Thanks once again for all the reviews, alerts and favouriting; I really am thrilled by how much folks are enjoying this story. After yesterday's shorter bit, today's is a bit longer. It's also - for anyone interested - the first bit of this story I sketched out, way back last June!

Disclaimer: Out of this story, all I own is the plot. The rest is borrowed from Bellisario et al with no offence intended and no (well, very little!) harm done.

No beta readers were harmed in the production of this story - but thanks to V for putting up with the number of times this section's been revised!

This is my shot at resolving the end of season 7, set about a day after the end of Rule 51, and it both is and isn't AU to Spider and the Fly. You can safely assume spoilers for everything up to and including Spider and the Fly. Also, while not exactly spoilers, I am using some of the backstory I used in A Very Special Guardian Angel - you don't have to have read that story to have this chapter make sense, but if you have read it, you'll know which bits I've swiped!

Coming Back To Life

Thirteen - Part 2

Ziva allowed herself a few moments to consider his question. She suspected that perhaps only Gibbs had ever been granted this level of openness and she didn't want to squander it with stupid questions, but nor did she want to take so long to come up with something that he retracted the offer. She finally settled on the most obvious thing to ask: "I think I would start with: Why did you choose to become a police officer?"

Tony nodded in return. From his expression, seen in profile, it seemed as if this was a question he'd been expecting. "Bunch of reasons. Partly because I knew it would piss my father off in an even bigger way than pro sports would have done. Partly because of something that happened to a friend of mine in junior year of college - and I'll save you a question, she wasn't a girlfriend; Tina was way too smart for that. She was kinda like Kate in that way. 'Fact, only difference between them is that Tina wasn't a Catholic school girl." His voice faltered for a second. Whatever had happened to Tina was clearly not a topic he was happy to discuss. "But I wanted to be a cop before Tina; before the idea of pissing off my father, even. Cops were always the good guys. They smiled at little old ladies and caught bank robbers and that's what I wanted to be. A good guy."

It was an answer that both surprised her and made total sense. Knowing what she did of his father, she could certainly understand the desire to be a 'good guy' - a phrase that could certainly never be applied to Senior - but the fact that it had clearly been a long-held desire was surprising. She'd always had the impression law enforcement was a career Tony had fallen into when professional sport fell through.

Sensing that further questions about Tina would be rebuffed, Ziva continued: "I would also have to ask you how you reached Baltimore PD and why you seem to have worked in every department there."

That got a snort. "Not quite - Narcotics refused to take me and I thank Christ they never tried to push me into Child Protection. I also never walked a beat."

"They must be the only departments, then," said Ziva lightly.

"Yep." He turned to look at her. "How much do you know about Philadelphia? My time there, not the city."

Ziva smirked at the pre-emptive clarification. "I know enough to know why you might have wished to leave. Eight inches of steel to the thigh cannot have been pleasant - and I have seen the scars."

"Yeah." He snorted again. "You know the really good part? Thomas is probably getting up close for release, if he hasn't gotten paroled."

"Given what he did, I am surprised he received a sentence with parole as a possibility."

Tony's good shoulder hitched in a shrug and he looked away. "Only thing they could really convict on was the stabbing. Nobody died so..." He hissed out a long sigh. "While I was still in hospital and loopy on the good drugs, Captain Harris of Philly PD and Captain Donahue of Balto PD came to see me. Told me about a joint operation they were setting up between the two departments to try and crack a particular Mafia family who had their tentacles into the organised crime rackets of half the Eastern Seaboard. Main powerbase was Baltimore, but they had operations running everywhere from Georgia all the way up to the New York state line and they were looking to renew their operations in Philly after a series of pretty effective takedowns there."

"They wanted you to go undercover?"

"I had all the right attributes to do it. Right age, right background, right look- Hell, there were people in Peoria who figured I was mafia, because of the family background and the fact that I was supposed to be this rich silver-spoon kid playing at being a cop, you know?"

Ziva didn't, but judged it wiser to not say so.

"And you were right, I did want out of Philly in the worst way. Got it, too. Spent eighteen months undercover with the Macaluso family, under the name Antonio Cabrini, and managed to come out the other side mostly intact - which for being undercover with the Mafia's an achievement anyway. Just ask Fornell about that one."

