Heaven bent to take my hand
And lead me through the fire
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight
Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I have messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...
Scene Fourteen — Fallen
Tony was surprised, really surprised, that they actually managed to get through an entire week before Ziva started getting restless. He'd given her three days tops before she started demanding that she be allowed to return to work.
"It is not like desk work is overly taxing, if all I am doing is sitting at my desk signing papers, Gibbs cannot complain."
"No, but he can head-slap us into next year," Tony reminded Ziva patiently. "If he sees you at the office before the doctor clears you, I shudder to think what he'll do. It's better not to push it."
Ziva sighed, annoyed, as she grabbed her book off the coffee table and flipped it open to a random page to begin reading. Tony rolled his eyes as he returned his attention to the TV. He knew this argument was far from over, of course. She'd been at it all day, unable to stand being cooped up any longer. She'd argue for a while, find something to do to occupy her mind for a bit, then go back to arguing. She knew eventually Tony would give in, of course — he couldn't say no to her forever. No matter how hard he tried.
And lord knew he tried.
"Come on Tony, it is just paperwork—"
"Come on Ziva, Gibbs will kill us both if I drive you in and you know it."
"Fine," Ziva huffed, throwing her book onto the table and walking over to the door, slipping her shoes on and grabbing her jacket. "Do you really think I am not capable of hot-wiring a car?"
Tony groaned as he jumped up as well, running to the door and resting his hand against it, forcing it shut as Ziva tried to open it. "Fine," he finally gave in, knowing damn well that Gibbs was going to murder him. "I'll freaking drive you in. Happy?"
Ziva grinned. Tony sighed as he slipped his shoes on and grabbed his jacket and car keys. Well, he'd lived a good life. And there were certainly worse ways to go than death by head-slap, right?
They spent most of the ride in silence, Ziva staring out the window, Tony pretending to focus on the road, though in reality all he could really do was watch her out of the corner of his eye.
It had been four days. Four nights of Ziva waking up screaming from nightmares she refused to talk about. In the morning she would do everything she could to avoid speaking to or interacting with Tony in any way. Short of leaving the apartment, though, there wasn't much she could do for that. And somehow the idea of leaving the apartment never seemed to occur to her.
Not that Tony was complaining. If she'd decided to leave, Tony knew there was nothing he could do to stop her.
"Wow…those two really have a death wish, don't they?"
Gibbs looked up at the sound of McGee's slightly amused, slightly horrified mutter. The young man was staring at the elevator, his eyes wide. Gibbs knew even before he stood to look who had stepped out of the metal box.
"Medical leave, David," he growled as he walked to the bullpen entrance to meet the duo. "You know what that means, right? And you—" he turned his glare to Tony, instantly slapping him as hard as he could upside the head. "You ever heard of saying no, DiNozzo?"
"Well…I…she threatened to hotwire my car, boss—"
"And what, she doesn't weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet? There was absolutely no way you could have kept her from leaving your apartment?" Tony ducked his head, running a hand through his hair. "Don't move," Gibbs said firmly before turning his head back to Ziva. "You, with me."
And with that, he started towards the elevator. Ziva jogged to catch up with him, slipping into the elevator right as the doors slid shut. Gibbs flipped the emergency switch, and the elevator shuddered to a halt. The yelling Ziva had expected didn't come, surprisingly; silence echoed around them. It was almost disconcerting.
"You are not going to say anything?" Ziva finally asked, her eyes on the floor. Gibbs sighed; when he spoke, he didn't sound angry. He sounded tired.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to say, Ziva."
Well that was certainly a first. Gibbs always knew what to say. Ziva raised her eyes to look at Gibbs at last. "You could say you are not angry," she suggested weakly. Gibbs laughed hollowly.
"Oh I'm pissed, Ziva, not gonna lie about that." Ziva almost smiled. As always, Gibbs saw right through her. "You haven't been sleeping, have you?"
"I…have…technically."
"Nightmares?" Gibbs guessed, and Ziva nodded slowly.
"I thought…I hoped…that maybe things would go back to normal…the nightmares would stop…once I was out of the hospital. I really hoped…I need things to just…to be normal again." Her voice shook a bit as she spoke; she struggled to keep herself under control.
