I'm not entirely sure if this story could ever be considered canon, and you all know I'm a stickler for canon. But I've come to the point where it just doesn't matter anymore. My tribute to eight years of Ziva, the only way I know how to give it.

I WILL

be a ballerina

ride a horse

live in a castle

visit Iceland and America

have a boy and a girl

.

"You know…I used to spend most of my time on stage searching the audience for my father's face. He was never there."

Her confidence is gone. She used to be cocky, full of herself, and she had the skills to back up the talk.

Now, she is painfully aware that she has not worn a leotard for almost twenty years, done a plié or looked at herself in a wall full of mirrors in a lifetime.

"I would like to take some rudimental ballet lessons," she tells the woman at the desk. "Is there a class for adults?"

"There is," the woman smiles.

She fills out papers and buys her materials and shows up every day for three weeks straight. Her muscles are not used to moving in ways like this, movements smooth and elegant, not sharp, movements to please people and express beauty instead of break bones and draw blood.

She bleeds, of course. The bottoms of her heels, her bunions, the side of her head when she slips and smacks her head on the bar. Her knees, when she slides and gets friction burns.

But it's strange. It's beautiful, to exert herself without the purpose of preparing herself to cause pain. She makes temporary friends with the other women in her class, meets their children and husbands and wonders whether she's pulling her life together or not. She is, she thinks.

She's nervous, actually nervous, before she goes out onstage. She, a "cold-blooded assassin," nervous.

She makes a conscious effort not to look at the audience while they dance at their first and only recital, but she can't help herself. She's a grown woman now, and she feels six, looking into the audience for her father's face.

Eli will not come. Tali and Ari and her mother, who all used to come, will not come.

"You're never lonely when you have kids. Good night, kid."

"Her father left her to die in a desert."

"I think you already missed your chance to rescue Ziva."

She searches, almost unconsciously, and imagines she sees her father's face, proud of her. The way Eli never had been.