Hello, everyone! I'm just updating here because ... well, I've gotten the feedback for the first draft of my thesis back (got it back last week, actually, but have you seen this well-worn card denoting my exclusive membership to the Procrastination Club?), and I will be working on it from now until the 28th (although I may update before then). I will not be updating from the 30th of August to the 15th of September at least, btw, because I will be travelling around continental Europe and will not have my laptop with me. But rest assured, I will not abandon this story! I'm about 12 chapters ahead, anyway.

Enjoy!

-Soph

P.S. I went to Leeds to watch the Phantom of the Opera today. I think it's safe to say that I may just have discovered why CdP had wanted (or still wants?) to be on Broadway :P

Chapter Seven

Time both crawls and flies by as the week passes. Faces come and go, with Abby appearing every morning and Gibbs appearing almost every lunch time; McGee shows up after dinner, and Ziva makes a reasonable effort to be awake and presentable whenever the Probie drops by. Tony feels a twinge of jealousy at that.

It's not that he begrudges Ziva the company or thinks that the younger male field agent is trying to usurp his position—far from it. He just wishes Ziva would smile at him, too, even if he doesn't have "nice things" to say. He's trying; he really is. He dutifully increases her food intake and successfully gets her to pay attention to her hygiene, even if she still sleeps on the floor. She follows him around everywhere like a lost puppy, save for when he needs to take a shower or go to the toilet (and those, after numerous assurances that he'll return quickly), yet never really looks at him or talks to him unless he addresses her directly. But, despite everything, her breathing still grows impossibly shallow and her eyes still grow impossibly wild and unfocused whenever he makes a single move towards the front door, as if the thought of his leaving forever and never looking back haunts her days. He can't figure it out.

The broken boat model is her constant companion in the mornings. When neither of them is occupied, she sits on the floor, trying to fix it with her bare hands. She never uses any glue and, as she tells him once, knows rationally that the model can't be made whole with thin air, but doing it seems to soothe her and give her something to aim for. After a week, seeing her do that no longer disturbs him, so he leaves her be and only sides with her when Gibbs offers to make her a new one and she steadfastly refuses.

The board game Scrabble remains the only thing she shows any remote interest in besides the boat, and as much as that fact is bewildering, Tony knows enough not to question it. He just drags the board out as often as he can, trying to engage her, trying to bring the spark of life back into her eyes; instead, he is often haunted with the words 'SALEEM,' 'ULMAN,' or 'TORTURE.' It scares him because he never really knows if she's trying to deal with her memories or attempting to further dwell in them. It has to be impossible that her supposedly chosen-at-random tiles so coincidentally fit.

On the second Monday that he spends there, the perfect little messed-up routine that he's established is destroyed. Gibbs pulls him aside before leaving from a visit and says, "Your vacation time ended yesterday."

Tony stares at his boss, stunned into stillness because he had completely forgotten that such a thing as work still existed. Gibbs merely continues with, "I'm giving you two more weeks, but after that, Vance is gonna ask questions and I'll need you to return. You should talk to Ziva about this. She needs to know that you can't spend all your time around her."

And then the silver-haired man is gone, and Tony realizes that he'd rather have Ziva shadow him forever than have himself made to part with her.

xoxo

She's sitting on the edge of the bed with her lips pursed and her hands busy with trying to reattach the mast of the ship when he turns to her. He breathes out, thinking that one day, he might encourage her to actively find ways to fix the boat; maybe even make another one. For now, though, he has more important things to attend to.

"Ziva," he calls, and she looks up and straight through him. He moves forward and kneels in front of her. "I uhm … Gibbs just told me that … the time-off I took ends in two weeks."

She peers at him. "Oh," she answers softly with an easiness that confuses him to no end.

"I'm sorry." He doesn't even know why he's apologizing, but he does it anyway.

"You need to work, yes?"

"Yeah. But I'll be here in the evenings and on weekends."

"Are you moving back to your apartment?" she asks, and he blinks because that might just have been about the most intelligent sentence she's formed all week.

"Not if you don't want me to."

