A/N: This chapter is set after "Bait", so this is the first real time jump we're making. There are plenty to come! I have a hard time figuring out exactly how much time passes between episodes, so we're going to say this is a few months after chapter 4.

The twenty-sixth time they sleep together, it's meaningful and soft, comforting above all else. Sex comes second to friendship, and someone who's lost is found. Isn't it difficult to keep the lines from being blurred when sleeping with someone who means so much?

"Stand down," Tony tells the snipers, knowing in his gut that there's more to this bomb threat than meets the eye. The kid isn't going to blow anyone up. There's got to be a way to get him out of there safely, him and all of those other kids who just came to school this morning expecting the same high school drudgery they see Monday to Friday of every week. They don't deserve to die, and the boy with the bomb doesn't either.

He's just a kid who wants his mother, misguided as that may be in these particular circumstances.

Tony's turning to say something to Ziva when it happens.

They feel it before they hear it, a great shudder in the walls of the school as a nearby section of it is rent apart; the table under Tony's hands trembles. Immediately after, the noise processes, an impossibly loud roar that suddenly makes Tony's ears feel like they're imploding.

The worst thing, though, is the sense that comes right after physical touch and sound—the feeling of absolute certainty in the knowledge that everyone who was in that classroom is now dead. His ears ringing, Tony tears out of the room he's in and sprints down the hall; there are shouts that follow him, but he ignores them. His own personal safety in this moment couldn't matter less—the only thing that matters is getting to the classroom. Maybe if he gets there fast enough, the whole day will somehow prove to be some sick kind of joke.

Unfortunately, he finds exactly what he expected to find, and it horrifies him anyway.

Where a few minutes ago, there was a long hallway full of classes, now there's a blackened, smouldering hole in the building. There's sunlight sparkling down where there should only be fluorescent lighting, and the beauty of the light passing through thick smoke seems like a mockery of the hideousness that has just gone down.

Tony coughs in the smoke as he hurries toward the wreckage, searching for survivors that he knows he won't find. He smells the bodies before he sees them, and it makes him sick to his stomach as he counts them. Too many lives cut short because of his inability to give an order that might have saved them—one partial body belongs to the suicide bomber, there are five dead teen hostages, and there's one dead NCIS agent.

Gibbs.

Gibbs is dead—children are dead—and it's all his fault.

He can't breathe he can't breathe he can't breathe he can't—

He wakes up with a start, his heart thudding painfully in his chest and his breath coming shallow and desperate. All his fault, all his fault.

Slowly he processes his surroundings—he's in his bed at home, it's going on three in the morning, and his hearing is just fine. He has no burns from shifting through wreckage and no damage from being close to the blast.

That's because the bomb never went off.

Once he remembers that, figuring out that the dream was just a dream, he attempts to calm himself. He focuses on slowing his heart rate and catching his breath, but he can't quite swing it. He knows on an intellectual level that the decisions that he made yesterday were proven in the end to be the right ones and that no one died, but he can't stop playing the what-ifs in the recesses of his mind.

He was fine before he went to bed, feeling confident and almost cocky about pulling off a high-pressure mission that felt nearly impossible when he was doing it, but it's becoming all too clear that the possibilities have shaken him more than he realized.

He can picture all of the bodies so clearly as if they're real memories and not darkly clever constructs of his stressed imagination, and with every blink, he sees them tattooed on the insides of his eyelids. Seven bodies, one two three four five six Gibbs. All those kids and Gibbs.

All his fault.

He can't breathe he can't breathe he can't breathe he can't—

For half an hour, he tries to shove past the needless guilt, the belated fears of what could go wrong when in reality it didn't, and it doesn't work. He can't stop his mind from turning in circles, torturing him… burned bodies, destroyed high school, the anger and shock and grief of all the people who he would have failed if things had gone differently today, families of the kids as well as his own team. He feels sick, and he feels miserable, and there's only one thing that he can think of to do.

