Title: Rule Number One
Disclaimers: NCIS, the rights to the show and its characters do not belong to me. No money was made by this. Inspired by the song "Willingly", which belongs to Vertical Horizon.
A/N: English is not my native language. So please forgive me my grammar and spelling mistakes.
Spoilers: Kill Ari I and II, I guess. And pretty much any episode that revealed something about Ziva's childhood and/or family. Takes place when Ziva comes back after escorting Ari's body back to Israel.
Pairing: none
Summary: Years after a warning from her father, Ziva muses on its significance.
A/N2: I just wanted to THANK YOU all for your reviews on Summer Nights, and those who favorited the story.
There had not been many rules when she was a child. Apart from the necessary warnings not to talk to strangers, not to walk around outside after sunset, and to always be aware of her surroundings. Their parents had not imposed bedtimes on their children once they had started school. Meetings with friends were limited, yes. But the important rules, the rules she now lived her life by, had begun when she had had her Bat Mitzvah at the age of thirteen. Subtle advices, pointing out suspicious behavior, or were someone could have a weapon concealed on them.
By the time she was sixteen, she was already training for her later career in Mossad. But the most important rule he had told her on the day she had to leave for her mandatory military training. He had embraced her, longer than he usually did. Long enough that one could think he actually cared and was genuinely worried. That was when he had said it, the mantra that had been repeating in her head over and over again on countless undercover missions, during operations with foreign agencies and their operatives. And the way it had been altered and shortened during the years that had passed.
Do not fall in love. Don't fall in love. Don't love. No love.
When her mother and Tali had died, their relationship had shifted slightly. As a child, she had adored him. Time together with her father had been so limited that it was a precious gift if he so much as tucked her and Tali in at night. The one time it happened was something to be memorized precisely, to be kept close to her hear, to recall during the following weeks, sometimes months until it happened again.
She had always wanted his attention. She had craved it. Her mother had tried to make up for their father's absence, she had spent all of her time with her and Tali. And while her sister had been content and taken more after her mother, Ziva had been a tomboy, and her longing for her father had never ceased. When Tali ran to her mother after another of their dance recitals and smiled in her embrace, Ziva had hung back, stubbornly blinking away her tears and ignoring the pain in her heart that came with the realization that he had not been there, again. That he had missed another recital, another evening when his work had been more important than his two daughters.
Her father never talked about her finding a man she loved. It was always about marriage. Sometimes it was about finding someone she liked, but the dreaded L-word was carefully avoided. By both of them.
Looking back now, as an adult, she saw the signs in his actions. And now she did not have to wonder any more if he had ever loved her mother the way she had loved him. If his marriage had been one out of love for him. The moment she shot Ari she had realized that her father was a cold monster incapable of loving someone.
She had felt her heart break when she came back to NCIS after the whole Ari-fiasco. Because it was then that she realized that her heart was empty, too. In seeing the banter between the team members, she was forced to face the truth. She had loved her mother and her siblings so much that now they were dead, she did not have any love left to give.
And the one person besides them, the one she had loved like no one else, the hero of her young childhood, he was not the man she had thought he was. She was spent, did not have it in her to love any more. Because he had been right with his warning.
Loving someone was a weakness a Mossad agent was not able to afford.
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