The return flight is longer and far less glamorous than the small, private plane the Israeli government had sent to escort home the Mossad Director and his family. This time they fly coach, wedged in the middle aisle of a commercial plane—not that Ziva minds, really. She would not have slept anyway.
A week has passed since she talked to him, though she promised she would call. Of course, he understands. She knows this instinctually. Really, guilt is not the issue here.
She misses him. Their last encounter plays back in her head on a loop—what she did, what they both said. A long time coming, surely, but things will be different now. They will be different.
She is different.
No, she does not sleep on the plane. Her nerves buzz and she knows that she will go straight to his doorstep from Dulles. Nine months, she figures, is long enough for this to hang between them.
It is time to speak the truth.
…
Her knuckles pause a few inches from the door. She has been here enough times—this building, this hallway, this apartment—that she should be comfortable, by now, with this. Still, she hesitates, if only for a moment, to gather herself. It has been a while.
She does knock, eventually, and she hears footsteps, then a chain sliding, then the click of a lock.
And there he is, smiling.
"Hi," she whispers, breathless, smiling right back. His collar is crumpled and his hair ruffled and his right arm hangs loosely at his side. His eyes sparkle.
"Ziva," he greets, stretching her name around his tongue like he so often does. "I didn't think you'd come tonight." He opens the door wider and leans against the frame.
"I did not want to wait until tomorrow," she shrugs, shifting forward. Her head cocks to the side and she reaches out, gently placing her hand on the side of his arm. "How is your shoulder? You are following doctor's orders, I hope?"
"Don't I always?"
"Tony…" she warns.
"I stopped wearing the sling a few days ago, as per doctor's orders. Happy?"
"Not until you are perfect as new."
"You mean good—"
"Oh, shush. I have been speaking Hebrew for two weeks, forgive me if my English has grown a bit squeaky."
"You mean rus—"He raises an eyebrow. "You did that on purpose."
She grins. "Perhaps." He does not have a retort to fire back, then, and the mood settles.
"I missed you," he admits in a low voice. She hears in it every ounce of honesty.
Her body draws closer, angling her head up to meet his eyes. "I missed you, too."
That is all they say before the kiss. Wordlessly, he brings his hand up to cradle her neck and they meet in the middle for the second time. His lips are warm, his body against her warmer, and though short, their kiss is tender. She closes her eyes.
"I will not tire of that," she breathes when they pull back.
"The novelty might wear off after a while," he warns, tucking a curl behind her ear.
"I doubt that." She will not tire of such gentility.
He pauses, eyes never leaving hers. "Something is different."
"Different how?"
"In a good way," he assures her.
"It was an… eventful trip."
He smiles again, softly—something else she will never grow tired of. "Come inside, Ziva. I'll make some tea."
"You do not like tea," she reminds him as he ushers her through the threshold. She kicks off her shoes and takes in his apartment. Clean, as always, with the curtains drawn against the night. She sees the living room by the light of a few lamps.
"Well, tea for you, then, and coffee for me."
"I will help. Three creams, two sugars?"
He flicks on the overhead light as they enter the kitchen. "You know me well, Miss R…" He catches himself. "David." Perhaps he reads the guilt on her face, because he continues, "It just takes some getting used to, don't worry."
"Tony…" she leans against the countertop, watching as he fills a mug with water. "There is a lot we need to talk about."
"It can wait a few minutes, you just got here."
She blinks as he sets the mug in the microwave and moves to his coffeemaker. The granite is cold under her elbows, cold like her fingers and toes. "I know you have a lot of questions."
He shrugs, turning back to her. "I've pieced together a lot of it, you know." She swallows.
"I do not want the only things you know about my past to come from… the things you heard him say." She looks away. "Vile things, Tony. I would prefer you never heard them at all."
There is that concern again, flooding his eyes and pulling him toward her. "Believe me, Ziva, I wish I didn't have to hear it."
"I made a promise to you in the hospital," she reminds him, "that when I got back I would tell you. I would tell you everything." It is the least he deserves.
"Ziva, if this is too difficult—"
"It is not," she promises. "I have made my peace. I want you to hear it from me."
"Well, let me get you your tea first. Then we'll talk." The microwave dings and he pulls out the mug, and a tea bag from the cabinet. He sets them on the countertop in front of her and turns around to pour his coffee. He inclines his head to the dining room table. "Wanna go sit?"
They walk through the archway together and sit down both at one corner. They are close, but they do not touch. She prefers it this way. The mug in her hand warms her fingertips and she comforts herself with the words he spoke in the hospital. It had been more like a speech, really, all to the tune of nothing will change how I feel about you. She dissolves her lingering insecurities in this memory, and looks up at him.
There is reassurance in his eyes, and sitting in front of him it is not as hard as she imagined, bearing her past in the open air. She starts at the beginning, finally laying the truth out for him.
