I haven't written anything in years, and then this one just sort of happened a few weeks ago, so I figured I should post it.
It's a pretty different take on Ziva's childhood.
She's just turned two years old when she gets her first spanking with the wooden spoon, the one with the long crack in it that the cooks use to mix the dough for the challah bread each week. At least the first that she remembers.
Her ima's tummy is big and round because she is getting a little sister, and Ziva forgets the Russian greeting she was taught when her grandparents come to visit. She cannot have a daughter that misbehaves, ima tells her as she's dragged into the kitchen that night. The spoon hurts, and Ziva cries until it feels like there are no more tears left in her, but ima doesn't stop until Ziva can pronounce all the words right. Almost right. Russian is hard.
Later that night her abba sneaks into her room with a glass of water and a cold, wet cloth for her backside. He pushes her hair back from her face and helps her take a sip of the water since it hurts too much to sit up. Before he leaves he tells her she should listen to her ima, that ima always knows best.
On a hot day early in the spring it starts to rain. The maid is feeding the baby and her ima is not home, so she convinces her abba to take a break from his work and come outside with her.
When the car pulls into the driveway it has stopped raining, and her ima is greeted with a beaming smile as she steps out from the back seat.
"Look ima, I making the water splash!" The look in her ima's eyes is nothing but disappointment as she sees the bare feet in the muddy puddle and the streaks of dirty brown on the pink dress and on her oldest daughter's cheek, and Ziva's back automatically straightens as her smile fades.
"Ziva, go to the back." She hesitates and looks up at her abba, hoping he can help her but knowing he'll always side with her ima. "Now."
"Come on, Rivka, she's just a kid."
"She is a girl, Eli. Girls don't get dirty and play in the mud." Ima's stare returns to Ziva, and she's already halfway across the lawn by the time the 'go kiddo' leaves abba's mouth.
When her ima meets her behind the house, where no one can see them, she makes Ziva strip out of all her clothes and sprays her with cold water from the garden hose until she's shivering and her hair is clinging limply to her face and there's not a single piece of dirt left on her. She's sent to her room without supper, and abba doesn't bring her a snack. He does not even come to her room to kiss her goodnight.
The next morning her ima takes her to the hairdresser and makes them chop off Ziva's beautiful curls. If she wants to act like a boy she gets to look like a boy, she tells her, as Ziva feels her eyes tear up at the reflection that meets her when she looks in the mirror.
Her ima had sent her to dance lessons as soon as she could walk. Ballet teaches discipline, she always said. Discipline and grace and a beautiful posture.
Ziva likes dancing. She does not mind the rules or the repetitions or the sometimes hard and grueling exercises. It is all worth it when she gets to move to the music and leap off the floor or spin around in pirouettes like she just learned. Her teacher is strict, sometimes hitting them with the cloth she's always carrying around if their backs aren't straight or their feet aren't pointed. But that's okay, cause sometimes her ima observes her dance lessons, and when she's finished there is a light in ima's eyes that Ziva rarely sees.
And if she's really good, Ziva might even get a kiss on the cheek.
Abba has a very important job. That also means they often have guests. Ima always makes her dress up in her prettiest dresses and stocking and shiny black shoes. One of the maids fix her now shoulder length hair into two twin braids with matching ribbons in the ends. She curtsies when the guests arrive and sits on her chair with her ankles crossed, just like ima taught her.
Ziva likes some of the guests better that others, like the ones who joke around and make her abba and ima laugh. One day abba has some colleagues over for dinner, and Ziva is dutifully using both her knife and her fork to eat the vegetables on her plate. The man across from her abba is talking about all the trouble his son gets in constantly, and all of the adults are laughing.
"I dropped my cup last week as well, but on her carpet." The men laugh and her abba ruffles her hair, but when she looks at her ima, Ziva knows that she's in just as much trouble now as when the accident happened.
It isn't the first time she's spoken up when she wasn't supposed to, and since the soap clearly hadn't worked, her ima uses pepper instead. With all the pepper on her tongue, Ziva starts to cough, and that only causes her to take another big breath of air and pepper.
