Chapter 24: Visitors
Tony stands with his mouth gaped.
Director David is laying a few inches before him. A small pool of blood is beginning to stain his dress shirt and his tan colored suit jacket. Tony swallows, trying to keep a cry from escaping him. The gun he used to murder the Director of Mossad is brushing the tip of his boot-covered foot.
Ziva is leaning over Lior. With a few quick maneuvers, she removes his leather vest. It is out-dated and warn, his blood rolls against the slick material and makes droplets in the dirty floor.
Tony can not move, but he watches her closely. He nods to himself when she pulls a torn piece of paper from his left front pocket. After reading it, she throws it aside.
He clears his throat, remembering his wounds. He can feel the shock rushing out of him and guilt of the yet-to-come sinking inside of him.
Ziva unties the laces of Liors boots and slips his shoes off. Inside she finds another torn piece of paper and reads the scribbled words.
She pushes herself to her feet and in a few steps she is standing next to her partner.
"That better be a get out of jail free card." His attempt for humor brightens the dark feeling if only for a little bit.
"It is a map."
Tony catches the faded edges and the murky ink. "Like we can read that."
"I know where this is." She says quickly. "I will arrive there as soon as I get you to a hospital."
His eyes widen. "I think your priorities are crossed."
"You aren't any use to me now, Tony."
"Sure-after I kill your father."
She understands his feelings. She can see the uncertainty behind his tear-y eyes, but she knows she an not deal with him now.
"That is not what I meant." She pauses. "Without Michael and my father, there is no one to lead the assault."
"You think you're going to find them alive?"
She grabs his hand and begins to walk. He stays quiet, but his eyes can not help themselves and so they look at all the lifeless bodies scattered around the ground of the warehouse.
He knows now that the image will never leave him. In the entire history of his profession he never left this many for dead.
"You will get used to it, Tony."
The quietness in her voice makes him realize that she is only saying things to bring him some sort of comfort, and for that he can not be angry with her for doing.
They near the front entrance of the warehouse and it is there that he realizes she is doing her very best not to look back at the two men that made such an impact on her life.
"I could hold off a few more minutes…" His says easily. "…just in case you-"
"I've said goodbye to them a long time ago, Tony."
He steps aside to let her pass through the door first, and as she does, the eyes in the back of his head scan the warehouse for the final time.
Director Shepard passes through the double doors of the hospital. Her dress suit dark like the circles under her eyes that she desperately tried to hide with makeup before leaving her estate.
The past week has felt like an eternity of displeasure and torment. The only upside being the capture of Abby's stalker.
She appears in front of the service desk and looks kindly at the young nurse. With a flash of her badge and a verbal identification with details as to why she is there and what she wants, she is handed a visitors pass. A pass only given to those on their way to see a loved one in the ICU.
As her feet take her down the bright and white hallway, her stomach begins to knot itself. She stops to take a breath and allows herself a moment to regain her confidence that the two Agents she is about to see are well on their way to recovery.
Stepping inside quietly, she treats the floor beneath her feet like an invisible bridge of faith she hopes remains, even if slightly, between the wounded man and herself.
She reaches his bed gingerly because she is unsure on how to react. Somewhere inside she is grateful that he is sleeping, as wrong it sounds.
Slick steps behind her make her smile faintly. Tony comes closer to her and peers down at the leader of his team. She turns slightly, catching his bandaged shoulder and the fresh scab that is located on one side of his face. Her expression shifts even though she knew of his damage by telephone when he still had been in Tel Aviv.
He looks away from her because her stare begins to make him uncomfortable. Clearing his throat, he rounds the hospital bed and rushes to the other side. A few machines beeps, but Gibbs does not movie a muscle.
"He wouldn't like us looming over him like this."
"He's asleep." Tony remarks. "He'll never know."
The Director smiles softly knowing that DiNozzo is rushing lies past his own lips in order to keep some sort of control-even if it only is on the task at hand.
"Abby here?" He questions, then falls back a bit to chuckle. "Don't answer that."
"Our dear Abby would have already assigned herself as Gibbs' personal guard." The Director says as she reacts to Gibbs' current state by touching his head softly. "Suppose he'll never know this?"
Tony waits for her to turn to look at him, but she does not. Her fingers travel through his hair slowly as if they were made of feathers. Her action makes Tony tense with hesitation and he begins to pull away from his boss' bedside.
The Director can feel the air shift, but she continues her actions knowing that this act of care is more for her comfort than it is for the man sleeping before her.
Just then a nurse enters and mentions that two people forms a problem in case of an emergency. Tony nods his understanding and as he moves to leave, the Director reaches for him.
"Stay."
He opens his mouth, wanting to tell her that he feels it is not his place. That inside, he is ripping apart with guilt for his leader's current state. That it is his fault the Batman to his Robin is defenseless while trying to pull himself out of the fine quicksand; that his Probie is suffering more mental damage than physical.