"My mother died when I was sixteen," she begins, "but that you already knew. I told you that night we played the piano."
"I remember."
"I told you that she died. But I did not tell you what happened afterwards." He is silent, letting her continue. She looks down at her glass and watches the color spread from the tealeaves, swirling. "My father, the Director, he… saw an opportunity. I got back from the funeral and he called me into his office. He told me about a terrorist group Mossad had been working to bring down for years. They were responsible for so many attacks—on café's, on train stations. They needed to bring them down from the inside, but every mole Mossad sent was found and killed within a week. They were getting desperate, and my father had been sitting on an idea for a while at that point, I believe."
"To send you."
"Yes. But I would not be… like the other moles. There was a reason it had to be a sixteen year old girl."
She looks up to find Tony's eyes steeled. He suspects what she will say next.
"The terrorist cell had a huge cash flow. Some of it came from selling drugs—opium, mostly. But most of it came from the multiple child prostitution rings it had set up across the country."
"Ziva…"
She swallows. "My father knew no one would suspect me. It was the perfect solution."
"It's inhuman. Shit, Ziva."
"I know," she whispers. "I know. But it was my choice."
"Like hell it was. You couldn't have gone against him."
"I wanted to do it, Tony. I thought…" A sardonic laugh bubbles up her throat. "I thought that I could handle it—that I was special. I wanted to do my duty. More than anything, though…" She shakes her head. "I just wanted to run. I was not good at mourning, and I think my father knew that."
"He took advantage of his wife's death to pimp out his daughter."
Her throat burns. "Tony…"
"It's horrific, Ziva."
"It gets worse," she admits. "I was selfish to jump at that chance to leave. I forgot about Tali, how she would need me. We had grown…apart, in the past few years. Once he started training me, I barely saw her. But still… I could not have known what Eli would do."
Tony's brow furrows. "What did he do?"
"He faked my death." The air in his apartment is still, silent. "But I did not know that. I only found out when I returned. He told Tali that my plane crashed in the desert." She pinches the brow of her nose, pushing away the guilt. "She lost her mother and her sister within a week."
"It isn't your fault. You were a kid, just trying to make your dad proud." He shakes his head. "I know what that's like. It's not your fault."
"I know," she whispers. "I loved him."
"He betrayed you."
"It took me so long to see that. Even when I got to Be'er Sheva, to the warehouse where the terrorist cell ran their operation… Even for the first few months, I did not think he had betrayed me by sending me there." She takes a deep breath. "But there is only so much suffering you can take before you begin to… wonder."
Tony looks sick to his stomach, and she almost feels sorry for him. "That man in Gibbs' basement, then… Kameel. He was in charge of the operation?"
"He and his right hand man, Harim. He was the muscle, Kameel was the brains." She looks down at her mug once again. The tea is cold. "Kameel masterminded the whole thing. They bring in girls off the streets, keep them isolated from the others for a while. They promise food, shelter, in exchange for certain… services. Before your first client they give you a pill that they say is birth control." She shakes her head. "It is opium. It takes away the pain… after. They keep doing this until you're hooked, then they move you in with the other girls."
"That is… horrific."
"I only took the pill once. My first time." She looks down at the table to find her hands shaking around the mug and she pulls them into her lap.
"Your first time… ever?"
"Yes," she breathes.
He runs his hands down his face, closing his eyes against the truth. "Goddammit."
"He was in his forties, I think. Greying hair, expensive suit." Her stomach knots. "He paid double for a virgin."
Tony's eyes just squeeze tighter shut. "Shit, Ziva."
"It made me sick to even think about…" She shudders. "And then it was over. I went back to my room and cried. The drugs kicked in a while later and they… they made the pain tolerable."
"I'm so sorry, Ziva."
"It is what it is. I… dealt. But it only got worse from there. Some men have… other preferences. There was always another way to be violated."
"I hope they're punished," he seethes. "Karma, final judgment, whatever—they had better pay for their actions." His voice is thick, his jaw set. She sees that his hands shake, too, and she reaches across the table to hold them.
"I hope so, too," she whispers.
"How did you stay sane through all that?"
She smiles sadly. "It was pretty… touch and go?" She looks to him for confirmation, and he nods. "Yes, it was touch and go for a while. But I made a friend, and she helped."
"Another one of the girls?"
Ziva nods. "She was a comfort. But she left, eventually. She wanted me to come with her, but I could not abandon my mission, I… But Tony, I thought about it. For a moment I thought about it."
"Did she know? The truth about you, I mean."
"No, and she could not understand why I would not go with her."
"And after she left?"
"It was bad," she sighs. "Very bad. I found out not too long later that I was pregnant. The bastards bought cheap condoms and relied on the opium's interference with fertility to do the rest. But of course, I was not taking the drugs, and then…"
"Ethan?"
