XXV. Shedding Skin

Well, you have suffered enough
and warred with yourself,
it's time that you won

- Glen Hansard, "Falling Slowly"

Ziva can feel the rays of the desert sun on her back like anvils, pushing on her bones and making her hair, her clothes, her socks, stick to her as if they have been glued to her every skin cell. She can see the camp out ahead of her, but the sun – or maybe her head – makes it hazy, makes it swim in front of her eyes instead of staying still. She squints and she coughs and kicks up a cloud of dust.

Flash.

She can see him on the boat, feel him up against her in the cabin, his Marine dog-tag glinting with his sweat in the semi-light. And then she can see him dead, lifeless, on the floor – because that happened to him and she was responsible for it, she was, she was—

Flash.

She can feel the sting of the slap on her cheek that almost took the wind out of her. Her mouth is thick and gluey and she has to work her tongue around for several seconds to swallow properly. She needs water and she needs to lie down and she is bound, this chair is too hot, this room is too hot, this world is too hot – and God, he's coming again, and she tries to muster the strength to say a prayer in Hebrew, even just in her head, but he's yelling something and she gets another slap and she cries out, even though she's numb and feels nothing, just because she wants to remember that she's still alive.

"Ziva!"

There is a layer of sweat on his leering face as he looms over, his rancid desert breath like a swarm of dying flies around her nose; and there is a glint in his eyes that she doesn't like, that's been there since he first raked his eyes over her body and gathered information he seemed to enjoy having.

"Ziva!"

And then there are hands on her, hands on her, hands touching her and grasping at her and trying to keep her down. She tries to scream but there isn't enough moisture in her mouth to make a sound higher than a swollen whisper; she tries to fight the hands, but she has to fight exhaustion too.

"Ziva!"

She tries, she tries; she kicks, she flails; she musters all the strength in her to scream and maintain her frenzied limbs, but she is bound and there's little she can do and she's never been so scared in all her life and those hands, those hands, those hands—

"ZIVA!"

Something gives and Ziva's eyes snap open, overflowing with terror.

There are still hands on her, and for a moment she almost goes insane where she lays, inhuman shrieks escaping her mouth as she prepares herself to die; but then she blinks and suddenly, she realizes it's Tony's face above her, Tony sitting on her legs, Tony calling out to her – and that the hands on her are only Tony trying to reach her, trying to wake her up from her personal hell.

His nose is bleeding freely, she sees now, but his eyes glow with almost preternatural intensity, and his hands are holding hers so tightly that it hurts him.

"Ziva, you're all right," he tells her, breathless, as if this is all he's been saying for some time now. "Ziva…"

Her name sounds like a blessing on his lips. Her chest heaves, up and down, up and down, all the oxygen around her not enough to quench her need; and she tries to calm her hands and her feet – which have evidently thrashed the blanket to a pulp – but she finds that she tenses up and shakes uncontrollably, unable to calm anything.

"Tony…"

She finds her voice enough to say his name, but he rests his weight a little further into her legs to stop their movement and he moves his hands from hers to her face, cupping her cheeks in a way that strikes her as unbelievably loving, intimate.

"You're right here," he reminds her. "We're at my place. You're just fine. No one's trying to hurt you."

He is breathless, but so calm. Too calm. And hearing his calmness begins calming her too, brings her back. The scene rematerializes as her memory retrieves images from the evening – from work, from the case, from Tony and the restaurant they went to for dinner and that they didn't have sex afterwards and then falling asleep beside him in his bed.

Tony is right; she is fine. She is in his bedroom, and he is sitting on her, his red boxers visible in the dark, and she's kind of stopped shaking now, down to mere tremors. Her breathing is a bit slower too, not as dangerously fast as before. She can hardly feel her lips, knowing only that her mouth is open and that air is passing through it and that it's bone-dry. Dry like the desert. Like that place.

She squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to give in to blackness, but all she can see is the black of his eyes. Panic flares. She opens her eyes and Tony fills her view again, sweet Tony with the goofy smile that has currently been replaced by pursed lips emanating worry.

"Ziva?" He tucks her hair behind her ear, his fingers warm against her flesh. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Water," she gasps.

"Stay here," he orders, as if she is any state to move, let alone go someplace.

