When she wakes, they are bathed in a curious half-light. A blanket of dawn, light as feathers and thick, and sweet. The machines chirrup. They are content. Tony is cradling her with caged arms and a guarded expression. His eyes are dark and heavy. She is curled. Warm.
"Good morning."
She blinks, and the day rights itself. He stretches his cramped muscles, and she feels their power hum slightly under her skin. A bird calls outside her window, and for a fleeting moment she feels it, hesitant and joyful, flooding her. Then she notices the needles in her arms and the tight and binding sheets of her bed. Tony stands and yawns. "I need some coffee."
Still, she does not speak. He strokes her hair with more affection than he realises, and lightly kisses her forehead. "Can I come back?"
She nods, mute and unseeing. Sees him leave the room and feels his absence like a wound. She opens her mouth to call him back but before she can utter a single cry, the man that has haunted her sleep enters. In his hand is a white cup filled with hot brown water. His movements are slow and controlled and deliberate and he sits on the side of her bed. She shrinks away.
"Good morning, Ziva."
Although she hates herself for it, her eyes fill with tears. They linger and spill. Congeal into a shiny cracked glaze on her cheeks. Salt. He raises a scarred and capable hand and tries to wipe them away, but she flinches and a savage whimper tears itself from her throat.
Take care of yourself.
And suddenly she is sobbing, wide eyed and empty hearted, and he gazes at her impassively with that hateful blue and does not try to still her. A thousand memories spark like fire down electric veins, leaving her exhausted and drowning. Kisses and slaps and withering glares. A mind as sharp as silver daggers and the skeleton of a boat in a darkened room. Whiskey and solitude.
Bang bang bang and they all fall down and they all fall down so dead.
His face blurs and becomes her cold father, her dead lover, and every man that ever failed her. The tears stop falling and she turns her tired head away from him. He does not leave, but shuts the blinds and locks the door. She is trapped and frightened, a bird, in a cage, with a cat, and a gun.
"Ziva."
Her breathing is ragged and harsh and she feels the panic bubble and clot in her chest. Opens her mouth wider for air and suddenly a hard callused hand is on her neck and the side of her cheek, firm and unrelenting, holding her gaze. She meets his eyes and tries not to break.
"Ziva. Will you listen to me?"
She tries to nod but the hand restricts her movement. She has to speak.
"Yes." It is out of fear as much as anything. He nods contemplatively, and then drops his hand and passes her a glass of water. Again, it trembles, threatens to spill from her hand and so he grasps it and guides it to her lips with disarming tenderness. Like a father with a child, and suddenly she remembers everything he has lost. She wonders if she is part of that.
"I presume your doctors have told you all the medical stuff?"
She nods. They did, and she listened helpless and remote as each bruise and broken bone was explained. She tried to care, and failed with grace.
"Can you remember what happened to you?"
And she smiles. It unnerves him. It does not reach her eyes.
"I was trained well. By Mossad and by you. Do you remember, the first case I ever worked on at NCIS, and the map?"
He does. She drew it, almost perfect, from memory. He had looked at her with new and humble eyes as she glanced up, vague and triumphant, from a quiet victory.
"I remember everything I possibly can. Small details and things people say and the way they lie. And what they do."
"Then you must remember a lot about your ordeal."
"Sir, I remember all of it." The sir is unexpected and stings like lemon juice on grazes. He recoils, visibly, and her eyes are proud and wounded.
"Gibbs, Ziva."
"Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Yes?" The words are cold and anonymous. They could be on a gravestone. Once, he wanted them to be. There is only one word that he knows will start to mend her broken soul. But apologies are a sign of weakness, and they sit cold and hard and gloating on his tongue. Metallic, and they choke him.
"Tony will be back in a moment. He only went to get coffee."
"Ziva, I told McGee to take him - at gunpoint if needed - to go and find a horizontal surface on which to get some sleep."
This further betrayal hurts most. It does not sting but pulses, dull and aching and irrevocably recognisable. Her eyes gaze into blue and see a curious mixture of emotions.
"Ziva. I understand if you're still angry – with me, with Tony, with your father. With everyone." His words make her feel childish and immature, as though he is kindly humouring a hysterical child in order to avoid a tantrum. "It's OK to be angry." He grinds the knife in.
"Please leave me alone, Gibbs."
"You chose to leave us, Ziva. Remember that."
"As if I don't have enough to remember!" The words are closer to the bone than she realises, and she is left, light-headed and strangely triumphant. Something falls away in his eyes and a wealth of understanding floods them. She cannot bring herself to look away.
"Ziva. I'm ... sorry. I really am. For everything you had to go through, everything you endured. I don't as yet know what the repercussions of this will be, the finer details of the whole ordeal, but please believe me when I say that it's over, for you."
"What's over, Gibbs?" The words challenge and taunt him.
"Whatever you want to be over, Ziva."
"Oh, touché, sir." There is a power and a lack in her voice and in her eyes that frightens him more than the array of angry red cuts and mottled bruises that coat her body. Not for the first time, he realises that her golden skin conceals muscles of the purest steel.
"If you want to come back to NCIS, I can try to arrange that."
"What, and crawl back on my hands and knees?"
"Of course. You're far too proud for that, aren't you, Miss David? Far too ... right." And it is this final word that slices her open. Her eyes bleed, and she feels herself fill with familiar fire.
"I have done so much for you, Gibbs!"
"I know that." His eyes bore deeply.
"I killed...I killed my brother for you. So you could ... kiss me goodbye. I thought you trusted me."
He does not flinch. "I did trust you." And oh, how the past tense can burn.
"And now?"
"Now, Ziva ... now I do not know." A sigh, heartfelt and icy. He glances up.
The bruises and welts and burns. The ribs shine through her skin. Broken bones and a sickening red hole in her shoulder. Notice how her hands tremble in her lap and she looks just like a child. Her shorn scalp and the scars that cross it. They glint, silver and forlorn. She cannot hide behind her hair and so she hides behind her pride, her wounds, embraces them and pretends she can bear it, when her eyes are large and lost and lonely, dark with exhaustion and hunger and a quiet hopelessness that could break your heart.
"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't tell them a thing."
And it should, but it doesn't.
Hmmmm ... I made Gibbs out to be a bit of a bastard here, which wasn't entirely what I intended but I really didn't want it to become a completely OOC and melodramatic slush-fest (E.g. "I'm so sorry!!!!!" "No I'M so sorry!!!!!" "WE'RE ALL SO SORRY!!!!!!!!!!") Hope you all enjoy. And PLEASE keep reviewing, reading them all makes my day :)
And also, one more note - as of Montag, ALL my exams are finished, so, firstly WOOOHOOOOO *celebratory dance* and secondly, it also means I'll have loads more time to update quicker, longer and better chapters. So yays all round, I think.