The piano teacher is mean, Ziva thinks. She's old and grumpy and she hits Ziva's fingers whenever she makes a mistake. She's making a lot of those today, but old Mrs. Baum doesn't care that Tali was sick and kept Ziva up all night.
She's five years old, Mrs. Baum points out. She should be able to do these scales in her sleep by now.
Her ima wants her to play for the family when they come to visit during Hanukkah. All the girls on her ima's side of the family play piano, so she must not embarrass ima by messing it up.
Her right hand is hit once more and she doesn't have to look sideways to know that her teacher is shaking her head from side to side.
"You are hopeless, child. I do not know what to do with you." Ziva doesn't know either. She is just glad that ima has taken Tali to the doctor and isn't home to look at her with those stern, disappointed eyes.
Her ima is out of town for the week. When Tali is asleep one evening, Ziva sneaks away from the book she's learning how to read and goes into her father's study. She sits on a chair next to the desk and watches her father and all of the papers in front of him. He tells her all about it while he works, about duty and country and why his work is so important. Ziva listens amazed, asking questions she wouldn't dare ask when her ima is around, and abba tousles her hair and lets her drink some of the bitter tasting liquid in his glass.
He brings her to work the next morning, leaving Tali at home with the maids and the cooks and the nannies. The place is big and busy, and abba gives her a tour that is so long that Ziva gets hungry before it's done. She doesn't mind though, cause it is all so very fascinating.
The women here aren't like ima or Mrs Baum or her ballet teacher or the french tutor. They wear pants and ponytails and joke around with the men. They even fight and shoot guns, and at first Ziva isn't sure what to think. But the more she watches them the harder it is to take her eyes off of them again. She is sure their imas don't get mad at them if they jump in the water puddles.
Abba hands her a gun under the strict instructions not to tell her ima. It's cold and heavy and a bit scary, but as she lifts it up and down and turns it around and think about all of the people she's seen today, Ziva can't prevent the smile on her face from growing.
"Can I try it?" He hesitates at first, but then sees the way the gun seems to be right at home in her tiny hand. He lifts her up so she kneels on the ledge and stands behind her, closing his hands around her much smaller ones and levels the gun at the round target. He tells her to pull the trigger and she barely blinks at the recoil.
Ziva knows she hasn't ever seen her abba as proud as when the shooting instructor tells him she's a natural with a gun.
He kisses the top of her head and calls her 'My Ziva'.
It becomes a game of theirs. He brings her to Mossad whenever they can get away with it. Her ima has no idea.
She is six when she learns she has a brother. Ari's mama is in the hospital with a ruptured appendix, and abba brings him home after dinner one night so he can stay with them for a while.
Her ima doesn't like him and she doesn't want Ziva and Tali to be alone with him. But Ari is intriguing. He's twice her age and he's dark and smart and everything that's different from Ziva's life. Two days after he arrives her ima comes home to find them laying on Ziva's bed. She doesn't care that he was only telling Ziva about the stray cat that always hangs out on their doorstep back in Gaza or that he was helping her improve her Arabic.
Ziva's head goes in the filled tub for disobeying her ima's instructions and neither of them can sit down properly yet when their abba drives him back to Gaza four days later. None of those things hurt as much as ima's disappointed eyes, though, or the way she told Ziva she wished she could behave just half as well as her four-year-old sister.
Ziva's piano playing has improved. Ima no longer shakes her head at her when she's practicing, and she even lets her play for the guests sometimes. But ima's eyes don't light up at her music like they do when Tali starts to sing. Her sister is only five but she's already crazy talented, and when Ziva plays piano and Tali sings, it's Tali that they all adore.
But her little sister doesn't have Ziva's talent for languages, and she sure can't shoot a gun or throw a knife like the older girl. Ima doesn't know about that, of course, and Ziva does not even want to consider what would happen if she did.
They go visit her ima's brother, far away from the city, when the heat of the summer is so bad that it's hard to be outside. Ziva doesn't generally like ima's family, but her uncle is pretty cool. He teaches Ziva and Tali how to ride his horses while their ima and his wife are are drinking iced tea and catching up.