"You also got your man," said Ziva softly.

"Yeah. Yeah, Michael Macaluso went down. So did most of his family. It was a good job, really. Good result." His tone suggested he didn't really believe it.

"But you still feel guilt for what you could not prevent while you were under," Ziva judged.

"It shouldn't still bother me, this far distant. It's not even like I had to do the things."

"What is the saying? All it takes for evil to flourish-"

"-is for good men do to nothing," Tony finished. "I know."

"You are a good man and you were forced to do nothing." Ziva shrugged. "I can see why it would still bother you."

"Didn't bother Philly or Balto, though. Both PDs gave me citations for bravery and accolades and awards and all that kinda crap and then neither of them knew what the hell to do with me. Think there must have been a coin toss or something to figure out who I even belonged to. Baltimore won, but they didn't have a desk open for a homicide detective. So first I got cold cases - mostly because there was a spare desk down there and I had a hand in plaster so I could hardly go out in the field. When the cast came off and I did my firearms requals, they still didn't have a homicide desk for me, but transit had a spot. Then it was robbery. Then Vice - didn't last long with them. All kinds of awkward when your new coworkers were the folks who'd been trying to bust you for running prostitutes six months earlier. Narcotics wouldn't take me for the same reason. They finally found me a spot in homicide and the first case I caught was the one Chip screwed up. Second one was Linda Jones. There were some good people in Baltimore, don't get me wrong, but the situations sucked and that's before you get into the cases."

Ziva nodded slowly. Small wonder Tony had been so convinced that staying in Baltimore would have proved ultimately detrimental to his health. Deciding to move on, she said, "I would also why you did not call while you were afloat?"

From the way his shoulders tensed, Ziva guessed this wasn't a question he'd been expecting, but then his good shoulder hitched again and he said, "I did. A couple of times. I can take a hint."

Ziva frowned. "Hint? What hint?"

Tony grimaced. "You never got them, did you?"

"Got what?"

"Three emails, two postcards." He sighed. "Figured you were still pissed at me-"

"I was never pissed at you," Ziva cut in, shaking her head.

"Yeah, you were." Tony's voice was soft. "You thought I should have ignored Jenny's orders, and I didn't, and she ended up dead. Your friend."

Ziva sighed. "I was angry that she was dead, yes. Mostly, though, I was angry at her. At the choices she made. At her efforts to play God."

"Mostly?"

And, of course, he would pick up on that word. "There were other people I was angry with. You were not one of them."

"Oh."

"As for your emails and postcards," Ziva continued, "no, I did not get them. Eli must have had someone cleaning my mail."

"Screening."

"What?"

He gave her an amused look. "You screen mail, not clean it."

She considered that for a moment. "An idiom that actually makes sense."

He looked away again. "Does happen."

There was another obvious question she could ask here, about why he'd never raised her non-replies before, but she could all too easily see why he hadn't. By that point, their friendship had been beginning to fracture and he presumably hadn't wanted to push his luck. She decided to move on. "Why did you, really, come to my apartment the night Michael...died?"

Again, his reaction suggested he was surprised, but he gamely answered, "Because he was setting you up. I wanted you to know that. I was off-grid because I didn't want it to become official. Not until I'd talked to you and you knew what was coming."

"I could have been in league with him."

"No way."

"I had given you no reason to believe I was innocent," she pointed out. "And plenty to think I might not have been."

"I knew you weren't."

"How?"

From side on, she saw him smirk. "You had an alibi for some of the internet log ons - you were up a tree in SecNav's backyard - and it was just too damn sloppy. If you'd really been in on it, we'd never have caught you."

Ziva mustered a faint smile. "You never for one moment believed I was in on it?"

"Never."

The unhesitating answer both warmed and humbled her. She knew that by that point she hadn't deserved such unconditional trust, but he'd given it to her anyway. Not for the first time, she wished her own actions in the subsequent aftermath had been something different. "There is one last question, I would ask," she said softly. "Why did you look for me? Why did you go to Somalia?"

To Be Continued...