Gibbs was not altogether surprised when he finally found DiNozzo.

Back in the day, he would have ditched his room, too. And he'd heard it from enough people that DiNozzo was plenty enough like him. But looking at his agent now, he wasn't so sure that was a good thing.

Tony was sitting alone outside the door to Ziva's room, gaze unfocused and shadowed, hiding. His blue hospital gown fit loosely behind his shoulders, flowing down to his legs and only partially covering his heavily bandaged right thigh. Gibbs was about to ask how he managed to get here until he saw the metal crutches laying underneath his chair.

His hair was messy, his face unshaven.

(And he'd seen that look before.)

"Forget where the head is, DiNozzo?" came Gibbs's voice, cutting through the younger man's vigil.

Tony didn't acknowledge or seem the least bit shocked that his boss had found him. He just kept staring idly at the door.

"When I came to see her they told me she was sleeping, but I used the old DiNozzo charm to get them to let me stay," he explained, his voice tight with forced humor and his green eyes blazing.

(The nurse had pitied him when he vomited after digesting the words sexual trauma, but he left that little detail out.)

"Tony," began Gibbs, his voice soft with understanding. "What are you doing here?"

"Nurses tell you everything?" Tony suddenly asked, his head turning towards his boss for the first time with a confrontational spark in his eye. Gibbs stared at him for a moment, wondering just who his underlying anger was directed at, then sighed.

"I read the report, yeah."

Tony let out a harsh breath and smiled sarcastically, nodding his head.

"Of course you did."

He sat in a huddle of poorly-concealed frustration for a few seconds before continuing.

"I mean, I was there, right? I already knew about everything, I was there, I fucking saw her. Guess I missed a few things," he broke off, swallowing back down the emotion and uncertainty in his throat.

Gibbs shifted his stance a little, his previously softened face stiffening into a frown. Tony didn't seem to notice.

"I was supposed to protect her," he all but whispered, traces of self-loathing laced into his words.

Gibbs chose not to comment on this, looking down at the man he considered family and knowing he would have said the same damn thing. Did say the same thing, when it was Jen –

(Not now.)

He dropped into the seat next to DiNozzo, lowering his voice into a steady and calm rhythm.

"What happened out there?"

"Long story, Boss," he replied quickly, before he could stop himself and consider who he was talking to.

The trademark stare certainly said enough.

"Guess you wouldn't be sitting there if you cared about that," he corrected, managing to fix his mentor with a grimace.

"Whenever you're ready," said Gibbs smoothly.

Tony sighed heavily, itching to snap that he would never be fucking ready, but pettiness would do him no favors here. Instead he nodded, knowing this was the first of the many explanations he owed.

(How kind a mistress fate could be.)

"The night after I came back from the Seahawk, we went out for drinks. You know, to catch up and do the whole 'reuniting with the team' thing. Then she tells me that good old daddy dearest had been keeping secrets from her, but I mean, what do you expect from the head of Mossad? We already knew he was a ruthless piece of –"

"DiNozzo…"

"Fine. Apparently he told her that eight years ago he faked her sister's death in an explosion because some idiot threatened to kill his family. And guess what? Little David was alive and kicking in Egypt all these years, hiding with the CIA. I guess they wanted to exploit the family talent," he finished, almost joking, but there was very little humor in his eyes, and the smile was a little too forced to be believable.

"You left the safe-house in Israel. Why?"

"Ziva had to see her. She was so pissed off her father made her stay uninvolved, and he was the one that kept her in the dark about her sister. Last straw, and all that. I thought if I just went with her, we could be back within a day and no one would know."

"So what happened?"

"When we got to the house of Tali's contact, everything changed. Her sister was missing – had been for three weeks. The last anybody heard from her she was on some classified assignment. When they tried to find her, they were attacked. They stopped looking after that."

"And Ziva?"

"She left in the middle of the night to find her. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn't let me. Guess you know how she is. Anyway, she didn't come back for almost three days. And when she did, she had blood all over her clothes. And no Tali. Even McGee could've put the pieces together."

Gibbs froze internally for a second, the sudden familiar pain of losing someone piercing his heart for a second, quickly replaced by a sort of blank numbness.

"So her sister is dead."

Tony looked for a second like he was angry, hot air rushing out his nostrils and his eyes flashing, but it passed as quickly as it came.

"She had this look on her face," he muttered lowly, his tone that of a person who knew that there were no real words to describe something. Gibbs chose not to ask for any further elaboration. He didn't need any reminders about how he wasn't there.

"Then what?" he asked, drawing his agent back to the objective, away from things he couldn't explain.

