Pivotal Moments

Author's Note: Chapter 6 follows Dagger (6x09). The last one was Cloak, of course, my brain had a glitch and I typed it in wrong yesterday.

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November 2008: DC

Gibbs sent them out to search for Michelle's daughter, and by the time they got to the region they were to search, Tony's rage had been replaced by bemusement. "How can you work with somebody for three years and not know they have a kid?" he asked, pondering Michelle's situation.

Ziva shrugged. "Just because you work with someone every day does not mean you know everything about them."

"Really? Then I shouldn't know about that tattoo on the inside of your--"

She cut him off. "I meant I can understand someone wanting to keep their personal and professional lives separate—as should you. It did not end very well when you fell in love when you were undercover, did it?" She pushed the conversation too personal so he wouldn't ask about her own love life. Whatever was going on there lately, she didn't want to share with him.

"Thanks for the memory," he said acidly.

They started walking into the woods; Ziva carefully swept her eyes back and forth over the foliage, looking for sights that a scared child had traveled through here.

After a moment, Tony started talking again. "So, tell me what I don't know about you."

She darted a glance at him, suppressing the urge to freeze, then nonchalantly resumed her tracking.

"What are your hopes and dreams, Ziva David?" Tony deepened his voice like a sports announcer and Ziva smiled.

She cocked her head, thinking of what might shock him—and what would keep the conversation clear of Michael. "My dream? Well, I am content with my profession. But I would like to have a family."

She surprised Tony so badly that he stopped walking. "Really?"

Ziva smiled tightly. "Really."

"Well, why not shack up with somebody, pop out a couple little buggers?" Tony was half teasing, half serious.

She turned to look at him. "Tony, at this moment we are searching for the child of an NCIS agent who was manipulated into giving away state secrets to protect the child's well-being."

"Ziva, you're a far cry from being Michelle Lee."

Now Ziva stopped. "I would do anything, I think to protect my child."

"Well, any parent would, I suppose..."

She shook her head and started walking again. "Not my father. Before Tali died, there were threats made against him, against our family. It was not a random suicide bombing."

"Ziva." He reached his hand out toward her shoulder, but she took a quicker step, evading him without seeming to.

"I suppose that is the other reason I have not had a child. I might be like him."

"But he loves you, of course," Tony protested. "He didn't take that threat seriously, but--"

"No." Ziva cut him off. "He was always impatient with us, and withdrawn, and if we acted up he'd beat us. I honestly don't believe he would ever negotiate for our safe return."

Tony shrugged, unwilling to argue further on behalf of a stranger, not against Ziva. They walked in silence a moment, the Tony said, "I really didn't know that about you." He sounded almost sad.

Ziva glanced at him again. "No one knows anyone completely, Tony. Not who they are, not what they will do—even if you think you do, everyone is constantly in flux, constantly changing."

He looked right into her face, then sighed and looked around at the forest. "Yesterday I'd have argued with you, that there are some people—Gibbs, Abby—who we know well. But after last night..."

Rather than dwell on the chaos in their lives, Ziva broke in with a joke. "You really think we know anything about Gibbs?" she teased him.

Tony grinned.

"For all we know, he can breathe under water and has slept with every red head in the district," she went on.

Tony was laughing now. "He's built a flotilla and stores it in the attic," he got out between breaths.

Ziva tilted her head back and laughed. It felt good. "He--" She broke off. "Look! A ribbon there on that branch."

They knelt to examine the evidence, their light mood fading as they were reminded of the danger Amanda might be in. As they continued through the woods, they kept their thoughts to themselves.

Ziva hadn't articulated it to herself before, but she did sympathize with Lee. She couldn't really imagine herself parenting like her father, but the opposite seemed plausible. And certainly she could be a far more powerful weapon in the hands of criminals than most agents. She wondered, in passing, if that was the only way, now, that anyone could get her to blindly follow directions.

Later, prepping Lee for the transfer of information, Ziva asked softly, "You've plead your case with everyone else, why not me?"

"I'm done trying to explain," Lee said miserably. "No one understands."

"I do."

Lee's head jerked toward her in surprise. "You would do what I did."

Ziva gave her a small smile in answer, adjusting the wires under Lee's clothes. "That too tight?"

"It's fine," Michelle said quickly. "Thank you." Then, hesitantly, she asked, "I'm never going to see my daughter again, am I?"

