Chapter Thirty Six: Don't Fight Me
"His name was Sa'id."
That was all she offered him to start with. He instantly wanted to know who this other guy was; a friend, a lover, more? But he refrained. This was her story, her past, and he needed to respect that, no matter how much time it took for her to tell him. He knew that it would be bad because he knew the ending - her thinking she couldn't have children and he had some idea that her being emotionally distant in relationships was something to do with this story as well. It was also strange to see her taking her time with something like this, usually if she cracked under his questions and revealed something about her past, it was always told in a straight shoot manner, direct to the point and never pandering on details. Now, she leaned against the dresser, hands braced either side of her, avoiding his eyes as she looked down at the plush carpeting. He followed her gaze at some point to see her burying her bare toes in the material. She'd painted her toenails. Why hadn't he noticed that before?
"He was an apprentice agent working under my father," she continued eventually. "He was strong, determined, fiercely loyal, all the hallmarks of a good officer. It was only natural that my father took such an interest in him. I was fourteen years old when we were first introduced." If she closed her eyes tightly enough, she could still picture that moment, walking into her father's office after finishing her studies one day and accidentally intruding on the conversation. She had thought first that she'd be punished for being rude, but instead her father had brought her into the room and introduced her to his most promising recruit. "He would come over to the house to brief my father on things that happened when he was away from the office. I would see him and catch his eye from across the room. My sister-"
"Tali?" he interrupted, without meaning to.
She nodded. "Yes. Tali. When she would see me watching Sa'id, and him watching me in the same manner, she would tease me for hours about it. I did not care for her words, however, because I was slowly becoming infatuated with Sa'id. It did not take long for our innocent meetings to become more meaningful visits. It was a strange connection that we had, one that I had not experienced before so I was eager. I would feel my heart racing when we would look up and meet one another's gaze at the same moment. If ever my father noticed this, he did not say, but when Sa'id and I decided to become involved romantically, it was clear that we could not risk letting my father catch us. So we hid our meetings. I would pretend that I was going to study with friends, or that I was partaking in a production with the school. It was easy to fabricate that lie, as I knew that my father would never come to watch me dance, no matter how many performances he was invited to."
She stopped for a moment, looking down at her toes as they moved through the carpet. He didn't have to guess the reason behind her sudden silence. He wasn't stranger to the resentment she showed towards her father for never coming to watch her dance. This time, he didn't interrupt. He just waited for her to continue speaking, trying to convince himself that now was not the time to be admiring the shape her nightclothes took around her body.
"When my father was away on missions, it was easier for us to find excuses to see one another," she recalled. "He would come over, pretending that he did not know my father was away, or that he had been instructed to leave various documents in his study. My mother had passed away years before this point, and I was left alone with only my siblings while my father was away. Tali was younger that me by three years, but she could see what was happening between me and Sa'id. I made her promise not to tell, so when she did see him arrive at the house, she would excuse herself and leave us be. Sa'id, himself, was older than me by two years, but he did not mind that our relationship did not move as fast as others might have. We took our time, always being cautious because we were always so close to being caught. We never did, though. If there was anything my father taught me, it was how to keep secrets."
Again, she fell silent. This time, Tony felt the need to say something. His head ducked a little, trying to look into her eyes as she made sure to keep them hidden from him. "Hey," he murmured. She raised her eyes to meet him, and combined with her leaning against the dressed, bowing her head and skimming her toes across the carpet, she looked like the younger version of herself she was telling him about. "You don't have to do this," he assured her.
She didn't acknowledge that offer, but she did smile sadly. "Sa'id would tell me that he loved me," she told him. "He would say these wonderful things to me that I wanted to hear when I was that young. When I was that age, all I wanted was to believe that there was a man in this world who would not treat me like my father did. I wanted to believe that I would marry a man who would be an attentive father to our children, who would not recruit them into Mossad from the moment they were born and then proceed to ignore any other activities, including their schoolwork. Sa'id made me believe that were true. He would often tell me of his plans of us getting married and having a life away from Mossad. We were happy, so I believed, and that was something I had not felt for a long time, so I continued the relationship with him. It was not until my sixteenth birthday that we slept together for the first time. It was not romantic, nor was it particularly pleasant, but it was away from my father's prying eyes, and I was ready. It was my first time, but it was not his, although a man of his stature, I did not believe it ever would be. But yes, I was ready for that night, but I was not ready for what came next."