"You need to talk to someone," Gibbs corrected her gently. "Ziva do you remember what you said to me at my house, after I brought you home from the hospital when you overdosed on the pills?"
Ziva cringed at the reminder of that day. She'd said a lot under the influence of his bourbon. "You regret the chances you didn't take," Gibbs reminded her when she didn't respond. "Don't keep living with regret, Ziva. You have a second chance. Use it."
Ziva didn't have an answer to that.
"What the hell?" Tony muttered as his computer once again rejected his password. "Damn it McGee, what'd you do to my computer while I was gone? My password isn't working." He turned to glare at McGee, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. "What?"
Before McGee could say anything, the elevator dinged, and Gibbs and Ziva stepped out, making their way towards the bullpen. Ziva stopped dead when she saw Tony sitting at his desk.
"You know what, it's no problem," McGee said a little louder than necessary, grabbing a flash drive out of his desk and jumping up, crossing quickly to Tony's desk. "Ziva what's your password, I can move all your files back to your computer in two minutes."
"June two-zero-zero-three," Ziva muttered, her eyes on the floor. McGee quickly typed the numbers in, and the desktop appeared on screen. He put the flash-drive in the tower and set to work finding all of Ziva's files. Tony just watched, his eyes flitting between the computer and Ziva, who was still staring determinedly at the floor. She'd moved into his apartment, she'd taken his desk…what else had she done in his absence?
"All right," McGee finally said, grabbing the flash-drive out of the tower and walking over to Ziva's desk. Ziva finally raised her eyes to look at Tony, who was regarding her with a serious expression.
"Okay, and…you're all set Ziva."
She barely acknowledged McGee, other than to go and sit at her own desk and begin typing. Tony reset his password before setting to work as well.
The silence that had fallen over the bullpen was stifling. It was quite a relief when Gibbs' phone rang. "Yeah, Gibbs." He listened for a moment before saying, "All right, be right there," and hanging up. "DiNozzo, McGee, grab your gear."
He glared at Ziva, daring her to argue. She kept her mouth shut, her eyes on her computer screen. Tony and McGee grabbed their bags, each casting their female co-worker a look before heading for the elevator, Gibbs right behind them.
Tony waited until he and McGee were safe in the confides of the truck before speaking. "She moved to my desk?" He asked as he started the truck. McGee shrugged.
"There was a…problem with the agent Vance got to replace you," he said after a moment, feeling strangely as if he were betraying Ziva. But Timmons wasn't exactly a secret to anyone else, no reason why Tony shouldn't know, right?
"And by problem you mean…?"
"Well…he was an arrogant asshole. Ziva snapped and almost choked him to death in Observation." Tony flinched. "After that I guess she couldn't stand to see anyone else sitting at your desk, she came in the next morning and practically begged me to help her move her files to your computer."
Tony pressed his lips together as they pulled out of the garage, starting down the street. "Is that when she moved into my apartment too?" He saw, out of the corner of his eye, McGee's face take on a shocked look. Shit…
"She moved into your apartment?" McGee asked in disbelief.
"You didn't know?" McGee shook his head. "What about the others? Abby, Ducky, Gibbs, did any of them know?"
"Abby didn't, I know she didn't, she said she was going to Ziva's apartment every other night to try and get her to talk, but Ziva never answered the door. Ducky…probably didn't, and I don't know if Gibbs knew or not. If he did he certainly didn't tell any of us."
Tony could tell McGee was still reeling from this new piece of information. He cursed silently. Why couldn't he just keep his mouth shut?
Abby was surprised, to say the least, when she turned away from her computer and saw Ziva standing in the door of the lab. "Ziva!" Her face split into a grin for a moment before she frowned. "Wait, I thought Gibbs was going to kill you if he caught you back here before your medical leave is over?"
"We compromised," Ziva assured the woman. "I promised I would stay at my desk and not even attempt to get anyone to let me onto the field, and he said he would not kick my butt if I kept my promise."
"Fair enough." Abby smiled, a bit sadly. "So how are you?"
How was she? From the moment Tony had left her sight to go to that crime-scene, she'd been unable to get the images of something terrible happening out of her head; the truck crashing, someone pulling a gun, a bomb at the scene…
"Well I am beginning to regret promising to stay at my desk, I am already going crazy, and the doctor said it will be at least two weeks before he clears me…but other than that, I am pretty okay." Abby laughed.
