OK, firstly, I am SO sorry for not updating sooner. I know it's only been like three days or something but I did promise it would be pretty much daily. There's a stupid problem with our Internet connection (AOL, I want it to die a painful death) which basically consists of our modem going 'What? You want to what? Connect to the Internet? What the hell do you think I am, some little webwhore that will just indulge your every whim? Baby, I have rights. I'm contacting my union.' So yeah. I'm having to transfer everything to school and I'm grabbing some connection whenever I can – which isn't often. But this is like my top priority – that and checking my email.
And I'm sorry to the people that have reviewed that I haven't gotten back to like I promised. I'm replying whenever I can, so if I have five minutes here or there I'll try to but it's getting v complicated, so just a massive thank you to everyone that's taken the time to read and review, I really appreciate all the positive feedback and you're all incredibly beautiful.
Enjoy. Because NCIS is like totally mine. No, really. Honest. Don't believe me? GOOD.
She cries, softly and sweetly. Apologies, so hopeless they break his heart. His shirt – the one on his back, on his skin – is soaked with salty sorrow. She cannot meet his eyes.
"Hey, c'mon, it's OK. Come on, Zee-vah, it's me. It's not like I've never tried with you, now, is it?" He tries for a joke, forces his voice to crack in a jocular fashion. The words are flat and insincere as they fall, dead and glassy, into her hair. Wince.
"Zeev – please, please don't cry. You're home now – I mean, D.C., not here at my place. It's gonna be OK. Special Agent David, huh? Pretty exciting stuff?" Now he is desperate, almost ranting. The trembling of her shoulders lessens; the sobs subside.
Special
Agent
David.
It's beautiful, to her. To them both.
It might even be enough.
When the room is silent, filled with the steady breathing of the broken, Tony suggests a film. Ziva complies. Tony suggests a title. Ziva complies. And he wonders, with a dull and dusty smile, what really happened to her. Complicity, obedience, co-operation ... this was not Ziva, this was, most emphatically, never Ziva as he had known her, but now it was, it was, hopelessly so, and it hurt to see her vacant.
He wanted her to stand behind him, whispering seductively into his ear – something about natural urges, something about giving in - and then cackling with cruel mirth at a private joke. He wanted that mysterious and self-assured smile when he said something stupid. He wanted her to talk about how many ways she could kill him with a paperclip.
He wanted her to not want him.
He knows she is not watching. Her eyes are open, but glazed and glassy. At every shout, every gunshot, every cartoonish kaboom she jumps a little, shivers next to him and occasionally even gasps, a rapid and frightened intake of breath with a high and rising scream on the top note. He holds her tight, relishes the knowledge that the tick in his fingertips is keeping her safe. For once, he does not notice that her skin is soft and warm, taut and silky and golden under his touch. He sees the scars, the honey-yellow and dusky purple of fading bruises – sees the fear-stained eyes – and knows what he must do. A savage and loving pride bubbles in his chest.
And oh, he is noble.
Perhaps he does not trust her – perhaps he does not trust himself. But, as he flicks off the television and stands, exaggerated yawn and stretch, he bids her a goodnight, says she should sleep in his bed and he'll take the sofa.
Her eyes betray complete bewilderment, and for once they are not clouded by anything else. Lust, anger, calculation. She is young and scared, still. And so he asks her, gently, whether she wants him to sleep in the bed with her, and she nods, fast and shy. Blushes, and my, he is astonished.
He wonders, for a faint and fleeting second, a lazy contemplation, whether she has ever been as innocent as she is now. It makes him chuckle in some other world.
He gives her another shirt to sleep in and allows her to lock herself away in the bathroom. The nurses at the hospital in Tel Aviv lightly implied she might be a suicide risk, but Tony DiNozzo – tired eyed, pale faced, half smiling Tony DiNozzo - cannot imagine Ziva taking her life in the company of others. Still, he sits outside the door and chats idly to her as she washes. He has not seen her naked body since he found her, although not for any hedonistic gratification, he wants to. He wants to see if she is healing, if the wounds are closing, the bruises trickling back into her flesh, the burns fading into little silvery disks.
Maybe one day a future lover will ask her what made such marks, and maybe she will lie to him, and maybe she will tell the truth.
Out of habit, he peers once, quickly, through the keyhole. She is stood, shirted and bare legged, staring listlessly into the mirror. It screams back at her, vivid and barren. Her hair is longer than his now, and the soft curls make her look so like a child. They widen her eyes, make them dark and plaintive and lonely and hoping. The scar on her cheek – the star, the scar – twinkles at him gently.
He hates so many men.
He lifts the blankets for her, like a child, and tucks her in. Her teeth glint in the half-light as she smiles. Peck her forehead and crawl in, aching and exhausted, next to her.
He realises it is the first time he has been between sheets in a long, long while. Groans comically in such a simple pleasure.
And her voice, her old voice, dances out of the darkness next to him.
"Tony? Would you like me to give you a little, uh, private time? Sounds like you could, uh, use it."
He chuckles. It is warm and soft and golden, and seeps like honey into her ears. He feels her smile next to him. Curls around her, like he is so very used to. Feels the pulsing of her white, dead bones halter. Lessen. Cease.
They stare at the ceiling together and tell their truths.
And oh, what truths they tell.
Tony does not hate his father, but he pities him, and that is worse. He sees him in his mind, an old man clinging desperately to younger and younger women, girls, and he promises himself – vehemently, angrily – that he would rather die than grow old. He knows it is not true. And, in a curious way, he wants the same as his father.
He would rather die than grow old alone.
Ziva used to be scared of the dark when she was a child. She would imagine the shadows to be monsters, and would cry herself to a fitful, fearful sleep. And then her father, exasperated with this childish terror, told her a bedtime story to bleed your soul. And after that, she never saw monsters in the corners of her room, behind the curtains and in the wardrobe.
She saw them whenever she looked at people.
Tony lost his virginity when he was fifteen years old. She was seventeen, with long legs and a mocking smile, and when he tried to tell her she was beautiful, she called him sweet and he hated it.
Ziva kissed her first boy when she was eighteen. It was part of her training, the power of seduction, and the boy was named Jacob Levy. He was gentle and made her laugh, and she never told him it was her first kiss but she knew he could tell. He put his hand on her hip and it made her start. Ever since then, she says into the night, into Tony's patient ears, ever since then, whenever a man touches my hip, the memory flares inside me. She tells him that Jacob Levy was killed - captured, tortured and killed - less than a year later. And then she tells him how she lost her virginity when she was sixteen years old. At first, he does not realise the discrepancy. And then he does, and he understands, and they are silent.
Tony hates so many men.