Ziva David (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bywiseguidance) wrote2013-04-21 06:16 pm
bywiseguidance) wrote2013-04-21 06:16 pm
seventh [text/action for Justice Farm]
[A lot can happen in a week. Even more so when that week involves falling asleep and living out the span of months at home. Ziva has been silent and still up until now, the next thing to comatose.
Late in the evening, she begins to stir, coming out of the deeper sleep into something more restless. Small noises begin to come out of her throat, a strangled mix of sobs and what may have been words, had she been more awake to give them voice. She's tangled in sheets and blanket, her expression pained and anxious even in sleep.
It's fairly obvious that she's not going to be so lucky as to wake peacefully. Jethro whines from his place at the side of the bed, where he's been sitting for most of the last week--he senses her anxiety and winding tension.]
[A few hours later, a text post appears on the network.]
Steve. I apologize for worrying you.
That said, I am awake again.
[...and since she's still in mourning, she doesn't really want to talk much more besides that. There's no more from her.]
Late in the evening, she begins to stir, coming out of the deeper sleep into something more restless. Small noises begin to come out of her throat, a strangled mix of sobs and what may have been words, had she been more awake to give them voice. She's tangled in sheets and blanket, her expression pained and anxious even in sleep.
It's fairly obvious that she's not going to be so lucky as to wake peacefully. Jethro whines from his place at the side of the bed, where he's been sitting for most of the last week--he senses her anxiety and winding tension.]
[A few hours later, a text post appears on the network.]
Steve. I apologize for worrying you.
That said, I am awake again.
[...and since she's still in mourning, she doesn't really want to talk much more besides that. There's no more from her.]
AW YEAH ACTION
It's Gandhina, really, who hears her coming to first, both from the noises Ziva's making and from Jethro's reaction to them. That's her cue to take off and go fetch Albert, who thankfully has been extracted from his lab earlier in the day via massive green glitterbear, and is available for response.
Not that he wouldn't have been, otherwise. This is Ziva we're talking about.
He makes sure she's alert before he appears in the doorway, a mug of steaming coffee already in his hands.]
Hey.
WOO ACTION FOREVER
She had gone to sleep in Tony's small twin bed, and woke up...back here. No Tony, no Shmeil, but Albert--Albert, Harry, Carmen, Hiccup, the people she considered friends here. They didn't know what had just happened.
It only takes a moment for Ziva's face to go from hurt and dark to...just dark, a look on her face like all the lights are off and the shutters are closed, pretending that everything is alright, but not very well.]
...Albert.
no subject
Nice to see you up and at 'em. You okay?
[He comes in slow, holding out the coffee like a peace offering.]
no subject
Yes.
[No. She is far from okay, and here she doesn't have to pretend--the fact that Eli was a powerful political figure, murdered on US soil, made it necessary to avoid conflict--but she is anyway.]
I am sorry for the trouble.
no subject
[There's a chair near the desk; he's used it for moments like this before, when it was Reid he was dragging to bed and keeping vigil over. He pulls it out and takes a seat there now, positioning it close by so they can talk, but keeping a comfortable distance out of respect, too.]
You've been out about a week. I checked you out when you collapsed; when you're feeling a little more up to it, you should let me give you another look-over, just to be safe.
no subject
[Ziva looks down into the coffee mug, tilting it slightly back and forth to watch the liquid move.]
I do not feel like I have hit my head or anything. Is this not at least passably common? Or are you just interested in the phenomenon.
[Science, you see.]
no subject
Who knows what the hell this place does to people when it knocks them cold like that. It's not unheard of. Nobody seems to have a clue how it happens, or any pattern of people it hits. Same goes for the way people get yanked in and kicked out.
[Cooper's gone. Reid's gone. It's like someone dropped a glass on the kitchen floor; smash, crash, and now there are pieces left to pick up.]
I'm interested in you being okay.
no subject
Really. I am fine. This is not the first time I have been...yanked about by this place, or so I was told.
[And she believes Hiccup, so. If he says she had been here before, she was, even if she couldn't remember it.]
What of everyone else?
no subject
Coop's still gone. The kid's gone. Miss Scarlet's AWOL with the vikings — I have a sneaking suspicion Harry knows where she is, but he's not coughing it up. I'm here, he's here. Gordon's here.
[He pauses.]
You're back.
no subject
[That...doesn't surprise her. Just another tired retread of losing people, or drifting away from them, or somehow just...anyway.]
