Okay, so I just realised I uploaded the wrong version of this chapter before. I'm fairly sure this is the proper one; there isn't too much different between the two versions. Just a heads up in case it bothers you, this includes some swearing (I'm Scottish, it's like it's built into my DNA).
Please let me know what you think of this (slightly anxious, type A university student over here, feedback is pretty much my whole life right now... go to university, they said, it'll be fun, they said) and thanks for reading.
Enjoy.
:&:
Couldn't Live Without You
Very Special Agent Anthony D. DiNozzo Junior isn't scared of very much. As a child, the only things he could honestly claim to be afraid of were vampires (he knew it was a bad idea to watch Dracula right before bed) and step-mother numero uno (because she wasn't mom and she goddamn made sure he knew it). Since he entered adulthood (though some – most – would argue that he's yet to make that step) those fears have been replaced by rats (getting pneumonic plague'll do that to a guy) and Gibbs (that cold stare could, and in fact has, intimidated even the most hardened of criminals). He doesn't think either of those are in any way irrational.
But right now all those pale in comparison to the fear the look in the woman's eyes sparks within him. The woman he has spent the last two months thinking was dead. She sits in front him an imitation of the person he once knew – the person who once jammed their gun against his chest, threatening to pull the trigger with such wrath and venom and genuine hatred he was momentarily worried she actually would. The crazy person who had once voluntarily stayed behind to disarm a live bomb just to avoid losing evidence. The person who was once blown up while undercover in Morocco (he wishes he could have seen her, pre-explosion, apparently her cover as a lounge singer had turned more than a few heads – 'a dress so low you could see her tan line,' Abby had cheerily informed him with a wink, he didn't even bother asking how she knew) and didn't think to tell him. Just the tip of the iceberg that is Ziva David.
Once upon a time she had feelings in her eyes – light and teasing, dark and murderous, and everything in between. Now, there's nothing. It's like looking into two black holes – endless and haunting and utterly devoid of light. And nothing has terrified Tony as much – not when he was dying of Y Pestis (he was younger then, carefree), not when he'd been framed for murder (a worryingly regular occurrence come to think of it), not when he was being interrogated by Eli Fucking David (with a dad like that, it's almost a miracle Ziva grew up to be anywhere near as well adjusted as she did; funny, well-adjusted had never been high on the list of the most common adjectives used to describe her before).
At first he was confused when Saleem stomped out of the room only to return thirty seconds later with a new appendage – a figure clad in ragged, oversized khaki with a bag over their head. And then the bag was yanked off in one smooth movement and everything fell into place with one surprised gasp from the person in front of him.
Ziva David is dead.
He had uttered those words a few hours ago (was it hours? Or had it actually been days?) almost fully convinced they were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. But here she is, a few feet in front of him, alive and… not exactly well, but looking remarkably good for a corpse. Her hair, never out of place before (Tony always loved her hair for reasons even he didn't really understand –he'd been with blondes, redheads, brunettes, girls who changed their hair colour every other week, and he could honestly say he'd never paid an awful amount of attention to their hair before - he just knew that when Ziva's hair was down and curly and free that it was gonna be a good day) is positively manic; wild curls hang limply down around her sharp cheekbones, he can see splotches of bruises under the layers of dirt on her face, a nasty slash across the bridge of her nose, and her features are far more pale and gaunt and downright haunted than they had been that sunny day in Israel four months ago.
But she's alive.
And god, she's beautiful.
He stays silent until Saleem leaves them alone together (them, and the possum-playing McGee; don't look at him like that, alright, it was the best way for McGee to be above suspicion, it wasn't even Tony's idea), tries not to let any emotion show on his face.
"Well," he says as soon as the heavy door slams shut, caught halfway between a sob and a relieved exhale that, if he were any more intoxicated would turn into a full blown, borderline hysterical laugh that would probably end with tears, "how was your summer?"
If this were a film, that would be one hell of a line. The audience would go wild for the reunion between the battered, heroic protagonist who had walked to the ends of the earth to get what he wanted and his tortured, damaged, damsel in distress love interest who had been through hell and back but still managed to look drop dead gorgeous.
