Seven
A/N: What a beautiful episode. Here are some missing scenes and expansions for "Shiva".
Update: Edited on 4/6/2015 to reduce crap factor.
Ah'at
She's never felt so... forsaken? Is that the word for the thing that clogs her lungs, burns her eyes, and squeezes her heart like a vice? What has she done? She knows she is not pure, far from it. She is a killer. Once, that was all she was. But has her time with NCIS, trying to do some real good in a world that is so often devoid of it, really mean nothing?
As she recites the prayer, she wants to be angry at God. She wants to throw a brick through the stain glass window. Wants to light a match to the carved wooden pews, stand in the smoking ruins. She wants to abandon her faith and rip off the Star of David necklace laying against her throat, drop it on the ground, smash it under her heel.
But for some reason, she can't. She dutifully recites the prayer, and looks to the sky, and she speaks to her God. She's not sure why. Maybe she needs Him now more than ever. Maybe she just wants answers.
Is it too much to ask for a sign? She doesn't think so. When the doors to the synagogue creak open, punctuating her askance, she can't help but feel the slightest bit of hope. Are You really listening?
She turns to see Tony standing by the door, eyes that seem to change color on a daily basis seeking out her own. It's all she can do not to sigh at the sight of him. She asks for a sign, and she gets Tony instead.
But when he offers anything to help her, wants to know what she needs, what she wants, a spark of hope grows every so slowly.
Is Tony Your sign?
Shtayim
It makes her feel slightly better to have Abby's arms wrapped around her. The warm, good-natured comfort emanating from the forensic scientist, it covers Ziva like a favorite quilt, heavy and soft. When she withdraws, the smell of the freshly baked cookies touches her nostrils.
Abby explains her theory of the smell of baking cookies relaxing the tense environment currently permeating the Navy Yard, and Ziva admires Abby's efforts. She can see in the other woman's wide green eyes that right now, she feels useless. The world has fallen down, is still falling, and Abby is just trying to pick it back up, put the pieces back together.
Ziva embraces Abby again, this time instigating the contact. When she withdraws, Ziva asks if she can have a cookie. Abby happily gives her one.
Shalosh
She touches the cold drawer of the freezer in autopsy, debating whether to pull back and reveal her father's corpse.
Do not do this, she warns herself. Remember him as he was, not how he is.
Of course, it doesn't really matter now. All she can think of when she thinks of Abba is his crumpled body, his chest riddled with bullet wounds.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. She doesn't know why she's surprised.
No, there is really no need to have this new picture of her father, pale and lifeless. But she needs to be here, to be as close to him as she can be, at least physically. She needs to be close to him in some way, since she will never truly be in spirit.
She will never receive another kiss on her cheek, and 'my angel' whispered in Hebrew, a warm embrace after not seeing her for so long.
Her father's death has gone quite a long way towards blinding her to his faults. She wishes that she could have overlooked his betrayals before his death. One of the last things she said to her father was that his sins were too great.
Damn it all, why did she say that? Why? Why could she not have just let it go like all of her father's other transgressions?
When Ducky walks in and offers to open the drawer for her, she almost accepts, but something inside of her throws up a wall. No. Perhaps she is a coward, or perhaps she doesn't want to face the simple truth that her father is dead.
If she sees him like this, it will be far too real.
When she looks at Ducky, she sees the same expression that Tony had, that Abby had... they care about her, they truly do, and that fact is the only thing that can make her square her shoulders and hold her head high, when all she really wants is to be a little girl and her father's angel once more.
Arba
Her dreams are haunted by her father. In these dreams, he is as he was when she found him in Director Vance's house, only instead of the eyes closed behind his thick framed glasses, they are wide, white, and sightless, yet still stark with condemnation. It's her father damning her from beyond the grave, or at least that's what it feels like.
Too late, too late, too late.
