CHAPTER 7: FINDING ZIVA, TAKE 2

"All right, all right, all right, everybody just calm down!" Jenny yelled over the sounds of her agents going nuts. "Tony, what's going on?"

"She's – she's – she's awake, director," Tony gasped in delight, a stupid grin spreading across his face. "She seems a little disoriented, but that officer – "

"Simon," Jenny interrupted him.

"Yeah, him – he says that the doctor says it's not uncommon and it should wear off shortly – "

"So we can bring her back home, then," Gibbs said, as more of a statement than a question.

"That officer – "

"Simon."

"Yeah, him – he says that the doctor said something about observation but I guess that's just standard safety regs in a hospital, right?"

"I want a bird leaving the airport in 25 hours," Gibbs told Jenny bluntly. "Now, I'm going to go see my agent." With that, he pushed past Jenny and entered the hospital room. "So, Officer David, you ever do that again and I will boot your insubordinate butt back to Tel Aviv myself."

Ziva looked at him in confusion. Then she cast an uneasy glance back at Simon, who said something quietly to her and stood up to face Gibbs. "Agent Gibbs, come with me a moment. Out in the hallway, please."

"What's going on?" Gibbs demanded of the young officer, the rest of the NCIS team quickly joining them.

"The doctors are not certain how it happened," Simon said quietly. "There were any number of factors which could have contributed to it…"

"Simon, the point," Jenny said.

"Ziva does not remember you," Simon said. "Any of you. She does not remember going to America, she does not remember working as metsada and she does not remember any of her years at Mossad or in IDF. As far as Ziva knows, we are still in middle school. Her memory ends at 11. She has lost her English. She has lost all the languages we learned in school."

~*~

Myriam, Motel and Malachi arrived not long after Ziva's awakening. "Simon, how is she?" Myriam asked desperately, casting a worried glance towards the Americans huddled together down the hall.

Simon sighed, his eyes closed. "She has amnesia."

"How badly?" Myriam asked warily.

Simon paused, obviously trying to regain control over his emotions. "Caterina has just been killed. That's the last thing she remembers."

"Oh, my God…" Malachi groaned. "So she remembers nothing."

"That's right," Simon confirmed.

"Rafi, Kemuel, Tali, Ari…"

"All still alive."

"The Americans?" Myriam asked as she began to head for the door of Ziva's hospital room.

"She doesn't have a clue. She doesn't even remember any of the languages we learned. She remembers her Hebrew, her Arabic and her Yiddish."

"Has anybody told her?" Motel asked softly. When Simon shook his head, Myriam said stiffly,

"Good. It's her stupid Americans that got her here in the first place." With that, she entered the room with a smile on her face, greeting Ziva happily.

"Is it just me," Motel said to the other two men, "or does Myriam have a bit of a grudge against the Americans?"

"Good observation, Motel," Simon said with a roll of his eyes. "I have a feeling she's a little suspicious of them after what happened with Ari. She thinks they might've lured Ziva into a sting to revenge that agent."

"Ziva's been there for three years now. Little long for a sting," Malachi pointed out. "And trust me, that Agent DiNozzo down there? Definitely not interested in killing her. Jenny Shepard ought to know better than to think they could deceive Ziva like that – that's the American she worked those East Europe ops with. That Agent McGee? I'd be more wary of Motel than I would be of him. That Agent Gibbs would be the one to look out for."

~*~

"She's still alive, somehow?" Deputy Director David asked sharply as he strode into the hospital.

"Yes, sir," Motel replied quickly, scrambling to keep pace with his boss. "The doctors say that she has amnesia. She doesn't recall any of her years in Mossad." The director slowed, and in relief, Motel lessened his pace. "Should I file those visa renewals, sir?"

"No," David replied. "There's no use. She won't be of any good to either agency. Place Officer David on medical leave, release her to the custody of one of the other officers until such time as the doctors declare her fit to return to full-time duty."

"So who's going back as liaison?" Motel asked. "NCIS will be expecting Ziva to return to Washington with them tomorrow."

"I will speak to Director Shepard. Send Officer Meir to Washington. Make his contract term five years."

"That… seems a bit excessive, sir, for a disciplinary… five-year term, Officer Meir, right away," Motel caved in at David's dangerous glare, disappearing down the hall again.

David entered the hospital room to find Ziva and Myriam talking easily to one another. "Officer Rogel, do you not have something to do?" he asked pointedly; Myriam nodded quietly, said goodbye to Ziva and then left. "Ziva."

"Father," Ziva replied, a hesitant pause before the word.

"The doctors informed me that your memories of the last few years have gone, and there's a chance that they may never return," he said stiffly. "I'm sure that even with those memories gone, you can appreciate how dangerous it would be for you to leave this place without protection."

