Disclaimer: NCIS is not legally mine. Yet.
Of Tombstones and Days Gone By
The familiar scent of sawdust with an underlying hint of bourbon filled Gibbs's lungs as he swung the door to his basement open, cherishing the comforting smell. He was looking forward to a night of rough sanding and the burning taste of bourbon.
Alas, it was not to be.
To anyone else the dim room would appear empty but his sniper vision often caught what other people missed. He paused at the top of the stairs, gazing into the blackness. His ears picked up the sound of gentle breathing, alerting him to the presence of another. Instead of calling out he descended the steps softly, the quiet creak of the stairs announcing his presence to his late night visitor.
Once he reached the last step Gibbs casually flicked the light switch on, causing his basement's occupant to groan at the sudden light that filled the room. Gibbs's eyes settled on the floor beside his boat, an eyebrow raised in surprise. What was his probationary agent doing here at this time of night?
Ziva was sprawled across his floor, lying on her back in what looked like a rather uncomfortable position. Messy brown curls were smeared around her face like a black halo, a few strands of hair resting on her cheek. She had shuffled slightly when he had turned on the lights, a hand thrown over her face to protect her from the glare of the illuminated bulbs, yellowed with age.
Gibbs waited for her explanation for a few moments, staring at her unmoving figure. Her breathing was deep and relaxed but he didn't doubt for a moment that she wasn't awake. However, the silence continued and he sighed to himself, stepping casually over her body as he made for his workbench as if her sleeping on his floor was a normal occurrence.
The sounds of scrapping soon covered the previous silence as he set to work, expertly carving into the block of wood that lay before him. He waited patiently for her to speak, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before she voiced her thoughts. However, as the minutes stretched into hours of uncomfortable silence (at least to him it felt so) Gibbs found himself forced to re-think his strategy.
'You know, the spare bedroom upstairs is a lot more comfortable than the floor,' he began casually, forcing her into conversation. Sometimes Ziva needed to be prodded at before she was willing to voice her concerns.
'My brother wasn't killed in your spare bedroom,' came her steady reply moments later, solidifying his belief that she had been awake the whole time. The sound of his methodical sanding stopped at her response, plunging the room into an ever more tension filled silence. Without making a noise he pivoted to look at her, disbelieving eyes raking over her relaxed position.
Gibbs noted with a slightly nauseated feeling that she was, in fact, sprawled over the very spot where years ago she had shot her brother dead, the only testimony to that night being the very faint bloodstain that had soaked into the wood. He remained silent, turning back to his work and continuing again. His unasked question hung heavy in the air between them, almost making it difficult to breath.
Why are you sleeping on your brother's deathbed?
His sensitive hearing picked up on the sound of the pull of fabric against wood as she presumably shuffled into a more comfortable position, the dull echo of her head hitting the floor again vibrating through the floorboards she rested on. The chisel in his hand felt unusually heavy but Gibbs persisted in his work, knowing that the scape of his instrument against the wood would make Ziva more likely to talk. He had learnt long ago that rhythmic sounds often comforted people and helped them to open up. He had had many chances to put this knowledge to the test and it had yet to fail him. Tonight wasn't an exception.
'Our house in Tel Aviv was in quite a remote area,' she began, her voice slightly hoarse. Gibbs wondered who she was referring to when she said 'our'; which of her wonderful family members had kept Ziva company in the empty building she had spent her tragic childhood in? Her father would rarely have been home, especially if they lived in the suburbs where he was so far from his work.
Her brother (and despite himself Gibbs felt the disgust crawl up his throat at the thought that the monster that killed Kate was also once loved and cherished by Ziva) would probably have been her main source of conversation and companionship until he was called away by Mossad. Gibbs could imagine quite clearly the two of them chasing each other through the garden as children, later as teenagers learning to hold a gun and shoot side by side.
