A/N: This has been in my head for a long time, thanks to Kim (violashipwrecked on Tumblr). Now, I'm very nervous about it – it's very long and a little crazy – but I'm posting it anyway, so I beg you to please be kind in your critiques. This is kind of experimental, and hate mail always breaks my heart.

Basically, I rewrote seasons 3 through 10 of NCIS the way I might have done it if I were on the writing staff. (That's why it's so long. Ten years of Tiva is no small feat, y'all.) For the most part, I stuck to the main storylines, and a bit of the dialogue is the same as the show, but there are important tweaks, and they should be easy to see. For the stuff I left the same, I am banking on the show's context to fill in the blanks.

Disclaimer: Of course, as you know, I own nothing you recognize from NCIS – but I also do not own the Ed Sheeran song I quoted, nor do I own the Tom Waits song later quoted. I own basically nothing you see here, sadly.

Again – remain kind and open-minded as you proceed. And if you can, enjoy. I promise I gave you a happy ending.

with all the love i can muster
By: Zayz

Give me love like never before
'Cause lately I've been craving more
And it's been a while but I still feel the same
Maybe I should let you go

You know I'll fight my corner
And that tonight I'll call you
After my blood is drowning in alcohol
No, I just want to hold you

Give a little time to me or burn this out
We'll play hide and seek to turn this around
All I want is the taste that your lips allow
My, my, my, my, oh give me love
My, my, my, my, oh give me love
My, my, my, my, oh give me love
My, my, my, my, give me love

- Ed Sheeran, "Give Me Love"

She is supposed to be no one. She is a girl in a purple bandana, who waltzes into his life with an admittedly seductive smirk, and a request for Agent Gibbs. She is supposed to get what she needs, leave, and stay gone, because goodness knows they have enough to deal with right now.

But she doesn't. She is Ari Haswari's control officer, and she is convinced of his innocence, and there is a serious agent beneath the flirty first impression. Clearly, she is a woman full of surprises.

She surprises him again, that long, rainy night when he thinks he's so clever, tailing her against her knowledge. She pierces his charade outside the hotel door, and shares a slice of pizza and the story about her sister. From what he learns about her later – the Great Wall of Mossad Agent Ziva that she has built around her heart, with armed sentries posted every few feet to keep out intruders – he realizes in hindsight that she, too, expected to leave and stay gone. That story was meant for someone she would never see again. She wouldn't have told him if she had known.

Or maybe she would have. Maybe from the moment they had their first extraordinary conversation about phone sex, she knew there was something in him that made her relax the guards and let him in.

He isn't sure about that. But he is sure that she isn't no one, and she is definitely here to stay.

It's only a couple of months after her unorthodox induction to their team that Tony is told to go undercover with Ziva. And, frankly, he isn't ready yet. He doesn't trust this strange little cannonball so freshly shot from Mossad; he is still bitter about the frame-up that sent him to prison, still vulnerable about his missing partner.

Kate would have been a riot with this assignment. Kate would have whined and groaned and complained about it – she would have begged not to go with Tony – she would have worn a jumpsuit, if necessary, to keep Tony from ogling her – she would definitely not have shared the bed or pretended to have sex with him.

But they would have gotten the job done, and done well. They would have been in sync with each other's tells, and they would have laughed about it later. God, he still misses Kate so much – like he's missing something seemingly non-essential, but definitely essential, from his very self.

Like his toes. Yes, Kate is like his toes – small and tucked up inside his socks most days, things he takes for granted, until they are gone and he is left disoriented, off-balance.

Instead of predictable, prudish Kate, though, Tony has wild, unpredictable Ziva. Ziva, who kisses like a whirlwind, who kicks up his mischievous side, who rolls around the bed with him as though they've been together as long as he was with Kate. Ziva, who gets the job done, just like Kate would have.

He makes the innuendos, and he laughs and smirks like she expects him to – but they don't really have sex that time and he is glad. She is fun, and definitely sexy, but there are rules about this – and anyway, it's still too soon.

That night, when the mission is over and they are both back in the office, Tony stays late to finish up the report. Ziva says she'll be right back – and surprises him by returning with a cheese pizza from down the street, just as he is finishing up the report.

He leaves her part of the report on her desk, and the two of them walk out together, chewing a slice of pizza each, Tony holding the box in preparation for another slice.

It's raining slightly, and both their cars are parked outside in the open air. So they linger by the door, eating the pizza and watching the rain – kind of like their first night at the hotel, when they were strangers. Now, they are partners, and they have already shared a bed. Funny, how things happen that way – how life just moves on, never stopping for anyone. It hasn't even been six months since Kate died.

He doesn't realize he said that aloud until Ziva's expression softens, and she says, "You miss her, don't you." She says it like the statement it is; there is no question that he misses her.

He nods slowly, ears reddening. "Yeah. I do."

She doesn't say anything. Instead, she reaches into the box in his hands, and when she takes out the second-to-last slice of pizza, the fingers on her free hand brush lightly against his wrist. She stares at him for only a fraction of a second – but he gets a sudden rush of empathy from her, like she understands. Like there are untold tragedies, unnamed ghosts, suddenly floating in the air between them.

Already, they are familiar with each other's loss. She came into his life right as he lost someone important to him. He learned about her sister in their first real conversation. Who knows who else she has lost, or he? These are stories to come with time.

He finishes up the pizza and throws out the box. The rain helpfully lets up a little. The two of them walk to their cars, and his comes first. She lingers around his car, and he lingers with her, wondering what she wants. She catches his gaze, and he is slightly mesmerized by her eyes – dark and rich and probing. Like she is x-raying not his bones but his soul. Yet – and maybe it's a trick of light or tiredness at this late hour – stars seem to dance mischievously in her eyes, as she beholds him.

His hand is on his door, but he doesn't go in. She comes a little closer. And then she throws him off completely by leaning in and kissing him – lightly, but fearlessly. Her tongue slips between his lips and takes a quick swipe at the roof of his mouth, pulling him in even closer.

She kisses him, but he doesn't stop her.

And when she breaks it, and grins at him like they are naughty schoolchildren, his jaw is slack, and words fail him.

Fortunately, words do not fail her. "I wanted to get it out of the way," she explains in response to his implicit question, casual as anything, though her eyes still glitter playfully. "I could see that you wanted it."

He opens and closes his mouth once, like a baffled goldfish, before he manages a response. "How presumptuous you are, Ms. David."

She merely shrugs. "Well, either way, now you know."

He takes the bait. "Know what?"

She grins even wider. "How it feels to do that without an excuse."

He closes his mouth and just stares at her, a doe in headlights. The rain starts up again, pouring down on his head, but he doesn't seem to notice. She looks up, surveying the rain, not seeming bothered by what she's done or said, or the fact that the rain is going to wreak havoc on her hair. She smirks at him, rivulets of water pouring down the hills and valleys of her face, and proceeds to walk in the opposite direction from which they came.

Evidently, she only came this way in order to be with him.

They dance around her kiss in the parking lot the next few days – never mentioning it, but never quite forgetting it either, when they catch each other's eye. She doesn't seem embarrassed at all; no, she winks at him, and flirts outrageously with him, unperturbed that the office might perhaps burst into flame some day, with the way she looks at him.

He, for his part, is embarrassed, and a little bit nervous. He can banter with the best of them – he throws her flirtation right back at her, as he is supposed to – but he knows Gibbs, and he knows this team better than she does, and he understands that there are just some things they are not supposed to do. Acting this way with a coworker is one of them. Gibbs would never forgive him; Tony shudders at the thought.

So, even though he is endlessly astonished and amused by Ziva David, Tony's guard stays up and she takes his lead. They circle around one another in the office, slightly electrified whenever they interact. As though everything each of them does turns the other one on a little.

She is exotic in her foreignness; he is exotic in his frank, earnest American-ness. She teases him mostly because he isn't quite as slick as he thinks he is. He thinks she can't tell, when the faint blush comes to his ears or his cheek, when his smile goes from goofy to shy, when he looks at her like a lovable, rambunctious dog that may bite. But she sees it, all of his tells, and she finds them charming. Like he is the puppy that can't clean up after himself, and leaves traces of his mood and his behavior all over the house.

