Deep Lacerations: Chapter 24
"You look like hell." Ziva David almost jumped at the unexpected voice, thinking she had been the only one awake in the dimmed ICU room. She had been staring at the back wall, her gaze unfocused as she replayed her conversation with Gibbs earlier that night, dwelling on what he could have meant when he said she didn't understand because she didn't have children. If he meant to imply that no parent could do anything to hurt their children—well, she had seen the aftermath of suicide bombers who proved that theory wrong.
She had completely missed any sign of Tony DiNozzo waking, and when she turned to face him, she found him staring at her with that concerned/understanding/analyzing expression she had only seen on his face before when she had done something to almost get herself or somebody else killed. He had that look in his eyes for almost a week after she killed a murderer while undercover. "I am fine," she countered. "You are the one in the hospital."
He gave her a trademark smirk. "And yet you're the one who looks like you haven't slept in a week."
"You have done enough sleeping for the both us," she shot back, hoping that the lace of worry she heard in her voice was only her imagination. If he had heard it, he gave no indication as he grin widened.
"You know me," he said. "I need my beauty sleep."
Taking the comment for the light-hearted fish for a compliment—or maybe request for things to be normal between them—that it was, she gave him a teasing grin and patted his cheek affectionately. "You were plenty beautiful to begin with. Now I believe you are out-doing it."
"Over," he corrected, the glint in his eye telling her that he knew she flubbed that one up on purpose. "Over-doing it, not out-doing." She smiled back and shrugged. "You can get some sleep, too, you know."
"I am on guard duty," she informed him. He snorted lightly.
"In a hospital staffed by sailors and guarded by Marines. I think you can relax for a couple of minutes."
"Whoever is responsible for these cases captured, tortured, and killed three armed and well-trained officers, Tony," she reminded him. "One in a warzone, and two on secure military bases. If they wanted to do the same to you or Agent Gracy, a few doctors and nurses would not stop them."
He rolled his eyes; they both knew that her reluctance to get some sleep had less to do with concern about his and Gracy's safety—neither of which was the type of target their current perps were after—but more about her unwillingness to let her guard down. He had been unconscious the whole time, but he had heard after the fact that when he went in the water, Gracy dove in to save him and Gibbs chased after the bad guy. The fact that nobody—especially not Ziva—had talked about what she had been doing told him that she wasn't proud of her actions, or inactions, whichever they might have been.
He scooted over in the hospital bed; like Gracy, his bulky Bair hugger had been traded hours before for the electrically-heated garments he now wore. "Get up here," he said, his voice somewhere between a command and resignation.
Ziva looked surprised for a second before she gave a short snort of laughter. "If this is an attempt to get me into bed, you should probably wait until you are medically cleared to handle it."
DiNozzo chuckled in response. "You're exhausted, and that chair doesn't look comfortable. Get up here. It's plenty warm. Besides, where better to watch over me than right next to me?"
"I am supposed to be watching Gracy as well." After a few minutes of considering the consequences, she relented, crawling into the hospital bed with him. He waited for her to adjust her position, molding her trim body to his, her head resting on his shoulder.
He could feel her breath on his cheek for several minutes before she spoke again. "We are going to get in trouble," she said, not sounding terribly concerned. He laughed.
"I don't think the doctors could give any legitimate complaints; after all, we're conserving body heat, right?"
She gave a low, throaty chuckle. "I am sure that 'conserving body heat' is not the only thing contributing to your rising body temperature." Normally, he loved the sexual innuendo, especially when her voice was low and sexy as hell, but he wasn't normally lying on a hospital bed meant for one, her body all but draped over his. Deep breaths, he commanded himself. Think about something else, like...McGee's book. About Agent Tommy and Officer Lisa...damn. It took him a moment to even regain his voice. Fortunately, she saved him the trouble and spoke first. "I was referring to the trouble from Gibbs."
"Ah," he replied. He thought about that for a moment before saying, "I'm sure he'll understand. You know, the body heat conservation thing."
She didn't respond for a minute. "He is already upset with me," she informed him, her voice suddenly serious.
"What'd you do, insult his boat making skills?"
"I told him he has become too emotionally involved with Agent Gracy and that he has let that keep him from doing his job."
"Wow," DiNozzo said, sounding truly impressed. "That was really dumb."
"Thank you, Tony," she snapped before sighing in defeat. "I know that it was not my brightest move, but I was just trying to make the point that it can not be a coincidence that the bodies started piling up right when she arrived on our team."
"There's no such thing as coincidence," DiNozzo recited automatically. He turned to face her and was surprised to find her face less than an inch from his own. He was distracted by that for a moment, having a sudden flashback to a dark closet in a fake warehouse. When he finally regained his senses, he continued, "You're only looking at one possibility. What if someone is after her?"
