I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed
(I could do most anything to you...)
Don't you breathe, something happened, that I never understood
You can't leave
Every second, dripping off my fingertips, wage your war
Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die, well I am scared
In slow motion, the blast is beautiful
Doors slam shut
A clock is ticking, but it's hidden far away
Safe and sound

Somewhere a Clock is Ticking — Chapter Eleven

Tony wasn't surprised, when he woke up the next morning, to find that his apartment was already empty. It was after six; no doubt Ziva had gone back to her apartment to go running and then take a shower and get ready for work. Of course, that was assuming she'd stayed the night. But somehow, Tony knew that she had.

His head was still spinning from the revelations of last night — he couldn't help but wonder if Ziva had told him because she knew he was drunk, and it'd be less likely that he would remember in the morning. He wouldn't say anything to her about it, of course. That was just the way their relationship (or whatever the hell it was) worked. They talked to each other, and then the subject was dropped, never to be breached again.

It probably wasn't healthy.

"Have you thought any more about whether or not you want to return to field duty?"

Tony sighed, running a hand through his hair. Had he thought about it? Only every single moment of every single day for the past week. Had he come to a decision yet? Absolutely not.

"Nobody thinks I can survive behind a desk."

A note on the clipboard. "What about you? Do you think could do it?"

Did he think he could survive sitting behind a desk day after day after day while everyone else left him behind to investigate crime scenes and talk to witnesses and track down suspects? No way in hell. "I…don't know. I could try. I mean…I'll have to try, but if I can't pick up a gun…"

His voice drifted off, and after a moment he closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair. "I feel sick every time I so much as look at a gun," he mumbled after a moment. "Ziva drags me down to the gun range every day and makes me sit there while she practices — like she freakin' needs the practice — and I mean it shouldn't be so bad, all she really does is make me sit there and watch, except for that one time, but even just watching…hearing the gunshots…" A slight shudder ran up Tony's spine, and he shivered. Dr. Shea tilted her head a bit as she made a note.

"What happened that one time?" She asked after a moment, curious. Tony blew a breath out from between pursed lips.

"She forced the gun into my hand. She learned from that, she hasn't tried it since." He paused for a moment before continuing. "I…tried it on my own too. Thought maybe if she wasn't standing there watching me it'd be a bit easier, but it just…wasn't. 'Course she figured out what I was doing, she came down and…" And what? He wasn't really sure how to finish that sentence. Helped him? Made him fire the gun? He really didn't know what to say.

"You and Agent David have a very strange relationship, don't you?" Dr. Shea asked after a minute. Well that was one way of putting it. "You mention her a lot during these sessions."

"Well yeah…isn't she why I'm here?"

"Technically you're here because you're working through the guilt of having shot your partner. Unless you're saying you wouldn't be here if it had been Agents McGee or Gibbs you shot?"

Tony winced at the thought of that. "No…I mean, yes, of course I would be here." He couldn't help but be a little insulted. Did she think he cared less about his other partner, his boss, than he did about Ziva?

"What if it had been one of them? Would they be as…involved in this entire thing as Agent David has been?"

Tony almost snorted. He couldn't imagine Gibbs or McGee breaking out of the hospital to kick his ass for being an idiot, or tolerate him being a jerk the way Ziva had, and they sure as hell wouldn't have dealt with him showing up at their places just because he didn't want to be alone.

"No." In all honesty, he had a feeling it would have still been Ziva he was going to for everything, even if it had been Gibbs or McGee he had shot.

"So you would have been suffering alone." Tony pressed his lips together. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to that. Dr. Shea already thought his relationship with Ziva was "strange." Which wasn't a lie. But he didn't need to give her any more of a reason to believe that.

But she was waiting for an answer. "No," he finally said.

"Agent David would have helped you, right?" Damn it, she was good.

"You said it — we have a strange relationship."

Not just strange, Dr. Shea thought as she went back through her notes for a moment. If she had to give a label to the relationship between Agents DiNozzo and David, she would call it symbiotic. DiNozzo clearly depended on David, and if Dr. Shea had gotten a chance to sit down with the female agent, she had a feeling she would have found that the feeling worked both ways.

Of course, it was also clear that Tony was in utter denial about the entire thing.

"Are you avoiding me?"

Ziva paused with her finger on the trigger. She'd come down to the shooting range alone, mostly because she knew Tony would come looking for her no matter where she was. After what she'd revealed last night, there was no chance he would be leaving her alone.

