Within 5 minutes of NCIS arriving at the abandoned warehouse that was once used as DC's downtown bus depot, Larry Wilson has shot and killed Daniel Murphy in the back of the head, the 60 year bus driver. Has flashed open his jacket, revealing a detonator that shields his entire chest, yet has also let 7 of the 8 children go. His daughter sitting by a side window as her father paces the alleyway of the bus, a shotgun in one hand.
They had snuck in through a back entrance, Gibbs directing both McGee and Tony into different sections of the building to cover all possible areas of entry and exit, while settling himself on a stair well, perched in a corner overlooking the ground, preparing his rifle.
It takes Larry Wilson within 10 minutes of NCIS arriving to become aware of their presence. For a SWAT team to arrive surrounding the perimeter via Gibbs' instructions. For McGee to relay from Abby that the detonator attached to Larry's chest was mechanically wired to the underbelly of the bus, creating a dead man switch, making it foolproof. If they killed Larry, they'd kill Kasey too.
And for Larry Wilson to step out of the bus and start making threats.
"I KNOW YOU ARE OUT THERE…I WILL SHOOT HER…IN THE HEAD, IF YOU DON'T COME OUT." He roars and it echoes around the cemented brick walls so that no matter where your standing, hiding, you can hear it.
From where he's been standing, Tony is in direct eye line of the little girl, tears matting her cheeks as she sits terrified, flicking her eyes between her father and Tony's face. He tries to make eye contact with her when when he can, barely smile at her when he can.
It's silent for too long and it flares Larry's agitation as he flinches around, clutching his gun to his chest. He pauses a moment before stepping back on the bus, clamoring to the back of it. He snatches a piece of his daughters collar, pulling her off the seat and down off the bus steps.
"I MEAN IT, I WILL KILL HER, RIGHT NOW IF I DON'T SEE YOUR HANDS."
His daughter is shaking so badly that the only thing keeping her up is the hold her father barely has on her shirt and it takes Tony all of 30 seconds to rip out his ear wig, reposition his gun and come around the wall he was ducking behind with his hands up.
"Okay, okay, I'm out Larry. You don't have to shoot her."
"Let her go, Larry." Tony starts, stepping forwards, his hands still raised in the air. Up close he can see the sweat dripping off of Larry's face, can see the way he swallows and then breathes and then swallows again.
"Shut up. Don't tell me what to do." Larry turns his back slightly so that he's facing his daughter, bending down to meet her face, "Okay baby, back on the bus."
It makes hot acid burn it's way up into Tony's throat the way Larry gently brushes her chin, tears and snot just dropping off of it and he needs to swallow down the bile, threatening it's way up. His daughter just continues to cry, standing there and Larry running out of patience pushes her roughly towards the doorway until she's stumbling her way back on just to get out off his reach.
It takes every single piece of restraint, every single piece of desperate restraint for Tony not to think of Ziva, to not take in her face, sink into those eyes. To not let himself leave this place and be with her where she was, safe as he looks up at Kasey, slumped against a window, barely conscious.
"How many more of you are there?" Larry demands, waving his gun around in the air.
"It's just me Larry, so we can talk, just the two of us and I can help you get what you want, we'll figure it out together." Tony holds his hands out cautiously and creeps forward, one tiny little step at a time. He knows if he moves the slightest bit out of line, he's done.
Larry seems to soften, his shoulders sagging and he opens and closes his mouth several times before he can find the words, "They…don't understand, nobody understands."
Tony takes a couple slow deep breaths, "I understand Larry, so talk to me, let me help you."
"You…you can't help me, it's too late. Too late. It's been done, it's too late." Larry stutters, appearing to completely forget for a moment where he was, what he was holding and the tiny little human being just above his head who he was doing it all for.
"It's too late. It's too late." He repeats it again, pacing back and forth a couple feet and Tony uses the opportunity to take a couple steps forward.
Larry stops pacing.
"ENOUGH!" He shouts, his eyes piercing through Tony's, his face almost contorted.
"I risked everything, did everything I was supposed to do and this is the thanks I get…she abandons me, she leaves me. They took her away from me." He cries and bends his elbows, clamping his arms over his ears, rocking back on the balls of his feet.
Tony stays where he is, adrenaline pumping through him faster than he can rationally think. There weren't very many options for him, his resources low, his obstacles higher, other than for him to risk stepping closer, gauging Larry further which could either fuel him enough to get his daughter back down off the bus, or to shoot Tony.