"Did your father find out?" he asked.
She just shook her head, an action that made him realise what could have happened.
"You were pregnant," he realised.
She just nodded. "I tried to ignore it at first. I could see all the signs, and many girls my age were already married, but I tried to tell myself that I was too young and that my mind was working against me. But deep in my heart, I knew exactly what was happening. And that the time, it could not have been more inconvenient, as I am sure you could understand."
"You weren't married," he acknowledged.
She shook her head. "Which would have added to my father's fury, had he known the situation at the time. So I continued to deny it, telling myself that I would not have a child until I was married, and a part of me believed that if I ignored it long enough, then it would go away. I forced it to the back of my mind and carried on with my life, but it did not change what was happening."
Tony nodded, smiling sadly. "Life doesn't work that way," he said softly. Ignoring something didn't change it, that was something he could definitely understand.
"As you now know," she nodded.
"Yeah," he agreed. "What did you do?"
"I panicked," she told him. "Especially when I began to show. I was small, compared to other girls my age, so I showed quickly and it was becoming increasingly hard to hide it from my family, especially my father."
"What about your sister?" he asked. "Did she know?"
She shook her head. "I could trust Tali with my life, but she would have gone to my father with my best interests at heart."
"Did you tell Sa'id?"
"He was the first to notice," she recalled. "It did not surprise me, as we were still sleeping together, but it was a while before he began to notice the weight gain. I could not lie to him, so I told him my fears."
"How did he take it?" he asked, although he could tell from the look on her face already that he didn't take it entirely well.
"He just…he sat there, for ages," she remembered. "Silently. I remember sitting before him, being so worried about his reaction. I could not say anything to him, though, as I was so afraid. Then he just stood up and he left. I did not see him for days afterwards, because he was sent on a mission for my father. When he returned, he asked me to meet with him and I did. He told me that he was not ready to be a father, and that he did not want anybody to know what had happened between us in case the news reached my father." She scoffed to herself. "He did not want it to interfere with his career."
"Bastard," Tony mumbled, before he could stop himself.
"Yes, my thoughts exactly."
"What did you do?" he asked again. "I hope you gave him what was coming to him."
Instead, she shook her head. "I was sixteen years old, unmarried, pregnant with an illegitimate child, and alone. There was not much I could do. I hid my situation for as long as possibly, because I could not have told my father. He would not have understood and he would have forced me to marry Sa'id. So I left. I made a plan that I would have the child in secret and surrender it for adoption, where it could have a good life away from Mossad and Sa'id."
"Where did you go?" he asked, the darkening her eyes making it all the more tempting to go to her and hold her in his arms. He didn't know whether or not she'd appreciate the gesture at a time like this, however.
"I did not get far. My brother found me."
"Ari?" he questioned. She nodded. "Did he know about the baby?"
"He had guessed," she confirmed. "He promised me that he would not tell our father, under the condition that I saw a doctor to ensure that I was in good health and that the baby was growing well. I refused, but he also said that he would help me to find a family to take the child when it was born, and find somewhere safe where I could give birth. He promised that he would be with me, so I would not have to do it alone. I had not seen a doctor before then, so I agreed. They told me that I was twenty-eight weeks into the pregnancy. At that far along I had no choice but to have the baby. After seeing the image of my child on the ultrasound, I could not bare to send it to another family. It was my child, and I would make sure that the actions of the father would not be important in it's life, because it would have a mother that loved it, and would care for it. But I could not have done it alone, and to marry Sa'id knowing that he did not want the child…"
"It wouldn't have been fair," Tony finished for her. "For you or the baby."
