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The story is near to drawing to a close…

Chapter 12. Terminal.

Tony leaned Ziva against the side of the phone booth after walking to 8th street. Perhaps being a street over from Azan's destination would buy them some time.

Tony began rummaging through his pockets before turning to Ziva. "Do you have a dime?"

Ziva gave him a doubting look. "Why would I have a dime, Tony? We have just been held captive."

"Well, a phone call is ten cents, so we need a dime," Tony pointed out, still searching the pockets of his jeans.

Ziva sighed and began fishing through her pockets as well. Miraculously, she pulled out a dime.

"Hey, what do ya know," Tony said with a grin. "Looks like luck's in our favor today."

Ziva rolled her eyes, ready to point out all of their bad luck, but she let it pass; it would require too much effort to argue.

"Alright, we have one call," Tony stated, staring at the valuable silver coin. "Do we call Gibbs or McGee?"

The couple looked at one another before both saying, "Gibbs."

Tony quickly stuck the coin into the slot and dialed Gibbs's phone number, hope and excitement swelling within him once more. But when a busy signal reached his ears, his hope sank quickly once again.

With a grimace, Tony put the phone back on the cradle. "It's busy."

Ziva quietly ranted out a few curses in Hebrew.

Tony began fishing through his pockets once more, striking luck once again. A quarter was found in his back pocket. He held it up happily in front of Ziva's glare. "By Jove's, I've got it! I've cracked the case!"

Ziva continued to glare at Tony for his idiocy.

"It's Sherlock Holmes, Zee-vah," Tony clarified as he filed the next coin into the coin slot.

Ziva leaned against the booth and closed her eyes again.

Tony snatched up his nickel and dime as he hung up the phone once more. "He didn't answer his house phone either."

Ziva gave her partner an incredulous stare. "You did not call McGee? For God's sake, Tony, call McGee!"

Tony straightened his back as he eyed Ziva. "Good to see you've got your personality back."

Ziva glared at him out of the corner of her eye as Tony tapped in McGee's phone number.

"McGee," the agent answered.

"Probie!" Tony barked, relieved to finally hear his friend's voice. "Get Boss, and come to 7th Street."

"Tony?" McGee asked in disbelief.

"No, McGullible," Tony mocked with an eye roll, "it's Humphrey Bogart."

McGee swallowed back a lump in his throat before running up the basement stairs, Abby right on his six. "Boss! Tony's on the phone."

Gibbs looked up from his phone call with Vance before tossing his phone to a random agent.

"Gibbs," he barked into McGee's phone.

"Can I talk to him?" Abby asked, a large smile spreading across her face.

Gibbs turned away from the group to take the call.

"Hey, Boss," Tony greeted. "Beautiful day today, isn't it?"

"Where the hell are you, DiNozzo?" Gibbs demanded.

"8th Street," Tony answered. "Just off of 7th. Azzan's behind this, planning on meeting on 7th within the next five minutes."

"Ziva?" Gibbs asked, wondering of his agent's welfare. He packed Abby, McGee, and a couple of the dispatch officers into the NCIS van before taking off at a dangerous speed.

"She's not doing too good, Boss," Tony responded with a glance at his partner. Sweat dewed on her pale face, making her clammy.

Gibbs threw the phone to McGee, putting his full focus on speeding to meet his agents.

"We'll be there in five minutes, Tony," McGee promised.

Gibbs, not accepting this statement, slammed harder on the accelerator.

"Make that three," Abby chimed into the phone.

Tony hung up the pay phone and returned to Ziva. "How you holdin' up?" He eyed her warily, worried at the state she was presenting. Would it be much longer before her body demanded a force shut down? One could only survive with so little rest after torture and heart failure.

Ziva concentrated on her breathing, a common tactic she actively practiced during her Mossad training years. She had found that it was much easier to bear something if it wasn't dwelled on. "Gibbs will be here shortly, yes?"

She peered out of the corner of her eye to see Tony's nod before reclosing her eyes.

"Then we will wait," she stated.

Tony looked around this empty street, feeling exposed out in the open. Was there some kind of shelter near by?

The sounds of vans' tires screeching and rolling down the pavement filtered through the air to Tony and Ziva.

Ziva gave Tony a worried look. "Gibbs . . .?"

Tony shook his head, wrapping his arm around her to help support her weight. "It's too soon."