He flips his bedside table lamp on so he doesn't have to fumble around in the dark and then grabs his cell phone, selecting a button on speed dial before he can talk himself out of it.

Ziva David has never been one to sleep deeply—those who sleep deeply are those who will not survive until morning if an assassin comes in the night. She sleeps instead with a gun under her pillow and a readiness to leap up and defend herself if necessary.

As a consequence, her phone going off startles her awake as soon as it starts to ring. It takes her a few seconds to process the noise that woke her, and by the time it does, she's totally alert and sitting up with her gun pointed ahead of her.

Figuring out that it's just the phone and assuming it's Gibbs calling to tell her to meet the team at a new crime scene, she takes her cell from its resting place on the table next to her and glances at the caller ID. She was wrong—it's not Gibbs, it's Tony. She looks over at her alarm clock—maybe it's later than it feels, closer to normal operation hours?

3:29 AM.

She intuits that something isn't quite right and answers the phone with a bit of trepidation. "David."

There's no sound on the other end, and Ziva's worry grows. "Tony, are you there?" There's more silence, and just as she's starting to think she should wake McGee and Gibbs to rescue Tony from whatever situation that he's clearly trapped in, her teammate finally speaks.

"Ziva?"

Hearing her name in that tone is unsettling, and her worry doubles. "What is wrong, Tony? Are you hurt?"

For a long moment, he doesn't answer again. Then: "Did I wake you up?" Something in his voice is wrong. He sounds faint somehow, like he's having this conversation after a solid blow to the head. She listens to his breathing, too fast and not deep enough.

"Please tell me what is happening," she says softly instead of answering his question. "Are you okay!?"

"I'm okay, I'm—" his voice catches in his throat.

He can't breathe he can't breathe he can't breathe he can't—

She waits another beat to make sure he isn't going to say anything more before throwing the covers off and climbing out of bed. She's going to go find him, wherever he is. "Just give me your location, yes?" She's using a gentle voice, trying not to spook him before she finds out what's wrong.

"I'm at home."

"Stay there, then. I will be there in fifteen minutes." She pulls on jeans and a sweater as she talks, discarding her pajamas. She doesn't foresee much more sleep happening for her tonight.

"No, Ziva," she hears Tony protest, and his voice sounds a little stronger. "I don't need you to come, I just need…" If she's not mistaken, that was a break in his voice. He's not physically hurt, she realizes suddenly. He's hurting emotionally.

She slowly sits back down on the side of her bed. "Please tell me what is wrong, Tony. I want to help."

Ten seconds of silence, fifteen. Twenty seconds.

Suddenly: "They all could have died yesterday and it would have all been on me. All of it!" He shouts the last three words with enough unexpected force to make Ziva jump.

"No one died yesterday, Tony." She keeps her voice calm and soothing.

"It doesn't matter if they didn't actually die! They almost did, they could have, and it would have been my decisions that killed them. Mine!"

"That is a cost of leadership, and you handled it well."

"Leadership," Tony scoffs. "I'm not the leader, Ziva, Gibbs is. And guess what? If that kid had set the bomb off, Gibbs would have been gone in a second."

Ziva's glad to hear the anger in Tony's voice and she doesn't mind it being directed at her. It's easier to hear and easier to deal with than the heartache she could first hear when Tony called. "Kody was not controlling the bomb," she reminds him. "He could not have set it off."

"We didn't know that when the snipers had eyes on him!"

"No, we did not. You had to make a decision based only on the information at hand and you trusted your gut. It is exactly what Gibbs would have done if the situation was reversed."

There's no answer, just the sound of Tony still breathing hard, and Ziva's chest aches with secondhand fear and guilt. She understands what he's going through. "Tony?" she prompts gently. "Please let me come to you."

"No," he snaps. "I don't want you here."

"Then come to me," she murmurs, easily able to disregard his belligerent tone. "You should not be alone right now."

He lets out an explosive sigh. "I don't need a babysitter, David!"

"I am not saying that you do. I am saying that you are my friend and I am worried about you." She sighs much more quietly than he just did. "Please."