"I have a better chance of gaining access at any hour." She explains. "Stay."
He swallows and waits even as she nears the automatic glass doors and exits.
With his back facing the sleeping man, he cracks just a little bit more on the inside.
Abby stiffens as she sits next to her one and only. The only person to have such an impact on her life. The one she needs constant approval from. Her everything when her world turns upside down.
He is sleeping still. His disgusting hospital food hardly touched. She frowns, knowing he needs anything he can manage to keep down in order to be able to flee the restriction he finds himself lying in-yet part of her does not want to feel for him.
His silver hair makes her remember how much she always needs him, but his lips are devious. The lips that kept secrets from her when the going got tough. The same lips to assure her that he would return all put together, with McGee and Tony on his side.
She knew Gibbs had a slickness about him. A sly being embedded somewhere inside his very being, but she also knew that he never was one to play with her emotions. He delivered things to her in ways he did the others, but there was always something gentle about his interactions with her, and his advancements in her direction had always come correct.
He was her shoulder to cry on, but where would she go now that he was the one to bring her to tears? As the tears stream down her face, she stands abruptly from the lumpy hospital chair located on the side of his bed and turns her face roughly away from him as if all of his betrayal has hit her like a slap in the face.
Forgiving did not want to come easy and she felt as if forgetting never existed.
A cup of coffee lingers near her nervous hand as she waits for the exit of whomever his current visitor might be.
Tony had took his time going home so he said, but something in his eyes told Ziva that he was on his way to a place he could wallow in self pity and watch strange people in the world pass him by through a smeared glass window-until morning arrived and he found his way, whether by himself or by assistance, back to the hospital to witness his boss and drown in another guilt trip.
McGee had been released earlier in the morning. His wounds never could compare to Gibbs', but his state of being would have scarred him for the rest of life if they had not found him and rushed him to the hospital as quick as they had rushed Gibbs.
Times were tough and Ziva knew this. She saw the strain on the entire team now that the glue that kept the team together was fighting for his life. The realization made her gut twist and it made her begin a trip down the same road as her Italian friend.
The door clicking open breaks her train of guilt, but when she looks into Abby's misty eyes, she feels the train of guilt beginning to storm through her once again.
"Abby." She says as neutral as she can, but the look in Abby's eyes flash with raw hatred. Her eyes twist and they turn until they unleash a blaze of fire. "May I see him?"
Her asking of permission sounds strange-uneeded, but she is at a loss on how to speak to the angry scientist leaving her burning into ashes.
"Oh sure, Ziva-you want to see him now that he's dying."
"He is not dying, Abby." Her tone full of frustration. "He just needs time to heal."
"Easy for you to say." She lets the door click into place as she begins to pace casually around Ziva, making sure that a hospital official or security guard does not notice her fighting tactic. "Figures you wouldn't know a thing about Gibbs-"
"Ab-"
"You wouldn't know how tormented he was when it happened."
Ziva begins to harden. She feels Abby attacking her and for the first time she is unable to properly contain the situation or be the one to control it.
"Gibbs was bordering on becoming an alcoholic." Her word scold her deeply. "He nearly floored McGee. He played DiNozzo for losing connection-"
Abby stops herself as she sees Ziva's eye twitching. "Don't stand there and say nothing, Ziva!"
"We might never have worked out our differences, but we made sure that we both understood our positions and what needed to be done before I left…again."
Abby crosses her arms over her chest protectively though Ziva is the one in need of extra armor. "I might have believed that if you hadn't left him a letter-if you didn't burn his eyes with so much bullshit-"
"You do not understand, Abby!" Her anger is beginning to show itself in the place of her pain. "You will never understand, Abby!"
"Oh yeah?" The Goths' tone is challenging, but it is a challenge that does not appeal to Ziva. "You don't have any right being here."
"I was the one to find him." Ziva grasps for any means of defense.
"Yeah-and he was the one to risk his life looking for you."
"He went looking for DiNozzo!"
"And Tony risked his life looking for you, too!" Ziva shakes her head in a poor manner. "The only problem is you're too full of yourself to realize just how much you hurt them…the team…us." Ziva opens her mouth, but she can not speak. "At the end of the day you've left us all with a burden…especially Gibbs."
Sitting down for a moment, she tries to clear her head with a few deep breaths. Abby stands still with her arms still crossed. She acts as if she is a guard specifically assigned to protecting Gibbs.
As Ziva looks to her again, she begins to understand that her needs and her wants are not as important as Abby's. The way her eyes glisten and the way her lip trembles every so often alerts Ziva that she is closer to the breaking point-one she has done her best to keep hidden; one she is completely frightened to reach.
The Israeli rises out of her seat, clasping her arms in front of her.
"When he wakes, I hope you are with him."
Abby opens her mouth, wanting a snooty remark to come barreling out-but Ziva surprises her and so she stands there with her mouth slightly open.
Ziva inhales and begins to walk down the hallway she walked down minutes before.