"You should not have to make your whole life revolve around me."

That stings somewhat, even though he knows she hadn't meant it as a dismissal at all. "Don't you want me here?" he teases, but the joke seems to sail right over her head.

"You have to go to work."

"I know, but I'll be returning to you in the evenings."

She watches him. Really watches him, more intently and for longer than she's done in many days, and it suddenly hits him that she might already be planning to give up if there is not a single person by her side at the end of the day. "Do you want to return to me?"

He swallows the lump in his throat and reaches out to hold her hand. "Yeah, I do." Not just to keep you alive.

She stares at their hands. "Okay."

And therein lies the extent of her reaching out. "What does 'Okay' mean?" he pushes.

"I hope you return."

She looks at him in perplexity when he lifts her hand to kiss it, hot tears burning the back of his eyelids.

xoxo

That night, he learns that she can apparently still put up a fight if she wants to.

He suggests that she sleep on the bed, and she drops herself to the floor, arms crossed and expression mulish. "I don't want to," she says.

"C'mon, it can't be that bad. I've been putting you to bed after you fall asleep these past few days, anyway."

"Yes, but I'm already asleep then."

"So you won't even try to fall asleep in a bed? Like normal people?"

"I'm not normal!" she snaps.

"I think we were aiming for integrating you into regular life." He pulls back the covers. "C'mon. I'll stay here with you."

"You always stay here with me. I still can't sleep in a bed."

"Well, I'm not leaving you on the floor when I go to work, so just get in already!"

She freezes, the stubborn light in her eyes fading out. Orders, his mind hisses at him as her hand flutters nervously over a draping corner of the bedspread. She can't deal with orders well anymore, you idiot. When are you going to get that through your thick head?

He sighs and sits down opposite her. "Ziva, I don't wanna leave you on the floor when I go to work."

She rubs a bit of the bedspread between her thumb and index finger. "I can take care of myself."

"I know you can, but … it doesn't feel good to me, leaving you on the floor."

"I'm not here to soothe your ego," she answers defiantly, and he is so taken aback by it that he almost forgets his next sentence.

"Well, can't you do it just to humour me?"

"No." Her eyes are hard and angry, cutting so sharply into his heart that his spirit falls.

"Okay," he replies. "Okay, I guess I can't make you."

"No, you can't."

Feeling discouraged and strangely humiliated, he gets up to throw away the leftovers from dinner and clean up. She tails him all the way to the kitchen sink.

xoxo

In many ways, it's as if she's a frightened child. Quiet and withdrawn, she yet never misses the opportunity to follow him around or demonstrate her stubborn will.

That night, he is halfway through sleepily wondering if he should've dealt with the situation differently when his heart wrenches with the ridiculousness of it all, from the way he indulges her whims to the change in his manner of speech towards her. Ziva's an adult, and a formerly reserved one at that. Things shouldn't be this way, ever.

But yet … he doesn't know what other way things could be. Taking up a harsh tone with her is certainly out of the question, and a soft tone seems to draw her out of her seemingly empty shell more than any other voice does. He can't exactly tie her to a chair as he goes about with daily life, either. He can't leave her behind any more than she can let him out of her sight.

He is trapped between being a good thing and being a bad thing for her. Not for the first time in a week, he wonders if he's doing anything right. The way her appetite seems to be getting marginally better might point to success on at least one front, but hey, he's an Italian. If he were to be good at anything, it'd be at getting someone to eat more.

With a sigh, he adjusts his arms around her and struggles up and into bed. She may be able to sleep for the entire night on the floor, but his back whines at the strain of it all, and he can't sleep well without the soft mattress beneath him and the assurance of the still-alive woman beside him.

Sometimes he wonders if he hasn't irrevocably damaged her.

But then, right now, she's humming in her sleep and shifting her hand up to rest it possessively—or so he pretends—on the side of his neck, and he remembers that he hadn't heard her frightened whimpering the night before, or in the past hour that she's been asleep in his arms. His heart soars to new heights at that.

Maybe … maybe there's still hope for all of them?