She knows there are rules, and she knows that kissing him, or flirting with him, isn't the best idea. She is guarded; she doesn't like people in her business. But there is something about Tony DiNozzo. She thinks he's funny, and refreshing, and much less insufferable when he isn't trying quite so hard.

And, inevitably, this is just what she does. All her life, she has been a woman playing a man's game. Sex is the goal for the man, always, so she has her fun, and she gives him what he wants – and then she lets the awkwardness from the situation diffuse subsequent kinks in their relationship. Once the sex is demystified, they can work together again, and he will never want to come any closer. There will be nothing else that he wants from her.

This is the game she expected from someone like Tony, someone who likes to ogle at her legs and her ass and her breasts when he thinks she isn't looking. Now she knows that for all his bravado, that isn't his thing. But she still thinks it's a good time, playing the game with him anyway. See how much she can embarrass him by hinting towards what she already knows he wants. See how red his cheeks can go, when he finds his limits and refuses to cross them.

But then there is that summer that Gibbs scares them to death with his coma and then leaves, and Tony is in charge, and everything is different.

Tony tries not to let on, but of course Ziva knows that he is devastated. She, too, is devastated. The center of their universe, the infallible, omnipresent Gibbs, haunts their halls no more. And Tony, who is ready but also not ready, has to take his place.

He does the best he can. But most of the time, he's strained, and frustrated, and angry. He has had to take on too much too fast, and he's often short with Ziva and McGee, because he is the one they have to report to, ask questions to. He's the one who needs to always have an answer. And while Ziva and McGee get to stay friends, Tony has to be their leader. There is little space for his own grief, or professional indecision. And he can do this, Ziva knows – he wasn't senior field agent for nothing – but he doesn't seem to know it.

So after one particularly bad night, when Tony yells himself hoarse at McGee over a lead that went cold, Ziva quietly whisks him away to her place, and fixes him a drink. And, because there is no one else to talk to, no one else to vent to, he releases a torrent of his thoughts upon her through the night. And she listens, because he needs her to.

That becomes their thing, that summer. The intimacy comes hard and fast and desperate – she is all he has. She knows how he is with loss. And he knows that she deals with her own. And she listens in a way that makes him feel understood, not like McGee, who is very sweet and well-intentioned, but not good with other people's tragedies. The recently vacated center of their universe has left a large void, and he clings to her now, for the way she helps him skirt around the edges of it, holding his hand and calming his raging tempests.

This is the first inkling he has, that she means something to him. That he can tell her things, and she will listen, and he will not be so alone. And this is the first time she really understands the softness, the goodness, in him that she has had glimpses of in the last year. This is when she understands how he is so much more than he seems – and how she likes his private self so much more than the clown that he is when he knows people are watching.

That summer, he is the one who chooses a TV for her and installs it, and buys the inaugural DVDs – a handful of his favorite Bond movies. That summer, they drink wine together, two or three times a week, and just talk about everything. Or, rather, he talks about everything. She chimes in sometimes, when it gets quiet and he is raw and worn out, but for the most part, it's him doing the talking.

That surprises him, but not her. It takes far more than a team leader's hiatus for her to share the things that mean the most to her. But sometimes, she makes the effort, and those moments always feel so gratifying, so hard earned. It gives him something to hold on to, to work for. Going to her apartment at night after work, slowly learning the things that make her tick, is the thing that keeps him together.

In the office, of course, he is Agent DiNozzo and she is Agent David and they never reference the time they spend alone together – but after hours, he is Tony, and she is Ziva, and the universe shrinks down to just the two of them, as they sit on her couch and talk about everything.

On the hottest day in August, after a week-long heat wave that nearly melts his bones, Tony goes with Ziva to her apartment directly after work. They have just finished a difficult case, and he hasn't slept much, and he is exhausted, and he needs her. So she lets him in, and they flop down on the couch with take-out on the table between them.

She unearths a bottle of champagne, and so of course, they drink too much, the sweat running down their pink faces. Even with her air conditioning, it's hot in her apartment. He slips out of his jacket and unbuttons his shirt – but she disappears into her room to change into sweats hiked up to her knees, and a tank top that sticks to her with sweat. Her calves are a beautiful golden-brown in the dim light – and somehow he is sure that she is well aware of this.

A thin sheen of sweat gleams on her skin – and on his too. His face is a ruddy, unsophisticated pink; wisps of her hair fly out from her ponytail, sticking to her forehead and the back of her neck. She comes to sit beside him, and the two of them face each other, drunk and sticky and intrigued. She has never been so casual, so…not put together, in front of him.

Like the first time, she is the one who initiates the kiss, and he is the one who lets her do it. She straddles his hips and grinds up against him, her hands anchored in his hair. And he lets himself melt from the heat of the air and the heat of her body – lets her give him sloppy, open-mouthed kisses, where their tongues collide and her lips smash against his teeth and they are both wild with lust. Her hands start edging for his shirt, which she untucks and slips beneath, her fingernails digging into the breadth of his back.

And it is wrong, so very wrong – Gibbs would not approve – but the thing is, Gibbs isn't here. The rules are different because Gibbs isn't here. So when Ziva gets to her feet, and pulls him by his tie towards her bedroom, Tony doesn't refuse. He's too tired, too intoxicated, to refuse even if he wanted to.

It's nice, letting someone else take the lead for once. So he gives in, and she gobbles him up, just because he's there. Their kisses are hot and wretched and fierce and hungry – like salt water, filling each other up only to make them ever more hollow.

They wake up the next morning at dawn, simultaneously. He opens his eyes and turns his head and finds that she is staring right at him, something like blind panic in her eyes. She turns away, presumably to hide the sudden, vulnerable burst of emotion, but it's too late, he already saw it – and she hates herself for that.

They dress and leave her apartment without speaking, hungover in every sense of the word. He has his own car, thank goodness, and stops at home for a quick shower and change of clothes, and shows up late to the office. McGee complains, and Ziva doesn't say a word. She is subdued all morning, tough like overcooked steak, too difficult to approach.

They crossed a line. The rules may be different now with Gibbs gone, but it still feels as though they have done unspeakable wrong. The intimacy that lingers into the next day, and everyday after, shocks and scares them both. They went farther than they intended. They have been laid bare – physically, emotionally – and they aren't sure what to do now.

Sex was supposed to be easy for Ziva. She has slept with informants plenty of times to get what she needs without batting an eyelid, and she has slept with her partners at Mossad, too, just because the nights are lonely and cold and being so close to one another, even if just for a couple of hours, meant that they trusted her, and would remain focused on the mission instead of her ass.

Sex was a business transaction, a means to an end. And somehow, it doesn't feel quite that neat and simple this time.

It takes her a couple of days to work it out, but she decides that it's different because of Tony. Tony, who brags about all the dates he gets, but doesn't have nearly as much sex as he lets on. Tony, who is actually quite guarded, yet lets her in, not only because he trusts her but because he actually likes her.

Tony, who is their team leader, who may just ruin everything.

That's why she doesn't tell him, when she is framed for murder and she is desperately trying to figure out what to do.

She can't tell him. Instead of diverting his attention from her body to their mission, she seems to have diverted his attention towards her mind, her heart, all the problematic little corners she keeps in the dark. He is so concerned. And she doesn't need his concern. She needs him to be focused and objective and help her. But, despite everything she has seen of his leadership all summer, she doesn't trust him to do so. He is Tony the clown, Tony who doesn't understand – and anyway, it's easier for all of them if she doesn't drag them into her messes. She tries, so hard, to keep them away.

She chooses Gibbs instead, because his job, his livelihood, is not at stake. And then there's that understanding between them: he knows who she is, he knows what she did, and though she knows that he loves her, it will still be business between them. He knows how to keep his distance. He won't be so concerned. He will be mad at her for dragging him out of retirement. But he'll help her anyway and then disappear. Like phoning in a favor.

She does not expect Tony and the rest of the team to come gallivanting into Gibbs's basement to help her anyway.

Gibbs tells Tony to take Ziva and hunt down the safe house. They go upstairs without a word, walk briskly towards the front door – but when they get outside, Tony snatches Ziva's wrist and roughly turns her around to face him. She inhales sharply in surprise, but her eyes are hard and defiant, same as his.

"What?" she hisses. "We have a job to do."