But it's a movie for an audience of one and he's currently pretending to be unconscious so… All the world's a stage and Tony and Ziva are the only players.
(That, and she never was the damsel type. He has no doubt that if their lives were made into an action flick - hopefully more Speed than Speed 2: Cruise Control (c'mon 'Cruise Control'? Even for Keanu it was too much, and he'd been in that shitty Little Buddha movie) – she would be the rugged, brooding, scarred protagonist with a stony, hidden heart of gold and he would be the much unwanted tag along… he only prays to every deity he's ever heard of to, please make him more Marion Ravenwood than Willie Scott; he doesn't be want to be the screaming, wailing ingenue, if he's gotta play the chick at least make him the femme fatale who only occasionally gets herself kidnapped.)
She fixes him with those newly dead eyes of hers and shakes her head. "Out of everyone who could have found me… it had to be you." Her voice is different, he notices in his drug induced haze, more stilted and less sure of the language it's speaking. Tony isn't sure if it's because she's not used to speaking English or because she's not used to speaking at all.
"You're welcome," he tries to smile. He wants to cry. Sure he… they (Ziva is not and never has been his, and let's face it, she probably never will be) have Ziva back, but at what cost? Because he recognises that kind of off-kilter, zombified stare fixated on him.
He's seen it before.
He flashes back to a point in his life he thought he had long since locked away but hey, he never was great at compartmentalising. He'd been working a homicide case in Baltimore back in… what? 2000? He supposes it doesn't matter overly much… except it was part of the reason he had accepted the job at NCIS and upped stakes again despite telling himself it would finally be the post, the state, he stayed in for more than two years.
Some self-entitled sicko was chaining women up in his basement, keeping them for up to a year at a time. Then… he let them go and only once the dregs of hope had started to filter back into their hearts and eyes, would he kill them. They'd found him in time to release his latest victim, a woman named Natasha Lewis, a thirty-five-year-old high school Biology teacher. She'd been there five and a half months.
(It's the reason he finds it hard to enjoy the gritty, over dramatic cop shows. He can't stand the way they use people's suffering for entertainment purposes.
'This week on a brand-new Criminal Minds, some sad white boy with mommy issues goes around murdering beautiful women because he got rejected once years ago and he just can't get over it like every other person in existence. Oh, also, his mommy left his daddy and his dog died of cancer, see, isn't his life just so tragic. Will the heroes get there in time to save his latest victim - generic blonde haired, blue eyed actress #3 who looks more like a supermodel than the runaway, drug abusing, teen mom prostitute she's supposed to be – or will she be brutally dismembered and made into chilli to be fed to the members of her own search party? Find out this Wednesday on CBS.'
Yeah, no thanks, not for him. He'll stick with the over-saturated, hammy violence, and glorious eighties-ness of Magnum and Rockford, thanks very much.)
He remembers having to interview her, gently coaxing her statement out of her and thoroughly hating himself, and the rest of the male population, the entire time. She'd described in possibly the smallest voice ever how the man beat her every day, denied her food and water, raped her when she wouldn't submit to his demands and a dozen other things that still make Tony feel sick even ten years later. The bastard hadn't even confessed, had been determined to put her through the indignity of a trial.
He learned later that she committed suicide after her own personal devil was sentenced to a truly pathetic twenty years in prison thanks to a gung-ho, hotshot defence attorney and a bumbling prosecutor who was greener than green (kid looked like he was barely outta law school, must've only been given the case 'cause they thought it'd be a slam dunk).
He can't let that happen to Ziva.
Desperate to draw some of the old her to the surface he says, "So, you glad to see me?"
"You should not have come," she says, avoiding answering the question outright.
Honestly, he's not sure he wants to know anyway. The last time they laid eyes on each other was on an airstrip in Israel not long after she had pressed the barrel of her gun against him. He'd killed her boyfriend and she had lost all trust in him. If he's honest, he's still a little hurt at how quickly she jumped the metaphorical ship. Sure, she may have been Mossad pretty much since birth but she'd been with them for four years, she knew them… knew him. And yet she thought he killed Michael Rivkin because he was jealous? (He was jealous, obviously, but in the heat of the moment the very sharp shard of glass in the drunk Mossad assassin's hand had been the driving force behind his actions.) But all that can wait until they're out of here, until he knows she'll be alright. Until feeling angry won't make him feel quite so guilty.