The two hurried their shuffle into the only place that they could see—an alley in between two brick buildings.

Alas, after hurrying down the shady hallway, they met another brick wall, blocking off all exists.

"The worst always happens it alleys," Tony pointed out glumly.

Ziva leaned up against the cool, dirt-coated brick wall after traveling to the farthest corner of the entrapping alley. "Tell me a story."

DiNozzo gave her a confused look. She had always protested against his ramblings before. Was she really this out of it? "What?"

"Tony, I am allowing you to rant about whatever you desire," she stated bluntly, just wanting him to seize the opportunity. Her aches and wounds from the torture she had endured, along with the extreme fatigue from her near death experience, were causing Ziva David to want to become entranced with anything besides reality. "Distract me."

Tony wetted his lips before beginning his ramble. "There once was a stealthy, yet seductive, ninja named Ziva David. . ."

Ziva gave him a doubting look, causing Tony to hold up his hands in a defenseless surrender. "Hey, I'm just sticking with the facts.

"Ziva was a Very Special Agent, one of the most special, in fact.

"Then," Tony continued, becoming more animated as he fell into his imagination, "one day, she met Tony, the most handsome and terribly dashing Very Special Agent that had ever lived."

"If I already was a Field Agent," Ziva corrected, "I would have already met you, yes?"

Tony hushed her and continued on. "The two fell madly in love, and—"

"I would not call it 'madly in love,'" she voiced her opinion, still refusing to open her eyes. "Of course, we were attracted to each other, but—"

"And," Tony continued, "that was when the terribly handsome Tony approached her with a proposal that they accompany one another for dinner." His eyes looked into a far away moment as the memories of happier people flooded his mind. "She laughed at his witty jokes, and he corrected her terribly wretched English idioms.

"She seemed a little surprised when she kissed him. He leaned in eagerly to meet her lips. He'd never felt anyone as warm as her. I think it had something to do with the weather. I never wanted to let her go. I'd never wanted to hold onto someone as badly as her…"

Tony's eyes snapped out of the events that had taken place that night and back to reality. He looked down at Ziva who was now slumbering against his shoulder. It had been such an eventful few days that she had managed to fall asleep in those few story-telling moments.

Tony grinned down at her and murmured, "And so they lived happily ever after as they battled psychotic killers in strange street alleys."

Cars screeching their tires against pavement. The harsh sounds vibrated through the air to the hidden couple. It was ominous, it was nerve-wracking.

"Zi," Tony hissed through a whisper. "I think Azzan's here." He glanced at her and found her still sleeping. He carefully leaned her against the brick wall, but the action awoke her.

"Tony?" she inquired, snapping back to reality.

Tony pressed his index finger to his lips, hoping she would understand what was going on.

The sounds of angry Arabic tongues chattering echoed dimly back to Ziva and Tony's ears. They exchanged wary looks as the voices became angrier and louder.

"They must've found Hopkins," Tony captioned.

"Shh," Ziva silenced him, straining her ears to listen for more.

The sounds grew louder. Men shouting and bickering and yelling—all of the sounds grew in volume.

Ziva and Tony clutched one another's hands, hoping that the men wouldn't go down 8th Avenue. Perhaps they would skip it all together and go to 9th. Perhaps pigs would fly.

The voices were so near. How close were they now? Twenty feet, thirty at best?

Tony's eyes roamed over every inch of this simple brick alley. Brick, brick, brick—the whole damn box was encased with brick! Why had he chosen this place to hide? It seemed so stupid now. He had taken Ziva, searched for the mouse trap, and then sat patiently, waiting for the trap to snap. He had guided them ignorantly to their deaths.

The voices were so close. Ziva held onto her breath as she waited, but Tony released his in small puffs. There's was no hope left for escaping; why waste the energy he had preserved on false hope?

But then the voices died out. Silence slapped their eardrums, taunting them at the climax.

Ziva and Tony exchanged confused looks, waiting for the voices to resume.

"Ziva," Azzan announced gaily, stepping around the corner. His sun-beaten skin was covered in dirt and sweat. His face wore a crazed expression, a face desperate for something. "You should have learned that you cannot hide from me. Mossad trained us both."

Tony glared at the man, never a fan of being ignored. He pointed the acquired gun at Azzan. "We're not doing this, Gorion. This ends now."

