Summary: Ziva isn't the type to really pine away for someone and wait by the phone, but she's in Israel now and Tony hasn't made any effort toward communicating with her … her father is pushing her toward Michael Rivkin while her heart is aching for Tony, and struggling with the pain of losing Jenny. She's hurting, she's sad, and she hasn't heard from Tony at all, so she agrees to go on the date with Michael, and although she's not as comfortable with him and he doesn't make her smile the way Tony might have, she can see that her father is proud and it's nice to not be alone, so she builds a relationship with him.
Written for Ziva David Week on Tumblr. I have not posted the other fics as they have been short, but you may find them on my blog (same username).
This is an arc that I feel has been given very little attention to, and I can sort of see why – the Somalia arc and Ziva's rebirth as an American citizen is perhaps one of the strongest arcs of the series. But I feel like there's just so much to this time period between Season 5 and Season 6 while Ziva was in Israel, including the events leading to the ending of Season 6 where she makes the choice between her loyalty to Israel and her loyalty to the team. Maybe that all started here, during these months.
"Are you happy to be home?"
Her father's voice interrupted her silent reflection as she sat staring at the dossier she'd been given on her newest assignment for Mossad, her mind slipping into reading Hebrew again with ease, despite her time spent overseas and the transition her thoughts had made, at some unspecified time, into English.
"Home," she repeated, and Ziva didn't have any further answer. It had been three years working alongside American federal agents in what should have felt like a foreign land, no more home than anywhere else she'd traveled, but suddenly the way her father phrased the question – as though there could be no other place than Israel to call home – had felt strange to her, unfitting somehow.
It was not the first time since arriving back in Tel Aviv that Ziva had felt like she didn't belong, and she was certain, as she watched her father's curt nod of dismissal and stepped out of his office, that it would not be the last.
Three weeks. She'd been here for three weeks, and although her belongings had reached Israel and been put away a week after she had, she still hadn't felt any grandiose feeling of homecoming.
No, it was homesickness she felt.
Somewhere in the course of the three years she'd spent as Officer among Federal Agents, foreigner among natives, Ziva had begun to feel at home in DC, and being told that she would be returning to Israel and Mossad had felt like being punched in the gut. After everything that had happened, for it to just … end.
She had exchanged e-mails with McGee and Abby, but Tony and Gibbs had been silent. To be fair, she noted with a slight smile, she hadn't exactly expected to hear anything from Gibbs, given his knowledge of twenty-first century communication. But Tony … she thought, by now, she'd have at least heard something, and it pained her terribly that she hadn't.
It wasn't like I didn't try, she thought to herself, remembering how she'd gotten settled into her room at the apartment her father had set up for her and plugged in her phone, hoping for at least a message. That hadn't deterred her from dialing his number, but there was a message saying it had been disconnected.
He must have gotten a new number, she'd thought to herself as she hung up, closing her phone and staring silently at the bland apartment walls. It was hot in Israel, but the apartment had felt cold and uninviting from the moment she'd entered it.
It wasn't home.
Ziva checked her phone again as she got into her car – her Mini had finally arrived a few days ago – noting that there were no new messages or missed calls. She shook her head, trying to shake away the feeling that she was waiting for his phone call. She should not be waiting for a call, and she should not be so concerned about the lack of one. Walk away, she urged herself.
She was having trouble with walking away.
She wondered how he was doing on his new assignment, his reassignment to the middle of the ocean just as much a punishment for their colossal screw up on their protection detail as her reassignment back to Israel was.
Jenny. Ziva sighed, wiping the tear that had barely begun welling up in her eye. She was back in Mossad, probably being watched at every moment, and she dared not show any weakness, despite the pain she felt at the thought of losing her dear friend and colleague. She had told Tony not to blame himself, but only because she felt as though sheshould share the burden with him, or relieve him of it entirely.
"It was inevitable," she repeated Tony's words to the empty car, swallowing a sob that she couldn't allow to surface beneath a strangled chuckle. She'd told him then that nothing was, there was no inevitability in this life, and she'd been right, no destiny ruled above them, not even the orders given down from Directors and fathers.
But she'd thought she would have more time, and despite what they'd been through both together and separately, she had foolishly held onto hope that someday, he might turn and see her differently, in the same new light that she'd seen him under while he was with Jeanne – showing a mature side that Ziva hadn't known he'd possessed. Despite the terrible mess it had made of his heart, she still longed for him, to go to him, even now.
She thought that they would have more time.
He clearly did not feel the same way, or he would have at least sent her a quick e-mail, something to let her know that he was all right, and to inquire about her wellbeing, but he had been silent. She was about to go undercover, but she knew that when she surfaced from her mission and checked her phone and her e-mails, there would be nothing from him.
He blamed himself, she knew that, but she hadn't anticipated that he would isolate himself in his guilt. I am just as guilty as he, she thought, the image of Jenny's lifeless body lying in a pool of blood flashing before her eyes. "Damn it," she said out loud, forgetting her mother tongue in her frustration.
Ziva sighed as she turned onto her road. Nothing good could come from these thoughts, but they were hers all the same. She felt something for Tony DiNozzo, something at once shocking and unsettling but new and alarming and real, for the first time, and he'd cut her off, and it hurt.
Losing Jenny had been bad enough, but losing everything she'd come to love over the past three years? How was she supposed to pretend to be okay with that, after all this time?
Her phone rang, interrupting her thoughts, and Michael's voice came through the receiver after she answered the call. Michael was a friend and a colleague, someone with whom she was expected to work "very closely," her father had said.
He meant, Ziva corrected in her mind, get involved. "Will you come out to dinner with me, to discuss the case?" she heard him asking, and she felt the panic rise at the thought of discussing a case over dinner with Michael, the way both he and her father seemed to pull her toward him at an alarming rate.
She knew what they were doing, and she did not like it. "Okay," she replied, nearly choking on the word, knowing that neither Michael nor her father would give up if she refused.
"Good, I'll arrive at your apartment at seven," Michael's pleased tone came through, and it was all she could do not to scream and throw the phone out the window of her car and into oncoming traffic. Why can we not go back, she wondered, to the way it was, before Jeanne, before Jenny, before Israel?
Before she felt like everything she'd worked for had started coming apart.
She gave one final, "Okay," to Michael before hanging up the phone, looking down at it as she sat at a red light. No new missed calls. No new voicemails.
No Tony.
Perhaps then, it was not meant to be, not inevitable as she had told him, and oh, she hated being right just this one time. She would go out with Michael, and perhaps she would even have a good time, or as good as she could, for someone whose every move was planned out for her under the careful, watchful eye of her father.
Maybe she would even forget about the American she might never see again, anyway.
Ziva did not want to let go of everything she held so dear, not yet, not ever. Jenny had given her more than just a job when she'd come over to NCIS all those years ago. She'd given her a home.
But she was far from home, now, and everyone and everything she loved. From the relationship she'd never had the chance to pursue, and the man who had not given even one thought to call her, despite everything they'd gone through together. It stung, she had to admit, but she was not surprised that he'd held her so carelessly at arm's length. Perhaps that, she surmised, had been the inevitable part of it all.
So she would date Michael, for the time being. She would try, at least, if this was what her father wanted of her. She would go out with him, date him, and maybe even smile at him across the table.
She just hoped that he wouldn't be able to tell that her smile wasn't genuine.
Adds a little bit more to the line "You could have called," doesn't it? Thank you for reading.