“Oh, no. Yeah. I thought I had reached it a long time ago but-,” he trails off- Ziva can fill in the space with any number of his dumb mistakes. He closed his eyes, allowing a brief, but indulgent montage of some of his greatest hits. The how am I still alive moments? The moments he had always taken for granted, with a wink and a nod to some invisible camera and then he was ready to be briefed for his next mission. Moving right along, no time to process what had actually happened to him. Until now. Until he, really, had no idea how he made it out this time. No one else had. Gerry opened his eyes again. mmmmm Cheetos. “not that night. I didn’t even remember it until- they brought it up.” He sat up. ”We talked about it the other day. I think everything will be alright.” But he still felt like shit. constantly. never a great moment here, these days. “everything’s always-,” he gave a thumbs up, reached for the cheetos. “dandy.”
Christ, he had always hated when someone acted this way. When there was something to clearly wrong, and they acted like such, and expected everyone around them to know that they weren’t find. but then was so vocal about being fine. That had been his life for six months. “it’s just- I don’t know why I didn’t expect them to come back.” back back, from the dead. “our lives,” our, Ziva included. “are just bizarre like that.”
she never would have thought less on gerry because of the mistakes she had done everything from watch happen, in real time, and heard about, after the fact. she had watched him grow up - had watched all the shield kids do so, really, but there was only a handful that ziva counted as friends. she thought impossibly high of him, even knowing all she did, because she knew that at his heart - he was good. better than. he might have messed things up, sometimes, and his antics might have caused an eye roll or a drawn out sigh from her, more than once, but when he came knocking ( or when he simply appeared, as the case sometimes was ), ziva never turned him away. and when it mattered, she didn’t try and make him feel any worse than what he probably already did. “that’s not ideal,” she admitted, passing off the oversized bag without a second thought - the comfort food more for him than it was for her, anyway, “but you can’t dwell on something you don’t even remember, either. because everything WILL be alright. even that.”
and she wished that there was more she could do. really. she wanted to be able offer him something more than words, because... she cared. she cared about a LOT of people, but she had been painted, of late, as someone who cared for no one - and gerry, sitting here, sharing, was proof to her that she hadn’t gone insane. that she hadn’t done what she was being blamed for, not even accidentally, or without remembering. she cared about people, and she did what she could for them, and she would never - had never changed. so of course she wanted to do MORE for him, and of course she felt bad that ultimately, she couldn’t. all she had were her words. “it’s not the natural order of things, though. is it?” hers was... a different situation. she hadn’t actually DIED, after all, no matter how widespread the belief was. but at her heart, she was a realist, taught to be so by her upbringing and shield ; and people weren’t meant to come back from legitimate death, no matter how often that seemed to happen. “it’s not what we’re taught, when we’re small. it’s supposed to be...- permanent. the fact that it isn’t, always, doesn’t make you wrong just because you didn’t expect it.