Ari occasionally appears in her mix of nightmares as well. Once or twice, she even sees glimpses of her mother and Tali. She is just barely thirty, yet her entire family is buried in the ground, some fresh, some decimated down to dust and bone, distant memories of a happier time. Regret, remorse, and want for a brighter world twist together into a dark vortex of emotions that she refuses to face in the waking world, so they attack her when her defenses are down.
In her dreams, corpses whispering her name are threatening to overtake her, yet in the waking world she can just barely feel warm hands ghosting across her forearms. She awakes with a jerk, Tony hovering over her, and she lunges at him for a split second before realizing that he is friend, not enemy.
She waves him off, assures him she is fine, even though she is quite obviously not. She just wants him to leave, leave her to her own heart, so she can find the quickest way to smother it. She is not some weak creature that requires a man to hold her. She does not need sympathy nor pity; she needs revenge.
Yet here she is, trapped in Tony's apartment, in his lonely single bed, unable to do anything.
She makes Tony leave, because that, at the very least, she has some power over.
H'amesh
When Leroy Jethro Gibbs asks you if you are okay, it is not typically a good sign. It means that you are either dying, or someone you know is dying (or already dead). Blue eyes search hers, and for the first time, she feels like this is a time to be honest.
"I do not know what I am." Because she really, really doesn't. She hasn't known what word to define her feelings since she set eyes on her father. She doesn't know how to feel about this new revelation, that the deputy Director of Mossad is most likely involved in this disaster. This... betrayal.
She is once again sure that leaving Mossad was the best decision she had ever made, because she knows the people she now considers her family would never orchestrate a plot such as this. She knows with absolute certainty that she can trust Gibbs, Tony, McGee, Abby, Ducky, even Director Vance, a man who she feels closer to because of their joint loss.
She wants to find the man who killed her father, rip him limb from limb, draw and quarter him, and then feed his entrails to crows. She wants every ounce of him erased from the earth. Rage burns like a hot fire in a body that seems unusually cold. Leaving this to NCIS and the other authorities will be the hardest challenge of her life.
If they don't find you, she swears, her fingers hooking onto her necklace in the gesture of a solemn promise. I will.
Shisha
She stares into Tony's eyes, and she wonders if this is the moment. She can see that he expects it, but his tight jaw tells her that maybe the man that prides himself on his bravery is actually frightened right now. Their breaths turn into mist, mingling together between them on the freezing January night.
She wants to kiss him, a feeling she has been getting more and more of late, but now is not the time. She is not sure that time will ever come, though she hopes it does. She instead throws her arms around him, trying to express words she can't bring herself to say by way of physical touch.
He brings her close to him, his arms tight around her, and the sides of their faces press together, and she feels the closet thing to warmth that she has in a long time. For some reason, she's not surprised when he whispers in her ear, "Aht lo levahd, Ziva."
She withdraws, and she simply says, "I know." Because she does.
She turns from him, wishing more than anything that Tony was coming with her to her homeland, but like many things in her life, this is something she must do alone.
Shiva
Ziva's hands graze over the stubbly plant. She inhales the familiar aroma in the air, feels the wind pushing at her hair. Between the arid climate and sand underneath her, a sense of peace settles over her.
Washington has been her home for many years, but her roots still remain in Israel. She remembers the prayer she stuffed in a hole in the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the Temple of Solomon. A simple prayer. She tried to think of something more eloquent, but when it came down to it, two words covered everything she needs.
Guide me.
She hopes that He will hear her plea, because right now, what she needs more than ever is a hand to show her the way. Things should not simply go back to normal, should they? Would it be fair to just continue on like her father and Jackie Vance were not buried in the ground? Like more lives had not been lost?
I suppose our only option is to carry on, she thinks, standing carefully and brushing the dirt off of her pants. Her heart lifts at the use of our, instead of my.
One thing she has no doubt of... her biological family may be gone, but that does not mean she doesn't have one waiting for her back in America.