Excellent work. Nice use of the shifting POV, especially to show just HOW concussed Ziva is while pretending to be "fine." I like the flow of your prose, the way that it has structure but still moves steadily and organically through the episode. I like especially the way you used the bits of the episode to ground the story at which point each scene occurs, but at every stage ADDED, either observations or thoughts or dialogue to make it more than just a recap and to enrich the story as seen in the ep. Particularly nice is McGee's babbling fear with "Ziva's been shot" and Tony's response...then the recurring sense of the taste of blood and fear. Nice work.

You really have a knack for getting into people's heads. It's amazing. and all the references & sensory stuff like that, it makes the story whole.

Well done!

aw! sad and cute at the same time!

hmm... you know I think I've read this before.

I'm surprised I didn't review it the first time.

you've nailed the characters. great job. :)

Hey!

I'm reading and reading and reading... it's raining outside and I should be doing stuff, but it's the perfect day for escaping reality... never read ncis before, and I can't reconstruct how I stumbled into this section on ... but I started reading your ffs because your name made me smile... absolutely ingenious nickname, when I'm through with your stories I'll be searching for "the little prince" *sigh*...

anyway... enough rambling... I'm a bad reviewer today... don't know how many stories of yours I've allready absorbed without doing my duty and leaving a review... so here it is: brilliant writing, sweet and sad and believable scenes, I can see them in my head while reading and the leave me smiling... I'll go reading some more, just wanted to let you know that you SHOULD get (*goes looking how many stories you've written*) 51 reviews from me... because I've read a lot, and probably won't get away from the screen till I've been through all of them... but since I'm a bad reviewer it'll probably stay one review, that hopefully gets the message across: great writing!

thanks for making my day,

Lie

(excuse all in unintelligibility, english isn't my native language ;-) )

This is just devastating and fantastic all at once. Your characterization is so deep and real. Absolutely loved Gibbs, who wasn't even the focus of the story. He was just spot on. And last but not least, the tying in of the past into the present was so seamlessly done. I'm in awe. Love all your writing and can't wait to read more!

Oh I love this. This is such a perfect supplement to the episode.

I really liked this story.

The sense memory of when Kate was shot was very potent and worked well here. As did the later comparisons to the Kate situation. I so hadn't considered the parallels when watching the episode, but I like that you drew them. (I apparently missed a lot when watching and really need to watch it again!)

For whatever reason, I liked this line... "He replied with the only question he could think of, “She’s broken?"" I could picture that very easily.

I loved this line as well... "She didn’t want his pity. He had offered his friendship, his companionship, his ear, but she knew they came with an unspoken, unconscious caveat. And she didn’t want his pity." It works well with my view of Ziva and what I saw in the episode. She was doubting herself and her abilities; the last thing she would want was pity.

"He was sure he hadn’t started grinning like an idiot until she’s slammed the door. Pretty sure." Hee!

I liked the ending, how everything was starting to get back to 'normal'.

I enjoyed reading this a lot. Thanks for sharing.

Cute.

I was hoping for something like this from you after the episode and you didn't disappoint. I love it. As always, wonderfully IC and well done.

Very nice! and so very sensical :)

wonderful wonderful work. :) loved this episode and absolutely love this. :) great work.

Nicely done. I wonder if this actually happened. You know what would be awesome? If next weeks episode (well, after the theme song) starts with Tony and Ziva in bed. That'd be off the hook! Hahaha.

Once again, great fic.

Lovely. I figured this ep would inspire a lot of Tiva fic, and this was a great end to the story. Thanks for writing!