Warning for implied mention of rape, torture, and uh ... questionable sexual practices? Idk, a lot of things, basically :P But it's all mentioned pretty subtly, so if you were fine with what was in previous chapters, you'll probably be fine with what's in this chapter!

Enjoy, everyone! Please review!

-Soph

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ducky becomes Tony's first order of business the next morning.

A quick talk with the medical examiner later, Tony decides to take a day off in the next week to accompany Ziva to the therapist's office and make an appointment; he calls Ziva at lunch and tells her accordingly. There is a long pause on her end of the line before she asks, her voice small, if they cannot make the appointment over the phone instead. It takes forty minutes before Tony can coax her into daring to take that first, tiny step out—and even then, he returns home that evening to a Ziva who is both tense and nervous.

xoxo

He hears the low growl and the angry clatter the moment he steps out of the shower, and he skids into the bedroom to see Ziva sitting on a corner of his bed with her back towards him, her shoulders rigid and her head oriented towards where her hairbrush lies quivering on the floor.

"Whoa," he mumbles, and she startles violently. He holds up his hands when she turns to him. "What did the hairbrush do to you?"

"I hate this hair," she merely growls, yanking on her hair rather brutally before glaring pointedly at his towel-clad form. He swallows.

"I'll be right back," he answers, returning into the bathroom to dress.

When he comes out again, the hairbrush has been retrieved, but Ziva's head is bowed and her hair remains untouched. He taps on her shoulder to alert her as to his presence before scooping the hairbrush from her lap and swinging onto the bed to sit behind her. Gathering up her hair, he starts to work through the numerous tangles.

"So, why do you hate your hair?" he asks conversationally, and her chest heaves.

"N-nothing. It's nothing."

"I'm assuming it's not for some diva-like reason," he prattles on, "because—"

"He touchedthis hair." Her answer, hurt and quiet, makes his heart stop. "He touched my hair, Tony."

"Who?" he asks, careful not to slow his pace of brushing.

"You know who. He liked to … jerk my head back a lot as he … did things—and it's just, with the motions of brushing…. I've been trying not to remember, but it's getting to be too m-much."

He lays the brush down cautiously. "Okay. I'll take you to a hair salon after the therapist's on Monday; how 'bout that? We'll cut it shorter, and it'll be a lot easier to deal with."

"No. Now, I want to cut it now!" she slurs with sudden urgency, sounding almost hysterical.

"Zi, I don't know how to cut hair, and all the hair salons are closed at this hour."

"Then give me a pair of scissors," she demands, turning towards him with her eyes wild, "I will cut it all myself!"

"I'm not gonna give you a pair of scissors when you're in this state," he protests, and a panicked cry exits her throat. He grabs her hands quickly. "Zi. Ziva! Hey! I'm right here. Come back to me. Please."

With a choked sob, her attack—whatever scary kind it is—fades as quickly as it had appeared, and she blinks rapidly as she drops her hands from his. "I … apologize, Tony."

"Hey." He shifts forward and gathers her into his arms, rubbing small circles into her back. "It's alright. It's okay."

"It is not okay. I act like a crazy woman," she mumbles against him.

"Ah, who on this Earth isn't crazy anyway, hmm?" he replies, and she makes a low gurgling noise in her throat that might be a failed attempt at laughing. "Besides, I fuss way more over my hair than you do."

An oof escapes his lips when Ziva thwacks him in the arm. "It's not that funny," she murmurs softly, even though he sees the corners of her mouth twitching for the first time that evening.

"You think it is," he points out.

She mumbles something incoherent before pressing her face into him and inhaling deeply. His shirt feels damp when she lifts her head again, but he doesn't bring her attention to it. "I want them to go away, Tony," she whispers.

"They will, eventually," he answers, smiling bravely at her with a sureness he does not feel.

"When?"

"I can't give you a deadline, Zi, but I can promise to be there until they do."

She hesitates. "But what if they never go away?"

