A/N Onwards! Posting a day early because it's my birthday, and I feel like making us all a gift.
This chapter is a tag to episode 10x14, Hereafter.
Warning for heavy themes. Difficult familiar situations, divorce, depression and loss of a parent are discussed or at least mentioned.
I tried to go easy on all this as much as I could, since my goal was to create a moment of openness and intimacy that mirrored the "Little Prince scene" in Shell Shock pt.1. That said, I will completely understand if some of you will prefer to skip this chapter altogether.
«Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.»
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Lev N. Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
"As good as it can be."
She felt her control falter for the first time that night.
When Vance had asked her and Tony to go babysit his kids, she had been worried. She wanted to help him any way she could, but she was not eager to go back to the place where her father had died, and frankly she was afraid to face the kids who had also lost a parent that night. Then she had told herself she had to keep it together. If those kids could live in the house where their mother had died, she certainly could suck it up and spend a couple of hours in there with them.
She had let Tony drive and kept quiet the whole trip. She knew he'd worry, but she just couldn't open up and share her anxiety if she wanted to arrive at the house with the right attitude.
He had seemed to get it, because he had let her be, and only checked on her every once in a while with fleeting and discreet glances.
While she walked out the door, she realized that she had managed to keep her mask in place all the evening just thanks to his little overdramatic scene at their arrival. She was almost sure he had pulled a classic DiNozzo to distract her and put her in a position where she had to be the one in charge and therefore be focused on the task. It had worked, she hadn't thought of anything that didn't concern taking care of the kids and hadn't let her feelings get in the way, until Vance had walked in.
Her brief exchange with him had finally shattered her walls, despite its positive outcome.
She hoped Tony would follow her quickly outside, because now that the assignment was completed and she had nothing to keep her thoughts away from the dark zone, lingering in that driveway would take apart her sanity flashback after flashback.
He made her wish true appearing at her side, touching her back and uttering in his deepest voice "Let's go home".
Since the drive back appeared to be no less quiet than the outward trip, Tony tried to cast a casual comment.
"Wasn't too bad after all… nice kids. And they give the right importance to the classics, that certainly made it eas –"
"You can quit the act now, Tony. That certainly made it easier for me. I appreciate it."
He made his typical "you got me" face and smiled.
"You're welcome. It wasn't all completely fake, you know? I am uncomfortable around kids."
"It did not look like it."
"It's always easy to hide behind shenanigans," he answered, sounding self-conscious.
She narrowed her eyes, surprised by his demeanor.
"It does not sound as a bad thing, if it helps people around you to feel better," she observed.
He smiled at her, grateful for her comment. They remained silent for a while, before he revealed the reason for his uneasiness.
"I just wish… you know, I've been there, I should be able to give them a word of wisdom, but I can't, 'cause my mom has been gone for over thirty-five years and I'm still mourning. It's like –" he interrupted his somber musings abruptly. "Sorry."
He cast a sideways glance to her to check if he had saddened her further. The passing light of a street lamp revealed a mostly annoyed expression on her features.
"I told you already, Tony. There is no reason to have taboos. What is the point of the whole sharing agreement if you cannot talk to me about 'the things that matter', to use your words?"
"True. I just didn't want to be insensitive."
"You were not." She exhaled. "I was thinking about my mother too. It is inevitable after a night like this, yes?" she added quietly.
He twisted his mouth in a silent and bitter agreement.
"Every family is different, Tony. Vance's kids have something in common with us, but they also have a good father and they have each other. I'm not saying it will be easier for them, but… different. Every loss is different. We cannot give them any word of wisdom for this reason."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," he commented.
He pulled over in front of her house reluctantly, not keen on leaving her alone with her thoughts and being alone with his own. She either picked up what he had in mind or shared the sentiment, because she did the last thing he would have expected from her.
"Come in and drink something?" she proposed.
He winced. "You mean drink drink? As in getting drunk together?"
Getting tipsy with their friends on a happy occasion was one thing, but drinking themselves oblivious on such a hard moment didn't sound like a smart idea.
"As in drink something warm, Tony." Her lips twitched, tracing the ghost of a smile.
"Oh." Of course Ziva would know better than that. "I'd love to."
Sitting on her couch twenty minutes later, with two steamy mugs on her coffee table, they didn't seem to be able to find their way back into the conversation they had started in the car.
Ziva tucked her feet under herself and drew a blanket over her legs, offering him a corner of it. He smiled, pleased by the intrinsic intimacy of her gesture, but let her have it all. He enjoyed the sight of Ziva wrapping herself protectively in the blanket and took a closer look to it. It had some irregular knots, and its color, a rich deep blue, turned abruptly into a lighter shade on one edge, as if whoever had made it had finished the wool too soon.
"You never told me you could knit," he observed, trying to restore the conversation.
"Because I cannot. And it's crocheted. My mother made it, ten years ago."
"Oh. Well, she was skilled." He paused. "You know, you never talk about her either" he pointed out, referencing her comment of months earlier, when he had showed her a picture of his mother in the break room.
"I do not for your same reasons. More or less." She gritted her teeth. "It is not just that she broke my heart… it is more that I have contributed to break hers."
"Why would you think that?" he asked, genuinely bewildered by how far her inclination to guilt could go.
She looked down and started fiddling with a little hole in the blanket.
