Her eyes were static, not conveying any of the writhing emotions behind their glassy gaze. Her arms were tense, itching for job to do. Her legs were ready, waiting for their upcoming use in a fight. Ziva's daughter was prepared for anything that life threw at her and was going to punch her way through anyone who tried to make her feel differently. Her opponents had made it their challenge to force her to crack. Their new ambition in life was to witness her crying at their hand. To an onlooker that would seem cruel but she encouraged it and she always got her way. She wasn't spoilt or demanding. All she ever wanted was something to do, anything to occupy her busy mind, to keep herself from torturing her heart with thoughts of her morals or relationships.
The man watching her was enthralled by her collected appearance but he knew her too well to be fooled by it. He was overwhelmed with memories of all their many meetings. He was a trained assassin, the best in the whole of the Russian Federation. He had racked up a running tally of over three hundred victims who had died directly at his hand, not including the others who had died by those in his command. He was a professional killer and had never been beaten. Not even by her. She had never won outright; there was always the element of escape. He was an organised character, who planned every attack obsessively, but whenever he was preparing to try to kill her, he left it to chance and snap decisions. She was impulsive and unpredictable. Sometimes she toyed with him, other times she fought her way out of his reach but this time she had stood up and followed him.
She knew that someone was watching her and she knew who it was. Even after they had left the school grounds he had kept his balaclava on, but she knew who he was. He was the man who had tried to kill her countless times, had saved her life a couple of times and loved her faithfully even if he wouldn't admit it.
He watched her eyes close slowly and open again. He longed to join her and sweep her up in his arms, just as he had done two years ago when he had pulled her bloodied body off the floor and charged through a condemned building, counting down the seconds before it would blow up. He was irrationally protective of her and although he needed her dead for political reasons, he would thwart any assassination plan by any other man except himself. He would be the one to kill her; no one else had that authority. But one day she would die. It was fate.
Her mind was churning and her heart was pounding. She needed to decide whether to invite him in and talk to him or remain facing away and avoid the inevitable difficult conversation that would touch too many sore spots for comfort. Having someone to play against, someone who could rattle her, a nemesis was essential for her, she knew that. She understood herself perfectly. She knew what would mess her up and what she could handle. She knew her limits which would have been a blessing if she had kept to them. But she ignored her psychological state, citing it irrelevant, and continued on her path of self destruction, not driven by a desire for justice but pursuing vengeance on all who threatened those with a better life than her. She came across as distant and compassionless, but, although she had no issues with destroying innocent people in her path to catch the danger, she was completely selfless and would always put others above herself on her priorities. She was insignificant to her which allowed her to take risks no one else would even contemplate. The absence of self respect had created the ultimate assassin, agent and machine of destruction.
However, recently that power had been harnessed by Mossad and used by them to take out threats to Israel in a controlled manner. She had been raised by rogue Mossad agents so had been taught to use unnecessary force to take out their targets. But, the rogue agents had once been clean and they had retained all of their training, even if they had added a little of their own, and so all the basic requirement for Mossad were present and all they had had to do was refine her tactics a little and, voila, they had a capable Mossad assassin. She soon proved herself to be more than just capable, she became their most valued asset and was given the hard targets to eliminate. She would get close to them; infiltrate their paranoid inner circle before striking. This way, she would also gain useful intelligence about their covert operations which could be used to take down the rest of the group. She went far beyond the boundaries of expectations. She soon became their leading undercover agent as well. She was still only a child at this point, although it was easy to forget that she was not. Mossad had extracted her from her uncontrollable guardians and taken her in hand when she was just eleven years old. She was still impressionable although already as skilled as a grown man. She was retrained for eight months and began work as a Mossad assassin when she was twelve. She started taking undercover jobs at the tender age of thirteen. She could make herself look older but there was a limit to the miracles of make up and posture and her role could not exceed sixteen so she played school child and befriended the daughter of the target or got a job as the gum chewing, clueless paper girl. She threw herself into every job she was offered and never turned any work down. Eli felt a special affection for the child and knew that he would never have to question her loyalty as he did with his daughter. His granddaughter, although extremely similar to Ziva as a young Mossad officer, offered him her unconditional love, much like a dog. He had no reservations in referring to her in those derogatory terms because she would be flattered by the comparison if he had ever told her of it.
