#ttiva

He remembers uttering those words once, back in Philly, a lifetime ago; the mother sinking to the ground sobbing, the father staring straight through him, straight through the mangled wreck of their son’s car behind him, as the light faded from his eyes.

He wonders if anyone saw the light fade from his eyes, down in Abby’s lab.

The bottle tips back against his lips, the bourbon burns down his throat, anger suddenly burns and spreads inside of him.

No survivors.

His inebriated mind plays tricks on him; the smell of bourbon mingles with that of saw dust. The combination used to bring him comfort, a sense of stability. All it brings him now is anger.

If it wasn’t for Gibbs she’d still be here.

Muscles quiver as his pulse races, the urge to throw the bottle against the wall is strong. The urge to scream his lungs out, his heart out, at Gibbs is stronger. To blame him for everything. To blame him for a rule that offered the perfect excuse to hide from the woman that held his heart.

Even in his intoxicated state he knows he has no one to blame but himself. The what-ifs always come too late. And “no survivors” is so much past too late he’s not sure if he ever wants to be sober again.

Another gulp of bourbon, the bottom now clearly in sight.

A knock on the door.

Glaring silently is ineffective; McGee threatens to pick the lock. His chest tightens and he takes another drink. Ziva could pick locks like a pro.

In another world he might have arrested her for burglary.

In another world they might have never met.

In another world she might not be dead.

McGee walking in and sitting down beside him barely registers; he’s halfway across the world, bobbing in the ocean like flotsam. There are no survivors.

“Tony.”

Judging by the look on Tim’s face this wasn’t the first time he tried to get his attention.

McGee opens and closes his mouth, before his eyes focus on the almost empty bottle of bourbon. “That won’t bring her back.”

Tony scoffs, the last thing he needs right now is McGoody Two-Shoes stating the obvious. “But it will make me forget her.”

“Is that what you want, to forget her?”

Does he?

No, not really. He does want to forget the words “no survivors”.

Another swig of bourbon, another glance at McGee. Flashes of Ziva encouraging him to make tough decisions float through his mind. He places the bottle on the coffee table and leans his head back on the couch.

Closing his eyes at the onslaught of memories and emotions, he runs both hands over his face, and says, “Nothing is inevitable.” He presses the heel of his hands into his eyes, swirly lines blurring his vision like whitecaps on the water surface. If she had truly believed that then why was she dead.

“Ziva’s kind of hard to forget, Tony.”

Startled, he drops his hands and glances around aimlessly, wondering how he went from wanting to get drunk with her in autopsy a year ago, to being drunk and mourning her in his apartment.

He stares at McGee, his stomach clenches. Maybe it’s the bourbon, or maybe it’s the memory of how easily Tim and Ziva had become good friends.

Maybe if he hadn’t been so angry and hurt by Kate’s death and Mossad’s indirect involvement, maybe if he had put all of that beside him, accepted her as his new partner from the get-go, maybe he wouldn’t be sitting here, drunk off his ass, wishing he’d never heard those two words.

McGee’s brows draw closer and he looks down briefly before looking him square in the eye. “This will be a lot harder on you, won’t it?”

The alcohol is doing a fine job of clouding his mind, and it takes him a full five seconds before he scoffs and strings together the words, “What are you talking about?”

He knows what he doesn’t want to talk about. What he doesn’t want to think about. He also knows that if McGee pushes, the alcohol will make him say things he doesn’t want to say out loud. Saying words out loud makes them real, like...

No survivors.

“I just thought…the two of you seemed…close.”

While his mind considers kicking his unwanted guest out, his mouth betrays him. “Maybe we could’ve been, in another world.”

Hands ball into fists, resentment mingles with regret. Regret for admitting his feelings to Tim, for not admitting them to Ziva.

Would that have made a difference?

The bottle beckons him once more and he wonders if regret is what Gibbs tastes every time he downs a mason jar of the brown liquor.

“How much was in that bottle when you started drinking?”

The concern in the probie’s voice makes his blood boil.

He doesn’t require sympathy, and he certainly doesn’t deserve it. She’s dead because of him, because of what he did and didn’t do, because he waited too long, because Rivkin died and he didn’t.

No survivors.“None of your business.”

“Drinking yourself to death isn’t going to bring her back.”

He scoffs, empties the bottle and slams it on the coffee table. Tripping over his discarded shoes on the way to the get more liquor, he mutters, “I died when she did.”

The bottle of tequila seems to mock him, so he heads for the freezer instead. The cold, wet droplets forming on the vodka bottle chill the memory of Ziva’s laughter after she beat him in a tequila drinking contest.

“Tony.”

McGee’s voice, full of empathy, yet tinged with reproach, drifts through the fog.

It dawns on him, then; he’ll never hear her say his name again. His hand tightens around the bottle, the cold spreads to his very core.

He looks at McGee blankly, places the vodka back in its cold, wet grave—no, that wasn’t right—and closes the freezer. No amount of drinking will thaw him now.

He puts his game face on as best as possible, a skill that had been second nature since childhood. A skill Ziva could see through with far too much ease. He clenches his jaw, thanks McGee for stopping by with minimal slurring and a tight-lipped smile, before showing him out and locking the door.

The leather of his couch somehow feels colder than usual as he stretches out on his back, and stares at the ceiling in the moonlit room. Everything would be cold and dark from now on, like the deep blue sea.