A/N: This is my first NCIS Fic, so hopefully someone out there will enjoy it. Clearly there's not much plot here, but I'm still working on my plot skills. :0)

Please review if you enjoy it and/or have meaningful feedback!!

Of course, I don't own these characters, etc.


Ari,

Would that I might ask you why. Would that I might tell you why. Would that our time might not be over, my dear brother.

Why, Ari? Why must I lose everything that means anything to me? Even, it seems, myself. For who can I be, if not your sister ... and how can I be both your sister and your killer? Am I anything at all, Ari? Is there any of me left? Perhaps it is for the best, perhaps I have finally gone where no one else can hurt me ... where no one can make me cry ... or laugh ... or smile. You made me smile when no one else could, and I ... I killed you.

Do you remember when you told me never to second-guess myself? Well, since that day, I never have, until now. What did I owe Agent Gibbs? Perhaps I should have let him die. Perhaps I should have let you live. Perhaps I made the biggest mistake of my life in that moment of choice. Would you change your mind if you knew what I had done? Would you want me to doubt this choice that I made? Once I would have presumed to know what you would answer, but now ... now I am not sure if I ever knew you at all. And your answer would not matter. I would doubt myself either way.

What happened to us, Ari? How did we become like shattered diamonds - a multitude of faces, a chaos of reflections, and a myriad of contradictions? How did our selves become so confused ... and so confusing? Knowing what I know about myself, perhaps I should have realized how little I knew about you. I insist to myself that I knew the real you, that you knew the real me, but I must have been mistaken. If death is real, those who deliver it must also be real, whether they wish to be or not.

Perhaps none of my faces is more real than the others. The daughter and the sister, the child and the dreamer, they are no more or less powerful than the killer and the liar, the spy and the assassin. I would have liked to have thought that I was your sister before all else, because I thought you were my brother in the very same, hopeless way. Now I know different. I know better. But it doesn't make me feel better. It makes me feel ... worse than dead.

Ari, I wish I was dead. Instead of you. Because I would rather be causing you all this pain than having to suffer through it. And would you have suffered, if our positions were reversed? Or did I mean even less to you than I imagine?

Do you remember when you wiped a tear off my face and told me not to cry? It was weeks after Tali died, but the first time I'd seen you. The first time you'd seen me twisted by my thirst for revenge. And you held my hands between us and said, "Don't do this, Ziva, don't let them destroy you, too." And then I cried, and you held me close and whispered into my hair. "Don't cry," you said, "Please don't cry." And I tried so hard for you, but without the outlet of tears, without the outlet of anger, what was I supposed to do, Ari? Where was I supposed to put my pain?

I am crying now, and there is no one here to tell me not to. There is no one here who cares enough. Oh Ari, I am sorry. I know you didn't mean to trap me with your words, but I could never be unhurt, no matter how much you wanted it to be so.

I am crying now, because who is there to take revenge upon? Agent Gibbs? How can I, when it turns out he was right all along? How can I, when it was my own false belief in you that allowed him to trap me thus? Our father? How can I, when he is the only thing I have left in this world ... a painful, twisted, bitter thing, but something nonetheless. I may not want to speak to him, see him, or hear his voice, but I cannot remove him from the world. I cannot spill any more of my own blood.

Who is there to take revenge upon other than myself? And how can I take revenge upon myself when it would be both punishment and reward, both pain and relief. Death would be the easy way out. I will not shame you with such weakness.

Do you remember one afternoon in Tel Aviv, when I was still a child and you were only just becoming a man? I was running. I flew around a corner and right into your arms, and you put a hand over my mouth and pulled me under the stairs quicker than lightning while my pursuers sped past unawares. It was just a game, a child's war game of adolescent secrecy and infantile strategy, and I was outnumbered and afraid ... because what would father say if I lost? What would he do? And right there beneath the stairs, you told me something I never forgot. "Ziva," you said, "So long as I am around, you will never lose. I will not let you. I cannot let you, because I love you." And then you showed me how to win. And when children's games turned into life and death, you taught me how to stay alive. You taught me the kind of things that separate the good from the best, and you always told me to use the knowledge well because you needed me to win, you needed me to stay alive.

I did as you asked, Ari. I stayed alive. Why couldn't you?

I needed you, too. And now I am all alone.

Z