He grumbles under his breath for a moment before snapping "fine!" and hanging up. Ziva smiles slightly to herself and heading to the kitchen to put on a pot of tea.

It doesn't take even fifteen minutes before Tony is rapping angrily on her door—he must have really sped to get here, and he isn't usually one to drive as quickly or aggressively as she does. She wordlessly opens the door to admit him. He's holding a lot of fury in his expression, but his eyes still look mournful, and Ziva pulls him into her arms without even shutting the door.

Tony stands stiffly for a moment before slowly relaxing into the hug. Eventually, he hugs her back and rests his chin on the top of his partner's head. "It's been a rough one, Ziva," he finally says.

"I know," Ziva replies simply, and she hugs him until he seems ready to let go. She closes the door and pads silently to the kitchen, knowing Tony will follow. She has two mugs of steaming tea ready to go and Tony accepts his with a grunt of thanks. Then they move to the sofa where they sit quietly for several minutes without speaking at all. The silence is broken only by the occasional sip and swallow.

"What is really bothering you?" Ziva asks once Tony seems ready to talk. She puts her tea aside—it's now empty—and lands her hand on his knee, squeezing comfortingly. "I know that it is not quite what you are saying it is."

"We had a clear shot at the kid." He's looking straight ahead, avoiding meeting her eye. "I know how things worked out, but I just keep thinking… what if things had been different? What if there were no outside forces at work on the bomber, it was just a kid who had every intention of blowing up his classmates? What if I knew that at the time?" He swallows hard and when he speaks again, his voice is unsteady. "I'm not sure I would have been able to tell the snipers to fire on him anyway. All of them would have died because I was too weak to do my fucking job!"

Ziva gives him a moment to calm himself once more before speaking. "So you are not worried about having risked an incorrect decision during the threat, yes? You are worried about a decision you might have made under different circumstances?"

Tony nods, his lips pressed together.

"Tony, look at me," Ziva orders softly.

When he doesn't, she gently reaches up with both hands and pulls his face around to look at hers. "Tony." He finally makes eye contact, and she gives him a small, sad smile. "You cannot focus on might-have-beens because they are gone now. All that is true is what actually happened. Besides, you would have done what you needed to do. I have every faith in that. You would not have let innocent people die because one boy was angry at the world."

"How do you know?" Tony demands, angry again. Rather than breaking her hold on him, he holds himself unnaturally still, his entire body tense.

"Because I know you." Without moving her hands, Ziva gently strokes his cheek with one of her thumbs. "You would have saved them, and what is more, you would have regretted for the rest of your life that a child had to die. That is because you are good, Tony. A good agent and a good man."

She feels his chin quivering slightly under her fingers, and her heart breaks for him. He's beating himself up so much over something so unnecessary, but she knows that isn't how it feels for him. Pulling his face down a little, she leans up to kiss his forehead. "It means something to take a life, Tony. It would be wrong to not hesitate if you are afforded the luxury of doing so. You did the right thing by stopping to consider."

"Oh, yeah?" he demands, his eyes blazing as he glares down at her once more. "Everyone knows you're some kind of hardened assassin, Ziva, so what do you feel when you kill someone?" She knows that despite his tone, he doesn't mean it maliciously—he's just... desperate. He wants answers and reassurance, and she'll do her best to give that to him.

"The circumstances under which I kill are often different, but in a situation like this… I would feel regret for the necessity of my actions, but I would not regret the action itself. Sometimes, we must hurt one to prevent the suffering of others. It is a necessary evil that we accept when we agree to protect the civilians and the innocents of the world." She thinks briefly of her sister and knows that it's worth protecting the innocents at any costs.

"He wasn't some—-some international arms dealer passing out tank blasters to oppressive regimes! He was just a boy! I bet you've never had to live with killing someone like that."

"Actually, I have." She's very quiet as she murmurs it. It isn't something she likes to think about, and it hasn't come to mind for a long time.

"A—a kid?"

