Truths and Covert Lies: Chapter 20
A/N: Wow, thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed (and reviewed) "Homecoming". I have never had that kind of response to a story/chapter before, which makes me think I need to change my writing style and start writing more stories like that one. I'm very glad that so many people liked it.
I think I broke my toe. No, seriously--it's killing me. The pain woke me up from sleep multiple times (which is why I slept in). We were taught that "pain that wakes from sleep" is a bad thing, but whatever. It's a toe. I might still go running today. I haven't decided yet. I really don't know why I just wrote that.
Anyway, time to get back to the story. To bring you up to speed after that long (one day) hiatus, Tony and Ziva just left a crime scene on a ship at Ashdod. And now here they go.
Ziva David let out a low curse in Hebrew as she expertly down-shifted the Maserati when she was forced to decelerate to avoid hitting a car that insisted on going the speed limit when traffic was otherwise moving. If they couldn't handle driving the way they should, they shouldn't drive at all. In her opinion, far too many people were given driver's licenses.
"That was actually fun," Tony said thoughtfully out-of-the-blue. She glanced over at him to see him leaning his head back against the headrest, his face exposed to the sun and his eyes closed under the sunglasses. She wondered what he was trying to prove; he was already rather sunburnt from the drive south the day before.
"Breakfast with Agent Burley?" Ziva asked, trying to follow his train of thought. Easier said than done; sometimes she wondered if he had a train of thought.
"Well, yeah," he admitted. "But I was talking about working the scene, talking to suspects...the whole bit."
"You miss your role as the senior field agent," she stated.
"Yeah." His tone was almost wistful, and she bit back a reminder that he would be back there soon enough. She figured this was just his usual need to fill the silence with the sound of his own voice. "But what I miss more is working with you on something." She looked over surprise to see him looking at back at her. The relaxed expression from a few seconds ago was gone and replaced with something intense that she couldn't quite interpret. "Watch the road," he admonished.
"It has only been six weeks since we worked together," she reminded him. "And you had still hopped ideas off me in that time."
"Bounced," he corrected. "You've been in Israel three days. Stop reverting. And it's been a lot longer than six weeks since we worked a scene together. The last one was—"
"Lt. Shaw's murder," she finished for him. The start of the undercover mission that brought them together. He had joked about chick cars; she had been distracted about the anniversary of her sister's death.
"Yeah." Again, his voice sounded heavier than she was accustomed to from him, and she again turned questioningly toward him. "Why is it that we're only happy when we're working or annoying each other? Or while annoying each other while working?"
She blinked at the sudden serious turn of the conversation. "You did not seem unhappy the other night," she finally said, hoping to let him know with her joking response that she wasn't in the mood for this conversation. Deciding that getting the drive over with faster was probably the only way to avoid it, she again shifted and jerked the car into the other lane, a move accompanied by the blast of a horn somewhere behind her.
"Ha. Nice try, Ziva, but you're not going to distract me by making me think about sex or fear for my life with your driving. I'm onto you."
"You certainly were the other night." She turned to see a decidedly unamused expression on his face and sighed. "While working is not the only time that I am happy," she finally said.
"Well, not you, personally, but you, me, us, as a couple. Maybe it's because we've been coworkers a hell of a lot longer than lovers, but it still seems a bit screwed-up to me."
"Are you saying that I am screwed-up?"
"Yes," he replied bluntly, "but probably not any more than I am." He sighed, and she could see him rubbing his face out of her peripheral vision. She wondered if it was the lack of sleep during the night that was making him talk about things they usually chose not to acknowledge. "We don't trust each other like we should." This time, she was genuinely surprised, and nearly jerked the wheel to the right as she swung her head quickly to face Tony. "Watch the traffic," he reminded her.
"I do trust you," she told him, ignoring his implied comment about the quality of her driving. "I trust you with my life, Tony."
