“Come Rain or Come Shine”-NCIS 10x15 “Hereafter”
Cut to Leon Vance sitting by his fireplace, with shards of glass surrounding him. He stares at the orange flames licking all around him. He feels the heat warm his skin just a little too much, but the pain is comforting and the night air is bitter. He glances around his living room for the last time, taking in everything he can before he closes this chapter in his life. He sighs, gets up, and walks to his door, and shuts it forcefully behind him. He needs no words, because she knows.
Camera pans around to Tony moving lazily around his apartment, preparing for a night in with pizza and a few favorite movies. He sits down just to hear a soft and hesitant knock on his door. He opens it to reveal an oddly shy Ziva, one he can easily see the vulnerability behind the mask she’s had carefully in place the last few weeks.
“Hi,” she says so softly he strains to hear it.
“Hey. Come on in,” he says with a warm smile on his face. No, he doesn’t mind she interrupted his movie night. In fact, he’s grateful not to be alone for a while.
“What will we be watching?”
That simple question lets him know that she hasn’t just come for a few Bond movies.
“Your pick.”
She doesn’t answer him by her usual shuffle over to his DVD shelf. She stands there frozen, staring off at a distant object with a forlorn look in her eyes.
Tony notices and steps toward her slowly. This could enter dangerous (their definition, anyway) territory, and he’s not ready for this yet. Not tonight. He senses this will be the turning point, ready or not, there will be no turning back. He notices the irony of Frank Sinatra’s rendition of Come Rain or Come Shine playing faintly on the record player, Ol’ Blue Eyes’ sultry voice ringing clear in the gravity of this moment.
I guess when I met you it was just one of those things...
“Ziva...talk to me.”
She takes a silent deep breath, buying herself time while still mulling over if Tony is the right person to bring this up with. Yeah, he is. This is the post-elevator us, where we tell each other things and bare our souls.
“You know, Director Vance...he’s been...really torn up since he lost Jackie. I mean we all have but...,” her breath catches in her throat and she needs a break. Mainly to think her next words over, no matter how dumb and loaded they may be.
“I don’t feel like I just lost my father. I don’t think I’ve cried enough. Shouldn’t I be just as upset as him? He was my father and...” her voices raises, but she doesn’t care to notice.
“Ziva. He wasn’t your father. Not in the way a father should be there for his daughter. Don’t beat yourself up. Not everyone grieves in the same ways, especially not in the ‘normal’ ways that everyone says you should.” Wow, that sounded dumb. Real eloquent, DiNozzo.
“Who said you were normal, anyway?” He tried to laugh off the seriousness of the statement, but his armor was slipping too fast and his throaty laugh faded away. She glanced up at him, and saw his mask was gone, dropped in haste, and he wasn’t moving a muscle to pick it back up.
She moved closer to place a hand on his chest and gave him a sweet smile that seemed to hold all the love in the world. Damn it.
He lowered his voice to just above a whisper and said what they’d been building up to for nearly the last 8 years.
“I can tell you you’re not. Ziva David, you are such an incredible woman and it kills me that you don’t see it. So I’m gonna make sure you do.”
With a final apprehensive look down at her lips and then back at her eyes, the stunned silence and look of mischief in her beautiful brown eyes told him exactly what he needed to know.
He leaned down and met her halfway in a gentle kiss that brought everything to a standstill. If he had no memory left as a frail old man, this was the one moment he’d plead with God to let him have. Yeah, this took over 7 years, countless roadblocks curiously shaped like people, and a trip to the ends of the earth and back, but this felt so right and real and Anthony DiNozzo Jr., part of the family of men who don’t cry, felt like bursting into tears. This was a turning point. And it was so much better than he’d ever thought it would be.
“I'm gonna love you like nobody's loved you
Come rain or come shine
High as a mountain and deep as a river
Come rain or come shine
I guess when you met me
It was just one of those things
But don't you ever bet me
'Cause I'm gonna be true if you let me”
