I can't believe I haven't snapped out of my pattern today, and I promised myself I would. Another update around midnight my time, another day in which I completely ignored my history essay. Bleurgh, is all I can say to that. Bleurgh with a capital bleurgh.
Anyway. A couple of points about this:
- vastly longer than the majority of these.
- I'm not sure whether it's as sweet and dreamy and the others, but I took notice of a review and Ziva doesn't cry in this one :)
- Although it's titled bird, and there is a bird (a big, big one!) it's less about birds than you might expect with a chapter entitled bird. But, y'know. There's a bird.
- I just said bird an awful lot. It's kinda fun.
- I don't really know if the details of either Tony or Ziva's mothers have been explored in episodes in Season 6 that I haven't seen yet. If not, then this is my take. If they have, then I'm sorry but this is just an alternative viewpoint.
- A couple of f's in here, but not much.
And, otherwise, I LOVED Code of Conduct. The whole Tiva thing at the end with the tension and the blue! Aww, it made me chuckle. However, I was wondering, I know the next episode is coming up in two weeks not one (heartbreaking) but I haven't been able to find any trailers/previews/whatever videos anywhere for 7.06. Is this because they haven't been released in the US yet (as they usually are at the end of each ep) or just slowness in getting to the rubbishy UK.
ALSO – Let me just explain that Hocus Pocus was an intrinsic part of my childhood experience. I LOVED that film with all my heart from the age of whenever to slightly older (yeah, I can't remember). However, it was only today, at around 6 this morning, when I realised that the older brother right at the beginning and the ghosty man at the end – the boy that gets turned into a cat and has a sister called Emily – is played by none other than a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD LONG HAIRED MCGEE. There were not words to describe my hysterical joy when I found evidence of this on Youtube.
AND ANOTHER ALSO - I really REALLY want to see 'Charlie Valentine' with MW in it, but I can't find it anywhereeee, and this is VERY upsetting.
Sigh. Anyway. Enough of me. Hope you enjoy this one :) but I understand if you don't, not as much as the others.
Bird
I remember it so clearly. The day was a bright new blue, and the air seemed more vivid, more real than usual. It was the beginning of the summer. The heat was returning to my bones. I woke alone.
He called too early. No manners, as usual, but there was a smile on my face as I answered. "Yes, Tony?"
"Ziva. I...uh...I have a problem."
"Of what nature?"
"It's, uh, not really something that would make sense over the phone. Is there any chance you could come round?"
"Of course. I'll be there in a couple of minutes. Do I need to bring weapons?"
He laughed, and hung up on me. I clutched the phone to my ear for a little while, listening to the cold rude drone of his absence. I said some words I could never say to his ears, to his eyes. A pair of jeans and a top I'd seen him appreciate a couple of weeks back. I stared at my reflection and wondered when I became a teenage girl again, fussing and fretting over my hair, my clothes, the way I walked. The way I smiled. A teenage girl, and I laughed, because I was never that girl. I never had the chance. I had a knife at my waist from fourteen, a deadly aim at sixteen. I did not blush. I hurt people instead.
But when I climbed the stairs to his apartment, I just felt like dancing. The air was cool and clean. The night was going to be beautiful. I felt free, just a little bit free.
And then there was crashing and swearing from inside. Something splintered within me. I heard a grunt of pain. My day crumpled and burned with the wind.
It seems so utterly pathetic – too utterly pathetic – how my heart started hammering within seconds. Within the second, and that was all it took. Gun out, I kicked my way through his door. Splintered. Crumpled. And there he stood.
"Ziva. What the fuck?"
---
I don't think I've ever felt so stupid. I don't think he's ever looked so stupid.
---
Picture this, if you will: A ruined sitting room, utter destruction. The coffee table swinging crazily on two legs, the blinds ripped and dangling, a shelf swinging vertically from a single bolt. DVDs, books, CDs. Paper, on the floor. I saw a photograph of all of us, the glass splintering McGee into a thousand wide-eyed men, fracturing me and Tony far apart.
And Tony, stood before me, indignant and incredulous, holding a massive, writhing, blue and gold macaw.
---
We had a casual, half-smiling argument. I tried to explain that I heard banging, yelling, remembered his words – "I, uh, I have a problem" – put two and two together and made four, when apparently the right answer was parrot. In trying to save his life, I had broken his door. I thought I had a valid excuse. I assured him I would pay.
"But-" and he sounded comically childish – petulant and earnest – "There was no need."
"I understand that now."
Apparently that is a very unsatisfactory answer. He went to throw his arms over his head in exasperation and almost hit the bird on the light fixture. It made noise. A lot of it.
"Tony, may I ask?"
"Go right ahead." His smile was sincerely insincere. He looked sleepy, and open, and pissed.