"No," she said. "There was only thing left that I could do."
"Tell your father."
She nodded. "He was angry at first. He demanded to know who the father was, but I did not tell him. Once he realised that I would not tell him, he stopped asking. After that he saw me, perhaps for the first time, as a daughter who needed a father. He realised that telling him was my last hope, and that I was begging for help despite the fact that he had raised me to stand on my own two feet. He came around to the idea of being a grandfather."
"What happened to Sa'id?" Tony asked, having a sinking feeling that this man wasn't quite finished in the story.
"He continued to work under my father," she informed him. "Most of the time he was away on business, so I did not have any contact with him. I was glad, as it meant that I did not have to be ashamed or hide the way I was preparing for the baby's arrival. My father would return with furniture, or Tali would spend her small allowance on clothing from a market stall where her friend worked with her mother. Ari would follow me everywhere, under my father's orders and his own insistence, to make sure that I was safe. But it became too much for me."
"You ran again?"
Her eyes began to tear up at this point, which scared him. He hadn't seen Ziva this emotional and distraught since she had turned up on his doorstep after what had happened with Adam. "I just wanted an hour with no one watching me," she sighed. "Just one hour…"
"What happened?" he asked.
"Sa'id," she whispered, raising her eyes to his. "Sa'id happened."
Now that she had raised her head, he could see just how dangerously the tears were brimming in her eyes. Against his initial promise to sit and wait, he stood up, going over to the dresser to stand before her. Placing his hands on her arms, he once again told her what he was still willing to respect. "You don't have to tell me…"
"Please," she broke him off. "I have not spoken about this with anyone. I need someone to know," she told him.
At this, he was torn between having to make her relive whatever had happened with Sa'id that had lead to her not being able to have children and knowing that keeping a secret, especially one like this, to yourself and having no one to talk to about it must be heartbreaking. What was Gibbs' rule about secrets? Best option, tell no one. Second best, tell one other person. There is no third best. Something like that, right? In the end, the friend in him won out, and he nodded silently, indicating for her to continue, but he didn't step back and release her from his hold.
"Sa'id had wanted me to get rid of the child, but I could not bring myself to do it," she whispered, shaking her head. "He said that if I would not do it, then he would. He attacked me…"
"He what?!" Tony cried out, suddenly burning with a fury he'd never felt before, perhaps not since he saw those marks of abuse from Penny's grandparents.
"Tony, keep your voice down," she warned him quickly. "You will wake Penny…"
"He attacked you?" he repeated, his voice lower but still steaming with anger.
"He stabbed me," she told him, her voice strangely steady but still incredibly distant as she stared directly ahead of her, not really seeing his shoulder but more staring straight through it. "Three times. In the stomach. I do not remember what happened next, but I remember waking up in hospital with my father beside me. I knew that something bad had happened because he was there. He was not there when I had my tonsils removed, or when Tali had needed her appendix removed, but he was holding my hand when I woke. He had never been at my side when I was sick before…"
"The baby?" he asked.
Her voice shook with her answer. "Did not survive."
He sighed. "Oh, Ziva…"
She shook her head, a tear slipping down her cheek as she shut her eyes tightly. "I hated myself, Tony, because I felt relieved. I had spent so much time not thinking about the baby because I had not spent much time planning on it ever belonging to me, that I felt relieved when I knew it was gone. It was just for one moment, and then it really hit me, but for that one moment, I was actually glad that my baby was dead." She choked up, bringing one hand to her face as if to shield herself from him. "What kind of horrible person thinks something like that?" she asked.
He was quiet for a moment, looking at how broken she was before him. Was this why she had never let herself get close enough to somebody to be with them completely? Because she was afraid of being betrayed, of being physically hurt, the way that Sa'id had hurt her? He didn't know the man, but he already wanted to hurt him, if not more than the way he had wanted to hurt Adam. Adam had cheated on her, damaged her pride, but Sa'id had damaged her soul, taken her child from her. He hated them both for hurting her, but it wasn't a competition to know who he'd kill first if he had the opportunity. He took her more into his arms, rubbing at her shoulders gently. "It was complicated," he whispered. "You were young, Ziva, and confused…it was okay."
