"The Uneasy Tremors of a Fractured Heart" - Tony, Ziva. Hurt, and some comfort.
disclaimer: So not mine. Just borrowed them for play. Put them back unharmed.
notes & warnings: The happenings right after 10x22 "Revenge", meaning: spoilers for this episode. Ziva, being all weak. Tony, being all strong.
Shout-out to Steve and Mary-Kate, for being my willing test subjects.
word count: 4,000
comments & feedback: Very much appreciated.
The Uneasy Tremors of a Fractured Heart
He was well aware he was stalling. The mundane tasks of jotting down some notes for tomorrow's report and zipping up his backpack, they never took him this long. But now, now that he had taken care of her backpack as well and set it down beside his own like some sort of statement, and that meant he was all out of ways to postpone leaving. All he could do now was lean back against his desk and watch the stairs that led up to Vance's office. Wait for her to show up again. Wait for her to look at him and maybe be broken enough to let him take care of her tonight.
When she finally did show, he froze, and his mind got caught somewhere between her tired feet dragging down the stairs and the urge to wake up, right now, and shake the remnants of this nightmare with a scream. Except that it wasn't his nightmare, and she had to be the one to scream.
She moved slowly, stiffly, and that confirmed a decision he hadn't even made consciously. He picked up both their backpacks while she made her way down the stairs, and the movement caught her attention. Her eyes flicked to his face, then to his shoulder. Her face was oddly blank, but he still saw the confusion build while she tried to put the clues together and couldn't come up with a clear answer.
"What...?" she said eventually, but she lost the question halfway through, and for a heartbeat Tony wasn't sure if her bloody mouth or the tired, defeated tone shocked him more. He'd never seen her quite like this. Not even three years ago, at the end of a particularly hot summer, when he--
He took a deep breath, then moved around her desk to retrieve the sling she had discarded a few days ago. "Let's get you home," he replied. Funny how his jaw hurt just from the control it took to answer without yelling at her.
She blinked again, as if she had trouble grasping his words and holding on to the meaning. "Tony," she breathed out eventually, her voice so quiet that he barely heard the word. "I'm--"
"No." He slammed the drawer shut, violently, and she flinched and swallowed the rest of the reassurance that was no more than a trained reflex. "No, you're not fine."
"DiNozzo." Gibbs's voice in his back, infuriatingly calm as always. "Give her some space."
And that, finally, was the moment something inside him snapped. He'd heard that kind of voice so often over the years: the tone that at the same time managed to convey that he should behave like a grownup, but also that he wasn't grown up enough to see the bigger picture here. And this, eventually, turned out to be the moment where he found himself unable to hand the reins to the older man. Tony had followed his lead faithfully for the past twelve years, and more often than not Gibbs's judgment had been right, but this time... this time he was painfully, devastatingly wrong.
"No," he pressed out. He didn't bother to hide his anger, and Ziva's eyes widened minutely because this was a word he hadn't said often to Gibbs. Funny how it mostly happened when she was involved. "No, because you know what? Every time I give her space, bad shit goes down, and I've had enough of that. She's not gonna sleep alone tonight."
The words fell from his lips heavily, dripping with putrid anger. Too much frustration, suppressed over the years and always, always swallowed down like rusty razorblades. The words poured out of him before he had a chance to censor them, and only when Gibbs raised his chin and narrowed his eyes did Tony realize what exactly he had just said.
For a heartbeat, he was tempted to do what was expected of him now: to apologize. To grovel, like he'd done for the better part of his time here. But something happened in the older man's face just then, and whatever it was, it showed Tony all too clearly that Gibbs expected this exact same thing from him now. He just waited for him to give in. And in the end, that expectation of inferiority was the very reason he squared his shoulders instead and turned his back on Gibbs.
"Come on," he growled, and she flinched. His fingertips touched the inside of her elbow, and it took an effort to not just grab her and drag her along. Ziva's eyes flicked up to meet his, and whatever she saw in his expression, it left her even more unsure and strangely pale. Her lips parted in the futile attempt of a reply. He had rarely seen her this confused.
Her gaze darted to Gibbs, and Tony assumed that it was his movement that stirred her into action, that familiar jerk of his chin that signaled reluctant approval. Tony saw it out of the corner of his eye, and yes, part of him wanted to get even angrier. But since she yielded to his touch now and let him steer her towards the elevator, he swallowed it down, like he always did.
