A/N: Title and quotes from Kipling's "Tiger! Tiger!"

"What of the hunting, hunter bold?/Brother, the watch was long and cold." - Rudyard Kipling

Let me tell you a story, child. Yes, I know your father says it is time for lessons. Stories can be lessons too. Stories teach the most important lessons.

Hunters are human. Many think that makes them weak. Listen to me, and I will tell you how to be strong.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl.

The scent of herbs permeated her childhood. She remembered her mother tending them in the garden and remembered how her father would pile them up in colorful piles on the floor and teach her the rhymes meant to help her remember their names.

Wolfsbane. Eyebright. Lavendar. Wormwood. Mistletoe. Uncounted others. Those that would not grown naturally in their climate were carefully tended in little pots.

No one cooked well in their household until Ziva decided to learn in her midteens, but everyone could measure out the herbs and turn them into lotions, scented packets, weapons.

Especially weapons.

She remembered her father wrapping his hands around hers as he taught her how to hold a knife, a sword, a gun. She remembered play fights with wooden weapons turning into sparring sessions with very real ones.

She remembered bedtime stories from her

father that always had the same moral: This is how to kill our enemies.

Mostly, though, when she remembered her childhood, she remembered the Broxa that slipped past their defenses one night and drank Talia's blood.

Their mother had found Talia cold in her bed the next morning and had screamed and screamed. She had stopped screaming eventually, but the screams had never stopped echoing in her eyes.

Her father had not screamed. He had gathered up his knives to go hunting.

Ari had looked at him with something Ziva later realized had been fury. Fury for not protecting their little sister. Fury for not caring more.

He had been at the wrong angle to see her father's tears as she had.

This girl lived in a village that was attacked every year by a great monster. Every year, the greatest warriors in the village went out into the woods to fight the monster, and every year, some stumbled back with haunted eyes, some stumbled back with great wounds, and some never stumbled back at all.

The Davids had been hunters for as long as anyone could remember, but that did not mean they could not hold other jobs as well. Her father, for instance, rose to be the Director of Mossad.

He kept the Broxa's wings mounted by his chair in his office. They were too large to ignore.

Ziva tried anyway, because the only thing she could think of when she saw it were screams.

There was a great deal to fight in this world. Ziva knew that all too well. There were the monsters that haunted their country, and there were human terrorists that threatened it just as much.

She fought, as it was her duty to do. With salt and silver, with bullets and knives, with a tight green dress and a deceptively soft smile.

She remembered the story she had heard when she was very young, and she decided the most unrealistic thing about it was that there had only been one monster in the woods.

She also remembered the part about the warriors stumbling back, and she remembered her mother's haunted eyes, and the way she had drifted through the house after Talia's death. She remembered some of her father's friends who had lost limbs, vision, or hearing to their task.

Someday, she might be one of them. There were too many horrors in this world to pretend otherwise.

Or someday she would be one of the ones that never came back at all.

Everyone died someday. She had made her peace with this.

One year, there were no warriors left to fight, so the girl told her elders, "I will go."

And her elders knew they should stop her, but they were old, and they could not fight themselves, and they were desperate.

So they gave her a knife and told her to be quick.

For the first time she could remember, her father hesitated before handing her the orders. "Are you sure you wish to be Ari's handler for this mission?"

"I am," she said.

So she went with Ari to America and forced herself to admit to the truth as it unfolded.

Ari was one who had stumbled back from the woods with haunted eyes and then attacked the rest of the village.

He killed the banshee, and she didn't much care despite what the Americans claimed about her being on their side, but then he tried to kill Gibbs, and she knew.

He was too far gone to save.

She had her gun. She was quick.

The girl ventured into the woods on the trail of the beast. She had heard many accounts of it from the wounded warriors in the village, but the accounts all contradicted each other, and she wasn't sure what she would find.

She had to get away from their father after that. She had to, even if it meant joining Gibbs' monstrous team.

He wasn't too happy with the idea either, she could tell, but they made it work. She resisted the urge to knife her coworkers, and he didn't insist she be more than civil.

After the housewarming party with its limited guest list, she learned they had slightly different definitions of the word, but that was alright. She could learn.

The first time Tony was accused of murder, she believed the FBI's report wholeheartedly, and she was disgusted with the rest of the team's refusal to see the truth. He was a werewolf, and worse, part fey. He was bloodthirsty and untrustworthy, and she did not know why they could not see that.

But she had promised Gibbs she would not kill anyone on the team, so she held herself to that.