"Should I be?"

She fired another shot, imagined Tony was wincing at the sound. She felt terrible; her own dreams the night before had been plagued by the memories of Somalia. Saleem standing over her, dragging knives and jagged pieces of glass over her skin, tearing her clothes away and making her "useful…"

She just didn't have the energy today to deal with Tony's problems. And he didn't deserve to have to deal with hers. So yeah, maybe she was avoiding him, just a little.

It was for both their own goods, though.

Ziva took a moment to indulge in her rather sick fantasies, imagined that the target at the end of the booth was Saleem Ulman's face. Tony jumped a mile as she emptied her clip.

"Are…you okay?"

She set her gun down, taking a deep breath. He didn't need her mental problems, she reminded herself, closing her eyes for a moment before turning to face Tony. "I believe I am the one that should be asking youthat."

"I'm not the one that just emptied a clip into a paper target."

Ziva didn't answer. After a moment, Tony moved so he was standing next to her. He could just make out the slight tremor running through her body, the muted fear shining in the very back of her eyes.

He knew that look; he'd seen it in her expression for weeks after she'd come back. It had faded over time, reappearing every now and then for a while before it disappeared completely.

Tony couldn't imagine there were too many reasons why it was back now.

Ziva started to turn away. Tony, without really thinking, grabbed her wrist, holding her back. She flinched, almost unnoticeably, at the contact, not quite able to raise her eyes to look at Tony. And for whatever reason, Tony found himself thinking back to the night she'd fallen asleep in his arms. He remembered thinking how young she'd looked in that moment — but more to the point, he remembered the desperate need to protect her. Remembered how disgusted he had been with himself at the time because for the guy that was supposed to be protecting her, he'd done a damn good job at almost killing her.

But that didn't change the fact that she needed protecting. From the guys that came after her with guns. From the ghosts that refused to die. She deserved someone that could protect her.

And as long as Tony was wrapped up in his own guilt, forcing his problems on her, he couldn't be that person.

His grip on Ziva's wrist tightened for a moment before he turned into the shooting booth, slamming the button to bring the paper target forward. He ripped Ziva's mangled target down, putting up a new one and sending it back to the other end of the booth. He grabbed Ziva's gun and released her wrist, pulling out the empty clip and loading in a new one.

He only hesitated for a moment before pulling the trigger. And then he did it again without much more thought. And again.

He didn't know if he could be that person — the one that protected her. But he knew he wanted to be. And that had to count for something, right?

Ziva watched, more than a little shocked, as Tony slowly but surely steadied his shots; it only took a few moments for him to hit the middle of the target. He was shaking visibly, though he didn't seem to notice.

Finally he stopped, shaking more than ever as he set the gun down again.

"Tony?"

He turned to look at Ziva, and saw a smile pulling at her tired, haunted expression. She was still standing. She wasn't lying on the floor bleeding. She was okay. He hadn't shot her.

She was okay.

Like clockwork, Ziva thought with a small smile as she opened her front door and found Tony standing on the hall, holding a bag of take-out and a stack of movies. It wasn't likely she was going to be sleeping tonight, but she wasn't completely sure she had it in her to deal with company either.

But it was Tony. And he looked so hopeful. And she just had such a hard time saying no to him.

"Would you like to come in?"

"If you don't mind."

Ziva stepped aside, allowing Tony to shuffle past her, towards the kitchen. "I was thinking spy movies tonight. I don't I've ever really introduced you to James Bond, have I?"

"You mean other than the incessant references you make to him?"

Tony just grinned. He'd been in a much better mood that day, thrilled by his triumph at finally having been able to pick up and shoot a gun without having a panic attack. And Ziva was happy for him, she really was. She knew what it was like to finally overcome an irrational fear, how it felt to once again be capable of doing something so simple. She really was happy for him.

They sat down with their take-out containers as Tony hit play for the first movie — Ziva wasn't even completely sure what it was. She hadn't really paid attention to the title. She picked through her noodles and chicken, not really hungry, not really interested in eating. Eventually she gave up, setting the container aside and curling into the corner of the couch. If Tony noticed that she hadn't eaten, he didn't say anything.

Tony didn't really understand why Ziva kept opening the door and letting him in. He could tell, just by looking at her, that she wasn't into this — she hadn't even taken two bites of her food. If she didn't want company, she usually had no problem telling Tony to go away.