*** *** ***
She didn't say a word the entire ride, and he couldn't figure out if she was tired, shocked, hurting, or simply remembering the last time they'd shared a ride. He was pretty sure, though, that it wasn't a good sign, and the temptation to reach out to her, to grab her bruised hand and squeeze it reassuringly, almost burned him up. Only now wasn't the right time for that, judging by the careful way she had her arms resting on her thighs, one hand cradling the other.
Yeah, clearly not the right time. As usual.
*** *** ***
By the time they reached his apartment, he had almost crumbled a couple of times under the stress of keeping it hidden just how much her battered condition really affected him. He'd never seen her so... docile. As if she had given up somewhere along the way.
"This is home?" was all she said when he parked the car at his place, her voice low and tired. He wasn't sure what to reply to that because there really had been no good reason to bring her here, so he just shrugged, and that was about it. And once more, her quiet acceptance got under his skin much deeper than any kicking and screaming would have. A Ziva who followed his orders like this, a broken Ziva... she scared the crap out of him. This was beyond mere exhaustion, this was a dive straight into trauma, and Tony wasn't sure how to handle this. The way he wanted to handle it wasn't appropriate. He wasn't entirely ready yet to try and just hold her, for comfort alone. Because she might have gone along with it tonight. And that would have been the part he wasn't ready for.
She eyed him sideways when he dropped her backpack and slipped out of his jacket. There was still that hint of numb confusion on her face, as if she had forgotten how to do these basic things, and that left him grinding his teeth again and wishing he'd been on time to drill his own fist through Bodnar's jaw.
He didn't bother asking her if she was hungry. He already knew the answer she'd give, so he decided to skip the formalities and order pizza while she cleaned up, in the hopes of getting her to eat a few bites later. He knew what she liked, after all. He could make that simple choice for her.
And that was roughly the point where his plans ended, with her on his couch, some food, and maybe some talk. Maybe even a bit of crying, so she could rest. He was pretty sure he could deal with that, just this once.
Tension crept into his shoulders and tightened his muscles while he watched her and waited for her to do something. Say something. Anything, really. But she didn't. She just stood there, in the middle of his living room, and stared blindly into the darkness of his bedroom. Her own plans had apparently ended hours ago.
"Come on," he said eventually, and she jumped when his hand touched her shoulder and nudged her into motion. "You'll take a shower, and then we'll sit down and I'll let you pick a movie to ignore until you're tired enough to crash."
She moved, yes -- slowly, stiffly, and it unnerved him to no end that she still didn't say a word. He would have given a lot to have her earlier fire back. She felt so much more alive whenever she held him at a distance.
*** *** ***
He maneuvered her into the bedroom carefully, and she flinched again when he flipped the light switch. Her muscles tensed under his palm, as if she were close to panicking all of a sudden, and he thought that there was a certain irony to the fact that his intentions had never been more pure than in this very moment.
"Hey." He ran his hand down her back slowly, and it was supposed to be a calming gesture, but the tremble in her muscles ended up unsettling him instead. Ziva blinked, and for a tiny moment she leaned back and into his touch. And that was when his hand developed a life of its own, moving slowly, surely, back up to her shoulder, repeating the motion. Firm strokes, up, down, meant to rub the distress out of her. Failing, of course, but trying hard nonetheless. "You need any help?"
Her eyelids fluttered, and she turned her head to the side, almost looking at him, but not quite. For a heartbeat he was sure she would lean into him now. Would curl up in his arms, maybe, and let him hold her up while she was busy breaking down. And his pulse hammered in his throat all of a sudden, because for that same fraction of a second he wasn't sure how he was supposed to react if she did that. Then her lips parted, and very quietly, almost casually, she shocked the fuck out of him when she whispered, "Yes."
He blinked and stared at her while his palm pressed into the small of her back and her trembles reverberated in his fingertips. "Shoulder?" he asked, and she closed her eyes and swallowed hard while she fought the things happening in her head.
"Everything," she finally admitted quietly, and that was when he realized that he'd never seen her this pale, even in the warm, artificial light of his bedroom. "I don't think I'm mobile enough to..."
The rest of her words drizzled away, and his jaw clenched harder with each of her shallow breaths, with each tremor in her abused body. He had to fight the absurd impulse to drag her to his chest and crush her in an embrace. It would only hurt her more, of course. But knowing that didn't lessen the urge at all, and so he focused on slow breaths and not screaming instead.