Her heart sinks. "No."
"Oh, God." His hands constricted around hers and she knew he felt pain for her.
"I found out when I miscarried. The client that night liked it rough and… it was too much for it, I suppose."
"You didn't even get to go to a hospital?"
"Only the other girls knew. They helped me clean up the blood and I… I dealt with it."
His brow furrows. "How many people have you told about this?"
"Very few," she sighs. "Tali and Ari do not know. I do not want them to."
"That's understandable."
"I hit a low after that. I had some pills saved up under my pillow—they brought them every time I had a client and I would save them until I could dispose of them somehow. The night after the miscarriage, I… I was so close to just leaning my head back and swallowing them all."
His hands tightened around hers again and his eyes shut. "Jesus."
"I felt so trapped. I did not know what else to do."
"What… what stopped you?"
"I do not know," she admits. "I just could not bring myself to do it."
"I'm glad," he whispers.
"So am I." She sighs. "After that I was like a robot. Collect information, sneak out at night to put it in this pick-up spot across the street. Do what I had to do along the way. I wanted to leave."
"How long did that go on?"
"About a year," she tells him. "Until I realized I was pregnant with Ethan. I knew then that I could not stay. I would not… I would not condemn another child of mine. It was not worth it."
"That is very brave."
She shakes her head. "It was my only choice. I knew what it meant, what that would make me… I knew I would have to run. But it was my only choice."
"So you just… left?"
"I snuck into Harim's room to steal some money for a train ticket back to Tel Aviv. But I was not careful enough, I was so impatient to leave that I timed it badly. He caught me."
"What happened?" He seems almost afraid of the answer.
"He beat me." She bites her lip. "I was so afraid for my child, Tony. I was terrified. I had a run in with him not even a year after I got to the warehouse, and he… overpowered me. He was very strong and I was weak and I knew I could not fight him and win."
"So what happened?"
"He pinned me to the ground, pulled off my shirt, and beat me with his belt." She can see that her nonchalance disturbs him.
"That was where you got those scars, then? On your back?" Her mind flew back to the day she went into labor—what Tony had seen after she slipped in the shower. His hands are shaking again.
"Yes," she answers softly. "The doctors say they will fade with time."
He nods, but does not say anything.
"I left the next morning, after two and a half years. I went home to see Tali, who nearly had a heart attack when she saw me. It was then that I found out what Eli had done. I did not want her living with him anymore, so I decided to take her with me. Ari wanted to come too, and we had a Mossad friend help us out with the papers. And then… we were the Regevs."
"And I know the rest."
"And you know the rest."
"Thank you for this."
"I know it was hard to hear."
"I'm sure it was even harder to say."
She rubs her thumb back and forth over his palm. "It needed to be said. I needed to say it. I am making peace."
"Does your eventful trip to Israel have anything to do with that?"
She smiles softly. "It has everything to do with it. I went back to the warehouse and it helped. I think… I think I have finally forgiven myself, for everything I did there."
"I'm glad," he tells her, pulling one hand from hers and reaching across the corner of table, reaching up to brush a curl behind her ear. He likes doing that, she has noticed. "You deserve to rest."
"It is still hard in many ways," she warns.
"Two and a half years is a long time. You've come… so far, since then. I mean God knows I've seen my fair share of rape cases and so many of them don't—"
"Tony," she interrupts with a voice of stone. "Please… please do not call it that."
His hand pulls back from her and he frowns. "You don't think that's what it was?"
Her gut swirls; she feels sick. "Tony, you must understand. I never… I never fought. If I did, it was because that was what they paid for." She shivers, looking down at the untouched cup of tea, now cold as ice. "The doors to that warehouse were not locked. I was not a prisoner."
"That's not true and you know it. That door might as well have been padlocked shut."
"Everything I did, it was because I chose to do it. I… I did everything they asked, and God knows, Tony, some of them asked for terrible things." She can barely keep her voice under control. "Over two hundred times, Tony. I've done the math. More than two hundred times I participated. I did not just lay there!"
"So? That doesn't mean—"
"Tony, you need to accept the truth! I put on lingerie and went into that room twice a week and I had sex with those men. I knew what I was doing."
"It wasn't your choice."
"You do not know, Tony! You do not know the things I did. Things I did without complaint—without so much as a second thought! And you want to know something, Tony? Sometimes I even let myself feel pleasure. So you do not get to call it that. You do not."
Her angry words die away but she hears them echo in her head, and dread fills her stomach with the realization of what she's just admitted to. She promised herself never to speak that reality, never to admit those nights that she was so desperate to feel something other than pain that she let them give her pleasure. Those truths were to stay within her forever—but now they were out, and he knew.
"Ziva…" he whispers. "Did you want it?"
