For Schermionie's 5, 10, 20, 50, 70, 100 Fandoms Challenge.
Set after S07E01: Truth Or Consequences
Life after Somalia goes on for Ziva. She takes the needed tests. She passes. Just barely, but she passes all the same. The psychiatrists call her "damaged, but fit to work" and the doctors say she's "completely healed".
It's almost as if it never happened.
...well, it would be like it never happened. She'd never tell anyone, but she thinks about it all the time. Like most things, it's worse at night. She closes her eyes and it hits her all at once.
The dusty floors. The blade held to her cheek. Pressed down. The ropes around her wrists. Around her ankles. The fists and feet flying towards her. The way they spat in her face. The undying need to give up. The crippling urge to do anything—anything at all—for a drip of water.
Pain. Burning pain. And loneliness. Oh, the loneliness. Knowing that no one's coming. That no one knows where she is and that she's going to die alone.
She'd like to forget. She'd be better off. She's just not that strong. She doesn't know how to suppress these sorts of things. She knows how to pretend, but she doesn't know how to make it any less real.
Tony isn't helping. All she wants to do is forget, damn it.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks her.
He's looking at her as if she's the most fragile thing he's ever set eyes on. As if she'll break if he dares breathe too hard. As if she'll fall to pieces any moment. He's looking at her with pity, and Ziva would dearly love to punch it out of him.
It's sweet, really. That he cares. It's good of him to offer. Tim, for one, would be too frightened to offer. He pities her most of all, she thinks. Abby would be too scared to hear; the slightest description would be bound to send her into fits of sympathetic tears. Gibbs...well, Gibbs would be there if she asked.
But Tony. Tony offers. He pushes her. He wants to know. He wants her to feel better.
It almost makes her tell him. She could tell him, she's sure. It would be easy to tell him that she was scared. Scared for her life. Scared for him, when he was idiotic enough to come after her. Scared for Tim too, of course.
But she can't. She can't tell him.
He's...he's Tony. And she's Ziva, for goodness sake. She doesn't get scared. She doesn't cry. She's not the type to be afraid of falling asleep at night.
She can't tell him. She knows what he'd say. He'd hug her and whisper that it's all okay because he's got her, and he'd offer to come around and keep her company on sleepless nights. He'd go to Gibbs and get her a few days off work and then he'd demand that she rest up and tell her not to bother arguing.
It'd be nice.
But she can't. If she tells him, she'll be telling him exactly what she doesn't want him to know. That the shrinks are right. She's damaged. That the doctors are wrong. She's not healed at all.
She doesn't want him to think that. You see, she liked him before Somalia and she thinks he liked her a little too.
But she's different now; the desert changed her. He won't like this Ziva—this weak, frail, pathetic, damaged Ziva. Even she doesn't like this Ziva. She doesn't know what she'd do if Tony didn't like her anymore.
And so, she looks him straight in the eye and says, "There's nothing to talk about."