Tali will only go on the horses if she can ride with her sister, but Ziva prefers to ride on her own. Horseback riding is a bit like dancing, she thinks. When she's galloping fast and the wind whips her hair around her face and cools her down she feels just as free as when she leaps and twirls across the floor in the dance studio.
She gets up extra early in the morning so she can take out Twister while it's still all calm and quiet.
Sometimes abba gets them ice cream. One day on the way home from school it's so hot outside that they melt before they can even finish half of them. Their hands get sticky and they both end up with ice cream on their dresses, and Ziva laughs because Tali somehow ends up with ice cream on her nose.
But Ziva has a dance lesson and Tali's singing teacher is already waiting at the house when they get home. The slaps to their cheeks are hard enough that ima's hand print is still visible when they go to bed that night.
Tali cries. Ziva doesn't.
Tali has a really hard time learning her letters.
Ziva likes that she isn't the one on the receiving end of their ima's disappointed glares, and she likes how ima keeps telling Tali that her sister could read even before starting school. But Ziva hates seeing her little sister so sad and the tutor ima hired is even more mean than Mrs. Baum. So she sneaks into Tali's room late at night when ima thinks they're sleeping, and they practice the letters and their pronunciations together.
Abba catches them once. He kisses both of their foreheads and tells them to keep it up.
Ima never knows that it's Ziva who taught Tali to read.
Ima dies. She's out of town and someone puts something in her food that kills her while Ziva is in math class learning how to multiply.
Abba seems to forget they exist. He even forgets Tali's birthday the week after it happened. He never smiles or tousles their hair anymore and when he's home he spends all his time in his study. He's almost always at work, though, and always without Ziva. She doesn't dare ask him if she can come, convinced he wont even acknowledge her.
A month after her ima dies, Shmuel Rubenstein tells her he likes her. But abba loved ima and Ziva thinks ima liked abba, and now Ziva doesn't have an ima anymore, but she has an abba who is too busy to even tell her and Tali goodnight. So Ziva breaks Shmuel's nose.
She gets suspended and abba picks her up from the principal's office. It's only lunch time, so he brings her back to Mossad with him. He didn't miss how she'd only needed one punch to break that boy's nose, and he doesn't miss how at ease she is at the head quarters.
She's is eating lunch and laughing with one of the kidon operatives when he finishes his meeting, and Eli stops dead in his track as he watches his oldest daughter, his little girl in her green skirt and her messy braids and her impossibly straight back. His little girl who's always eager to please.
"Ziva, how would you like for Hannah here to teach you how to fight?"
Ziva no longer dances. She loves to dance, but Abba loves Mossad, and Ziva wants nothing more than to make him proud.
Instead she fights. She throws knives and shoots different guns and she runs every morning. Tali has gotten all of her dresses. Ziva never really liked the dresses and the skirts and the hairbands, but that is what a proper girl wears. Abba happily lets the maids buy her pants, though, and at Mossad a proper girl is one who can shoot a gun as well as the men.
Her little sister does not like how much she's changed, but Ziva figures that at least one of them will still grow up to be who their ima wanted them to be. She doesn't stop her piano lessons, though, and when Tali sings and Ziva plays, they're still just the same two sisters.
She meets Ari again. They're both older and wiser and a bit less innocent. This time there's no one to split them up and when he leaves they keep in contact.
When she is 10 her abba brings her to the office early one morning, hours before school starts for the day. He has a very important job to do that day, he tells her, and he wants her to join him. She feels excited and special, and Abba squeezes her shoulder and says "Come, my Ziva."
Ziva witnesses her first assassination, and that night she crawls into Tali's bed because all she sees is blood and brain splatter and dead eyes and bullet holes when she closes her eyes.
When she goes to her room to get ready for school the next day, there's a brand new knife waiting for her on her desk.
Abba never seems to get over the loss of their ima. He is at home as little as possible, and even then he is never the same abba as before ima died.
