A/N: Sorry this has been so long in coming and a thank you (in advance) to all the readers who have stuck with me despite the lack of updates. I promise they will come more reliably soon, when my life goes back to normal sometime in August, although i do hope to get the next chapter (full of yummy stuff) up soon, but until then, at least this one contains some much anticipated information. Enjoy and thank you!
Ziva was so silent on the car ride that Tony thought he might be in for a repeat of the previous night's distress, but when they reached his apartment she jumped out and waited impatiently for him to unlock the front door. As soon as he let her in she headed for living room and hit the power button on his sound system. With Led Zepplin blaring from the speakers, she began rooting through his movie collection, all the while carrying on an animated conversation about the possible selections.
"I am in the mood for some good action," she said as she pulled out a movie and examined its case. "Hmm, 'The Bourne Identity,' too unrealistic." She tossed that one back and removed another. "This one is good, but too depressing." It joined the pile of discards. "Ah, 'The French Connection,' this is old, but perfect."
Tony watched this whole display, his mouth open with amazement. He had never seen anyone run though such a gamut of emotions so quickly and he knew that her current manic state was no more than a cover for the fear she had expressed earlier. Still, one small part of him wanted to just go along with her, sit and watch the movie and avoid dealing with the hard truths that were sure to become issues tomorrow. He tamped that part down, though, and the credits had barely started to scroll across the screen when he grabbed the remote and turned the TV off.
"Ziva, we need to talk. You need to talk."
"Tony, tomorrow is going to come soon enough, why can't you just let me forget for tonight," she pleaded, her distress showing through the mask of frivolity she was trying to keep in place.
"Because if you don't talk, I can't help. Ziva what could be so bad that, after everything we've been through, you can't tell even me."
She didn't answer him, at least not directly, instead sinking down onto the couch and staring at her knees while clenching her hands into fists so hard that her nails left bright red indentations on her palms. Finally she looked up, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
"You do not really know me," she said. Tony opened his mouth to protest but Ziva cut him off. "I am a killer, Tony."
"Ziva, I know that - we all know that, and no one cares what you've done in the line of duty. It's not like you're the only one, even McGoo has had to go there. You've just been there a bit more than the rest of us - except for maybe Gibbs and I really don't want to know about Gibbs."
"You do not want to know about me either."
"And I don't need to, so what is the problem? Even if your father gives a blow by blow account of your career, NCIS isn't going to care," Tony said with a shrug.
"And if it was not all in the line of duty? What would they say then? What would you say if you knew I was not just a killer but a murderer."
"Ziva, I know you, and you are not a murderer. Besides, I'm sure that anything you did was at the behest of your father."
Ziva shook her head. "This is my own doing. My father is not to blame and he was not always the monster you know now." Ziva stopped for a moment and looked at Tony. When he simply held her gaze without speaking, she took a deep breath, and continued, looking down at her knees again, as if unable, or unwilling, to watch his reaction as she told her tale.
"You know that I was already part of Mossad when my sister was killed, what you don't know is that my job was different back then. My father made sure that I received the highest level of training, but then he kept me away from the worst of the action. Because of my language skills, I ran a few informants and my other duties were mostly providing support to agents in the field. I did not do any of the undercover or termination work I later took on and I do not think my father ever intended me to. "
She stopped talking again, wringing her hands and refusing to meet Tony's gaze. He reached over and gripped her hands in one of his own, holding them just firmly enough to stop their obsessive twisting.
"Ziva, tell me. There is nothing you can say that will make me change what I think of you."
"Do not make promises you can not keep, Tony. You have not yet heard what I have done." Then, with a sigh, she went on. "When Tali was killed, my family was devastated. It was the beginning of the end for my mother, she simply wasted away after the funeral. The doctors can say what they want but I know it was the loss of her youngest daughter that killed her. And my father, he became a man obsessed. Every resource was used, every agent put on the case, and every informant pressed for leads in his hunt for those who were responsible. I, too, was put on the case and pursued it with a zeal that I had never felt before."
"I wouldn't have expected anything less," said Tony.
