Ziva knew what she wanted. Always had. And since the day she had taken the oath of the Israeli Defense Forces, she knew that her actions had consequences, sometimes detrimental consequences. Every day since, she'd controlled absolutely every move she made. But no matter how much of a perfect soldier she was, she was a human. And humans tend to break their own rules.
Ziva heard a baby crying from the other room, and moved slowly from where she'd been standing in the kitchen doorway. She dropped her keys on the table and walked into the second bedroom. She stood in that doorway, leaning against it, letting exhaustion overtake her. In the bedroom, sitting in a rocking chair, was Abby Scuito. The only person who had ever managed to pull the person out of the assassin that was Ziva David. Abby had revived in her what Ziva had thought had been lost forever, lost at the age of 18 as she scrambled around the streets of Tel Aviv, screaming Tali's name into the aftermath of a Hamas suicide bombing, even as her innermost reasoning told her that her family had been the target, and Tali had died. Lost once again not even ten years later when Ziva had been faced with an impossible ultimatum: Kill Ari, her agent, her brother; or disobey a direct order from her father and protect Ari, even though he was a double agent. She had questioned everything she believed in, the remainders of what was once her sound acceptance shaken to the core. She had ultimately chosen to kill Ari. The four years since, at NCIS, had been truly, the best of her life. They'd had their ups and downs, professionally and personally. The past two years had shown Ziva love, more than ever in her life. She'd began a relationship with Abby, and now knew what it meant to say that you were meant to be with another person. Abby had shown her complete trust, placing her life and her heart in Ziva's hands. They confided in eachother, and Abby had even told her once that they were "soulmates".
But of course, they had their problems, as every couple did. And due to the fact that they were polar opposites, and of course the nature of their jobs, their problems differed greatly from those of regular couples. The most intense of their relationship problems was the one that nearly tore them apart for good. When Ziva's old partner Michael Rivkin had died, killed by Tony in a standoff, Abby and Ziva's nearly year old relationship changed forever.
Ziva had developed a deep distrust of Tony. They went to Israel, to put Rivkin's body to rest. During their time there, Tony was interrogated by Ziva's father, Director Eli David of Mossad. Surprisingly to her, Tony was allowed to leave Israel unharmed. Ziva could not find it in herself to return to America with Tony, because she thought that he had killed her former teammate in cold blood.
Abby knew that while the team was there, something had went down between Ziva and Tony. It bothered Abby, not knowing what. She was hurt more than she could put in words when the team returned to the states one short, Ziva having opted to stay in Israel. Abby soon found out that Ziva hadn't been forced by her father to stay, but had stayed on her own accord. Ziva had left a voicemail for Abby, when it had been the dead of night in America and she knew Abby would be asleep. She had basically said she needed some time to cool off, the best place to do it was in Israel, and that this was not goodbye. Over the next few weeks, Abby had called Ziva hundreds of times; Ziva had not answered once.
Abby was a mess. She had never realized how much she needed Ziva until then. She couldn't sleep without her. Abby actually found that strange, Ziva wasn't exactly a peaceful sleeper. So many times the two had fallen asleep together, naked, bodies entwined after sex, only for Ziva to be taken by one of her nightmares. They were relatively common, rarely a week passed without one or two. Ziva would hide herself as best she could in the makeshift cover provided by the sheets, almost always waking Abby in the process. She'd cry out in Hebrew and Arabic, what Abby assumed was begging for her life. Abby was a scientist, she knew Ziva was having night terrors brought on by the post-traumatic stress of any of a million nameless things she'd done, or of Tali's death or Ari's death. And all Abby could do was hold her, whisper comforting words to her and try to fight away her demons until she woke completely.
Abby also missed Ziva's cooking. When she'd been with Ziva, she could count on having homemade meals and someone to share them with. Hell, even takeout with Ziva had been enjoyable, because there was nothing they wouldn't tell eachother. Very rarely would they venture into the "what Ziva's done" territory, but when they did, Ziva held nothing back. This was a matter of talking to her lover, it went way beyond the fact that Abby didn't have the security clearance to know any of what Ziva had done for Mossad.