"Then Kadin found out there were terrorists hunting us and there was an explosion and all the sudden I found myself locked in a cell with nowhere to go. Not my best week, Gibbs."

"Tony…"

"I should never have agreed to leave Tel Aviv. We should've stayed."

"DiNozzo…"

"I actually thought we could get away with it. Partners, right?"

"Tony!"

He snapped his attention toward his boss, green eyes blazing and his face contorted with determined anger, refusing to give up just yet.

"I was supposed to protect her and I let this happen. Don't try to tell me you would feel any different," he snapped, turning his head away again and back towards the door.

Gibbs's eyes were turned on him, blue and shining and resilient.

"I should have gotten you out earlier, I know that. And nothing I say is gonna stop you from blaming yourself. But that doesn't take away the actions of the people responsible."

Tony turned his head curiously, eyes narrowed and breath hesitant.

"I saw their bodies. I wanted to kill them myself, but you…" he suddenly cut off, his eyes turned sharply on Gibbs but frozen in dark realization. "Something tells me that's not what you came here to tell me."

"Someone sold you out," Gibbs deadpanned, not even bothering with the verbal foreplay.

"What?"

Seconds passed. A tense silence filled the space between them and he could practically hear his heart pounding with each anticipatory moment that passed.

"What do you – who?" he bit out, unable to articulate what was truly running through his head.

"How close did you get with Kadin?"

Tony fell silent, his eyes narrowing into a glare instinctively and his shoulders stiffening into a defensive position. He dropped his voice a little bit and leaned a little closer.

"I should have known," he spat, his chest rising quickly and his fists clenching together, restraining his urge to smash the nearest object he could find.

He should've fucking known not to trust that guy. He had so smoothly welcomed them into his house and acted like a friend and yet all the sudden they found themselves captive in a desert with the men they had so badly wanted to elude. Perfect. He fell for it and he paid. Both of them did.

"Let me know when you find him," he said brusquely, his words strong and eyes burning with earnest. He glanced from the door back to his boss, then back to his hands, clasped together with disgust and desperation flowing through his veins and turning his knuckles white.

Through the haze of diagnoses and opinions and predictions, not much got through to him.

But this did.

This fucking did.

At nights, solace was determinedly elusive.

The first few days were mostly a blur, with beeping machines and guilt-ridden visitors that said very little and the warmth of the cotton home she had found herself in. It was easy to forget in the daylight, when the glistening sun and its golden flecks streamed through the windows and when the kind smiles of nurses encouraged her to keep going, be strong, fight everything.

But when darkness came, it was not so easy.

When night fell and she was left with nothing but herself, she did not want to fight. It was mostly the dreams and the gnawing, almost void pain that bothered her. Sometimes the dreams were happy, in a way. Old times when she was younger and Tali was just a child and they would laugh together at things that only made sense to them. Other times the images were angry and violent, and confusing, and all she wanted was just one fucking night where it would leave her alone.

But it didn't. It never left her alone.

Each new day felt the same as the others, and she would wake with dark circles under her eyes that faded nicely into the bruising and dampness on her neck and back.

The nurses snuck uneasy looks at each other, scribbling their notes, making unchecked little comments to each other as they weaved in and out of her room. Wondering why her body was taking so long to adjust to a normal diet. Wondering how many more times they were going to have to throw away the food on her trays, untouched. The other one, the American, didn't seem to have that problem.

(She didn't bother to remind them she was fluent in Arabic.)

He did, however, struggle with nights as well.

Even with the pain medication and the antibiotics working through his system, his mind refused to slow down. He would lay there, alone in his bed, helpless to stop his thoughts from taking over. He tried to stop, to shut them out, but he couldn't ignore them. Thoughts about what happened, over and over, soon replaced by things that came so very close to happening. Most of the time, he just felt so angry, so stupid confined to his starched white bed, and how the hell was he supposed to rest then?

That's when he started sneaking out.

It didn't work the first time, considering the nurses did, in fact, have medical training and figured it out within minutes. But when they saw that he hadn't been sleeping, and what he was trying to do, they allowed carefully-monitored visits. Her room was only a few doors down anyways. So technically then it wasn't sneaking out, but it worked for him.

(He could look surprisingly pitiful when he wanted, and he played that card with ease.)

The first night he visited she was still so reliant on the medication that she slept through both his arrival and his departure. He just sat there in his wheelchair idly, secretly hoping she would pull a knife and chastise him for giving her the jeebie-heebies, as she called them. But she didn't. Which was a hundred times worse.

