Pivotal Moments

Author's Note: This chapter follows Cloak, but is decidedly more Tony/Ziva friendship than UST. Ziva questions her loyalties more when she finds out Gibbs sent her and Tony into danger without all the facts.

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December 2008: DC

In the instant that she woke, Ziva froze. Unconsciousness was becoming too frequent a visitor. She played back her last memories: sneaking in, the closet with Tony, getting what they needed and nearly out—the fight, the butt of a rifle hitting Tony and then presumably her. She could feel the cool weight of metal around her wrists behind her back. She was sitting—on a rug? The air was conditioned and she could hear it coming from vents somewhere. Certainly not a typical interrogation set-up, then. But she could hear something clicking. The familiar sound of a knife opening and closing. She'd have to open her eyes to find out more. So she did.

A middle-aged man was sitting across the room from her. When he saw her eyes open, he focused on her. "Young lady. Can you speak?"

She looked around further. Tony was nowhere to be seen.

"Apologies for the shackles, we were worried about your state of mind."

"You were right to be," she snapped, "where is Tony?"

"Remain calm," the man said, condescendingly. "I promise you and Agent DiNozzo will soon be reunited." He took out a cigar, talked about it a while, but Ziva was focused on the room, on the tension in the cuffs, on the likelihood that he'd leave her alone long enough to escape them.

A knock on the door drew her attention, and a guard entered, announcing Vance, and for the second time in recent memory, Ziva felt the sinking sensation of losing faith in those in command.

Tony entered and she gasped in relief. "Tony, what's going on?"

He knelt to release her. "I am not entirely sure," he answered, his tone revealing the same betrayal she felt.

The sight of his injuries riled her further; it was one thing to have information withheld that might have protected her, but Tony—

Tony confirmed her fear. "They knew we were coming."

"They were in on it, too?"

"I don't know about too—apparently," Tony sighed in pain, "we didn't get the full picture."

Ziva's mind whirled with anger. They had done no more than follow orders, been loyal, and they'd been set up. Her mood only darkened as Tony identified the man with her earlier as the Secretary of the Navy. "Someone's lying to us," Tony said, and Ziva nodded tightly. There had better be answers, and soon.

She was still angry an hour later when they arrived back at her apartment. Gibbs had told them next to nothing and sent them home to bed like children. "There is no good reason that we could not know. We would have been more useful, and I at least am a good actress," Ziva ranted to Tony as they went inside.

"Hey, me too," Tony came back.

"An actress?" Ziva smirked.

He rolled his eyes, her humor not overcoming his frustration. "You know what I mean. It must have been Lee, and if they wanted me to feed her more or less information than I did over pizza, they only had to ask. It's not as if lying to Lee would have bothered us."

Ziva chuckled as she crossed the living room to the bathroom and passed Tony a tube of antibiotic ointment and a box of band-aids. Next she wet a hand towel and began wiping at the dried blood on her face, then Tony's.

"It was Lee, right?" Tony asked.

"Gibbs did seem to confirm that it was someone close to us, and she is the obvious choice," Ziva responded, settling a bandage across Tony's eyebrow.

"Do you have any beer?" he asked.

Ziva rolled her eyes. "We may both have concussions. I, at least, am too tired not to sleep, but no alcohol."

Tony shrugged and cocked his head as she started tending to her own injuries, still puzzling out the situation. "What could possibly be gained by keeping us in the dark?" he asked harshly.

She had no answer. They stared at each other, turning the question over in their minds.

The phone rang.

Ziva jumped and dashed back into to the living room.

The caller ID was a foreign number, so she answered in Hebrew. "Shalom."

"Shalom, Ziva," Michael answered.

Ziva gestured to Tony with her head that she was taking the phone in the other room, and walked into her bedroom.

"How are you?" she asked, still speaking Hebrew.

"Well," Michael answered amiably. "Nothing to report, I just thought I'd call and see how your day way."

She found herself smiling, though the expression faded as she answered. "It was a bad one. We got sent into what we thought was a war game, but we were pawns in the game, not admirals as we'd been told. My boss lied to us from the start, and he's the most trustworthy man I've known—it's been quite a frustrating day."

