Fic: A Goat for Azazel, (Tony, Ziva, Team) [6/15]
Title: A Goat for Azazel, chapter 6/15
Authors: Hagar and Sailor Sol
Category: gen
Rating: overall M for captivity elements and intense emotional content
Summary: Goes AU after Aliyah. When Tony disappears two days before the Saleem op is a go, the team scrambles to find him - and to understand what an associate of La Grenouille and Israeli domestic intelligence have to do with it.
Chapter Title:Undertow
Chapter Rating: M for captivity situations and mindsets
Chapter Summary:Life in Gisele’s camp is not without dissent.
AO3 | DW | LJ Below:
Warnings: single psychologically intense scene.
Israeli idiom moment. Golani is an IDF infantry brigade. Known as The First Brigade, they’re considered the epitome of what infantry is and have a reputation for brutal efficiency; however, “Golanchik” (colloquial for a Golani soldier) in Israeli idiom also denotes a coarse and not-overly-bright person.
Arc Two: Maelstrom
Sunday, September 13
It might have been a factory, once. Now it was mostly a large, echoing empty space. The first floor was taken, though. It might have been offices, back when the ground floor was supposed to be a machine shop, but now it was where Gisele's crew lived. One room was still an office, so to speak: the one at the end of the hallway that oversaw the others.
Oren leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed on his chest.
"He's a cop," he said bluntly.
Ziva barely glanced up at him over the laptop. "He's not."
Oren didn't bother to dignify her dismissal and replied to her words instead. "So you know who I'm talking about."
"Yes, but not because I suspect him." She closed the laptop lid and half-stood, leaning over it with her palms pressed against the table. "Spit it out, Oren."
He stepped into the room and stood on the other side of her desk. "I'll feel better if I took your lap dog on a walk in the woods. The kind that involves a gun, and then a shovel."
"He's not a cop," she repeated, tone flat and even.
He dragged himself the other chair and sat down. "And you're so certain, because?"
"Because no one would have him. Don't say a word about cover stories, Oren," she added. She shook her head. "I was there for his dishonorable discharge."
Bad news: the Rottweiler really wasn't a cop. More bad news: Ziva had a soft spot for the guy.
"How'd you find him, anyway?"
"His old boss was the competition."
Competition is a killer. It was an old saying, in Ziva's current line of work.
She leaned back in her chair, arms loose at her sides. "You sound like a little girl when you're jealous, Oren, did anyone ever tell you that?"
"The hell I'm jealous."
"The fuck you aren't."
"Are you fucking him?"
She seemed amused, more than anything, as she said: "None of your fucking business."
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Definitely my fucking business."
"Charming, Oren. Now you sound like a Golanchik."
He grinned at her. "Admit it, Ziva. You're bored to death among the goyim."
She snorted derisively. "They have their uses."
"They have bigger guns," he said with a straight face.
"I'd slam your face into this table," she said conversationally, "except I think that's what you're angling for."
"You are so sleeping with him."
"Maybe I will let you two go on a walk. So he can feed you your limbs, and I'll have some peace and quiet."
"And what will you tell Benny?"
"I'll tell him that his hot-headed right-hand finally picked a fight with somebody bigger than him. His stepson's death he won't forgive me. You?" she shrugged.
"You've definitely been with the goyim too long, Ziva. Is that how you treat family?"
"Fuck off to hell, Oren. My family's dead." She leaned forward. "And if you say anything about this only being until I start my own..."
"Do you see a kipa on my head?" he demanded. They were nearly in each other's faces, like this.
"You've been trying to get in my pants since you set foot here."
"Sleeping with the help is bad for business."
"Don't tempt me, Oren," she said softly, dangerously. His jeans were too tight. "You two neanderthals are not the only ones around here who know how to kill."
The knock on Gisele's door was far louder than it had to be.
"All good to go, Boss." Werth's empty-brained military-drone inflection put Oren's teeth on edge, as it always did. Then Werth shifted into a different, more familiar tone: "All right here, Boss?"
Oren turned around to glare at him. Werth replied with a condescending stare, like Oren was the idiot who got kicked out of service and Werth was the decorated captain.
Ziva pushed herself up and picked up the laptop. "Everything is fine," she said shortly, shifting to English while ignoring the way Werth's eyes clung to her every movement. "Don't mess with my toys while I'm gone, Oren," she added, in English still.
He twisted around to follow her exit, head held high like every commander ever. "Im o bli dofek?" he asked in Hebrew, like before they were interrupted. The ones with or without a pulse?
She paused at the door and turned her head back towards him. "Both."
The good news was, DiNozzo hadn't been sick again since Damon had been there last, a day before. The bad news was, the bottle of Gatorade was untouched where Damon had left it, suggesting that the guy wasn't just sleeping off whatever the hell Ziva knocked him out with on Friday, he was still unconscious.
"Damn it," Damon muttered as he unlocked the door. "What the hell was that shit, anyway?"
