After six hours of sleepless tossing and turning, Tony eventually gave up trying to rest and swung his legs over the side of the bed, throwing his duvet to the ground. He padded softly out of the tiny spare room and down the short hall to the master bedroom. The door was ajar, just the way he had left it when he left the previous night, and he paused, biting his lip thoughtfully, before he slipped in. He crossed over to the bed, his eyes fixed on the peaceful form of Ziva lying underneath the blanket, her chest rising and falling as she snored softly. He chuckled lightly at the sound; it proved that she would wake up from the sleep punctually.
He perched gingerly on the bed beside her, taking her hand in his. Her eyes remained closed and the snoring continued steadily.
He bent over to kiss her cheek and, spontaneously, he decided to move his lips up to her ear. 'I love you,' he murmured, brushing the curtain of hair away with his free hand.
'I love you too, Tony,' she breathed, almost inaudibly.
Tony started, jumping thoroughly out of skin, and stared at her in disbelief. She hadn't spoken for over a year. These couldn't really be her first words, could they?
'You're supposed to say Mama or Dada or something like that,' he told her softly.
She opened one eye and gazed lazily up at him. She smiled pleasantly and opened her mouth to say something else but instead was overcome by a fit of coughing.
Tony grabbed her shoulders and hugged her into him, his hand rubbing soothing circles on her back. She collapsed weakly on him and let herself be held close, all the things that they had never said to each other lingering in the air like a stagnant pond but just far enough away not to be immediately affected by the rotting stench of silence and unspoken feelings.
Tony kissed the top of her head and unwrapped his arms from around her, placing them on his knees, not touching her at all. She lay back on the bed, staring up at him through her soft, brown orbs.
'You spoke,' Tony commented, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
She screwed up her face in order to force the words out. 'Yes, I did,' she agreed hoarsely.
He strained his ears to hear her speech. 'You are getting better,' he moralised her.
'Slowly,' she added in a grating rasp.
He frowned sympathetically and touched her cheek gently with his forefinger. 'You are going to pull through this, Ziva,' he told her. 'You are going to recover fully using that immense reserve of strength you have in you.'
She turned her face away from him, her eyes blank and emotionless as they gazed blindly at the wood grain of the bedside table.
'Hey,' he whispered. 'You are so special, Ziva. You can do this.' He crawled off the bed and knelt in her line of sight, forcing her to look at him. 'I believe in you.'
He was rewarded for his motivational speech with a watery smile and a slow blink before the room was filled with repetitive snoring once again.
Tony remained kneeled beside the bed, watching her, until his alarm clock beeped in the adjacent room and he was compelled to leave hurriedly to prevent it waking the resting Ziva.
He did not return to Ziva's side but trudged into the kitchen, still wearing his cotton pyjamas, and began to sift through his recipe books to find something suitable for Ziva's delicate palette.
Holding the cookery book in one hand and stirring the mixture in the other hand, Tony hummed an uplifting Hebrew song to himself. He began to sway to his own singing and was very soon dancing by himself in the kitchen, careful not to overturn the mixing bowl.
'You dance well,' came a quiet voice from the doorway, and he spun round, knocking the bowl of the counter in his surprise. Sitting in her wheelchair, smiling in the doorway, was Ziva. Her hands were folded in her lap and her legs were dragging along the ground, but she had managed to move herself off the bed and into her artificial legs all by herself.
'Ziva,' Tony exclaimed, ignoring the spilt breakfast in a puddle on his formerly anally spotless floor. 'How did you…Why are you…When did you…'
She laughed at his adorable speechlessness. She declined to answer due to her burning throat but cocked her head to one side amused by his astonishment. Her arms were exhausted from the burst of energy needed to drag herself to the edge of the bed and hold the wheelchair steady while she pulled herself into it, and she could not bring herself to propel herself across the carpet to him. She sat still and waited for him to cotton on to her plight and offer his assistance which she accepted gratefully. She stubbornly refused to ask for help unless absolutely necessary. Her pride had already been wounded enough.
He pushed her up to the table and floundered, his breakfast plans lying in a mess on the floor. He pulled the fridge door open and hopefully peered inside. 'Aha,' he proclaimed jubilantly, holding up a bottle of smoothie. He placed it in front of her and she lifted it up to inspect its label.
'Berry madness, my favourite,' she smiled. 'You remembered.'
He grinned back at her. 'Of course I remembered,' he replied sincerely. 'I remember everything about you. Your memory was all I lived in for a year.' He clamped his mouth shut, instantly kicking himself for saying too much. 'I mean…' he tried desperately to rectify his mistake.
'No,' she shook her head, rejecting his frantic correction. 'I'm sorry, Tony.'
He snorted, swallowing the tears that threatened to cascade freely down his so far dry cheeks. 'You have nothing to be sorry about, Ziva,' he protested. He smiled feebly, tears sliding down his face. 'You woke up and that's all that matters.'
He buried his face in his hands, trying to cover up the sobs that choked him. She looked on, helpless to do anything to comfort him and feel terribly guilty. She had done this to him and it wasn't fair.