After a few years, Tali is mostly back to her happy, energetic self, and it seems her bubbly spirit is the only thing that can bring out a smile on their abba's face. The younger girl doesn't allow him to withdraw, and she refuses to leave for school or go to bed without a hug and a kiss from her abba when he is there.
Ziva has always loved spending time with him, both before and after ima died. But it isn't as fun anymore.
It is no longer a game. Abba doesn't get proud of her when she does something well, cause he expects it from her. He wants her to be the best, and so does Ziva, she just never expected it to be this hard. And it is no longer just at Mossad. She's expected to be his little soldier-in-training at home as well. Ziva suspects he simply just doesn't know what else to do, and so she goes along with it.
She doesn't go running one morning. She's tired and her feet are blistered from the new shoes she wore the day before, and the only thing on her mind is the science test she has that morning.
The slap to her face is unexpected and it burns. It's the first time he's ever laid a hand on her. Ziva stares with wide eyes as her abba tells her in a sharp, cold tone that the people who killed her ima don't just sit around lazily because of some sore feet.
She adds an extra mile and a half to her daily run after that.
Ziva gets a gun for her 12th birthday. Abba still kisses Tali goodnight.
Her best friend dies on his way home from school, blown to pieces.. That night, abba's eyes light up when Ziva asks him to teach her about all about bombs. Not so much because of the bombs themselves, but because of her determination.
Less that a week later, her abba once more brings her with him. But this time he lets Ziva pull the trigger.
She doesn't crawl into Tali's bed in the middle of the night, and she's only slightly sad that that doesn't disturb her.
Ziva breaks three fingers at krav maga practice. It doesn't hurt all that much, and it's far from the first time she's broken anything, but this is the first time it really bothers her. She rarely spends any time with Tali anymore, and so she treasured the little she does very much.
Tali understands, of course, but the sad look in her eyes still hurts Ziva more than she thinks it should. Her little sister doesn't need her to play to be able to sing, but it's one of the few things that has brought them together since they were very small. They're so different now, different from back then and different from each other, but somehow Ziva is never as relaxed as when they play and sing together. It's a break from her her usual life, and she knows it's as important to Tali as it is to herself.
They switch roles, and while it works it just isn't the same. They still smile and they still laugh, but somehow Ziva's heart still aches when she goes to bed that night.
On the day Ziva turns 15, Shmuel tells her he likes her. This time she kisses him.
Ziva likes him too, she thinks, just maybe not like that. But most of the girls in her class are starting to date, and Ziva is far from oblivious to what will be expected from her once she joins Mossad. So she kisses him and holds his hand and lets him call her his girlfriend.
Ziva does like Shmuel, and he treats her very well, but abba always tells her that love isn't real and that it can only hurt you. He approves of her dating Shmuel and teaches her not to let her emotions control her, tells her to use them for her advantage only.
Ziva believes him. She saw what happened to her abba after ima died.
A month later she hands Shmuel a note and he meets her outside of Mossad late that night when most of the agents have gone home. She sneaks him into the empty garage and sleeps with him in the back of a weapons carrier.
After she sends him home she goes to meet her father in his office. He knows, of course, and as they walk to the car he tells her it was about time.
When they reach the dark, silent house, Ziva contemplates sneaking into Tali's room, but her little sister would be disappointed in her if she knew what she's done. So she cries herself to sleep, promising herself that she'll break up with Shmuel the next day. He's too sweet and too gentle to deserve someone like her. But his eyes light up when he sees her and he kisses her and lets her have some of the homemade falafel his mom put in his lunch, and she can't do it.
Ziva really does like Shmuel.
Shmuel breaks up with Ziva. She spends too much time with her father and at Mossad and too little time with her boyfriend. She kisses him one last time and smiles and tells him she understands, that he deserves better.
She still cries that night.
He gets a new girlfriend. She is tall and beautiful and sweet and puts Shmuel above everything else. Ziva is 16 and sleeps with random guys she barely know. Even one who works for her father.
If he knows or cares he doesn't let it show.
Ziva graduates. Her abba still hugs Tali goodbye before she leaves for school.
