Tony was struggling. He knew that he was struggling. He didn't like that he was struggling but who ever liked admitting to that? He certainly didn't. Especially not now. Not when he needed to be strong. Struggling meant that you weren't being strong. So, if he had to be strong, he couldn't be struggling. Because struggling meant that he couldn't be there for people, couldn't be the normal, whatever that was. He just knew that he wanted things to be normal, was that too much to ask? Except that he was struggling which meant he wasn't strong which meant that he couldn't help. He needed to be able to help. Because if he could help, he could be useful. If he wasn't useful, he wasn't doing anything and that was not a good thing for him, trust him.
Did any of that even make sense? Nothing was making sense anymore. When were things going to make sense again? Was it ever going to? And that just made him sound stupid, even in his own head. Of course, things weren't going to be like before... before everything that had happened. It couldn't possibly. Even though that's what he wanted. But when had the universe ever cared about what he wanted?
And that was just depressing. Which was about right. No. No, it wasn't good to think like that, even without therapy he knew that. And he didn't want to talk about therapy. Not yet anyway. He wanted to think about current things, not past things. That was supposed to be better, right?
There was this new normal, well, what was becoming their new normal and well, it wasn't exactly comfortable yet. It was going to take a while. He didn't even know if he liked it. He didn't do well with change. None of them did. And they had definitely gone through a lot of changes in the last few months. Very few of them were good. But things were getting better, they were. Slowly but surely.
It was almost like they were getting used to each other again. Like they had to get to know each other all over. Except that they already knew a lot about the other. Look, he never claimed that it made sense.
His head, it was all over the place. Which meant he wasn't focused. And he couldn't not be focused. Which meant that he had to get himself sorted out. And quickly. Because he didn't want any attention drawn to whatever this was, he was going through. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He didn't want to be benched. No. He could sort this out himself. He was going to sort this out himself. He and Ziva were going to be just fine. They were. Just once he sorted himself out first and this, this was the perfect place to do it.
This was the beach. You know, the beach. The beach he and Ziva had come to. Well, they had been to plenty of beaches, dozens by now. But this was the one. The first one. The one that had started everything. The one where she had talking about building sandcastles as a child back in Israel. The one he had dragged her to in the middle of a case to build castles. He had still built the better one, by the way.
Sandcastles. Around two years ago they were here, talking about sandcastles, building them, looking at photographs of them. Two years ago. Was it really that long ago? It felt like just yesterday, as horrendously cliche as that sounded. And they had been happy. Happy teasing each other. Happy reminiscing. Just happy. He wasn't happy right now. Neither was Ziva. Not happy. He snorted. That was a bit of an understatement.
Kicking at the sand, he found that he didn't really care that he'd misjudged the wind and it came spraying back at him. What was a bit of sand in the grand scheme of things? He would curse the sand in his shoes later. Right now, it was something he could feel. Something he could interact with without being scared of what was going to happen. He kicked at it again but this time he wasn't so lucky and managed to kick a rock.
Swearing under his breath, he hopped around like some sort of moron until the pain subsided. Well, there was still a throbbing there but whatever. He turned to the waves, watching them. It was a rough kind of day out on the water from the looks of it though it didn't feel like it over on the safety of the sand he was standing on. There was no wind, no rain or anything. But out there on the sea, the waves were rough. Big waves, lots of them. Crashing down onto the shore. The noise of them, it didn't exactly sooth him but they helped. Almost validated his feelings somehow. He snorted to himself, wondering what a shrink would think about that. Lots, probably. They liked using imagery and stuff like that. Would probably have a lot to say about the fact that he liked the fact that the sky was grey and not clear and blue. Clear and blue would just be obnoxious in his opinion. Yeah, a shrink would probably have a lot to say about that as well.
Well, it was a good thing that he wasn't seeing a shrink then, wasn't it? He didn't need to. Nope. There would be none of that.
Tearing his eyes away from the water, he looked back at the car park. His car was the only one there, being a grey day in September during a work day tended to ensure that. He should probably get back in it and go back to work but he made no movement to do so. Not yet.
Things were, well they weren't exactly peaceful, not with the height of those waves and the aforementioned sky, but it was fresh air. And open space. And, and, he was by himself. He wasn't ready to be around other people. Not just yet.