Post Shalom

Ziva David would be the only person he knew that could pull off a broken nose. She was seated upon a table in the morgue basked in the dim glow from the lamp on top of Ducky's desk. A plethora of band aids, antiseptic and gauze was next to her as Tony stood in between her relaxed legs. It was unsensual, for certain, but intimate for them all the same.

Her big brown eyes gazed at him skeptically as he looked at her nose from different directions.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she blurted, breaking the silence of the cold room.

"For the millionth time, yes. How many times do you think I've broken my nose?"

"Hmm, considering how many times you get hit in the head, and taking into consideration your low IQ, not to mention the fact that I've seen your nose break at least four times in front of me because you lack the ability to defend yourself-,"

"Hey! I can defend myself perfectly. Besides, Ducky's already left for the night, and Gibbs doesn't want you bleeding on anymore case files."

Ziva humphed at this. Tony picked up the instrument from the table, shaped like a tuning fork, and placed it at the tip of her nose. She looked at him and he raised his eyebrows to gauge her readiness. She nodded slightly.

Tony pushed the instrument up her nose, slowly but surely, hearing the cracks as her nose straightened itself to accommodate the intruding metal. She did not wince or (thankfully) punch him, but he saw that her knuckles were white and gripped around the edge of the table with fury. He removed it, being satisfied that her nose was fixed, and placed a lump of gauze to stem the blood that followed.

"You ever break your nose in Mossad?" He was prodding, but kept the tone light.

"Once. I wad in a gredade addack. Dupid pud a bomb inna book. I had "Pride anb Prebudice" implanded in my forehead for a week. Anb a concuddun." She smiled a lopsided grin at him, as if to say "Que sera, que sera" to a head injury. He had to fight back the beam he wanted to show at her adorable inability to pronounce letters.

Tony pulled away the bandages and looked at her nose. It was still bleeding pretty badly so he switched them for some new ones.

He placed a kiss on her widows peak, and pulled back to find her inquisitive eyes peering at him.

"I'm proud of you. You did good today- no, really. It means I did something right, as team leader. And I was worried about you. Try not to tick off the FBI again, okay? Or go missing for hours at a time."

"Fair enubf."

"You know that you look cute with a broken nose, right?"

"Shuddup, Dony."

Post Recoil

The scar that adorned her angelic face would probably never fade. And that is what scared Tony the most.

Every time he caught the angry red on Ziva's forehead he felt a pang of guilt and something else he couldn't put his finger on. It scared him to see how fragile she was, how close he had come to losing her. She seemed to see the danger too, as he heard the tail end of her and Gibbs' conversation while heading down to find Ducky.

"I almost died." And then it all came flooding back to him; he prayed that the scar would go away and he could stop feeling like this- helpless and in need. He was helpless because he didn't want to lose her. He was in need for the ability to not care about her. The tension between them was already too much, he couldn't handle anymore. He was in love.

Gibbs left, and she was standing alone staring vaguely into the wall in front of her. He made sure to take loud enough steps that she wouldn't jump when he called to her. A foot away, he stopped and took in her slumped figure.

"Zee?"

She turned around to face him but did not meet his eye.

He walked closer to her, but Ziva just backed up until she felt the wall at her back. Tony had her trapped like a guilty, scared puppy as he put his hands to rest upon the wall.

"You okay? You haven't been…well, you. I'm scared." Her eyes snapped up to meet his face now, and she nodded in admission of her defeat.

He continued, "I know that it freaks you out to be frightened for your life. I get that. But it's a good thing- you'll figure that out one day. It's good to know that you'll miss something if you die. I guess Mossad didn't approve of fear?" She shook her head no. "It was like when I saw my car blow up and wondered if I was in it what would happen. Even now, after Jeanne, I am afraid. There are things-people- I couldn't get by without. Gibbs, Tim, Abby, Ducky, Palmer…you. Yeah, I definitely couldn't go without you." She was shocked, in a blank expression as he moved his hands from the wall, down her shoulders, tracing the delicate curve of her body to her hips. They rested there as he leaned in and placed a kiss on the scar. His temple rested at hers as a tear escaped his eye.

He froze and snatched his hands away, ashamed to cry. He couldn't do this. He couldn't get emotionally attached to her, Ziva. It had ended badly for Jeanne. Tony loved Ziva too much to put her through it. He balled his hands into fists and walked to the elevator with only one word in his mind.

Idiot.

Post Truth or Consequences

Ducky gave her a laundry list of things wrong- broken, displaced, scarred, atrophied. It scared the shit out of Tony. She was like an angel who had fallen, quite literally, to Earth. She was too damaged to be Ziva.

It didn't matter that she said she didn't trust him- she trusted him enough to save her life. It didn't matter that she had hated him mere months ago- she didn't glare at him now. As she sat upon the table in Ducky's morgue, dark circles around her eyes, scars on her face, he didn't care about anything.

Except the fact that she was alive. And in pain.

Ducky gave her a "goodie bag" of medication, vitamins, band aids, and the like for the night. She refused to be checked into Bethesda, for which Tony was thankful. Her- pale, in a hospital gown, hooked up to beeping machines- was just too real. He followed her from the cold place that housed the dead to the elevator, and promptly flicked the emergency switch.

"You're staying with me tonight. I don't care if you don't like it. You need someone. If you don't want me next to you, I'll be outside the door."

"Fine," was her only response in a quiet voice. She flipped the elevator back on. He stopped it again.

"You will also take your meds, drink so much water you're going to have to pee every twenty minutes and not over tax yourself."

She nodded briskly and flipped the switch back to "On". He stopped it yet again.

"What?" she cried out, her voice breaking with anguish.

"I'm sorry. For everything I've done. For making you go through that. I can't even begin to explain how it felt to hear that you died, that you were tortured. It hurt so bad…I wanted to die. That's what you did to me." She was confused, her brow wrinkled. "You made me fall in love with you, and then I fucked up. I fucked up and pushed you away. And then I thought I lost you… The only thing that was going through my mind was, "I haven't told her that I love her," and now you're here. And I still love you. And you're home. Thank God, you're home."

Tears were streaming down her face as his thumbs went up to brush them away. His lips brushed hers and it was fireworks and too long a time coming. His heart was thudding, she pushed into the kiss. They stayed like that for too long, but he didn't care. It was an emotional overload and too perfect. Bittersweet, perfect, and a beginning.

Ziva was damaged, sure. But she was also his. And it was all good.