Author's Note: I've seen "Truth or Consequences" about a hundred times, I think, and it has always struck me how Tony watched Ziva from the corner of the elevator and then again from his desk, and how Ziva entered the bullpen silently, her affect so very diminished. And then the next time we see them together, Tony could only stare at her, with that half-cocked smile on his face, and she could barely make eye contact. Which got me wondering-What happened in between? This is my idea.

A note on "Ziva-talk" in the second half-the words she speaks are from the Viduy, a Jewish confessional prayer. The one word Ziva repeats often is "Ni'atznu," which is where the title comes from. is a great site if you'd like to know more about this profound prayer.

I don't own 'em; I take no money from 'em. I only let my little grey matter consider them after the cameras stop rolling...

When she slipped away from the room, as quiet as a heart that no longer pulsed, not one person seemed to notice.

Except Tony.

He had watched her leave when the rest of the office was busy writing reports, or asking questions about that shot, that miraculous shot, or had reported to the director's office, or were congratulating the team, or any other vacuous, banal activity he wanted no part of.

He had not taken his eyes off her since Somalia. Had sat behind her in the HumVee that escorted them away from Saleem's nest; had sat across from her while they cared for her in triage. And although he wasn't allowed in the examination room when they administered the rape kit, the neurological tests, he had walked beside her on way to radiology.

On the long flight across the unending ocean, he sat apart from her, but she remained within his bead. Silent, vacant, her eyes never met any of theirs, and her hands rarely left the knot of fingers buried in her lap. She did sleep, sitting upright, even though Gibbs recommended she spread out, even though Gibbs wrapped a protective arm across her shoulder.

In the van from the air base to the naval base, Tony sat in the front seat, where he could watch her surreptitiously from the vanity mirror, where he watched her stare out the window, where nothing that came to her attention drew her attention.

Where he could continuously remind himself that she was alive. That she was right there. That, I'll be damned, she didn't die... A summer's worth of trying and not succeeding to wrap his head around one brutal reality, and now the ordeal of unwrapping those suffocating knots. A living dream, with a nightmarish shell. Still, seeing her, relearning the color of her eyes, the slope of her features, the topography of her hands-it helped.

So when she disappeared from the bullpen, of course he knew where she was. He'd gone there himself a time or two. Twenty times. A hundred.

He'd found himself there after his welcome into hell. The smell of the sewer and rot, he found out, was not a superficial one. It was molecular. It lingered. After a full hour scrubbing in the shower, the stench still wafted into his nose and did so for weeks after.

Not even a year later, with the grime and grit of a road trip covering his body and with the blood of another on his hands, DiNozzo stood again under the force of the shower, his hands pressed to the wall, his head draped between. The warmth helped him to reconcile his fondness for a deranged man who had attempted to kill him. A tricky reconciliation, at best.

And then, oh, then, six months or so... The shower floor ran pink as Kate's blood washed from his skin. As congealed brain tissue sloughed away. As bone fragments rinsed from his hair.

He had been there after the declaration of love for Jeanne, and after the renunciation.

There was the California sand that had embedded itself in every crease of his body, that was gritty against his teeth. That scraped beneath his eyelids. That blew around him as it had around the abandoned diner, and continued to pelt him with its death and acrimony, with its constant reminder of his culpability and loss. No amount of water could wash away the images that soiled his memory, of her lifeless eyes reflected in a pool of her own blood.

For that moment, and for all moments when his entire being was a tinder keg and the world was a punk, Tony sought out the tight enclosure of the shower, the salve of the hot water, the drone of spray against tile.

He knew where she was. Of course he knew.

Tony pushed open the door to the locker room, made sure no one else was there. The dichotomy of cool hallway and warm locker room sucked breath from his lungs. He padded over to the bench nearest the stall that coughed out plumes of steam. A pair of boots, a camp shirt, a threadbare T-Shirt, a pair of dark, stained cargo pants, all neatly folded and placed on or under the bench. No undergarments. He touched them all, hoping they'd speak to him in some hidden language.