"Then I'll get straight to the point. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Anything!" he explodes. "You told Abby not to tell any of us that you were in contact. You disappear and the FBI is on our asses about some assassination. We were worried about you, Ziva."

She exhales slowly, deeply; her voice is deadly calm. "I was handling it."

"By calling Gibbs out of retirement!" He is as loud and outraged as she is cool and unruffled.

"I needed a favor."

"You could have asked me."

"Tony, you had enough to deal with." Her eyes narrow, as if to remind him, cruelly, of all the nights he spent with her, thinking he could trust her.

He raises his eyebrows, and for a split second she can see the shock and the hurt in his face as though he is a color-coded road map. But the moment passes, and he is back to being pissed.

"You should have told me. You should have trusted me."

But she is at the end of her patience. Before she can stop herself, she snaps, "Just because we slept together, doesn't mean I have to trust you."

The long resulting silence – stunned, angry, disbelieving – tells her, painfully, that he disagrees.

But he doesn't say another word. Just storms past her to the car, ready to clear her name. And she follows him, buries this conversation down into her darkest depths, as usual, because this is what she has to do. This is the job she signed up for.

The car rumbles to a start and they drive off.

And this is why things are so different now between them, since that hot August night. Because she didn't sleep with Agent DiNozzo, the talented senior field agent with an armor of humor around his heart. She slept with Tony. And now she doesn't know who, exactly, slept with him. Because before, she thought it was Agent David, his partner and coworker, the woman who never shies away from sex – but now, she isn't so sure.

In that first moment when he saw her in Gibbs's basement, alive and unhurt and safe – before she yelled at him – he gave her a look that held such determined warmth and intimacy that it shone on her with the might of the sun, almost blinding her. And it makes her wonder if she had accidentally exposed a different part of herself that night – someone softer, maybe even worth loving. Someone who was actually a part of something now – a little family, who could be so concerned but also businesslike, who will protect their own, not because there is a debt to be owed or a need to be fulfilled, but simply because they care about her. She can't remember the last time anyone looked at her like that.

But he isn't looking at her like that anymore. He isn't looking at her at all. And she doesn't blame him, really. This is, in effect, what she wanted him to do all along. Stop thinking about her in the personal sense, and get the job done.

She just hadn't been prepared to win this battle, and find her victory so bittersweet.

Gibbs returns to NCIS, which means that things should start going back to normal – but the thing is, they never really do. Normal was a time and a feeling, and neither is present anymore.

The team had been blasted apart and put back together clumsily, carelessly – and it takes a while for for each of them to pick the shrapnel out of their skin, search through the debris and see what – and who – is left.

The trappings of normalcy provide merciful structure – grabbing their gear, going to a crime scene, solving a murder, seeing what Abby's got and bantering along the way – but now, Tony has had a taste of power, and he doesn't submit so easily to Gibbs's hard-and-fast judgments. He pipes up when something seems off. And McGee, who was just their little probie, had a taste of being senior field agent – and he is smarter, more practical, less willing to endure Tony's jokes at his expense.

And Ziva – well, Ziva is a proper teammate now. She is the one Tony trusts with his life. She is the one who reads between the lines, who is personally invested in all of them the way they are in her – a momentous feat, considering her history. The summer without Gibbs has brought her deeply into their fold.

The team is different now, but stronger, in a way. None of them are quite so afraid anymore. They are a unit that has survived a lot.

That is why Tony is simultaneously proud and afraid of the assignment that Jenny gives him: getting close to Jeanne Benoit.

His team is small, but it is his family and they are still recovering from a difficult year. Tony doesn't want to have to keep this secret from them, enormous and explosive as it is. But Jenny is the director, and when she gives an order, he has to listen. He assumes his new identity and begins the secret-keeping.

Jeanne is an assignment, and one Tony hopes to finish as quickly as possible, so he tells himself to keep it professional. He is flirty and charming and likeable – he plays his role well – and quickly wins Jeanne's trust. She is an assignment, but just as quickly as she, he still finds himself liking her personally. She is successful and sweet, and she works almost as much as he does. She understands about dedication. He hasn't felt that connection to someone in years and years, if at all.

But, most puzzlingly and intriguingly of all, he finds that she isn't afraid of her feelings. Where Tony – and the rest of his team, to an extent – buries the personal in order to focus on the professional, Jeanne does not struggle with romance, or vulnerability. She draws her strength from it. She blossoms for him, and he respects that about her. It's the reason why he waits so long to sleep with her.

As he has recently learned, sex isn't always carefree, no strings attached. Especially in a long, meaningful relationship. Intimacy can bring people together, but it can easily tear them apart. In Jeanne's case, it is a lose-lose situation – he is afraid of both scenarios. As time goes on, he feels himself falling for her, a little bit and then a lot, and he isn't sure, anymore, what he wants, what the endgame is going to be.

He always knew, inevitably, that he would hurt her. It's the nature of the business. But after what they have shared, the hurt will be cataclysmic, and he wants to shield her from the worst of it. He wants to delay the inevitable as long as he can, even if it means it hurts them both that much more when it finally comes to pass. He has grown into this new role as Tony DiNardo – someone who has a beautiful girlfriend to text and tease and kiss and come home to after work. He gets to be someone he doesn't always get to be – himself. And she makes it so easy to open himself up to her, because she reciprocates, and lets him into her world.

It is new to him, being so emotionally open with another person. Somewhere along the line, the line between personal and professional blurs – and the night of the explosion that kills Paula Cassidy, the night after the rock-climbing fiasco, he goes to her place, and tells her he loves her, and he means it. And he knows it will be both of their undoing.

Of course, the transformation in Tony does not go unnoticed by Ziva. In the first days of his assignment, she thinks that he is sick. He tells her he is seeing a doctor – which is technically true – but if anything, that only increases her worry. Because if Tony is ill – well, that is not something she wants him to go through alone. And it isn't just personal. An illness will compromise his ability to work, which compromises their trust – barely patched since the assassination frame-up – in the field. Which, of course, compromises both of their lives.

So one day, when they go out for an interview, she asks him, "Has the doctor told you what you have?"

He wrinkles his nose in confusion. "What?"

"The doctor. The one you're seeing. Did he tell you what you have?"

"She," Tony corrects, "and…um…no. Tests haven't come in yet."

"But you would tell me when you found out?"

He turns on his megawatt toothpaste-ad grin at her. "Oh, so now you're worried about me. Why?"

"I am allowed to be concerned," she points out dryly. "We do work together. My life depends on whether or not you are able to do your job.

He merely chuckles. "If that's what is worrying you, sweetheart, then allow me to reassure you – I am perfectly fine and capable of doing my job."

He knows how she is. He figures that by playing it aloof and casual, she'll stay off the scent because he is just Tony the clown, not worth the extra concern. But she is merely frustrated – and not convinced. He will have to be careful what he leaves lying around on his desk.

They don't talk about the assignment again after that. He gets lost in Jeanne and the possibility of loving her, even if he knows that it can't last – and Ziva watches from afar, quietly but closely.

She sees the little ways in which he changes. How he stops ogling and flirting with women; how he keeps anxiously watching his other cell phone, like it's a puppy about to urinate on the carpet; how he disappears from the office so cheerfully, like he doesn't care what Gibbs will do to him because there is something better waiting for him.

She knows he isn't sick, that it was a lie he let her believe in order to throw her off. He is seeing someone, and it is serious, and she makes him walk into the office every morning happy in a way she has never seen him.

She knows how he is when he gets a girl's phone number, or an extra good cup of coffee, and that's not the kind of happiness that she sees on his face anymore. This kind – it's more muted, and yet it glows brighter. Like a light has been ignited behind his eyes. Even though he is still Tony, working the cases and being a smart aleck, when attention diverts from him, he smiles like he has a secret. Like he has the sun in his pocket, for himself and no one else.

He isn't terminally ill, but he is lovesick – and the transformation is fascinating.

He doesn't make a big deal about it, but he is softer around the edges, and his eyes are sunnier, and he whistles sometimes as he walks out to the car for an assignment, or down the hall to the bathroom. And he is not the type to whistle unless there is something to celebrate.

Despite their history, Ziva is sincerely happy for him. She has screwed things up between them before, but she knows that he is a good man, and if he has a shot at happiness, the kind that fizzes inside him now, like bubbles in champagne – well, he should go for it. Whatever they are doing seems to be working.