"No, you trust me with your health," he corrected. She frowned, wondering what he was getting at. "You trust me to watch your six. You trust me enough to give me a key to your apartment and let me know where you keep your guns hidden and join you on your runs and bike rides, but you don't trust me with your life. You don't tell me anything about you. You never say what's bothering you or what's on your mind, and even after working with you for four years and sleeping with you for four months, I can't figure it out." He gave a frustrated sigh. "You know everything about me, Ziva. You know how I did in elementary school and how many points I scored against Purdue my junior year and you probably personally vetted the anesthesiologist for my last surgery, and I know none of those things about you. We're staying in your father's homeand I'm no closer to figuring out how you grew up. I know you had an older half-brother and a younger sister and that you spent three years in the IDF before leaving for Mossad training, but that's it. When the hell are you planning on letting me in? Ever?"
For once, she kept her eyes on the road, her face set in a blank expression as she considered his words. As her father had told her growing up, you can never completely know another person, and she had been raised to never expect otherwise. Her own father was a mystery to her the majority of the time, and it couldn't have been unexpected that she would turn out the same way.
And look at what that's done for you. She blinked at the sudden nagging internal voice, and spying a familiar exit on the freeway, made a split-second decision, not even bothering with the turn signal as she barreled across the lanes toward it, a chorus of blaring horns following her. "What the hell?" Tony demanded angrily, his hand clenched on the frame of the windshield as if expecting that to protect him in case of a crash. "I want you to talk to me, not kill me!" She didn't respond at the Maserati continued, now weaving through a quiet residential area of Tel Aviv.
Neither spoke again until after she had parked the car on an unassuming street of low brick townhouses surrounding a courtyard. She wondered if Tony recognized it from the picture she had in her Georgetown condo, the one of her in her IDF uniform sitting on the concrete steps with Tali. She turned off the ignition and palmed the keys before hazarding a glance over at her partner, who was still wearing a bewildered expression. Without explanation, she unbuckled before opening her door and stepping out of the vehicle. Tony followed suit, remaining just as quiet.
Her tennis shoes didn't make a sound as she walked along the sidewalk toward a swing set and play structure in the courtyard. "This was where I grew up," she finally said. She didn't have to look over at Tony to know that he would be wearing an astonished look on his face. She pointed to a building. "Over there, apartment 204. Shmuel Rubenstein lived in that building," she said, pointing to another.
"The boy you hit when you were eight because he said he liked you?" Tony asked, confused. She smiled slightly when she nodded.
"That took place right there," she said, pointing to an area of grass near the play things. "My mother was inside with Tali and did not see it, but she heard about it from Mrs. Rubenstein, and she was not pleased, to say the least. I was not allowed outside to play for a week."
"You were grounded," he observed, sounding amused.
"Yes, I guess that would be the term," she agreed. She lapsed into silence again as she walked over to the swing set. She sat down but didn't swing, keeping her feet on the ground as she rocked back and forth slightly. "There were three bedrooms in the apartment," she continued. "But my father had used one for a study. For the first two years, Tali slept in my parents' room before they decided she should go to my bedroom. I was very angry with that decision. I was eight years old and did not want to share a room with my two-year-old sister."
"What about Ari?" Tony asked, taking the swing next to her. She shook her head.
"Ari did not enter the picture until much later," she informed him. She glanced up, her eyes scanning the courtyard. "My primary school was a kilometer that way," she said, pointing. "There were many children in the neighborhood. We all walked to school together. When we came home, our mothers would be here, many with our younger siblings, and we would play until it was time to come in for dinner."
"It seems so... normal," he said when she again lapsed into silence.
"It was normal," she said with a nod, turning to face him. "Two children, father worked for the government, mother was a teacher...there were hundreds of families in Tel Aviv exactly like us."
"Not exactly," he commented.
"No," she agreed. "Not exactly." She remembered driving out to the desert with her father to practice shooting, stern lectures about performances at school and expectations for her future. She remembered scanning the crowds at piano recitals and dance recitals, looking for the father who had promised to come. She had gotten so accustomed to his excuses of something coming up at work that by ten she had stopped asking him why he wasn't there. By the time she was twelve, she had stopped asking him to come.