IDF training isn't too bad. In the back of her mind she figures she should thank her mother for her strictness and her discipline, and the many dance lessons definitely didn't hurt either.
But her familiarity with weapons and her fighting skills is what gets her noticed by her superiors. She moves up the ranks much faster than she should, and Ziva knows it isn't because she slept with her commanding officer. She enjoys the looks of jealousy sent her way by the men and women who started at the same time as her.
When Tali gets killed four months later on her way to a recital Ziva had completely forgotten about, they allow her to transfer to Mossad. Not even the seasoned soldiers stand a chance against her newly developed rage during combat training, so abba pulls some strings and they know her skills will be of good use there. They're equally sad and relieved to see her go.
During the day she's all rage and hatred and an ice cold fire that burns anyone who gets too close, but at night Ziva cries herself to sleep, clutching Tali's pillow to her chest as she lays in her little sister's bed. Then Ari slips her a folder containing information on the group that organized the bombing that killed her sister, information that Mossad hasn't yet obtained.
He doesn't tell her how he got it, and Ziva doesn't bother asking. It isn't important. All that matters is that someone took her sister from her. Her sweet, perfect sister who sent her handwritten letters every week and whom she didn't appreciate nearly enough while she was still alive. Ziva isn't sure she ever told Tali she loved her.
And so someone needs to pay.
A few months later when she walks into her abba's new, bigger office, she's sure there's more blood staining her hands than those of the man on the other side of the desk. There's a glint in his eyes and a smirk on his lips and by the time Ziva goes home that evening she's officially part of the Kidon Unit.
Even at Mossad most people know to stay clear of her, including the ones who watched her grow up.
She wonders if Shmuel would've still held her hand and left trails of kisses down her body if he'd known what she'd become. She knows what her ima would think, and doesn't even have to close her eyes to imagine the look she'd have received when ima disowned her. She refuses to let any thoughts of Tali cross her mind, but when they do manage to sneak up on her late at night and she's alone, she gets out her sharpest knife and carves little lines into the soles of her feet that just might look like Ts and As and Ls and Is.
Her abba just smiles approvingly whenever he hands her a new folder or receives complaints about his daughter having left bruises or broken bones on yet another of her colleagues.
It is all a blur. Ziva gets orders and she follows them.
She seduces men and women alike, assassinates just as many without asking what they've done and slowly but steadily adds to the tally of scars littering her body. She gathers intelligence and improves her language skills and reads the occasional book.
One of the rare times she is home she tries to play the piano. After that she makes sure to get her own place so she doesn't ever have to go back there again, and she never realizes that her walls are completely bare or that she's missing both plates and curtains and a toilet brush.
The American woman she's partnered up with is clueless. She never shuts her mouth and she isn't scared of Ziva. They're so different and equally stubborn, and neither of them really likes the other. Jenny is older and determined and she isn't exactly inexperienced. But then their covers are blown and Ziva saves her life and they're forced to hide out in a dark, abandoned apartment while Jenny recovers.
One morning the American agent catches the younger woman's slightly bloodied feet, and for the first time since her sister's death, Ziva mentions Tali's name.
The short week spent holed up in the apartment changes things between them. They're no longer as hostile towards each other, and as they keep working together they learn to trust each other more and take advantage of their different skills and approaches. Ziva doesn't think they'll ever be friends, she doesn't have friends, but they form a bond of mutual respect and trust over the following months, and Ziva never really knows how to feel about that.
On a rainy evening outside of an expensive hotel in America's capital, Ziva tells Tony DiNozzo about Tali. She doesn't know what it is about these too talkative and non-disciplined Americans that make her walls momentarily crack.
She shoots her own brother. It isn't hard, she doesn't hesitate. She knows there's no other option when he points the rifle at Gibbs.
Abba had ordered her to do it, and for the first time she was questioning his orders, was planning on not going through with them. Then Ari had started talking and Ziva no longer knows what to believe anymore.
She doesn't know if there's anything human left in her. She wonders if there ever really was.
7/7