"So what can I do for you?" Ziva shrugged as she moved further into the lab. She hadn't been able to stand staying upstairs by herself, with nothing but her thoughts to occupy her mind, and paperwork doing nothing to distract her.
"Gibbs and McGee and Tony just left for a crime scene, it was…too quiet upstairs, so I decided to come down and see you." A new thought occurred to Abby, and she bit her lip for a moment before voicing what was on her mind.
"Tony knows you took over his desk?" Ziva nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. "Did he say anything?"
"No." Ziva sighed, running a hand through her hair. "This is…admittedly harder than I originally believed it would be."
"It's never easy when someone comes back from the dead." Ziva's head snapped around to look at Abby, who was regarding her with a sad expression. "We spent a month thinking you were dead too, remember? Wasn't easy then, either." Ziva pressed her lips together for a moment, not sure how to reply to this. "But…you're not dead," Abby finally said, her voice cracking a bit. "And…and Tony's not dead. Nobody's dead. And yet no one seems able to take a hint and take the chance fate is giving them." Ziva knew a hint when she heard one. Luckily her many years of training hadn't completely abandoned her; she also knew how to ignore a hint when she heard one. "You're just going to ignore that, aren't you?" Ziva didn't answer. "Of course…" Abby sighed, shaking her head slowly. "You know at the rate you people are going you're all going to have me as grey as Gibbs."
The image these words provoked had Ziva laughing, just a little. After a moment Abby began giggling unwillingly, and before long they were both cracking up, and the feeling felt so utterly foreign to Ziva after the last month of darkness and depression.
And she loved it.
Ziva made it back upstairs right as the boys were coming back from the crime scene. Gibbs assigned her with the task of looking up the victim's background, and she didn't protest, too pleased to be involved with the investigation at all to think about protesting her orders.
Tony was glad that the rest of the day went off without a hitch. He teased McGee, overjoyed when Ziva reluctantly joined in, they ordered pizza while they worked, Gibbs head-slapped McGee and Tony ("Boss' pet," Tony grumbled at a grinning Ziva when she escaped having to suffer the same fate), they broke the case and declared it a suicide before seven-thirty. Everything was just…normal.
It was really a good day.
Ziva seemed especially pleased when Gibbs sent everyone home at around eight. Tony waited until they were in the car, pulling out of the parking garage, before he dared to ask, "What are you so happy about?"
"I was right."
Tony cocked his head, confused. "Well Zee-vah, as much as I hate to admit, it's not exactly a rare occurrence, you being right. So why exactly does you being right this time make you so happy?"
Ziva was still smiling as she answered. "Everything just needed to go back to normal. You at your desk teasing McGee, Gibbs slapping everyone—"
"Everyone? I seem to recall you being spared."
She ignored his grumbling. "Everything is okay now. It is back to normal."
They pulled to a stop at a red light, and Tony took the opportunity to examine Ziva. Well she certainly seemed happier than she had the last couple days. A bit of light had returned to her eyes, the haunted look was gone, and she was smiling more now than Tony had seen in the week and a half that had passed since his return. Yeah, she was definitely happier. And she wasn't just acting, either. Tony always knew when she was lying about how she really felt. No, she was genuinely happy.
"Everything is back to normal."
If she just ignored the fact that she hadn't been able to stand Tony being out of her sight. That would go away with time. Everything would be fine.
It was back to normal, after all.
Red or green…red or green…the choice bounced around Ziva's head, taunting her. But why were these insignificant colors important?
She gasped, pain tearing through her chest, as realization barreled into her like an eighteen-wheeler. A bomb! She pulled herself up, ignoring the protest of obviously broken ribs, her eyes — aching from the heat of the explosion — scanning the area as dust settled over everything. She hadn't been alone when the bomb went off, she knew she hadn't been...
Finally her eyes landed on a heap of grey and red laying a few feet away from her. "Tony!" She choked out, pulling herself onto her knees and crawling slowly but surely to where her partner lay. When she saw the state he was in, she felt as if the ground had given out from beneath her.
