Disclaimer: I own none of the characters etc.
This is just a short one-shot that has been sitting on my iPod for the better part of a year, so I decided to publish it. It is set just after 'Kill Ari Part 2'.
Close to Death's Door
It sometimes dawned on her how close she has come to dying on so many occasions. Death was nearly part of the job in Mossad. She stayed alive by her willpower to be the best of the best and her stubbornness never to be captured alive. She never addressed the closeness of death when she was in Mossad. Death wasn't an option for her. Fight and fight again. Never give in and never give up. People died. She had known that since she was a young girl, when she had first met death. From then on, death was no stranger to this young woman, and never more so than when it had taken her young sister and mother into its grasp as well. Death might have become a friend has she allowed it to, but to allow death to be a friend was to accept that death was justified, that it was reasonable.
It had been a shock for her when her father had ordered her to kill her own brother. She believed him innocent. She was familiar to death, even the deaths of her family. But her brother was a survivor, like her. She had learned to ignore the pain death caused. Sent to America, she was startled awake as she saw them suffer the loss of a dear friend and colleague. They let death hurt and blind them. And her brother was the cause, the reason of their pain. She had always strived to be the best so her father would be proud of her. She couldn't imagine her father doing what her brother had said he had. He was wrong, but then again, he was right in one aspect. No, the leader of the team was not like their father; their father was very different, but she realised that her father was capable of anything. Had he not always told her that?
Perhaps her brother was right. In the end, she did what she thought was right. Not because she had been ordered to, but because the boy she had known was no longer than man she had thought he was, because she couldn't allow him to kill another innocent person, not purely on the basis that he thought that the leader was similar to their father, and since he couldn't kill their father, he would kill the leader instead. People are always held accountable for their crimes in the end, and her brother could not an exception. She did not regret what she had done; it had made the world just slightly better and one more life could be saved.
That was all she wanted. She served to protect; in whatever form it needed to take. That was her duty. That was her life.
Please review! If I get enough reviews asking for it, I may publish another chapter on Ziva's feelings about her family in Season 10, after Eli's death.