He spent the rest of his allotted time watching her sleep, fully aware that what he was doing was both entirely soothing and entirely creepy. He did not care. Somehow, after everything, he didn't think she would either.

The second night he didn't see her at all, as she spent the entire time in the bathroom. Her nurse told him that apparently this was routine after "meals" (he was unsurprised to learn she was refusing most of her food) and he would just have to wait it out.

But he didn't. Instead he returned to his room and was so overwhelmed by all the shit he had tried to repress that he punched his fist right through the wall. It wasn't even on the top ten of the stupidest things he'd ever done, and that made him smile, an angry, fuck everyone smile.

(The nurse gave him a funny look as she bandaged his hand the next morning.)

Tonight was different.

He found her neither in her bed nor in the bathroom. Instead, she was sitting alone in one of the chairs next to her bed, her back to the window and the wall. The streaks of moonlight seemed to illuminate her figure, partially shadowing the empty look in her eye.

Her face held a weird sort of grimace as he approached somewhat clumsily with his crutches. He counted it as an attempt to greet him, which he supposed was better than his last two visits, but he got the sudden feeling he was disturbing her.

"Sorry. I can come back," he assured, his tone low but light, not entirely sure why he was apologizing. She bowed her head and glanced at her hands, almost fidgety.

"I was already awake," she replied slowly, her voice deep and taut with – shame?

She didn't meet his eye when he glanced at her, taking in her ragged appearance. He was careful to avoid looking at the bruising behind her neck, as he was unwilling to revisit those thoughts right then.

"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly, knowing too well what she was avoiding by staying out of her bed, forcing herself to sit stiffly against the chair.

At his question she clenched her jaw in an awkward attempt to wring her hands, rendered futile by the thick bandaging covering the broken one. He felt a stab of – not pity, not for her, she deserved better than that – something, as he watched her restrain whatever was troubling her.

"There is a saying, in Israel," she began, not entirely looking at him. And then she spoke, almost sadly, words flowing out so easily in her native tongue.

"What's it mean?"

"It means – I do not think it translates well," she added, that same sadness lingering. "Something like, snake eyes in the morning."

"Snake eyes?" asked Tony, perplexed, not understanding how this applied to her wellbeing.

"Yes."

"Like the shitty Brian DePalma film?"

It was tribute to how serious she was that she did not cock an eyebrow, roll her eyes, or snort derisively.

"No. In dice, when you roll snake eyes, yes?"

"Okay, so, bad luck? You're talking about being unlucky?"

"More than that. It loses something, in English. It's – being cheated. Betrayed."

He frowned.

"Why the morning?"

"It is crueler that way."

Tony sighed, remembering the blood on her clothes, that look she'd given him, and the feel of the tiny silver chain in his palm.

"Yeah," he whispered to the room around him, "I guess it is."

Neither she nor the walls said anything back.

She frowned, unbandaged fist still clenched together in obvious discomfort. How else to say what she was feeling? It was like waking up to a different life, yet nothing – the cars, the sky, the heat – none of it had changed. Like the cold thin green of veiled glass, insulated with a grim, callous honesty. Like staring at yourself in the mirror and not knowing what the fuck you were looking at. Like –

"Snake eyes in the morning," Tony repeated, eyeing her warily, as if he knew.

Still, she kept her silence.

(She'd gotten very good at that.)

"Gibbs told you about Kadin," he guessed, his voice grave and reluctant.

"I already knew."

"How?" he asked, thinking that he should've left when he had the chance, because he wasn't quite sure he wanted to hear this.

"Ponytail. He made sure of it."

She didn't sound angry, and he noticed that more than her words. Another stab of not-pity pierced him, and he suddenly wanted very much to sit down. Sit down and stay with her until he had to leave, the dull golden light of the dawning sun rising behind them.

But would that ease his fear? Idle his restlessness? Heal her at all? No, (though his heart screamed yes yes fucking of course) because he had no idea what his presence meant to her anymore. They were out now, they survived. It was different, so different he felt he'd been scrubbed raw, right down to the bone. Like he'd been shoved into a box and told to stay and yet he could not help that he was spilling over the sides.

Like he'd aged ten years in less than one.

He scowled, stiff and tense and trying not to feel as he angry and vulnerable and fucked as he knew he was.

She reached for his hand, and he almost jumped.

(The touch of her palm against his is the softest thing he'd felt in weeks, and for a moment he forgot all about snakes and dice and the bastards that used them.)

Hint: that is not a real saying. Don't ask me what strange corner of the mind I pulled it from. Thanks for reading, drop me a line, then be on your way!