*** *** ***
Her shaking didn't stop once while he helped her shed her clothes. Jacket, shoes, pants went off smoothly with his help, even though she shuddered once when he reached her belt buckle. (Yeah, all right. That was a tad more intimate than they usually were around each other.) But she didn't object, and this wasn't about getting her naked for the sake of it, so he kept going and worked her pants down carefully until she could step out of them without moving too much.
Ghostly bruises spread across her hip and down the whole side of her right thigh, and for a second all he could do was stare at the damage. His hands clenched again in the futile desire to slam them into Bodnar's arrogant face. Then he saw the goose bumps that tightened her skin, and that spun his mind around on its axis and replaced his need for physical violence seamlessly with deep concern. Yeah, she'd had enough fighting for one day.
Her shirt presented the first real problem because now that the adrenalin had worn off, she had trouble raising her arms even to waist-level. After a couple of tries that left her wincing and holding her breath to mask the true extent of the pain, he gave up and went off in search of a pair of scissors.
She jumped when he made short work of the shirt and cut the front apart. For a second that stirred her, and her eyes lost the scary numbness of the past hour. He wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to beat his hands away though or if she was about to run off now and fall apart in a quiet corner. But the spark of life died down as fast as it shown up, and she turned her head to the side and went back to evading his gaze.
"I liked that shirt," she murmured, and then she closed her eyes again and waited until he was done. He tried to come up with a comforting response, but in the end he just pressed his lips together tightly. No, he really didn't like seeing her like that. Broken and empty didn't suit her.
His brows drew into a tight frown when he carefully peeled the shirt off her and his eyes could take in the full extent of the damage for the first time. He had expected the shoulder, of course, but not like this. There was fresh, nasty bruising underneath the one left by the car crash. The left side of her rib cage was a giant purple mass, and he was pretty sure that hadn't been just one blow.
She shuddered when he slipped the shirt down her arms carefully, and while he watched her skin tighten in the too cool air, he noticed more and more bruising, all over her body: dark indentations on her throat where Bodnar had choked her and on her forearms where she hard warded off his blows. Her whole hip, probably from slamming into something hard, repeatedly.
With each mark he discovered, his anger grew darker, but he couldn't let it show, of course. Couldn't grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Probably wouldn't have done much good anyway. Not now, while she was so close to shattering into a million pieces.
Harder, deeper trembles shook her when he moved behind her to unhook her bra, because from the looks of it she had no chance to manage that on her own. Goose bumps spread under his fingertips when he couldn't help an accidental touch, and he tried his best to ignore it and just keep going as if it hadn't happened. She was in no shape for him to notice.
Honestly, he had no idea how she'd even held herself on her feet until now.
"You should be in a hospital," he ground out through clenched teeth, and she blinked and turned her head to look at him, wordlessly. And those wide, pretty eyes in her battered face grabbed his heart once more and squeezed tight.
Tonight had been a close call, and for once she didn't even try to deny it.
He sighed eventually, and then he couldn't fight the urge any longer and touched her cheek tentatively. "Anything broken?"
She blinked slowly, and he could almost see how she went through some internal self-assessment at his question. It was weird to watch her face. She looked almost as if she hadn't spent a single thought on that possibility yet.
Eventually she shook her head, still quiet, still numb, and he sighed again because her trembling lips and shaking hands chipped away at his control at an alarmingly rapid pace. "Alright. We'll get you checked out tomorrow. Go, grab a shower. I'll order some food in the meantime."
She still didn't reply, just stared at him for another endless heartbeat. Then she turned and stalked towards the bathroom, her gait stiff, her movements slow and cautious, as if she expected to tread on glass.
He watched her retreat, and yeah, it shouldn't have surprised him, but with every step of hers he discovered more bruises on her. More damage that needed to heal.
*** *** ***
"Ziva?" His first knock on the bathroom door was tentative and sounded almost as reluctant as he felt. Because yeah, despite the fact that she had stood in her undies before him mere minutes ago, that was still his partner in there. His friend, and the woman he--
He cleared his throat, not sure how she would react if he just waltzed in on her while she was still in the shower. On normal days, yes, of course, she'd rip his arm off and beat him to death with it. But tonight was as far from normal as it could get.
He sighed, raised his hand again and rapped his knuckles sharply against the door. "Ziva, look, I've got a bunch of towels for you, I'm just gonna drop them off, okay? I swear I'm not gonna peek."
There was no answer, and for a second he stood in front of the bathroom door, head lowered, listening. His left hand twitched nervously, fingers curling and uncurling while he waited for some sort of reaction. And then, while he called her name a third time, he realized that the sound of running water didn't really sound like the shower.
