NCIS ~ I Will Love You Thru Everything

chapter 33

The days went by, and a routine was soon established. Tony went to visit Ziva on his lunch break and after work every day. Ziva was amazed that he came every day, and they never ran out of things to talk about. Tony brought her decent food from wherever he stopped on the way so she didn't have to eat hospital food 24/7.  Finally, one night after work, Tony brought up what had been on his mind almost constantly. He had been seeing Ziva every day, without her hair done and makeup and she still looked beautiful. Her face was clear, apart from the bruises, and her hair was so soft it felt like silk when he was touching it. He had helped her sit up, held her hand thru the pain, and let her cry on his shoulder. Tony knew in his heart that he loved Ziva and knew he wanted to marry her and have children with her someday. But right now, he needed to know.."Ziva, when you first got here, you were treated for alot of cuts all over you. Some were from Lenz, but some of them..some of them, the doctor said were older." Ziva's face grew still and pale. She didn't meet Tony's eyes. "Zi.." Tony prodded. He leaned forward and took her hand. "I know this is probably something you don't like to talk about. But I need to know when, and why. And unfortunately, gibbs needs to know too. We've both been kicking ourselves for not noticing, and wondering if its something we could've prevented, or whether we missed the sadness in your eyes one day and shouldve said sonething." Ziva looked shocked. "Tony, it is not something I do alot. I kept my arms covered in long sleeves for a reason." Tony looked at her face. She wasn't lying, he could tell. "When you do it, Zi.." then he realized he was avoiding it just like she was and corrected himself, "When you cut yourself, Ziva, how does it make you feel?" Ziva looked away. She was growing slightly angry and didn't want to discuss it any longer. Tony sensed her irritation but waited. "Ziva, babe...I--" he cut off when he saw emotion sweep across her face. She looked at him with tears in her eyes. "No one has ever called me 'babe' before, Tony, and you just make my heart slam in my chest..and now, here you are, on a Saturday night when you could be partying. Here you are, holding my hand and talking to me about things that hurt me. Here you are, telling me you love me.." her voice broke. Tony moved his chair closer. He gently brushed her hair away from her face and tenderly held her face. "I love you, Ziva. I'll love you through everything" he promised. Ziva gently kissed his lips. He touched her face, memorizing every part of it. "You are so beautiful," he said lovingly. "Every part of you, I love..even the marks you have made on yourself, they are still beautiful."

Ziva listened to him say this, and searched his face and his eyes. She realized he meant every word he said to her. She swallowed. "I am..ready, Tony. I do not know what to say about the cuts, so if you had a specific question, maybe?" He gently asked her how long she'd been cutting, and how deeply. Her brow furrowed. "I think you've misunderstood, Tony..I don't cut that often and never deeply at all. I don't wish to actually harm myself alot." She saw his look of confusion and understood. "The ones the nurses were talking about, the old ones, were extremely old. From when I was a teen, right after Tali was killed." Tony felt relief. It didn't appear that she was a serious cutter, or that she was suicidal or upset with her inner self. "Every now and then, I'll accidentally slip back into the blade. But as soon as I've done it I'm upset with myself, I know I shouldn't." she explained. Tony held her wrist up to his face and kissed it. Ziva blushed and tried to wiggle it away from him, but he kept kissing it. "Every piece of you is beautiful, and I love it all." he admitted. He leaned in towards her face, but his phone buzzed. He groaned but opened it anyway. "Dinnozio." He listened briefly to the caller. "Right, I'll be there in two minutes. I'm at the hospital right now anyway, so--" he listened. Ziva could faintly hear the caller asking why he was at the hospital. It sounded like Gibbs. "Uh, just visiting Ziva." Tony answered. Gibbs did not sound happy at all. He hung up on Tony, who then hurriedly gathered his coat and papers. "Sorry, Zi..boss man calls." he apologized. Ziva kissed him goodbye and watched as he strode briskly out of the room.

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Abby had finished the photos and out them away. She fished out the packages of Ziva's clothes to check the blood and stain residue. After taking samples, she entered them all into her machine for identification analysis. She knew it would take about half an hour and that would be perfect..She had to run some other diagnostics on McGee's laptop. She had been transferring some of her files to his laptop to take with her that night at the safe house, but it had crashed. She entered some codes and the restore started. The files and pictures flashed across the screen as they restored and reloaded. Papers, papers, charts, nerd mcgee stuff, pictures of them..pictures of them?!?! Abby furiously ran thru the files. It was pictures they had taken when they had accidentally met up at a festival last year. McGee had sworn he hadnt saved them. "McGee!!" she yelled. Mcgee came into the back lab, looking innocent. "What," she pointed at the screen," are these pictures doing on here? Someone could see them!" McGee froze. "I, uh.." luckily  he was saved by beeping from Abby's machine. Abby glared at him. "You got lucky." she growled. She walked over to her machines and examined the printout of what had been on Ziva"s shirt. Blood, dust, blood..nothing unusual..blood, hair, blood..mmm. Male DNA. Ziva had sworn up and down though, that no one had touched her. Abby entered the file into the system and began to search for a DNA match. She believed it would take a while, so she turned around to berate McGee again when the beeper went off again. Abby gasped. McGee glanced up in concern. "What is it, Abs?" he asked. He came over to her just in time to see the screen go blank. "Hey!" he complained.Abby shooed him out. "I need to call Gibbs," she told him. She hit dial, and waited while it rang. "Umm, Gibbs..I need you in my lab. There's something you need to see about Ziva's evidence." Gibbs hung up and started on his way. Tony continued his desk work, unaware that Abby was about to turn his and Ziva's world upside down.

Comment what ya thought! You do not want to miss the next chapter btw - lots of stuff goes down!