He smiles all the time now, wide and goofy and genuine. It's nice to see. Out of all of them, it seems fitting that Tony is the one who gets a happy ending, if just for a little while. Last summer, she saw the romantic in him, the one who wanted a woman to tell his secrets to, the little ones as well as the big ones. She can't be that for him, of course, but now there is a woman who can do that for him. And he should keep her close, if she is the one he wants.

Ziva is unexpectedly wistful, though, watching Tony leave work early, practically skipping to the elevator. Jeanne's presence in Tony's life has sufficiently mellowed him out enough to bring his relationship with Ziva back to its usual, teasing self – and yet, Ziva is protective of the man she got to know, of the man presumably sleeping with this other woman.

It's not like she wants him for herself – of course not. She has been happily single for many years now, because men always want something from her and she doesn't have any more she is willing to give them. She doesn't want to spoil her relationship with Tony in that way.

No, it's better that they are just coworkers, very platonic friends at most. She understands the rules better now, in her second year on the team. There are lines that should not be crossed – and though they managed to get back from their transgression, she isn't sure they would be so lucky a second time. But she still can't help but be concerned for him, because she sees him everyday and their job requires them to trust each other in a way most people never have to consider trusting each other, and that kind of trust – it changes things. It changes the way she looks at him and cares about him.

She hopes that this woman, whoever she is, can give Tony what he is looking for. Because Ziva can tell that this is serous for him – and if his girlfriend hurts him in any way, well…Ziva has plenty of assassins on call if necessary.

But then the mission blows up in Tony's face, and Ziva and everyone else find out the truth, and Tony shuts down almost completely, refusing to talk about it. Refusing to even think about it. Because it was real for him, and now she is gone, and he feels lost again. Lost, and all alone.

Ziva knows that he wants his space – and goodness knows she understands about wanting space after a tragedy – but at the same time, she isn't sure if space is really what he needs. She can smell the alcohol on him sometimes in the morning, left over from last night, and she sees the shadows under his eyes. She sees him overcompensating with the jokes and the bounciness, as though none of them can see that he is hurting, badly.

A couple of weeks after the disastrous Le Grenoille mission, Ziva corners Tony in the men's room, and asks him if he wants to come over for pizza and wine. Her treat.

But he declines. He knows that she means well, and he knows what she is trying to do – but he remembers the last time they had pizza and wine together, and he doesn't want to go there again. Not now, not with her. If he has learned anything, it is that they are not the kind of people who should get personal with each other.

"Thanks," he tells her, and means it, as he leaves for the elevator. Ziva perches herself on her desk and watches him go, looking thoughtful.

Though Tony didn't want pizza with Ziva, he does decide he needs a drink – so he goes to his favorite bar, a quiet little place about a ten minute drive away, and orders a bourbon. He's had a growing fondness for bourbon ever sine Gibbs left.

After his third helping, when he is getting a little tipsy, Ziva walks into the bar, still in her work clothes. She smiles at him and takes the seat beside him, and orders a martini for herself. Tony eyes her up and down, surprised and suspicious.

"Are you following me?" he asks in a bit of a slur.

"No." Her martini comes, and she takes a small sip.

"What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," she says. "I went to your place to check on you, but you weren't there."

"So how'd you know to come to this bar?"

"Lucky guess."

But he keeps staring at her expectantly, so she chuckles and explains, "I had a hunch that you would need a drink, and I know this is your favorite bar."

"Oh." He raises his glass glumly to her, and clinks it against hers. "Cheers."

He takes a big gulp of his drink, but she only takes a tiny one. He polishes off the bourbon in another sip, and raises his hand to ask for another. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and wonders whether to look at the bar counter or at her. He chooses the counter; she is giving him one of her intense, x-ray stares, and he doesn't care to be x-rayed right now.

"You know, you didn't have to come find me," he tells her, after his fifth drink. "I'm fine. You know. Dandy."

They both know he isn't, but she stays silent anyway, takes another little sip of her martini. That silence is unbearable – it's the very reason he left his apartment, and came here instead, where there is at least an illusion of company. He rubs his face in his hands, and then tells her, "I don't know what your problem is. I don't know what my problem is. It happened. It's over. Jenny told me what to do and I did it, okay?"

She nods. "I know."

"It's not fair."

"I know."

He keeps talking like this, for hours. He's getting steadily drunker, slurring his words and being far too honest. He had told himself he wouldn't do this again with her – but she, like Jeanne, makes it so easy for him to talk. Because though they have history, and though he doesn't quite understand what they are, she listens to him and despite herself, she feels safe to him.

He keeps his life small – he can't take many disappointments like the blow-up with Jeanne – so Ziva is his two AM emergency call. She fits right where the rest of them don't. Abby is too effusive, overflowing with feelings and works; McGee is sweet, but doesn't quite understand the things that keep Tony up at night; and Gibbs – well, his muteness can be intimidating, and anyway, there are just some things you don't tell your boss about your head-space.

So Ziva, with her not-intimidating silence, and the way she understands loss – the way she understood his from the beginning – is all he's got.

So he lets himself need her tonight, because the words are spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them, because he feels weak and spent, and she came to find him even though he told her not to. And she lets him need her – even though she isn't good at being needed.

It's strange, really. The way he talks and talks makes things easy for her. He doesn't make it feel like he's taking anything from her. His words just bounce off of her, and fall into her lap, and she chooses which ones to keep. There isn't any obligation. She stays with him because he needs her, and that's the only reason. And she has never had that kind of relationship with anyone before – not since her little sister, who wore perfume and went dancing and cried on Ziva's shoulder when a boy broke her heart. Her little sister, who is dead, who can't need Ziva anymore – but whom Ziva still needs sometimes, to remind her that there is still beauty in humanity.

It's kind of nice, though, being here for someone now. Being able to be enough for someone. Seeing the beauty in Tony's honesty. He talks and she listens, her martini and his bourbon and this bar and this world forgotten. Like somehow, this is the place they are both meant to be tonight.

He is smashed out of his mind, by the time Ziva decides it is time to drive him home. Ziva leaves a few bills on the counter for the bartender, and says, "Hey, Tony. Let's go."

But Tony shakes his head. "Nah. Nah, you go. I'll see you tomorrow at work."

She sighs. So he's one of those drunks. She puts her hand firmly on his shoulder and says, "I am going to drive you home. Come on. We are going now."

But he stays put – sways slightly, but remains seated resolutely on his stool. Ziva considers using physical force, but the poor man is too intoxicated; it wouldn't be fair. She tries to think about what to do, how to get him out of here. But as she does so, his hand finds hers on the bar counter, and leans in close to her – so close that their noses almost touch. She stops breathing; he can hear the faint noise in her throat. She smells sweet, but also spicy, a little salty.

Her hair is in a ponytail, but several wispy curls have gotten free through the course of the day. He twirls one strand of her hair between his first two fingers, and smiles sheepishly, tenderly, at it. At her. He is still entirely too close; she can smell the bourbon on his breath as powerfully as if she had drunk it herself.

She knows what he's doing. He's lonely, and sad, and extremely inebriated, and he has mistaken her presence at the bar tonight for physical intimacy. His forehead presses against hers; he grins, and brushes his nose against her like a polar bear kiss, the strand of her hair still curled around his finger.

She remembers the last time they did this. And she can feel her body responding to him, wanting him too. Sexual curiosity has always been a part of their electricity and banter – they are both strong, attractive personalities, after all – and after doing it once, it's natural that they should want to do it again. Especially on a night like this, when it is late and they both have alcohol in their system, and he wants a way to numb himself up against what he is feeling.

But it's not right. She puts her hand on his, gently forces him to let her hair go. She takes a step away from him, her eyes boring into his like construction drills.

"Not tonight," she says, as softly as she can. "Not like this."

That seems to bring him back to his senses a little bit – but because of all the bourbon, his guard isn't as efficient, and she can see his disappointment. "No, I guess not."

"Look, I get it," she says in a fierce undertone. "Okay? I do. And I've made the same mistake. You think it's what you want, but it's not. Let me take you home."

He doesn't say anything, or fight her after that. He lets her put his arm around her shoulder, and lead him out to her car, where she opens the front door for him and leans over him to put his seatbelt on. He gets a whiff of her scent again – the one that smells like that summer. Strangely, it comforts him.