Ziva rarely spoke of her mother and Gibbs presumed that either she was dead or had severed all communication with her children when they had decided to follow their father's footsteps and become Mossad. He could envisage her as well, slowly creeping further and further away from her two eldest as they grew into the perfect soldiers that their father had moulded them into. She would not have been a very strong-willed woman to have let her husband use her children like that, Gibbs mused.
He imagined her as very young, very naïve to believe that she could marry Eli and live a happy life with the Deputy Director of Mossad (at that point he had yet to reach the top). She would have tolerated Ari's presence in her house but never taken to him, the illegitimate son of her husband's previous girlfriend. Gibbs saw her in his mind's eye, a small, fragile woman with her daughter's curly brown hair and compassionate, young brown eyes. He doubted that Ziva's had remained as innocent as her mother's for long.
'It was after Tali died that I came back,' Gibbs was drawn back into the present by the soft sound of his agent's voice. Her tone was barely more than a whisper as if she was confiding in him some great secret that must never be repeated. Visions of her family life disappeared, replaced in Gibbs's mind by the startlingly vivid image of a much younger Ziva.
This Ziva had short, curly hair though that fell around her shoulders and big, inquisitive brown eyes that peered out of her tanned face. She was wearing a summer dress, a chain of daisies around her neck. Out of all of the family she had it was Tali Ziva spoke the least of. In fact, Gibbs hadn't even known that she had a sister until he read her file a few weeks after she joined the team.
He had felt closer to her somehow, knowing that her younger sister had died years ago in a Hamas bombing attack and that her older brother had died by her own hand. How terrible it must be, reflected an only child Gibbs, to lose both siblings.
'I would lie in my bed at night, staring up at my ceiling and remembering her. The house was so empty, so lonely in those few months that I stayed there. I used to spend my days walking along the corridors and thinking about her. The whole place felt so very dull without her presence. And at night it was the worst, when everything turned black and I had to close my eyes and try to sleep. All I could see was her burnt, charred body behind my closed lids. It was torture,' she paused for a moment, her steady voice faltering as he continued his methodical woodwork.
'There was a cemetery just across the road from where we lived,' Ziva continued breathily. 'Tali was buried there. I picked out her headstone myself. White marble with gold lettering. It looked truly beautiful in the moonlight,' her voice taped off slightly, lost in memory. Gibbs took a few deep breaths, reminding himself that Ziva needed to get this off of her chest no matter how much it hurt her.
'I used to climb out of my window every night at about eleven and cross the road in my pyjamas. The lodge keeper learnt to leave the gate unlocked after I woke him consecutively for about a week. The first night I just…stood by her grave, just stared at the place she was buried. I think spent the whole night there in my cotton pyjamas. After that it became a normal ritual. I got so tired one night that I just sat down with my back against her headstone and fell asleep.
'Soon I just came there for the purpose of sleeping. I'd lie back on the wet grass and stare up at the stars and watch the moon rise. It always brought me peace,' she finished, a soft sigh escaping her lips. 'I just needed some peace tonight, Gibbs, and I didn't feel like booking a ticket to Israel just to be able to get that.'
'So you came here,' his deep tone matched hers, both speaking in voices just above whispers. Usually Gibbs sat silently as his agents poured out there problems to him but somehow he knew that Ziva would never admit to why she came here unless he gave her an opening.
'So since I couldn't get to Tali's tomb I came to Ari's,' she admitted in a slightly guilty voice as if she was afraid of reprimand. Gibbs nodded silently, the chair scraping against the floorboards as he stood. Her eyes were open and the two orbs of brown were fixed on the ceiling, brighter than usual. He dropped into a crouch next to her, pressing a kiss to her forehead like he used to do for Kelly when his little girl had to go to bed.
'Shalom,' he whispered, straightening up again and walking quietly up the stairs to his own bed. Sleeping on graves, surrounded by the mournful silence that lay in the gardens of death…
...How bittersweet it would be to gain comfort from the dead. How fitting.