Ziva ignored his reassurance, in fact, she shook off his hand and rose, starting to pace the room as she continued her tale. "Other agents brought home a few vague rumors but I was the one who dug paydirt."
"Hit paydirt," Tony corrected her out of habit, but she didn't seem to hear him.
"One of my informants knew of someone involved in the bombing. I should have simply relayed this information to my father but by then, having watched my mother fall apart and with my father barely noticing me, I needed to do something more to ease my own pain. I went undercover by myself, without authorization, to try to contact the man my informant had told me about ... and I found him."
"Good for you."
"No, not good, not good at all. He was not a major player, just someone who supplied some parts and a safe haven where the real bombers could ply their trade. He might have led us to the masterminds, but when he told me about the attack, he was bragging. He was proud of the part he had played, of the people he had helped to kill for Islam."
"That must have been hard to listen to," Tony said, but he didn't understand where this was going. So far nothing she had said was at all shocking. Heart wrenching, yes, but not surprising and certainly not damning.
Ziva looked over at him, pausing her agitated walking, but she did not seem to really see him. Her eyes were unfocused as she relived the memory, watching an agonizing video behind her tear-filled eyes.
"He specifically mentioned Tali, not her name, but the fact that she was the daughter of a high ranking Mossad officer. He even told me how he had brought his son with him to watch the bomb go off, then he called his son in to the room to help him tell the story. I still remember what they said, how they described the blast, how they described Tali's death. They said she was just walking through the door when the explosion happened, that in fact, they were concerned that the bomb might go off too early and miss her. But it didn't. They told me how it blew her backwards, so hard that she crashed into car almost 20 meters away. Then they laughed. They said the best part of the bombing was seeing Tali 'learn to fly, right before she learned to die.'"
Tony was horrified at what she had gone through even though he still didn't understand why she thought these events reflected badly on her. He stood up and reached out to her, gathering her into his arms and holding her. He could feel her quivering with suppressed sorrow and tension as he cradled her against himself and stroked her hair. "You don't have to tell me more. I'm sorry I made you relive something so painful," he told her.
"But I do have to tell you," she said, her voice muffled as she spoke into his chest. She turned her head slightly, so that he could hear her better but made no effort to look up at him as she told the last part of her tale.
"When they laughed, a part of me exploded. I did not care that they were our one solid lead to the bombers or that the son was no older than Tali, I just wanted them dead, wanted them to know what it was like to die for nothing. I pulled out my gun and I shot them. I do not know how many times, I just pulled the trigger over and over, then I dropped the gun and I ran. My father was furious. I had killed our only link to the men who were truly responsible, but I was his daughter, so he covered it up, wrote up orders for their assassination and backdated them. Then he called me into his office and told me that if I was so anxious to use my gun then he would put me where that would be an asset. That was when he began to train me in earnest, when he decided to make me his weapon, when he decided I was a killer first and his daughter only second. And that was what he threatened to tell NCIS, that they were employing a murderer, someone capable of shooting an unarmed man and his child in cold blood."
Ziva finally stopped talking, looked up at Tony, and saw the shock that she had expected on his face. But then, before she could look away, the shock melted out of his eyes and was replaced by something that frightened her even more, something that she decided to call pity.
"Oh, Ziva," Tony said, amazed at her strength. Amazed that she had been able to not only go through all that she had in her life, but keep it locked up inside and still remain, if not exactly whole, at least relatively intact. He realized that she was exactly what he had always wanted but, thanks to deep seated fears of not measuring up, had been afraid to try for. He dated bimbos and played the fool, the only time he had ever let himself get close to someone had been when he was undercover and therefore supplied with a built in barrier, but he was through with hiding. This time he was determined not to make the same mistakes so he tried to put all the sympathy and all the love he was feeling into his gaze as he pulled her closer in the hope of soothing her fears.
Ziva stiffened as she felt Tony's arms encircle her even tighter. Shock she could have tolerated, she was even prepared for disgust, but pity, and that other, truer thing she saw in his eyes, that emotion she was afraid to even name, undid her. She did not know what to do so she did the first thing that came to mind. She tilted her head up, twined her hands in his hair and kissed him. At least lust was something she was comfortable with.