Author's Notes: Generally my chapters will be longer than this but it's just the first/set-up chapter. I have never done a fanfiction like this before in the sense that I am telling it from Ziva's point of view (POV). I really hope I did her justice. I was trying to get inside her mind and tell the first chapter as she would. I plan to write my whole fic like this, though not just from Ziva's as some chapters will focus on other characters as well. This does mean you'll be limited to that character's knowledge and perception, so please let me know your thoughts on this. But as I said, most of the chapters are by Ziva anyhow.
So, this fic is a Tiva (Tony/Ziva pairing), even though from "hearing" Ziva's thoughts it may not seem so. She's in denial ;). Remember that this is AU (author's universe) and set at least after season 7, but not any specific time. There is also a link to the banner for this fic, found in my profile. Anyway, enough from me and onwards with the first chapter!

It was a crime scene; another crime scene. There was nothing special about this one either. They all had dead bodies, blood, evidence, and witnesses to interview that are often annoying, plus I have to put up with Tony's jokes, and taking all the photos. Yes, I am a criminal investigator, but after a while a crime scene is just a crime scene. I miss the thrill sometimes. I was a Mossad Officer, still am in a way. It's like how Gibbs was a marine and does not believe there is such a thing as a former marine. I do not believe there is such a thing as a former Mossad Officer. Not when the instincts are still there and it is in my blood to be who I am. I was a killer and now I catch killers. Ironic, yes?

So, where was I? Ah yes, the crime scene. It was a sailor this time, though he wasn't in uniform. Dead, as expected, and lying in a puddle on the floor of a living room that once had a wonderfully stain-free carpet. The pictures on the walls indicated he was married, yet the state of his house did not. I would certainly not marry such a slob like him.

Tony is saying something, but I am not listening - it's probably just about another movie he saw. It's always about some stupid movie. Tim is complaining, not about Tony because we're all used to that, but about the amount of things lying around in the house that we need to take photos of and place into evidence bags. Tony joins him while I do not say a word. In Mossad such complaints would get you a bullet in your head, if you're lucky. It is our job and we have been given orders to do it, just like we always have. Americans will never understand that because their lives are not placed in danger every day like it is in Israel. Or at least where I came from as a Mossad Officer.

Good, Gibbs is here. He had been interviewing the witness and I am glad he did because had I been chosen I would be tempted to complain also. She looked like a very annoying woman, even from a distance. He shut the boys up with a single stare and told us the woman claimed to have found the body and that her reason for being in the house was because she owned it. She was not the victim's wife and I could tell she was lying. Gibbs could too. I enjoy working for Gibbs because he reminds me of the old ways of my life; the Mossad days when things are to be taken seriously and given proper perception. Tony and McGee do not understand, as they have not suffered and lost as Gibbs and I have.

'You still with us, Ziva?' Tony asked with his usual smirk that meant he was trying to annoy me.

It worked.

'I am still standing here, aren't I?' I replied.

I was not in the mood for jokes or facts about whatever the body had reminded Ducky of. It was my mother's birthday two days ago. I did not remember until this morning. My mother is dead and has been for a long time, but I still think of her often and try to remember the woman she was and yet never really knew. I had let the date slip by for two days before I noticed. Two days! I had been amused by Tony's latest prank on McGee and a boyfriend Abby had been talking about...I was distracted.

I have been in America too long.

I do not wish to return home, nor to re-join Mossad; it was my old life and I have moved on. But I also do not like my new one. No, scratch that...I love it, yet at the same time, I do not know. Two days ago it was just another day at NCIS where my friends were being themselves. Today it is different. This morning I realised how far my old life was slipping away.

And I was changing too.

I do not know yet if it is good or bad, but I do not like it. Perhaps it really is the fact about my mother. I miss her, yes, but lately I have been thinking more about her than I have Tali or Ari. I lost them too and I also miss them terribly. They are my family. My mother I hardly knew and even so, I forgot her birthday for two days. She is dead so I doubt she would care for such a silly tradition of lighting a candle and watching it fade each year. Fade, like she had. It mattered to me, though I cannot figure out why so much this year. Was it because I had become distracted and forgotten or was it something else I am yet to figure out?

'Something on your mind, David?' Gibbs asked as he stood in front of me.