The smell of her, and the motion of the car – Ziva takes some care driving this time, so that she doesn't jolt Tony or make him sick – puts him to sleep long before she gets him to his apartment. She wakes him as carefully as she can, and leads him to his apartment, lets him fall into bed fully clothed.

There is nothing more she can do for him tonight – and chances are he won't remember much in the morning. She takes off his shoes, and then leaves his apartment and goes home, wondering why they do what they do, what this means for them now.

Indeed, Tony does not remember much of the previous night the next morning – but he does mercifully stop drinking to blackout after that. He is still a mess, but the team is there for him, and so is Ziva. She keeps both of their secrets, in her quiet way, and he is grateful for it.

They have an understanding now, between each other. Their role in each other's lives is vague, but they don't need to define it. They just try to keep each other safe. Not merely professionally, but in any way the other will let them.

Of course, this means that Tony isn't allowed much access into Ziva's life. She has always been private, and their relationship doesn't change this much. He always lets her in deeper than she lets him in. And he tells himself that it's okay, because that's just who she is – but he still worries from afar, even when she makes it clear that she doesn't want his sympathy. Like when they all underwent the investigation for Le Grenouille's murder. Like when she was shaken up so badly after Andy Hoffman nearly killed her.

There is chaos in the agency right now, but he is steady and he is with her. And though she won't tell him her secrets – she is never going to be as open as he is – she lets him stand with her. It is all she can give him, and he takes it.

But then Jenny is killed, and their entire world is thrown up in the air again.

The guilt is corrosive. It eats Tony alive – another person he could not save. But this time, he doesn't have her with him to share the grief, because this is the summer that the new director, Vance, splits them up and sends them away. Tony, to the destroyer, McGee to the basement, and Ziva, to Israel.

He wants to call her, sometimes, when he spends those long nights at sea, trying not to vomit as the ship sails through choppy waters. She was there with him that day, she understands what happened – and she knows him. Knows him better than pretty much everyone else.

But alcohol, as it turns out, is very understanding too. Because where she would have held his hand as he braved his heartache, alcohol lets him drown it out – and the distraction is very welcome.

Ziva is overseas on that assignment when she meets Michael Rivkin – and she, too, needs a distraction. Michael is charming and good-looking, and a Mossad agent, so he knows the job and its enormous weight. That's part of the reason she likes him so much.

They sleep together between missions, when Ziva is in Tel-Aviv about to leave for her next assignment. It feels so normal, in a way, like coming home – the pressure of a job, sex in a dark corner on borrowed time. It reminds her of who she was – who she still is. This work, and its little benefits, is the best way to move on. She buries the grief for Jenny – a friend as well as the director – beneath long flights, undercover surveillance, a night in a cheap motel with Michael Rivkin.

Through the years, she has learned that one must always do whatever is necessary to survive. These are the ways that she knows how. She doesn't indulge the futile anger or anguish that tempts her; she plows ahead, never thinking about any moment except the one she is in, because no one can disappoint you if you never expect anything.

She had missed Tony terribly, she realizes, when they are reunited again – far longer yet also far sooner than expected. She thought she was home when she was running missions for Mossad – but instead, she finds that she is really home when she lays eyes on Gibbs and Tony, and Tony smiles at her, remarking that she got a serious tan.

There is work to do, but when they get a moment, checking a cabin on the Destroyer, he asks, "Are you all right? I heard about the bomb blast in Morocco."

"I am fine," she assures him, grinning as she searches a drawer of a petty officer's undergarments. "They pitched me up and I am back at work."

"Patched," he corrects.

"Right."

He waits a beat, then says, "I missed you, you know."

"I missed you too."

"Are you back in D.C.?"

"For now."

"I don't know when they're finally going to get me out of this hellhole," says Tony, gesturing around to the ship. "I don't know how much longer I can take on here, honestly."

"You will be all right," she promises him. "Let Gibbs figure it out with Vance. I am sure we will be back on the team soon."

"Yeah, but now I've seen you and Gibbs – and even McGoo on video chat – and now I'm going to go certifiably crazy trapped on this ship by myself," he confesses.

She chuckles softly, puts a hand to his shoulder. "We will bring you home. Promise."

"You sure you can keep that promise?" He tries to play it off as a joke, but his eyes are worried.

She nods. "I will assassinate whoever needs assassinating to get you back to D.C."

He laughs at that – really laughs, for the first time in months. The sound is a little unfamiliar, but it feels good, warm. "Thanks, Ziva."

She winks at him. "Don't mention it."

The first night Tony gets back to D.C. is bliss. He has such enormous affection for every tiny thing about the building – the parking lot, the orange walls, his desk and his stapler and of course all the decorations that Abby made to welcome him home. Tony, McGee, Ziva, Abby, and Ducky stay up late into the night, swapping stories of the summer, reveling in the joy of being reunited once more.

It is that night, when Tony is unpacking the box of his personal items at his desk, that Ziva finds the photos. They fall out with a couple of other things on the floor, and Ziva picks them up before Tony can snatch them away from her.

They are the pictures from LA, when she was in a bikini by the pool – the pictures she had told him to delete. Ziva's hands go to her hips, and she raises an eyebrow that suggests death will be imminent. Tony grins, chuckles nervously, and takes several steps back away from her.

"Yeah, um…ahem. Sorry about that, Ziva. It's just…you know, on a ship, about five thousand guys, practically no women around, missing home…"

She examines the picture closely, and then points to a small hole near the top of the photograph. "Did you have this hanging up on your wall?"

"Um…" He says nothing, but the blush in his cheeks gives him away.

There are three photographs, all taken at different angles, but all prominently featuring her ass. She remembers the day – hot, a little muggy, but bright. They were supposed to take the afternoon for themselves, but she wanted to stay close to Jenny and he wanted to have an adventure. He took the pictures as a laugh. She was never upset that he took them; she intended to delete them off the camera when they got home. Strangely, seeing them now in her hands – a little faded, crumpled in the corners, with the holes where he had pinned them up – touches her. She can understand about missing someone.

So she clears her throats and hands him the pictures back. "Destroy them," she says, and spares his life.

Things are supposed to be different now. No more secrets, no more lies. The team should settle in again and relearn their routine, so disrupted over the past few years. But unfortunately, things are not as different as Tony thought they would be.

The mole hunt with Langer and Lee sends Tony into a tailspin. He sees now, that he was part of a much bigger plan – but that doesn't make him feel much better about the whole thing. The war game tips him over the edge – because he is tired of games. He is tired of never knowing the whole picture, until it's convenient for somebody to tell him.

No more secrets, no more lies. Is that too much to ask?

In the midst of the mole turmoil, Rivkin pays an unexpected visit to D.C., and asks Ziva to meet him. Work is busy, and honestly, she had not intended to ever see Rivkin again after their one night – but after Lee and Bankston are caught, and the worry over the mole is over, she changes her mind at the last second and meets Rivkin on his last night in D.C. They have dinner at a sidewalk café, and he kisses her exquisitely on the side of the road – and he tells her that the only reason he doesn't take her back to his hotel room is because he is on the first flight out to Tel-Aviv in the morning.

Admittedly, she enjoys the evening. She enjoys seeing Rivkin. They email back and forth, and he calls her sometimes when he isn't on assignment. They talk into the night about everything and nothing – and she feels herself relaxing into this relationship.

He links her back to the older part of her life, that reckless girl she used to be – and she finds that her recklessness still thrives inside of her. Because her life used to be big and chaotic and restless, bouncing around from country to country, always filled with a sense of purpose. Her life is smaller now – and though she loves her family, and her team, she remains fitful.

She isn't always happy in D.C. This has been home for only a few years; her entire life is scattered in Israel and the dingiest corners of Europe, East Asia, South America. She is torn apart – and nobody seems to understand this about her except Michael.

He asks her once, on the phone late at night, if she has ever wanted to come back to Mossad. Her father still speaks highly, and often, about her. And she can only coyly dodge his question and change the subject, because she really doesn't know if she wants to stay or go. Michael reminds her of the life she once had, the place and the time she had once called home – and it's hard to let that go. Old habits die hard.

