Ziva steps out of the Mossad morgue with her eyes ringed in red, lips pressed into a thin, red line. As she shuts the door, through the glass over her shoulder, she sees Tony. His arm's in a sling, game face on, and even though raw, cold anger bubbles up inside of her, she still feels that swooping sensation in her stomach and her hold on the door handle tightens.

She turns to him, mirrors his stance. "I had no choice." He tells her.

"That's a lie." She's monotonous in her words, eyes on his.

"Why would I lie to you, Ziva?" He demands, eyes narrowed against Israel's hot sun, yet she can feel the wind chill seeping through her blouse and jeans.

"To save your worthless ass." She snaps at him, advancing toward him.

He does the same. "From who? Vance? Mossad?" Even though she's about a foot and a half shorter than him, he can feel the anger radiating off her in waves, and it scares him a bit – she can see it in his eyes.

"You jeopardised your entire career, and for what?" She enunciates each word carefully – her father had rebuked her earlier on her habit of slurring words, something she had picked up on in the States. She doesn't expect an answer, but he gives her one anyway.

"For you." She draws still, but he pushes on. "He was playing you, Ziva."

She hates the loving tone that he affects, and she snarls at him, "For some reason you felt it was your job to protect me?" She wants to laugh at the incredulity of it all.

"I did what I had to do." Tony's calmness is infuriating her, even more than she already is.

"You killed him."

"If I hadn't then you'd be having this conversation with him, but maybe that's the way you'd prefer it." The assumption stings her already wounded pride.

"Perhaps I would!"

"Okay, why don't you just get this out?" He hisses, stepping toward her, invading her personal space. "You wanna take a punch, take a swing? Get it out of your system! Go ahead! Do it!" He shouts – she flinches at his proximity, but doesn't back down. She hates him; oh she hates him for what he did to Michael. But she hates him even more for giving her such an opening. Had it been about five years ago, she would have taken the punch. She was tempted to now. But all she does is regard him with cool eyes, the only sign of her anger her flaring nostrils.

After a small pause where they glare at each other, Ziva murmurs, "Be careful Tony, because much like Michael I only need one." She can see the realization now starting to dawn on him – he's pissed off a trained Mossad agent and he draws back at the fact that she may just flip and kill him with her gun.

"And that's what you're really angry about, isn't it?" He curls his lips back in a snarl. "That's what's bothering you. It's not that he's dead. It's that your Mossad boyfriend got his ass kicked by a chump like me."

"You took advantage of him." She says defiantly.

"He attacked me, what was I supposed to do?" She suddenly flies at him, knocks him to the ground, ignores the thwack of his head hitting the pavement and she hangs over him, her hands pinning his shoulders down. He groans.

"You saw a glass table, you pushed him back, you dropped him on it. He was impaled in the side by a shard of glass, bloody… gasping for air!" She snarls, feeling that pent up rage reach a boiling point.

"I guess you read my report." His sarcasm only infuriates her further.

"I memorised it!" She howls, tears already leaking from her cold eyes. "You could have left it at that, you could have walked away, but no, you led him up!" She whips out her gun, pushes the barrel into his chest. "You put four in his chest!"

"You weren't there." Tony snaps at her.

She shifts the gun to his knee. "You could have put one in his leg!"

"You…weren't…there." He repeat, slower, and she's quite tempted to pull the trigger then and there, on the cold, hard concrete of the Mossad courtyard and watch the life bleed out of him like she watched the life bleed out from one of the few men she had ever loved.

"But I should have been!" A small voice whispers in her mind, what should you have been there for, Ziva? Tony or Michael? Which side would you have taken? That was the problem. She didn't know. Tony stares at her, and she sees comprehension dawn in his dark, icy blue eyes.

"You loved him." He murmurs. Ziva hesitates, and then answers in a tone that matches his:

"I guess I'll never know." She pushes herself off him, using his injured arm as support, ignoring his hiss of pain. She marches off, opens the door to the morgue, and with one look back at her partner, lying on the ground, trying to gather his thoughts, she feels all of her anger ebb away. She slams the door.

When the plane is set to depart the next day, Ziva watches Tony and Director Vance get on the plane, and she makes up her mind, right then and there. When she goes over to Gibbs, he takes one look at her and knows exactly what she's going to say. And she's pretty sure he knows exactly why. He leaves her with a kiss to her cheek, and as she watches the plane take off, something new settles into her stomach. It's not hatred or anger or sadness for Michael. It suddenly feels, for just a moment, that she's watching the only people who have ever cared for her slip away.

Then her father touches a hand to her neck, and she turns away from the vanishing craft, wiping away the single tear that she has let slip past. After only seconds of her decision, she regrets it.

And then, her second question is answered from the day before, when she was fighting with Tony.

Which side would you choose?

There was only one side that she could choose, no matter what happened.

And she had just watched him fly away.

the ending wasn't my finest moment, but I suppose this is okay. Thank you to the two people who have reviewed - one has reviewed three times, each time saying thank you for it, so thank you very much :). This was the scene in Aliyah when Tony confronts Ziva about Rivkin, and the acting was absolutely superb in this scene. Cote and Michael have such great chemistry in every scene they do together, and I really love it. When he yells at her to take a punch, it was such a powerful moment that I almost burst into tears. It was fantabulouis. Please review!
no white horse for me