I realised I have been holding the camera, ready to use it, yet was doing nothing other than staring into space.

'Sorry, Gibbs.' I say.

I am not sorry to him, but to myself, my mother, and Israel. I never get distracted from anything. In Mossad a distraction is the difference between life and death. I am an NCIS Agent in America. There is no such thing as a former Mossad Officer. I was distracted, but why?

Tony was right; the wife was the killer.

A week later and the case was closed. I still could not erase from my mind the failure I felt when I had become too distracted to notice my mother's birthday until two days after the date. It should not still bother me, but it did. I do not like the parts of myself that I cannot understand or control.

'You've been quiet this week, Ziva.'

I look over at Tony, who is seated at his desk with a pile of paperwork he was probably trying to avoid. It was night and we're the only ones left in the office. I did not answer him, simply because I knew it would annoy him. And I have nothing to say that is worth mentioning, other than to agree with him. Tony left his desk and approached mine.

I knew he would.

'Something bothering you?'

I lifted my gaze from the line I was supposed to be signing my name upon and stared at him. I should have told him "yes" but then he would only ask more questions. If I did not answer those, Tony would become curious and concerned, therefore annoying me further by prying.

'Not really.' I shrugged as though it was nothing.

It should be nothing.

'I have not had much to say.'

He doesn't buy it and I didn't expect him to. Yet Tony returned to his desk, even if he was trying to be discreet about watching me. I used to find it irritating, but now it's actually rather useful. When I know someone is watching me, I can better compose myself and remain under control. Things are always worse when I am alone, though it hardly matters when no one is around to see it.

Tony is different from the others.

If our jobs, office, and lives were a part of some silly Television show, I am certain the viewers would accuse me of loving Tony. It was nothing like that, as we were not a couple nor did I ever wish for it to become such a commitment. If I was questioned about it during a Polygraph test, I would pass. Well, I would pass regardless, but that is besides the point! Tony was just my partner, friend, and co-worker. I found it completely irrelevant how I saw him differently simply because his breath was warmer, touch safer, and eyes kinder.

I may consider Tony my soul mate but that does not mean I am required to love him.

I finished my paperwork, said goodnight to Tony, and left the NCIS building to head home for the night. I would be back tomorrow and it would all be the same. As I got into my car, I realised another mistake I had made. To assume the next day will be no different is also a lowering of my guard. I should always expect something to be different and constantly be on alert for the unexpected. I cursed America as I drove home, because I indeed have been here far too long. I wouldn't change it though.

America and NCIS, it is home now.

I do not require devices such as an alarm clock to tell me when I should be awake. However, I always set it anyway. The next day began as any other and once again my alarm clock was beaten. No, I did not shoot it. I was dressed by the time it made that annoying noise it does, as it is supposed to by whichever idiot created it and assumed it is the first sound people wish to hear when they're rudely awoken in the morning.

My routine of dressing, having cereal with juice, cleaning my weapons, going for a run, showering, dressing for work, and driving to NCIS was no different than any other day. Yet I was early. Gibbs was not even there. It does not usually bother me as it had happened before, but I knew something felt out of place. I should be on alert for something, but I could not begin to figure out what or where it would be coming from. Something bad or big was going to happen today. I was on edge because of this, therefore until the others arrive I shall check my emails and then clean my weapons again. "You cannot be too careful, Ziva", papa always said.

I was three when he first told me that, and even then I knew to believe him.

And by 0930 we had a case.

It was in Maryland and Tony was driving, rambling about yet another stupid movie. I tune out his and McGee's voices as my focus remained on the roads and cars around us. Nothing was suspicious and everyone seemed harmless enough, to me anyhow. Yet the feeling of unease remained. And it was not until we arrived at the crime scene that I realised, finally, what it was that has been bugging me.

The victims are dead on their living room floor in large pools of blood. Marine Sergeant Gordon Miles and his wife Stacy, according to the fingerprint scan McGee just did. I was the first to notice her. The six-year-old beautiful girl in the only family portrait on the mantel of the fireplace. I held the small, fragile frame in my hands while the others talked and waited for Ducky. She really is beautiful. Not perfect, but the image of innocence and joy, yet I can see the look in her eyes. This was a posed photograph. Her golden brown hair, bright blue eyes, and pink attire was the very picture of a sweet little girl with her mother and father on either side behind her.