This is the primary reason Ziva does not tell Tony about Michael Rivkin. She obviously wants to avoid the endless list of questions he would be sure to devise about any boyfriend of hers – but also because, as smart and concerned as Tony is, she doesn't want him near that old scary part of her that Michael knows. She doesn't want Tony to expect anything from her.

There are some things that Tony simply can't understand. Like how she can love Tony and NCIS, and Michael and Mossad, simultaneously. Like how loyalty is a messy thing, not always as cut and dry as Tony or Gibbs make it out to be.

Tony suspects she has a boyfriend – he rifles through her desk and even her trash like a rambunctious twelve-year-old – but she doesn't want to confirm his suspicions. Even though she knows how tired he is of secrets after Jenny and Jeanne, this is one secret she is determined to keep anyway.

It's not because she wants to lie to him, or spite him in some way. It's just because there are certain demons better fought alone, and she believes it is within his power to grant her this little bit of privacy.

But the question of her privacy gets even more complicated when the team goes to LA to track down that sleeper cell, and Michael Rivkin is in the center of the whole mess, and Gibbs and Tony start asking too many unnecessary yet necessary questions.

Ziva has no idea what Rivkin's mission is – they never talk about work, they know better – so it does come as a surprise, when it turns out that Rivkin might be a Hamas agent rather than a Mossad one. And she knows that she should own up to her relationship with him, even if it is personal rather than professional – but somehow, she cannot bring herself to say anything.

Rivkin's relationship with Ziva has nothing to do with the mission in question. She doesn't know anything about what he's doing in Washington; she has no new information to give. She would only cast a suspicious light upon herself if she said anything. With her history, she would cause more problems than answer questions – and she would divert the investigation away from the issue to focus on the entirely mundane question of her half-baked love life.

The problem is, just because she doesn't say anything, doesn't mean a suspicious light won't fall on her anyway. Because Tony won't stop investigating into her personal life, and he knows about Michael, and he starts questioning her loyalty. Which infuriates Ziva, because what does he know about her circumstances? What does he know about all she has given in the name of loyalty? What does he know about what Michael means to her?

He pulls her into the elevator and flips the emergency switch, so that they are alone, bathed in that ghostly blue light – he, with his arms crossed, staring at her, and she, with her hands on her hips in battle position, staring right back at him.

"I am tired of us keeping secrets from each other," he informs her, his voice as cold as the steel walls around them. "I am tired of pretending. Tell me what you know about Michael Rivkin."

And it seems like a fair question to ask, really, considering the investigation they are running. But that doesn't mean she is ready to talk.

"Mind your own business," she hisses at him.

She moves to flip the emergency switch again, but Tony blocks her, and grabs onto her wrist.

"Do you like your hand? Because I will break it right here and now. Do not push me," she warns.

But he isn't afraid of her anymore. "Start talking."

"Now who doesn't trust who?"

"This has nothing to do with trusting you. Which you know that I do."

"Do you?"

He looks at her like she slapped him across the face. "Just answer the question and we won't have to have this conversation."

"You know as well as I do that it will not end there. It will never end there."

She glares bloody murder at him, and finally twists his arm so that he lets go of her hand, and she flips the emergency switch. The lights are back to bright white, and the elevator glides back to their floor.

"Maybe later, when you ask nicely," she remarks acidly, as she gets off the elevator and marches to her desk.

But there isn't time to ask her. Not after that. Because the very next morning, they investigate the death of the ICE agent, and they are forced to drop the matter and act cordially towards one another once more. They work late into the night on the case, and into the next day – and later that evening is when Tony drives out to Ziva's apartment in order to have their conversation.

And that is the evening he meets Michael Rivkin in Ziva's living room, high as a kite but still utterly deadly.

The fight is a blur of blood and punches and pain and broken glass. But when it's over, Tony is alive, and Michael is the one with glass in his gut, coughing up blood. The last thing he ever sees is Ziva's ceiling. And then Ziva herself bursts through the door, gun pointed straight at Tony, her eyes so dangerous that the assassin she has suppressed all this time almost explodes to the surface and kills him where he lays.

But she doesn't do that. She calls an ambulance, and refuses to even look at Tony as she climbs into the ambulance alongside Rivkin, and rides to the hospital. Tony, and his bloodied suit, and his broken arm, are hardly a concern.

Because suddenly, loyalty isn't so complicated anymore. It's very simple. Ziva can never, ever trust Tony DiNozzo again.

The blows just keep coming. Her apartment is bombed, and the investigation is underway, and she must fly to Israel to answer to her father, and Tony still thinks what he did was justifiable. But it isn't. She reads every word of his report so many times, and yet the words are dizzying and they don't make any sense, and she eventually rips her copy apart, like a feral savage, into black-and-white confetti on her bathroom floor.

He put his entire career on the line for her, and she hates him for it. She hates herself for letting it get this far, this messy. She hates herself for not keeping a closer watch on DiNozzo the last few months. She let things get messy and soft, and she let herself feel things for Tony – she let herself trust him, that was her mistake – and now look at this mess. Look at the blood and the thorns scattered everywhere their eyes can see.

What McGee finds on the laptop proved that Michael was working for Hamas, that he duped Mossad and therefore Ziva. In a way, she almost expected that. It's something she would have expected years ago, when she lived his life, when she knew trust was a smoke screen, dissolved at the slightest touch.

But Tony. For Tony to betray her too – for Tony to come to her apartment and have the audacity to murder a man he knew meant something to her – and this just after questioning her own loyalty to NCIS – is unforgivable. And she will not forget it until her dying day, and perhaps not even then.

Because Tony is the good guy. Though she has had an admittedly spotty record of trusting him entirely when the moment calls for it, she does trust him to do what's right. That's what she expects from him. Because he is strong and capable and he has sharp instincts. She trusts him when they're out in the field on a mission, and she has done so for years. She even started to trust him off the field, like an idiot, thinking anyone can be trusted with any sliver of her heart.

He is supposed to be the one who never betrayed her. And now he has. He's just like the rest of them that way - petty, jealous, undependable. How can he expect her to move on from this?

Her father tells her, unknowingly, behind a pane of glass, that Rivkin was always acting under his orders.

Hadar tells her, "Rivkin was in chaos. You knew. And yet you decided not to tell your father. You tried to protect Rivkin. But in truth, you are the reason he is dead."

It is such a confusing jumble of broken promises and misplaced loyalties. For all her righteous fury, she herself is not exempt from blame either. There is just so much blame to go around.

Her father has betrayed her. Rivkin has betrayed her. Tony has betrayed her. And Michael Rivkin is dead now. Dead by Tony's hand. And she is the one standing in the middle, unable to stay, unable to go. Unable to decide what this means, or how to release the rage churning black inside her.

This is the end of the line. Where else is there to go? She can't even fathom it.

I guess you read my report.

I memorized it! You could have left it at that! You could have walked away, but no. You let him up. You put a bullet in his chest.

You weren't there.

You could have put one in his leg.

You. Weren't. There.

But I should have been.

You loved him.

I guess I'll never know.

She doesn't get on the plane to go back to D.C. She stands on the tarmac and watches it fly, higher and higher and farther and farther away, until it is a pinprick against the clouds, until it is no more. She tells herself she is staying because Eli is blood, because blood matters – but really, it's because she can't bear to even look at Tony's face again.

She realizes now, bitterly, that she had made the egregious error of holding him to a higher standard than she normally held men. Of all the betrayals she has faced in the past weeks, his stings the most. His is the one that burns. All those nights they spent talking, the nights of James Bond and Chinese take-out, every kiss they ever shared – she watched that movie with him, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with him, and she would give anything now, to undergo that procedure, and erase him from her head. Anything not to remember all the shades with which she had loved him – yes, loved him – for four years.

So she goes on that death mission in Somalia resigned, exhausted, colorless – a ghost living inside her skin. Her father's last betrayal is another sucker-punch to her gut, but she is numb and resigned and cognizant of the fact that this is just what she deserves. She is young in years, but ancient in sin. The bridges to Israel and to D.C. have all been burned, charred beyond recognition.

There is no place on this Earth left for her.

And yet, there is strange freedom in being so untethered, so cut off and alone. There is nothing left to hurt her with.

