Disclaimer: NCIS characters and situations borrowed. No profits made.

A/N: All your comments got me wound up to do more right away! So I cheated - I sneaked this in when I should have been working. Now I have some serious catching up to do on office work! :P

I really appreciate all of you who have given this story a chance, especially those of you who worried that this story would be one-sided and unfair to Ziva. Although we heard only Tony's thoughts in the first chapter, your comments helped me realize I needed to shift gears earlier than planned, and let you see inside Ziva's head now too. (More about this at the end of the chapter). See? Reviews matter! :}

Remember that for any character's POV in this story, it won't be a neutral, balanced view of things. Rather – it's a peek into that person's thoughts as they react to the circumstances, based on their own (maybe limited) knowledge, experience and feelings, and how that character deals with difficult events and emotions. None is meant to be a narrator of 'reality' – only of their own, one-sided, banged-up version of it. You saw that Chapter 1 was Tony's depressed and brooding POV. In the privacy of his thoughts, he allows himself to be more moody and defensive and even a bit more accusative than he would be if he were speaking to anyone – and, most of the time, especially to Ziva.

A warning: rape is mentioned in this chapter – not graphically, and not the act, but its effect: Ziva's response, her take on events, and her particular reaction to that and other things that happened during her captivity. My warning is to say that I am not generalizing about rape; it is in no way meant as a comment on it or the effect it has on people in real life; it's offered only within the context of what her ordeal might have meant to Ziva.

Once again – many thanks to all of you who took the time to comment, either via PM or review. I am excited by how many people responded. You've helped me understand the challenge this story presents, even more than I thought it did when I started, so I hope I will maintain an even hand with these two. Keep those comments coming!

PRETENDING

As she and Gibbs walked in silence to the Charger waiting in the lot, behind the evidence garage, Ziva took a moment to look at the stars overhead, and filled her lungs slowly with the cool night air, appreciating once again the moisture and even the faintly fishy scent of the Anacostia. It reminded her, moment to moment, that she had her freedom again. She was sure her father would not appreciate her dwelling on such things; he had always been a strong proponent of facing matters, dealing with them and moving on.

The sudden irony actually made her chuckle. If there was anyone in her life who preached "living in the moment," it was Eli, despite all the training and the preparation Mossad required – once you were in it, you were in it; once things were past, they're past. If that was not living in the moment...

Well, "living in the moment" had a very different meaning these days, Ziva reflected. She felt better than she had in a long while.

She hadn't believed that talking with someone about the horrors of her captivity would have any effect, but when she finally tried doing so, several weeks after her return, she found it had, some – at least enough that she could wake up most mornings without disorientation and dread. Even so, when a therapist suggested she try taking a yoga class, of all things, the idea seemed ludicrous and a complete waste of time. It was a too trite and far too stereotypical panacea for all ills, simply a middle class illusion that seemed to have infected everyone, everywhere, in the U.S. – was it not? After all her training, in more than one style of martial arts and in rigorous, demanding conditions, how could simple stretching and standing on her head be of any help?

As she reached the car door and grabbed the handle, Ziva smiled to herself, this time at her stubborn biases, glad to admit that she was wrong. When Gibb's call came tonight, she was finishing up a private session with her instructor, a kind soul who stretched her own day to meet Ziva's erratic schedule, for individual sessions; she was still in the heady glow of how strong it made her feel, bending and stretching her body like a finely tuned instrument, once again willing to respond as she asked.

Ziva had never been self conscious about her body, but long had been highly sensitive to its workings. Just as she would be about her weapon or equipment in the field, on which her survival might depend, she was in sync to the smallest changes in her body and mind, her strength, her coordination. After all, she herself was a weapon; her body was her weapon of first and last resort. It was the gift her father had arranged for her, from when she was a toddler; from "Mommy and me" swimming lessons to dance to martial arts, from further training in weapons or self-defense or endurance, she developed a keen sense of power and balance. She always knew when she was the slightest bit out of alignment, when a day of off-schedule eating or more sugar than usual tipped the fine balance a tiny bit out of plumb. Since coming to the U.S., she allowed herself more leeway than she ever dared while she was active with Mossad, but she was never far from that perfect balance, and could adjust her intake and workouts so than in a handful of hours, she was again optimal.

That was ... until Somalia.

At every turn, her most trusted, reliable weapon – her very self – was battered and damaged and violated; from the outside and deeply inward, she'd been flayed, far more than her team realized. She wondered if they could understand that her deepest scars came not from the physical violation she suffered, as humiliating and painful as they could be – but of the loss of self, the loss of her control, the loss of the balance and fine-tuned response her muscles and tendons and bones had always provided. It was something no one at Mossad, not even Eli, had ever thought to prepare her for.