Abby had figured that Ziva not answering her meant that, no matter what Ziva had said, it was over. And she'd have to find a way to deal with it. Ziva had always told her that the thought of Abby ever being with anyone else, man or woman, was enough to put her in tears. Then again, she'd also told Abby that if anything ever happened to her, Abby should find it in her heart to move on, and find comfort and maybe someday love in another person. Abby saw what Ziva had done as a betrayal, and so she took the steps associated with moving on from losing the only person she'd ever loved. Abby met a guy at a bar, Chris, and got his number. They met up, dated, so to speak. This was hard for Abby. Not speaking about Ziva meant not speaking about the past year. And, she had absolutely no feelings for this guy. They spent about two weeks "together", until Abby couldn't take it anymore. He was a nice guy, but she was in love with someone else. Over that two week period, they had had sex a few times; this satisfied Abby's primal need for physical comfort. They had used a condom each time, but once it had broken. And within a few weeks Abby knew she was pregnant. She called Chris and told him, feeling he had a right to know. Abby was completely pro choice, and wanted to have an abortion. Chris came from a religious family, and said that she should keep the baby and they should be married. Abby, of course, didn't want this. She still thought Ziva had betrayed her, but she was still in love with her. She couldn't marry Chris and have his baby. Abby spent a few weeks in complete indecision. She hid her pregnancy from everyone at work, and still prayed constantly for Ziva to call her, to email her; to make contact and tell Abby that everything was just going to be alright, that all of this was a mistake and Ziva was coming home to her. As Abby marked the start of her second trimester, Chris was killed in a head on collision with a drunk driver on his way to work. Abby had never loved Chris, had never agreed to marry him, but she attended his funeral. And never had she felt more alone.
Ziva, on her first day after her team had left her in Israel, learned that she had been wrong. Michael Rivkin had been a double agent of sorts; he would have killed Tony if Tony had not defended himself that night. Tony had done nothing to betray her trust. And now, Ziva had made what seemed to Mossad like a permanent return. Worse than that, she had left Abby with nothing more than a voicemail saying "this isn't goodbye". She knew what that must have done to Abby, how much it must've hurt. And she knew that because it hurt her just as bad.
Her father offered her Rivkin's spot on Officer Malakai Ben-Guidon's special ops team, and Ziva knew that it was more of a command than an offer. She obliged, thinking she would work with Guidon until she could find a way back to NCIS, to Abby. She also completely intended to call Abby again, this time when she was awake, and explain everything. Her plans to do this were interrupted when Guidon started calling her on missions with him. The first few were menial, assassinations and the sorts of things she'd done for years before she'd left that life for NCIS. Ziva started to complain to Guidon, and he said that she was just earning his trust for a very imporant operation. That particular operation nearly cost her everything.
Ziva accompanied Guidon and another member of his team onto a Somalian freighter called the Damacles. They had a contact, a former United States Marine who had become a deserter, named Daniel Cryer. He worked under the name Daniel Shatlev, which was a Hebrew name. Shatlev had struck a deal with the smugglers and thieves controlling the freighter, getting Ziva and her team passage into Somalia to diffuse an Al Queda camp, as well as discretion. Ziva saved Shatlev's life onboard the ship when he got caught snooping around. One of the Somalian men was going to shoot him right there for, pretty much, sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Ziva walked in on this exchange and told the Somalian that she had Shatlev looking for a place they could spend the night together. She then advanced on Shatlev, and started kissing him, and continued until the Somalian believed her and walked away. She reprimanded Shatlev, telling him that she'd kill him herself if he did anything to jeapordize their mission. Ziva was shocked at herself, although all she had done was what she was trained to: follow her instincts to save the life of a contact. But she had kissed him...and that fact alone had kept her awake at night more than the fact that her life was on the line.
