NCIS 1. Refuge

**Disclaimer: **_NCIS_ is not mine. The show and the original characters belong to Don Bellisario, Gary Glasberg, and CBS. The new characters, however, do belong to me. This was written strictly for fun, not for profit.**  
****A/N: **Hi there! I must be crazy to start a multi-chapter story, but here it is, a heavily Ziva-centric piece that came to me right after 11.02 aired. It's obviously very AU. You're gonna need to have some patience with this one, but hopefully you'll think it's worth it in the end. :-) Drop a note and let me know yea or nay!

* * *

**Salam ****| Peace**

Once when I was running, from all that haunted me;  
To the dark I was succumbing-  
To what hurt unbearably.

Searching for the one thing,  
that would set my sad soul free.

In time I stumbled upon it,  
an inner calm and peace;  
and now I am beginning,  
to see and to believe,  
in who I am becoming-  
and all I've to be.

—Lang Leav, "Self Love"

* * *

**Part 1: Refuge**

Ziva awoke, a precious few hours after collapsing exhausted on the spot, to the sound of pattering feet outside her tent. Before her deep-rooted instincts sent her reaching for the empty space under her pillow, musical giggles and the graze of fingertips over the cloth sidetracked her foggy mind. Through the haze of sleepiness, she spied the source of her unconventional alarm clock: three small forms silhouetted against the closed flaps.

_It is only the children…_

"I know you are out there," she called to them in Arabic, holding onto the slippery language along with consciousness. "Amari, Lina, Yusef…" Her educated guesses shocked the trio motionless. "You would not want me to tell your—" She bit her tongue; some of the children in the camp did not have mothers anymore. Or fathers. Or both.

"The plane is coming," one of the children announced in a rush, and then there was more giggling and the outlines of all three loped away.

Smiling to herself, the tired woman stretched out beneath the tattered blanket that offered little but the illusion of warmth, lengthening muscles stiff from her final overnight shift in the infirmary for the week. Her hands met the back of the tent as she unfolded like a cat, pushing fists into the burlap. It was still early, and the promise of daylight tinted her close quarters a dusky shade of violet, but she rose to sitting, blinking through her fatigue.

What the child had called a plane was actually a helicopter, and helicopters meant supplies. But she had another reason for forcing herself awake. These early morning moments, prior to the start of her long, arduous days, were the most susceptible to the invasion of memories that rang up out of her price range.

She'd calculated an Abby smile to be worth a day; the echo of Gibbs' already rare voice cost her two, sometimes three for a "Ziver"; and though priceless, one of Ducky's reminiscences nevertheless set her back too far. When she thought of them all—her team and her family—it was as if she never left, and that was unacceptable.

It was difficult enough that it did not feel that long ago. The desert, even one that was not her own, had a way of siphoning time like the sifting of ashes between one's fingers. Had it really been two months since that night at the airport? Since she sent…_him _back where he belonged? She couldn't bring herself to say his name, for that came with the highest price tag of all, one she could never afford, not on any day.

Heavy eyelids fluttered open again. Ziva stared through the darkness of her tent, willing the chills running a marathon the length of her spine—that had nothing to do with the temperature of the morning—to subside. She did not come here to remember.

With every act done at this refugee camp, in the service of those who needed it most, she balanced further the uneven tip of her soul's scale. Here, she was not an assassin who killed her half-brother. Not an investigator who sought revenge. Not an orphan, a teammate, a woman who left behind everyone who still loved her for this solo journey. Here, she was simply one of the many doing her part.

Anonymous.

(/)(/)(/)

The chopper blades stirred sand into a gritty soup, their incessant _thwak-thwak-thwaking_ erupting small volcanoes of pain in her eardrums. Ziva chose to hold the scarf over her eyes and mouth instead of plugging her ears; she would be plagued by ringing deep in the canals for the rest of the day, but it was preferable to sandy eyeballs.