Ziva paused, wondering whether Lee would be more or less likely to go through with this if she knew the truth. Then she dismissed the question. Lee had held up through far more than they'd imagined in the last few months. "Probably not," she answered softly.

And Lee walked briskly inside, belying Ziva's fears. She knew that when you have to follow orders, when they can make you do anything, it led to something like this: Lee facing her own death or her sister's, never able to make a choice in the matter. So she tried to give Lee some solace. Because if she had been in her father's place, she really would have done anything to save her sister.

Ziva forced a smile as she held the door of her apartment open. "Come in, sweetie," she said softly to Amanda. The girl was staggering with exhaustion as she crossed the threshold. The sleeping pills were lingering in her system, making her too groggy to ask questions yet, but the paramedics had said she'd be alright once she slept, so Ziva had asked Gibbs to let her take the girl home. He'd seemed surprised, but said yes without pressing the matter.

Amanda looked up at her wearily, and Ziva put her hand on the girl's shoulder, steering her to the couch, which was still draped with the blanket Tony had used the night before. Amanda laid down at once, resting her head on the pillow and closing her eyes. Ziva opened her mouth to tell her she should eat, should brush her teeth, all the motherly directives she remembered from childhood, but she didn't speak. She found she didn't want to do anything to make the child wake up, for fear that then she'd start to ask questions about her sister, her captor—questions Ziva didn't want to answer.

As Amanda's breathing slipped into the regularity of sleep, Ziva settled in a chair opposite the couch. She remembered the day of Tali's death as the worst day of her life: her first encounter with grief. Amanda has already lost her parents, so at least there would be some familiarity with the emotion, but to be suddenly an orphan, and for the second time in her life, seemed more than such a small child could handle.

Ziva found her own head sagging under the weight of two days of intense emotion and endeavor. Her sadness over Lee's death was only one new facet of the maelstrom of conflict that took up residence in her mind when she began to relax. The way she had been raised, as a weapon, required someone to wield her. But her trust had been so shaken in recent months that Ziva was no longer sure who would be loyal to her in turn if she gave her allegiance to them. Her father's lack of trust she could endure, because she knew at some level that it was valid; she no longer had the blind loyalty to MOSSAD that had defined her early career. As her director, she knew he could even justify sending her into Morocco with incomplete information. But Gibbs—she knew she had earned his trust, had never given him cause to doubt her commitment.

The phone rang and she snatched it from its cradle before it could wake Amanda. "Shalom."

"Shalom, Ziva," Michael said warmly. "Have I called too late?" he continued in Hebrew.

"No. I just came in," she answered, her voice soft.

Michael chuckled. "It is nearly 6 AM here; I only just got back from running."

She smiled. There were certainly moments where she appreciated the similarity of their training, their worldviews. "You are still in Tel Aviv?"

"No. Cairo—we believe men pertinent to the mission are working in Africa. It is blistering hot, too hot to sleep and far too hot to run long, so I thought I'd call and see how you are."

Ziva smiled. "I remember the heat well. I am...exhausted," she laughed. "I find now I haven't slept in recent memory. But how is the mission?" she asked, courteous.

Michael paused. "The contacts Mossad put me in touch with seem...unreliable. I do not have relationship with them, and I doubt their intentions. But if I question them to your father, there may be trouble. Instead I edited my report to show that there are practical problems with using them."

Ziva didn't respond for a moment. She could imagine how fear might lead to disobedience; she knew better how Michael was feeling because she let her concern for Tony outweigh Gibbs' voice in her ear, she who had never been emotional.

"I really must sleep," she said when she realized she'd lapsed into silence unintentionally. "But be safe, Michael. I lost a—a friend, today. An agent. I don't want to lose any more."

"I'm so sorry," Michael said gently. "You take care of yourself, too."

They whispered their good-nights and Ziva pulled herself up from the chair, gazing at Amanda's sleeping form for another long moment before checking all the locks in the apartment and collapsing into bed herself.

The next morning, she watched as Gibbs told Amanda about her sister's death, reliving Tali's death: the horror of it, the fury at knowing it might have been prevented. Amanda didn't have that to bear, not yet at least. The memory filled Ziva with defiance of her father, and she wondered why she had gone through so much of her life unquestioning. At any rate, she was not his soldier anymore.