He throws himself into Lila's case, ringing every relative the three-year-old has ever met, bringing up past files, birth records, dental records, any sort of records that have been related to the child. He doesn't delegate, or ask for help, but sits behind his desk with a computer mouse in one hand and the phone in the other. He is seemingly unaware of McGee, Gibbs and Ziva, who are all staring at him: Gibbs, bewildered by Tony's sudden interest in paperwork; McGee, unnerved by his superior's out-of-character behaviour; Ziva, cautiously observant. He takes the call he's been waiting for, grabs his jacket and heads to the elevator.
The aunt, Matilda, has absolutely no clue what could have happened to her niece; she tells him that she took Lila for ice-cream, and when she turned around, she was nowhere to be found. He asks to see her room, but it is surprisingly stark for a small child's bedroom; a plain white single bed, one teddy, and a wardrobe standing in the corner are all that occupy the small space. The aunt comes to stand beside him.
'We haven't fixed her room up yet; Lil wanted to paint in pink.' She shakes her head and stares at her feet. He feels a rush of empathy, puts his arm around her shoulder and she leans into contact, and for a minute, the two stand like that, each feeling their own burdens. Suddenly she straightens up, smiles at him, and leaves the room.
He takes swabs of the things Lila might have touched, seals them, and leaves hurriedly. He breezes past the team, McGee and Gibbs looking through the records he pulled earlier, and heads straight to Abby's lab.
When the elevator dings open, he hears hushed voices behind the equipment. He hesitates, just for a second, and then continues to plough through the door. Ziva and Abby look up, both looking thoroughly shocked to see him there.
'Evidence,' he states awkwardly.
There is a silence in which Ziva and Abby look at each other so heavily he feels the air become unnaturally dense, and he realises with a start they must have been talking about him. In that second, in that instant, he feels his blood surge with anger.
'Thanks Tony!' Abby chimes, standing up and moving to take the swabs away from him.
He snatches it out of her grasp. He has not felt this since she passed away and he is sure as hell that no one will understand if he doesn't himself. He has felt depressed, upset, wracked by grief, but anger; well, this is new. It ripples through him like shockwaves; his jaw clenches, his fists curl, and he takes a step away.
And he yells. He yells and yells and yells. He yells about being whispered about; he yells because he is sick of being weak; he yells about betrayal and anger and Lila. He yells because no one is feeling this with him; because she is not here to stop him. He yells until his voice begins to hurt and his body begins to shake and when he finally cannot speak another word, he turns on his heel and marches out of the lab, pushing a whole row of test tubes onto the floor with a satisfying crash. His body is electric with anger.
The elevator dings and begins to close, but a slim arm feeds itself through the crack and the doors open again. He glares at her as the elevator reveals Ziva standing there, wild fire playing in her eyes. She gets in, the doors close, and in one movement she shoves him up against the wall. He is so taken aback by how strong she is that he doesn't even try to retaliate.
They fought once. He told her that he didn't like strawberry ice cream one night without thinking, and she immediately accused him of lying when he told her that her homemade strawberry ice-cream was delicious. A trivial matter, but they fought until her eyes brimmed with tears and his voice became so loud her next-door neighbours yelled at him to shut up through the wall. He slammed the front door behind him and went off into the night.
When they went out a couple of days later, it wasn't brought up. They acted as though nothing had happened, and he considered it a strength of their relationship not to hold grudges.
It wasn't until they'd kissed goodnight that he realised he didn't feel in the least bit guilty.
She takes a step back and flicks the emergency switch, and he stays pinned to the wall at his own will. She stands against the door, so that she is directly opposite him.
He half expects her to pull out her gun and shoot him, but all she does is look at him. There's anger there, and a mixture of emotions also that he cannot pinpoint; but this is Ziva and it's in her nature to mask them.
'Do you think you're suffering this alone, Tony?'
Yes. No. I don't know.
She lifts her chin a fraction, and he can actually feel the fury radiating out of her. He immediately increases his anger tenfold, as though she's competition.
'She cared for you, yes? Worried about you, even? More than anyone else ever will?'
Immediately the air tastes sour. We do not talk about this, Zeevah. That was an unspoken rule from Day Zero.
She hesitates, for a moment, and he is momentarily caught out by this rare display of vulnerability. Then she whips around, flips the emergency switch back, and turns to glare at him with such menace he shrinks ever so slightly into the wall.
'Did you ever stop to wonder why you haven't made dinner in a month?'
She steps into the bullpen and disappears up to MTAC before he's even registered what she's said. He stands for a moment, dumbfounded.
And realises that his anger has been joined by guilt; two emotions that are conflicting so violently in his chest that when the elevator dings shut again, he slides down the wall, puts his hands over his face and cries.