He left the door unlocked behind him. No one else would come down there and DiNozzo wasn't going anywhere. Damon wasn't a fan of locked cells, even when he was the one with the key.
He put the new bottle next to the other one and crouched at about a foot distance from the mattress. DiNozzo seemed paler than a week in the dark summed up to, even if that was difficult to tell in said darkness. His breathing was shallow, laboured and wrong, somehow, far from any rhythm of sleep or unconsciousness.
He coughed, even as Damon watched him. It was a tired, wet sound, nothing like any cough Damon had heard before.
"Fuck." Damon reached with one hand to tilt DiNozzo's head backwards as he found his pulse with his other hand.
DiNozzo's head rolled under his touch easily enough, but his eyes opened at the touch. The darkness yet again meant that Damon couldn't tell much of anything, but he was still pretty sure that DiNozzo's gaze was unfocused. His pulse, under Damon's fingers, was dehydration-pulse, rapid and shallow, and his skin was clammy. The skin tone seemed good, though, not yet the dry dough feeling of serious dehydration.
"Hey," Damon said. Quietly, because it was spooky down there, but clearly enough that DiNozzo should be able to hear it.
DiNozzo's eyes tracked his face, but he didn't say anything. There was no telling how lucid he was or, more likely, wasn't.
It could have been worse, but it was still bad enough. He slid an arm under DiNozzo's shoulders and cradled the back of his head. Damon could feel a lump there, and DiNozzo grimaced at the touch; that was new, but there wasn't much Damon could do about it except try to be gentle. He got the older man into a semi-upright position, then used his free hand to open the bottle of Gatorade and held it to DiNozzo's lips.
"I'm going to need you to drink this. Small sips," he ordered, tipping the bottle just a little. He managed to bite back the sigh of relief as DiNozzo licked the liquid from his chapped lips, before opening his mouth enough for Damon to pour some in. DiNozzo swallowed reflexively, and that was another good sign.
He spent the next several minutes mentally cursing as he allowed DiNozzo to drink about half the bottle in small sips. It'd been a couple years since Damon had done this last, but Iraq was a harsh teacher that way; Damon had gotten too many privates through not making themselves sicker by drinking too much, too fast.
"More," DiNozzo said, voice soft and rasping.
"Keep what I gave you down, and you'll get more in a few minutes," Damon replied. He really didn't want to have to clean up any more puke.
DiNozzo made a very small nod.
At least he understood what Damon was saying. If Damon was to get him to drink both bottles - which was what he should do - then he was going to be stuck there a while.
Damn, but this job sucked sometimes.
Ziva's door wasn't locked, but Damon rattled it anyway, trying to not tear it out of its frame. The door was flimsy, he was angry, and the point was to keep the door between him and Ziva until she was awake enough to look and think before throwing that damn knife.
That second damn knife, that is: the thunk of the first one embedding itself on the other side of the door was a good enough indicator that she was awake enough.
"Damn it, Damon," she said, still groggily, when he shouldered the door open and pushed his way in. Predictably, she had a gun in one hand and another knife in the other. "What is it?"
"We need to talk," he said, shutting the door behind him and throwing them back into pitch blackness for just a moment before she turned on the emergency searchlight she kept for a bedside lamp. She adjusted the lamp so that the beam of light passed between them, casting both their faces into deep shadows. His more than hers, probably, as she was lower.
She pushed her weapons back under her pillow and sat up properly. "No, really," she said irritably, throwing her blanket away. "Because you usually wake me up for no reason."
Damn right he didn't, and he wasn't surprised that she'd be a bitch about it. "I just spent the last three hours in the basement," he told her, and if he couldn't throw ice back in her face than he had fire. "What the hell did you do to him?"
Her eyes narrowed, expression shutting off even more. "I interrogated him," she said, voice no more readable than her face. "Asked questions. Left a few bruises. What is the problem?"
Damon had been on the receiving end of punches to the face that were less stunning than her casualness. "The problem is that he didn't drink the Gatorade I left him last night while he was still sleeping off your interrogation." He spat that last word out. To hell with that, so long as he wasn't breathing too hard. "He hasn't eaten anything since, what, Thursday night? Have you ever had to clean up stomach bile someone's puked up before?"
"He shouldn't have been unconscious that long," she said, frowning and sitting straighter. "Especially not at a partial dose."
"The first thing he should have done when he woke up and saw that bottle of Gatorade right in front of him was drink it. I don't think he even moved, Ziva," Damon said. "Unless you count from coughing his fucking lungs out."
And that got her to wake up the rest of the way, fucking finally. "He has a bad chest," she said, "but he wasn't coughing on Friday. How sick is he?"
"Well, he was still sweating," he said bitingly, "so he wasn't completely dehydrated yet. But he was sweating because he has a fever, which isn't fucking helping."
"It's 65 degrees down there, Damon. It's not the Sandbox. I'm more worried about that cough."
The careless exasperation in which she'd said that wasn't helping. "Two and a half days without drinking anything will still leave you dehydrated even if it was thirty below," he snapped.
