"What a pretty princess!"
Ziva twirled with a wide smile and giggled at the look of adoration on Nurse Moira's face. She waved her little green wand and attempted a ballet move she'd seen a woman in town do earlier that month. It wasn't often that he got out, and she always remembered when she did.
She's six years old, with long wavy black hair and bright, innocent chocolate eyes. Her story was a tragic one, but even when the light in her eyes died, it could be lit again.
(You can't fight the tears that aren't coming...)
…
At nine, she is already a brilliant dancer. Of course, her father does not know that Nurse Moira is taking her to ballet lessons, instead of Japanese class, but it seems worth it to her, and she feels free when he body is moving, completely to her advantage. The balance is calming, the instructor's soft voice counting, "One, two, three, four," and the graceful movements of every other child who had been in this class for as long as she had. She didn't have any friends, for some reason, she just couldn't make any. She'd tried, she really had, but they thought she was odd. Finally, she accepted that as truth. You would be odd if you were raised by the Director of Mossad, she told her self sadly. But that was okay. She had her siblings, and Nurse Moira.
...
"Tali's dead."
Her head jerks up and she looks at Ari in some kind of mix of horror and disbelief. She shakes her head, and opens her mouth to tell him to stop playing mind games, she's sick of them, but in his eyes, she doesn't see the usual twinkle of mischief, just dead brown, no emotions left in them. Her throat closes and she chokes on her own tears, shoving his hand off of her wrist, and turning to her mirror. She sees a girl whose heart has been ripped out and torn in half.
"Tali..." She whimpers, and then turns back to her brother, only he's not anymore. This isn't the Ari who she'd seen yesterday, playing chess with Tali and complaining that she was cheating. This was a cold Ari, an Ari who was frozen in the cruelty of their loss.
"I'm going to kill them." Ari tells her stiffly, his fists clenched at his side. "I'm going to rip their spines from their chests."
The thing that scares her the most, is not that he says this calmly. It is not that he has gone cold. It was not, that she blamed her father. It was that she wanted to do the exact same thing.
(Sooner or later it's over, I just don't want to miss you right now)
...
Bloody bodies litter the floor, and she can't move, breathe, think.
Ari is already cleaning up their mess, but her hands are shaking, dripping blood, the knife she'd held only twenty minutes ago, on the floor, staining the white carpet red. That's okay though, it's alright.
(Not your fault.)
She looks up at Ari, as if begging him to tell her that it was their own fault, they did this, they brought it on themselves. But, how does one bring on a fate this...terrifying? Her legs finally move, leading her to the bathroom. She needs to get the blood off her hands, not her blood, shouldn't be there. Her breathing comes in shallow gasps, and she can barely steady her hands enough to turn the water knobs, but as soon as the water hits her hands, a rush of relief flows through her and she closes her eyes, seeing Tali's kind face, and finally, allowing herself to cry. To truly, cry.
(I don't want the world to see me, cause I don't think that they'd understand)
…
NCIS is foreign to her. As foreign as she is to them, she supposes. She had blood on her hands, while most of them didn't. She had so many losses, while most of them still held onto their innocence in some way. It was scary to be a part of something so different, but it was scarier to continue being the monster she'd become. She didn't even know who she was any more.
On her third day at NCIS as Ari's representative, she shoots him. Right in the head.
She sees red, and she sees all their kills together, all their days together with Tali, when they were children and Tali would tell them they were too much like each other, that they should wear name-tags so she'd know which one was which. It was a joke, a harmless one at the time, but now Ziva couldn't help but wonder, was she really that much like her brother? Would she turn out like him, killing for fun? She shuddered at the idea, and suddenly, she realised it didn't matter.
She had no one. Tali was gone. Ari was gone. She was alone.
(I don't want to go home right now)
…
She loves them. It sounds strange, wrong to her own ears, that he loves anyone after what had happened previously to her life. But she does, she loves them. She loves Abby and her odd sense of style, she loves Ducky with his long, never ending stories, she loved McGee and his geekiness that saved them many a time, she loved Gibbs for all his fatherly love and the way he genuinely cared about her, how he never let go of her when things were tough. And she loves Tony, with all his stupid movie references and his corrections whenever she said anything, and the way he looked at her, like she was something to protect, a pearl surrounded by plastic.
She loved her new life.
And maybe, she could leave the past behind, finally. Leave Tali and Ari, leave the ballet and the pain every time her father sent her away. She could finally be a new person. A new human being. There was no need for the new her to be the same monster she had been.
(All I could taste was this moment, and all I could breathe was your love)
…
First NCIS fic! Constructive Criticism is encouraged! :) Thanks for reading!