Title: Step by Step
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Aliyah, Truth & Consequences
Summary: Ziva deals with the aftermath of her time in Somalia, and finds solace in an old routine.
There is salvation in movement. For months, she was held in an eight-by-ten cell; caged, unable to break free and run.
For the first few days, she is too weak and listless to motivate herself; her body has been starved of food and moisture, and has grown used to long periods of inactivity. There are injuries she needs to heal, also – a bruised shoulder that sends agony radiating down her arm when she moves it; a pain in her lower ribcage that she cannot identify the cause of; a fingernail torn away, leaving an excruciating wound behind.
She waits, with as much patience as she can muster, and tries not to remember. It is futile.
The first day she can stretch her arms above her head without wincing, she dons her new running gear and leaves her new residence to find a new running route. No traces of her old possessions remain, save those she left at NCIS. Everything was incinerated in the arson attack on her old apartment.
The sneakers hug her feet as she moves from a walk into a jog, and something unfurls within her body, sending a spike of grateful adrenaline through her system.
Ziva has always loved to run.
She is out of practice, and cannot keep up her usual pace. That does not matter. The steady rhythm of her feet hitting the pavement, left following right following left, makes her clearheaded in a way she has not been since she returned to Israel. Concentrating on each breath, on each step, allows her to forget every betrayal she has suffered, everyone she has lost.
She runs from Michael, who was not the man she loved when he died. From Tony, who killed him before she could take measures to alert her father. From Gibbs, who left her behind in Tel Aviv, too easily. From Salim, who put her through torment beyond measure.
Most of all, from Eli David, her father, who was prepared to abandon her to her fate. And from herself, for welcoming the death he condemned her to.
None of it matters, as long as she keeps running. Her lungs burn and twinges of pain run up her calves, but she does not stop until she reaches a bridge, deserted in the early morning sun.
There, she resists the urge to collapse onto the ground, stretching out her limbs instead, and gazing down at the river. The landscape could not be any more different than Somalia, where she was held captive, or Israel, where she was born and raised.
She is not sure when she began to think of Washington DC as her home. Perhaps it was when Gibbs left her behind; when she realised that there was no reason for her to return here, no matter how much she missed it.
Perhaps it was when she considered going back to Israel to face her father, and pondered how much easier it would be if he thought that she had died in Somalia.
Perhaps it was when she saw Gibbs standing in front of her, Tony's and McGee's arms supporting her from either side, in a gloomy hallway in Salim's compound. Or perhaps when Abby enfolded her in a gentle hug, and the applause of everyone in the squad room rang in her ears.
She is not naïve enough to think that living here will be easy. She is unsure whether or not she will be allowed back into NCIS, and her relationships with both Tony and Gibbs are uneasy, at best. Her sleep is still disturbed by night terrors that leave her in tears, and during her waking hours, she is plagued by the knowledge that, after all she has been through, a part of her wishes she had died by Salim's hand.
For now, though, she will run; taking each step as it comes, clearing her mind, concentrating on getting her body back into shape. She will relish the freedom to move as she pleases, and with a little time, she will find the mental strength to deal with the rest.