A/N: This is a one shot about Ziva's nightmares. Post 07×01. Also, I refuse to believe Ziva died in 13×24 or would have left NCIS at all. Anyway, please review. And I do not own NCIS otherwise Ziva would still have worked with NCIS and would be married to Tony.
I yawned. The fatigue was clouding my mind. My body was begging for sleep. It was the fourth night in a row that I woke up screaming. Once I calmed down sleeping was impossible. Tony must have noticed because he was now staring at me with a big grin on his face. " Another late night, Zee- vah?" he asked. I shook my head. " Then why do you look like a zombie?" he asked.
Suddenly it was happening again. I grabbed Tali and ran to the closet. I've repeated this action so many times it has become instinct.
It starts with me saying the nightly prayers and Tali repeating my words so that she too can say grace before supper. Then we start eating at the table dimly lit by candles. My father smiles at me before asking me to fetch him a bottle of wine. I pour a glass, then another, and another, until the smell of alcohol hung thick in the air.
That was the time we cleaned the dishes and went to our rooms, disappearing from sight. Moments later the shouting will begin. My father would shout out with slurred Hebrew. Truth is he did not need the alcohol to reach this level of anger and insanity, he was already there. Every night, if he even bothered to come home, it would be like this. Every night he would find something new to yell about.
While the screaming and shouting continued I would sing lullabies to Tali until she fell asleep. Through all the years my mother just stood there and allowed him to treat her like crap. She listened to his every word. All the lies and false accusations. She never once yelled back, never let him see her cry or witness the pain he caused. To me she appeared weak. Why not fight back? Why not speak the truth? Later I realized that she made him believe that he controlled and frightened her so that he left us alone. She was the mother bear protecting her cubs from the danger lurking in the moonlight.
It was that night that I swore I would never get drunk, never lose control and never ever have kids. How can you bring a kid, so fragile and innocent, into a world filled with so much pain and evil? Try as you might you can never truly protect them.
Less than a year later I lost my mother. The look on Tali' s face still haunts me at night. She was so innocent and pure, she did not deserve to know such pain. She did not deserve to have her world torn apart or see the darkness of the world. Yet, two years later, a terrorist marched right into her school with a bomb strapped to his chest. Just like that, my little baby sister was gone forever. I still wonder what might have happened if the bell never rang. If Tali was still in her history class when the bomb went off. Would she have survived? What would she have become? Would she too become Mossad? Proudly serving her country and father as I had? But the thing I wondered most was if she felt any pain when it happened. Did she suffer? Was her death instant or did she lie there beaten, bloodied and bruised before she finally let go and entered the next world?
And then Africa. The place I was sent to die. The place I died a million times over in four months at the mercy of men. The place where I was an object, an experiment or test. A test to see who can break me first. To see how much I can take before I shatter into a million pieces.
These were the nightmares that haunted me. The ones Tony can never understand. He was still staring at me, waiting for a reply. I have no idea how long we sat in silence before I finally answered: "Just insomnia, I guess" My voice was barely audible. I could tell by Tony' s expression that it was not enough. He wanted more. He was just about to say something when Gibbs cleared his throat. Tony glanced at him before nodding. " Understood Boss" he said before returning to his paperwork. Thankfully Gibbs knew that
my nightmares was not something I was ready to discuss.
After Somalia the nightmares got worse, almost to the point where I was afraid to fall asleep, fearing I will wake up back in Africa. At some point Gibbs showed up at my house in the middle of the night and told me to pack my things. He later explained that he knew I was not sleeping and invited me to stay at his house. That way he could keep an eye on my and chase away my nightmares. I stayed in his guest bedroom for a month. Everytime I woke up screaming he was there to calm me down. The nightmares started fading and I could sleep again. Gibbs promised that he would never make me talk about them, or let Tony bug me until I had no choice but to silence him with the truth. So here I was, being questioned by Tony, but protected by Gibbs.
After that there was silence. I pushed the nightmares out of my head and went back to work.