She stood at the sink when he opened the door, back turned towards him, her hands gripping the edge of the sink in a way that looked painful. The faucet spewed gusts of water -- hot, from the way the mirror had fogged -- but Ziva didn't pay attention to that. Her eyes were fixed on the back of her hands, the almost-black knuckles, the broken skin on them that spoke so loudly of her physical exertion. Once more he said her name, and he had to fight the stupid impulse to ask her if she was okay. She obviously wasn't.
She blinked when she heard him, head bowed, and it shocked him when he saw steady tears fall into the sink and onto the back of her hands.
"It won't stop bleeding," she stated flatly, and he breathed out and stared at her naked back for a heartbeat. Then he dropped the towels to grab his robe from a hook on the wall.
She flinched when he put the robe around her shoulders to cover her, and for a heartbeat he felt the old tension in her, as if she braced herself to fight him off. But his hands stayed on her shoulders despite that, and his chest was heavy against her back, and that steadiness seemed to do the trick because suddenly all the fight bled out of her. And so, just this once, she stopped struggling on her own and accepted the comfort he offered. His arm tightened around her shoulders when she turned, partly to hold up the robe around her, but mostly because he suddenly had to keep Ziva from falling apart. She let go of the sink, and he caught her when her knees gave; her hands came up to his chest, shaking, fingers grasping air uselessly, and he held her tight while she gasped and more tears came.
"Okay," he said. "Shhh." He turned off the water while he held her to his chest and desperately tried to ignore the way she turned limp in his arms. Weak. God, he almost wanted the tremors back now.
She didn't make a sound when he picked her up and carried her out of the bathroom, and in the end that was the thing that shocked him about all of this: that Ziva the strong, Ziva the unbreakable, suddenly curled up in his arms like a child, stuck in being helpless and hurt. Mourning. Not just for her father this time.
*** *** ***
He pulled the sheets back and put her into his bed, and she still didn't protest, just stared at him with these wide, scared eyes while he tried to cover her up with his robe and his sheets and... ah, damn, he should have changed them.
No, that didn't really matter right now. Ziva mattered, and Ziva had been right, her knuckles were bleeding again. He went back to the bathroom to get his first aid kit, but then he glanced at her over his shoulder, and after a second's hesitation he took a washcloth, too, and wet it with warm water.
She'd turned her face into his pillow by the time he came back and sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. For a few moments he just stared at her and watched her breathe in his secondhand scent from the pillow. She looked so far gone right then that he wasn't sure he could bring her back.
"Give me your hand."
She obeyed again, quietly, her eyes wide, and god help him, he really couldn't deal with seeing her cry like that -- no sobbing, no sniffling, just tear after tear rolling down her face in an endless, silent stream.
Carefully he concentrated on the job at hand -- cleaning the cracked skin of her knuckles and dabbing away the blood before he put antibiotic cream on it. Then he checked her other hand, and she watched him while he tended to the less damaged one as well. It took a while until he was satisfied with the result and let go of her hand to grab the washcloth instead. She blinked slowly and stared at him while he carefully wiped the traces of that long, painful night off her face. He spent some extra care on her tear-stained cheeks, and that turned into something so unexpectedly intimate that it almost ended with her crying again. Almost, because slowly, slowly she seemed to find her way back into her skin and into her mind.
When he was finally done and put the cloth away, there was nothing left to concentrate on except her, and so he reached out and touched her cheek. And when she didn't flinch, he smiled at her and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture that was supposed to be reassuring. "There. All better."
She held his gaze for a few endless seconds. Then she breathed out slowly and her eyes flicked to the side, avoiding his in a weirdly timid way. "How can you still look at me like that?"
He laughed then, and the sound turned into something treacherous. He wasn't sure if she could hear the raw emotion behind it, too, but to him it was there, loud and clear, because he had finally reached the point where he couldn't hide it any longer. And the rough, unsure sound underneath the throaty chuckle mirrored the pain in her voice perfectly.
"You make it sound like I have a choice."
For a second, she pressed her lips together tightly, and it looked like she might start crying all over again. But then he reached out to brush her hair out of her face, and for some weird reason, she closed her eyes and let him do it. And that was it.
*** *** ***
She did fall asleep eventually, in his bed, without the aid of a movie. It didn't even take that long.
He thought about leaving her side for a heartbeat, but then the concept seemed so odd that he shook his head. He'd promised that she wouldn't sleep alone, after all.
