Ziva did not go to America in Kill Ari. Gibbs shot Ari in his basement. Ziva never joined NCIS.

I am a smoking gun. Never allow myself to cool off, calm down. When a gun is rested is grows cold. A cold gun is no use to anyone. Life is easier is there is no time for reflection, no time for boredom. If you overanalyse your actions, your bullets will become outdated. I need to work efficiently and emotionlessly if I am to do my duty to my father, to Ari and to Israel. A smoking gun is what will avenge Ari's death.

Ziva stared out the grimy window through glassy eyes. Her thoughts were flying erratically through her head because she refused to catch them and nurture them into something profound. She had trained herself to think in terms of death, destruction and extermination. It was her job to kill all enemies to Israel, Mossad and her father. She had to honour her three masters.

The view from the window was mundane. She was standing in a bare hotel room surrounded by people with ordinary lives, no death wish to fulfil. Ziva shivered at the memory of her one lapse in detachment. In a coma the world looks different. Even if she was only unconscious for less than a week, she still felt disgusted by her weakness. The thoughts she had allowed to grow in her while she had not got the willpower to quell them rose up like bile in her throat every time she stopped to take a breath.

If I was allowed to, I would have killed myself by now. Snapped and pulled the trigger with the smoking gun pointed by me at me. I put myself in the bullet's path everyday and yet it has never finished me off. I have ended so many lives which were worth more than my own but I was the one to be kept on. I have been living on borrowed time since birth; maybe it is time to evict myself. And I probably would, if my father would allow it. My father is the one putting me in harm's way yet he is the only one keeping me alive. The smoking gun is always spinning, finding new victims. At some point it will have to point in my direction.

If Ziva's teardrops hadn't been parched, there would have been a single tear trickling down her unwashed cheek. She had forgotten how to cry, how to make tears and let them fall. She was unable to show sadness and pain.

Her unruly hair had sand in it, her tanned arms were stained with dried blood from various sources, her legs were ripped to shreds and her face was smeared with mud and oil. Life in the desert was not sanitary and, as always, her father had neglected to foresee any need for a room with a shower. Mossad was not paying for this mission; her father was funding it out of his own pockets. He had understood her wish to kill the man who killed her brother and had given her permission for the execution. Papers were being forged to confirm Eli's claim that Agent Gibbs had committed crimes against Israel. Ziva felt a chilling calm rush through her when she imagined the bullet streaking through the air and slicing through the old man's skull. She had read the report on Ari's death and had planned Gibbs's death accordingly. The vengeance was to be exacted in the basement, from the top step. He would fall backwards onto the ground in a pool of blood and she would slowly descend into the depths of the ground. She could see herself stand over him, and feel Ari squeeze her hand. The anger boiled up inside her and she would let out all her rage with her foot on his chest. Ari had betrayed her and he had never had a chance to explain. This was Gibbs's fault so he deserved to die. If anyone should have killed Ari, it should have been her. Ari was her brother.

Ziva was startled from her reverie by the chirping of an alarm. Her plane would be leaving in two hours. She crossed the room and swung her tattered, bloodied bag over her shoulder. A single photo was all that was left in the room and she picked it up. She stared into the eyes portrayed menacingly in the frame before sliding the photo out of the wooden frame and pushing the paper into her back pocket.

'I will miss you, Michael,' she murmured to herself before leaving the room to board her plane to America where she would finally find a relief for her bottled up fury.

I, Ziva David, will end Gibbs's life tomorrow. He had better enjoy his last day alive.