"Alright then," he says, falling back on his usual method for coping with serious situations: a failed and very misplaced attempt at humour. "Good catching up. I'll be going now," he makes a move as if to stand and is immediately pulled back down. Comedic timing at its finest, suck it Chaplin. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he continues, voice dripping with heavy sarcasm, "taken prisoner." He had hoped to get a rise out of the (former?) Mossad officer. All it elicits is a weary sigh.
"Are you alright, McGee?" She asks, though those deep-set brown eyes of hers don't leave Tony's face. Of course, trust her to know there's another person in the room even though he's barely made a sound. Her words cause guilt to ripple through Tony – from the moment the sack had been whipped off his supposedly dead partner's head, he'd sort of forgotten about McGee. He may have been faking unconsciousness in front of Saleem but that cut on his head, those kicks to the abdomen, they were very real, and they looked like they hurt like hell.
"I'm just glad you're alive," the man says, his own emotion badly suppressed. Tony decides not to give him too hard of a time over it. (For now. They get outta here alive and it's fair game as far as he's concerned.)
"You thought I was dead?" She asks and while neither her face nor her eyes show it, for the first time Tony hears an actual emotion pass through her cracked, split lips – confusion, if he's as well versed in the language of Ziva as he thinks he is. What? Did she really think they wouldn't look into her suspicious lack of contact with anyone? Tony and Gibbs… fair enough. But McGee? Abby? Ducky? (As far as he's aware the worst thing Ducky ever did to her was accidentally forget about one of their planned lunches last year and all it took to make it up to her was a cup of fancy tea and a homemade scone.)
"Oh, yeah," he says and he really has to fight not to cry.
(DiNozzo rule number six: DiNozzo men don't cry.)
There were no survivors.
Ziva David may have been some sort of Israeli assassin-spy-superhero-ninja in their eyes but it was a reminder that even she was human.
It's no secret Tony's a fan of all things cinema, he's watched more films than he can count and something he learned very quickly in life was that in the world of gritty action and unrealistic explosions, if there wasn't a body then the character wasn't dead. Simple as that. And more often than not, that very character would make a triumphant return in the third act, all guns blazing, just in time to bail the other characters out.
Real life doesn't quite work the same way, but still, there had always been a small part of him dedicated to believing that, until an actual body was produced, she was still alive. No body, no proof (maybe he should make that DiNozzo rule number 23). (Hell, sometimes there was a body and that still didn't mean shit –the hero or the heroine would make a miraculous recovery with little to no explanation – if Fornell of all people could do it then Ziva definitely could.) Even if that body was supposedly at the bottom of the ocean. He's fairly sure all of them, Gibbs included, had secretly been living in hope that there had been some horrific mistake. (I didn't give her permission to die, Gibbs had said during one of their basement drinking sessions a few weeks ago, and if it wasn't Gibbs talking, Tony would have described him as being choked up.) But even as they were all thinking it… wishing it, none of them voicing it, all of them had accepted that this was a revenge mission, not a rescue.
"Then why are you here?" Her voice is filled with disbelief and it suddenly strikes Tony that she's here for a reason. She didn't just stumble into Saleem's camp in the middle of fucking nowhere, Somalia. No… someone sent her here and considering the last thing he heard was that she had gone back to Mossad (bound by her obligation as a dutiful daughter, as a dutiful soldier – in Eli David's eyes, Tony doubts there's any real distinction between the two) there's only one person Tony can think of who would give her this order. Eli David. He sent her here to her death and then didn't bother sending anyone to get her out again (if NCIS, the agency no one's ever heard of, could spare the resources, Mossad, the infamous Israeli intelligence agency, easily could). Her own father left her for dead. (David makes DiNozzo Senior look like Father of the Year material. What an achievement.)
