A/N: Hi everyone, thanks for all the awesome reviews - this is my first fanfiction EVER, so I hope you can be nice to me :) but you already have!
This is the second part of the story, and I think there will be more. I experimented a bit with this chapter, so it might not be what you were expecting - but please, when you review, be absolutely honest if you think I'm not moving in the right direction. As I said before, this is my first time, so feedback would be really very helpful.
I hope you enjoy!
xx Lola
A week later in the bullpen, he is sitting at his desk reading a file he's already read thirty times, trying and failing to ignore the dull ache in his chest. Ziva breezes into the office, collected as ever, but he knows she's tired; she agreed to go out with Abby the night before, to reassure the Goth that Tony would be fine.. Without looking up, without saying anything, he extends one arm and reaches into his desk draw, and throws a Panadol tablet in the general direction of her desk, which she catches with ease. She considers him for a minute, then shakes her head, swallows the pill and settles behind her desk.
Once, one night when she was lying in his arms, they tried to have a conversation without using words. It was cheesy and immature, she said, but joined in anyway, because he really wanted to try. They stared at each other, thinking hard, but when neither could read the other's expression they burst out laughing. She buried her face in his shoulder, and minutes later they fell asleep like that, both wrapped around each other so tight an observer would think they were one and the same.
It wasn't until she died that he realised they weren't.
Gibbs walks into the bullpen shouting instructions, and Ziva springs into action. It takes him a moment to figure out that she's gently pulling him into a standing position, hands him his bag and his gun, and prods him in the direction of the elevator. When the doors ping shut, both she and Gibbs watch him worriedly, and he quickly rearranges his face to look passive instead of distraught. They reach the truck and swing out onto the highway.
The victim is a 40-year-old male Petty Officer, and his youngest daughter, just shy of four years old, found him hanging from the ceiling of her bedroom. The wife is inconsolable, hysterically crying into McGee's chest, almost doubled over from the pain. It's all the Probie can do to keep her upright.
He does not realise he's staring at her, immobilised by the sudden resurgence of grief, until Gibbs nudges him gently.
'Don't do anything,' he says quietly. 'You get to sit this one out.'
He stands there. He can't think, he can't breathe; it's like That Day all over again.
On the last good day, he made her breakfast: waffles and strawberries and a small glass of champagne to celebrate nothing in particular. She protested that she was on a diet, so he grabbed her hand and his keys and dashed out the front door. Three runs around the block later, when she'd finally stopped laughing, she asked him what on earth he thought he was doing.
He had cocked his head to the side, and said innocently, 'The calories don't exist any more. So you can't feel guilty about consuming them!'
She looked at him, a bemused expression playing on the corners of her mouth. He released his hand and said 'You're it!'
She chased him all the way upstairs.
He sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and turns to watch as Ziva squats down in front of the victim's daughter. She is brown haired and olive-skinned, and is curled up on her swing. He watches as Ziva speaks slowly to the little girl, and turns to point at him. The little girl nods, and Ziva lifts her effortlessly onto her hip. The two walk slowly over to him, and it strikes him how alike they are.
'This is Tony,' Ziva says carefully, and the little girl looks up from where she's had her head burrowed in Ziva's hair, and looks him straight in the eye. He doesn't know why, but his own eyes suddenly well up with tears.
I am Anthony DiNozzo, and I do not cry. I will not cry.
The little girl looks to Ziva. 'Did he know my daddy?'
Ziva raises her head, and looks directly at him, in time to see a single tear slip out and mark out its salty trail against his cheek. She reaches forward, brushes it away, and for a minute lets her hand rest on his cheek. Then she turns and walks back to sit on the swing, placing the little girl in her lap. He follows, and squats down next to them.
'No,' he says, slowly. 'But I'd like to.'
He isn't even surprised when he comes out of the shower that night to find Ziva dicing tomatoes on a chopping board his aunt gave him last Christmas. He raises a questioning eyebrow, and the look he receives in return tells him all he needs to know. Ziva moves on to lettuce, carrot, and capsicum, before tossing in a dressing she has brought in a container herself. She picks up the knife to wash the blade and instead slices her thumb along the sharp edge. To his utter surprise, she bursts out laughing.
She raises her thumb to his eye level, and he watches as a droplet of crimson seeps out of the tiny cut. She draws it back down, and licks the blood off, before running it under the tap.
'I've been trained as an assassin. I can kill any person I choose hundreds of different ways with this knife! And yet I still manage to give myself a paper slice!'
'Paper cut,' he says automatically. She smiles at him coyly.
And it's then he realises, two weeks from Day Zero, he may actually be healing.
The dinners keep coming, with or without Ziva. Some days he will be sitting in the living room and hear an unexpected voice behind him, and a steaming bowl of soup and the accompanying Israeli climb over the back of the couch to join him. Others he will find a container on the counter, with a post-it note of microwave instructions taped to the lid, having miraculously appeared whilst he's in the shower. It is actually a relief not to have to worry about the finer details when he's wrapped in memories of her; he will suddenly catch a whiff of her smell passing his bathroom door, and stay there savouring it for seconds, minutes, hours, before realising with a panic he is late for work. Gibbs does not say anything about this and neither does McGee, but Ziva will touch his hand as he walks past her in the bullpen, a gesture he finds comforting. They do not speak of her, but she is there making the air thick all the same.
One day, Gibbs tells the team about the fate of the murdered Petty Officer's family they dealt with four weeks ago, the one with the frightened little girl. The wife killed herself; the two daughters were palmed off to relatives, and the youngest, Lila, has just been reported as missing.
He doesn't know who initiates it, but suddenly he's holding Ziva's hand, too afraid to let go.