The chair in one corner of the bedroom wasn't comfortable enough for him to close his own eyes and catch some sleep as well, but that didn't really matter. Keeping watch over her had also never been a choice.
notes & warnings: The happenings right after 10x22 "Revenge", meaning: spoilers for this episode. Ziva, being all weak. Tony, being all strong.
Shout-out to Steve and Mary-Kate, for being my willing test subjects.
word count: 4,000
comments & feedback: Very much appreciated.
The Uneasy Tremors of a Fractured Heart
He was well aware he was stalling. The mundane tasks of jotting down some notes for tomorrow's report and zipping up his backpack, they never took him this long. But now, now that he had taken care of her backpack as well and set it down beside his own like some sort of statement, and that meant he was all out of ways to postpone leaving. All he could do now was lean back against his desk and watch the stairs that led up to Vance's office. Wait for her to show up again. Wait for her to look at him and maybe be broken enough to let him take care of her tonight.
When she finally did show, he froze, and his mind got caught somewhere between her tired feet dragging down the stairs and the urge to wake up, right now, and shake the remnants of this nightmare with a scream. Except that it wasn't his nightmare, and she had to be the one to scream.
She moved slowly, stiffly, and that confirmed a decision he hadn't even made consciously. He picked up both their backpacks while she made her way down the stairs, and the movement caught her attention. Her eyes flicked to his face, then to his shoulder. Her face was oddly blank, but he still saw the confusion build while she tried to put the clues together and couldn't come up with a clear answer.
"What...?" she said eventually, but she lost the question halfway through, and for a heartbeat Tony wasn't sure if her bloody mouth or the tired, defeated tone shocked him more. He'd never seen her quite like this. Not even three years ago, at the end of a particularly hot summer, when he--
He took a deep breath, then moved around her desk to retrieve the sling she had discarded a few days ago. "Let's get you home," he replied. Funny how his jaw hurt just from the control it took to answer without yelling at her.
She blinked again, as if she had trouble grasping his words and holding on to the meaning. "Tony," she breathed out eventually, her voice so quiet that he barely heard the word. "I'm--"
"No." He slammed the drawer shut, violently, and she flinched and swallowed the rest of the reassurance that was no more than a trained reflex. "No, you're not fine."
"DiNozzo." Gibbs's voice in his back, infuriatingly calm as always. "Give her some space."
And that, finally, was the moment something inside him snapped. He'd heard that kind of voice so often over the years: the tone that at the same time managed to convey that he should behave like a grownup, but also that he wasn't grown up enough to see the bigger picture here. And this, eventually, turned out to be the moment where he found himself unable to hand the reins to the older man. Tony had followed his lead faithfully for the past twelve years, and more often than not Gibbs's judgment had been right, but this time... this time he was painfully, devastatingly wrong.
"No," he pressed out. He didn't bother to hide his anger, and Ziva's eyes widened minutely because this was a word he hadn't said often to Gibbs. Funny how it mostly happened when she was involved. "No, because you know what? Every time I give her space, bad shit goes down, and I've had enough of that. She's not gonna sleep alone tonight."
The words fell from his lips heavily, dripping with putrid anger. Too much frustration, suppressed over the years and always, always swallowed down like rusty razorblades. The words poured out of him before he had a chance to censor them, and only when Gibbs raised his chin and narrowed his eyes did Tony realize what exactly he had just said.
For a heartbeat, he was tempted to do what was expected of him now: to apologize. To grovel, like he'd done for the better part of his time here. But something happened in the older man's face just then, and whatever it was, it showed Tony all too clearly that Gibbs expected this exact same thing from him now. He just waited for him to give in. And in the end, that expectation of inferiority was the very reason he squared his shoulders instead and turned his back on Gibbs.
"Come on," he growled, and she flinched. His fingertips touched the inside of her elbow, and it took an effort to not just grab her and drag her along. Ziva's eyes flicked up to meet his, and whatever she saw in his expression, it left her even more unsure and strangely pale. Her lips parted in the futile attempt of a reply. He had rarely seen her this confused.
Her gaze darted to Gibbs, and Tony assumed that it was his movement that stirred her into action, that familiar jerk of his chin that signaled reluctant approval. Tony saw it out of the corner of his eye, and yes, part of him wanted to get even angrier. But since she yielded to his touch now and let him steer her towards the elevator, he swallowed it down, like he always did.