First Ari. Then Michael. Then Director Daddy Dearest.
Three strikes and you're dead.
No wonder she has trust issues.
"Well," he grits out, twisting his neck, "McGee… McGee didn't think you were dead."
There were no survivors.
"Tony," she says, sharp and serious and so not how he imagined her saying his name in this moment. "Why are you here?"
"Couldn't live without you, I guess," he chokes out, the filter between mind and mouth stolen from him not entirely by the makeshift truth serum pumping in his veins but by the sight of his dead partner sitting in front of him, very much alive. He aches to reach out a hand to touch her, run his thumb across her muddied cheek, maybe push back some of that messy hair, press his lips to hers. Do what he should've done a long time ago.
"So you will die with me," she says with the most chillingly humourless half smile ever. "You should have left me alone."
She's speaking as if they aren't currently tied up in a terrorist camp. As if she hadn't spent months in this hellhole already. As if she wants to die.
"Okay, tried, couldn't," he spits out, hoping the truth cocktail wears off before he can say anything too embarrassing. "Listen, you should know, I've taken some kind of truth serum, so if there's any questions that you don't wanna know the answer to…"
God, there's so many questions she could ask him right now…
The Ziva he first met years ago wouldn't've hesitated to ask him something humiliating just for shits and giggles. But that Ziva hadn't spent three months in a terrorist camp. That Ziva had seen some shit, done some things that he wouldn't be able to comprehend, but prison… torture, it changes people. And that Ziva, while she'd inflicted torture without blinking, hadn't had it inflicted on her, not on this scale anyway. (He really doesn't wanna think about what kind of training she'd have to undergo in order to be able to hold out for so long; he'd almost cracked up after half a day in a jail cell, a perfectly average, non-torture-y, American jail cell.)
"I did not ask for anyone to put themselves in harm's way for me. I do not deserve it."
Her words inspire a different sort of anger within him. He wants to shake her shoulders, yell at her to fight for fuck's sake because she's not dead, she's alive and she's here and they are going to be okay. Because they have to be. He can't live without her, he guesses. He's good at making her angry, always has been and anger is a much better look on her than defeat.
"So what are you doing out here, some kind of monastic experience? Doing penance?"
"It is justified," she nods, as if he'd asked a serious question.
"Get over yourself," the words fall from his mouth before he can even try to stop them.
"I have," she smiles the emotionless smile again. "Now you tell Saleem everything he wants to hear, and you try to save yourselves. I am ready to die." And just like that his breath is gone and it's up to McGee to answer in his place.
"That's not how it works," McGee, bless him, groans from the floor.
"How what works?"
"The plan."
"You have an escape plan?" She asks.
He shoots her his best Indiana Jones crooked smirk in reply, winking and clicking his tongue. Maybe if he tries to act like a suave, debonair action guy who always saves the day and the girl (I think what Agent DiNozzo means is that the Transporter would have gotten the case, gotten the girl, and still have held on to his cappuccino) he'll actually start to feel like it.
"Tony… they have thirty men, heavily armed. They have anti-tank and anti-plane weapons. What do you have?"
Well, sweet cheeks, as it happens I got a whole freakin' army outside these walls ready to move on my signal. It's fool-proof baby.
That's what he wants to be able to tell her but she's never been one for false hope so all he can manage is a slightly weak, "Well, that's where things get a little tricky."
He tells her about how they found out about the camp, the initial apparent shutdown of their plan by Vance, the sneaky, roundabout Gibbsian tactics and lastly, McGee and himself deliberately driving right into the outskirts with a fairly good idea of what they were getting themselves into.
He doesn't tell her about Abby's reaction – a combination of anger and sadness when they explained the plan to her, how tightly she hugged them as she begged them to make it back alright. She couldn't take losing another one of them, she had said. He doesn't tell her that McGee didn't even tell his sister what he was doing because she would only try to stop him going on what was potentially a suicide mission. And he definitely doesn't tell her that a part of him had hoped he wouldn't get out alive. That before he'd left he'd altered his will – splitting things between his team, the few family members he still spoke to, and various charities his mother had donated to all her life (not that there was really a massive amount to split).