But just like the disrobed clothes, the room was silent, sans the water. Nor did the opaque plastic curtain give up any secrets contained within the cell. He slid his hands into his pockets and pressed his back to the partition. Glancing over his shoulder, he caught a shock of ebony hair, just the top of her skull, and he dared not look closer. He just wanted to make sure she was on her feet, though how was another matter.

He knew why she was here. A place to think, to ache, to grieve. To cleanse one of inequities, both real and imagined, of the body and of the soul. To ask forgiveness, knowing it rarely was granted. To be crated like a frightened animal, surrounded by cold tile and scalding water. To separate from the noise and the pain, a place of self-imposed deprivation that not even Gibbs would violate. Well, rarely.

When the door to the locker room opened and two probational officers, fresh from a boxing spar, jaunted in, Tony pinned them down with uncompromising eyes and shook his head. No questions entertained or asked, they backed out, and he was alone again with her, and she remained oblivious.

Which is why you seek out the sanctity of the shower. To rid yourself of the grime, the dirt, the blood, the hours, the guilt, the sweat. Where tears blend in, just another passenger on a journey toward absolution. And oblivion.

Where there are no more questions asked and no carefully constructed answers to choke out. Or carefully hidden truths to obfuscate. Where the residual, bitter grains of truth serum might surface, ripping open his body with yet another sharp-edged verity of the Ziva variety. Where you can sit in silence with your thoughts while all the world tumbled frenetically on. Where, should one of those grains surface and enslave the voice, you can vocalize it without the reproachful, incredulous eyes of those in the room.

Like this particular statement that had been set to explode for a long time- "You got lousy taste in men, Ziva."

Michael Rivkin. If Tony had to pinpoint the event that toppled his life like so many falling dominoes, it was when Ziva took up with Michael Rivkin. How could she have been so blind? There's truth for you, he thought. Didn't even need an injection from a dirty syringe to come up with that one.

So, Michael Rivkin's rampage across the US was the first domino. Shooting him in the chest was the second. A third domino-flying to Tel Aviv. The fourth-flying home alone. Eli David had to account for dominoes five through eight, at least, which led to a sunken cargo ship, nine, and some very sketchy intel, ten.

And it all began with Michael Rivkin.

"Well, truth be told," Tony muttered to no one, rubbing his fatigued eyes, "it started with that bastard Eli. Father of the Year, that one."

Tony looked at his watch. He'd been outside her stall for a good ten minutes. Against the far wall was the towel rack. He grabbed two, then another. One more for the floor. He stacked the coarse, white towels on the bench next to her clothes and sat down beside them. From here he could see her feet, still encased in dark socks that bulged at her ankles, waterlogged and long-past fresh. That bothered him, the disconnect. The ominous feeling that she wasn't clear, that she was functioning solely on auto-pilot and that her pilot was severely compromised.

Still, the silence.

He pegged his elbows to his knees, hands cantilevered out, head bowed. What had they done to her? he wondered. Did he really want to know? How had Saleem and his minions managed to eviscerate her soul? Would the light ever return? How long would she ghost through the world, scarcely able to disturb the air?

How long had it taken him to get over her death? Of course, that healing had barely begun when she showed up alive once again.

Tony clapped his hand to his pinched brow and only then remembered he, too, was still covered in the grime of the desert; he, too, had nightmares hovering behind his eyes-a knife at Ziva's throat, a gun at Tim's head. Sleep would not come easily in the next few nights. Hell, he hadn't slept well since the end of winter. Better buy a fifth on the way home. Sleep, the DiNozzo way-flood the sight of her exposed neck and the glinting, tense blade; mute the sounds of bullets tearing through windows.

"Tony?"

Yanked from lacerating memory, Tony's focus jerked up and lit upon Abby's wide-eyed concern just visible through the crack in the door. He jumped to his feet and, as if traversing hot rocks, scampered to the door. One hand held up to quiet any further sound that would penetrate Ziva's solitude, Tony wedged himself half in, half out of the door. "Hey, Abs. How ya doin'?"