The thought brought unexpected tears to her eyes, and she quickly put thoughts of her father out of her head, knowing that thinking of the father he had been would only lead to thoughts of the father he now was and his request of her. In efforts to get her mind on something else, her eyes fell on a dark-haired girl running and laughing, and she started thinking about another small dark-haired girl. "I did not want a younger sister," she said quietly. She could see Tony frown at the change in topic and saw his eyes follow hers to the small girl. "When my parents told me that I would have a little brother or sister, I did not understand at first, and then I thought it would be something new to play with, like a puppy. When Tali was born, I realized that she was not a doll that I could dress up, but was something that took my mother's attention and her time and left her tired and cranky." She again lapsed into silence, remembering a six-year-old version of herself and a temper tantrum that she still was not proud of in the marketplace.
"What was she like?" Tony asked in a low voice.
"Tali?" She smiled slightly as she remembered her younger sister, forever sixteen years old. "Tali was the daughter my mother wanted. She liked to do her hair and put on makeup and play with dolls." A glance over at Tony revealed an almost amused expression on his face. "I did none of those things," she quickly said.
"I never would have accused you of such things," he joked. She smiled thinly before continuing.
"On the surface, Tali was quiet and kind, but she used that to hide a mischievous streak. She was smart, imaginative, and quick-witted, and could come up with an excuse for everything, so she was never in trouble." She glanced down at the toes of her shoes as she dragged a line through the sand under the swing. "She wanted to be like me," she continued, her voice a bit lower. "She took dance lessons because I took dance lessons. She wanted to learn the piano because I played the piano."
"Was she as good as you?"
She couldn't stop the small, triumphant smile from crossing her lips. "No," she confided. "She was a perfectionist and would become nervous about making mistakes and could never play confidently. And the more nervous she got, the more mistakes she would make." She could still remember more than one piano recital that resulted in Tali going home in tears and abruptly changed the subject again. "We both attended Gymnasia Herzliya, the oldest secondary school in Tel Aviv. The current mayor is a former principal and alumnus. There was a coffee shop a few blocks from the school. I spent time there with my friends when I was in secondary school, and when Tali matriculated there, she began studying there as well. That is where she was when a suicide bomber walked in." This time, she couldn't stop the stray tear that escaped from her eye, and despite quickly wiping it away, she knew that Tony had seen it.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice low. She nodded to acknowledge his words.
"I was in Mossad training at the time," she continued, "and my father came to Jerusalem to give me the news and take me home." She found herself unwilling to continue that story, to tell him of the time spent training away from her mother's eyes. "My father—." She stopped abruptly, suddenly choked up, and the words that came tumbling out of her mouth were not the ones she intended to say. "The business that I had to discuss with my father, it is not what you think. It is not a mission, nor an order to return to Israel. He wants me to help him kill himself." This time, she made no effort to stop the tears as the streamed down her cheeks. Tony rose from his swing and squatted down in front of hers, but didn't force her eye contact. "He says that it is not unlike Jen, how she wanted to die on her own terms, finishing business she had to finish. He has this all planned out and his plans will leave Hamas responsible for his death and will send Israel down the path to another war." She finally met Tony's eyes to find his filled with surprise and concern, and she shook her head at his unasked question. "I could not do it. I can not do it. I will not do anything that will cause another war, not for one man's selfish wish to die without anyone knowing that he is dying. I can not do this, Tony. He is my father and my director and I can not do this." Her breath was now coming out in sobs, everything she had been feeling since she found out that her father was dying more than a year ago coming out at once. She was barely aware of Tony pulling her from the swing to her feet, of his arms around her as he held her close, of the barely-comprehensible words of comfort that were coming from his mouth as she sobbed into his shoulder and finally allowed herself to completely trust another person for the first time in her life.
A/N: So I know it's now established in canon that Ari grew up with Ziva and Tali, but before that was revealed, I had had my assumptions about the David family dynamic, which is different than canon. I decided I liked mine better, so I'm sticking with it. There will be more about Ari and Director David later in the story, which fully explains what had previously been my theories on that topic.