It was flawed.

It was a Saturday. This family had lived in the house on the Marine Base for mere months, therefore it was unlikely the girl was with neighbours. Being a weekend, she was also not at school.

I could feel it; she was here with us, alive.

I placed the picture back on the mantel, a little behind the others of Gordon Miles in uniform. I did not know why. Perhaps because I wanted to be the one to find her, as though I knew that if I alone was searching then she would be found. I trust the others and I know they could find her too. It was my instincts that told me to look alone, not my heart or head.

And I have never ignored my instincts, apart from once or twice, and I was not about to.

As a not-so-former Mossad Officer, I am an expert of discreet and cautious. Not even Gibbs suspected I was searching for anything beyond the usual clues. They did not know there was a child here. I could feel it and they could not, yet the house did not reflect it either with none of her toys in sight or photographs of the family. Tony commented on that, the lack of family photos, but I was much further ahead of their conversation.

There was a set of stairs. The girl was close, I knew it, yet without going up those stairs I was unable to see where she could be. The mother, Stacy, was lying closer to the side of the stairs with the blood spray over the side of the wall from the bullet she had received in her skull. I stare at the blood and noticed that while it dripped down the side of the stairs wall, there was an odd pattern. A crack. The blood dripped everywhere but a vertical lined section. A secret door. With the pale wallpaper it would be very hard to notice and even I almost missed it.

It was there and I knew the girl was too.

I could feel the team watching me as I bent to extract the knife from my ankle. It extended with a familiar "snap!". I placed the tip into the crack and used the pressure of the knife to wedge the crack open wide enough for my fingers to slip inside to replace the blade. Not even half a minute later, a door was revealed as I pulled it open. Inside was dark and cluttered with what I would label as "junk". I could hear heavy breathing, sniffling, and fear. I could almost smell the terror of a young child inside that tiny, darkened, junk-filled space.

'Do not be afraid.' I said without moving. 'I will not harm you, Samantha.'

I knew that was her name because it was written in pink words on a silver bracelet she wore in the only complete family photograph in that fragile, brown frame on the mantel.

A flash of movement was sighted, but I did not react like Tony and McGee did by jumping back with surprise (who had been standing on either side of me), because I knew it was just the girl. She had rushed forward with messy hair and a tear-streaked face. I was prepared to stop her from running passed me to flee. I was not expecting her to run at me and wrap her small arms around my middle and press her sad, scared face to my stomach. At that moment, as I placed a briefly comforting hand on the back of her head, I was no longer a Mossad Officer. I was not even an NCIS Special Agent. Israeli or American did not matter.

I was her rescuer and that was all.

'How'd you know?' Tony was surprised.

Even after all these years they still have not learned to assume that I will always surprise them. I pointed to the fireplace where the picture was. Gibbs went to it and the rest made sense to them; the clues I had noticed and realisations I had made. I could see their sadness when they looked at the sobbing girl and the amazement in their eyes as they glanced at me. I accepted that I cannot make them understand. A Mossad Officer would. Gibbs does. Observation is everything and sometimes words are wasted breath, effort, and time.

A paramedic is called and soon arrived.

I shielded the girl's face from the bodies of her parents the best I could, but it was useless to try and move her. Her fear and relief combined had caused her to hesitate and become unyielding in movement, no doubt preparing to remain still and ignore the world away. I picked her up instead as it was the only way to get her outside. Gibbs followed, acting as a sight barrier between the girl's sad blue eyes and the bloody redness of the family she no longer had.

The paramedic said she was unharmed, but in shock. I did not resist rolling my eyes at such an obvious statement. We called him to the scene to hear what was so painfully clear? Wasted resources, I believed.

'Stay with her.' Was the order I received from Gibbs.

As an NCIS Special Agent I opened my mouth to show my objection and dislike, but as the Mossad Officer I did not say a single word. The girl was watching me with those haunted blue eyes resting above the liquid trails of her turmoil. Six-years-old. I was certain of her age, though I had no evidence to confirm it. She was too young to be a witness if only because it is not right. In Israel it would not be considered such, but in America is it labelled as wrong. And it is wrong, wherever a person lives, for a child to see the true darkness of the world at the age of six.

'How...' Samantha bravely tried to speak.