"Um, good, but that's not... Is she with you?" Abby asked, reaching out to pinch his shirt, to ground him to her. "I mean, of course she is, otherwise why would you be sitting in the... I mean, is she here? Like, here?"

He clutched her hand, trembling and cold, in his and pressed it to his chest. Nodded his head, and meant to reassure Abby that Ziva was fine, that she was just, ya know, chillin', but he couldn't lie to her like that. "I need you to do something. I need you to find a change of clothes for Ziva. Can you do that? It's like this-I, uh, I don't want her to have to..."

Abby wove an arm around the back of his neck, pressed her check to his, a thing that shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did, and then she was off.

He lumbered back to his perch outside her shower stall; kneaded the tightness in his lower back. Perhaps it was from past experience, perhaps it was the exhausting severity of it all, but from deep within, Tony knew her silence would and should go on. He understood down to the marrow that boiled within that for Ziva, hours were coming, days he would not be able to soothe away with his words. And really, what could he possibly say to her? "Buck up, little buckaroo! At least you got to see dear ol' Dad!" Or worse, "Next time you go down with the ship, you sure as hell better take me with you."

Words, he realized, were empty and useless, at least that's what he had always found. Even his use of phrases-"I'm fine," "DiNozzos never faint," or in response to Jeanne's question of any of it being true, "No"-none of it carried an ounce of truth or comfort. And people knew that, people like Ziva.

But some people... "Oh, my god, she's alive?! I knew it! I knew it! She's alive. Bring her home. I've missed her," was all Abby needed to tell herself and the others, and then she had moved on to the happy-happy. Tony envied her that. What he wouldn't give to be able to dig out the memories of Ziva's death and replace them just that quickly with relief of her life. "Not that easy," he whispered to the mist.

After all, part of him was still in the Damocles' bulkhead. Her death, her ignominious death augered into him, haunted him so that for weeks he woke up screaming, gulping at air, sometimes crying (though he would never admit to that) over his imagination's grotesque conjurations of death at sea, about her last breaths before being submerged; about her last movements, frantic and ineffectual; about her face, bloated, grey, her hair swimming in the frigid water.

Words cannot soothe. Possibly not even actions.

And sometimes, not even being an eyewitness to her resurrection.

"Ziva David is dead."

Unless she wasn't.

He rubbed his eyes until he caused pain, crushed his teeth together, and breathed in harsh air. She wasn't dead. One minute, she was; one minute, she wasn't. Incongruous. The sting of it, the actual physical pain of dealing with her death still wrapped his heart in barbed wire, and yet she was alive, in the same goddamn room, a few feet away, and he wished he could rejoice in it, but just hours before, she was dead...

Tony glanced toward the shower again, to catch a glimpse of her socked feet, just to make sure that she really was there.

She was there, but no longer standing.

"Ziva?" he called out, rushing to his feet. Tony clamped his hands to the sides of the shower, pressed his ear to the curtain, and listened. Strained to hear her cry, to hear her speak, to hear her whisper, to hear her breathe. Nothing.

He peeled back the curtain to expose only the floor, hoping, praying he wouldn't find blood. No blood, so he drew it back more, and all the while his heart pounded.

Her socked feet were closest to him, shoved into the corner. Pulling back the sheath, Tony found bruised legs, crossed one over the other, the water beading off in rivulets. He crouched down and whispered her name, slid the curtain back. "Ziva?"

Slumped, wedged in the corner, hands drooped to the shower floor, Ziva stared at nothing, while strands of wet hair cut across her face. Tony threw his hand to her neck and felt for a pulse, dear god... Still there, but slow.

"Ziva?" He kept his frightened eyes on hers; he didn't not want to directly see the scrapes across her shoulder, the bite marks on her arms, her chest, the old scabs on her elbows, the burns, the lacerations, the devastation to her body. But they were there, glaring in his peripheral vision. Tony swallowed hard, bit his tongue-maybe the pain would stop his heart from breaking. "Ziva, honey?"

"Oshamnu, bogadnu, gozalnu," came the flat words, barely audible. And still, her eyes, just as flat, did not waver. "Dibarnu dofi, he'evinu, ve'hirsha'nu, zadnu..."