"Well, he's kept it down once you got him to drink it, has he not?" she snapped back. "So that is not where the problem is."
If there had been any furniture nearby for him to throw, he would have. Instead, he just balled his fists tighter, fingernails digging even deeper into the palms of his hands. "You're right. The problem is that you gave him that shit and then left him down there. You're the one who said we needed to keep him alive."
And that, finally, got some emotion out of her. "I don't want him dead!" she snapped. The heat in her cheeks was visible even in the miserable lighting. "Damn it, Damon! If I'd known..." She swallowed, hands fisting in the sheets for just a moment.
"If you'd known, what? You'd go down there when he's calling out for you?" Damon snarled.
"Well, I didn't know that, either," she snapped at him. "How could I -" He could almost see her stuffing her anger back under that Ice Queen facade. "I am trying to keep us all safe," she continued after a moment, voice low and precise. "Or as safe as possible. You know how complicated this situation is, Damon. I never meant for Tony to get sick. We have spare blankets, and we should have Tylenol; he can't take Advil on an empty stomach. And I will go see him tomorrow. I promise." Her voice softened as she spoke, going from an inflection all too much like her Gisele persona to something much more recognizable, if still too distant for comfort.
He almost spat out You should never have brought him here but checked himself at the last second. Ziva cared about her former colleague, even if she sucked at showing it. And if she needed to be reminded, then hell, that was what Damon was there for, why she'd kept him and let him in. The anger bled out of him, slowly, leaving something that wasn't quite a headache behind. "Good," he said.
He saw the ice drain out of her in return, bit by bit, revealing the familiar exhaustion and worry he'd known - hoped - were there. "We're almost there, Damon," she said. "Just another week and then we can all go home."
It was one in the goddamned morning, and he'd spent most of the last three hours playing nursemaid in the dark. Damon nodded, tiredly, and turned to leave. He just hoped like hell that they'd all survive the coming week.
Monday, September 14
The noise was loud, jarringly so, metallic and echoing. He winced involuntarily. It took him a moment to realize that it had to be the lock coming off the door. He opened his eyes, hoping for Damon to have returned.
The back lit figure was all wrong, though: too short, too slim.
Ziva.
He almost crawled towards her, cringed away, tried to stay utterly still. The mixed instincts hit him all at once, and he didn't even manage to fully sort them apart before being covered by something soft and light, warm almost. He clawed at the word: blanket.
The effort of dredging it out made him miss Ziva, Ziva kneeling in front of him, her hand moving away from a lumpy package.
His heart flitted in his chest, head even lighter at the possibility of more needles. Please don't got cut with please, yes, but just the thought of speaking made his whole body feel dead and heavy like lead. His whole body, except for his chest: the dark, invisible talons got a kick from the thought.
Breathing shallowly against that sharper pain, he closed his eyes, ceding this round to the darkness.
Something cool and soft touched his cheek, putting pressure on one of his many bruises as his head was tilted sideways and up. The sudden flare of sharper pain it caused brought him back to himself, to Ziva's presence, and he opened his eyes again to the sight of her face, cast in shadow, her other hand ghosting against his forehead.
The darkness was trying to get to her, too, sliding across her skin. He opened his mouth to warn her, but he should have known he'd just fail. What beast of darkness was hiding in his chest tried to claw its way out as soon as it got the chance, and he only barely managed to clamp his mouth shut before it climbed all the way up.
Ziva let go of his face. He thought - dreaded, hoped - that she was leaving, that she'd be safe. Instead she sat with her back to the wire mesh and pulled his head into her lap. He could hear her fumbling with the package and so he closed his eyes again. The needle never came. Instead, something hard bumped against his tightly-pressed lips, followed by something wet and frothy-feeling. The scent caught up with him a moment later, so utterly alien that it took him several more moments to place it.
Chocolate.
The press of his lips relaxed. He wanted the chocolate, wanted little more than to open his mouth and lick it in, gulp it from the bottle. There were still needles and claws in his throat, though, and the second he opened his mouth the darkness would come lashing out and latch on to Ziva.
He couldn't fail her again. He couldn't. He would've whimpered if he could, but there was too much pressure in his chest.
"You haven't eaten in three days." Ziva's voice was loud enough to make his head hurt, hurt even worse. "You need to drink this."
No, he wanted to plead. Please, no. All he could do was look up at her, and hope that she would understand, that she'd be able to read it in his eyes, in his face.
Ziva had always been able to read him. How could she not know what he was doing? She had to understand, had to know. Maybe, he thought, trying to push the maddening scent out, maybe this was a test.
"Drink this," Ziva ordered. When he didn't respond she continued, more irritably: "I said, drink this. You will not die."
Too surprised to remember anything else, he blinked at her and nearly said But I'm already dead. The words never came, crushed between the cough and the frothy chocolate shake. He sputtered, struggled to breathe, and somehow managed to swallow the monster together with the chocolate.
