Gone (But Not Forgotten)
~Apart~
A/N: This is a duo of scenarios regarding Ziva + the episode "She." Together and Apart (the latter being the first!). They're unrelated in scenario, yet bound by concept and I couldn't bear separate them.
I do not own NCIS.
. . .
Keeping the distance was her weakness.
It wasn't supposed to be. By nature, she was trained to evade and hide and be perfectly invisible whilst in plain site. And while 'nature' was supposed like riding a bicycle, picking up her skills after so long was akin to riding a unicycle, instead.
It took a fool to deny the truth: Tony had been looking for her. For three years, she barely whisked herself away before he'd catch up to where she'd been. Anticipating. It was how he found her the last time. He knew her all too well. She was prepared this time.
Sometimes, when she gathered enough strength, she watched them from the shadows. Tony and Tali. Their daughter. Those words never failed to make her smile but her smile grew melancholic since she went incognito. Yes, their daughter. Except those words meant nothing since they weren't together. Not really. Not ever.
Now, Tali was his daughter. And she herself was nothing more than a spectator of a life she could have had.
She forced herself to stay away no matter how much she wanted to give in to her deepest wishes and just...stay, settle, live with Tony. However, she would be unable to live with herself if anything happened to either him or Tali. She lived as a walking target and they didn't need to be casualties in a war on her.
But she tried to avoiding dwelling in the past and the could-be's unless absolutely necessary. Like now. Coming back to DC twisted the knife already in her gut. Not being able to be with her family hurt enough as it was. Seeing...seeing Gibbs and McGee reminded her that her family extended beyond the father of her, no, their, no, his child. She also forwent the comfort of her pseudo-father and brother. Much like the first time in the US-she was a ghost (though she remembered fondly that Tony prefered the phrase 'ninja').
They'd constructed a new family since she'd been away and there was someone she'd never met sitting in her desk. She could only faintly wonder if they gave the pretty blonde an objection to her sitting there like had been the case when she had to replace Kate. She'd never know. All of Tony's correspondence since she'd left had remained unopened; it hurt too much to remember. Especially when Tali existed as a reminder of what could have been.
It was fate or coincidence that brought her back to D.C. as NCIS began to reinvestigate the Morgan Burke case. Except Gibbs taught her that coincidences did not exist. Things happened when they needed to... She needed to ensure Morgan finally received the justice she deserved.
She watched as Gibbs and McGee remained two steps behind her last attempt at the investigation back in 2013. They couldn't help it; it stumped her, too. But to her surprise (and absolute delight), the pretty woman who sat at her desk lit aflame with the same passion she'd once harbored as an NCIS agent.
Eleanor Bishop.
That was her name. She'd overheard it while she watched from the shadows. It was quickly evident that Eleanor was the one to watch in the investigation. She caught on with lightning sharp accuracy and managed to take the strides of her previous investigation in only a few quick bounds. She'd even found her secret, the place nobody knew about.
Whoever this Eleanor was, she was the real deal. The kind of agent she would have loved to be friends with if she had stayed at the agency (there she went again, contemplating the what-if's). She watched as she took every risk necessary to find Morgan. She watched as Robert Hill pointed a gun at her.
She'd known that if she had her gun, she would have been able to make that shot. Nonetheless, she made it out alive. With Morgan. Thankfully.
And the case was solved. Mostly.
Stealing the letter for Morgan's kidnapper was a risk. She had no contingency plan if everything turned south. But she made a promise, ghost or not. She intended to see it through even if it killed her for real this time.
Luckily, she survived. And the only person to suspect...the only person to walk into her web and respect its threads...was her. Eleanor. She could keep her secret.
So, she wrote to Eleanor, the pretty blonde who now sat in her desk, in careful lettering:
For the safety of my family, please keep my secret.
In the years following her attempted murder, Ziva David learned she hated being alone. More than anything in the entire world.
This homecoming tied up her loose strings at NCIS. Sure, the edges frayed just a bit with her letter. But it was tied in a pretty bow, nonetheless. She had no reason to return here. And she could trust this woman. The one who sat at her old desk. This would be enough.
It had to be.
~FIN~
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(Part II, "Together" will be out...sometime next week. I hope.)