Reaching out with one shaking hand to touch her swollen ankle, Tony found that the water had gone cold. "Jesus, Ziva..." He fumbled for the shower fixture and turned off the water, reached back for the stack of towels and raked them toward him.

"Chomasnu, tofalnu sheker, yo'atznu ra..."

Desperate to warm her, Tony unfurled one towel and held it open. "Ziva? I'm gonna...I'm gonna cover you up now, Ziva. Okay? Will you let me do that?" he asked, coming closer to her. He draped one edge over her shoulder and down her back, the other was tucked between the cool tile wall and her arm. She did not stir; she did not catch his worried eye. Tony stripped off her threadbare socks and picked up a second towel. "I'm going to touch your legs now, Ziva. Do you hear me, honey?"

"Kizavnu, latznu, moradnu," she said with a voice that would not susurrate the most fragile leaf, as if her soul were that leaf.

It was impossible not to see the ravages her body had sustained, and an anger boiled within him. Tony's hands shook as he cocooned her in the coarse linens. "God... God..."

"Ni'atznu," she said, and her chin trembled. "Ni'atznu..."

Tony angled himself inside the small enclosure, trying to intercept her eye. "Ziva, I need to get you out of here. Can you hear me, Zi? Can you just, please, tell me you understand me?"

"Ni'atznu..." she whispered, and closed her red eyes. "Ni'atznu..."

She was nearly hypothermic and hardly lucid, and he needed to warm her, and he needed to pull her emaciated body to his, and he needed to protect her, comfort her, feel that she was really near him again. He bowed down low, slung one limp arm over his shoulder and slid his around her thin back. The towel covering her body began to slip, and he tacked it in place against her with his chin. Tony scooped her legs up under his arm, and labored to lift her from the shower floor. "I got ya, Ziva. I'm right here," he whispered to her, and Ziva's face lolled into his neck, against his hammering pulse.

Still, her solemn chant continued as soft breaths against his skin. "Sorarnu, ovinu, posha'nu, tzorarnu, kishinu oref, rosha'nu... Rosha'nu..."

Where could he go with her? Where could he warm her, tell her she was safe, she was home? Tony lowered himself to the bench, cupping her body to his, and enveloped Ziva in his arms.

In his arms. Surely an answer to a prayer he could not have even imagined invoking. He combed the chilled strands of hair from her lax face and off her neck. He drew the towel up under her chin, worked the edges around her arms and across her back. Swaddled her hips and attenuated legs with the other. Still, her feet hung free, uncovered, toe nails slightly blue. Too far away from the other towels, and he'd be damned if he'd let the desert-tainted old clothing touch her body again, Tony decided her feet would warm with the rest of her body. So he pulled her in closer and began to rock. Pressed his cheek to her damp forehead.

Still the wild card, he thought, refusing to accept the reality right in his arms. And how could he with so many questions ricocheting through his brain-How'd you get off a sinking ship? How'd you end up in the Sahara? How'd you meet Saleem? Just what in the hell did Eli do this time?

Or worse-How did this not kill you? Are you still dying? Are you dead, and I just can't see it? When will this nightmare end? Who do I need to apologize to? Tell me, I'll do it!

"Well, that settles it," he said, rubbing his shaking hand over her cheek, her ear, her neck, trying unsuccessfully to mask the fear in his voice, "you can't leave me again. Ever. You can hate me all you want, choose never to speak to me, spit in my coffee, hell, you can even try not to laugh at my jokes, but leave my side? Not gonna happen."

When his trembling fingers felt her tears, when his arms registered her quaking body, Tony buried his quavering lips and a stifled sob in her hair, and screwed shut his aching eyes.

"Shichasnu," came her thin voice again. "Ti'avnu, to'inu, ti'tonu..."

"Forgive me, Ziva," he whispered, "for Michael, for leaving you in Tel Aviv, for... for believing that you were dead. Forgive me. Please forgive me."

"Ni'atznu," she cried. "Ni'atznu. Ni'atznu..."

Sometimes, words are all that remain.