He had to have passed the test, because she carded her fingers through his hair again. Maybe he was shivering, because Ziva couldn't be unsteady. The chocolate came in regular mouthfuls, and if swallowing required more than blind instinct, he would have choked instead. He couldn't think with Ziva's solid warmth against his back and face, with her fingers raking through his hair. That was what he was trembling for.
"There," Ziva said, the word sliding in between one caress and another. "That's better. That's good, Tony."
It was the smell of cardamom and coffee that finally alerted Gibbs that someone was in his house. He wasn't particularly worried; anyone with ill intents wouldn't have bothered making coffee. Most people didn't bother to bring coffee and cardamom with them if they were only planning on robbing a house or trying to kill someone. That, plus the fact that he hadn't heard whoever it was moving about, gave him a rather good idea of who it might be.
He didn't turn to watch Dunski coming down the stairs, finally making enough noise so she knew he would recognize her presence. He heard her approach across the cement floor, and then two glasses of coffee were set down on his workbench as she pulled a saw horse out to sit on.
"Could've used mugs, you know. There are plenty in the cabinet," he commented, finishing off the last pull of bourbon from the mason jar in his hand.
She huffed softly, picking up one glass and holding it cupped in one hand. "That's not how it's done."
"And bringing your own supplies to make coffee when you break into someone's house is?" he challenged, finally taking a good look at her. She looked as tired as he felt. She'd ditched her office look, too: she was wearing a knitted jumper, her ponytail hung low and the natural-seeming makeup she'd worn to the office was noticeable in its absence. He didn't really know her well enough to know whether she wore makeup like a shield as some women did, but he filed away the bit of information anyway. Typical Israeli, though, she looked cold even in her jumper, despite the fact that it was still early fall and the nights weren't getting that chilly yet.
"I'm particular about my coffee," she said wryly, "and I would not think you'd forgotten your front door was unlocked."
"Why are you here?" he asked, not picking up the second cup of coffee yet. Too hot, still, and the paranoid part of his brain questioned whether or not he'd ticked the Israelis off enough for them to want him dead.
"Coffee," she said with a too-straight expression that melted back to tiredness a second later.
He weighed his options; he'd noticed over the last several days that Dunski never brought coffee for him, despite that she'd regularly did for Tim and Cassie. He'd never called her on it. Coffee runs were his own chance to stretch his legs and clear his head. For her to come to his house after work and make him coffee, deliberately putting herself in an uncomfortable position, meant she was playing at something.
Well, he wasn't about to play by her rules.
He picked up the sorry excuse for coffee she'd made and took a sip. It could've been been decent coffee, if she hadn't gone and ruined it with shit that did not belong in coffee. "And?" he prompted.
She took a few sips from her own coffee and brought the glass down again, but did not let go of it. "We had time to talk between May and this," she said, "to catch up. Ziva and I. One thing never made sense." She leaned back slightly on the saw horse, and her gaze grew sharper.
She was waiting for him to prompt her again, he could tell. He debated making her be the first to talk, but he wasn't in the mood to play games. "You gonna get to the point any time soon or just draw this out all night?"
"The records say you executed Ari, and the Ziva I knew then would have nothing but hatred for whoever would've done that."
Gibbs met her even stare. The casual tone of her voice could have been a challenge. "People
change," he countered.
"That's one option," she said. There was some sort of an emotion lurking under the quiet intensity, too faint to be recognized. "Though I do believe she took that mission as a fuck-you to her father. Two other options would be that you have somehow successfully made the case to her after, or that you were not the one who killed Ari."
"Do you really need me to tell you what happened that night?" he asked as she took several sips of her coffee.
This time she put the glass down properly. "To know what happened? No. To know what you think happened?" Beat, as her chin rose almost imperceptibly. "I'm beginning to think that I do."
"Ziva killed Ari," he replied. First time he'd said those words out loud. "There's nothing more to know."
"Except the reason why," she replied evenly. "To kill another person can be murder, execution, self-defense. I think that if you did not care for this question, or if you were certain, you would not dismiss it."
Anger boiled to the surface. He hadn't liked this train of thought when Vance had brought it up earlier in the summer, and he still didn't like it now. Especially now, when it was harder to believe Ziva was doing the right thing after kidnapping Tony. "And did she tell you why she killed him?" he challenged.
"Because Ari claimed loyalty to Al Qaida and not to Israel," she said, "and because he was about to prove it by killing you."
"Tell me something I don't already know," he snapped.
"You didn't sound so sure a moment ago," she retorted. "She never had enough to lose to give up even that little without a damn good reason, and I -" She cut herself off abruptly, mouth snapping closed, and he could practically see her reining her anger in.
Interesting.
"And you what?" he prodded.
She looked aside, mouth pulled in what could be a grimace or a particularly flat smile. It was a moment before she said, "There aren't too many people I genuinely give a damn about."