Couldn't live without you, I guess. More than just a line, more than she probably knows. Probably more than he really knows, to be honest. Tony's never been good at knowing just how he feels or what he's lined up to lose until it's too late; it was the same with his mom (yeah, she was a bit of an alcoholic and yeah, she was kinda messed up, but she loved him and he loved their trips to the cinema in town… she was the first woman to break his heart) and with Jeanne (he really had loved her, you know, only properly realised how much when it was gone; whenever he caught a snippet of classic French cinema on his TV; whenever he had to drive past the hospital she used to work at (word is that she's back with Doctors Without Borders, hey, who knows? She could be in Somalia right now too); he can't even tell a lie without his brain conjuring up images of the woman he had lied to more than anyone else), even with Kate to an extent (not that he would've admitted it to her while she was alive, but he's sure now that he'd felt a certain sort of love for her, he's just not sure exactly what sort of love it had been - something not quite romantic but not quite platonic at the same time).
"Wait… you got captured on purpose?" She says it as if he's being particularly stupid. Who knows? Maybe he is.
Look at you, Junior, getting yourself killed over some damn girl. I thought I raised you better.
You barely raised me at all. Guess you've got mom and all the various housekeepers to thank for this.
"Yeah."
"These men are killers, Tony."
"I know. That's why we have to stay alive long enough to not get dead." And as rousing speeches go, he reckons it's up there with some of the all-time greats. He's Gibson in Braveheart. He's Butler in 300. Crowe in Gladiator. Stallone in Rocky. Hanks in Toy Story (what? It's a classic).
"That would involve being rescued." It's how she says the word 'rescued' that gets him because it's crystal clear from her tone that she was well aware rescue wasn't on the cards. That she'd long since resigned herself to a lifetime of being disposable, to being another casualty in a senseless war. A war that's already claimed her mother, sister, brother, and in a way, her father too.
"Yes, it would."
"How long will it take?"
"I don't know. How long d'you think I've been talking?"
(He vaguely recalls day turning to night and back again, sweltering heat turning to slightly more manageable heat, the dry burning of a throat deprived of water. He isn't sure what's real and what's not. If he comes to his senses and discovers this is all a twisted fever dream he'll either cry or murder someone.)
"What's the plan?" Rushed out, knowing Saleem could come back any second, and showing signs of actual life again. A spark of hope illuminates in her eyes and God, this really is far too much like Baltimore.
"Oh, well… we fail to contact Dubai, words gets to the carrier in the Med and they scramble F-2 Raptors that burn sand into glass. How long's it gonna take, I don't know. Hours or… days. Ziva, can you fight?" The resulting expression that crosses her face is answer enough, even if she can't bring herself to voice it. He diverts his gaze slightly so he can plausibly deny seeing the single tear crawling down her cheek that she's unable to wipe away. It's almost like this is her just realising that no, she can't fight. For the first time in her life there's absolutely nothing she can bring to the situation.
If his hands weren't literally tied, he'd Gibbs slap himself.
'Can you fight?' What kinda dumbass question is that, DiNozzo? She looks like she can't stand up let alone throw a punch.
"Oh, hey, Saleem," he says, alerted by the heavy creaking of the door opening and the sounds of gunfire bursting from outside. He's almost grateful for the distraction. "What's up, man? What's the commotion?"
"We're moving out."
Lights. Camera. Action.
Showtime.
"Oh, well, that's good. I was gettin' kinda tired of this place."
"We're not taking prisoners."
"Oh, well, okay, it was nice talking with you."
"No, we're not done yet." Saleem brandishes a knife, it's at least three times larger than the blade he knows Ziva usually carries with her at all times.
(The insane, drug fuelled thought of: 'that's not a knife... that's a knife' briefly enters his head.)
Rule number nine: Always carry a knife.
"If they do not check in, their people will come looking for them," Ziva says breathlessly, the pulse point in her neck jumping erratically, and Tony knows what she's saying. She wants to die, he realises, she isn't just saying this to stop Saleem murdering himself and McSleepy over there. She wants to die. Ziva David, perpetual fighter and very scary person, wants to die. And snap. Like that he has a new worst fear.