Their third day on the ship, someone became spooked and started shooting. Between Ziva and Guidon, the entire crew of the Damacles was assassinated. Guidon was wounded, shot in his shoulder. When it came down to Ziva and Shatlev, pointing their pistols at eachother, Ziva understood that Shatlev had not betrayed them and started the shooting. Guidon apparently did not see that, and shot Shatlev dead right there, leaving Ziva standing over the scores of bodies. It was just like Ziva hadn't spent the past four years legitimately working for NCIS, hadn't followed the laws of an uncorrupt justice system. It was like she was right back in dog-eat-dog Mossad, getting sent on missions that each left her staring at the blood on her hands, wondering why the body count always had to be so high, wondering when she had agreed to play a deadly game with ever-raising stakes. She also saw that she was a person who had wrought such death and destruction to so many people, so many people's families. Abby had shown Ziva love, and the two of them were like family, and part of Ziva now believed that no matter what a person did, their family shouldn't suffer for it. If Ziva had ever been a double agent, she wouldn't want Abby to have to feel the repercussions.
Somehow, they made it to Somalia, in a lifeboat of the Damacles, which had went down in a storm the night of the shootouts. All the carnage, all the bodies, now lay at the bottom of the sea only a few hundred miles from the Horn of Africa. When they reached port, Ziva parted ways with the spec-ops team, saying that she could not disobey her father's direct order to proceed into Somalia. She knew that going alone was "suicide", as Guidon called it. But she also knew that without Abby there to help her stay in the moment, to be there with either a bear hug or a soft kiss or even a hand in the small of her back to give her balance, she had nothing. She felt like her life wasn't worth anything. Abby must be so mad at her. Ziva felt like if there was no hope of going back to NCIS and reconciling with Abby, she may as well head on her suicide mission into Somalia. At least she'd die a hero, destroying an Al Queda cell.
Three months, Ziva was in an Al Queda run prison camp in Somalia. Three months of torture, physical and psychological. Three months of Salim dehumanizing her, taking away her will to live. Three months of "Tell me everything you know about NCIS" and similar statements daily, three months of watching other prisoners tortured and murdered after they talked. One of the worst things you can do to someone who is Israeli Jewish, like Ziva, is take away the Star of David and destroy it. And that's exactly what Salim did to Ziva the first time he saw her, after his underlings had disarmed her and beat her mercilessly for the first time. Ziva spent three months, barely living, with the constant pain of regrets bearing down on her. All Ziva wanted to do was see Abby again. Talk to her. Touch her. Make her understand. Have everything go back to the way it was. But, within three months, Salim had managed to destroy Ziva's sense of self. She had no hope of returning to America, to NCIS, to Abby; the three things she now associated with home. And she was resigned to her fate.
Until one day, Salim dragged her into a room, a bag over her face, and sat her in a chair. When he removed the bag, she saw Tony DiNozzo. And laying on the floor behind him was a seemingly unconcious McGee. When Salim left them alone, she first asked McGee if he was alright, and when he said he was, she turned her attention to Tony. It didn't take her long to figure out that Tony, and the team, had thought she was dead. Her world got even smaller, if that was possible. Abby thought I was dead.
She asked Tony why they had come all this way, and he said "Couldn't live without ya."
She responded, "So you will die with me."
Even though she really still believed that she would die there and now Tony and Tim's lives were in danger, Tony had forgiven her. That was a bit of weight off of her shoulders.
In Tony and Tim's attempts to break away from Salim, Tim ended up attacking him. When Salim got up from the floor, he pointed his gun at Tim. In a desperate attempt to have it be her life instead of theirs, she attracted Salim's attention. She thought her life was over in the moment he put a blade to her throat. She was outwardly telling Salim to kill her and use the Americans as leverage, but inwardly, what she thought were her final thoughts were of Abby. She fought to keep the peaceful image of her lover awake in her mind even as she thought she was about to be murdered. But Tony surprised her once again, saying something about being the wildcard of his team.
