Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS.
A much needed conversation. My take on Post-Somalia. Let me know if it is out of character. I wanted to portray something a little different than our typical hurting Ziva. After all, she was not the only one effected.
Left to be Said
xxxxx
It wasn't her unusual way of behaving that worried them. Instead, it was her acting like nothing had really happened. She extended apologies to each of them individually, heartfelt and genuine in kind. Three weeks since her rescue in Somalia, and Ziva was acting as if she had never left NCIS. She flew through her evaluations, her psych assesments, the manditory counseling, with ease. She never flinched at a sexual assault, batted an eyelash at a hostage situation.
It was unnerving, really.
Tony seemed to feel all of it for her, Gibbs noticed, and the glances that he exchanged with McGee seemed to affirm that he was definitely not alone in thinking it.
She was a little too alright to truly be alright, and Tony was a little too devastated, and so far out of it that his work had reflected it.
Ziva seemed to be hypersensitive to this as well, watching him with interest as his eyes seemed to see through her clothes to the welts covering much of her back, legs and stomach area. She would be damned if she showed a speck of weakness, but she obviously noticed that he was concerned, and afraid to show it for fear of history repeating itself.
Gibbs, being Gibbs, stepped in the second he had Ziva alone.
"Have you spoken to him?" The older agent asked in his best non-prodding voice. It came out awkwardly, as he was a natural interrogator. "DiNozzo," he clarified.
She shrugged. "Of course."
"Extensively?"
"Define extensively." Her tone dropped a touch, as she realized what he was asking. Gibbs wanted to know if they had discussed Somalia.
Gibbs ran a hand through his hair, and pushed the emergency shut-off on the elevator before they reached their floor. "Well, he demands that Vance give us the go-ahead to rescue a defective agent halfway across the world. That'd be you, Ziver. And he succeeds, with help," He pauses as she sighes softly and lets this information reabsorb for what he figures wasn't the first time, "And aside from thanking him, I get the idea that you haven't really enlightened him that it's okay for him to be near you, and you aren't going to do it again."
"I admitted that he was right, and my instinct was wrong. What more is there to say?"
"That you care, Ziva. That you won't do it again." Gibbs usually would let them realize these delicate things in their own time, but for the good of the team, some things needed to be helped.
She nodded. "He knows I won't do it again."
Gibbs shook his head. "This is DiNozzo we're talking about. Unless you've told him directly, he refuses to assume a damn thing about you. He made that mistake enough to learn from it already."
Wordlessly, Gibbs turns the elevator back on. Before the doors open, he leans over in her direction.
"You are strong, Ziva. Letting him in on the situation doesn't make you weak."
She bites her lip before answering. "Maybe so, but I refuse to let him feel bad for this. It was not his fault."
"Maybe you should tell him that." Gibbs's breath ghosts over her ear, and she doesn't know if she shiveres because he's right, or because she knows he is.
xxxxx
It's another three days before she's left alone with Tony. It's late, and Gibbs and McGee are split up between autopsy and the lab, waiting for results. They pass by the bullpen once or twice to inform Vance on the situation, but for the most part leave the duo doing research alone to do their work.
"Tony." It is not a question, and Ziva's voice does not waver.
He looked up, instantaneously, his attention gained before she even finished his name. He'd been jumpy lately, his attention almost constantly on her, checking for any glimpse of problems readjusting to her life in D.C.
"Yeah, Zee-vah?"
She looks up from her computer, brown eyes meeting his own green ones. She's lost for a moment, seeing the glimmer of hope mixed with concerned. "Something is troubling you."
Again, not a question. Tony looks taken aback for a moment.
"Not really."
"Don't worry about me." She sighs, gets up and pulls her chair across to his desk. "I'm fine, really."
He nods, slowly. Then, pressing his hand to the bridge of his nose, looks up. "Alright, Ziva."
The tone sounds like he feels painted off, Ziva thinks. Wait, she reconsiders, that wasn't quite the word she was looking for. Making a mental note to ask when things aren't as awkward, she looks down for a moment.
"Do.." She pauses, her voice quiet, and hesitant. "Did you see the report from Ducky?"
He looks at her, and his eyes shine in a way that makes her heart plummet into her stomach and vault right back up to her throat. The same feeling when Saleem had pulled the bag off of her head and she realized that they had come. That they did care.
He looks away before he answered. "Do you want the real answer, or should I play stupid again."
The defensive stance he takes reminds her of herself. "You've seen it."
"I processed the kit."
Kit? Oh, she realizes, with incredible amounts of gravity beginning to weigh her down, pulling that sluggish feeling back up to the surface of her thoughts. The SAE kit. But she doesn't get the chance to say anything before he continues, his voice rising
"Did you think I could let Abby process that information? She'd be unable to sleep for months."
She sighed. "I never asked you to process it. I never wanted Ducky to take one."
