It is late. He doesn't know exactly what time it is, and frankly, he doesn't care. After the news they received today, it is only understandable that he has been given work off.

The curtains are drawn shut and a beer is gripped firmly in one hand, the remote in the other. A sliver of moonlight sneaks in, landing on the piano. Tony has covered his prized instrument with a white sheet, because all it does is cause memories to resurface. The sheet does not help. It still serves just as well as a ghostly reminder of her.

She's gone, and he's having a really hard time wrapping his head around that fact. He always figured she would die from a bullet, a bomb, a knife. He never pictured her falling to something of Mother Nature's design.

He figures that someone must have it out for him when he is flipping through the channels and sees Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet gripping the metal railing of a ship about to plunge to its watery grave. He cannot shut it off quickly enough, but it is too late. His mind is whirring.

The masochistic part of his brain has always been the most imaginative, and it disgusts him how well he is able to picture it. Ziva, her strong, beautiful body fighting for air that would never come. She flails and kicks but it is for nothing. Her lungs have no more air; she inhales gulps of water in desperation. It takes minutes before she falls still, her limp body floating almost peacefully in death.

A glass bottle shatters the wall, and a sob tears through his chest.

Was she scared? What was she thinking about as she tried so futilely to find life-giving oxygen? Was she sorry for leaving, for not trusting him? Did she even think about him? Did she panic as she realized, her lungs burning painfully, that she was dying?

How long did his Ziva suffer the slow agony of drowning?

He growls in frustration because he cannot stop thinking of these brutal realities. He cannot stop thinking about her once-beautiful body, no doubt now bloated and pale and food for the fish. It angers him to think these things.

Snarling in anger, grief, and frustration, he pops the lid off another beer and does not move until morning.

...

She has been back for a week, and they have hardly talked. Their bathroom encounter dealt with what needed to be said, but time and distance and supposed death have intensified his longing to simply be in her presence.

So he goes to her new apartment, having gotten the address from McGee who helped her get settled in. She is not expecting him; he does not care. His heart yearns for some sense of familiarity that only take out and movie night can bring.

Ziva is surprised to see him of course, but does not shun him away. He does not know if it's out of guilt or gratitude or if maybe she feels that nagging need to be normal, too, but he's in her apartment and that's all that matters.

"If you are going to stay, then I at least get the choice of the movie," she insists, and Tony agrees because that spark is back in her eyes and that's all he cares about- not even that she will most likely pick a chick flick or musical just for the sake or annoying him.

He goes to the small kitchen to order take-out while she puts in the movie she has chosen. When he comes back, the main menu is playing My Heart Will Go On, and he wastes not a second in running up and turning the TV off.

"No."

Ziva looks confused. "I only have chick-flicks, they were Abby's housewarming gift."

"Then pick something else." His voice is firm and demanding. She does not argue. It is only halfway through Sound of Music that realization dawns on her.

She takes his hand, he grips it back like a lifeline, and they do not let go.