Ziva was wrong about dying there. Tim and Tony had come with a plan, and a reliable sniper in the hills. Gibbs put Salim down with a headshot, and Tim and Tony braced Ziva between them, and left the camp, bodies falling in their wake.
The first place her three teammates took her when she returned to America was NCIS. She had been gone a total of a year. And she had not spoken to Abby. When they stepped off the elevator, everyone was clapping and Ziva was confused, and she saw Abby and, in that moment, she saw nothing else. And Abby hugged her, and Ziva knew that no matter where the long road home had brought her, no matter how much healing she had left to do, she had Abby. And somehow, that was all she needed.
They had talked. Ziva explained to Abby in full detail absolutely everything; from thinking Tony had betrayed her, to Guidon's team mission to the Damacles and Somalia. For the first time, she recounted being tortured. She'd started with the characteristic straight face but eventually her resolve had faded and she had ended up sobbing in Abby's arms, Abby crying too. Abby had explained in painful detail about thinking Ziva had abandoned her and about going to a bar for comfort and about Chris and his death and her pregnancy. Ziva sat there, in Abby's lab, holding her hand, listening to it all, eyes filled with concern.
"What about the child?" Ziva asked Abby.
Abby took a deep breath and said, "Z, I thought you were gone. We got intel from Mossad that you had been on a Somalian freighter that had went down in a storm. They said there were no survivors." Her voice was cracking. "You hadn't contacted me, I was completely alone and I had no idea what to do and-" She realized she was rambling, took another deep breath and said "I had the baby, Z. I have a daughter now, her name is Emma, after my grandmother, and my mom is up here helping me with her. She's three months old now, Z, and she didn't get the deafness gene. She's really beautiful."
Ziva's eyes went out of focus and she slumped back in her chair. That was an incredible amount of information to digest. Abby has a kid. I left her for a year, what did I expect? She thought I was dead, and I didn't give her a reason to think otherwise. She had every reason to move on. But, God, I still love her.
Ziva looked up into Abby's usually peaceful green eyes. They were now filled with fear and apprehension. Abby really had thought Ziva was dead, and had never expected to even have the chance to explain the past year. She hadn't even imagined how Ziva would react.
Ziva put into words the idea Abby had been dreading. "Maybe it would have been easier for you, in this situation, if I really had died over there. You thought I had anyway, and you...you have no idea what I have done, what I have been through in order to return to you." Her voice had taken on a cold, dejected tone, like all of the anger she'd felt since returning to Israel the year before had finally boiled over into rage. "I was being tortured, tortured for American secrets. And I gave them NOTHING. For all of my trouble, my father tells my friends I am dead. And my girlfriend has some random guy's baby. WHILE I WAS BEING TORTURED." Ziva was screaming now, and she'd stood up and was moving toward the door. Abby was desperate to get Ziva to stay, to keep talking to her. "Z, listen to me I didn't know-"
-She was cut off as Ziva's fist slammed into the wall next to the sliding glass doors to Abby's lab.
Ziva spun around to face Abby, and said "Listen to ME. I spent a year wanting nothing more than to be here. Or to be anywhere, for that matter, as long as it was with you. There were nights when I had my gun to my head, I was so convinced I would never be with you again. And now, I am. And now, I wish I had pulled the trigger."
Abby stood there, watching the spot Ziva had been, until she could feel her feet under her again. When she could, she grabbed Bert the Hippo and shut of the lights and music in her lab. She lowered herself into a dark corner. And then, and only then, did she allow herself to cry again. And she cried for hours.
Ziva had made it all the way to the street in front of NCIS before she realized she had nowhere to go. He apartment had been destroyed after Rivkin's death a year before. But that had been alright; for nearly a year before that she had basically lived with Abby. What little she had in America was in a bank account, and she accessed it from an ATM. She used the money to buy herself clean clothes and a cheap meal. She checked herself into a motel room, and sat on the bed and buried her face in her hands. She felt herself crying and did nothing to stop the tears. She had no reason and no right to be mad at Abby. And she knew it.
