Making Rules
Hey kids, finally some more plot development! You should have known the fluffiness was too good to last... *We're still pre-Mother's Day*
This chapter was provoked by an interview I saw somewhere online from the Paley Festival last week, in which Michael Weatherly was asked if Tony is too immature for Ziva. The response (borrowed from some website) was, ""I take issue with the question... You're defending the Mossad assassin against an all-American guy who just wants to have cheeseburgers and french fries? I mean, what's the worst thing about Tony? He's like 10 pounds overweight? She kills people for a living! And everyone's like, well don't you think he's a little immature? It's like, well, one of them has a moral code and the other one is a complete, you know, what would she be? An anarchist? Come on! She's a female James Bond. She's a sociopath." Anyway, beyond thinking that ararchism doesn't mean what he thinks it means, I though this was an interesting point. And thus this came to pass:
The phone was ringing somewhere. He was pretty sure the phone was ringing somewhere. Then Ziva sat straight upright beside him in bed, her entire body tense, and Tony was awake.
"It's just the phone," he murmured.
She turned to him and slowly nodded.
"I'll get it." He swung his legs out of bed, flinching at the chill. Tony stumbled to the living room and grabbed the landline, wondering why Ziva even had one. "Hello?" he asked groggily.
A woman's voice burst out of the receiver, loud and angry and completely incomprehensible. After a minute Tony worked out that the first word had probably been Shalom and that whoever it was probably wasn't just crazy.
"Ziva," he called, pressing the phone to his collarbone, "It's for you."
She padded out on bare feet, swaddled now in her bathrobe, and took it from him. "Shalom?" she asked sleepily.
Tony crossed the room to flip on the light-switch. He turned, but instead of finding Ziva blinking sleepily, he saw her eyes wide in fear.
"Toda," she whispered into the phone, hanging it up. Her eyes never left Tony's.
"What is it?" he asked at once, tiredness falling away as he fed off her reaction.
Ziva sighed shakily. "We need to get to Gibbs. I can explain to both of you then."
Tony nodded his willingness and darted back into the bedroom. They dressed silently in the darkness.
*
Tony slid behind the wheel, glad Ziva wasn't fighting him for it in her state.
"Gibbs?" she said softly into her cellphone. "Good. There is an emergency. Tony and I are coming over." She paused, listening, then snapped her phone closed. "He will be waiting," she said resolutely.
Glancing at her, Tony could see that behind the tension that had seemed like fear to him before, there was sadness in Ziva's face. He reached out to squeeze her hand, and she smiled at him gratefully.
"How bad is it?" he asked softly.
She looked away. "I am not sure. I am hoping Gibbs will know."
*
Ziva paced in front of Gibbs and Tony where they sat on the couch. Her arms were folded across her body, bracing her against the trembling that was threatening to overtake her.
"Ziver?" Gibbs finally asked softly.
She turned, laced her fingers together, squeezing her palms against each other. "Alright," Ziva said softly. Then she began. "I got a call earlier, from a woman I know in Mossad." She nodded slowly at the instant alert in the men's eyes. "I cannot tell you her name, but it is not important. What she told me was that the media in Israel have gotten a hold of some information. A list of people who were assassinated with the permission of the Director but less than the full knowledge of the Israeli government."
"People you assassinated?" Tony asked quickly.
She nodded. "Some of them."
"They know you did it?" Gibbs added thoughtfully.
Ziva hesitated. "That is why she called. They do not know it was me, but—she has reason to believe that it was my father who released the information. That this is a threat to me directly." Her eyes fell to the floor. "Some of them...if he made it public, there is no way I would ever be allowed to become an American citizen."
"And if he names you for them, you might even have foreign governments or InterPol after you," Gibbs said slowly.
Ziva's eyes leapt to his as she nodded.
"What does he want?" Tony burst out, looking back and forth between them.
Gibbs shrugged slightly. "Hasn't made any demands, as far as I know from the director."
"To me either," Ziva added, shaking her head.
"Shot across the bows," Gibbs murmured. Ziva frowned, confused, but Gibbs waved it off instead of trying to explain the idiom. He glanced at a clock. "It's already nearly five. Feel like sleeping?"
They both shook their heads.
"Good. You two go into the office. Ziva, I want you to find out the names that were released and review the cases in your mind. Don't commit any of it to paper! And then start making a list of other questionable hits your father has ordered you or other agents to do in the past. Just in case."
Ziva let out a long breath, her tension easing away in the face of orders, of structure. Tony wrapped an arm around her waist as they stepped out into the cold night. She rested her cheek on his shoulder a moment for comfort.
Tony pulled her against him for a moment as they reached the car. "It'll be alright," he said firmly.
She looked up at him, tried to smile. "Thank you."
He kissed her.
*
An hour later Tony looked down the list she'd handed him, ice settling in the pit of his stomach as he scanned how many of the names she'd highlighted. "All of these?" he asked in a whisper.
She watched him intently, suddenly nervously, from her perch on her desk. "Yes," she said firmly. She paused. "Those are not all of my kills. Only the questionable ones."
The cold was reaching up to his heart. "What makes them questionable?" he asked.
Ziva could feel the emotion in his voice and tried to keep her voice level. "Some were young, teenagers who had already gotten involved in terrorist movements. Some seemed too old to warrant assassination, especially if they had reformed their lives. Others were killed for reasons that had more to do with political power than the crimes they had committed." She caught the look of revulsion on his face. "I had orders, Tony!" Her words echoed through the empty bullpen, his name trembling on the air.