*** *** ***
She didn't say a word the entire ride, and he couldn't figure out if she was tired, shocked, hurting, or simply remembering the last time they'd shared a ride. He was pretty sure, though, that it wasn't a good sign, and the temptation to reach out to her, to grab her bruised hand and squeeze it reassuringly, almost burned him up. Only now wasn't the right time for that, judging by the careful way she had her arms resting on her thighs, one hand cradling the other.
Yeah, clearly not the right time. As usual.
*** *** ***
By the time they reached his apartment, he had almost crumbled a couple of times under the stress of keeping it hidden just how much her battered condition really affected him. He'd never seen her so... docile. As if she had given up somewhere along the way.
"This is home?" was all she said when he parked the car at his place, her voice low and tired. He wasn't sure what to reply to that because there really had been no good reason to bring her here, so he just shrugged, and that was about it. And once more, her quiet acceptance got under his skin much deeper than any kicking and screaming would have. A Ziva who followed his orders like this, a broken Ziva... she scared the crap out of him. This was beyond mere exhaustion, this was a dive straight into trauma, and Tony wasn't sure how to handle this. The way he wanted to handle it wasn't appropriate. He wasn't entirely ready yet to try and just hold her, for comfort alone. Because she might have gone along with it tonight. And that would have been the part he wasn't ready for.
She eyed him sideways when he dropped her backpack and slipped out of his jacket. There was still that hint of numb confusion on her face, as if she had forgotten how to do these basic things, and that left him grinding his teeth again and wishing he'd been on time to drill his own fist through Bodnar's jaw.
He didn't bother asking her if she was hungry. He already knew the answer she'd give, so he decided to skip the formalities and order pizza while she cleaned up, in the hopes of getting her to eat a few bites later. He knew what she liked, after all. He could make that simple choice for her.
And that was roughly the point where his plans ended, with her on his couch, some food, and maybe some talk. Maybe even a bit of crying, so she could rest. He was pretty sure he could deal with that, just this once.
Tension crept into his shoulders and tightened his muscles while he watched her and waited for her to do something. Say something. Anything, really. But she didn't. She just stood there, in the middle of his living room, and stared blindly into the darkness of his bedroom. Her own plans had apparently ended hours ago.
"Come on," he said eventually, and she jumped when his hand touched her shoulder and nudged her into motion. "You'll take a shower, and then we'll sit down and I'll let you pick a movie to ignore until you're tired enough to crash."
She moved, yes -- slowly, stiffly, and it unnerved him to no end that she still didn't say a word. He would have given a lot to have her earlier fire back. She felt so much more alive whenever she held him at a distance.
*** *** ***
He maneuvered her into the bedroom carefully, and she flinched again when he flipped the light switch. Her muscles tensed under his palm, as if she were close to panicking all of a sudden, and he thought that there was a certain irony to the fact that his intentions had never been more pure than in this very moment.
"Hey." He ran his hand down her back slowly, and it was supposed to be a calming gesture, but the tremble in her muscles ended up unsettling him instead. Ziva blinked, and for a tiny moment she leaned back and into his touch. And that was when his hand developed a life of its own, moving slowly, surely, back up to her shoulder, repeating the motion. Firm strokes, up, down, meant to rub the distress out of her. Failing, of course, but trying hard nonetheless. "You need any help?"
Her eyelids fluttered, and she turned her head to the side, almost looking at him, but not quite. For a heartbeat he was sure she would lean into him now. Would curl up in his arms, maybe, and let him hold her up while she was busy breaking down. And his pulse hammered in his throat all of a sudden, because for that same fraction of a second he wasn't sure how he was supposed to react if she did that. Then her lips parted, and very quietly, almost casually, she shocked the fuck out of him when she whispered, "Yes."
He blinked and stared at her while his palm pressed into the small of her back and her trembles reverberated in his fingertips. "Shoulder?" he asked, and she closed her eyes and swallowed hard while she fought the things happening in her head.
"Everything," she finally admitted quietly, and that was when he realized that he'd never seen her this pale, even in the warm, artificial light of his bedroom. "I don't think I'm mobile enough to..."
The rest of her words drizzled away, and his jaw clenched harder with each of her shallow breaths, with each tremor in her abused body. He had to fight the absurd impulse to drag her to his chest and crush her in an embrace. It would only hurt her more, of course. But knowing that didn't lessen the urge at all, and so he focused on slow breaths and not screaming instead.
*** *** ***
Her shaking didn't stop once while he helped her shed her clothes. Jacket, shoes, pants went off smoothly with his help, even though she shuddered once when he reached her belt buckle. (Yeah, all right. That was a tad more intimate than they usually were around each other.) But she didn't object, and this wasn't about getting her naked for the sake of it, so he kept going and worked her pants down carefully until she could step out of them without moving too much.