She sat there for hours, ignoring the NCIS cell phone Gibbs had given her; it was undoubtedly him checking up on her. She didn't want to talk to him, beacuse talking to him meant talking about Israel and Somalia all over again. She wanted to talk to Abby, and make things right. She wanted to tell Abby how much she still loved her. And, surprisingly even to herself, she wanted to be a part of the child's life. Abby's daughter, Emma. She wanted the girl to grow up in a happy, loving environment, the kind of home she had never had. Ziva was excellent at reading people; it was in her blood, in her training. The way Abby had been talking had made it very clear that there was no one else for her. And Ziva had known tragedy and loss, had taken more lives than she could count, had felt the intensity of betrayal. But never before had she known love. And it was a feeling she never wanted to let go of.
But, as was often the case, work came first for Ziva. She could no longer ignore Gibbs phone calls.
Over the next month, the contact she had with Abby was generally work related. The next time Ziva went down to the lab, Abby screamed at her about doubting Tony. When she finished, she wrapped Ziva in a bear hug, telling her once again how worried she had been. Ziva responded with "I know. Don't worry, ahuvati, I will figure this out. I said some awful things to you, and we will talk. Just give me time." That was the best she could do, for the time being. As for Abby, it was the first time in over a year Ziva had called her "ahuvati". Abby was thrilled, knowing it was a step in the right direction.
Ziva was made an agent after she severed all ties with her father and the Mossad. She did this after recounting her entire experience for Gibbs and Vance, when she learned her father had set her up to die onboard the Damacles along with Shatlev. When she hadn't, she should have in Salim's camp, but NCIS intervened. Now, Eli David's target was Guidon, and Gibbs basically told Guidon to run from the Mossad director.
Ziva had a life in America again. She was a probie, and Tony would never let her forget it, but she was a Special Agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. And to her, no title in the world was better.
Ziva drove her new model Mini Cooper to Abby's apartment for the first time in over a year. She'd always known what she wanted, and right now she wanted to make things right.
Walking up to the apartment, she smiled when her old key still worked. She entered the apartment and heard the familiar sounds of Abby-music she couldn't understand. Ziva heard a baby crying from the other room, and moved slowly from where she'd been standing in the kitchen doorway. She dropped her keys on the table and walked into the second bedroom. She stood in that doorway, leaning against it, letting exhaustion overtake her. In the bedroom, sitting in a rocking chair, was Abby Scuito. The only person who had ever managed to pull the person out of the assassin that was Ziva David.
Their eyes met, and Abby smiled. She returned her attention then to the quieting baby in her arms. Ziva walked over to her, and sat in a second chair in the nursery. Abby placed Emma in her arms, and she felt the peacefulness she'd always associated with babies. It reminded her of Tali when they were children, it must of been what Ari felt when he saw the two of them. Ziva was overwhelmed, felt happy tears in her eyes as Abby stood behind her with her hands on Ziva's shoulders. Ziva spoke softly to Emma in Hebrew, and once the little girl was safely asleep Abby led Ziva to the living room. Ziva opened her mouth to speak and Abby shushed her. She kissed her, and as she pulled away said "Shhhh. You don't have to say it. I know. All is forgiven. I love you."
And Ziva was absolutely alright with that. It was a year in the making, but it was what she wanted. She smiled. "I love you too, ahuvati."
Story Notes:
Everything in here that's canon is correct, the only canon I changed at all is that when Ziva was in Israel, she was really there for a matter of months. In my story, it was over a year. I needed to give Abby time to...well, you'll see.
Author's Chapter Notes:
"I was being tortured, tortured for American secrets. And I gave them NOTHING. For all of my trouble, my father tells my friends I am dead. And my girlfriend has some random guy's baby. WHILE I WAS BEING TORTURED." Ziva was screaming now, and she'd stood up and was moving toward the door.
Chapter End Notes:
Everything in here that's canon is correct, the only canon I changed at all is that when Ziva was in Israel, she was really there for a matter of months. In my story, it was over a year. I needed to give Abby time to...well, you'll see.