That, at least, was closer to honest than anything else she might have said. He took a sip of his own coffee to buy himself a moment before replying. "We'll bring her home."
Authors: Hagar and Sailor Sol
Category: gen
Rating: overall M for captivity elements and intense emotional content
Summary: Goes AU after Aliyah. When Tony disappears two days before the Saleem op is a go, the team scrambles to find him - and to understand what an associate of La Grenouille and Israeli domestic intelligence have to do with it.
Chapter Title:Undertow
Chapter Rating: M for captivity situations and mindsets
Chapter Summary:Life in Gisele’s camp is not without dissent.
AO3 | DW | LJ Below:
Warnings: single psychologically intense scene.
Israeli idiom moment. Golani is an IDF infantry brigade. Known as The First Brigade, they’re considered the epitome of what infantry is and have a reputation for brutal efficiency; however, “Golanchik” (colloquial for a Golani soldier) in Israeli idiom also denotes a coarse and not-overly-bright person.
Arc Two: Maelstrom
Sunday, September 13
It might have been a factory, once. Now it was mostly a large, echoing empty space. The first floor was taken, though. It might have been offices, back when the ground floor was supposed to be a machine shop, but now it was where Gisele's crew lived. One room was still an office, so to speak: the one at the end of the hallway that oversaw the others.
Oren leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed on his chest.
"He's a cop," he said bluntly.
Ziva barely glanced up at him over the laptop. "He's not."
Oren didn't bother to dignify her dismissal and replied to her words instead. "So you know who I'm talking about."
"Yes, but not because I suspect him." She closed the laptop lid and half-stood, leaning over it with her palms pressed against the table. "Spit it out, Oren."
He stepped into the room and stood on the other side of her desk. "I'll feel better if I took your lap dog on a walk in the woods. The kind that involves a gun, and then a shovel."
"He's not a cop," she repeated, tone flat and even.
He dragged himself the other chair and sat down. "And you're so certain, because?"
"Because no one would have him. Don't say a word about cover stories, Oren," she added. She shook her head. "I was there for his dishonorable discharge."
Bad news: the Rottweiler really wasn't a cop. More bad news: Ziva had a soft spot for the guy.
"How'd you find him, anyway?"
"His old boss was the competition."
Competition is a killer. It was an old saying, in Ziva's current line of work.
She leaned back in her chair, arms loose at her sides. "You sound like a little girl when you're jealous, Oren, did anyone ever tell you that?"
"The hell I'm jealous."
"The fuck you aren't."
"Are you fucking him?"
She seemed amused, more than anything, as she said: "None of your fucking business."
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Definitely my fucking business."
"Charming, Oren. Now you sound like a Golanchik."
He grinned at her. "Admit it, Ziva. You're bored to death among the goyim."
She snorted derisively. "They have their uses."
"They have bigger guns," he said with a straight face.
"I'd slam your face into this table," she said conversationally, "except I think that's what you're angling for."
"You are so sleeping with him."
"Maybe I will let you two go on a walk. So he can feed you your limbs, and I'll have some peace and quiet."
"And what will you tell Benny?"
"I'll tell him that his hot-headed right-hand finally picked a fight with somebody bigger than him. His stepson's death he won't forgive me. You?" she shrugged.
"You've definitely been with the goyim too long, Ziva. Is that how you treat family?"
"Fuck off to hell, Oren. My family's dead." She leaned forward. "And if you say anything about this only being until I start my own..."
"Do you see a kipa on my head?" he demanded. They were nearly in each other's faces, like this.
"You've been trying to get in my pants since you set foot here."
"Sleeping with the help is bad for business."
"Don't tempt me, Oren," she said softly, dangerously. His jeans were too tight. "You two neanderthals are not the only ones around here who know how to kill."
The knock on Gisele's door was far louder than it had to be.
"All good to go, Boss." Werth's empty-brained military-drone inflection put Oren's teeth on edge, as it always did. Then Werth shifted into a different, more familiar tone: "All right here, Boss?"
Oren turned around to glare at him. Werth replied with a condescending stare, like Oren was the idiot who got kicked out of service and Werth was the decorated captain.
Ziva pushed herself up and picked up the laptop. "Everything is fine," she said shortly, shifting to English while ignoring the way Werth's eyes clung to her every movement. "Don't mess with my toys while I'm gone, Oren," she added, in English still.
He twisted around to follow her exit, head held high like every commander ever. "Im o bli dofek?" he asked in Hebrew, like before they were interrupted. The ones with or without a pulse?
She paused at the door and turned her head back towards him. "Both."
The good news was, DiNozzo hadn't been sick again since Damon had been there last, a day before. The bad news was, the bottle of Gatorade was untouched where Damon had left it, suggesting that the guy wasn't just sleeping off whatever the hell Ziva knocked him out with on Friday, he was still unconscious.
"Damn it," Damon muttered as he unlocked the door. "What the hell was that shit, anyway?"
He left the door unlocked behind him. No one else would come down there and DiNozzo wasn't going anywhere. Damon wasn't a fan of locked cells, even when he was the one with the key.