Ghostly bruises spread across her hip and down the whole side of her right thigh, and for a second all he could do was stare at the damage. His hands clenched again in the futile desire to slam them into Bodnar's arrogant face. Then he saw the goose bumps that tightened her skin, and that spun his mind around on its axis and replaced his need for physical violence seamlessly with deep concern. Yeah, she'd had enough fighting for one day.
Her shirt presented the first real problem because now that the adrenalin had worn off, she had trouble raising her arms even to waist-level. After a couple of tries that left her wincing and holding her breath to mask the true extent of the pain, he gave up and went off in search of a pair of scissors.
She jumped when he made short work of the shirt and cut the front apart. For a second that stirred her, and her eyes lost the scary numbness of the past hour. He wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to beat his hands away though or if she was about to run off now and fall apart in a quiet corner. But the spark of life died down as fast as it shown up, and she turned her head to the side and went back to evading his gaze.
"I liked that shirt," she murmured, and then she closed her eyes again and waited until he was done. He tried to come up with a comforting response, but in the end he just pressed his lips together tightly. No, he really didn't like seeing her like that. Broken and empty didn't suit her.
His brows drew into a tight frown when he carefully peeled the shirt off her and his eyes could take in the full extent of the damage for the first time. He had expected the shoulder, of course, but not like this. There was fresh, nasty bruising underneath the one left by the car crash. The left side of her rib cage was a giant purple mass, and he was pretty sure that hadn't been just one blow.
She shuddered when he slipped the shirt down her arms carefully, and while he watched her skin tighten in the too cool air, he noticed more and more bruising, all over her body: dark indentations on her throat where Bodnar had choked her and on her forearms where she hard warded off his blows. Her whole hip, probably from slamming into something hard, repeatedly.
With each mark he discovered, his anger grew darker, but he couldn't let it show, of course. Couldn't grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Probably wouldn't have done much good anyway. Not now, while she was so close to shattering into a million pieces.
Harder, deeper trembles shook her when he moved behind her to unhook her bra, because from the looks of it she had no chance to manage that on her own. Goose bumps spread under his fingertips when he couldn't help an accidental touch, and he tried his best to ignore it and just keep going as if it hadn't happened. She was in no shape for him to notice.
Honestly, he had no idea how she'd even held herself on her feet until now.
"You should be in a hospital," he ground out through clenched teeth, and she blinked and turned her head to look at him, wordlessly. And those wide, pretty eyes in her battered face grabbed his heart once more and squeezed tight.
Tonight had been a close call, and for once she didn't even try to deny it.
He sighed eventually, and then he couldn't fight the urge any longer and touched her cheek tentatively. "Anything broken?"
She blinked slowly, and he could almost see how she went through some internal self-assessment at his question. It was weird to watch her face. She looked almost as if she hadn't spent a single thought on that possibility yet.
Eventually she shook her head, still quiet, still numb, and he sighed again because her trembling lips and shaking hands chipped away at his control at an alarmingly rapid pace. "Alright. We'll get you checked out tomorrow. Go, grab a shower. I'll order some food in the meantime."
She still didn't reply, just stared at him for another endless heartbeat. Then she turned and stalked towards the bathroom, her gait stiff, her movements slow and cautious, as if she expected to tread on glass.
He watched her retreat, and yeah, it shouldn't have surprised him, but with every step of hers he discovered more bruises on her. More damage that needed to heal.
*** *** ***
"Ziva?" His first knock on the bathroom door was tentative and sounded almost as reluctant as he felt. Because yeah, despite the fact that she had stood in her undies before him mere minutes ago, that was still his partner in there. His friend, and the woman he--
He cleared his throat, not sure how she would react if he just waltzed in on her while she was still in the shower. On normal days, yes, of course, she'd rip his arm off and beat him to death with it. But tonight was as far from normal as it could get.
He sighed, raised his hand again and rapped his knuckles sharply against the door. "Ziva, look, I've got a bunch of towels for you, I'm just gonna drop them off, okay? I swear I'm not gonna peek."
There was no answer, and for a second he stood in front of the bathroom door, head lowered, listening. His left hand twitched nervously, fingers curling and uncurling while he waited for some sort of reaction. And then, while he called her name a third time, he realized that the sound of running water didn't really sound like the shower.