He looked up at her, his entire body chilled now as he looked at her with new eyes. She had been ordered to kill, and again and again she had done it without compunction.
"What?" Ziva whispered, suddenly fearful of the distance in Tony's eyes.
Tony glanced back to the list. "I didn't know," he said softly.
Ziva swallowed hard, leaning forward to see the pages filled with streams of yellow.
He met her eyes. "I just need to figure this out for a minute."
She nodded, still nervous, took a step back. "I am going to go down to the gym and run," Ziva said tightly. "Would you like to come?"
Tony shook his head. "I'll see you later."
"Alright." Ziva looked almost scared as she turned and walked away.
He watched her go. When she'd disappeared into the stairwell, Tony glanced down and ran his finger down the three pages of the list. Nearly thirty names were highlighted. Thirty questionable names. He shuddered. If it were anyone but her...he didn't like to imagine what he'd think about someone else who'd done this. Gritting his teeth against the reality, Tony flipped the papers over and headed toward the break room. He'd need some coffee before he could face the day.
*
A case came up nearly as soon as Gibbs and McGee made it in, and Tony and Ziva saw little of each other all day except in rushed exchanges of cameras and evidence bags.
At five o'clock, released on time for once, Tony stopped in front of Ziva's desk. "We have an appointment with Dr. Harper in half an hour," he said softly.
She glanced up. "I had not forgotten." She smiled. "She will be glad that for once we have not had to cancel because of a case."
Tony nodded back, his mouth returning her grin but his eyes humorless. He waited while Ziva slipped her coat on, then led them toward the elevator.
"Wait up!" McGee called from his desk, and joined them, making small talk about the case.
Tony listened to McGee and Ziva talk on the way to the parking lot, but didn't join in. He wasn't sure what was going to come out when he finally opened his mouth.
*
In the car, Ziva tried to make a list of all the rules they'd come up with in the two weeks since their last appointment. "Have we only made 9?" she asked thoughtfully. "It seemed like more."
Tony shrugged, his eyes on the road. "We could add a few quick ones. No meat and dairy?"
Ziva smiled. "Then you could not have a cheeseburger. Or pepperoni pizza."
"That's out, then," he muttered. Tony could feel Ziva's eyes on him as they parked and headed inside, but she didn't ask anything. In the elevator, she laced her fingers through his, and her touch was so exactly what he needed that Tony's chest ached. He clutched her hand as they made their way through the labyrinth of halls to Harper's office.
The receptionist waved them in, and Eileen Harper smiled from her doorway at the sight of the two agents hand-in-hand. But she didn't miss Tony's joyless expression. "Come in," she said brightly, gesturing, and closed the door behind them.
Tony and Ziva took their usual seats opposite Harper's desk.
After the usual pleasantries, Harper smiled firmly. "Last time you were here, we talked about you making some rules. How'd you do?"
Ziva loosed Tony's hand so she could reach into her pocket and pull out the now-crumpled list she'd made in the car. With a smile, she read down the list. "No Secrets. No Stupid Risks, Gibbs—our boss—is not part of our relationship, Take Nothing for Granted, Ask Questions, Be Faithful, Do It Right or Not At All, Don't Panic, and," she turned to Tony with a blush, "If you will regret something, do not do it." Ziva squinted at him when he didn't respond to the phrase.
Harper looked them both over carefully. "That seems like a good start," she said slowly.
Tony perked up at the merest hint of disapproval in her tone. "What's missing?" he asked, slightly wounded.
She pursed her lips. "It's not that anything's missing, Tony. You two have clearly put a lot of thought into these. It's just that after my conversations with both of you about trust, I'd expected that to be on your list."
Ziva was surprised. "It did not occur to me, but Always Trust Each Other would be a good rule." She smiled self-consciously. "We have been through so much...but I do not feel I have to worry about not trusting Tony."
Harper caught how Tony's eyes dropped to his lap. "Do you agree, Tony?"
He turned, inexorably slowly, toward Ziva. "I'm not sure," he whispered. It hurt just to say the words, but far worse was the shock and pain in Ziva's face as they registered in her mind. He saw her breathe deeply to fight back sudden tears and hated Eli David more than he'd ever hated anyone in his life.
"Why not?" she whispered.
Tony closed his eyes, unable to look at her any longer. He turned away, spoke facing his knee caps. "You showed me that list this morning." He glanced up at Harper. "Of people she'd...killed, for Mossad. With permission!" he emphasized. "A long time ago." His eyes dropped again. "I always knew what you did before NCIS, I teased you about it a thousand times. But until I looked at those names, I never really knew what it meant. You went out and found those...people...and took their lives away, left their families as lost and destroyed as I was last summer." He looked toward her, bereft. "And I know you were raised to do it, I know Eli screwed with your head. But the very first day I met you, the first thing you made sure I knew was that you were Mossad and you were proud of it."
Ziva looked stricken. "You do not think I have changed since then?" she asked, her voice slightly wild.
Tony shrugged helplessly. "I know you have. But I still...I don't know what I think about all of it." He watched as she gasped for breath. The only thing he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her as hard as he could and tell her to forget everything he'd said. But all Tony could think of were the names.