The first time Ziva had turned her back on the rules and thrown all caution into the wind had been when she was twenty. For two months, she had disappeared from the Mossad radar, hunting down every single person that had anything to do with the suicide bombing that had cost the life of her little sister. She had been out on a mission, damned be the consequences. And she had not given up until she had killed the last person that had known about the bombing beforehand. It was her idea of family and loyalty. You do not mess with someone's family. If someone hurts your family, you hunt them down and inflict pain on them. Because they deserve it more than anybody else.
If that was true, then Kadira had a good reason to be after her. And Ziva wondered, not for the first time, if the Palestinian knew who had really killed Ari Haswari. Who had been the one to pull the trigger that night in the basement. If she did, then it was a sheer miracle that Ziva was still alive.
Back in Jenny's office, she had acted on an impulse. She did not want to die, no. But at one point, she had thought that she deserved to. When she had looked into Kadira's eyes at Ari's funeral, seen the sadness and grief in them, the questions and underlying accusations, Ziva had taken a step back. And asked herself what a monster she had become, what kind of person her father had raised her to be. She had killed her own brother without hesitation, for a stranger. Because it had been an order. Because she had not paused long enough to find an alternative, to find a way around this. Because she had thought it was inevitable. And then, two years later, she had said that nothing was inevitable. Nothing was set in stone; the only person responsible for one's destiny was oneself.
Ziva knew that handing in her gun and badge had been foolish. She was no longer the Mossad liaison to NCIS. They would not come to her rescue. But she had figured that if they were not coming to her rescue, they would also stop hunting down Kadira. Until Ziva found a way to contact the girl, to talk to her, figure something out.
She had had to hand in her badge. Because Jen's order had been one Ziva knew she would not be able to obey. And she preferred walking away with her reputation and image intact.
She knew that if confronted with Kadira again, face to face, she would not be able to pull the trigger on the Hamas terrorist. Because as much as she had changed, Ziva still saw the young girl that had laughed along with Tali in the rain.
Because you could not chose who you loved. You just did. And when you did, you were damned, no matter what.
Sorry for the delay. Life's a rollercoaster right now.