She shook her head, tears still falling. "No, it was not."
"It was not your fault," he stressed slowly.
"They told me it would have been a girl," she remembered, pressing her face against his shoulder when it was the only place left to go. "I was too late for an emergency termination, so they had induced a labour while I was sedated. The doctors told me that I was too heavily sedated and too traumatised to have remembered the labour. It was not properly formed, not quite, but it was a girl. A daughter. They asked me if I wished to see her, or to give her a name, but I could not, not knowing that I failed her."
"It's okay," he whispered, not knowing what else he could say. It wasn't possible to make something like this right with words.
"I just…" she broke off, taking a deep breath. "I do not ever want to feel that much pain again," she admitted.
"You won't," he said confidently, wrapping his arms tighter around her.
"I did not…"
He never found out what she was going to say next, because she broke off, holding her breath. He knew what happened when she held her breath; a classic sign of her withholding her emotions when she realised where she was. She usually held her breath a lot on a case that was getting to them, because it would stop her from getting emotional when the women before her were crying for lost children. Now, she was holding her breath. He went to stroke his hand through her hair, but she brushed him off, suddenly stepped back, removing herself from his arms and running her own fingers through her hair.
"No," she said. "No, we have had a nice evening and I am ruining it."
"You're not ruining anything," he rushed to assure her.
She laughed, but there was no happiness in her tone. "This was not how you expected this evening to end, Tony," she pointed out.
"No," he couldn't deny that. "I expected it to end as it did the night before, with us going to bed beside each other and waiting until something happens."
"With the mission?"
He stared at her, watching her for a moment too long when he seemed to surrender with his answer. "Yeah, with the mission," he mumbled, his eyes darting to the left momentarily.
She noticed his silence, as well as his eyes flickering to the left, a sure sign of a lie. What was he lying about, though? What, exactly, was he waiting for to happen? The intensity of his stare caused her to crumble once again, and he instinctively reached out, pulling her back against his shoulder, even though she tried to fight him.
"No, no, don't fight me. Don't fight me," he said, whispering his repetition in her ear. Feeling his voice so close to her encouraged her to relax against him, bringing her arms up to encircle his waist. They remained that way, holding each other for the longest time. When they moved back, Tony held out his hand to her. "Come on," he whispered.
She looked confused. "Where-?"
"We're both exhausted," he said simply, leading her over to the bed.
As they did the night before, they climbed into the bed. Ziva automatically curled up on her side, facing away from him and towards the window. He heard her take a shuddering breath, no doubt due to her holding her breath so much, and he scooted onto her side of the bed, giving her no warning as he slipping his arm around her waist, effectively spooning her. To his surprise, she didn't question him or move him away. She just put her hand over his, holding him in place, as if wanting to feel life in a place where she had previously lost it.
"Tony," she whispered into the darkness, once he had reached over and turned the lamp off.
"Yeah," he replied, showing her just how close his face was when it tickled her ear.
"Thank you," she said honestly. "For not judging me.
"We all have pasts, Ziva," he reminded her. "You wouldn't be who you are today without your past."
She scoffed quietly. "That is not necessarily a bad thing."
"Well, I kinda like you how you are," he admitted.
"Kinda?" she questioned.
He just laughed lightly, tightening his arm around her stomach and dragging him a fraction closer to her. "Go to sleep, Zee."
A/N: Okay, we've got some answers now. A little bit of angst (OK, maybe a lot of angst) and a tiny bit of Tiva fluff. Writing this at the same time as writing Save Us kinda back tracked me a bit. I had to go and rewrite half of it because I suddenly remembered that these two haven't crossed the line yet! I can promise you, however, that we are getting into some serious Tiva territory (yes, that's right, I will get around to writing it! I owe you big!)