"What else haven't you told me?" Tony asked after a moment. Ziva blinked a couple of times as her mind dragged itself back to reality.

"What?"

Tony grabbed the remote, hitting pause and turning to face Ziva completely. "What you told me last night can't be the extent of what you dealt with when you came back from Somalia. What else is there that I don't know about?"

Ziva sighed, reaching for the remote with every intention of turning the movie back on. But Tony held it out of her reach, and she gave up after only a few moments. "Tony just start the movie again, this is really not something I feel like talking about—"

"You're such a hypocrite," Tony interrupted, annoyed. "You've been sitting here for the last month—" God, had it really been a month? "Preaching to me about opening up and dealing with my feelings, but I'm fairly certain you've never once even tried to deal with what happened to you—"

"Almost two years ago," Ziva cut in pointedly. "It has been two years since Somalia; there is nothing left to deal with—"

"Yeah, that's why you still have nightmares about it."

"Talking will not make the nightmares go away. Now will you just let it go? Please?"

Tony thought about this for a long, long time. "You told me last night that you ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning because you were trying to drink to forget about what happened over there. You can't tell me something like that and expect me to just let it go."

"I did not tell you that because I wanted you to make a big deal out of it. I told you because I was trying to make a point to get you to stop drinking so much."

Tony groaned, running a hand through his hair. "You are such a damn hypocrite."

"I have never denied it."

They fell silent for a long time, staring at each other, neither willing to back down. "Someday you'll have to talk about it, Ziva. You know that, right?"

"There is a lot that I do not talk about," Ziva replied simply. "And I think I have gotten by all right."

And with that she stood up. "I think I am going to lie down. Feel free to stay and finish watching the movie, if you wish."

"Were you raped?"

The words slipped past Tony's lips before he was even aware of thinking them. Well, that wasn't completely true. He'd thought them a lot in the last two years. More than what was healthy, he was sure. But he had to know.

Ziva stopped short, her entire body tensing. It wasn't a huge jump, she knew, to assume she had probably been raped at least once. She'd been the only woman in a camp of thirty-plus men, after all. But not even the shrink she'd been forced to speak with had dared to ask such a question.

Ziva closed her eyes, trying to block out the images Tony's question had called to life.

"You can't tell me to deal with my demons if you won't even admit that yours exist."

All the air escaped Ziva in one long huff, as if someone had squeezed it out of her. When she turned to look at Tony again her face was pale but set. "I know very well that my demons exist, Tony. I'm just the only one that knows why. And it is going to stay that way."

"Why?"

Why? God, if only he knew. If he knew the things that had happened to her in Somalia…if he knew the full extent of what the torture went to…if he knew that they'd walked into her cell every single night and used her until she actually broke down and begged them to stop, and then they continued anyways…if he knew everything…

"The past is the past. I am leaving it where it belongs, and I suggest you do the same."

"It's not the past if it's still haunting you today."

And just like that, all the tension drained from Ziva's body. Her exhaustion made itself more present in her mind, and for a moment she was truly afraid that her legs were just going to give out. The last few months had been absolutely exhausting. What with the Port-to-Port Killer, and getting shot, and trying to help Tony through his guilt…and now the stupid man was trying to force her to talk about things she didn't want to talk about, revisit memories she had no interest in revisiting…

She just didn't have the energy for this. Not tonight. Not that she thought she'd ever have the energy to talk about Somalia.

"I know you want to talk, Ziva. I can see it in your eyes every time I bring Somalia up. And I don't know what's holding you back, but some day you're going to have to give in. And when you do, I hope I'm the one you come to."

Ziva stared at him for a long, long time. After a moment she collapsed onto the couch, burying her face in her hands and sighing deeply.

"Turn the movie back on, idiot."

Tony snorted as he hit play. After a moment Ziva leaned back on the couch, back in control of herself, and she curled up in the corner, sighing a bit. They sat in silence for a few, watching the images flash by on the screen.

"Finish eating," Tony said after a moment, leaning forward and grabbing the food container Ziva had previously set aside. Ziva took the container without much thought, picking through the contents with a sigh.

She'd always had a surprisingly hard time saying no to him.

Author's Note: I spent five minutes trying to come up with something witty to say. I've got nothing. I know this chapter was a little shorter than usual, but I figured it had enough angst and trauma packed into it to make up for the length. Hopefully you agree. Review please? One chapter left — Sam