Exhausted, she nods and he relieves his weight from her legs, getting up out of bed to go to the kitchen. She can hear his footsteps going to the fridge; she can hear him put on the tap and fill a glass; she can hear him coming back. She sits up and hugs her knees and tries to focus on his eyes, because they are the only eyes that don't make her skin crawl right now.

He is back in the space of seconds, holding the water. He makes the motion to hold it to her mouth for her, but she is recovered enough to find this embarrassing and takes the water for herself. She can feel every drop on her parched throat and she is ravenous for it; she drinks it in one greedy gulp and he silently takes it from her, goes to the bathroom next door to refill it.

He brings it back and this time she drinks it slower, daring herself to make it last. It washes the sticky out of her mouth, leaving her cool, refreshed, properly alive, no longer hot and crazy. The arch of his eyebrows asks if she wants more, but she shakes her head. He puts the glass on his bedside table.

She meets his eyes and she can see the concern in him. Now that she is hydrated and thinking clearly, she is fully embarrassed.

Tony has never known about the nightmares. They used to be common – every night in the beginning unless she self-medicated and put herself out for the night – but they are much rarer now. Honestly, Ziva had almost forgotten about them herself.

Until tonight, that is.

That godforsaken place will haunt her dreams until the day she dies.

She fights for composure, for maybe a little drowsiness, but she is wide awake now and she knows it. And she's still shaking. Little shakes, but shakes nonetheless. And Tony sees them. Tony sees everything right now, laid out in front of him like a jumbo color-coded map of the world. But he is inscrutable, for once; she cannot penetrate the emotion that surely must be churning in him too.

Her emotions are fairly easy to guess by one glance at her usually tight features. Fear; shock; horror. Some remorse. He isn't sure but can guess what she was probably dreaming about and it saddens him, saddens him to the point where he could slowly bleed to death one drop at a time, knowing she's been through far worse than she would ever tell him.

Without thinking, he scoots next to her and wraps his arm around her, shifts her to his lap and gathers her up against his collarbone. At first, she tenses, as though she's about to hit him; but then she crumbles and he is there to hold her, rocking slightly, as though comforting a small child.

Her tears brim. She hates them – hates their weakness, hates that he can call them out so much easier than anyone else can – but a couple of them spill onto his chest. Particularly when she glances up at him and realizes that his nose is still full of blood, some of which has traveled down his chin and neck.

She must have done that to him when she thought he was trying to kill her. Guilt ignites, searing hot, in her gut because she didn't mean to hurt him. She's sorry; she almost tells him so. But he catches her looking up at the wound.

Stroking her hair with a firm reassurance, he uses his free hand to mop up the blood with the collar of his shirt. Then he gently shifts her again so that her head is against his chest, near enough to his heart that she can hear it beating faintly in the quiet beneath his bones. And she focuses on the sound, as though it'll do something to save her.

He is as patient as the earth, holding her there. A minute later, he tugs on the blanket and covers her with it. Despite the warmth of his body, she needs it – she's just wearing one of his thin t-shirts and a pair of her own shorts that she had brought with her – and she lets it protect her, lets it help her.

All the while, she undergoes the peculiar sensation of shedding skin – of letting the layers go.

The layer of distance that she maintains between them, despite the sex; the layer of self-control that has always kept her demons at bay; the layer of practicality that has her thinking about the next moment rather than burying herself in the current one. They fall away from her one by one, as she lets him hold her. She feels empty, unreal, as if she has just thrown up something toxic and the darkness that squashed her internal organs has lifted, leaving them free for the first time, unsure of all the space they suddenly have to spread out.

She has gone to a lot of trouble never to fall this far; but all it takes is a nightmare and Tony Dinozzo and she's sitting on her ass at the bottom of the well, her rear end damp with the wind on her hair, wondering when the foundation fell through and if she could have stopped it, suspended herself above the floor any longer.

Some time ago, she would have been repulsed by her weakness, by the way that she not only felt it but let it show; but these are different times and in this night, in his room, with his wonderful humanity enveloping her like he is, she can do nothing but surrender.

It might be minutes; it might be hours. They never speak – he never asks the questions and she never gives the answers – but he stays with her through all of it, solid, unmoving. And it's in his arms that the night fades and she finally falls asleep, still sitting in his lap, her head still on his chest, her arms around his neck and his arms around her waist.