Cooper, I remembered. He...will be fine, yes?
[Albert would know, they're from the same world. She reaches up with one hand to brush her hair back from her face.]
...I am back.
[She's not sure whether to be relieved or immensely frustrated. She can't find the people responsible for her father's death here, she can't put him to rest. If she wasn't so tired she's fairly sure she'd be angry about that.]
no subject
[He doesn't say more on that. What else is there to say? He's just gone. Here today, gone tomorrow. And it turns out the remark fits for all three of her statements, so he leaves it there as an answer to all of them, silent and brooding for a minute in his own thoughts.
Then, at last, he puts his hand out and waits. She can take it if she wants to; she can ignore it if she doesn't. He's not getting sentimental. He's just...
...something.]
You look like hell.
[WELL IT'S TRUE.]
no subject
I may have been asleep for a week, but it was hardly restful. I do not know what else to say.
Text
Is everything okay?
Text
[Though the timestamp on the message--some 10 minutes later, for such a short message, might indicate some indecision and/or hesitation on her part.]
no subject
[Meanwhile, Gandhina apparently decides that she wants in on this hand-touching as well, and trots right over to shove her nose into the middle of it. HELLO, ZIVA.
Naturally, Albert gives her a casually disgusted bop on the nose for her efforts.]
Last time you dropped in I was checking you for a concussion, remember?
[He hasn't forgotten the day she arrived, after all.]
no subject
Yes, I do. I was fine then as well.
[She's going to give in with all kinds of bad grace though.]
But if it will ease your mind. I am sure you would also like your bedroom back.
[Hers would have been perfectly fine, you know.]
no subject
[OH HELLO ZIVA BEST FRIEND MORE SCRITCHIES PLEASE.]
It was bad enough you dropped like a sack of potatoes. I didn't really feel like hauling you around like one any further than I had to.
no subject
I appreciate your care.
[Surely between all of them there's at least one critter capable of carrying a small, comatose woman about.]
I do not think I will be sleeping again, so if you would like to finish the night in your own bed, I will go elsewhere.
Text | Private
What happened? You collapsed, no one said one way or another about what was happening, but someone took care of you, I assume?
Text | Private
As for that...yes, I live with a group here, they took care of me in the meantime.
no subject
I was up. I've been pulling long nights in the lab. Getting near a breakthrough, too, even with the setbacks.
[He sees you trying to get rid of him, Ziva. He's well aware of the tactic; it's one of his favorites himself.]
Look. [But then he actually stops short of launching into one of his lectures, reassessing what he was about to say and possibly even tweaking it accordingly.] Everybody's a mess right now. And every damn one of us has a modus operandi of sweeping it under the rug and getting on with it, 'cause that's what you do in our line of work. Harry had to drag me out of the lab earlier with a bear, for god's sake.
[But let's not talk about that.]
We all know the drill. You pick yourself up and you move on. Just...maybe this time around that's not the right idea. For any of us.
[He reaches to give Gandhina a scratch of his own.]
Just think about it.
no subject
...
[Ziva just continues to administer careful scritches in thoughtful silence, head ducked down. Eventually, she quietly says:]
...the last words I will have ever said to my father...was that I will never be able to forgive him. Now, I am not sure if I regret that, or if it is still the truth.
no subject
Also what the hell do you even say to something like that. Where do you start? Sorry about your dad? Something consolatory about forgiveness? Some kind of assurance that he knew you didn't mean it, or maybe that you weren't wrong and he deserved it? One sentence and there's a million things to say in it, and normally Albert would approve of that for how concisely and efficiently it addressed so much, but for the moment it really just kind of sucks.]
And now you're gonna play "what if" for the rest of your life. Right?
no subject
[This is why she can't sleep at night, Albert. Jethro whines and lays his big-jawed fuzzy head on the bed by Ziva's side. Sorry, Gandhina, her boy's gotta get some love too.]
Text | Private
Sounds like one hell of a disorientating experience. You okay?
Text | Private
I will be.
Text | Private
Okay.
I'm glad to hear you're awake.
[he really can't think of what else to say, he doesn't know her well enough take the conversation elsewhere]
Text | Private
even with a super late response.]Thank you. For your concern.
[Even if she's kinda tired of it, she knows...she's not in a good place and that is obvious. It'd be stranger if no one noticed.]