A/N: It's been ages since I wrote here. Prelims, some pretty messy stuff at school, other stories. Kind of got hectic. Anyway, this is about Ziva and Eli, and the song is "World of Chances" by Demi Lovato.
Sarah x
You've got a face for a smile you know
A shame you waste it when you're breaking me slowly
She saw his face again for the first time since she left for the Somalian dessert. How she wished he would smile for her. As a child, her greatest happiness came from her father's smile. It was a rare thing for him to crack a smile, but when it was directed at her, it always seemed warm. He had an ability to make her trust him, wisely or not, with a warm smile.
But he wasn't smiling. He was showing no emotion. He refused to apologise for leaving her to die. He wasn't going to beg for her, he said, and that broke her. He wasn't going to beg for his daughter, his only living child, to stay in his life. He wasn't going to beg for her to forgive him. Little did he know that she had been enlightened to his character, and she was reluctant to properly forgive his betrayals.
He should have been smiling for his daughter, trying to make her smile and laugh, but instead he was breaking her with his pride. It wasn't one massive blow, but every word was another crack to add to her collection and it was a slow, painful way to break apart.
But I've got a world of chances for you
I've got a world of chances for you
I've got a world of chances,
Chances that you're burning through
She couldn't help but give him a chance. She always gave him another chance, another opportunity to prove he loved his daughter. A chance to make her see that he really did care about her. But all he ever showed her was how to kill, how to protect her country in one of the most dangerous ways possible. Every time, he put her in danger.
He always ended up using her to complete a mission, no matter how dangerous it was. In the year since Jenny had died, the team had split up and reformed; she had been blown up, then later forced to rejoin Mossad, kidnapped, held hostage for months, tortured and almost killed, all because she was his weapon.
Every time she gave him a chance, he only proved he didn't deserve it. He always showed her his worst side.
I've got a paper and pen
I go to write you goodbye and that's when I know
The first time she realised that she would always let him try was when, not long after she returned to NCIS, she had left a note on Gibbs' desk saying she was going away for a couple of days, so she could clear her head. She had written it slowly, because her hands were shaking quiet badly, and she realised whose fault that was. It was his duty to her to atone for his dishonesty and cruelty.
She knew that, even though he would always ruin it, she would let him try and make it right. It was his fault she needed to clear her head, that she had to write Gibbs a note, but she wanted him to apologise, put it right somehow.
I've got a world of chances for you
I've got a world of chances for you
I've got a world of chances,
Chances that you're burning through
As she had stared at him over the car, she had realised that she always would try and trust him, normally against her better judgement. Trust did not come easily for her, especially for him, but she would always try. The only person she trusted easily now was Gibbs – he, unlike her father, had proved he cared for her.
Every ounce of trust she had given to him had been used against her, manipulated to his advantage. She had trusted him about Rivkin and discovered too late that he had placed him there for her to fall in love with. She trusted him about Tony's involvement in Rivkin's death, and it was Tony who saved her in the dessert, not Mossad, not Eli David.
Oh, I'm going my own way,
My faith has lost its strength again
Oh, it's been too hard to say,
We've fallen off the edge again
We're at the end, we're at the end
She looked into his eyes and wondered what he must have looked like when she sent him the email to say she was to become an NCIS Special Agent, and break away completely from his organisation, and him. She wondered if there was any pain there when he read that his daughter was walking away from him.
She sent the email because she could not bear to talk to him properly, to hear his voice. To hear his voice would have been like giving him the opportunity to convince her out of her plans, to convince her that her trust in him should be stronger.
And she couldn't say it aloud to him. She couldn't tell him that their relationship was beyond decent repair, that there was no trust left for him to betray. She ended up writing to him to tell him that they were at the end of the line, because she could not bear to speak the words to him.
Maybe you'll call me someday
Hear the operator say the number's no good
And that she had a world of chances for you
She had a world of chances for you
She had a world of chances,
Chances you were burning through
Chances you were burning through,
Chances you were burning through
She believed, in that moment, that he would go back to Israel once he was safe without a second thought for her. After all, if he refused to ask her to stay in his life, how much could she possibly mean to him?
She wondered, as she smacked her hand off the metal of the car in frustration at his refusal to be a man, if he would try and contact her years from now, if he saw the error of his ways? Would it take so long that she would have moved homes, changed her phone numbers, all her lines of communication, so that all he would hear was an automated voice say that the line was disconnected?
Would he realise that she loved him, even if she found it hard to trust him? Would it occur to him that she gave him chance after chance to repair his mistakes, and each time he found a new way to screw it up? So much so that she just gave up on him? Would he see what he had done?
You've got a face for a smile you know
All of this, all of it, was made better when he surprised her with a smile and a kiss before he left for Israel. She didn't fully trust him still, but his smile was loving, for once. She could see that he actually meant it this time. His smile was so precious to her that she allowed one for him, so it was the last thing he would see on her face before they parted.
After all, she had a world of chances for him, because, despite what he had done and what he had forced her to do, he was her father, and she loved him. He was not the ideal father, for from it, but she had grown up knowing him. She always found a tiny piece of her that loved him, if not for his ways, perhaps for his smile. Because his smile made her day.
Hope it was alright!
Please leave a review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x