He had met with Ziva, his conquest's mother, a few times. He had not seen Ziva since she left Mossad permanently to join the Americans so he did not know how she had changed but the last time they had spoken, he had been struck by both the subtle similarities and the obvious differences between the two. Ziva had become overwhelmed by the brutality of Mossad's treatment of their officers and had found a haven in her liaison position at NCIS. Her daughter had made her nest in the comparatively warm arms of Mossad, escaping the demands of terrorist life. At NCIS, Ziva had retained some of her intimidating, violent persona but had mellowed considerably and while nobody would ever accuse her daughter of mellowing, the rough edges of her aggressive training had been ironed out by her new training although she held firmly onto her base beliefs of the necessity of killing, torture and punishment. Any means necessary was the philosophy that she lived by and the motto that had driven Ziva away from her Mossad brethren.
These thoughts fired up a sleeping compassion for his captive and, on an impulse, he threw open the door. Her head lifted almost imperceptibly and he could feel the anticipation in both of them.
'Miriam,' he called using her birth name. She had changed it to Frieda, meaning war, after she had been taken to Russia to train. Since then, she had had many names and aliases but Miriam would always be her first name, the one given to her by her mother. The one that Ziva regretted giving to her because she irrationally blamed her name choice for her disappearance. Miriam meant rebellious and bitterness. Her father had always called her Tsipporah after she had returned to Israel. She remembered the day that he had first called her that clearly. It was the day after she had arrived and she was standing on the balcony of her hotel room staring out across the border to Jordan. Ben-Gidon had watched her silently before coming up to her and putting a reassuring arm on her shoulder.
'We don't want to hold you down,' he whispered. Her eyes had widened in alarm and she twisted round to face him. He had picked up on the fear that she had been keeping inside her since the day that Mossad agents had burst into the cottage in Hungary. It was that moment that she realised that he wasn't a stranger to her, he understood her just as well as her old friends had. 'You shouldn't push away who you are. You are flight risk and we would love you to stay but if you need to leave, nobody will stop you. You are a free bird.' And then he bent over and kissed the top of her head. She had never been kissed there before. 'My free bird, my Tsipporah,' he murmured.
'Miriam,' her captor called again and she was roughly taken from Israel back to England. She turned.
'Yes?' she asked coldly, shaken by his use of her name. She hadn't heard it for years.
'You are here for a reason,' he stated flatly. She took a menacing step towards him.
'I guessed,' she replied.
'I won't kill you this time,' he added, unsure what else to say to this.
'I know,' she returned again.
'It's time you stopped running,' he told her.
'I agree.' He was thoroughly disconcerted by her short, honest answers. He couldn't remember the last time that she had told him the truth.
'Your mother is here.' He studied her face for any reaction but it was passive. He had learnt from her that you could tell more from what a person hides than what they disclose to you but her face wasn't hiding anything for once. He had never experienced this version of her.
'Frieda.' He reverted to her chosen name to try to get her to communicate in a way he understood.
'I don't care. I have no feelings for her. She is a liability. She betrayed Mossad and her family. She would not be an asset.' Although this violent resistance had been what expected, it still unnerved him to hear her flatly renounce her mother as impractical to her uses.
'Frieda, she doesn't need to be an asset, she's your mother.' Frieda shrugged.
'Why did you come?' he asked.
'I don't know,' she answered. 'You seemed a wee bit down. Sometimes I need to go east on people not as good as me.' He snorted.
'I have called Mossad, told them where to find you. They should be coming now. With your mother.' Frieda shrugged again.
'You don't think I can escape,' she taunted. 'I will not be here when they arrive. I will be waiting in Israel.'
'I invested in some better chains,' he explained. 'You will not have time to yank yourself free.' She considered this information before replying.
'I have no feelings for her. It will not damage me to see her. You will just hurt her in the end.' He was discomfited. He had orchestrated the whole thing to make her crack but along the way he had developed sympathy for his charge and now he wanted her to reunite with her mother. He was not a romantic man but he felt his heart tug with anticipation every time he imagined the scene. Now, Frieda would ruin the whole plan.
Ziva sat silently in the back of the SUV next to Tony. She could sense his disapproval. She knew that he did not think she deserved to meet her daughter after what she had done and truthfully she agreed fully. However, her father had decided for her and she had no choice but to follow him. She was apprehensive about seeing her daughter again but felt a slight attachment to Miriam now that she had discovered a new side to her daughter's heart. A side that connected with Eli and Malachi, that worked with Mossad to apprehend terrorists rather than aid them. She was nervous but she also really wanted to know her daughter again and as they approached the warehouse where Miriam was being held her stomach clenched. It was almost time.