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Tony leads several cells of the new French Resistance in vampire-occupied Paris. He still writes and reads reports, like in the old days, but they tend to run brief, written in code, and he never lets the pages stay in one place for long.
They use only hardcopy since he’s more than learned his lesson about electronic communications. He demands all those in his cells use old-school dead drops, hand passes, sleight of hand. The old ways work best, and he makes certain his people know them before assigning them their first missions.
He sends a Groupes de Choc armed with stakes, holy water, and crossbows to take back the Maubert-Mutualité Metro after receiving good intel that the swarm with which Ziva packed the place lacked discipline and kept throwing each other in front of oncoming trains. Apparently, maiming amused them, but it means they’ve lost numbers, and the vamps who stayed won’t have much hope of holding out against his team.
Color him a black-hearted bastard for wishing he could see what’s left of the too-mangled-to-live-but-can’t-die blood-suckers he’s told clutter up the place. He wishes he could stake them all himself.
He’ll give the cell a couple of hours to finish the job and return, but he’ll bug out if they don’t come back within that timeframe. Can’t risk staying in case someone gets caught and the location’s tortured out of them. If Tony’s caught and tortured, he could betray a great many more cells. He’s realistic about his chances of resisting. No one withstands torture. Vivre libre ou mourir.
He plans another op over a map, coffee, and croissants, this one in aid of a bit of malicious compliance—helping the vamps get their wish of people on tap, only they’ll sub in the terminal leukemia patients who quietly let the resistance know they wanted this job. Their targets won’t die, but they’ll feel sick enough after imbibing to think twice about placing humans in vending machines. He’s heard a brood tried this once before, in a place called Sunnydale, California, but apparently the lesson didn’t take. Maybe this time.
He works from an old hostel, weak morning light filtered in through the single window facing a brick wall, because Ziva and Tali won’t look for him here. A bitonal police siren cuts through the quiet somewhere off in the distance. He hopes it has nothing to do with the Metro op.
If they think of him at all, Ziva and Tali will expect him to live somewhere posh, like the old flat with the stained glass and Tour de Eiffel view, not here, where whoever built the place grouted every room with white bathroom tile. The vamps would probably love it for the easy cleaning, but him not so much, the rooms always too clammy, so he needs his inhaler.
Ziva’s fighting skills and assassin background won her the title L'Impératrice de Paris. Ambition’s a new feature of Ziva-the-undead that must come from the demon. He knew her deadly, but never power hungry. Tali’s her ride-or-die executioner, their mother-daughter dynamic finally cemented over Tali ax-murdering the leftovers once Ziva and her minions have sated themselves on live TV. He avoids the broadcasts, taking his news secondhand from his resistance cells.
God, he loved them, his daughter and the mother of his child. Still loves them as he knew them, but he can’t sit with the feeling or he’ll lose himself remembering.
He doesn’t hunt them. He’s willing to take out as many vamps as he can, but he leaves his family for others because, given the choice, he fears he would join them instead of doing what’s right.
He doesn’t grieve. Of course, he did, but he won’t give his whole life to it the way he watched Gibbs do. He loves the world as he knew it, too, and he’ll do anything he must to bring it back.