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Ziva stands quietly at a spot near the doorway and considers the man in the room. There is so much for her to ask and for him to tell. Only silence now and she is the silence. She has learned to observe people apart from their environment and to give them an existence outside of their meaning. There is no understanding of a person on any level if they're only considered by their surroundings. People existed on their own and existed totally prior to government and organized religion; she finds the truth in a person and defines their existence because of who they are, not in spite of it.



(Gibbs is a good example. When she first met him she was unimpressed. He was out for revenge and there was no mistaking the look in his eye that told her he wanted Ari's brain splattered on a sidewalk. A vengeful man, she thought tiredly, as if she hadn't come across enough of those, and days like that reminded her of the danger involved in her job and just how unforgiving it would always be. Take him outside of his environment and what is he? He is smart and very logical, but so is she, and her logic tells her that he occasionally sits in his basement with a bottle and siphons his grief into chipped coffee mugs.)



Her spine is straight and stiff like the walls of the room. The room itself is without character, per usual. These are her rooms and she's claimed all of them with a hundred confessions, flinches, and truths that puddle on the floor at men's feet. Tables, chairs, and scattered cabinets; it's nothing new, not that she'd notice, anyway.



(Tony, she knows, would notice the décor of a room and of a person, soaking in the details of a bland wall color as well as the curves of a lithe female. Perhaps he's not as vain as one would believe, but despite appearances he is more lost than Gibbs, who at the very least knows for what it is he grieves, and regardless of Tony's wardrobe or car his shoulders will slump in resignation as he drags behind him remnants of the boy he once was, complete with silent contempt.)



There is an uncooperative man in the center of the room. It is all she has to know. She's done her homework and knows him, the version of him that's documented, which means she doesn't know him at all.



(Obviously, she never got to know Kate, and there will never be a good time to ask others what they thought of her, as if opinion even comes close to fact. She is aware of Kate's upbringing and wants to know if Kate ever once thought her god the slightest bit perplexing before a bullet screamed front to back through her skull.)



This man is twice her age with tattoos on his forearms as memories. The lines on his face are a map of places traveled and places not. He crosses his arms in front of him and reclines slightly in his chair. With that single gesture he has made himself known. People are the sum of what has happened to them and especially what they have done to themselves.



(Initially, she wasn't sure what to make of Abby. Truthfully, she still is unsure, and it's not as though Abby isn't forthcoming with information, even to her, but it's what she doesn't say. Her clothes and hair seem to have her attempting to rise up, stand down, blend in or fade out. It doesn't happen often, but when Gibbs and Abby both use sign language, at those times Abby stands before him, all dark hair and quick fingers, perfectly clear in every way. Ziva remembers once Tony told her, "It's not the journey but the destination," and she wonders where the hell Abby is trying to go.)



And one of the things she has learned in her years: pain and insecurity can grow inside of a person to the point it blinds them to everything. Her advantage is another person's weakness and when she does find a little fissure it will be all she can do not to vomit because neither of them will ever be the same.



(Ducky is unusual and hits on her almost as much as Tony, but in a more dignified way. He deals with corpses, humans not quite human, and no matter how death came, grotesque in their nature. Ducky is different because he sees a corpse as reminiscent of life and not of death. The fact that he can view a corpse outside of what it is—flesh and muscle and bone, all signifying defeat—makes him a good person.)



There is a sound specific to defeat, of a person finally breaking, and it brings a strong taste of something to her mouth that she swallows with her eyes closed. Afterwards there's always an energy in her limbs and when she speaks her voice will crack with restrained excitement. She sees it, what she does—this—as a game. Her opponents never do. It is never a game when you lose.



She takes a step into the room. Her heels echo in broken silence and she smiles to herself as she turns around to shut and lock the door.