She frowned at his explanation. "And is trying to get at her by killing her husband's associates in a fashion similar to her husband's deaths?"
He shrugged the one shoulder she wasn't occupying. "And how would you get a former medical examiner with an expertise in lacerations to the crime scene where you're lurking with a loaded gun?" She didn't have an answer to that one. "Besides, what motive would she have for killing her husband's associates?"
"To cover over the true events of her husband's death," Ziva replied automatically. "After all, since she was the only one who truly knew the state of his body when she claimed he arrived back in the States—"
"Okay, first of all, it's cover up, not cover over," Tony interrupted. "And second, now you're getting ridiculous. I don't even have a movie reference for this one, because if someone tried to make it a movie, no one would believe it. What motive could she possibly have for orchestrating her husband's death, or at the very least, cover for the person who did?"
"I do not know, Tony, and that was my point to Gibbs," Ziva snapped, glaring at him with full force. DiNozzo was quickly discovering that an all-out argument with Ziva in bed wasn't nearly as good in reality as it had been in his fantasies. Of course, those fantasies rarely involved electric garments or heart rate monitors on the walls. "If he had not become so…enthralled, with Agent Gracy, he would have treated her like any other wife of a victim, and interrogated her about their finances or if one was having an affair or why anybody would want to kill him. But he did not do that, so we do not know the answers to those questions. All we truly know about Agent Gracy is what is in her personnel file, and all we know of Major Gracy's death is what is in his CID case file. That is not much to go on."
DiNozzo stared at her for a moment, meeting her gaze unflinchingly, before he finally spoke. "I trust Gibbs' gut," he finally said. "If Gibbs says she had nothing to do with this, she had nothing to do with this."
"I can not believe that you of all people would still be able to trust him, after what he has shown himself capable of doing." They continued to stare at each other for a moment, her still on her elbow, leaning over him, a challenging look in her eyes.
Tony was the first to relent with a long sigh. "Ziva, I'm far too tired to have this discussion right now. Can we pick this up when I'm not, you know, in the Intensive Care Unit?"
A look of horror crossed her face as she remembered where they were. "Tony, I am sorry—"
"Don't apologize," he said, an involuntary smile belying his stern words. "Just calm down and lie down. You're making me fear for my life. Well, more than usual." She did so without complaint, and for a few minutes, he just enjoyed the feeling of her in his arms—well, with her lying on one arm with the other attached to a blood pressure cuff and something monitoring his body temperature, but he'd take what he could get. "And just so you know, Ziva, it's not just Gibbs' gut I'm trusting," he said, wishing he could just drop it, but having one more thing to say. His hand had worked its way to her back, absently playing with her hair. "She saved my life. She didn't have to do that, and she's in the ICU because she did, but she did. That has to mean something."
She glanced up to look at him, seeing the serious expression on his face, and nodded slightly before returning her head to his shoulder. "Gibbs said he could not explain why he did not think Gracy was involved," Ziva finally said, her voice slightly muffled by his neck. "He said I would not understand because I am not a parent."
"Maybe he's right."
"Parents are not perfect people, Tony."
He snorted. "Believe me, you don't need to tell me that." They continued to lie in silence before she spoke again.
"Her children were here. They are staying with Gibbs tonight."
He smiled slightly at the thought of two little kids in Gibbs' basement, sanding a boat and doing shots of Johnny Walker or Jim Beam or whatever it was that he kept down there. Well, sanding a boat, at least—unlike DiNozzo, Gibbs knew what to do with children. "And let me guess—two adorable little red-headed kids bidding their mother goodnight. Oh! I bet they were singing their goodnights in German like in the cocktail party scene in—"
"Sound of Music," Ziva finished. "I have seen that one."
"Figures that that'll the one you've seen," DiNozzo muttered. Ziva smiled slightly.
"Nate's hair is red. Well, a very dark red," she said, referring to his earlier comment. "Maddie's hair is black. They are a quarter Jordanian, after all. And Agent Gracy read them a bedtime story in German, but most of their conversations were in English. And there was no singing."
"That's too bad," he murmured, feeling suddenly drained after the long conversation.
"Maybe they will be back tomorrow morning. You can ask them to sing then."
"Yeah, maybe," he said, his eyes fluttering closed. "G'night, Ziva."
She watched as his eyes finally slid shut, his breathing becoming smooth and even. "Shalom, Tony," she whispered in response. She adjusted her head on his shoulder and slid her arm around his waist, waiting for her exhaustion to take over.