Along with a dozen of her fellow volunteers, she crouched over, maintaining the requisite distance from the makeshift landing pad—a cleared square of land, free of bushes. As the aircraft descended, she turned her face and did not look again until the blades had ended their terror.

Transports like this arrived with mysterious cargo. It was a game the aid workers played, taking bets on the type of supplies that might be allocated to their camp that week. Or every other week, as was often the case now. Opening the fuselage doors revealed stacks of stark white boxes—so clean and alien against the third-world conditions the goods were entering. Blocky words were stamped on the cardboard: Hygiene. Medicine. Non-perishable. Ziva smiled; there was a reason everyone had stopped betting against her.

Two weeks of waiting, and it took only minutes to transfer the load of supplies onto the waiting truck. As there was never room on the vehicle for the workers to ride back to camp, they instead set off on foot for the 60km journey home. Behind them, the helicopter roared to life once again.

Overhead, the clouds parted, revealing the sky's pre-dawn blush that warmed the rippling Mosul Dam Lake running alongside their path. A stale breeze snatched at her over-shirt, billowing the threadbare fabric away from her body; the camisole underneath was already damp with her exertion. Ziva lifted her hand as she walked, using it to dab sweat off her forehead. That was when she spotted them.

Forty-paces ahead, with the yawning horizon at their backs, the morning's first wave of Syrian travelers crossed the river on the rickety pontoon bridge that was newly constructed to facilitate their evacuation. Closer and closer, they trudged away from the hands of oppression and violence that seized their homeland and towards the safety that the Peshkhabour border point offered.

A few carried bags of possessions; others were in possession of only what they wore on their person. The wounded limped alongside the broken-spirited. Children ran underfoot. The sea was vast and deep and endless, a jostling mass of desperate bodies flowing on a collective tide. They barely acknowledged the abrupt switch from plastic to sand beneath their weary feet as they staggered onto Iraqi-Kurdish soil.

This was how it had been since she arrived at Domiz via a Jeep out of Dohuk, riding along with a handful of other new volunteers for the international aid organization stationed at the camp. None of them, save for her, had made it through the month. The tangible image of thousands upon thousands of displaced human beings emptying out of one country and into another like gushing water forcing its way through a narrow sieve was a reality too foreign for their hearts.

_At least they are alive_, Ziva thought of the refugees. _At least they are not among the dead who did not get the opportunity to make this journey at all_, _to escape and start over._

She did not know where this newest group would go, where they would be put within the camp; the term the aid workers used was _severely overcrowded_. It meant that there were already two families to every tent and not enough food and supplies to accommodate the influx. For the new arrivals, other arrangements would have to be made. Some would set up temporary shelters on the outskirts of the wire fences. Others, the able-bodied, would be sent into the neighboring towns to seek both lodging and work, if they were lucky enough to be granted a residency permit.

Receiving and placement was not part of her responsibilities that week, so she continued on the serpentine stretch of desert that would eventually lead back to the rows of faded red and tan tents. Her boots found the beaten trail, one after the other, following in the multitude of footsteps that'd come before her.

(/)(/)(/)

Into the satchel Ziva nestled the jug of water—filled to the brim, the lid sealed tight—with fresh water obtained from the tank trucked in not long after she returned to camp. Weighted down by the container, the bag's strap tugged at the thin skin over her collarbone, the spot as worn as the leather itself. She adjusted the strap, and then set out.

Domiz was a labyrinth, a small, one-story city of dirt roads and many, many occupants that walked the pathways with determination, as though the paths would lead somewhere beyond the circle of the encampment. Since her arrival, it had grown, almost doubled, and still it was insufficient to meet demand. Nothing ever came completely clean in Domiz and there were few amenities, but it was not Homs, Al-Hasakah, Damascus—a war zone. The inhabitants did not live in fear of awakening to the whistle of bombs dropping into their villages or to clouds of poison filling the air.

Despite the size of the camp, her destinations within the boundaries that afternoon were engrained in her muscle memory. At each stop were one or two children, confined to their tents by illness or injuries for which the infirmary could no longer spare beds. Besides, no child, anywhere in the world, cared for hospitals.