And it's cradled around her that sleep finally comes for him too, forcing him to lie back with her lying half on him, half off him, sprawled across the mattress, his hand on hers, loosely connected but connected all the same.

This time when Tony wakes up, it is not to Ziva screaming bloody murder in his ear or to Ziva punching his nose in with her frightened fist: it is to sunshine, coaxing his eyelids awake, and to the smell of breakfast cooking, and to the thought fluttering into his head like an amiable bird that it's Saturday morning today and he doesn't have to go to work. He blinks and revels in this fact and in the scent of bacon, an unconscious smile sweet on his lips. He yawns and stretches his arms and lies contentedly in the mess of blanket, waking up.

Once he is functional, he gets out of bed and goes to look for Ziva. She is undoubtedly the culprit behind the aroma of eggs and bacon.

And, sure enough, Tony pads out to the kitchen and sees Ziva at the stove, her back to him, watching over two sizzling pans. When he is in the hallway, she whirls around to look at him, take in the sight of him.

He is endearingly rumpled – half his hair going the wrong way, the crease of the blanket on his cheek, the yawn stretching his mouth into an oblong oval tunnel. And for half a second, she wants to rush to him and say something that translated the profound gratitude and shame currently living in her chest.

But she thinks better of it as he comes towards her, eyes curious and on the alert for exactly this sort of behavior. Somehow, she cannot bring herself to meet his expectation.

"Good morning, Tony," says Ziva evenly.

"Good morning, Ziva." He yawns. "I see you have breakfast going."

"I hope you are in the mood for bacon and eggs," she says.

"That sounds nice," he says, genuinely enough to stir her guilt. "Do you need help?"

"No. It's done now."

He nods. She bites down on her lip but turns back to the stove to hide it. He pulls out a chair for himself and sits in it, watching with interest as she transfers the eggs and bacon carefully into two plates, one for him and one for her. Then she joins him at the table, setting the plates down and running back for the cutlery.

He half-considers offering to get them himself, but she is already back by the time the words have climbed up his throat.

"Thanks," he says, accepting the fork and knife.

"You are welcome."

They begin to eat in silence.

Meals go by quickly when there is nothing to say and it's only a few minutes until their plates are already empty. She had only made them one egg each, with two strips of bacon. When it's done and there's nothing else to distract them, they are forced to look at each other and the sight isn't pretty.

He overflows confusion, she the same but with a twist of apprehension that doesn't become her. And he longs to kiss her, with her mouth so slack before him, yet the distance across his table suddenly stretches itself across time zones and he is lost before he can even start.

He opens his mouth – he doesn't know what he wants to say just that he has to say something – but she beats him to it.

Instead of letting him wade across the ocean to her, Ziva flies towards him – her hand lifts from its spot on the table – and she lays her palm over his knuckles, her fingers fitting into the spaces between his.

He catches her eye and she curls her fingers inward, pulling his hand up and squeezing it in midair, so firm that for one wild moment he truly believes they have broken some rule of matter and physics, that the skin covering their hands and separating them falls away and her hand melts into his so that they are more together, more intimate than they've ever been.

And then she has come up from her chair and poised herself on his lap; and she kisses him once, so softly that she barely brushes against the surface of his lip, tasting of egg and morning and something uniquely, beautifully, her own. And in its clumsy way, the gesture says everything he needs to know right now.

He is still holding her hand when she leans into his ear and tells him, "I am going to take a shower. Please do the dishes."

He looks up at her just in time to see her eyes smolder with love and humor, all of it for him. And he wants to smile at her, wants to maybe kiss her again, but she has already let his hand go, walking towards his bathroom.

And as he does the dishes, he listens to her start up the shower and muses idly that since it is Saturday, he will probably follow her under the water – and she will probably let him.

A/N: Phew! Cathartic, huh? Instead of taking the nap I desperately needed this afternoon, I wrote this with a medley of soundtracks playing in the background, because I've wanted to write this for ages and I finally hit my stride when "Drops of Jupiter" by Train played.

I also didn't add an author's note in the beginning because I wanted you guys to leap right into the craziness that was the chapter's start without my comments messing with the flow. In case you were wondering.

So…I hope this worked and that you liked it and that you will review, because that's always appreciated so much more than I could ever tell you.

Cheers.
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