
The last time they had called each other by those nicknames was in Berlin. Right before they had gotten into a car accident and she had killed Bodnar. He wishes they didn't have so many memories that end with death or injury.
He shakes off the memory and focuses on what she just said. "You had them created years ago?"
"Yes." She shrugs. "How many times have we been in danger over the years? A friend owed me a favor and I figured it was best to be prepared."
"Did you just have IDs for you and me created? Or the whole team?" He asks this mostly out of curiosity. Mostly he is glad she had the foresight to plan ahead.
She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "Just us. We were usually the ones who were in trouble, were we not?" He can't disagree.
"You would have been a great Boy Scout," he tells her. She smirks again at him.
The cargo door finally opens with a rush of fresh air. They step off the plane and onto the runway. "Ah, the motherland," Tony sighs, stretching his arms out. It has been years since he was last in Italy and even then, it was just for half a minute in Naples while they boarded a naval ship.
The person injured during that memory? Stan Burley. Tony doesn't feel overly bad about that, especially since he recovered.
Ziva and the same Israeli officer talk more in Hebrew. He hands her something small - a phone, Tony thinks, and she eventually says, "Todah," and heads back to Tony.
"The train is that way," she points, "and we have a burn phone courtesy of Orli Elbaz. She will inform us when Jacob Scott has been apprehended. She already sends a message that the man hired by Scott to fire upon my father's farmhouse has been taken care of."
He raises his eyebrows. "Mossad is nothing if not efficient," he says.
"Come on. We will have to walk about three miles north to get to a train station," Ziva says. "We can get something to eat in Santa Severa."
The thought of food makes Tony's stomach rumble and as he follows her lead, he asks, "How in the world do you know where we are?"
She shrugs, shifting her bag to her other hand. "I have been to this airport before. Plus, after high school, before the IDF, Ari and I went to Rome and backpacked along the coast a bit." Her voice hints at sadness at the mention of her half brother. Who she had to kill.
He needs to stop thinking of their past like this. As a cop and an agent, he had to learn how to compartmentalize death and injury, especially those caused by himself. If he continues with the body count at the end of every memory that comes over him, he will start feeling as guilty as Ziva had been feeling before he left her over two years ago.
"But that was years ago. How do you remember all this?" he presses this as they walk in the dust along the side of a road.
Another shrug from her. "Photographic memory, remember?" She still sounds melancholy.
"No. Because I don't have a photographic memory." He tries to crack a joke. She looks up at him and gives him a half smile for his effort.
They walk in silence as he tries to think of something appropriate to say. They walk past a few small farms. Unless a car is approaching them on the road and he drops back to walk single file behind her, they walk shoulder to shoulder.
They pass a wooded area - she explains that it is a nature preserve - then more farms, with hay bales dotting fields, a military installation of some sort. The sun is beginning to set, although he has a difficult time enjoying it with Jacob Scott after them and Ziva with such a faraway look in her eyes.
When he starts to feel that they have been walking forever, they approach a small town. "Santa Severa," she says, her first words in what he estimates to be a mile.
"And look, a place to eat," he points. Without checking to see if she is following him, he heads toward the flat roofed stucco building promising pizza. Maybe he can get through to her once they both have food in their stomachs.
He's Italian, or half so, anyway. Food solves all problems.
