A/N: For those of you wondering, this story has no connection to any of my other Tiva fics. Everyone's relationships are back to square one.
Gibbs screeched his car to a halt outside the 7th Street Market and slammed the transmission into park. Beside him, Tony was on the phone with Metro Police, repeating the address of the store for the third time with impressive calm. They had been the only two people in the office when Ziva's text had come in, and the only conversation they'd bothered to have with each other since they ran for the car had been monosyllabic orders and acknowledgements.
The Metro dispatch center, on the other hand, appeared to need extensive explanations.
"No," Tony told the dispatcher icily, "I did not say 'Eastern Market'. I said 'Seventh Street Market.' Again. What? No! Just..." He glanced from Gibbs to the shuttered front of the store. "Just get someone here. I've got a federal officer being robbed! Now!" Not waiting for the dispatcher's newest round of protests, he flipped the phone closed and dropped it into the car's cup-holder. "How do you want to do this, Boss?"
"There a back door?" Gibbs asked, looking around.
"Yeah, Boss. Delivery door's off the alley in -"
He was interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. They both froze, staring at each other, and then in unison reached for the car doors. "Take the back," Gibbs ordered, unholstering his weapon as he ducked out of the driver's seat.
Tony nodded and unsnapped his own holster, then stiffened at the sound of another shot.
"Go!" Gibbs snapped at him, then slid up to the store's front door. Using the opaque concrete to the side of the glass door as cover, he tried to peek through the space between the edge of the door and the shade covering it. He could make out two moving figures, but not well enough to identify either of them. With a gentle push, he tested the door, but it held firm, locked.
Two more shots. There was no more time for recognizance; Ziva needed backup. Returning to the car, he grabbed the closest heavy object, his toolbox, and turned around to heave it through the locked door of the store. The glass shattered explosively, and Gibbs dove through the hole it opened in the door, rolled, and came up to his feet with his gun in his hand.
There was silence from the inside of the store, broken only by the sound of quiet sobbing from the back. No one was visible above the shelves that filled the room.
Tony appeared from the stock room, fanning his gun across the open space. "Clear!" he called to Gibbs.
"Drop your weapons!" Gibbs ordered the room at large. "Federal agents!"
The crying grew louder, and a gun clattered to the floor. "It's ok," a male voice called. "It's over. I...I think I killed them."
The two agents exchanged a look and made for the source of the voice, guns still at the ready. Rounding the corner of a shelf cautiously, Gibbs pulled to a stop at the same time Tony tried to. Tony's foot, though, came down in a red-stained pile of sugar - the remains of one of the containers that had serviced the coffee bar - and shot out from under him. He hit the ground in a lunge and skidded to a stop a foot from where a knot of people were hunched over a still figure. "Federal agents!" he said, scrambling back to his feet, and a face looked up from the crowd.
"Help her," begged Carlita, holding out a bloodied hand to him. Instinctively, Tony reached for it. He knew that behind him, Gibbs was clearing the rest of the store, but he blocked that out and focused on the people on the ground. Gibbs could take care of himself; Tony would concern himself with the crowd. And where the hell was Ziva? He stepped toward the group and at the sight of him it dissolved into only three people, far fewer than he had assumed, surrounding a still, dark-haired form on the ground.
"Ziva!" The witnesses forgotten, he dropped to his knees, not noticing the pool of blood he was sinking into, and reached for her.
"Help her!" Carlita sobbed again, reaching out to clutch the lapel of his coat with one hand. "Por favor, ayudale, por favor, ella me protegía, no dejes que se muera..." Her Spanish got progressively more incomprehensible from there, and Tony stopped listening.
Ziva wasn't moving, but Tony's police training kicked in and he knew he had to secure his team's safety before he could care any further for Ziva. "Everyone up!" he ordered the small group, all of whom were still staring at him from the floor. "¡Levántate!" he added for Carlita's benefit, not knowing if she spoke any English. He had occasionally encountered her when he came into the store with Ziva in the past, but the women had always spoken Spanish to each other, and too quickly for him to even attempt to follow.
Reacting slowly to his order, the teenaged girl and the young man got to their feet. As the young man stood up, Tony caught sight of a gun on the floor beside him. He kicked it away, out of the reach of the group, and called over his shoulder, "Boss, got a gun on the floor here."
Gibbs appeared around the corner and bent down to look at the weapon. He eyed it for a second, then flipped on the safety, stood up, and placed himself between it and the witnesses. "Looks like hers. We've got two dead down the aisle and a police unit pulling up outside. You got cuffs on you, DiNozzo?"
Tony reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair, which he tossed to Gibbs, then returned his attention to the woman on the floor. Extracting his own pair from a pocket, Gibbs nodded to the two young people. "Turn around, please, folks."
"What?" the girl gasped, staring at the cuffs in his hand. "We didn't do anything!"
"Probably not," Gibbs replied calmly, "but I've got an agent down and at least one uncontrolled weapon in this shop. Everyone's getting cuffed until we figure this out." And without waiting for further comment, he gently cuffed the girl, who sobbed but made no move to resist him. "You next," he told the man, who held out his hands obligingly.
"I shot them," he babbled. "The robbers, they shot her, and then I saw her gun, and I picked it up, and I shot the guy who shot her, and the other guy, she shot him but then I shot him too, and -"
"Enough," Gibbs interrupted, taking him by the arm and pulling him out of his way. "You can talk all you want about it later." He looked down at the matronly woman still babbling in Spanish on the floor and motioned to her to stand. "Ma'am. You, too. Usted también."
Carlita shook her head without looking away from Ziva. "She is bleeding," she said in clear English, surprising both men. "I must care for her."
"Ma'am -" Gibbs glanced over his shoulder warily, then looked back at Carlita. His gut said she wasn't dangerous, but if Ziva had gotten caught out in this store, so could they, and he wouldn't relax his guard until everyone who was not one of his agents was secured.
"I'll get this, Boss," Tony spoke up without looking away from Carlita and Ziva.
Gibbs nodded and looked over his shoulder again. "Do it," he told Tony.
Tony knelt down and lowered his head until he was in the older woman's line of sight. "I'll take over here, ok?" he said reassuringly, reaching for where she was supporting Ziva's head. "I'll take care of her. You go with him." He gestured toward Gibbs.
Carlita blinked at him for a second, then swallowed and inclined her head in a small nod. She carefully transferred her grip on Ziva to Tony, then lifted herself to her feet, whispering a prayer. Gibbs, realizing he was short on handcuffs, took hold of her elbow and looked over at the two other witnesses. "Move 'em out, folks," he ordered, and led the group toward the store's front door, calling out, "NCIS Special Agent Gibbs coming through with witnesses!" to the police he knew must be there by now.
Within seconds, Tony was alone with Ziva's unmoving body. His hand was cupping the back of her head, and he could feel warm blood still coursing out of her wound. As he shifted his weight to his knees, her head moved in spite of his caution with it, leaving red-painted streaks on the floor as her hair dragged across the tile. "Oh, god," he muttered, knowing there was nothing he could do for her except try to stop the blood from draining out. Her face was chalky, and as he looked down at her, he realized just how large the pool of blood she lay in was.
Tony pressed the cloth Carlita had left him more tightly against Ziva's head.
End note: Don't give up on Ziva yet, folks! She's a fighter!