A/N: This chapter was inspired by the song Everything by Lifehouse. Listen to it while you read this, it makes it so much better! You can find it on YouTube—it's hugely popular. I loved writing this chapter, but it was really hard to do. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it!

It was dark. She couldn't see. Her eyes were open, as wide as she thought they possibly could open, but despite the fourteen hours she had been in that room, tied to a very uncomfortable metal chair, she couldn't see a thing.

Ziva's wrists burned as she tried to wriggle out of the rope that had been expertly tied around them, and a second and third securing her ankles to the legs of the chair, which was bolted to the floor. The room smelled of a black mold which was no doubt covering the walls.

Worst of all, it was silent. It was quieter than the silence of Ducky's autopsy. No rat, no moth dare scurry across the room for fear of disturbing the undoubted presence that loomed outside of the structure she was captive inside.

Her heart had sunk long ago, deep into her. Nothing had worked out the way it was supposed to. Nothing in her life worked out the way she thought it would. Nothing had gone according to plan, nothing had happened the way it was supposed to.

She wasn't supposed to be captured by terrorists.

Mossad wasn't supposed to refuse to listen to her, the only Mossad liason in the United States.

Azari wasn't supposed to coerce her into faking her own death.

She wasn't even supposed to be weak enough to be coerced.

Ari wasn't supposed to give into the temptations only Hamas could offer.

A sister isn't supposed to kill her brother.

Tali wasn't supposed to die.

Her mother wasn't supposed to die.

She wasn't supposed to become an assassin.

She wasn't supposed to fall in love with him.

Ziva shut her eyes as her chin fell to her chest. Never in her life had she felt more defeated, more inadequate.

The number of times she had chided herself for falling for such a man… There were too many. He was absolutely ridiculous. He was childish. He was crazy. He talked more about movies than he did himself, surprisingly. And yet, somehow, despite all of that, she had fallen in love with him. She accidentally found a way to see through it.

There in her own dark room, she let a tear slip as the memories of the past five months, past five years, the past 34 years of her life flooded her mind, inducing a physical pain deep within. It was a pain she knew well, one she had learned to ignore. It was the pain of guilt. Of failure. Of desperation.

All her life, she had been trained to set aside these feelings, to move on to the next thing, to focus on the mission. But now, there was no "next thing", no mission, nothing to focus on but her aloneness. She had no one. Nothing.

Nothing but him.

Oh, it was the look in his eyes as she stepped out of the car that gave her any reason to hope. The familiar smile on his face, the one that was real, not the one he gave every person who walked by. It was a smile few people ever saw. She was one of them.

For a moment, she smiled, remembering those times, so happy, so right. The stakeout filled with pranks on one another. Seeing him again, aboard the Seahawk. Halloween. Even just having each other's back as they interrogated suspects and approached dangerous situations. He had always been there for her. He stuck by her, through everything.

Almost.

Jeanne bolted everything up. It wasn't her fault.

"You know I saw this on Cinemax once," he said. She had followed him into the men's room. After several days of hell, he still wouldn't talk to her. She knew something was wrong.

"So what happens now?"

"They play some funky music and you say, 'I have been watching you from afar,'"

"Well I have been watching you from afar, Tony, which is why I know how much you cared for Jeanne,"

Tony chuckled as he tried to clean his shirt from the jelly doughnut. "Your timing is impeccable, Ziva,"

"And how much it hurt when she left," she added." So. What happens now?"

"I said I'm fine," he insisted, trying to move away from her.

"You are not fine. You are still deeply troubled," Ziva replied, searching his face.

"Even if I was, this bothers you because..."

"Because you are my partner!" Oh, and so much more. But this wasn't the time. " And because you made a grace error in judgement by falling in love with that girl,"

"If this is a pep talk, I give you a D-,"

"And right now it is very clear that you are still hanging onto her!"

"I see the confusion. These are called 'feelings,' Ziva,"

"Feelings you need to let go,"

"That easy, huh?"

ITony, even if by some miracle Jeanne did forgive you, would you be willing to be Tony DiNardo full time, to leave your entire life for her!?" To leave me behind? "You did not think this through,"

"Didn't you tell me the heart wants what it wants?"

"No, actually I didn't"

"Well it does,"

"Well it shouldn't," Oh, how well she knew this.

"Really? This coming from the woman who fell in love with the dead man walking?"

She almost felt shocked at his words, hurt piercing through her heart. "You crossed the line, Tony,"

"Oh, I crossed the line?!" he called as the door closed behind her.

And yet, in the end, he came back. Knowing that… it was what kept her hoping that someday, he'd find her, he'd rescue her from that cold house of chrome and glass that belonged to her father. The one where the piano echoed the aches of her heart, much like the mold-covered building she was in now did.

This echo had followed her her entire life, that is, until she met him.

He always came back.

Always.