He slammed his fists on the desk, keyboard jumping up at the force of the impact. "Damn it Ziva, you never had to ask!" He moves to stand up, and she's directly in front of him before he can pass her.
"Sit down."
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"I didn't expect to find you," he finally admits. "You were dead. Gibbs told us you were dead."
And he falls back in his chair, his head in his hands, taking shaking, deep breaths.
"Tony.."
"And I guess that makes me stupid, y'know, making a case against Saleem, dragging Tim and Gibbs in with it. Gibbs saved our asses, because if he hadn't found us out, we would've died, all of us, out in that desert. I guess I was just so happy to see you, alive, that it wouldn't have mattered if we did die out there."
Ziva reaches for his shoulder, to get him to make eye contact. He shrugs it off.
"And you probably still think I'm out to get you after that Rivkin shit-"
"Stop it," She finally whispers. "Please." The request is added as an afterthought, and it catches his attention moreso than the fact that she told him to stop, that he had struck a chord.
Now tears are ready to fall down her face. "Rivkin's death was his own fault. I know that now." She sighs.
Tony nodds, almost happy that she accepts it. But that troubled look is back in her eyes, as well as his.
"This did not just hurt me," Ziva says slowly, thoughtfully. "We are all left staggering."
"We don't want to lose you again." Tony reconsiders after a moment. "I can't do it again."
She meets his eyes. "Who says you will?"
"Who says I won't?"
Ziva realizes his reluctance to hold her gaze, and the magnitute of the situation is finally made clear. "Tony. Do you think this is all your fault?"
"I should have stopped you. I should have done.. something," he says, his voice sadder than she has ever heard.
She smiles and takes his hand, surprising him by how gentle she can be. "You did more than something," she begins, "What you did was more than I ever thought someone would."
"And it didn't stop them from hurting you. From-" She heard the his voice break, and he looks away, shoulders shaking and Ziva knows to look away, to allow him some pride.
And suddenly he's looking at her, tears streaming down his face, and she feels more heartbroken than she has in her entire life. She begins to tremble, and she feels hot tears fall from the corners of her eyes. "They raped you," he finishes. "And I could have stopped it if I wasn't such an idiot-"
She grabs both sides of his face.
"And I was here, trying to forget you, trying to believe you were happier without the team, without me to hold you back and ruin your life. I was trying to pretend I was better off without you and they were raping you. What kind of man deserves to live for causing such atroc-"
"It was not your fault!" She stands, and for a moment, all of time stands still. "Tony, it was not your fault, what do I have to do to make you believe me?"
He falls forward, into her, and suddenly they're holding each other in an awkward type of hug that only makes him sob harder, each one slowly shattering her heart.
When Gibbs walks by, headed toward MTAC for a late-night conference with a victim's CO, he notices the two figures huddled in the low-lighted bullpen, hears Tony's uneven breathing, and Ziva's hushed whispers.
"I promise you, it was not your fault. Everything I endured was worth it."
And suddenly the situation becomes explosive.
"It was not worth it," He all but screams. "I would do anything to take it back."
She sighs. "You did everything could to make me see. I am stubborn, Tony." She guides his chin, tilting it upward so that Tony could meet her gaze. It was incredibly emotional, and Tony could see the hurt she had refused to show for so long. "I wanted to make Eli proud of me. I wanted to do something right. And all I did was successfully screw up every single thing I had right. I will not- I cannot do it again. I do not believe I could live through it."
"That makes two of us." He looks at the ceiling, not before noticing Gibbs standing in the shadows, assessing whether the two of them would end up killing each other or if they would actually make ammends. "I still wake up sometimes and think I was dreaming, that you're gone." He sighs. "That you're never coming back."
"Oh, Tony.." She embraces him, and this time, she breaks, sobbs racking her petite form. He only squeezes her tighter. His hand slides down her back and hits a large dip in her mid-back.
He pulls away very abruptly, looking horrified. She looks up, trails of tears starting to dry, but their stains very visible on her face.
"They hurt you more than they hurt me," She manages in explanation.
He does not know exactly what to say, so instead, she unbuttons the blouse she is wearing, taking it off to reveal another tank top beneath it. In any other situation, Tony would've been chomping at the bit to see what lay beneath her shirt, but in this case, his eyes were trained away from her.
"I want you to see them," she says carefully. "I want you to understand."
This is all he needs to hear, and his hands shake as she turns around, exposing her upperback. Her eyes close as his hands ghost over the various welts.
"Zi,"
She tilts her head over her shoulder. "Yes, Tony."
"I'm sorry I didn't save you sooner."
She pulls her blouse back up over her shoulders, faces him, planting the gentlest of kisses on his forehead. "Do not be. There is only one thing for which you are to blame."
He meets her eyes, concern flooding them once more.
"Taking my life in your hands and giving it back to me. I did not know it then, but there is no one I could have trusted more."
xxxxx
Thanks for reading. - JL