"Yes." Ziva can see the ache in Tony's expression—he needs to know he's not a bad person, despite the fact that she's already told him. He needs proof. He needs to know that someone has lived through making decisions he's terrified of and has still come out the other side the same person they were before. She steels herself to answer because he deserves her honesty. "I cannot give you most of the details because of my oath to Mossad and the State of Israel, but I can tell you an approximation of what happened." It's her turn to look away uncomfortably, and she can feel his gaze burning holes into the side of her head. She takes a few deep breaths, calling the memories to mind. At least they might come to mean something if she can use them to help her hurting friend.

"I have been to regions that are less… less stable than America is. I would often be sent to places with great conflict, and I have seen my fair share of war. On one such mission, I was sent with a—with someone important to a strong government, and I was there for the protection of that person. Most of the mission had gone smoothly, but on the final day, we were in—a crowded city. I was not the only protection officer assigned to this person's trip, and we were conspicuous in walking down the street. The locals knew we were there. There was a flash of light reflected off metal and that was the only warning I got—there was a child leaping toward the person I was meant to protect, and she had a knife. I shot her from less than five feet away, Tony. She was dead before she landed on the ground. I later learned that she was only eleven years old. In that region, insurgents are often radicalized very young." Her voice is clinical, almost, emotion shut out not only so that Tony doesn't hear it but also so that she isn't forced to re-feel it. If she let herself slip into the trap of examining the effect of every death she's caused on her conscience, she would never come back from it. She'd be lost to the past, useless to anyone she can help now by being present in the life she's come to cherish.

Tony doesn't know what to say to that, and maybe there isn't a good response to it. He can feel his heartbeat finally beginning to soften and slow down, though, and he starts to realize her point. She's right… of course she is.

He's still holding his empty tea mug in his hand, and he sets it on the ground. It's his turn to pull her into a hug, full of gratitude. She melts into it. "Come to bed with me?" he asks softly. It doesn't matter that they're at her apartment instead of his—he knows by now that she won't mind his presumptuousness, not under these circumstances.

In answer, she tilts her head up and presses her lips to his with the lightest hint of pressure.

They shed their clothing before they climb into bed, but they snuggle under the covers for a long time without doing anything. Tony finds himself thinking about how nice it is to just be held, to not need any words because they've all been said already. He wonders who he's changing into—this softer, more emotional version of himself that called a friend tonight needing comfort rather than suffering through it, moody and alone.

After an indeterminable time, they decide silently and together that kissing is the right way forward, and they share a series of tender kisses that give evidence to the trust they've built between them. Tony lets Ziva keep him out of his head, and he's able to focus entirely on her soft lips, her hair brushing against him as it falls on the pillow underneath them, her warmth as she rests on his body.

It isn't Tony's usual style, but it means more to him than he ever could have predicted.

They join together slowly; it's still the middle of the night, they have nowhere to be, and they have all the time in the world. They take advantage of that, thoroughly pleasuring one another, and when they come, it's together.

Tony doesn't go home when they're done; he opts instead to fall asleep for the last few hours before his alarm in Ziva's bed. Her smell is all around him, enveloping him, protecting him from any bad thoughts that might try to make an appearance.

She falls asleep first and he watches her for a while. She looks entirely peaceful, though he knows her life has often been anything but, and he considers how difficult it must be for someone with her training and background to trust anyone the way he knows she trusts him. He also admires the courage and selflessness it must have taken for her to share the story she told him earlier, and then, out of the blue, it hits him.

Ziva is his best friend.

He's had some excellent friendships over the years, and there are several that he considers family. Somehow, though, Ziva has managed to wriggle past enough of his barriers to get closer to him than anyone else in his life—he can't be more glad that she has. He wonders if she thinks the same thing about him, but it doesn't matter even if she doesn't; she's firmly placed herself as one of the most important people in his life, either way. A quote from The Wizard of Oz pops into his head, and he whispers it to his sleeping partner: "I think I'll miss you most of all."

He can breathe again.