Work Text:
The Inn at World's End was, Ziva David decided, worrying.
She knew she should not be there, for starters. There had been a storm, and she'd pulled over because even she knew better than to try to drive through such a howling mess. She'd gotten out of the car with her hat and gloves and scarf (and guns and knives and her NCIS badge and above all else, her cellphone - but those were par for the course), when it looked as though she might be snowed in, and had headed for the nearest lightsource.
Which had turned out to be an inn.
She had no idea how long she'd been there; time didn't seem to matter, because the hands on her watch were completely static, even though she could hear its tick. She'd have thought it broken, but her cellphone said exactly the same thing (plus a minute and thirty-seven seconds).
She had no way of contacting the outside world; her cellphone had no reception and she suspected that had she brought the laptop, it wouldn't even work in the rooms.
But it was blessedly warm, and the people there were, while slightly strange (one man had the lower body of a horse, and she tried not to consider that too much), at least polite. Nobody had started a barfight, nobody had been murdered, and nobody had thought that 'NCIS Agent' was an odd job-description for a woman with an Israli accent.
The price of her stay was apparently a story, and so she had spoken her words, an old tale to her, and one she'd tried so hard to forget (learn from).
At the end of her story, the loudmouthed young man with the long braided hair and silver cross dangling from his neck, who had introduced himself as 'Duo', and hadn't given much more information than that despite his near-nonstop chatter, he silently reached across and rested his hand upon her shoulder, and for the first time she caught a glimpse of the scars that decorated the backs of his hands, and the callouses that only holding weapons could form on the palms.
"It doesn't get any easier," he whispered, his eyes somehow older than they had any right to be. "But I'll tell you this now: You never do want it to get any easier. Because the day it does is the day that you forget what you're doing your job for."
Ziva covered his hand with hers, and gave him a smile that she actually meant.