Chapter Fourteen

Ziva's voice is barely a sleepy murmur when she answers the phone, proof that she had been asleep before he called. But when he hesitantly asks if he can visit, she hesitantly answers in the affirmative, and he thinks that he might've heard a slight catch in her voice as she tells him that she will wait up for him. His heart breaks as he hangs up.

He's never deserved a woman as good as her.

He drops by a late-night, still-opened—God only knows why, except to cater to idiots like him—pizza place and picks up her former favourite before he goes to her. She's still not eating pizza, but he figures that it's as good a time as any to get her to try some. If only just to show her that he hasn't given up on her.

Gibbs glares at him when they meet at the front door, and the requisite warning head-slap is delivered to Tony's head. But the older man then steps out without word or protest, and Tony thinks that the thin, nervous-looking woman sitting at the edge of her bed might have something to do with it. He sees the flicker in Ziva's eyes as he steps inside and holds up the pizza box, even though she isn't really looking at him.

"Pepperoni," he tries.

She rises obligingly and sits at the table without a sound, as in the days when he had first come to her. He draws up the chair that he had added since and sits closely beside her, opening the box.

"I know you don't eat pizza," he continues, trying to keep the waver out of his voice, "and I'm not gonna make you eat it, especially this late at night. But y'know … I just thought, in case you wanted to try…" he tapers off pointlessly, feeling deflated. He'd wanted to talk to her. He still wants to talk to her. But he doesn't know where to begin, especially when she's being so silent.

Studying her, he realizes painfully for the first time that her silence is of a different quality than when they'd started out. Then, she had been indifferent; almost dead in her movements, she had made no attempt to reach out simply because she had seen no purpose in reaching out. Now, her fingers make tiny, nervous movements against one another, and her head is bowed; her aura is sad, almost depressed. She's upset, he realizes, in a way that she hadn't been before. He hadn't sent her hurtling back to square one—he'd sent her into a different game altogether.

She flinches hard at the sudden urgency that he uses to pull her into his arms, but then a choked noise leaves her throat, and her body starts to quiver and she's crying into his shoulder, bits of his shirt bunched tightly into her fists. He rubs her back and shushes her, whispering to her words of reassurance. He has no intention of leaving now—just like he'd had no intention of leaving before, but he'd be damned if he doesn't try harder now. It's about time he manned up for her.

xoxo

She sits up and regards him quietly with tired eyes when she eventually stops crying.

"D'you want to sleep instead?" he asks, and panic flares through her eyes as she gives a tiny shake of her head, her hands tugging unwittingly on his shirt. She's not going to believe so easily this time that he's not leaving her behind. He's lost the trust that he hadn't even known she'd had in him.

"Okay," he answers sombrely, shifting his chair closer to her and pulling the pizza box towards them. "Wanna eat?"

She removes a piece of pepperoni hesitantly, studying it. "It's not going to bite me, right?" she whispers suddenly, the wry smile on her face alerting him to the fact that she's joking. Joking. As if she hasn't just cried her entire heart out after spending weeks … not joking.

He gapes at her until she looks at him with worried eyes that might be an enquiry into whether he actually finds the joke funny, so he presses out a laugh. "Nope," he answers, and tousles her hair to make her smile.

She drops the pepperoni without eating it. "I'm sorry," she says brokenly.

"No, I'm sorry," he returns, about to continue his sentence when she cuts in with ragged breath.

"Ducky says I need to tell you what happened. So I am going to try. I did not mean to break your boat. I was … I was angry, because I felt like you were implying that I was … beyond your help. Which I rely on a lo—I do not like that, but…"

"It was our boat," he answers quietly when she breaks off, her eyes brimming with tears again. She swivels her head to meet his gaze.

"What do you mean?"

"It wasn't my boat. We worked on it together, y'know?"

"Yes…" She still doesn't get it.

"So, when you threw it…" He clears his throat, hating to have to be this honest. "When you threw it, it felt like you were ending … us. I mean, I know there's no 'us,' but I … count on being close to you," he ends stupidly, before exhaling and burying his face into his hands. What the hell was that?

"Oh," Ziva just replies softly and perplexedly.

He sucks in a breath and tries again. "I just didn't like that you said I'd called you 'broken,' okay? I never said that to you."

Ziva sniffles. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well…" he answers, looking up and pulling off a slice of pizza just so he'd have something to look at other than her.

She sniffles again, hiccupping suddenly. "Tony, I'm sorry to be a disappointment to you."

"You're not a disappointment to me." He frowns at her. "Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because you … you d-do a lot for me, and I can't repay you. I can't pay you back for the phone or the … days you stayed, and you had to walk me out to a tree and … I can't even do it myself. I'm so stupid."

She chokes on the last word, so full of pain and anger at herself that he can't help but to put down the pizza and pull her into his arms once more. His back protests at the awkward angle, but he persists, pressing a kiss to her warm hair and wiping at her eyes before saying, "Ziva, you're not stupid."

She opens her mouth to say something, but he shakes his head and continues, "No. Look, I know you're comparing how things were to how things are now, but you can't do that because … you didn't use to have those three months. Your life then and your life now is different."

"I know, but I just wanted you to see that I could be … better."

"I know you can be better." He kisses her hair again. "That's why I brought up therapy, y'know? Not because I think you're broken, but because I think that you could heal and are gonna be kickass if only you got some help."

She brushes at her cheek. "Not … you do not think that I am t-too damaged?"

"No." He bites his lip. "Ducky says you were doing all that stuff because you wanted me to be proud of you."

She inclines her head away, resisting his attempts to get her to look at him. "I wanted you to see that your attempts were not wasted."

His heart thuds painfully as he holds her tighter still. "I never thought that about you."

"I thought you thought that when you l-left."

"I'm sorry," he breathes out, leaning his forehead against the side of her head. "I'm so, so sorry, Ziva. I thought it was something else altogether."

She pats his forearm perfunctorily, as if trying to provide him with the comfort she can't herself find. "I don't want you to leave."

"I know. I'm so sorry, Ziva. I'm not leaving again."

A reviewer mentioned in a review to the previous chapter the hope that Ziva knew Gibbs threw Tony out, and that Tony didn't choose to walk away from her. Since I can't figure out a way to work it into the fic, I'll just mention here that Ziva was in the room when Gibbs threw Tony out. The "leaving" referred to in this chapter would be when Tony walked out after she tossed the boat at him. Yea :D I hope that clears things up!

Thank you for reading this chapter; please review!

-Soph