"What?"
"Did you want it? Did you want to be pinned down by disgusting men twice your age? To have them—" She springs from her chair, hands balled into fists.
"Stop."
"Did you?"
"No! No, of course not!"
"Then you were raped, Ziva. That is the truth."
She shakes her head quickly, mouth pressed into a thin line. "It was my choice."
"How? A choice implies that you had another option. Every night you made those choices, what were your options, Ziva?" He is standing too, now, bracing himself. "Tell Kameel no and get the shit beaten out of you? Abandon your mission, your country, your father? Spend the rest of your life alone and on the run? You complied because you. Had. No. Choice."
She grinds her teeth. "I could have left."
"No, Ziva, you couldn't have."
Her shoulders deflate, then, and she feels her body begin to relax. He was right he was right he was right…
"Why are you doing this?" Her voice is low, defeated.
"Because you said you've forgiven yourself, but I don't think you realize that there was nothing to forgive in the first place. You did what you had to do." He steps forward, and she does not move away. "You need to know that."
She nods, and he reunites their hands.
"C'mon Ziva, it's late and you're exhausted. We should sleep."
He tugs her into his bedroom and sets out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt on the comforter. She thinks about protesting—she should take the couch—but it would be futile. It always has been in the past.
With a final squeeze of her hand he disappears into the living room, shutting the door behind him. The second he is gone, she collapses on the edge of the bed.
She is not angry, she decides. He has so much faith in her and he was right to push her how he did. He was right.
Perhaps her concept of choice did need reevaluating, because even while they argued she could not understand why she clung so tightly to her own responsibility. She knew he was right, from the beginning, and yet she fought so hard against that word. Against his perception of her.
Against being a victim.
She understands, then, why she fought so hard. The word victim is bitter in her throat, on her tongue, on her lips and she wants it gone from her. She would prefer to think that the fault lay with her than to admit how out of control, how weak, they made her. She preferred shame and guilt to helplessness, but it was not the truth.
The truth is exactly as he spoke it: she did what she had to do.
…
He spreads clean sheets over his couch and his back groans prematurely in protest. But he does not mind—he thinks only of Ziva in the other room, silent. That was risky, he knows, but it had to be said.
So little of what she told him came as a surprise. Two weeks was a long time to be left alone with his thoughts and the memory of Kameel's words, and he had inadvertently conjured up a good number of scenarios, most of which had not been far off from the truth. But the details… the details were like a thousand knives in his gut, twisting and twisting. They are still there and the pain resurges whenever his mind drifts back to the things she told him. Vivid images of her suffering float before his eyes and become the source of his insomnia.
He remembers all of the times since he met Ziva David that he wished she would clear up the mystery that was her past, and he is suddenly very thankful that she did not. Before everything that happened with her father and the man in the basement this would have been a much more difficult story to process.
But there is relief, now, in knowing. This was the last thing that stood in their way, and now the future is theirs. He knows she feels the freedom too.
It is hours later that he hears her stir, and he knows that she has not slept, either. He gets up and pads softly to the bedroom to find her sitting up against the headboard, wide awake. He takes in her relaxed shoulders and soft eyes and knows instinctively that she is okay. He has questions but they do not make it up his throat—instead, he opts to climb in bed next to her. She lies down against him and he wraps his arm over her side.
She is warm, and he feels her relax against him. Her hair tickles his nose and he smoothes her curls against her neck. She inhales, then exhales, and it is peaceful.
"Goodnight, Ziva."
…
She dreams of the sea. She thinks it is the Mediterranean, for it is warm and blue and the air tastes familiar.
Everyone is there—Tali, Ari, Ethan, Tony, Nettie. There are no waves, only the water flat and still and beautiful as far as the eye can see. She feels the sun warm her hair. Behind her is the Haifa cottage; she knows this, though she never turns around to look.
They are in a boat, she realizes. It is a small boat, but a cozy boat. A rowboat. She looks out at the horizon and feels it beckon. Her family is smiling.
She picks up the oars.
A/N: Thank you all so so much for your patience. I had no clue it would be so long before I wrote this chapter- college applications snuck up on me and it's hard to write college essays and fanfiction at the same time. Luckily, before I wrote this chapter I planned out what happens from now until the end of the story, which means that A) it probably won't be so long between chapters and B) we're in the home stretch!
Thanks so much to pricious, Eowyngoldberry, dvd123, never-give-up-hope-2, athenalarissa, vg little bear, adelina-elise, tyraleanne, theroseshadow21, Tatiana, Mecha, ChEmMiE, amaia, debbie, not paranoid enough, thebluedragonwolf, J09tiva, licaro, mysticgirl101, prince-bishop, bookgirl360, Sam, and Mari83 for the wonderful reviews! And thanks always to Tatiana for her help :)
Allison
