Title: Crystal Ball
Fandom: NCIS
Author: Alidiabin
Words: 2,168
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Warnings: cannon character deaths, drug use
Spoilers: general mentions of up to S7
Parings: Tony/Ziva and Ziva/OC
Summary: A few months before her death, Tali took her sister to a fortuneteller. Fifteen years later Ziva drags her lover to a fortune teller.
Crystal Ball
A few months before Tali David's death, Tali dragged her sister Ziva to a fortune teller. Ziva sat outside while they waited. She smoked a cigarette despite telling their mother she had quit smoking. Smoking was a nasty habit she picked up from her two years and eight months in the Israeli defense forces where she was the sole woman in her unit. Ziva was contented to voice her opinions on the fortuneteller.
"This is a scam," she declared as the fortuneteller dressed like a gypsy rushed them into her tent in the fairground.
The sit in the room, which is draped in grape, colored velvet. The teller held Tali's hands while Ziva tapped her fingers restlessly on the table. The teller closes her eyes. Thinking of her lies Ziva mused.
"I see travelling." the teller said "And fire." she lets a tear fall down her aging face "I hear screaming and then I see a bright light" Ziva scoffed keeping her comments to herself after Tali scowled at her.
On a warm autumn day some months later, Ziva is sitting at a café as a group of teenagers including her sister loudly got onto a bus. They are headed to Jerusalem on a school trip. There is only a small group of them so the school decided they could travel using public busses. Tali leaned out the main window. The teacher tried to pull her back in.
"Bye Ziva" Tali shouted causing everyone to stare at Ziva "I'm going to miss you" embarrassment flushed scarlet across Ziva's cheeks; it was only a day trip. Tali would see Ziva if she drove to the suburbs that evening to have dinner with their parents. Ziva humored her sister and waved back.
The bus reached the end of the tree-lined street Tel Aviv. Then as Ziva turned to head toward the university. A loud explosion filled the air. Screams followed. Ziva turned around and saw fire. Ziva running on autopilot ran toward the screaming.
"Tali" she screamed. As she the fire engines and ambulances arrived she is pushed aside forced to stare at the blackened shell of a bus.
The funeral is small and somber. It is everything Tali would have hated. Nothing she would have wanted. Everyone wore black and had sad look etched on his or her faces. The sky was a sad shade of slate. Her father swore vengeance. Her mother fell into the black hole of depression. Ziva sat there allowing the numbness to engulf her. A noise broke any personal musings or thoughts. The other two hundred or so members of Tali's school stood dressed in a rainbow of colors on the hill above the sea of gravestones. Ziva looked up to see over one hundred red balloons floating in the sky as it turned azure.
In comparison to the five other families broken by the bomb, the David's are lucky. Tali's schoolteacher's Ms Litzaks parents lost their only child and her fiancé is forced to call the synagogue to cancel their wedding. The Oz family who lived in the street behind the David's lost the matriarch Golda who was six months pregnant with her second child. Aviv Oz is left to raise his four-year-old daughter Lyla alone. The Shamrons lost their last remaining child too just a year after their elder son had been killed serving his country. The Zohars are forced to bury a child who already had a scholarship to a prestigious university. And Mrs Stein, she is forced to watch as her daughter, son-in-law and grandson are lowered into the ground each coffin smaller than the one before it. On the other side of the strip a family too are broken a mother blames herself for her sons actions, a father can muster up no pride as he buries his son many years to old. A girlfriend is distraught at what a man she once kissed did.
Her parents' marriage breaks in their vodka scented hands. Eli is intent on vengeance. He spent the Shiva in his study plotting points on his map, reading pale papers inside manila folders and polishing his pistol. Ziva's mother Nadia is intent on joining her youngest daughter. She drinks de le casa David dry then asks her pious sister Nettie who is the only one actually sitting Shiva to get some more. Nadia now smokes in the house as Tali is no longer there to aggravate her asthma. Nadia no longer lets her hiccups of monogamy remain hidden. She parades the confused men in front of Eli in an attempt to attract his attention.
Ziva sits in numbness waiting for the time each day when her former army buddy Dan brings his brown paper bag and they climb on top of her roof and pass the precious white stick between them. She takes a long drag spluttering.
"Don't worry it increases your buzz" he told her. She laid on the flat roof. Wanting to laugh but knowing she should cry. She took two deep breaths in. The numbness engulfs her.
On the fifth day of Shiva Eli snapped. Nadia had paraded another man in front of Eli and led that man to her and Eli's bed. Nettie and any other mourners had long ago abandoned crazy town. Ziva walked straight into their fight. She cannot decipher the screaming in the dozens of different language her parents shout insults in. Eli's olive skinned hand rose above Nadia. Ziva watched as it struck her mother in slow motion. Ziva observed as Nadia fell back against the kitchen cabinet. Burgundy blood sprouting from her lips. Sobs escaped her petite body. Eli slid down onto the floor amazed at what his own hand had done. Low sobs escape his body. Ziva ran unable to handle to crying and the pain.
She stuffed clothes that clashed into her khaki backpack. She did not care if she had no shoes. She took nothing personal, nothing that her mother or father had given her, except the strip of photos taken in the photo booth the day of the fortune teller.
Edinburgh she decided as she arrived is the least Jewish place on earth. She sat among university students in a crowded bar. She eavesdropped on conversations about lecturers' with bad teeth and football players who deserved to be sacked. Men brought her drinks. All she had to do was bat an eyelid. They all ask questions about where she is from.