"Ziva," he warns, "shut up."
"Kill me," she says outright, her voice commanding Saleem to get on with it already. She's been suffering for months, at least make her death swift.
And he does.
In one quick slice there's a red Cheshire Cate smile painted into her neck, blood spraying out like a fountain – crimson red splashing across pale canvas. A gurgling sound echoes from the hollow of her throat for a few seconds before she goes utterly silent. Tony yells, a shout of absolute desperation as she slumps forwards in slow motion, sending blood soaking into his pants. He doesn't notice. He's spent the last two months thinking she was dead only to find she'd been alive the entire time. And now she actually is gone… They got within five minutes of all getting out alive. (See, DiNozzo, this is why you should just let sleeping dogs lie: ignorance is bliss, false hope and all that meaningless shit, all idioms that Ziva would mangle within an inch of their lives.) Tony jerks in his chair, trying and failing to break out of his bonds to race forwards and lay the ultimate beatdown on the smug terrorist; from the look on the guy's face you'd've thought he'd managed to score a date with Angelina Jolie or something, instead he'd sliced a woman's throat open.
You know, just another day at the office.
"What did you do at work today, honey?"
"Oh you know, just the usual, did the paperwork, made the lunch run, played some paper basketball, strapped a bomb to a kid who wasn't even old enough to drive, tortured a girl half to death. Nothing out of the ordinary."
"Sounds great, sweetie, would you like some more meatloaf?"
Was that a typical after-work conversation for this guy?
"Tony."
He struggles harder as Saleem advances, twirling his machete like a Bond villain of old. In fact, he reminds Tony strongly of Dr. No, he's got that whole evil academic thing goin' on. With that in mind, Tony's obviously Bond (gotta be Connery for him, guy was so good he made the actual Bond creator change the character's backstory, albeit Tony would like to think he's a bit less misogynistic; if he was entirely like Connery's Bond then, with the women currently in his life, he'd probably end up chemically castrated within days), McGee has to be Q (McQ, his brain supplies as if it's a helpful contribution to the situation), and, as he once mentioned to McGee, he always saw Ziva as Tatiana Romanova, the sexy Russian spy in From Russia With Love, or maybe Xenia Onatopp, the well-muscled Georgian Soviet with a fondness for crushing men to death with her thighs (mmm... now there's a way to die, Famke Jansson's legs wrapped around your neck… much less pathetic than dying tied to a chair in a terrorist camp that you shouldn't really be in in the first place). He supposes that makes Gibbs M or maybe he's Bond in his own right and Tony's the helpless schmuck Bond's sent in to rescue… Yeah, that sounds about right. Gibbs is the last action hero and Tony's the freakin' kindergarten cop (he really doesn't want his last coherent thoughts to be about the governor of California, no matter how much this whole thing is like True Lies).
"As for you, American, I will make sure your death is much, much slower." Christ, he even talks like a Bond villain. Difference is Bond villains rarely succeeded, this guy's already killed the Bond girl (Ziva would kill him if she knew he had ever referred to her as a Bond girl) and is within minutes of finishing off Bond himself.
Tony spits out every curse he even vaguely knows – English, Spanish, Italian, a couple of clumsy French phrases the dead woman had laughed at in another lifetime (Your pronunciation is terrible, Tony. You would stick out like a sore hand), and a few choice Hebrew words she liked to teach him over post-case drinks, her eyes bright, dancing with warmth and her cheeks red thanks to copious amounts of alcohol. (She was always so alive, and even though her body's right in front of him this time, part of him's still convinced this is all a show. The most masterful twist he's seen since Memento. Hey, if anyone could convincingly fake their own death in an elaborate, unnecessary way and have absolutely everyone believing they were actually dead, it was Ziva. Knowing her she probably has a contingency plan in place at all times. She's that level of crazily prepared.) He calls Saleem every name under the sun and it isn't enough. He needs to feel the man's pulse slow beneath his fingers, needs to watch the light leave his eyes, needs to paint the walls red with his blood, needs to deliver the truest form of payback.