"She was always a sensitive woman, too sensitive for her own good. After the divorce, she started having problems. I was thirteen and Tali was just nine, we noticed she was always sad but we had no idea how… bad things really were. She was probably already slipping into depression, but she always refused to see a doctor, so it went undiagnosed and therefore untreated. For a period, it went in ups and downs. She tried to be strong for us, but within a year she had stopped talking to all our relatives, she rarely left the house, and many times I had to cook dinner because Tali was hungry and our mother would not come out of her bedroom. After a few months I was so overwhelmed I reached out to aunt Nettie. She was my mother's aunt, and they were very close before my mother started to push everyone away. Nettie took care of us and of our mother, and things went better for a while. She seemed more relaxed, she did not get too anxious when she had to go out if one of us went with her. And then… when I joined the army, I think that gave her sanity another blow. She did not want me to go anywhere near my father, but I did. I missed him, and I used the training to get back close to him."
She shook her head. "Bright plan, uh?"
"You couldn't know, Ziva. It made sense at the time," he answered softly. Her question had just been a bitter comment, but he was determined to not let her beat herself up even over missing her father.
She glanced at him briefly before returning her attention to the hole in the blanket.
"Well, it was the beginning of the end. As if losing me to Mossad wasn't enough, a couple of years later she lost Tali – we lost her, and we weren't even able to lean on each other, that is how bad our relationship had gone by then."
She sniffed and brushed away a tear that had made its way out.
He reached out and stilled her fidgeting hands.
"You shouldn't blame yourself, Ziva. Depression is not something loved ones can cure. It isn't your fault your mother fell sick."
She lifted her look to him, and her glassy eyes met his.
"I know that now, but still I wasn't of any help," she replied somberly.
He squeezed her hands, at a loss for words. After a moment of silence, she spoke again.
"I am grateful for one thing, though… we parted on good terms. This blanket, she did it for me. She was angry and disappointed about my decisions, but during her last period she made this as a peace offer. Aunt Nettie had taught her how to crochet to keep her active and give her something to focus on. Did you know that crocheting and knitting are apparently anti-anxiety activities? I read that on a magazine a few months ago. It's funny, I do not think my aunt knew it. She was always a wise woman." She smiled, then took a moment to think.
"I don't know why I didn't take this blanket with me the first time I moved to the US, but I'm glad I didn't. I would have hated to lose it when my old apartment blew up. I finally asked my aunt to ship it here after… coming back from Saleem's camp. He had taken my Magen David, the only other thing I had left of my mother, and I just… needed to feel her close, after that experience, and after you know, the rift with my father."
Tony stared at her in shock. She had regained her composure and was speaking very matter-of-factly of the most difficult events of her past. He felt like he had learnt more things about her in the past five minutes than in the previous eight years.
She sensed his astonishment. Her fingertips went to her current necklace and her eyes to his.
"When you all replaced my necklace with this one – " she choked on her words and tried again. "It is good to wear it, as something that came from my new family and that at the same time symbolizes my heritage."
"Yeah, that was Gibbs' idea… and mine, too, but at the time I wasn't sure you'd want to consider me family, after what had happened," he admitted uneasily.
"I'm sorry I made you doubt that," she whispered. "I hoped… when I apologized, I hoped I had made myself clear that I did not consider you responsible for what had happened. It had been my mistake, and mine only" she added, louder and more forcefully.
"You had been clear," he confirmed. "But I still felt somewhat responsible for what you had gone through. I couldn't help thinking that if only I had shown you trust instead of calling you into question, and being hostile, maybe you would have trusted me."
His facial expression told her that that doubt had never really left him. She shook her head.
"Tony, you need to get this out of your head. You had every reason to go for the tough approach. Besides, I was very confused. Being sent away the previous summer, having returned to my father, to my old self, had shaken my world. I had lost my balance, I was fighting for my identity, and I felt split between two homes. I had to choose, and I made the wrong choice. That was it. I would have done the same no matter what."
He nodded, even if he wasn't entirely convinced. If that was the conclusion she had come to, he had to respect it.
"The only thing you're responsible for," she continued, "is me being here today. And I don't mean just because you came to rescue me. You let the door open, and let me come back on my own terms. Stop beating yourself up over something that I did."
"Ok." He took her hands again and looked her in the eyes. "You need to promise me something too. You need to promise me that you'll try to let go some of this guilt. You carry this huge amount of guilt with you, all the time, and I don't know how you manage to walk straight under its weight. You feel guilty towards your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, the team, even me sometimes. That's a long list. It's not healthy, ok? And the thoughts that generate it? Aren't true, for the largest part. Life has been hard on you, and you survived. Yours is survivor's guilt, Ziva. Surviving is good. It's actually great. Why don't you start celebrating it instead?"
She squeezed his hands, and exhaled. He was right, and somewhere deep in her mind she knew it.
"I promise," she said hoarsely. "Just remind me, every once in a while?"
"Do you really need to ask? You should know I can be pretty obnoxious when I decide to insist on something."
He winked, and she answered with her typical throaty chuckle that he loved so much.
She leaned on him, and when she was settled in his arms, he kissed the top of her head.
His father had been wrong. It wasn't a matter of sweeping her off her feet, but to help her back on them first. And she was trusting him on it. Trust. What had used to be the major problem between them was becoming their strongest bond. They had come a long way.
A/N This was a tough one. Tough to write, tough to reread... but oh so satisfying. I hope it has satisfied you as much.
I've tried to write about depression with tact, I hope I made it. Keep in mind that inaccuracies may be due to the fact that we're seeing it from young Ziva's POV. Let me know if there is anything that feels horribly wrong.
Let me also know if you liked it, because as you may have guessed by now, I'm particularly fond of this chapter.
I promise happy times will be back soon :)