"France" one red haired man declared.
"No Russia" a man who was obviously from Europe declared.
"Afghanistan" a woman who had made every effort to look like a man declared.
"Israel" a familiar voice declared. Ziva turned to face Ari. She looked up. "Oh little sister" he cried in their fathers language. She stood and buried her head in his black clad chest.
"Forget it he's one of Hazza's girls," the red haired man declared. Ari relented his grip. He ordered water and sat Ziva down. The two siblings are silent. The men and woman drift away in search of other young beauties to have a private party with.
He carried her home on his back. Like the piggybacking, they used to do when they ran around Haifa as children. He sat her down on the couch of his bachelor pad where a beach towel is considered a throw cover. She sobbed. Then she told him everything. About Tali. About what her parents had done to one another. About how she wanted to die just to feel alive. He laid her down as she sobbed incoherently. He gives her a pill and slumber came easily.
Each day she fell deeper and deeper in love with Edinburgh. The days were hers for the taking. She explored the dark alleys, finding all but abandoned second hand bookshops and cafes of cultures she had never even heard of. She is free to explore and is not haunted by Tali, for Tali never walked the narrow lanes of Edinburgh.
It is at night where Ziva remembered. Therefore, she drunk, she took colorful pills, inhaled green plants and white powder, and danced in clubs and bars. Then she did something beyond stupid. She kissed Ari's roommate Martin Sedgewick as he dragged her, after they were kicked out of a club. They raced into Ari and Martins damp flat. Clothes were torn from bodies. Kisses exchanged. A condom passed between hot hands. Ari returned as the dawn appeared rosy-fingered over the shining city of Edinburgh, after a thirty-six hour shift tending to the sick of Scotland. He walked in to find his shirtless roommate with his sister lying on top him drapped only in Martins discarded shirt.
"Ari" Ziva whispered. As anger boiled inside her brother. She watched as she grabbed his red motorcycle helmet.
Martin found her later that day hiding in the public library not focusing on the book on Greece she was pretending to read.
"I do not want to talk to you" she angrily spat.
"Hazza's at the hospital" Martin uttered quietly. She left the book on Greece half open and rushed out of the library.
She ran down the white hospital corridors. Her eyes red. She was frantic. She found a nurse with a blue uniform and watch attached to her breast.
"Excuse me" Ziva asked desperately trying to form the words in a language she is not yet used to. "Where is Ari Hazwari" she asked trying to desperately to maintain composure. The nurse led her just a few more feet down the corridor. She showed Ziva into the room where Ari is hooked up on many different machines.
"He is so very lucky" the raven-haired nurse declared her accent thick. "No permanent injuries" she told Ziva. Ziva latched on to Ari's hand.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered to his ear that had a cut on it. "Please Ari I can't lose you too"
A few days later, she stood in her father's new office. It seemed the death of his youngest daughter had been rewarded with a promotion. Eli handed her the letter her mother had left her when she ran from Tel Aviv. Eli does not mention his and Nadia's impending divorce nor give details about when Nadia left, for Ziva already understood why. Ziva threw it into the bottom of her khaki bag and begun to speak.
"I want to get the men who did it," she declared. "I could not handle it if she died in vain." Eli does not say a thing. He just handed her a pile of folders.
She shot every single one of them in the center of the head. All of them close range. She watched the last gasp of air leave their bodies. She stood above them and whispered the last words all of them hear is "This is for Tali"
She never let anyone else lover her or be loved as much as she loved Tali. Even when she sat in a black dress at the funerals of friends, family members and colleagues.
Then she let Tony in. Slowly, bit by bit she let herself love him. She let him love her. She let him watch her dance. He stood memorized by each movement. After everything they have been through. Michael, Jeanne, Roy, Dana, Somalia, the Frog and Jenny's death they found one another. They exchange kisses softly. His lips touch every inch of her scarred body. Her fingers dig into his skin.
Fifteen years after Tali dragged her to the stuffy caravan in Tel Aviv, Ziva dragged Tony to a fortuneteller in a Virginia fairground. He tried to pull her back. He claimed in was crap.
"Ziva" he whined like a child. She pulled him to the booth. "This is a scam" he muttered under his breath. The fortuneteller held Ziva's hand. A smile crossed her wrinkled features.
"I see a new life," she whispered. "And the unification"
A week later, Ziva found out she was pregnant.
She lay in a hospital bed every inch of her body screaming. She moaned in agony. She closed her eyes. She was so close to giving up after long agonizing hours in labor.
"Come on Ziva" the forever sixteen-year-old Tali cried as she stood before her sister. Ziva's eyes fluttered open. She heard Tony's voice and felt his hand on hers.
She held the tiny infant many hours later, the pain and swearing of the hours before long forgotten. She looked out at the dawning day, as he newborn son slept. She looked at the date 22 March. Her son was born on what would have been Tali's 32nd birthday. Tony led the team into the hospital room.
"Meet Noah Anthony DiNozzo" Tony uttered as he moved closer to his new family. Abby and McGee cooed over the infant. Ducky asked over Ziva. Gibbs watched along a smile across his usually expressionless face. The fortuneteller had been right. Noah had been the new life who had united her new family.
A/N: My muse is obviously protesting being shut away in order for me to study. So please review something I do not understand exactly where it came from.