The left half of his face was burned, making it almost unrecognizable, his shirt burned off, his chest blown open. His eyes were wide and glassy. "Tony? Tony!" She yanked her jacket off, pressing it against the gaping hole in the man's chest. His mouth moved a bit, no sound escaping. "Damn it Tony, don't you dare die," she hissed, putting a bit more pressure on the wound. "Don't die, don't die…"
"Z…Zi…" Terrified brown eyes moved up to meet green, and she was surprised to find that Tony was smiling, just a little. "C'mon Zi, whadya think that's gonna do?"
"Just shut up and focus on not dying," she ordered him firmly, ignoring the tears burning her eyes. A large hand rested itself overs, weak, limp fingers wrapping themselves around her own.
"S'okay, Ziva," he tried to assure, but she shook her head, refusing to accept it. "Really, it's all right…"
"I said shut up," Ziva repeated, the words tearing at her throat. "Someone has to be coming, just hold on…"
"I don't think that's gonna happen," Tony choked out, coughing; Ziva flinched at the sound. "Don't waste your energy Ziva, focus on yourself, you still have a chance…"
"You are not going to die you idiot, you just are not," Ziva cut him off, unwilling to hear what he had to say. Tony just chuckled before coughing again.
"Ziva, look at me." She refused, focusing her attention on his wounds. "Ziva." She shifted her eyes to him momentarily; his free hand caught her chin and held her gaze on him. "You know I love you, right?"
Her breath caught in her throat. "You…what?" She managed to say. But Tony's eyes slipped shut, his last breath leaving him, the ghost of his final smile still on his lips. "No, Tony! Tony!"
No response.
"TONY!"
Ziva's eyes flew open, her breath escaping her in short, ragged gasps. She was vaguely aware of someone laying in the bed next to her, saying her name, but the voice was lost in the din that filled her ears. She rolled onto her side and attempted to push herself up, not quite able to suppress the sob that built in her throat.
A pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around Ziva's shoulders, pulling her into more an upright position. Her back came to a rest against Tony's broad chest as she gave in to the sobs. "Sh, Ziva, sh…" He coaxed quietly, rocking her back and forth, his hand tangled in her messy curls. "Sh…"
Ziva coughed as she struggled to pull herself back under control, slightly horrified by this overwhelmingly emotional display.
Tony held Ziva tightly as she cried, not sure if she was completely okay with this situation and at this point not really caring. Even if she asked, he wouldn't have let her go.
"Are you okay?" He finally asked as she dragged herself back under some semblance of control. He wasn't surprised, or completely believing, when she nodded. "Do you want to talk about it?" She shook her head with a bit more urgency than when she had nodded. He pressed his lips lightly against the top of her head, sighing into her hair.
So much for everything being back to normal.
"Zi?"
Tear-filled eyes turned to look at Tony, who moved his free hand to rub the pad of his thumb along her cheek, wiping away the tears that had already fallen. "Sorry," she murmured after a moment, closing her eyes. Tony made a noise in the back of his throat as he tightened his arms around her shoulders, pulling her against his chest.
"Don't apologize," he commanded her quietly, resting his cheek against her head. Ziva pulled in a deep, shuddering breath as she buried her face in his shirt. Tony knew now was not a good time to ask why she had been screaming his name in her sleep. Truthfully, it would probably never be a good time.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk?" He pushed lightly.
"Yes, Tony." He was pleased to hear her voice, despite the fact that it was strained, and muffled by the fact that it was still buried in his shirt. And Tony knew that this was the end of the conversation.
At least for now.
Author's Note:
-SPOILER ALERT (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LATEST EPI!)-
So first and foremost - AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! TONIGHT'S EPISODE WAS SO FLIPPING AWESOME! That hug! Did you see the hug? She initiated a freakin' hug! And the finale - OMG! THE FINALE! I'm soooooo looking forward to this!
-END SPOILER ALERT-
*ahem* Sorry. I was super happy with that episode, as you can probably tell. Haha
Anyways here's the dealio — the lovely melt down everyone has been waiting for is next chapter, and I know that's what we all want, so Imma make you all a deal: I'm a review whore in every way, and if I can somehow get this story to 200 reviews by Thursday, I'll update Friday, which is a whole 4+ days earlier than I usually do. Like I said, I'm a review whore =P Plus you know, you really all wanna see Ziva have a breakdown. So review please! — Sam