Chapter 12: Boiling Point

Silence settles around the two bodies that occupy the sitting quarters of the apartment. His legs tired, unlike hers, from walking through the crowded streets of Hong Kong.

"I never thought going out could be considered a work out." He brings one leg to his chest to flex his their muscles. He hears a crack, then winces. "Yeah…that's going to hurt in the morning."

"What is?" She asks as she rubs a cloth against one of her weapons.

"Everything, actually." He stifles a yawn. The jetlag is beginning to take a toll on his body.

"I could walk on your back."

"Yeah--I'll pass." He says quickly; fear rising in the bit of his stomach.

"It will do you more good than you know."

"My back isn't the issue." He reaches for one of her weapons, then changes his mind.

"That is wise of you, Tony." She passes him a look. "Your prints on my weapon would not be a good thing in case I ever misplaced it."

"A trained Mossad leaving evidence of their existence?" He huffs. "Yeah--not going to waste much of my energy on that thought."

"I am not Mossad anymore, Tony…" She tries her best to keep her sudden feeling of uneasiness at bay. "I am dead to them."

He looks to her with eyes that seem to be full of life despite his tired state of mind. He clears his throat and looks away from her and what she is doing.

"Something the matter, Tony?"

"It's nothing." He keeps his gaze fixed on the décor of her apartment. "I still get a lamp to take back with me, correct?"

"If they'll pass it through customs I do not see why not."

"They better." He flicks his tongue out to lick his bottom lip. "Think it'll go with my apartment back home?"

"Definitely not." She snorts. "I am not sure very much can go with your apartment."

"You're not exactly an interior decorator."

"No argument there." She remembers her last American apartment. The place reeked of the ins and outs of Trent, the CIA, and all the rest of her dirtiness.

He can sense she is thinking of something or someone, but he can not pin-point the exactness of either.

"Ever play twenty questions?"

"No."

"Truth or Dare?"

"No."

"…Spin the Bottle?"

"…I do not think so however there has been a time that I can remember where I have spun a bottle. It was long ago--I was young."

He takes this information and uses it to form his next question. "How young?"

"I am not sure I know the terms in American."

"Were you old enough to smoke, drink--drive?"

"I would assume so…" She thinks for a solid moment. "I remember trying these three things long before the majority of American's did."

"You were such a rebel."

"What is a rebel?"

"An outlaw."

"…am I to believe you are insisting I was once a cowgirl?" He grins, causing her to make a crease in her forehead. "What is it?"

"I really need to take you camping sometime--or to a ballgame, hell--even an All-American cookout. Anything…to get you adjusted to American life."

"I am no longer in America, Tony."

"This could all be very temporary." He sounds confident though the decision was and is never meant to be his own.

"I am afraid this is the rest of my life."

"Don't be so melodramatic."

"I am not sure what melodramatic means, but I assure you that my residence here in Hong Kong is a lasting one." She reaches for another piece of one of her weapons. "I have found a life here."

"You weren't give much choice." He looks to her for confirmation of his bold statement, but she does not give him one. She hardly looks at him though his eyes beg her to turn in his direction. "Be honest with me, Ziva--"

"I will not open myself to you, Tony. This is not what your visit was for." She feels the pressure of his stare. "This is not any of your business!"

"Did you want to come here or did this husband of yours bring you here?" He sees her becoming agitated. "Come on Ziva, I've known you long enough to know you've got a set of steel ones to let some guy tell you where to plant your feet."

She swallows, focusing on the object in her hand.

"Ignoring me isn't going to make this go away--it isn't going to make me go away."

"You have one more day here, Tony. You will soon go away."

"Now that I know where you are don't you think I have a great deal of information to tell those back at home?" Her neck snaps to look at him, her eyes full of horror. "I'm not itching to expose the truth about you, but I'll be a fool to believe I won't have questions to answer to when I get back."

"You have the ability to lie."

"Lying has gotten us no where…all of us." He rocks back and forth on the floor for a minute. "You can't see the effect your leaving has on us. You don't understand what it's like to feel the strain everyday."

"I do."

"I find that extremely hard to believe."

"There isn't enough common sense in your mind to realize that I feel it as much as you all do--if not more."

"Then why don't you stop all this bullshit--come back to the states. Try to fix all that you've broken."

