Pivotal Moments

Author's Note:

This will eventually be a series of scenes crossing the last season or so, filling in the gaps in the information about Ziva and Michael up to and beyond Aliyah. It is, of course, my interpretation. This scene happens during the break between seasons 5 and 6. Also, I don't really like the title, but I have to go to bed now so I'll be refreshed enough for the ninth to last day of school tomorrow! Who ever knew that teachers got more excited about it than children? Anyway, if you have a better idea for a title, I'm open to suggestion.

Disclaimer: If I could get paid for this, I would!

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August 2008: Tel Aviv

Ziva glanced up and down the hallway quickly. Finding no one, she looked back to the package in her hands. In typed Hebrew characters were her roommate's name and her own: Rebekah Meir and Ziva David. She tilted the package slowly from side to side. Nothing shifted. With another cautious glance down the hall, she relocked their mailbox and headed upstairs.

In the apartment, Rebekah was sitting at the kitchen table, case files spread around her and a steaming cup of tea at her right hand. "Ziva! Shalom," she greeted her friend.

"We got some suspicious mail," Ziva answered seriously, setting down her bag and approaching the table.

Rebekah raised her eyebrows in concern and rose to meet her. "For both of us?"

"It seems so." Ziva passed Rebekah the package and she inspected it.

"Should we bring it into the office?"

Ziva shrugged, crossed to the kitchen to pour herself some tea. "It hasn't blown up yet."

Rebekah rolled her eyes. "Fine, you open it."

Ziva smiled for the first time since entering and playfully snatched the package. Even as Rebekah opened her mouth to protest, Ziva tore the brown paper and shook out a note card and a video cassette. As she glanced over the card, she gasped.

"What?" Rebekah demanded.

Ziva snickered, then read aloud, her voice trembling with laughter. "In the future, girls, don't leave the evidence where the victim might find it."

"Why is that funny?" Rebekah demanded, worried.

Ziva struggled to control her face. "It's your father's writing. I'm pretty sure this is our sniper video."

Rebekah looked delighted for a moment at the memory, then stricken. "Do you think Ima found it?"

"I don't think we'd be alive if she had," Ziva answered, still giggling.

Rebekah laughed too, in relief. "Well, put it on." She grabbed her tea off the table and sank onto the couch while Ziva popped in the tape.

A moment later, there they were on the screen, through the camera Ziva was holding at arms' length, eighteen years old in grass-stained military fatigues, laying in Rebekah's yard in the middle of the night, feigning seriousness as they loaded their rifles with rubber bullets.

The two women wailed with laughter as they watched the girls take aim and fire silently at the rows of tulips adorning the garden, taking out one blossom at a time with fairly good aim. Rebekah fell over into Ziva as she laughed, resting her head on her friend's shoulder.

"Thank god Ima didn't find this."

"Just hope your father didn't make a copy." They fell back to giggling, trying to drink tea, and laughing too hard to drink.

After several long minutes, their breath slowed. Rebekah pulled away from Ziva and watched her face return from its sudden sunnyness to the melancholic calm that had characterized her since her return to Tel Aviv.

"So how is your adjustment going?" She hadn't brought up the subject of America in weeks; she hoped Ziva was more open to talking about it now.

Ziva sighed. "I am remembering more and more of how to live here." She shrugged, glancing at her friend. "Sometimes NCIS seems like another lifetime."

"Are you still missing them?"

Another shrug.

"Are you still missing him?" She emphasized the last word.

Ziva glared at her. "Stop suggesting that."

"Ziba, the way you talk about Tony, when you do mention any of them—" The look on Ziva's face stopped her. "Did you love him?"

Ziva shook her head, refusing to answer. After a moment, she spoke, directing her words to the coffee table. "There are so few people I have trusted in my life, who have proven themselves worthy of that trust."

Rebekah nodded.

"To find someone I can trust, who is not family, who is attractive to me…" She met Rebekah's eyes and the other woman nodded once in understanding. "I'm thirty-two years old and I've never been in love. I'm not sure I'd know if I was."

"Oh, I don't know," Rebekah answered, her voice light, "there was that one civilian in Panama…"

Ziva chuckled and grabbed up a couch pillow to toss at her.

Rebekah caught the pillow and held it tightly. "Didn't you love him?" she asked melodramatically.

"I'm not sure flings when you're twenty-two count," Ziva said grudgingly.

"How many times did Ari try to tell you that?" Rebekah teased.

Ziva rolled her eyes. They calmed again. "Yes, I miss Tony. But I will probably never see him again."

Rebekah watched Ziva clenching her mug tightly. She reached across to squeeze the back of her friend's hand. "If it helps at all, I'm glad you're back."

Ziva nodded assent, then changed the subject. "So, I got news today."

"Of what?"

"My father's pulling me off intelligence with you; he's sending me to Morocco, undercover, as a lounge singer."

"Well, great!"

"Great?"

"You have such a lovely voice."

Ziva smiled. "Thank you. Anyway, I'll be going with Rivkin. I'm not sure when I'll be back, it could be a few weeks."

Rebekah pursed her lips, her face pensive.

"What?" Ziva asked.

"Just—don't jump into anything. I know you guys had a fling back in Russia, but lately he's seemed off. I can't quite explain it. And I know you're still a mess—"

"Hey!" Ziva protested, but Rebekah waved her to silence.

"Be careful in Morocco, that's all, Zibilya."

Ziva nodded, then shrieked and dashed off the couch as Rebekah lobbed the pillow back at her.

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A/N In this chapter, Ziva got called Ziba or Zibilya; in Hebrew, the letters B and V are nearly the same, and sometimes used interchangeably. The latter nickname is a Yiddish-ization of her name, which I think makes sense in this context.

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