I admired that about her and paid tribute to her courage by giving her my entire attention. Well, as much as I can, being a Mossad Officer and all.

'How did you know where I was?' An innocent enough question, yet how could I explain to her that I was trained as a killer from a war-ridden country where observation and fast reactions were essential? I do not like to lie, but it is a skill in my blood and training that presented no difficulty on my behalf.

'I heard you.' I told her.

Six-years-old she is, and yet she does not believe me. It was the first sign I received since the first glimpse of the single family portrait that this girl was not a typical American child. She was exactly that in every way but her eyes. Those blue orbs had a penetrating quality, a secretive glimpse, and a powerful sense of suspicion. I had seen it before on another six-year-old girl. She once stared back at me in my own mirror.

However, unlike my younger self, Samantha did not call me out on the lie and simply nodded her head like the sweet little girl she was. I did not suspect her of being any less innocent or kind than she looked. I just knew her life had darkness too, even before this day when her parents had been murdered feet from where she had been hiding.

'They're dead, aren't they?' Her soft voice did not have the unemotional value to it that mine would have.

She was miserably sad, scared, and confused, but her courage reached her voice and her eyes appeared to have used their last supply of tears. She felt pain and feared it, but this girl was no stranger to the emotional variation of it.

'Yes.' I did not see any reason to lie. It was the truth; they were dead and nothing was going to change that.

'I heard it.' Her tone was so low it took more of my focus to hear it without leaning closer. 'The man...they were crying...and the guns...'

And then she lost it.

Fresh tears emerged and her controlled expression crumbled. She was sitting on the edge of the paramedic truck, her feet once swinging freely in the air between the truck and the dirt ground. I was beside her, until that moment when she flung herself at me for the second time.

Once again only a rescuer, a source of comfort, and someone who is there for her simply by being there. I embraced her because I knew it was what she needed. I let her believe the natural body temperature of another human being was actually the warmth of safety and comfort. I did nothing to correct her assumptions that by crying until she cannot any longer would make her stronger and calmer. She thought my company and compliance is everything at that moment, when really I was not doing anything other than holding her and allowing her sadness to take over her mind and body.

She was not a Mossad Officer in training. Samantha Miles was a scared, crying little girl who had lost her parents in an act of unnecessary violence. I was doing my job and being sympathetic. Until her small hand reached to touch my hair. Another longing for safety and to ensure I was real, alive, and safe. Those fingers barely touching a few strands of my hair caused my rationalising mind to halt and yet I did not pull away. Tali used to do that. It comforted her after nightmares or loneliness.

Deluded into believing her crying to be the cause, Samantha moved back as though she was stronger and calmer than she had been a minute earlier. My initial reaction to her touching my hair was not shown on my face as I did not reveal it even to a six-year-old victim.

No, correction: witness.

'What's your name?' She sniffed and was clearly looking for a distraction. Samantha was more aware of her surroundings and the situation now.

'Ziva David.' I answered her. 'I am with NCIS.'

She did not ask me what "NCIS" was and neither did I tell her.

Silence followed as she stared into the distance, our minds wandered and centered on memories. Gibbs joined us and I was told to take the girl back to NCIS. The others would join us soon. I nodded and moved to pick up the girl as I had before. She jumped down from the truck instead and reached for my hand, allowing me to lead her to the car Gibbs had arrived in. Samantha preferred the back seat and therefore that is where she sat. I chose not to drive at my usual speed and ignored the part of my mind that focused on Tony's comments and jokes about my driving, or as he once said: "lack thereof".

The office where I worked at NCIS was quiet.

I mean, there were people walking around talking and working, but there was an atmospheric silence about it to me. A cloud of importance and seriousness that could not be penetrated as I led Samantha to Tony's desk. She sat in the chair and a ghost of a smile appeared on her face as she moved and realised the chair turned with her. The girl's pink and white shoes could not touch the floor and her hands gripped the armrests as she watched the floor move with her own actions.

The girl seated several feet away from me was no different than the one in the photograph. Still posed and yet the innocence and kindness were true. She did not have her parents on either side of her any longer. At that moment she had not a Mossad Officer or an NCIS Special Agent, but a rescuer.

At the border of her nightmarish experience, Samantha only had me.

Author's Notes: Please review and share your thoughts, comments and/or questions. I'd love to hear from you!