When he was proven innocent, framed by someone who was entirely human, she decided that perhaps she needed to reexamine some of her assumptions.

Magic in general was still dangerous, of course, but if there were any exceptions in this world, of course Gibbs would be the one to draw them to his team.

When she was accused of murder after the goblin - Dempsey boy, she corrected herself - collapsed, she was not surprised that some of the others believed her capable of it.

She was surprised when Tim tried to comfort her during the incident. She was perfectly alright.

But it had been - kind of him. Very kind.

And when Ducky pronounced the death of natural causes, Tony actually apologized for his doubts which was - also nice.

Even if he did immediately turn it into a joke.

The second time Tony was accused of murder, she acted as if she believed him innocent despite lingering doubts.

The third time, she did not only act as if he was innocent. She was quite, quite certain of it.

She did not understand these people. This vampire who insisted that caffeine be added to her blood, this wizard who did not want to be, this werewolf who liked classic movies and gradually forgot that she knew all his weaknesses and how to exploit them. She especially did not understand Gibbs, who reined this beast of a team in and kept them all in check.

She did not understand, but she thought she would like to.

She looked and she looked, but she could not find the beast. All she found was an old woman, who invited her into her cottage to share a meal.

The little girl went in very cautiously, afraid to find what was within, but it was a very ordinary cottage, and the woman served her bread and apples that were very, very good.

"Thank you," the child said when she had eaten, "but what are you doing out here? Surely you must fear the monster."

"Oh, greatly," said the woman. "But I must stay here, for where else could I go? Your village exiled me long ago."

"For what?" asked the girl.

"For being different," the woman said, and she turned to wash the dishes. When she did, the little girl saw the scales on the woman's back, for the beast could never entirely hide its nature.

"Why did you help me?" the little girl asked, to cover the sound of her knife being drawn from its sheath.

"Because you are too thin, my child, and because even I wish sometimes to do some good."

The girl would have hesitated then, but hesitation does you no good when the knife is already in the air.

Then her father died, and Ziva knew she had a choice.

She could chase the monster that had killed him, or she could stay with the team. With the pack, as Tony liked to call it, and which she had brought herself to do if only in her own mind.

She had many doubts about her decision, but it was too late for doubts when her knife was covered with the blood of her revenge.

The knife hit the monster square in the back and it died. The little girl dragged it back to the village, crying as she went.

Now tell me, my child, did she make the right choice? Hm? The monster was dangerous, you know. It had killed all the other warriors. Yet it was kind to her then, even if it might have turned dangerous again later. What should she have done?

You do not know, I see. That is alright. I am not your father. I do not insist that you choose one side or the other. I only ask that you think.

She went back to Israel. She kept hunting, but she was pickier about her targets now. Mostly, she taught.

Taught little girls how to hold knives. Taught little boys how to blend a mixture of salt, rosemary, and wolfsbane that would give most magical creatures a good shock.

She visited the team sometimes, and she couldn't help thinking, "If only."

But the knife was thrown.

"Grandmother?"

"Yes, child?"

"Are those scales beneath your sleeves?"

"It is armor. The better to protect you with, my dear."

"Grandmother?"

"Yes, child?"

"Why does Father say you are dead?"

"Because your father is a stubborn man who believes matters of birth are all that determine these titles. I raised him and protected him from his family's quite extensive list of enemies for six months after his mother died while we waited for his father to get home, and I've kept an eye on him ever since. I think that makes me your grandmother, don't you?"

"Grandmother?"

"Yes, child?"

"How did his first mother die?"

"She attacked a shapeshifter's nest, my child, and killed her chicks, which made the shapeshifter very angry."

"And very lonely?"

"Yes. So his mother killed three shapeshifters before they could come into the world, and I got a stubborn son to replace them, and we both got a little bit of what we wanted."

"Grandmother?"

"Yes, child?"

"Father doesn't know you're here, does he?"

"Of course not, dear. And that's not the real question. The real question is, are you going to throw that knife?"

A/N: A Broxa is a mythological bird from Jewish folklore, originally thought to drink milk from goats, leaving the goats barren, but who eventually became more threatening and was said to drink human blood - particularly that of children. They were said to be flying shapeshifters. I got my information from wikipedia and occultopedia . . . although the last website was a little weird . . . if you want to look up more information.

This is late, short, and I'm not entirely happy with it, but Ziva has never been my favorite character for reasons that I'm happy to get into but that you probably don't care about. Ah, well. Hopefully the next piece for this series will go better!