"Little Ones," Ziva called out in their native tongue, lowering down to her knees at the opening of the first tent on her route. "I have a surprise you will like very much."

The flap pulled back and two olive-shaped faces peeked out. Ziva could not recall the exact moment when all the children she'd cared for during her brief stint working in the infirmary had become infinitely dear to her, but the pair of siblings was no exception. Imani and her little brother, Abdo, shared prolonged cases of dysentery along with hair the color of chestnuts and naturally tan skin. They had escaped one terror only to be claimed by another. Their eyes were wide and somber, and her chanted name moistened their chapped lips.

"_As-salam alaykom_," she greeted them.

They replied in tandem, "_Wa alykom as-salam_."

"You are both thirsty, yes?" At their fervent nods, she exaggerated a conspiratorial tone. "Quick, while it is still cold."

They did not leave their tent, instead presenting toothy grins and their cups for her to fill, which she did—twice—while rattling off the only appropriate-for-children joke she knew in their language. The perpetually dehydrated and fatigued children giggled as they drank, never mind that they had heard the silly pun from her several times before.

Their mother, a skinny, dark-haired woman, younger than Ziva, emerged from the depths of the tent, watching with crossed arms and cautious eyes the scene between her son and daughter and the worker, a stranger, a Jew. Her Star of David necklace was with her former partner for safekeeping, but in these parts, it took only her accent to give her away. This woman was like so many of the Syrians who passed through Domiz's gates, learning to receive mercy from whoever offered it.

Ziva regarded her with a stoic but not unkind expression, and the gesture was returned. Survival, it seemed, meant more than a centuries-old feud.

The mother told her children to come back inside.

"_Shukran_, Zee-va," Imani chimed, water dribbling down her chin from a too-big gulp, before she and her brother gave their guardian angel final smiles and disappeared into their home.

"_Afwan_," she replied, her own smile lingering as, in one swift movement, she rose to full height and swiveled around to—

Her body collided with another, jostling both participants of the crash. Precious water from the container sloshed onto the leg of her cargo pants.

"Whoa, sorry—oh, hey there."

She knew to whom the Australian accent belonged even before glancing up at the lead aid organizer in Domiz. Blue eyes, set within a pale face that always appeared as if on fire, his fair skin unaccustomed to the rays of unfiltered sunlight, served as confirmation. Some people were not made for the desert: Thomas Gray was one of them.

Ziva pressed firmly on the lid of the container, and then swiped at her forehead, coming away with sweat-prints on her forearm. "It is fine," she assured with a reflexive twitch of her mouth, and moved to pass him.

Gray followed after her. Their shadows were even when silhouetted on the dirt road; when face-to-face, her eyes fell level with the dimple in his chin. If he caught her taut sigh, he ignored it.

"You should slow down, David. Take a break."

"I do not need one."

Unlike many of her fellow aid workers, Ziva loved most when the work was hard. When the transports needed unloading, the crush of each cargo box that she shouldered defining sinew. When trenches demanded digging, splinters from the crude, wooden tools spearing to unreachable depths beneath the skin of her hands. Even when the wounded in the infirmary required her restraint until they didn't anymore, and she smelled of their death for days afterwards.

When it was hard, repenting was easy. And she still had much to make up for.

"Suit yourself," the Aussie said, breaking into a jog to keep up with her. "Just so you know, everybody will be calling you the Energizer Bunny if you don't."

"I thought I was..._Desert Rat_?" Her accent wrapped each word in a question.

They reached the end of the row of tents and banked onto the main thoroughfare, the path widening enough for the trucks to drive through.

His laugh was hearty, resounding from his chest. "You caught that? At orientation?"

Ziva shrugged. "I have the hearing of a horse."

They stopped walking, causing the refugees at their heels to flow out around them. The memory of her first day was easy to call up. That it had been the end of October had no bearing on the gusty winds and sweltering heat. While her fellow probies were dripping with sweat after only minutes of digging a trench, the _sabra_ wore the desert climate like a tailored suit. Gray was directing her group, and upon observing this, dubbed her with the apt moniker, though not to her face.