Ziva's eyes betrayed her confusion, though her facial expression didn't move in the slightest. "What are you trying to tell me, Father?" she asked softly.

~*~

"No, no, don't tell me you're going to take that kind of crap, director!" Tony burst out as Malachi stood silently at the foot of the plane steps.

"Tony, I can't do anything more," Jenny sighed.

"Listen, Agent DiNozzo, I am not particularly pleased with this assignment either," Malachi said quietly as he mounted into the plane. "I have a wife and child I am leaving for the next five years because of what I did for Ziva."

"Screw you, Meir, I really don't care right now," Tony snarled, starting to head for the plane door again.

"Agent DiNozzo!" Jenny said sharply, just as the pilots closed the doors. "Sit down and shut up before I write you up!"

Glowering at the director, Tony took his seat as far away from the group as possible, his face dark as he slouched down without further words. His hand buried itself into his jacket pocket, where he had Ziva's necklace still lying in the palm of his hand, waiting for the twilight reunion that would never happen. Tracing his thumb over the pointed edges of the star and the rippled texture of the diamonds, he tried not to let his dismay show too much. As far as everybody in this plane was concerned, Ziva had been his partner. Just his partner and nothing more, when in reality she had been so much more…

~*~

Ziva tossed and turned at night, released into Simon's custody and sleeping on his bed while he took the couch. She couldn't believe that so much time had passed without her remembering a single thing, that they were grown up, some of them married, with kids, with jobs and real lives. And yet something kept nagging. Something that told her that the stories that her friends had told her were incomplete, that there were things missing, important things…

They had told her that Tali and David had died on graduation night, killed in a Hamas bombing. They had told her that Rafi, Kemuel, Zion, Yael had all been died in the line of duty. They had told her that she and Rafi had married their final year at Beth Shalom, even if he'd been killed by Hamas before the end of that same year. They had told her that she was Komemuite, assigned to duties as a metsada after Rafi's death. And yet everybody seemed to skirt around the topic of where she'd been, what she'd been doing the day she had lost her memory. Nobody seemed to want to delve deeper in what her life had been like: the part which didn't concern Mossad. Or was Mossad her life – was she just one of the officers who had nothing except her duties to occupy her time?

Finally, Ziva sighed and sat up. Swinging herself out of bed, she headed out into the hallway of Simon's apartment cautiously, trying not to wake him. It was all for naught, apparently, since a note lying on the kitchen counter said that he had been called in on an emergency at Mossad and would call late morning to check on her if he wasn't done by then.

Turning on the lights, now not worried about waking anybody, Ziva went rifling through the albums piled beneath Simon's coffee table, searching for something – anything – that would help her remember. She had this terrible, horrible feeling that somebody was waiting for her, somebody she wanted very much to get back to…

Finally, Ziva had to give up. Hopefully it would come to her soon.

~*~

"Do you think it was dishonest of us?" Chaim asked softly. "Not to tell Ziva about the Americans?"

"Dishonest, absolutely," Myriam answered shortly. "Wrong? No. She's better off not knowing."

"Myriam, you are so immoral," Leib said with a shake of his head.

"I'm Komemuite. We're not exactly known for our outstanding moral fibre."

Zelig hesitated, thinking hard, before he said, "But it will come back to her one day. She will remember them one day, and she's going to remember being there, and she's going to remember – "

"As far as I'm concerned, whoever the hell her lover was in America had it coming for even starting a relationship in the first place," Myriam said stubbornly. "Knowing that she was Mossad, knowing that her assignment was temporary, possibly even knowing the kind of work she does in Mossad… he had it coming."

"Myriam, don't talk about what you don't know," Zelig replied shortly.

"This is what I do know – " Myriam burst out. "I know that my best friend's brother, her charge, was shot to death by NCIS, I know that they were having her tailed because they didn't trust her, and then barely a month later, they begging for her to go work with them? It reeks of conspiracy, Zelig, things like that don't just happen!"

"God, Myriam, did you ever think that maybe Ziva wanted to go?" Zelig demanded.

"The day she left three years ago, Zelig, she told me that she wished she didn't have to go!"

"Then you either weren't listening or you don't have the whole story, Myriam, because Ziva was perfectly happy to stay in Washington," Simon said quietly as he joined the group in the bar. "You didn't listen to her teleconferences with the deputy director every year at assignment time. She was practically begging on hands and knees to have it extended for another year. And we all know how easily Ziva takes to begging."

~*~

Ziva pulled on her jacket, grabbing Simon's spare key from the countertop. Maybe a walk through the streets would clear her mind and bring back what she desperately needed to know.

She kept hearing the sounds of a man's voice, speaking in a low, unfamiliar language. She would get quick flashes of an apartment, of listening to cars and horns outside the window with a warm arm wrapped around her waist and soft, warm breaths against the skin of her neck. And somehow she knew: this was who she was looking for.