Chapter 29
Ziva felt like she was all cried out when she opened her eyes two days after having her breakdown at the washing machine. She knew Tony just wanted to make things better for her, but she really didn't think there was any way that he could do that. She didn't want him to fix things for her, she wanted him to listen and hold her and understand that she may actually be more scared than she could ever remember being in her whole entire life. Ziva had always been taught to dismiss fear, and to hide it from others because showing weakness was how you could end up getting yourself killed, and that was how she had learned from childhood to dismiss any emotion that may make others think you were an easy target or that you had normal emotions. But now there were so many things going on that she honestly knew that she couldn't hide herself or her feelings at all anymore, and she often wondered just how bad this was going to bleed into her career. But she also knew that Tony had told her that these emotions didn't make her look weak, they made her a better agent because now she could understand the victims and their families a bit more.
Ziva knew that he was really trying to make her feel better, like an good fiancé would, but she just didn't feel like that was true. She had been raised so differently, and most of the time she wondered what she could possibly be thinking, because she was in such a different world and she actually thought she had a chance to make her life work in it. She often wondered how long she actually thought her marriage with Tony would last, knowing that in the long run, with how different she was raised, she could end up driving him so insane in less than a year of marriage, which would make it another one of her failures, which scared her a lot.
"Hey." Tony said, startling Ziva out of the panic attack she knew was about to hit her as she worried more and more about whether she had made the right decision after all to agree to marry Tony.
"Hi." Ziva said, her voice nearly a whisper.
"I know what you're thinking, stop it." Tony said simply as he knelt in front of her, as she sat on the bed and bit her bottom lip nervously.
"What is it you think I am thinking?" Ziva asked, arching an eyebrow.
"You're beating yourself up about the changes you have made to yourself and your emotional status lately. You are also thinking we will never have a relaxed and happy marriage." Tony said, surprising her as she stared at him in shock. "I know you better than you know yourself sometimes Ziva. You're putting way too much pressure on yourself. Look, we may have to work harder at times, and there are probably going to be times when all we do is fight, but our marriage will be better and stronger, because we worked on it." Tony said as he kissed her and backed her onto the bed. He was well aware that he needed to stop her from thinking too hard and there was really only one way to stop a woman from thinking too hard, at least that he knew of, and that was exactly what he proceeded to do.
Gibbs was concerned, and most of his concern was for Ziva. The more he thought about things, the more he knew that all of this was going to force her to think she was backed into a corner and make a decision that she wouldn't normally make. He was well aware that she was trying hard to make changes, ones that she thought might be helpful to the team and ones that she thought might make things easier in her personal life, either with Tony or all of them as her friends. Gibbs hated that she didn't realize that they cared about her just as she was, but he knew she had to see that on her own for it to matter. If she was just told, she would think they were only saying it to make her feel better. Gibbs knew that all of this going on, was throwing his agents off their games, and that was the reason that things were slipping past them and so were people.
The thought that someone he knew, someone he worked around and possibly saw every day, could possibly helping out this sick freak, was really pissing him off. The worst part was that he didn't have any clues as to who it could be, and the last time there was someone inside that had been hinky, he had not trusted his gut. Gibbs needed to find the inside person, yesterday, if he had any shot at letting Ziva see that she wasn't alone in this and that they were all going to make sure that the inside person and the sick, perverted creep that was apparently after her, and maybe Tony, was going down.
"Hang on Ziva, let me do my job and you'll see that you have people that have your back." Gibbs whispered as he glanced over to her desk and remembered the last woman who had sat there. He didn't want to look at that desk and think he had failed two of his female agents, he couldn't.
He knew that the new information he had gotten from his inside agent, was right on the money. Gibbs was concerned that Ziva was going to make a rash decision, and that was exactly what he was waiting for. He knew his Ziva, way better than that nasty American who thought he could marry her did. He knew his Ziva, just as he knew her father, and he knew that she would need to end this her own way and that was what he was counting on. He was going to make sure that when she finally saw who it was, that she understood why this was happening. He wanted to kill her, and then he didn't want to kill her. There were mixed emotions inside of him, but what happened between them was going to end up being up to her. If she accepted that this American agent, Anthony DiNozzo, wasn't the right one for her and that she had been making way too many mistakes lately, mistakes he could help her fix, then maybe they had a real shot at making things work, back home though. There was no way they were staying in the US either way, after he got his hands on his little Ziva David. He had everything ready for them to make the trip back home, where she would either die or live as his, forever.