They capture her in Somalia, and she lets them do what they want to her. Life and death mean nothing to her anymore. She comes to peace with them under the heat of the desert sun. She is indifferent and therefore invincible.

They can't break her if she is already broken.

They left Ziva behind in Israel, but in the days after the team returns home, Tony muses that he left something of himself behind as well – something essential and electric and alive, something irrepressible and irreplaceable. Because though his arm heals and he returns to field work as usual, he is listless, flat, like a light has been extinguished inside his very core.

He tries to move on – they try to find a new substitute for Ziva – but he is so pervasively, stubbornly, hollow without her. The events in May refuse to erase themselves, or even fade, from his memory. Because he put his career on the line for her, and yeah, he did, he loved her – but it wasn't enough. None of it was enough. He survived the night in her apartment, and she hated him for it.

If Kate was his toes, leaving him off-balance when she left, Ziva is his liver. It has been wrenched from his gut, and there is only so long he can live without it. Without her.

Finding her is the only thing that matters, then. Because if Ziva becomes another casualty, another person that he can't save, he fears he will literally lose his mind.

And when he can't find her, when he realizes that she is lying dead at the bottom of some desolate patch of ocean, revenge becomes the only thing that matters. There is no real hope here, just a few pixels on a computer screen that might lead them to her killer – but it's enough. Enough to sustain him.

He couldn't save her in life. He got too close and he hurt her. He killed Michael Rivkin. But if he can avenge her – well, that's better than nothing.

So even though he gets captured, even though it was a far shot to begin with, even though he realizes that he will have to die here, it's okay. It's okay. He was only barely living in D.C., after Ziva anyway, and this seems a fitting way to go – coming on a valiant death mission because the closest friend he's ever had is dead.

He has no expectations. He isn't afraid of the gun Saleem Ulman puts in his face. The metal is a cold kiss upon his forehead – it's actually refreshing, in the sticky desert air.

They can't break him if he is already broken.

To say that Tony and Ziva are then surprised to each other under in their prison cell is like saying that the North African desert is a little bit warm.

The one in their million-to-one shot won out. She is here. Bruised, battered, but alive. The truth serum makes him hazy and, yes, over-honest – but all the life comes flooding back to his body, seeing her here. She is a survivor, and their efforts paid off – and even though in her mind she was already dead, merely waiting for her body to catch up, even though she isn't entirely sure she wants to live, Tony and McGee and Gibbs are going to bring her home again. Back to NCIS, where she belongs. Where she has always belonged.

It hardly makes sense to her, that they are here, and Gibbs fired his shots, and there is a plane outside waiting to take her away. He asks her, "Can you fight?" And for the first time in her life, she just stares blankly at him, dazed and beyond rational thought, because she is not here to fight. She is here to die. And yet, he has other plans.

They save her. They put her on a plane and bring her back to D.C., where the September air is cool and sweet, and the landscaping is immaculate, and nobody dreams of the horrors taking place across the world.

They bring her back. She is like a newborn baby, blinking her eyes at the world for the first time. It doesn't seem real. It's like they have somehow fashioned her a body from her ashes, and suddenly she has a future.

Every breath, every movement of muscle, is a gift and a miracle. And also a curse.

He tip-toes around her once they get back. Everybody does – everybody except Abby, who rushes right in and lifts Ziva off her feet in a bone-crunching hug. But Abby is Abby, and she can do that. She can say what the rest of them can't. That they love her, that they missed her. That they are glad she is alive. That now she is here and she is safe.

She stays at the navy lodge for a couple of weeks, while she figures out the practical details – her flat, her things in storage. The only people she really sees at first are doctors, scores and scores of them, with pictures and forms and questions, so many questions, about how she feels, where she has been. As though these are the things she really wants to talk about. As though the words are even capable of crawling up her throat.

She does her best. She's sure she failed most, if not all, of her psych evaluations, but it doesn't faze her. She is still unaccustomed to the sensation of existence. To grass, even. The first evening, when she gets back to the lodge after testing, she takes off her shoes and walks for miles around the surrounding wilderness. The grass and the leaves on the trees are every shade of green, cold and damp against her skin. Of all the things that might have made her cry, she breaks down in the dirt and cries for the grass she almost never got to see again.

How could she have ever thought that Mossad was home? Eli sent her to her death, and Tony came to find her. She was not allowed to die quiet and alone and in evil hands. He betrayed her, but then he saved her, and he brought her home.

Loyalty had never been complicated for him. She was one of them, always, even when he asked the questions he was forced to ask. He knew that going to Somalia meant almost surefire death, and yet he came, for her, even when he thought her dead. It fills her with shame, knowing that he would do this for her after their long, painful history. Knowing that yes, he loves her, and yes, she loves him, and now they are both alive and together.

Ziva wants, more than anything, to finally become an official agent of NCIS – no longer a floater, with allegiances on two sides. Despite what she suspects is a poor showing on her psych evaluations, the board clears her (thank goodness for Director Vance's veto power).

When she comes for Gibbs's blessing, he asks her, "Is this really what you want?"

"I had forgotten who I could trust," she tells him honestly. "We were a team. And I would like that again."

He gives a long hard look. But he signs the form. He kisses her forehead and says, "Welcome back, Ziver."

She moves into her new apartment two and a half weeks after the rescue. She goes back to work a few days later, just over three weeks after they brought her back. It is at the office, moving back into her old desk, that she sees Tony again properly – the two of them in work clothes, the material things that index normality.

His eyes meet hers and they simply stare, taking in the other's solid warmth and humanity before them. Because it never stopped feeling miraculous, knowing that they were both alive, that they didn't have to die in Somalia. They stare at each other without a word, until McGee walks in from the elevator, and hugs Ziva hello.

The hug jolts her back to his presence, the box on her desk, the paperwork she still isn't finished filling out to reinstate her. She tears away her gaze from Tony, and busies herself with the piles of documents on her desk.

Being alive is hard work.

He doesn't want to push her, when they return. Even after three weeks, they are overwhelmed, with so much, too much, to work through. There is a lot to feel, a lot to say. He doesn't even know where to begin. Their relationship began in loss, but they don't know how to deal with this kind of unspeakable tragedy. There is everything and nothing to say. They are in limbo, for now, and he waits until she is ready.

She comes to his place at two AM the day after she came back to work – a Friday night.

She knocks on the door, and he opens it after the second knock. She is in sweatpants and an old, tatty blue t-shirt, her hair unstraightened, left in a massive curly bun on top of her head. He is in red shorts and a gray OSU t-shirt, his hair spiked in every direction, a faint imprint of his comforter on his cheek. He yawns, but his eyes are awake. He steps aside to let her in.

"I'm sorry," she says automatically, as he shows her to his couch. "I know that it is late."

"I wasn't sleeping."

"Me either," she admits.

"Coffee?"

She nods, and he gets up to make a pot. She waits on the couch for a couple of endless minutes, but she is too restless to sit, and the coffee will take more time anyway. She gets up too, and joins him in the kitchen. He leans against the counter, waiting on the coffee maker. She lifts herself up and sits on the counter so that the coffee maker is between them.

She is thinner after the desert. Four summers ago, when she wore these sweatpants, they fit comfortably on the widest part of her hips. Now, they are practically falling off of her. Her hair is thinner too; less wildly curly, more docile. She chews on a hangnail and avoids his eye. He yawns again, and watches the coffee-maker work its magic in silence.

At last, she says, "I don't even know where to start."

"Okay," he says, "so, I'll start. How are you, Ziva?"

The simplest question, and she cannot come up with an answer that feels right. "I…don't know."

"That's okay," he says gently.

"Look, I…I know we should talk. About…things."

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He waits a beat, then looks her in the eye and says the words he has practiced in his head all summer: "Ziva, I'm sorry. For everything."

"I am as well," she says tremulously. "I…know you meant well."

"A man died."

Tears – bizarre, long restrained – well up. "I know."

"You've been to hell and back."

"Thanks to you."

"Yeah, well…least I could do." He tries to grin at her, like this is a joke, but it isn't funny and he just looks sad.

"You thought I was dead."

"Yeah. We all did. Me, McGee. Abs. Gibbs. Well, maybe not Gibbs. You know how he is with his Spidey senses."

"You still came."

"Had to."

"No. You didn't."

"We don't leave each other behind, Ziva."

