Thank you for the reviews! So much love xx

Set Season 10 (before 10x11): Ziva, recovering from an injury after a case, stays (at his insistence) with Tony.


She wakes to the sound of a bomb and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her heart races, pulled by its strings in too many directions, and pounds too fast for her lungs to keep up. Tears burn her throat, claw all the way from the streets of Haifa and spill down her cheeks. She blinks rapidly, trying desperately break free from the last clinging threads of the nightmare. But still it grasps: at bones, at flesh, at guilt. It's an old one but it lingers. Lingers like–

She inhales sharply. Crisp, clean Armani but also fish food… She rolls her head to the side and finds him. She's surprised it takes her this long to realise she's not alone in the room, which she also suddenly remembers is not her own but his. He'd be disappointed with his ninja's reflexes. It's good that he's asleep but he's slumped down in the his chair with his chin leaning on his chest. She frowns. She'd told him she'd take the couch, but he insisted, practically carried her into his bed, and told her he'd take the couch – "Because all Dinozzo's are honourable, thank-you-very-much". Her mouth quirks as she imagines all the complaining about his 'poor neck' he'll inflict on McGee do at work the following day. Or is that day today? Her mind is still not quite free from the haze of dreams.

At some point in the night he must have come to check on her. She dismisses the immediate sense of annoyance that raises its ugly head (and again the nagging worry that her so-called 'ninja' senses hadn't woken her) and instead chooses to smile. His thoughtfulness, something he rarely let's anyone see, is by far one of her favourite things about him.

His jacket, once presumably on his lap, has slunk purposefully to the floor. The image calms her somehow, quiets her thunderous heart and the last of her tears. She watches him – for how long she's not really sure – and it's like the world comes back into focus, slows down, let's her breathe.

And finally sleep without dreams.