Ficlet

Ok, this just came out in a stream of consciousness.  Its probably not at all canonically correct (well, its AU, but I’m referring to the characterization) and really is just me writing till I stop.  So read at your own risk. I may post it somewhere later if I feel happy with it.

EDIT:  I’m not so happy with it.  Its here to get constructive criticism.  Still a RAOR type of story.  Its actually not finished, but I couldn’t figure out how to save it from OCC ness if I continued.  It does have complete sentences though, and doesn’t end halfway through a sentence like a drabble I posted earlier (on another journal).

Sometimes she can still feel the bullet as it passes through her head.  She knows logically she can’t.  After all, it was a kill shot and if it hadn’t been for alien tech she’d have staid dead with no idea she had been shot at all.

But there are nights where she wakes up, the blankets tossed all around, pain shooting through her head and the images of Gibbs and Tony standing next to her,  faces showing shock and covered in her blood.

She should never have asked to see the case file that had been put together for that day.  Then she could have gone on not knowing what it looked like, what people described.  McGee still won’t look her in the eye, almost certain that the shot should have been for him.  Gibbs won’t let her out of his site, and Tony has just gotten distant since she came back.  Oddly enough only Abby and Ducky treat her the same as before.

There is a new girl in the office, an Officer David, who helped them track Ari down while she sat in some box coming back to life.  Ziva does a good job, but it hurts to see the others with her, almost as if she’s been cut of the picture and Ziva glued in.  Not quite the same, but it still works.  She teases McGee and Tony, and Tony teases back.  Gibbs pairs Ziva up with Tony like he used to pair her up with him.  It feels like she was replaced, but wasn’t at the same time.

So she hasn’t told anyone about the nightmares.  She doesn’t know who to tell.

It is funny.  Almost a year and a half ago she told Tony she never got nightmares.  And when she started to have them after Ari the first time, Tony had been the one to listen to her.  But somehow she doesn’t think he’ll be willing to listen this time.  He’s dealing with his own nightmares of that shooting, still dealing with feeling her blood splash over his face.  He doesn’t have to tell her, she sees it when he looks at her sometimes.  Like she is something he’s seeing that’s not really there.

But this all changes when she has that feeling during the day, in front of them all.  A shooting pain through her head.  The doctor’s call it a migraine, her team says its too soon for comfort.  So overnight observation it is.  Gibbs leaves first, wanting to tell the Director about her needing to spend the night (and she has a feeling that Gibbs has other things to say to Jenny Sheppard that have very if any to do with Kate at all) and McGee and Abby leave shortly afterwards.  They have a computer to bust into that may lead them to who killed the Petty Officer in this week’s investigation.   Ziva stands uncomfortably for awhile but leaves after saying she hopes that Kate feels better.  Which leaves Tony, who stands at the end of her bed watching her.

“How long have you been having these migraines?”  He’s got that look on his face, the one he gets when he knows she’s not saying something.  Usually its the look when she doesn’t finish a story to his satisfaction.  It also usually precedes him teasing or baiting her so she gives him a glare and some comeback.

“I don’t get them all the time.  And its getting better.”

“Not what I asked.”

“About four months.”  It had been almost four and a half months since the shooting, and three months since she was allowed back to work.  The migraines started when the nightmares did, about two weeks after she left the SGC’s hospital unit.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I didn’t feel it was necessary.  It wasn’t effecting my work and they weren’t all the time.”