"You should have." She says it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that she almost breaks his heart.

"Hey. No. It doesn't work like that."

"This is a mess," she says, wiping her eyes. "We are a mess."

"I know."

"How do we go on from here?"

Because that's the question on both of their minds, when they get down to it – what to do next. Where to go. How to forgive and move on, when neither seems to be an option.

He mulls that one over for so long that the coffee maker is finished before either of them say a word. He pours out the coffee into two mugs. He gives her one and locates the powdered milk and sugar in the cupboard at his knees.

They take their fill and sip their coffee, the air thick and tentative between them.

Then—

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

She just blinks at him.

"Do you?"

She purses her lips. "Yes," she whispers.

"And I trust you too," he tells her. "That's how we go on from here."

"After all…that?" She winces, and he winces too.

"Yeah. Give it time."

She takes a long sip of her coffee, savoring the way it burns her throat on the way down. And when she looks up, he is still there, not having taken a single sip. Just watching her, eyes smoldering, overflowing, the same lovely hazel that haunted her dreams every night in the desert.

He reaches his hand out, and finds hers on the counter, and squeezes it lightly. His hand is still hot from handling the coffeemaker. She slips off the counter and lands on her feet, her hand still in his. They take their coffee in their free hands, and he leads her back to the sofa, where he sits facing her. He can see every detail of her face – the delicate slope of her nose, the dizzying array of browns in her irises, the curve of her eyelashes, the lines and shadows beneath her eyes, hinting at her exhaustion. Even in her unkempt state, she is beautiful.

So he asks her, "Do you want some music?"

She is about to decline, just sit here on his couch drinking her coffee and drinking him in – but then she says, "Yes, I would."

She leaves her mug on the table and goes to sift through his record collection. She doesn't know many of the artists, but she likes the cover of a Tom Waits album – a man on a street corner, smoking a pipe, a woman in a party dress facing away from the neon lights to look at him. "The Heart of Saturday Night." Somehow, it seems fitting. She gives him the record, and he lets the needle land at random.

It's a little scratchy from use, but the piano introduction unfolds, and she grins, sways to the sultry jazziness like it's a joke, like this is normal for them. But his smile is real and warm and loving, as he takes it a step further, grabs hold of her hand and her waist, and twirls her to the center of his living room as the song really starts up.

She throws her head back and laughs – just laughs, because this is crazy, being alive, dancing with him in his apartment like it's home, letting him hold her and breathe her in as though she is wearing something pretty instead of her worn-out blue shirt. She buries her face into his shoulder as he circles around the room with her, his fingers intertwined with hers, humming the melody into her hair.

And I'm blinded by the neon
Don't try and change my tune
'Cause I thought I heard a saxophone
I'm drunk on the moon

Of all the things they have been through together, of all the days and nights they spent at each other's mercy, they have never danced. This is their first time – and even though it's late and they are scruffy and it doesn't seem appropriate, given the reason why she came, it still feels right. Bittersweetly fitting.

"I should have come sooner," she tells him eventually, as he slows them down, lets them sway on the spot together. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I know how you are."

She looks up at him, curious. She, too, knows how she is, but she needs him to tell her. "How am I?"

He considers the best way to phrase this. "Well, if I come forward, you'd run away. But if I stay still – then maybe you might come and say something."

Her smile is tired, but genuine.

"Thank you," she says, and he understands that this is a full, wide-ranging thank you. Tenderly, she runs her hand down his cheek, and anchors her palm at his jaw. Goosebumps emerge up and down his arms, and his muscles go taut, and yet she feels him relax. She kisses his cheek, light as rose petals.

Somewhere in the expanse of that unearthly second, the song ends, and the room, the whole world, is silent before the needle finds the next song. He rests his forehead against hers, and they just listen to each other breathe.

It is the beginning of healing.

They dance a while, to a couple more songs off the record, before collapsing back on the couch, turning to their now cooled coffees. She sips at hers, but then she puts it down and asks him, seriously, how his summer went. He makes her laugh by chronicling the fate of her attempted replacement, and then she listens solemnly to how they managed to track her down in Somalia. He tells her about how McGee was on board the second he suggested the idea, and how Abby had started before either of them had thought up a plan of action. How Vance wink-nudged them into the region when he wasn't officially allowed to.

All these things she missed, all the shades and layers of their concern and their subsequent rescue mission. Sometimes, it is painful, but she also recognizes that she needed to hear it. It loosens something in her, something she can't explain. Like she was never really gone, because she lingered in the background, the back of the team's heads all the time. Like they needed her – like fetching her was not a wasted trip.

From there, Tony branches off, telling her about cases, about the time he replaced McGee's supplemental vitamins with identical-looking sour gumballs, and laughed hysterically as McGee's face puckered. He talks and talks, as he always seems to do with her – but as he talks, she drifts off to sleep, right there on his couch, her cheek balanced against her knuckles on the top of the couch.

He doesn't take it personally – it's getting close to four in the morning, and she looks like she hasn't slept well in weeks. Instead, he gets up off the couch, and gently rearranges her body across the length of the cushions. She doesn't even seem to notice – just moans slightly, when he props her head up on pillows. He considers moving her to his bed, but she looks pretty settled on the couch, and he doesn't want to wake her. So he finds a spare blanket in the linen closet, and tucks her in.

It's the weekend, so she doesn't have to get up for work. She can sleep in and he can make her breakfast, if she wants. He kisses her forehead and retreats to his bedroom to let her sleep.

The reason she can't sleep is because of the nightmares. Endless streams of them, every night, no matter what the therapist tells her to try, no matter what she self-medicates with.

But on Tony's couch, in Tony's blanket, the scent of him a warm cocoon around her – she sleeps the whole night without interruption for the first time since she came home.

She wakes up on Saturday morning on Tony's couch to the scent of burning pancakes.

Evidently, Tony tried to make breakfast – for what she would bet is the first time in this kitchen – and he's trying not to yelp too loudly as he scrapes at the scorched, gooey pancake stuck to the pan. By the time he overturns it, it's inedible, so he throws it out and tries again.

Ziva stretches out her arms and pads sleepily into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. "Good morning," she says, smiling at him.

"Oh, hey, you're up," he says. "Sorry. Breakfast will be…um, a while."

"It's okay. I can go get coffee. And bagels, if you want."

"No, I'll do it. This isn't going anywhere anyway." He turns off the stove, and hesitates over the blackened pan. "I'll take care of that later."

He grabs his keys and his wallet, and rushes out of the apartment.

While he's gone, she cleans up the mess from the attempted pancakes for him. He forgot to oil the pan before he started, and he had the heat too high – but the thought was very sweet. She scrapes off as much of the burned pancake as she can, then puts the pan away. The apartment is small but sunny, and she realizes that she has only ever been inside his apartment the time he got drunk after the Le Grenouille mission. And that was just to drop him off in his bed and sneak out the door.

Intrigued, she takes a quick self-guided tour through his apartment. His living room, where they danced last night – a cozy, sparsely furnished place, with a couple of framed film posters and the state of the art television. His kitchen, where he made her coffee and tried to make her pancakes – there isn't much in here, and she's sure he rarely, if ever, ventures in here for more than coffee or beer.

She makes her way down the hall and peers into his bathroom – as messy as she expects it to be, his towel tossed into his sink, his shaving accessories scattered around the little shelf below his mirror, the toilet seat up (of course). And then his bedroom, which she has only entered once in the dark.

Surprisingly, his bedroom is the sparsest room in the place. Or perhaps that shouldn't surprise her. He probably only comes in here to sleep, and because of their jobs, he doesn't even much of that. But it still makes her a little sad, seeing his bed – a queen, not a king – and the simple comforter, the little table with the bedside lamp, no overflowing bookshelf or pictures on the wall. He has a couple of cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, but she doesn't dare look inside.

So this is his world, the place where he goes when he's gone. She flops back on his couch to wait for him, and she is astonished by how comfortably she can do that. His apartment is small and clearly a little bit neglected – how could it not be, with the hours Gibbs keeps? – but it's his home, and it's comfortable, and she is content here.

He returns shortly after her tour, with coffee and cinnamon bread. She curls up on the couch and eats, suddenly finding that she is ravenous. He settles in across from her, as he did last night, and the two of them share breakfast, saying nothing yet everything.