"Of course," Michael answered, consoling, "This is how I've come to feel about Mossad—that orders are never as straightforward as they appear, that we must question and evaluate them for ourselves before giving our obedience."

Michael's words stopped her cold, engendering instant rejection, but as she opened her mouth to say so, Ziva found that what he'd said also made total sense to her. Instead of discussing the matter further, she moved on, rambling about their plans, their camaraderie as they set up the op. "I suppose the best part of our day was getting into the facility—we planned it out to the slightest detail, coming up with impossible things to throw around for the staff there beforehand, manticores, ghosts...the confusion on the man's face when we all said unicorns..." she laughed.

"I'm not sure I get it," Michael answered, confused, but she couldn't find the words to explain.

"Never mind. I had better go, though, I have to calm my partner down. He's still angry over this."

"Isn't it late there?" Michael asked, his tone tinged with jealousy.

"We just finished the mission," Ziva responded defensively. "I have to go. I'll talk to you soon," she added, softening her voice.

"Goodnight then, Ziva," Michael said, still tense but sincere.

"Goodnight."

She returned to the living room, setting the phone back in its cradle.

Tony was laying on the sofa, mellowed by injury and exhaustion. "Who was that?"

"My father," Ziva lied even before considering her response. There would be too many questions if she told the truth. "There's no saying no when he wants to talk."

Tony nodded. "Mine's like that, too." His eyes were falling shut.

"You'd better sleep here," Ziva said, crossing to the living room closet and taking out a blanket.

"Alright," Tony said, kicking his shoes off onto the floor. He glanced at his watch as he set it on the table and groaned as he looked at the time. "We have to be at work in five hours."

Ziva shrugged, smiled. "You know what they say about well-rested NCIS agents."

Tony raised an eyebrow.

"Like unicorns," she whispered animatedly, and was rewarded with a laugh. She threw him a pillow, which Tony caught and tucked beneath his head.

"Goodnight, Ziva," Tony said as she rolled off and started to drift off."

"Goodnight," she answered for the second time that night. As she finished cleaning herself up in the bathroom and finally crawled into bed, she continued to puzzle over Michael's words. Her whole life had been about following orders, but since Ari died she'd questioned them more and more—from Mossad. Was it even necessary to question Gibbs?

***

The whole next day seemed to be about keeping Tony from exploding with the anger that returned as soon as she roused him, earlier than he'd like, from restless sleep on her couch. She was angry too, but it was Tony who seemed determined to blow his career over feeling betrayed once, and Ziva couldn't sympathize with such foolishness.

By mid-morning, she could no longer contain him, but she followed him into the elevator anyway, trying to settle him down.

"I like the job, I don't like the politics," Tony snapped. "I wasn't kidding about that part earlier."

Finally Ziva was exasperated. "If you had had some military training then perhaps you would have learned to follow orders," she answered angrily.

"What, like you? We were given a direct order not to engage. I recall that you were the first one to throw a punch." He raised the volume of the conversation further.

"It was a reflex."

"Hm, really? Then what happened after? Last thing I remember before the lights went out was you kimbo-slicing through a room full of guards. Was that a reflex?" Tony was yelling now, so Ziva did the same.

"Yes! It was. Gun shot went off, I saw you--" She cut herself off. He'd pushed her to something she hadn't even admitted to herself: her loyalty to Tony outweighed her blind obedience to orders. The realization sent her mind reeling.

"I'm tired of pretending," Tony said wearily.

His words summed up her feelings, even if she couldn't give the feelings names. "So am I."

Tony stalked out of the elevator with another irritated remark, but Ziva didn't move. She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to compose her face. A dozen things were in her mind, though Tony realized none of them. She felt like she was pretending all the time now, pretending to her father that she and Michael didn't doubt him, pretending to Michael that she shared his affections, pretending even to Tony, since she couldn't tell him what she'd gotten involved in. But now, here, she had found the make-believe that defined her life: Ziva David, perfect soldier. She wasn't that person, hadn't been in a while if she admitted it. But without that, she didn't know who she was.

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A/N The continuation, following Dagger, should be up tomorrow. Hope you like!