There had been a time, as a very small child, that Ziva had not been afraid of anything, because she'd believed that her Abba would always protect her from everything bad. Then, at the age of four, she'd watched her friend's house go up in flames in the middle of the night, and had realized that her Abba couldn't always be with her. She'd wanted to spend that night at her friend's house, but her Abba had said no with such force and her Ima had said no with such sadness that she hadn't pressed the issue. But later, watching the monsters drag Rachel and her family from their burning house, she'd cried and thanked a god she barely knew that her Abba had wanted her home. Three days later, her friend's family was found dead in the desert, their eyes eaten by birds. Her brother, Ari, had tried to shield her eyes from the grim pictures, but Abba had yelled at him to let her go.
After that night, she insisted on sleeping with a nightlight because she was so scared of the dark. Not of the dark itself, but that the monsters would come for her unless she could see to fend them off. Her Abba had scolded her but her Ima had stood up to him, and that morning Ari had given her a little nightlight in the shape of a star. And though the little light helped, her sleep was often plagued by monsters and fire and grinning skulls with hollow, glowing sockets that mocked her.
At ten she'd found out the hard way that the monsters were men and they could (and often did) come in the daylight as well. She'd been out shopping with her Ima and Aunt Nettie when men wearing masks had come out from inside an abandoned store, and started shooting. Her Ima had gotten shot in the chest, and her last act was to twist her body so that she fell on top of her daughter, shielding her from the bullets.
That night she'd ripped her light from the wall and smashed it on the floor. Her father had only smiled grimly, and her brother had said nothing, but later that sleepless night Ari had tiptoed into her dark room and handed her a knife, assuring her that it would protect her from the monsters regardless of the angle of the sun. And the monsters and skulls in her dreams were replaced with guns and evil laughing men with no faces.
At twelve she'd learned that her father was one of the monsters, and he would not protect her from anything because she was meant to be his weapon, not his prize. Alone in a bombed-out building, bruised and bloodied and hurting in places she'd never thought could hurt, she cried because her father had traded her body for military secrets.
When she'd returned home, covered in blood, her aunt had fussed over her and cleaned her up. Her father had told her that she was supposed to fight and sent her to bed without supper. Ari had brought soup to her room and curled himself around her, holding her all night.
At sixteen she'd learnt what she thought she'd been meant to know all along. That there were monsters in this world that no knife or light could protect against. She was supposed to be in the café with Tali, but she'd made her sister walk across the street on her own so that she could spend more time with Shmuel, a boy in her class with big muscles and pretty eyes. Later she will betray him for a cause she no longer believed in, and her father would smile while Ari shook his head. She should have died with Tali, and sometimes she believes she did, because now her nights are filled with screams and hellfire and a little taste of what she's sure awaits her in the next world.
Somewhere between Tali's death and joining NCIS, she learned that her father had ordered the attack on Rachel's house, but by then it didn't matter what kind of monster he was. She was in too deep. And though she could kill someone with a paperclip and sleeps with a gun under her pillow, her nights were still filled with broken bodies and dead sisters and bloody heads of captured partners.
At 23, she learned that weapons could not save brothers from themselves, but a single bullet could save others from the monster he had become. It should not have come as a surprise when Ari betrayed her. After all, wasn't she there to betray him? She didn't want to, but still, she would not have agreed to meet Gibbs if she wasn't ready to betray Ari. And when it came time to shoot, she felt another piece of her die and float away. To Heaven? She doubted it. No paradise for a sister who would shoot her own brother for a man she barely knew. Gibbs thanks her, and her father will congratulate her, but Ari just lays and bleeds. And her nights were haunted by ghosts of agents she did not know, a quiet loyal man who had lost too much too soon, and prayers sung by a traitor over the bodies of those she betrayed.
And then she was part of a family, and she let herself become soft. But at 27, she has become too soft, and does not follow when she should, and arrives just in time to see another friend die, killed by monsters with no names or faces. And then she wasn't part of the family anymore, and she met someone who wasn't what she wanted but he'll do for now. And because she had become soft, it took her six whole months to realize that he was only using her in dangerous ways. And though she wasn't sure exactly what the plan was, her nightmares started focusing on cat and mouse games and the betrayer betrayed.
And then she was sent back to her family, but this time she left another piece of herself behind in Israel, for although she knew he did not care for her, she had learned to love him. But back in America, things are different and he is quickly discovered and his game revealed, and he is wrong to use her, but then he is dead and none of it matters because she knows she was doomed from the moment she met him, whether he used her or not. So she flies back to Israel with the man she's killed for and the man who's killed for her, and she refuses to speak to either of them because they cannot know that she is racing towards her death. It turns out she was wrong, when she told him that nothing was inevitable. Death is inevitable, and the only question is whether she'll be forced to bring her family with her.
But, God be praised, she is not, because Gibbs believes her betrayal to be true, and with a kiss on the cheek and a whispered order which she knows she cannot follow, the plane flies off with one passenger too few. And she is on a boat and kills many men, and betrays many others, and does something that she vowed never to do. She is beaten, raped, tortured, all because she won't give up the name of a man who left her standing on the tarmac. She dreams all the time now, or maybe she does not, but she cannot tell the difference between reality and nightmares, and suspects that one is no longer worse than the other, so it no longer matters anyway. She dreams of darkness and pain and men that can't see through her lies so they leave her alone to die.
Then, miracle of miracle, someone does come looking for her, and it is them and him and her bruised heart jumps once in joy and then twice in fear, but in the end her family survives and they are all dead. Then strong arms lifted her up and she is carried away from that horrid room where Saleem lay dead on the floor, and towards the only father she's ever known. And then there is a helicopter and shouting that she doesn't hear and medics pricking her with needles and telling her it will be okay even as they write notes about how broken she really is. At last a plane, this time with all the seats occupied, and that is the last thing she remembers before one of the needles drags her into a world where there are no burning cigarettes that char flesh and no terrorists with steel in their eyes and boots and no nightmares about killing her friends with her words. When she wakes up she is home, home, home. And there is clapping and congratulating, and she doesn't understand why because she's been dead for years and wasn't much of a prize when she was living anyway.
A year passes. A year since she traded Heaven for Hell and then back again, and though she smiles at the sun, her eyes reveal that darkness brings knives on tender flesh and stolen necklaces and men in planes that leave her on the tarmac in a surprisingly foreign world.
Time will heal you they say. You left that part of you in Africa he whispers. Her father is killed in his bed one night and they tell her she will survive because she is not like him. And she feigns belief. But her eyes, which still don't shut up, are filled with ghosts of countless men she killed, and some she didn't. Three lovers she betrayed, and one she did not. A dark haired friend whose head was shipped overnight express because he made the mistake of thinking he could escape the war, and another friend with flaming red hair, shot to death because she did not even try to escape. A mother dead because she wanted her daughter to have a life that everyone knew she couldn't, and a father dead because he never wanted another life for himself or for her.
A sister killed in a war because she didn't believe in it, and a brother, killed in the same war because he believed in it far too much. Killed by her own hand because she didn't believe in anything at all.
And she learns the hard way that nothing can save you from the monster you were born to be. In her dreams, as in her reality, she is the only monster left.