She stood at the sink when he opened the door, back turned towards him, her hands gripping the edge of the sink in a way that looked painful. The faucet spewed gusts of water -- hot, from the way the mirror had fogged -- but Ziva didn't pay attention to that. Her eyes were fixed on the back of her hands, the almost-black knuckles, the broken skin on them that spoke so loudly of her physical exertion. Once more he said her name, and he had to fight the stupid impulse to ask her if she was okay. She obviously wasn't.
She blinked when she heard him, head bowed, and it shocked him when he saw steady tears fall into the sink and onto the back of her hands.
"It won't stop bleeding," she stated flatly, and he breathed out and stared at her naked back for a heartbeat. Then he dropped the towels to grab his robe from a hook on the wall.
She flinched when he put the robe around her shoulders to cover her, and for a heartbeat he felt the old tension in her, as if she braced herself to fight him off. But his hands stayed on her shoulders despite that, and his chest was heavy against her back, and that steadiness seemed to do the trick because suddenly all the fight bled out of her. And so, just this once, she stopped struggling on her own and accepted the comfort he offered. His arm tightened around her shoulders when she turned, partly to hold up the robe around her, but mostly because he suddenly had to keep Ziva from falling apart. She let go of the sink, and he caught her when her knees gave; her hands came up to his chest, shaking, fingers grasping air uselessly, and he held her tight while she gasped and more tears came.
"Okay," he said. "Shhh." He turned off the water while he held her to his chest and desperately tried to ignore the way she turned limp in his arms. Weak. God, he almost wanted the tremors back now.
She didn't make a sound when he picked her up and carried her out of the bathroom, and in the end that was the thing that shocked him about all of this: that Ziva the strong, Ziva the unbreakable, suddenly curled up in his arms like a child, stuck in being helpless and hurt. Mourning. Not just for her father this time.
*** *** ***
He pulled the sheets back and put her into his bed, and she still didn't protest, just stared at him with these wide, scared eyes while he tried to cover her up with his robe and his sheets and... ah, damn, he should have changed them.
No, that didn't really matter right now. Ziva mattered, and Ziva had been right, her knuckles were bleeding again. He went back to the bathroom to get his first aid kit, but then he glanced at her over his shoulder, and after a second's hesitation he took a washcloth, too, and wet it with warm water.
She'd turned her face into his pillow by the time he came back and sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. For a few moments he just stared at her and watched her breathe in his secondhand scent from the pillow. She looked so far gone right then that he wasn't sure he could bring her back.
"Give me your hand."
She obeyed again, quietly, her eyes wide, and god help him, he really couldn't deal with seeing her cry like that -- no sobbing, no sniffling, just tear after tear rolling down her face in an endless, silent stream.
Carefully he concentrated on the job at hand -- cleaning the cracked skin of her knuckles and dabbing away the blood before he put antibiotic cream on it. Then he checked her other hand, and she watched him while he tended to the less damaged one as well. It took a while until he was satisfied with the result and let go of her hand to grab the washcloth instead. She blinked slowly and stared at him while he carefully wiped the traces of that long, painful night off her face. He spent some extra care on her tear-stained cheeks, and that turned into something so unexpectedly intimate that it almost ended with her crying again. Almost, because slowly, slowly she seemed to find her way back into her skin and into her mind.
When he was finally done and put the cloth away, there was nothing left to concentrate on except her, and so he reached out and touched her cheek. And when she didn't flinch, he smiled at her and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture that was supposed to be reassuring. "There. All better."
She held his gaze for a few endless seconds. Then she breathed out slowly and her eyes flicked to the side, avoiding his in a weirdly timid way. "How can you still look at me like that?"
He laughed then, and the sound turned into something treacherous. He wasn't sure if she could hear the raw emotion behind it, too, but to him it was there, loud and clear, because he had finally reached the point where he couldn't hide it any longer. And the rough, unsure sound underneath the throaty chuckle mirrored the pain in her voice perfectly.
"You make it sound like I have a choice."
For a second, she pressed her lips together tightly, and it looked like she might start crying all over again. But then he reached out to brush her hair out of her face, and for some weird reason, she closed her eyes and let him do it. And that was it.
*** *** ***
She did fall asleep eventually, in his bed, without the aid of a movie. It didn't even take that long.
He thought about leaving her side for a heartbeat, but then the concept seemed so odd that he shook his head. He'd promised that she wouldn't sleep alone, after all.
The chair in one corner of the bedroom wasn't comfortable enough for him to close his own eyes and catch some sleep as well, but that didn't really matter. Keeping watch over her had also never been a choice.