A/N: Hello there everybody; I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies for the world's longest update, but I nearly went crazy editing this chapter. I've tried to keep a neutral chapter, and it's a little shorter than all the others, but fingers crossed you won't be disappointed. Please pretty please hit me with constructive criticism if you feel the need, I'm absolutely determined not to let this fic take a dive. Anyway, I'll stop being so neurotic, you stop listening to me dither, and together we can progress with the story at a slightly faster rate. Deal?
Thanks to all those lovely lovely people who reviewed.
The body isn't Lila's, which is an interesting combination of both the comforting and horrifying as now they are investigating two cases. Gibbs wins jurisdiction after a brief battle with Fornell, and Tony throws himself harder into the brick wall this case is becoming.
The burnt corpse belongs to Annabelle Garcia, daughter of another marine, Petty Officer Anthony Garcia, who is so distraught over the death of his daughter he flings himself into Ziva's arms halfway through the interrogation and sobs into her shoulder. Despite himself and his empathy for the man, Tony tries desperately not to laugh as Ziva awkwardly embraces the man who stands at least two feet both taller and wider than herself. She turns to glare at Tony's derisive snort and he sobers himself and remains quiet. After five minutes of steady sobbing, he resigns himself to the fact that Petty Officer Garcia is incapable of continuing and returns to the bullpen to review Lila's case.
No relatives claim to have seen Lila since her mother's funeral and even her aunt is in the clear after careful surveillance of the CCTV reveals her honest mistake. He squints at the file as though it will reveal a surprise answer if he concentrates hard enough and is hardly shocked when it does no such thing. He leans back in his chair, clicks his mouse a few times and stares at the ceiling, wishing desperately that life was simpler.
She didn't know why he was hurting; he could hardly say that he'd been investigating the corpse of an admiral who had been hacked to pieces in his own bed, so he fabricated some story about a student who, no matter how hard he'd tried, could not possibly pass Tony's film course. She rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles and told him that it was not his fault the student couldn't pass, that there was nothing he could try that he wasn't trying already. He smiled a scratchy smile against her cheek, pretended he felt better and went about making dinner. She watched him contentedly for a while, and then slipped off into the shower.
His only thought while slicing potatoes was how wrong they both were.
Ziva walks through the bullpen with Petty Officer Garcia and escorts him into the elevator. When the doors close, she ducks down behind her desk and rummages through her drawer, finally re-emerging with some paper towel to wipe the saltwater tears of the Petty Officer off her cream shirt. The fabric has already gone see-through and is plastered to her shoulder, a pearl-pink strap just visible against her skin. He watches her, oddly fixated by her damp shoulder, as she dabs at the fabric and curses softly in Hebrew.
They'll have to bring Petty Officer Garcia back for questioning; his daughter's death is the only similar case on file and Lila has now been missing for more than two weeks. He remembers how she coped when he asked her questions; how she curled her tiny fists into Ziva's hair; how she stared wide-eyed as her father's corpse was brought out of the house.
How much she looked like Ziva.
He feels somewhat deadened; Gibbs is at the end of his tether, spending hours into the night pouring over triple-checked forensic evidence and searching through any parallels in the two cases. McGee has buttoned up; running god knows what in the database for hours at a time. He has no idea what Ziva's doing, but he does know she watches him as she natters away on the phone in one of her many languages. And he questions relatives about a girl hardly any of them know.
McGee comes into the bullpen holding four coffees and a Caf-Pow! which he sets down gingerly at each person's desk. Ziva absent-mindedly picks hers up by the lid and the entire contents spills down her shirt, soaking straight through to her skin. She is up like a shot, curses in a language he can definitely understand and makes a few desperate and futile wipes at her shirt with the paper towel.
He snorts. She turns to look at him, and his grin widens.
'Great view, Zeevah,' he says, indicating her now transparent blouse, which earns him a glare that would cut glass.
'Keep dreaming, DiNozzo,' she replies, but he knows her well enough to know that she's only a whisker away from laughing with him.
Still chuckling, and without thinking, he pulls open his desk drawer and hands her a shirt he keeps for emergencies like this one.
She stares at him for a minute, a look of total surprise on her face. He stands for a moment, confused by her reaction, and then it slowly dawns on him that he's just handed her a large male shirt to a woman who could not be more than a size 6.
'Thankyou Tony, but I might stick to my own size, yes?'
She nudges his shoulder as she brushes past him, but there's a subtle smile turning up the corners of her mouth, so he stops mentally kicking himself and instead smiles good-naturedly at his own mistake. She returns moments later in a black shirt she reserves for the same purposes as his, and she smiles coyly at him from her desk.
McGee returns from giving Abby her Caf-Pow! and sits behind his desk, picking up a doughnut as he does so. Ziva taps at her keyboard, but her eyes are on McGee, which in turn makes Tony glance between the two curiously. He looks to Ziva with a question on his lips but she silences him with a look. There is half a heartbeat's pause; and McGee whips round and glares at Tony.
'You put toothpaste in my doughnut?'
He didn't, but he sure as hell knows who did. He walks over to the desk where she's trying and failing to hide a grin so wide he can see the caps on her molars. She looks up at him, biting hard on her cheek.
'You have learnt well, my child,' he says dramatically in his best Zulu voice, and does a mock bow, holding his hands together as though in prayer. Her grin widens, his grin widens, and before either of them can do anything about it, they have collapsed in fits of hysterical laughter.
They laugh because of McGee; because the coffee always tastes so damn awful; because he got drunk; because he cannot fix this; because she almost wore his shirt; because the emotion, rooted deep between them, has to escape somehow. They attract attention from bewildered teams all over the room, which instead of sobering them makes them laugh even harder. They laugh and laugh and laugh, collapsing into each other's embrace, shaking so hard McGee begins to worry about their mental health. When breath has been caught and composure maintained, they sink down into their respective chairs, Ziva grinning like a Cheshire cat, him revelling in the fact he still has the capacity to laugh like an idiot.
Gibbs breezes through the bullpen.
'Gear up. We've got another body.'
And just like that, six words they've heard a million times change the landscape.