He put the new bottle next to the other one and crouched at about a foot distance from the mattress. DiNozzo seemed paler than a week in the dark summed up to, even if that was difficult to tell in said darkness. His breathing was shallow, laboured and wrong, somehow, far from any rhythm of sleep or unconsciousness.
He coughed, even as Damon watched him. It was a tired, wet sound, nothing like any cough Damon had heard before.
"Fuck." Damon reached with one hand to tilt DiNozzo's head backwards as he found his pulse with his other hand.
DiNozzo's head rolled under his touch easily enough, but his eyes opened at the touch. The darkness yet again meant that Damon couldn't tell much of anything, but he was still pretty sure that DiNozzo's gaze was unfocused. His pulse, under Damon's fingers, was dehydration-pulse, rapid and shallow, and his skin was clammy. The skin tone seemed good, though, not yet the dry dough feeling of serious dehydration.
"Hey," Damon said. Quietly, because it was spooky down there, but clearly enough that DiNozzo should be able to hear it.
DiNozzo's eyes tracked his face, but he didn't say anything. There was no telling how lucid he was or, more likely, wasn't.
It could have been worse, but it was still bad enough. He slid an arm under DiNozzo's shoulders and cradled the back of his head. Damon could feel a lump there, and DiNozzo grimaced at the touch; that was new, but there wasn't much Damon could do about it except try to be gentle. He got the older man into a semi-upright position, then used his free hand to open the bottle of Gatorade and held it to DiNozzo's lips.
"I'm going to need you to drink this. Small sips," he ordered, tipping the bottle just a little. He managed to bite back the sigh of relief as DiNozzo licked the liquid from his chapped lips, before opening his mouth enough for Damon to pour some in. DiNozzo swallowed reflexively, and that was another good sign.
He spent the next several minutes mentally cursing as he allowed DiNozzo to drink about half the bottle in small sips. It'd been a couple years since Damon had done this last, but Iraq was a harsh teacher that way; Damon had gotten too many privates through not making themselves sicker by drinking too much, too fast.
"More," DiNozzo said, voice soft and rasping.
"Keep what I gave you down, and you'll get more in a few minutes," Damon replied. He really didn't want to have to clean up any more puke.
DiNozzo made a very small nod.
At least he understood what Damon was saying. If Damon was to get him to drink both bottles - which was what he should do - then he was going to be stuck there a while.
Damn, but this job sucked sometimes.
Ziva's door wasn't locked, but Damon rattled it anyway, trying to not tear it out of its frame. The door was flimsy, he was angry, and the point was to keep the door between him and Ziva until she was awake enough to look and think before throwing that damn knife.
That second damn knife, that is: the thunk of the first one embedding itself on the other side of the door was a good enough indicator that she was awake enough.
"Damn it, Damon," she said, still groggily, when he shouldered the door open and pushed his way in. Predictably, she had a gun in one hand and another knife in the other. "What is it?"
"We need to talk," he said, shutting the door behind him and throwing them back into pitch blackness for just a moment before she turned on the emergency searchlight she kept for a bedside lamp. She adjusted the lamp so that the beam of light passed between them, casting both their faces into deep shadows. His more than hers, probably, as she was lower.
She pushed her weapons back under her pillow and sat up properly. "No, really," she said irritably, throwing her blanket away. "Because you usually wake me up for no reason."
Damn right he didn't, and he wasn't surprised that she'd be a bitch about it. "I just spent the last three hours in the basement," he told her, and if he couldn't throw ice back in her face than he had fire. "What the hell did you do to him?"
Her eyes narrowed, expression shutting off even more. "I interrogated him," she said, voice no more readable than her face. "Asked questions. Left a few bruises. What is the problem?"
Damon had been on the receiving end of punches to the face that were less stunning than her casualness. "The problem is that he didn't drink the Gatorade I left him last night while he was still sleeping off your interrogation." He spat that last word out. To hell with that, so long as he wasn't breathing too hard. "He hasn't eaten anything since, what, Thursday night? Have you ever had to clean up stomach bile someone's puked up before?"
"He shouldn't have been unconscious that long," she said, frowning and sitting straighter. "Especially not at a partial dose."
"The first thing he should have done when he woke up and saw that bottle of Gatorade right in front of him was drink it. I don't think he even moved, Ziva," Damon said. "Unless you count from coughing his fucking lungs out."
And that got her to wake up the rest of the way, fucking finally. "He has a bad chest," she said, "but he wasn't coughing on Friday. How sick is he?"
"Well, he was still sweating," he said bitingly, "so he wasn't completely dehydrated yet. But he was sweating because he has a fever, which isn't fucking helping."
"It's 65 degrees down there, Damon. It's not the Sandbox. I'm more worried about that cough."
The careless exasperation in which she'd said that wasn't helping. "Two and a half days without drinking anything will still leave you dehydrated even if it was thirty below," he snapped.
