Conversations
This one is entirely outside canon, and outside the time line I've been following, but it's not relevant to the other chapters at all, so let's ignore all that. It's the story I wanted to tell today. Sadness warning.
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December 19, 2009
Gibbs found her sitting in his basement when he got back from a late drink with Ducky. She was on the floor, leaning against the drawers where he stored his tools. A yellow candle on the floor in front of her sputtered in the draft he'd created as he entered.
"Ziva?" Gibbs asked softly.
She didn't turn but he knew she'd heard him. He walked quietly down the steps, stopping a few feet from her and glancing at the candle.
"It's not May," Gibbs said. "I thought those candles were for anniversaries."
Ziva glanced up at him, her face composed but deeply sad. "Today is the day that I am older than he was when he died." She paused and turned back to the light. "It is not a thing one ever thinks to consider as a younger sister, the idea that you could one day be the older one."
Gibbs took a seat before her, watching the candle flicker. "Is it his birthday?"
Ziva shook her head without turning. "No. He was four years, two months and a day older than me. And that is how much time has passed since he died."
"You still keep track," he whispered.
"Of course," she answered equally softly. "Don't you?"
He nodded, reaching out to squeeze her hand.
Ziva sighed, a smile twisting itself into a grimace on her face. "My mother told me that when I was born, he expected me to be as big as him, so I could play with him. He didn't understand that babies grew just as slowly as children, that I was always going to be littler than him."
Gibbs didn't answer, trying to imagine what the man he had known only as a terrorist and murderer would have looked like as a child. It was hard to reconcile the two.
Ziva smiled briefly. "When Tali was born, he sat me down and explained that she would be a baby. I was only just three myself, I barely remember it."
"Letting you learn from his mistakes," Gibbs offered.
She looked at him sadly, the tears in her eyes a confirmation. "I wondered, sometimes, if by the time I reached this age, I too would have found reason to betray my country."
"You're no traitor," he said firmly.
She flinched, the scar through her eyebrow distorting the expression. She turned back to the candle as she spoke. "Yet I, too, am no longer loyal to Mossad."
Gibbs opened his mouth to say that she, at least, had never shot a member of team, but remembered the events of the spring and thought better of it. Finally he offered, "you're still loyal to his memory."
Ziva nodded. "As he would have been to mine." She held her hand two inches over the flame, seeing how long she could stand the heat. "Every year, we prayed together for Tali. He never forgot her."
Gibbs studied her profile as a tear slid down Ziva's cheek. He reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she turned, and said gently, "Please. I would like to be alone."
He settled his hand on her back anyway and leaned forward to press a kiss to her temple before standing.
"Come up when you're ready," Gibbs told her as he ascended the stairs.
Ziva sat, stiff but unwilling to move, for the last three hours as the yahrzeit candle burned out and left her in darkness, the oldest and most weary of her father's children.
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For Alice Rowan Swanson, who would have been 24 today.