"Why the parrot?"
Apparently that's a very unsatisfactory question.
---
His name was Gomez. In a fit of drunken stupidity, Tony had agreed to take care of him for the weekend. Tony had never had a pet before. Tony thought it would be fun.
I calmed the bird whilst he started putting his things back together. I watched him moan low over the broken DVD cases, stroke the mangled mess of the blinds. When he came to the photograph, weighted down with so much glass, he hesitated. It was only a parrot, a humorous anecdote, but the look in his eyes made me feel like crying.
He looked hopelessly lost. Young, sweet and vulnerable. He knelt down with such mournful bewilderment in his eyes, picked it carefully up, brushed the glass away. Cradled it tenderly and disappeared into his bedroom. I calmed the bird some more, and resisted the urge to hit it when it bit me sharply on the thumb for my efforts.
---
He came out soon enough, all smiles and excitement. A parrot! He yelped, just like a kid, how cool is that? I didn't have the heart to ruin it for him. Sometimes I think that all I ever do is ruin, because I can't see how I'm doing it, and so when I see the choice, clear, in front of me, bold and wicked, I make it right. I try to be good for once. A wisp of something better in the middle of all the blood that I have spilt.
He is in awe, and I am somewhere happy and warm, and so when he awkwardly, carelessly asks me to spend the day with him, I agree with a quiet smile. I cook for him. It makes me infinitely proud and peaceful. The parrot settles on the one remaining shelf. He opens his windows, wide, and we end up lying on the carpet in the little sun-drenched square of light, side by side, talking. Gomez flutters above us. We are far away.
---
He tells me about his mother, when she died, and suddenly I understand why he is.
---
She had cancer. His father was fucking around. She lay in her bed all day, yellow and empty, and just waited to stop existing. And he had spent all his time with her. Seventeen years old, no parties, no fun, just endless hours with his dying mother and that was all he wanted. It hurt so incredibly, every day, to see how much she had changed. They spoke of everything, he tells me, everything from sex to God to taxes to truth to college to just how much she loved him.
One afternoon, she answered the phone by her bedside and it was for him. A boy with a carefree voice was asking after Tone, asking whether he was coming tonight or is he busy? She swallowed the guilt with the pain meds and made Tony go. Made him promise. He cried a little at her bedside, said he didn't want to, and she cradled her child like he was five again. He didn't want to go, but above all he didn't want her to die, and there was nothing she could do about that.
She gave him money, money falling out of his pockets, gave him the more serene smile and told him that she was utterly proud, and then she died six hours later, whilst he was in someone else's dark and blurry room between the legs of a girl who meant nothing to him. I just couldn't-I mean, how do you?...I just...there was nothing, I wanted the last hours back so much, and instead I was at a party having fun, like I promised her and the opposite of what I promised myself, and she died, in her room, in the dark, alone. All on her own. My father was in some hotel with his receptionist and his wife just slipped away with no one with her, because my dick was too busy. How do you deal with that? How do you reconcile it? I couldn't. I...couldn't.
---
The sun pours down on us both, dripping down to our bones like honey, and now it is my turn.
I tell him about my mother, when she died, and he stays silent.
---
He brought Ari home, and I still remember the look on my mother's face. I was six, he was nine and stared straight at me with kind, knowing eyes. Ever the imposter, but he looked so comfortable, stood between my mother and his father, and even at such a tender age, I knew something was wrong. I looked at my father, and he met my eyes with no words, just that cold, shrewd, impassive gaze, and I loved him a little less and my fear for him burst so magnificently in front of my eyes.
She left, the next day, kissed me on the cheek, handed Tali to our nanny and told me that love ruins us, Ziva. And then she told me that she loved me, and I was so very young. I did not understand what she meant.
She never came home. He sat me down three weeks later, told me they found her body and that she was dead by her own hand, and that is a sin, my Ziva, and she will not be going to heaven for that.
I was six years old, and she never came home.
---
And all the while, that bird was just flying in lazy sweeping circles above our heads.
---
Sometime around four or five in the afternoon, we fell asleep. The sun made us drowsy and so we curled together like children and when I awoke, the moon was silky and rich on my skin and it shone like a blade and the night wasn't black, it was blue. Rich and soft and I could feel the difference in my blood, and he was watching me with soft sleepy eyes and told me I looked haunted when I slept.
It was the end of a floating day, and I felt new in my skin.
---
I did not wake alone that night.
Just wanted to point something out – in my stuff, I generally write present tense, it's just the natural way for me to write. However, in this one, I've skipped between the two quite a lot. I KNOW that's annoying to some people, but I write what feels natural and when it's present tense I generally just get a different feeling about it, as to when it's past. Idk. Just me, I guess. Hope you enjoy nonetheless.