"Well, then I guess this ole guy right here is never gonna leave you alone, huh?" he jokes weakly.

She snorts, though, and her eyes light up. "You are an idiot, Tony."

"I'm a lovable idiot," he corrects with a smirk.

She doesn't answer for the longest period of time, until he starts to wonder if he's gone so far over the line that there isn't even a mark in the dust by now.

But then, "Maybe," she concedes as she slips her own arms around his waist, and his heart flutters madly.

xoxo

After a while, he gets her to sit up.

After a while, too, he gets her to turn around and let him run her brush through her hair. He tries to tame her wild curls and makes sure to talk to her endlessly as he does so, practising what he does best just so her bad memories will not overwhelm her. When he is done, he lays down the brush and she curls herself right back into his arms; surprised, he holds her gently, and she asks the one question that he thinks he might always be most ill-prepared to answer.

"Do you think I will ever have the life I want to have?" Her tone is flat and defeated, and it makes him physically hurt.

"What kind of life do you want to have?" he murmurs.

She lifts a hand, as if to illustrate a point, and then drops it. "Free. Independent. As a working woman. Perhaps as a mother, with a husband who loves her and two children whom she adores … and a dog, because her children would want one and she wouldn't know how to refuse them the pet which would become their best friend. Safe. Happy. Untainted."

Her voice breaks on the last word, and it makes him want to cry all the more. "Yeah," he answers, swallowing. "Because you're not tainted, Zi, and you'll see that when you meet the man of your dreams, who will also see that you're the woman of his dreams."

Her chuckle is humourless. "My dreams are more like nightmares now, Tony, and I was tainted long before Somalia."

He freezes. "Zi?"

"My first undercover assignment," she continues without looking at him, "was as arm candy to a high-up politician with a taste for virgins. Let us just say that he liked it fast and rough. And that my first time was not in the back of a weapons carrier, as Abby and McGee have undoubtedly told you."

Tony works his frozen jaw. Abby and McGee hadn't told him anything at all, but now is hardly the time to dwell on such an insignificant detail. "Um … was this assignment … legal?" he asks, his voice no doubt sounding harsher than he intends.

She fidgets. "No. It was off the books. But I had already turned eighteen."

This time, he swallows bile. "Eighteen for how long?"

"A few months. I agreed to the assignment," she answers softly, pulling away from him and curling her shoulders inwards. "Do not get me wrong —I wanted it. I thought I was helping. It is simply that now that I think about it, men prefer more … wholesome women … to be their life partners, yes?"

Her breathing starts to grow ragged, so he touches her arm, trying to ground her. She jerks away as if from a burning fire and wraps her arms around herself. "Women for whom sex is not a weapon," she continues brokenly. "For whom sex is not seen as the easy way to obtain information or get someone's guard down far enough to kill them as quickly as possible. For whom relationships would mean something; would not take a backseat to death and manipulation. Who … who would not understand being f-forced—"

She never gets to the end of the sentence before she breaks down completely, her tiny figure shaking as she cries for the loss of her naiveté. And he gathers her into his embrace even though he hears the subtext of her words; hears the horrifying truth that he wishes he could erase from his memory forever. For an alarming moment, he thinks he might just empty his stomach onto everything, and his body gives a violent shudder.

But then her fists tightly bunch up bits of his t-shirt and her head falls onto his shoulder, her pained sobs muffled as she cries into him, and that moment passes because it's his Ziva. No matter what she's been through and why she's gone through these things, Ziva is still Ziva—his brave, smart, tough, principled, and incredibly beautiful partner, even if she doesn't know it herself—and that is never going to change for him. So, he keeps his hold on her and presses his mouth to her cheek, whispering soft words of reassurance to her and soothing her even as her shaking grows infinitely worse.

And even though there is no definable sign for it—even though there is nothing to mark it as a significant point in time—he thinks he feels exactly when she gives up holding back her pain to give way to letting go of the past.