Pivotal Moments

Author's Note: This will eventually be a series of scenes crossing the last season or so, filling in the gaps in the information about Ziva and Michael up to and beyond Aliyah. It is, of course, my interpretation of a show I do not own *sigh.*

Chapter 3 takes place during Agent Afloat 6x02

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­September 2008: Colombia

Ziva set her backpack down beside her desk and sat, waiting for Gibbs to finish his paperwork so they could leave. She doubted she'd ever packed as quickly as today, in her eagerness to see Tony again. Gibbs rose and headed toward the bathroom. Ziva sighed with impatience.

A ding from her computer caught her attention, and she turned on the screen to check her new e-mail. Ziva tensed when she saw it was from Michael.

Ziva, I hope you're well in DC, back among people you trust. I'm being sent after a terrorist cell without even a partner for back-up, and while I know we're spread thin since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started, I wish I knew that that was the only reason I don't have support for this. Your father told me to get in contact with you if I need help setting up an American alias, so I'm doing do. I hope you're well, and that you'll call when you can to help me. ~Michael

The tension in her body remained even after she closed her email and turned off the computer. This was exactly what her father had been asking her to report: Michael's skepticism about MOSSAD. But wasn't he right to be skeptical? He was suspected of disloyalty and it was entirely possible her father was deliberately setting him up to question his orders. As long as Michael continued to follow those orders, she didn't see why he could be considered a traitor, but she too had orders to follow...

"Ziver. Let's go," Gibbs said shortly as he passed her desk on the way to the elevator, and Ziva put her worries about Michael out of her mind as she rose and followed him.

***

Worries about Tony filled her instead when she and Gibbs finally found him; the way his eyes lit up told her that he'd been isolated too long from people who could see through his facade of comedy and promiscuity. When she had a moment alone with him, she tried to say so.

"You seem different," she began.

"Taller? Hotter?" Tony suggested.

"Older," Ziva said slowly. It was true. His tan highlighted the fine lines around his eyes and mouth. She supposed his face had changed slowly over the years she'd known him, but after time apart the differences between him and the man she'd first met were more pronounced. He looked more serious, more professional—also sadder.

"Well, it's been over four months," Tony answered, a little defensively.

It wasn't as though Ziva didn't know what had changed him this way; she knew she too had been more serious these last months. "You still beating yourself up over Jenny?" she asked softly.

"Not as much as I used to," he answered, facing down the hallway toward Gibbs so that she couldn't read his expression.

"Drinking?"

"Not as much as I used to."

Ziva felt her heart ache at his tone, knowing that in the months she had been missing him, at least she had had Rebekah and then Michael nearby for distraction and support. She wished Tony had had someone. She touched his arm to get his attention. "You could have called." Tony stared straight into her face, and she didn't know how to interpret the intensity in his eyes.

Before she could question him further, Gibbs interrupted again.

When she tried to continue their conversation later, Tony cut her off in a surly tone. "You're back in DC, which is what you wanted, isn't it?"

Ziva sighed. Wasn't it? Without him, with all the worry about Michael since she'd returned, NCIS hadn't been the haven she'd remembered. "You get orders, Tony. You may not like them but you follow them. That's why they're called orders."

Tony was watching her in turn. "That's not what I asked. Something happened in Israel, didn't it? You'll say you don't want to talk about it, but your eyes won't shut up. Something you left behind? Or someone?"

She paused. When he'd said earlier that McGee had had the worst summer, she realized no one had told him about Morocco. She couldn't tell him now; she knew that he would interpret the story as somehow his fault, for screwing up and getting her sent away into danger. "You're right," she answered, "I don't want to talk about it."

***

It occurred to Ziva on the flight home, watching Tony sleeping across the aisle, that she never answered Tony's second question, about who she'd left behind. She knew she could have, but at some level she was resistant, and it startled her that she didn't know exactly why.

Instead she turned her thoughts back to Michael. She hadn't been lying when she said to Tony that orders were meant to be followed, but for the moment she couldn't bring herself to obey one that would lead to her betrayal of someone who trusted her. Surely she could keep Michael's fears to herself without endangering MOSSAD.