Tony looks back up to the girl and the thought is so instant that Ziva is wrapping herself around him, clawing her way up his back when he opens his mouth, looks back to Larry and takes another step forward. There weren't options. There were only solutions.
"Look at your daughter, Larry. You don't want to hurt her anymore than you have."
Tony knows he's said the wrong thing almost immediately, Larry's face crumbling, his body convulsing forward, "I've done nothing but protect her, love her!" He screams and Tony watches as Kasey, now alert, presses her face against the glass and begins to cry loudly, covering her ears with both hands.
"I know you do, so you wouldn't want to hurt her." Tony says evenly, keeping both palms out and low.
"How do you know what I want? Did your wife leave you, your child call some other bastard her father." He asks, jutting the gun towards Tony's chest.
Ziva. Ziva. Ziva. He can feel her fingers across the nape of his neck, slipping under his shirt, her stomach against his back. He hadn't even felt the baby kick yet.
"No I don't Larry but I know what it's like to lose everything you thought you had…I don't have a kid yet but my wife, she's pregnant. We're going to have a baby Larry, you don't want to take another child away from her father. "
"She's…she's having a baby?" Larry's face softens, his eyebrows lowering.
Tony can only nod, every single part of him suddenly weak.
"What's her name?"
He thinks, for only half a second, about lying but her name is already rising up his throat, sticking against the sides of his mouth, that constant steady beat pounding against the skin.
"Her name is Ziva."
"And she will shoot you in the back if you do not drop your weapon."
Later, when he will let himself think about it, he will ask himself, repeatedly, why he did not move faster, think faster, act faster. But with his heart suddenly too far stuffed into his throat so that breathing is impossible, his vision blurry as Ziva's voice echoes all around him, he can't seem to grasp a hold of her face and that makes him not be able to do a thing at all.
Several things seem to happen at once.
He's being dragged, arms locked around his own in a vice like grip, backwards, further away until he's half thrown half pushed into an empty room just off a corridor.
"The girl. We got the girl. Gibbs, he has a shot." McGee quickly musters, deploring Tony with his face, having to close the door with his entire body.
But none of it matters, doesn't mean shit because Ziva was still standing on the other side of the wall, Ziva, with all her fire and light, with her passion, her intensity, her kindness, her selflessness that sometimes bordered on stupidity.
He can't remember if he told her he loved her that morning, if he felt her stomach, if he just let himself look at her for a moment longer. She was standing less than 3 feet away and he could not do nothing.
"Don't make me hurt you, Tim." And as McGee looks into Tony's darkening eyes, completely detached from reason, reality, from anything other than what was outside the door, he knows he would, he absolutely would.
McGee doesn't move and Tony shoves him backwards, slamming him against the door.
"I swear to god McGee, if you do not let me go, I'll put a bullet in your head."
Tony pulls out the gun stuffed into his back pocket and reloads it in seconds, forcing his hand straight to keep it from shaking.
But McGee doesn't miss a beat and only blocks the entrance further, "Shoot me then."
Tony hesitates and drops his arm and takes a couple steps back, panting heavily, shuddering with his unbelievable anguish, helplessness, not seeing a thing but her face. How dare you do this to me, he silently screams, I need you. You're carrying our baby and I need you.
And McGee lets out a shaky breath as Tony reaches for the nearest thing, needing something, anything, a chair and throws it so hard against the wall that it crumbles.
"Your husband seems to be quite upset." Larry says calmly as he faces Ziva with a smug grin on his face, her arm holding the gun not wavering an inch from his chest.
Though she's only thinking of Tony and how he had looked, how McGee had to drag him back with both feet along the ground and how he had stared desperately for her, her eyes narrow, and a familiar burn of energy pumps through her as though she were 19 again.
"He's not my husband."
And just as she triggers her gun and Larry pulls his hand up, a bullet rings clean through the air and shoots Larry in the back of the head. He drops to his knees and then to his face, inches away from where she stands.
Ziva can't even find Gibbs' location before mere seconds pass and the bomb, rigged to Larry's body, explodes violently from the bus. The force of it smacking Ziva against a wall as she moves for cover into a side corridor, scraping the skin off her arm along the bricks.
She thinks she can hear her name being screamed amongst falling pieces, thickening flames of heat, as she very slowly finds the floor and fades out.