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Before she fell, Ziva could not see ghosts, a serious failing in an intelligence agent. Now, of course, she saw everything, so she should be grateful, really. She was of much more use to her father and her country this way.
She told herself this firmly as her father's secretary walked straight through her and didn't even notice.
Ziva could have drained the blood right out of her if she had wanted.
That sort of thought occurred to her more and more now, but it scared her, so she stuck a lid on it and slipped through the wall so she could see her father.
(He doesn't look at her. Not once.)
Even with all the precautions people took against ghosts, clever ones could still get anywhere. Do anything.
Ziva had always been clever, so she learned how to hide herself, how to shrink, how to fade. She learned how to use her will to move objects.
She also learned how it felt to stand on the carpet of an expensive hotel room while blood seeped into her hands.
It was nice to be able to make herself be seen again, but she couldn't stop thinking about that feeling. She didn't remember what the man's face looked like, but she remembered the way the color of the blood had almost but not quite matched the carpet.
(Ari finds her crying silently in a broom closet. He sits with her and runs his fingers through her hair. He no longer has to make an effort to do so.
The warmth feels nice until their father finds them. He pulls Ari away into a meeting that she listens in on. It ends in shouting and terrible words.
She doesn't see Ari again for three years. When she finally does, he smiles at her, but he doesn't touch her.
Not once.)
Age was irrelevant to a ghost. Ziva could appear any way she wanted.
She wasn't sure how old she was when she first pretended to be in her twenties. She just remembered, later, how she'd been drawn to a low-cut blue dress because of the color, and her father had told her, "No. Not that one."
She'd picked a modest green and held onto his words all throughout her mission.
(It is years before she slows down enough to realize when her birthday is.
"My birthday is today," she tells her father. Perhaps he will take on the trip he had promised before her unfortunate fall.
For a moment, her father's expression crumples into something impossibly broken before he is his unflappable self once more.
"Your next mission starts today," he counters. "Terrorists will not wait while we celebrate."
"Yes, Abba," she says, but when she has a moment to herself on her mission, she buys herself a slice of cake.
She stares at it for a long moment before she realizes that it probably contains trace amounts of salt, and thus, she cannot eat it.)
She lost count of her missions somewhere around the time her head started to cloud. Rivkin was the one who taught her how to stop it.
"I prefer a nice cup of St. John's Wort, but everyone has their preferences," he told her.
She preferred iron. It was the most efficient way to deal with the problem, even if she had the sense that it would have worried Tali and horrified her mother.
(She does it right before a briefing once, in front of her father.
Tell me to stop and I will, she thinks but does not say.
Her father says nothing at all for the first thirty minutes of the briefing which is most unlike him.
She considers stopping in recognition of that, but after her next mission, she surrenders to the iron again.)
Ziva was patient, but even she had her limits.
Her father ordered her to take down her brother, and Ziva thought that she could go no further.
She went. She shot him.
His blood called to her, and she fled from the basement, trying to remember how his hand had felt in her hair.
(She remembers eventually. It only makes her feel more like her insides are being slowly devoured.
"I have an in with the NCIS director," she tells her father. "I would be a valuable liaison."
"America is dangerous," he points out as he flips through files.
So is what you have done to your children, she thinks but does not say.
"You want this?" Eli David finally asks. He looks at a point just over her left shoulder.
"Yes," she lies.
She does not want to go to America. She wants her father to tell her how sorry he is and that she has misunderstood this whole time. She wants Tali, her mother, and Ari to still be alive. She wants her family back.
But she hates the idea of going to America less than she hates the idea of staying here, so she says, "I think I can gain valuable information."
She tries to tell herself that her father's sole reason for agreeing is not just to get her out of his sight.)
She went fully intending to do her duty to Mossad.
Somewhere in the middle of Tony trusting her, Abby wholeheartedly embracing her, Tim helping her prank Tony, and Gibbs running a hand through her hair, she realized that perhaps she was compromised.
Several miles past compromised, as Tony would say.
(The night after Senior is arrested, Tony is lying in the big bed in his room that he does not need. Ziva is perched on the end of it in an attempt to get him to come watch a movie with her and McGee. She does not think he should be alone tonight.
"I still love him, you know," Tony said abruptly.
Ziva only blinks at him in surprise. She has never doubted it.
"But I think I love Gibbs more." He adds like it is a confession.
"I also still love my father," she offers.
She does not love Gibbs more, or at least she does not think she does. But she does love Gibbs more securely, because, at least for now, he loves her back.
Her father loves her too, of course, but he loves and mourns his living daughter, not the monster his dead one has become.
She suspects something of her thoughts have shown on her face, because Tony suddenly reverses his arguments and agrees to go watch a film.
When he lets her pick which one, her suspicions become certainties, so she throws a pillow at him. It is not very mature, but then, she is only a child, after all.)