Mossad had been pragmatic in its training, and anyone sent into the field, male or female, was warned about all types of abuse and torture at the hands of their enemies, rape certainly included. It was repeated, this warning, often enough, that Ziva was as prepared for it as she was the other physical torture and deprivations. She almost felt guilty, the one and only time she attended a rape survivor group, to see how ill-prepared the women there had been when they were attacked, even though they had no reason to hear all the warnings she had. As a female officer in Mossad, she knew from her earliest moments that rape was yet another method of torture that could be used against her; as such – and this was impossible to explain to anyone not from a county chronically at war, as Israel was – she was able to consider it less as a separate sort of abuse, and more as one in a litany of physical insults and injuries visited upon her.

But the overall privations and what they did to her – resulting in chronic illness there, with the unexpected inability of her body to fight off infection, in chronic weakness, compromised balance and coordination from her chronic malnourishment, dehydration, physical torture and lack of sleep – meant the loss of what she was and who she'd been, as if they took her very soul from her. Tony had never asked what she had meant, in Saleem's cell, when she said she was ready to die; he thought he knew, and she was grateful that he just assumed he did – because the truth hurt much more. She had tried one last time for courage, there in the dusty cell, as he suddenly appeared sitting across from her, and she managed to say that she was ready to die. She didn't dare admit, not while her captors might be listening, that Ziva had died long before. She was simply a ghost, waiting for release too. It made her losses easier to bear, when she understood that she had died along with the person she had been.

So she resisted the rape counseling and groups, resisted any counseling, all the while fighting to keep up outward appearances, to let her team see her as normal and coping, to ease the concerns of the counselor Vance made her visit occasionally. While Ziva knew she was nowhere near "fine," and observed, as if outside herself, when she would grow snappish or lose focus on occasion, she was at a loss to know how to heal: whatever the rape or PTSD counselors offered was not what she needed. Even worse, she feared that what she did need was not real: how could anyone understand her loss as she felt it, the numbness and uncertainty, when it did not exist in the eyes of the Mossad? Had it been real, this ... loss of self as she had come to think of it, surely Mossad would have prepared their warriors for it. And more frightening than anything, in the dark of night, in her nightmares, alone, was the pain and fear that, like losing a limb or one of her senses, she would never be whole again. That she could not find a way back to her old self. That the Ziva she knew and had been really had died in the Somalian desert.

Until now. Ziva drew another deep, refreshing breath, holding it for a moment, smiling ruefully at the simplicity of the answer. Her yoga sessions had been the fastest path to centering her again, and pilates offered at the same studio once a week (she remembered asking Tony, so many lifetimes ago, "what's a 'pilate?'") helped strengthen her in the way dance once had, building her from almost nothing to be strong yet limber, balanced and quiet, but powerful and ... alive. The first time she'd felt that, that rush of life force again in her, in the darkened yoga studio where she stretched and strengthened and centered herself – in the moment, always staying in the present moment – her eyes suddenly overflowed in relief. When she tried apologizing later to her instructor, the wise woman simply smiled and said something about the many times "tears come on the mat."

It was not a perfect cure; it was still new to her, but Ziva felt a convert's zeal at finding something that gave her such hope for restoring herself. She still had nightmares, still had dark thoughts; she could not forget that she'd yearned for death and was cheated from its escape. She felt some guilt about Tony, what he'd been through both before her rescue, and all events surrounding Somalia, but was at a loss to know how to make things right, knowing she was still on the rocks and he ... he was a new, quiet Tony one day, and the old, irritating, horny buffoon the next. She would try approaching him, make things right between them again, she had promised herself – but she had to make things right for herself first. She had too far to go to know when she could reach out to him, or even to respond when he tried, but now, for the first time since her return, she knew it could come.

Letting her breath out in a slow, steady, controlled breath, Ziva bounced on her toes and stretched her shoulders, feeling charged with energy as she often did after a private session in the studio.

She would be back.

...to be continued...

A/N elaborated: So Tony and Ziva are in two different worlds at the moment – but won't be for long. I hope you'll hang in with me – if at times one or the other of them says or does some pretty thoughtless things, that's how they can be on the show sometimes, and I'm hoping to offer some speculation as to they do what they do. They each have faced, and are facing, lots of stuff; neither is perfect, each is hurting in one way or another, and neither has caught on that they really could help each other through the worst. Given all their issues, though, they may actually have more in common than they think.

It seems there's some serious baggage to kick out of the way before TIVA can make their way to a mature relationship, but I'm rooting for them to find something there – if they can just get themselves straightened out with each other!

Final note: talk about a convert's zeal – everything I included about yoga here, I wholeheartedly believe, after many years of practice and training. There is nothing more empowering than a handstand! I know that Ziva has done a lot more aggressive and powerful practices than yoga, but I've practiced with martial arts instructors who find it challenging and empowering as well - so that part's the real deal.

I think Ziva's circumstances are unique, and she would want to find her own way to healing. For the loss I've given her here, I think yoga would give her a lot of herself back, and help her move on from there. Besides – I like to think that this is what she's doing while Tony invents worst case scenarios for himself. :D