Azzan's two followers snapped their guns to attention, quickly training them on Tony's heart.

Azzan show a lesser reaction: the corner of his mouth edged upwards into a smirk. He knew he had the upper hand, and he planned to taunt it. "Come now, DiNozzo. You have no part in this; I only bear an ill will towards Ziva and her father."

Ziva raised her chin at him in defiance. "Let him go then if your words are true."

Azzan shrugged, casually waving his hand towards the open street behind him. "He was only an incentive for Hopkins, and can now benefit me no longer.

"Go," he ordered Anthony. "Preserve your life."

"Not without Ziva," Tony defied through gritted teeth.

"She cannot be saved," Azzan stated. His voice was unwavering as he raised a third gun against the couple.

Ziva's hand itched for a weapon of her own. Alas, there was none to bear. "Leave, Tony."

"No." He was beginning to sound like a child desperately attempting to retain his faith in a lost fantasy. A saving fate: that was his fairytale.

Azzan cocked his gun. "Your death will be a message for your father. The last of his spawn to die at another's hand. Then, he will realize what I have in store for him."

Ziva braced herself as she looked Azzan straight in the eye. If she was to die, she wanted him to watch as she crumbled into a corpse. She wanted this moment to haunt him for the rest of his life just as the lives she had taken continued to haunt her. They had been friends, Azzan and Ziva. And now she wanted her death to play like a broken record, over and over again until it drove him to the brink of insanity.

Tony tightened his grip on his gun. He wanted to just take Gorion out right here and right now. But he knew that the second he did, the guards would kill Ziva anyways without a second thought. He could only wish that something interfered. "Last chance, Gorion—Drop your weapon."

Azzan ignored Tony and tightened his index finger on the trigger. "I will meet you in the next life, Ziva."

The shot rang out, quick and fast.

Tony, believing the bullet to have been expelled from Gorion's barrel, shot towards the three opponents.

The guards only saw their leader go down. But before they could let out another bullet, shots from various directions were fired through their skulls.

Azzan and his two guards were down, the two guards instantly killed as Azzan slowly bled out from his chest.

Tony looked to Ziva for injury, and she looked surprised and hollow. Her complexion was unhealthily pale; her vacant eyes stared at Azzan. But, despite the crossfire, she had miraculously only suffered an emotional trauma.

Azzan coughed blood, letting the ruby red drizzled down his chapped lips. He looked at Ziva with a questioning look, as if she was then one who had just stripped him of the rest of his life.

Ziva stepped towards him, and Tony tried to pull her back. She shrugged him off and knelt down in front of Azzan. "You were too bent on revenge," she accused, watching him with pity in her eyes. "It has destroyed you."

His lips spluttered out drops of blood before they moved into speaking. "Eli David killed my family. He needed to know what it is like."

Ziva felt an irrational pity for him. Like so many others, his family had been taken too early and too soon. But Azzan had been her friend through adolescence. She couldn't ignore that now. Not when she was the one who had to relive his death for the rest of her life. "It was not right, and it was not fair. But we must all face the consequences for what we have done." The weight of Ziva's last sentence pressed heavily on her soul, causing her to ache with grief for all of the lives and families she had robbed as a Mossad agent.

Tony stood behind the scene as Ziva muttered an apology to Azzan Gorion and his family. Although he believed the bastard should rot in hell for all of the damage he had caused, he knew this would be beneficial for Ziva.

Gibbs and McGee stood a few feet away, not needing to interrupt.

However, Abby had become impatient and ran up to Tony. She embraced him tightly and rushed, "Tony! Are you O.K.? You were nearly killed!"

Tony gave a half-hearted smirk. "We're O.K., Abbs. And I think we all nearly died."

Ziva straightened, not meeting the other's eyes. Her face was plastered with dirt and fatigue, echoing the past events.

Gibbs watched her, his warm gun still held in a loose grip. He knew her feelings all too well.

"Come on," he encouraged the agents gruffly, yet sympathetically. "Let's go."

The agents, along with a forensic scientist, shuffled towards the NCIS vans, leaving their past few bleeding days dying behind them.

The next chapter will be a conversation between Gibbs and Ziva. (And, of course, more Tiva.)

Anything you want to see before the story closes its curtains?

Reviews are gratefully welcomed. Thanks for reading. :)