Her focus is slipping off of cleaning. His words are sticking her like enlarged tips of needles.

"I am done with this." She tries to stand, but he presses down on her shoulder. "Tony, get away from me."

"Talk to me, Ziva. Tell me what you're thinking--what you're feeling." He feels his head begin to throb. "What the hell are you getting out of all of this run-around? Why can't you put your fucking guard down for one minute to let someone in--to let me in?!"

Her heart pounds in her chest. His words are beginning to bother her more than any other words she has heard for a while now.

"I will hurt you, Tony." She says as steadily as she can. His hand stays on top of her shoulder, but he takes his pressure off. "Please--leave me alone."

"I'll let you go--but I won't leave you alone." He stands with her, following her every move. Crowding her personal space; not caring if he makes her snap. "I'll never understand why you are the way that you are."

"I can say the same for you." She retorts while trying her best to get her weapons in order. "I could never understand your need to be incredibly annoying--so fucking full of yourself. Insanely interested in how many women you could roll around between the sheets with on a weekly basis." She turns to face him now; fire in her eyes. "You are who you choose to be, Tony. That is all that I reminded myself of while having to deal with you--and the fucking way that you are." She takes a step forward. "Whatever became of your relationship with Jeanne happened for a likely reason. Anthony DiNozzo--always ready to do a job, always ending up getting himself completely involved at the sight of a beautiful woman, and then fucking up at the very end." Another step. "Now Tony, do you want to continue this conversation?"

"Let it out, Ziva. All of it." His attitude nothing, but challenging. "You think you can sling rocks at me--knock me down to make yourself feel better about leaving the team--"

"Enough with your obsession with the team. I will not deny what I did learn, but I will also not accept what I know to not be true." Her eyes, still on fire, are growing tired. "I wish you would take things as the way they are--as the way they were meant to be."

"Do you still think about him?" Her words hardly meaning anything to him. "Do you think about him every time you think about us--about the team, do you think about him?"

"Who are you speaking of?"

"Gibbs." She takes a small step backwards, steadying her balance. He knows his has caught her off guard, but this is where he wants her. "All night I touched based on every member of the team you asked about." He puts his hands on his hips. "Not once did you mention Gibbs."

"You had the right to say something about him."

"And now I do not?"

She closes her eyes. "What?"

"If I had the right to say something about him then, I have every right to say something about him now…" He waits for her to open her eyes, but she does not. "…and I will, if you care…to listen."

"It is not needed." She opens her eyes. "It would be a waste of time."

"It's your stubbornness that makes a lot of things appear to be that way; a literal waste of time--when it in fact, it's everything, but that." He places both hands on both of her shoulders. "Why weren't things fixed between the both of you?"

"That is the way things were supposed to be."

"Now you sound as if you've always had the ability to predict the future." He shakes her slightly. "Wake the fuck up, Ziva. Stop the bullshit." He grits his teeth, his patience finally slipping. "I'm not going to run back to tell him that you asked about him if that's what's keeping you from asking me."

"That is not it."

"Then what the fuck is it?!"

"It is…" She trails on to nothingness.

His arms grow tired and he lets his hands slide from her shoulders. "Maybe you're right, Ziva. Maybe…what happened, happened because it was supposed to happen." He feels his asshole tendencies begging to come into play. "You fuck around with our Team Leader--and then shit hit's the fan for the entire team." He scoffs. "Now I'm not sure I blame Abby for being unable to forgive you. Why should any of us have forgiven you--you don't give a shit about us--about the team. You got what you wanted; probably split because it was part of your plan all along. Ya know, being a Liaison for NCIS and Mossad sure had its perks."

The silence is killing him now. Looking at her for another round with her knocks him off his block as he sees her face twist. Tears spill from her eyes as she stands there trying to deal with everything he had just said.

"Don't…think I wanted to go there, Ziva…" He takes a step to reach for her, but she pushes him away so violently. "Ziva--"

"Out, Tony." Her breath is shaking as she tries to stop herself from crying.

"Zi--"

"OUT!!!" She shouts loud enough for passerby's outside on the street can most likely hear.

He backs away slowly, not sure if she is serious. When he sees her clench her jaw, he quickly finds his bags and walks to the door.

"You're going to regret this, Ziva."

Before she can threaten him with violence, he slams the door to the apartment.