"Well, he's kept it down once you got him to drink it, has he not?" she snapped back. "So that is not where the problem is."
If there had been any furniture nearby for him to throw, he would have. Instead, he just balled his fists tighter, fingernails digging even deeper into the palms of his hands. "You're right. The problem is that you gave him that shit and then left him down there. You're the one who said we needed to keep him alive."
And that, finally, got some emotion out of her. "I don't want him dead!" she snapped. The heat in her cheeks was visible even in the miserable lighting. "Damn it, Damon! If I'd known..." She swallowed, hands fisting in the sheets for just a moment.
"If you'd known, what? You'd go down there when he's calling out for you?" Damon snarled.
"Well, I didn't know that, either," she snapped at him. "How could I -" He could almost see her stuffing her anger back under that Ice Queen facade. "I am trying to keep us all safe," she continued after a moment, voice low and precise. "Or as safe as possible. You know how complicated this situation is, Damon. I never meant for Tony to get sick. We have spare blankets, and we should have Tylenol; he can't take Advil on an empty stomach. And I will go see him tomorrow. I promise." Her voice softened as she spoke, going from an inflection all too much like her Gisele persona to something much more recognizable, if still too distant for comfort.
He almost spat out You should never have brought him here but checked himself at the last second. Ziva cared about her former colleague, even if she sucked at showing it. And if she needed to be reminded, then hell, that was what Damon was there for, why she'd kept him and let him in. The anger bled out of him, slowly, leaving something that wasn't quite a headache behind. "Good," he said.
He saw the ice drain out of her in return, bit by bit, revealing the familiar exhaustion and worry he'd known - hoped - were there. "We're almost there, Damon," she said. "Just another week and then we can all go home."
It was one in the goddamned morning, and he'd spent most of the last three hours playing nursemaid in the dark. Damon nodded, tiredly, and turned to leave. He just hoped like hell that they'd all survive the coming week.
Monday, September 14
The noise was loud, jarringly so, metallic and echoing. He winced involuntarily. It took him a moment to realize that it had to be the lock coming off the door. He opened his eyes, hoping for Damon to have returned.
The back lit figure was all wrong, though: too short, too slim.
Ziva.
He almost crawled towards her, cringed away, tried to stay utterly still. The mixed instincts hit him all at once, and he didn't even manage to fully sort them apart before being covered by something soft and light, warm almost. He clawed at the word: blanket.
The effort of dredging it out made him miss Ziva, Ziva kneeling in front of him, her hand moving away from a lumpy package.
His heart flitted in his chest, head even lighter at the possibility of more needles. Please don't got cut with please, yes, but just the thought of speaking made his whole body feel dead and heavy like lead. His whole body, except for his chest: the dark, invisible talons got a kick from the thought.
Breathing shallowly against that sharper pain, he closed his eyes, ceding this round to the darkness.
Something cool and soft touched his cheek, putting pressure on one of his many bruises as his head was tilted sideways and up. The sudden flare of sharper pain it caused brought him back to himself, to Ziva's presence, and he opened his eyes again to the sight of her face, cast in shadow, her other hand ghosting against his forehead.
The darkness was trying to get to her, too, sliding across her skin. He opened his mouth to warn her, but he should have known he'd just fail. What beast of darkness was hiding in his chest tried to claw its way out as soon as it got the chance, and he only barely managed to clamp his mouth shut before it climbed all the way up.
Ziva let go of his face. He thought - dreaded, hoped - that she was leaving, that she'd be safe. Instead she sat with her back to the wire mesh and pulled his head into her lap. He could hear her fumbling with the package and so he closed his eyes again. The needle never came. Instead, something hard bumped against his tightly-pressed lips, followed by something wet and frothy-feeling. The scent caught up with him a moment later, so utterly alien that it took him several more moments to place it.
Chocolate.
The press of his lips relaxed. He wanted the chocolate, wanted little more than to open his mouth and lick it in, gulp it from the bottle. There were still needles and claws in his throat, though, and the second he opened his mouth the darkness would come lashing out and latch on to Ziva.
He couldn't fail her again. He couldn't. He would've whimpered if he could, but there was too much pressure in his chest.
"You haven't eaten in three days." Ziva's voice was loud enough to make his head hurt, hurt even worse. "You need to drink this."
No, he wanted to plead. Please, no. All he could do was look up at her, and hope that she would understand, that she'd be able to read it in his eyes, in his face.
Ziva had always been able to read him. How could she not know what he was doing? She had to understand, had to know. Maybe, he thought, trying to push the maddening scent out, maybe this was a test.
"Drink this," Ziva ordered. When he didn't respond she continued, more irritably: "I said, drink this. You will not die."
Too surprised to remember anything else, he blinked at her and nearly said But I'm already dead. The words never came, crushed between the cough and the frothy chocolate shake. He sputtered, struggled to breathe, and somehow managed to swallow the monster together with the chocolate.