"Tony," it's McGee's voice. How the hell is he so calm? Ziva is sitting there, dead, blood flooding the floor and Tony had no idea the human body held quite so much of the stuff. It's suffocating. The thick, coppery smell is so heavy in the air it's almost tangible. It crawls up his nostrils and settles sickeningly in the back of his throat – metallic and salty – choking him, drowning him.
Saleem smiles, casually wiping the blade on his pants as he advances on the still-fighting Tony.
"Yes, she always was entertaining," he comments idly, as if this was just some sort of sick game that's been keeping him amused these last few months, "at the beginning she was so…" he trails off, "lively," he decides on, the smirk on his face is truly disturbing. "But everyone has a breaking point… after that," he grabs a handful of her hair and twists her head up so Tony can see the jagged, bloody wound stretching from ear to ear in a sick grin, "she wasn't nearly as much fun. She didn't even bother to fight back," he adds with a lecherous smile that could only mean one thing as he lets go. Ziva's head lolls brokenly forwards, a marionette without strings.
Tony wants to throw up as tears both angry and devastated sting his eyes (DiNozzo men don't cry), he rocks so violently in his chair that he topples backwards, his head bouncing off the floor like a soccer ball. He's like a turtle stuck on its back and no matter how hard he tries, he can't flip himself the right way up.
"Tony," Ziva's voice speaking to him from beyond the grave.
I'm sorry, sweetcheeks, he thinks as Saleem looms over him menacingly, I got you killed.
I love you. I know, shitty timing, right? And I didn't even plan on it, why's that always happening to me? In fact, I really wanted to hate you at first. For Ari, for what he did to Kate. You wanted him kept alive, I didn't. And then you had to go and tell me about your sister, I hated that I didn't have it in me to hate you after that. It made you too human to hate –meant you were grieving too. Course, you probably knew that, counted on it even.
I'm gonna die and right now I couldn't care less. I really can't live without you, I guess.
For all intents and purposes, Ziva David was both an incredibly easy and an incredibly difficult person to love. She was fire and ice wrapped in boots and cargo pants, and dresses that caught the eye of everyone in the room, and, occasionally, nothing at all. She was innuendo and tease with a mountain of issues. He could come up with an alphabet of words to describe his partner and still not be done. Not all the words would be flattering or complimentary (she's hot-headed, secretive, stubborn beyond belief, occasionally manipulative in that way where you're not even sure you're being manipulated until she's finished with you, and she doesn't trust anyone; not to mention she's a lunch-thief, yep, that's right, she committed the most cardinal of sins - she stole Tony's meatball sub once, no excuses, she just straight up stole it; it had taken him a week and a replacement sandwich for him to forgive her) but he wouldn't have it any other way; it shows that despite all her super-secret Mossad training she's still human.
Was. She was human.
He tries to choke back his tears, a horrible, guttural noise wrenching free from his chest, animalistic and raw.
"Any last words?" Saleem asks, raising the knife. Tony just glares at him venomously, he won't give him the satisfaction now. "Ah well, you will be with her soon, eh? Well…" he smiles, showing off teeth reddened by vast quantities of Caf-Pow, "not too soon. That would be too easy, yes?"
Tony can't say this is how he planned to go out; he always figured he'd go out in a hail of bullets, sacrificing himself for one of his useless teammates but, hey, as ol' blue eyes sang that's life and by God, no one could say Tony DiNozzo didn't do it his way (he faced it all and he stood tall; he loved, he laughed and he cried and he's had more than his fair share of losing… he did it his way, right until the end). Each jab and twist of the knife (both real and metaphorical) is more painful than the last.
"I'm sorry, Ziva," he whispers. And yes, he thinks, those are very appropriate last words.
"DiNozzo!" Gibbs's voice.
He jerks, the restraints prove to no longer be an issue, he's stronger than ever before. He bolts up into a sitting position far too fast if the pounding in his head and the roiling in the pit of his stomach is anything to go by. He leans over, emptying his stomach of the little contents it has.
