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Sometimes, Ziva felt as though she had a second-hand soul. There had to be a limit to how much pain could be borne in one lifetime, yet it felt like she was carrying a load far greater than most. Of course, she had experienced more than her fair share of loss, betrayal and heartache in her time too. But some nights, when she was tired beyond belief and so jaded that she could not trust in even the simplest of kind gestures, it truly felt as though she had lived a hundred lives, and each one harder than the last. When sleep eluded her, despite her exhaustion, sometimes she'd wander into the bathroom, and study her own reflection. The weariness of an old soul that had seen and experienced far too much looked back at her. She could see youth in her face, but age in her eyes. A thousand years lived in a mere 20-something; the only explanation possible was that her soul had walked the earth before her many times before.
Sometimes, when he looked into her eyes, Tony felt as though he was seeing into eternity. Those pretty "never shut up" eyes held so much. He'd had close to half her life again in years, but all that she had experienced added up to so much more. Often, he could only see her grief, the constant ache of loss and bad memories, haunted by a hundred ghosts of the lives that had fallen around her, or at her hands. There was the guard she kept between her and the world, afraid to let people get close, knowing how soon she could lose that which she held dear and a bone-deep exhaustion that could only be explained by having lived the lives of many in the span of one, as though her soul had been someone else's before it was hers. Other times, when she turned her mysterious gaze on him in rare moments of openness, there were glimmers of something greater. He found the wisdom of one far beyond her years, a tenderness that could only have grown to counteract having known the harshest of human behaviour, and a warmth that spoke volumes about the deep, loyal love she was capable of, a hope that maybe, just maybe one day she'd let him in too. But most important of all, this vibrant spark shone through the weight of all she carried, shimmering with immeasurable, ethereal energy; a desire for life and a sense of humour, that, miraculously, had not yet been snuffed out. For everything she'd lost, she'd gained so much, and he got to see it.
He'd heard it said that the eyes were the window to the soul. If that were true, then second-hand or not, Ziva's was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.