He had to have passed the test, because she carded her fingers through his hair again. Maybe he was shivering, because Ziva couldn't be unsteady. The chocolate came in regular mouthfuls, and if swallowing required more than blind instinct, he would have choked instead. He couldn't think with Ziva's solid warmth against his back and face, with her fingers raking through his hair. That was what he was trembling for.
"There," Ziva said, the word sliding in between one caress and another. "That's better. That's good, Tony."
It was the smell of cardamom and coffee that finally alerted Gibbs that someone was in his house. He wasn't particularly worried; anyone with ill intents wouldn't have bothered making coffee. Most people didn't bother to bring coffee and cardamom with them if they were only planning on robbing a house or trying to kill someone. That, plus the fact that he hadn't heard whoever it was moving about, gave him a rather good idea of who it might be.
He didn't turn to watch Dunski coming down the stairs, finally making enough noise so she knew he would recognize her presence. He heard her approach across the cement floor, and then two glasses of coffee were set down on his workbench as she pulled a saw horse out to sit on.
"Could've used mugs, you know. There are plenty in the cabinet," he commented, finishing off the last pull of bourbon from the mason jar in his hand.
She huffed softly, picking up one glass and holding it cupped in one hand. "That's not how it's done."
"And bringing your own supplies to make coffee when you break into someone's house is?" he challenged, finally taking a good look at her. She looked as tired as he felt. She'd ditched her office look, too: she was wearing a knitted jumper, her ponytail hung low and the natural-seeming makeup she'd worn to the office was noticeable in its absence. He didn't really know her well enough to know whether she wore makeup like a shield as some women did, but he filed away the bit of information anyway. Typical Israeli, though, she looked cold even in her jumper, despite the fact that it was still early fall and the nights weren't getting that chilly yet.
"I'm particular about my coffee," she said wryly, "and I would not think you'd forgotten your front door was unlocked."
"Why are you here?" he asked, not picking up the second cup of coffee yet. Too hot, still, and the paranoid part of his brain questioned whether or not he'd ticked the Israelis off enough for them to want him dead.
"Coffee," she said with a too-straight expression that melted back to tiredness a second later.
He weighed his options; he'd noticed over the last several days that Dunski never brought coffee for him, despite that she'd regularly did for Tim and Cassie. He'd never called her on it. Coffee runs were his own chance to stretch his legs and clear his head. For her to come to his house after work and make him coffee, deliberately putting herself in an uncomfortable position, meant she was playing at something.
Well, he wasn't about to play by her rules.
He picked up the sorry excuse for coffee she'd made and took a sip. It could've been been decent coffee, if she hadn't gone and ruined it with shit that did not belong in coffee. "And?" he prompted.
She took a few sips from her own coffee and brought the glass down again, but did not let go of it. "We had time to talk between May and this," she said, "to catch up. Ziva and I. One thing never made sense." She leaned back slightly on the saw horse, and her gaze grew sharper.
She was waiting for him to prompt her again, he could tell. He debated making her be the first to talk, but he wasn't in the mood to play games. "You gonna get to the point any time soon or just draw this out all night?"
"The records say you executed Ari, and the Ziva I knew then would have nothing but hatred for whoever would've done that."
Gibbs met her even stare. The casual tone of her voice could have been a challenge. "People
change," he countered.
"That's one option," she said. There was some sort of an emotion lurking under the quiet intensity, too faint to be recognized. "Though I do believe she took that mission as a fuck-you to her father. Two other options would be that you have somehow successfully made the case to her after, or that you were not the one who killed Ari."
"Do you really need me to tell you what happened that night?" he asked as she took several sips of her coffee.
This time she put the glass down properly. "To know what happened? No. To know what you think happened?" Beat, as her chin rose almost imperceptibly. "I'm beginning to think that I do."
"Ziva killed Ari," he replied. First time he'd said those words out loud. "There's nothing more to know."
"Except the reason why," she replied evenly. "To kill another person can be murder, execution, self-defense. I think that if you did not care for this question, or if you were certain, you would not dismiss it."
Anger boiled to the surface. He hadn't liked this train of thought when Vance had brought it up earlier in the summer, and he still didn't like it now. Especially now, when it was harder to believe Ziva was doing the right thing after kidnapping Tony. "And did she tell you why she killed him?" he challenged.
"Because Ari claimed loyalty to Al Qaida and not to Israel," she said, "and because he was about to prove it by killing you."
"Tell me something I don't already know," he snapped.
"You didn't sound so sure a moment ago," she retorted. "She never had enough to lose to give up even that little without a damn good reason, and I -" She cut herself off abruptly, mouth snapping closed, and he could practically see her reining her anger in.
Interesting.
"And you what?" he prodded.
She looked aside, mouth pulled in what could be a grimace or a particularly flat smile. It was a moment before she said, "There aren't too many people I genuinely give a damn about."
That, at least, was closer to honest than anything else she might have said. He took a sip of his own coffee to buy himself a moment before replying. "We'll bring her home."