"That's it," says a gruff voice, thumping his shoulder with unnecessary force, "get it all out."
Tony slumps back, shaking and covered in a cold sweat. He's in a semi-dark room lying on a lumpy cot that can't be good for his back. That's right, he's in the med centre they were taken to a few miles outside Mogadishu. It's your standard temporary army base job but they have supplies and canvas cots. All in all it's a good enough placeholder until they get home, so Tony thinks it was probably worth delaying their return; even if he had been denied access to the heavy duty pills he longed for due to the pharmacy already swarming his blood stream. Gibbs had insisted they all get checked over and cleared in addition to a night's sleep before their long trip back to America. He's alive, McGee's alive, Ziva's…
"Ziva?" He croaks out, panicky, looking at the silver haired man sitting on the far end of the cot.
"Right over there," Gibbs says, indicating a cot nearer the entrance of the tent. If he squints he can just about make out a squirming figure in the low light. Her breathing is utterly silent, there's none of the chainsaw-like snoring he became accustomed to after one too many late-night stakeouts – like the world's most irritating white noise machine. It seems stupid, but it actually makes him angry; it's another thing Saleem and his terrorist buddies took from her. He still relaxes minutely though, she's alive. It was all a dream… mostly… it was mostly a dream. A horrible, twisted dream that he'll no doubt be experiencing a lot in the weeks to come. "She's gonna be fine."
Is she?
Tony remembers how she looked as Saleem ripped the bag from over her head, her lack of… well, anything as he and McGee dragged her weakened body out of there. The silence from her during the chopper ride, the way she had stared unblinkingly at the sand speckled floor as if she were seeing something else entirely.
None of that sounds fine to him. None of that sounds like Ziva to him.
"She woken up yet?" After they'd all been checked over (separately, much to his annoyance, he wanted to know how she was, damn it) she'd dragged herself over to the furthest away cot and dropped off to sleep before anyone could say anything. Worrying him further had been when one of the doctors had gone over and hooked her up to an IV without waking her up, he had watched, cringingly, as they slid the needle into her bonelessly limp arm. She was still passed out when the IV was removed hours later.
"Mhmm," his boss confirms, fixing him with a look he can't interpret, "'bout an hour ago. Got her to eat something."
Tony breathes a sigh of relief, trying to stop his teeth from chattering as a feverish chill sweeps over him. This can't be good for his lungs. It's beginning to feel like some real Requiem for a Dream shit and it so isn't what he signed up for. Torture and interrogation, he figured that was par for the course, the possibility of death, a given, but this… hell no. Ever since he had the plague he's been wary about needles and fevers and sickness, worried that something might trigger a relapse and while this isn't on the same level, it still brings back a whole load of unwanted memories. (An envelope obviously meant for him; a humorous shower conversation overshadowed by words he never, ever wanted to hear; Kate, with her runny nose, bloodshot eyes and constant sneezing somehow not getting infected and yet risking herself by sticking with him anyway, she was a better friend to him in that moment than he had been to her throughout the whole of their short-lived partnership. Did he ever thank her? He hopes he did, can't stand the thought of her having died thinking he was an ungrateful bastard who didn't care about her or worse, that he was nothing more than a sex-obsessed overgrown frat boy who just wanted to sleep with her.)
"Here," Gibbs says, placing something thick in Tony's arms, he thinks he can make out the glinting of a zip and a desert sand camouflage pattern, "the Doc says the serum's wearin' off. Apparently it's one hell of a come down." Tony slips the jacket on appreciatively, his shaking hands fumbling with the zip.
"No kiddin', boss," he replies with another full body shiver. "How did you-?" How did you know I was having a nightmare?
Gibbs, being the mind reader that he is, gently cuts Tony off. "You were talkin' in your sleep, DiNozzo." Oh crap, what the hell did he say? Given what he'd been dreaming about, none of it could've been good. "No need to be embarrassed, we all have 'em," says Gibbs, either misreading his silence, or, more likely, letting him off the hook.
"Thanks, boss."
"Get back to sleep."
He doesn't need to be told twice.