Now, the fair-haired man rested his hands on his knobby hips as he regarded her, squinting through the overhead glare, stymied. "You say some strange things sometimes."

"And a bunny that is energized is rational?" Her expectant look challenged his steady gaze.

"Just…take a bit of your own medicine. Don't need my best worker passing out, now do we?" With a pat to her shoulder and the flash of a smile, Gray walked on, leaving her to her self-appointed rounds.

Watching him glide back into the flow of human traffic clogging the thoroughfare, Ziva realized she did not know much about him, despite their close proximity for weeks, but she did not need to know, either. She was not here to make friends. Not when there were more tents to visit, more thirsty children waiting for their cups to be filled.

Her work was never done.

(/)(/)(/)

Shiny gold garland tacked up around the inside perimeter of the workers' tent. Watered-down, creamy broth that passed for eggnog. The artificial tree, no taller than a toddling child, placed on the center table, and the twinkling lights that adorned it, blinking on and off sporadically—not for effect, but rather due to the unreliable power supply.

All because they claimed it was Christmas Eve.

Ziva willingly admitted to losing track of the date. Time was irrelevant in the camp, measured in new tents, trenches dug, and refugees admitted, instead of minutes and traditions. Though she did not celebrate the particular holiday, there had been a time when she enjoyed Christmas for the festive mood it drew out of people, and out of herself. That was not the case this holiday season, the first away from the States and her NCIS family in eight years. The first since her father died.

She was in no mood for a party.

Amidst the jolly festivities, Ziva managed a few bites of dinner, far fewer than her body needed after the work she'd done that day. Then it was all too much. Ducking her head, she pushed through the flaps out of the tent as if breaking the surface of a lake. Twilight, like a cold compress, lay across the smooth forehead of the land, bringing down the day's fever. Cool air expanded her chest on a deep inhale.

On the exhale, she set off toward her own tent, seeking the illusion of privacy it afforded. Snippets of promises, lullabies, and arguments snatched at her ears as she passed the refugees' canvas dwellings. Knowing more than one language was like having a translator in her mind, deciphering in real time any of the nine verbal texts in her repertoire. The only downfall was that it didn't come with a filter that spared her from what she wished not to hear.

Pausing in her stride, Ziva listened closely, isolating the shrill slew of Arabic words filtering out from behind the next bank of tents.

"They are out there!" The woman's voice repeated the plea over and over again. "Save them, _b__esora'a_!"

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're saying." The reply came in English—and in an Australian accent that was equally familiar.

Ziva toed around the corner, placing Gray and a Syrian woman in her sights. They stood in the glow of the infirmary tent; the strain of getting nowhere with each other played out in their frustrated arm gestures. It was becoming quite a scene. She was not the only one to take notice of the woman's screams. Other refugees stepped out of their tents, searching for the source of the disturbance.

Before she fully decided to involve herself in the situation, about which nothing felt _right_, the lead aid organizer's voice rose above the clamor.

"David? Come help me with this, would you?"

Caught. Ziva told the onlookers to go back inside their homes as she left the anonymity of the shadows and approached the pair.

Gray ran a hand through his mess of hair. "The docs couldn't calm her down. I don't know what's wrong, either. The only thing I'm getting is—"

"I can translate," Ziva cut in, turning to the refugee. "_Ana afham al-Arabiah. A'eedi men fadleki_?"

The Syrian's eyes alighted at the prospect of being understood. It was hard to tell how old the woman was, for prolonged anxiety and fear had etched deep grooves into her face. Her features crumpled when she began speaking again, this time aiming all her rushed imploring towards the newcomer.

Gray asked, "What's she saying?"

"She says there is a family that did not make it across the border this morning."

"There are lots of those."

Ziva sent a glare flying at her superior, and it landed with the intended effect. The moment of inattention caused the Syrian to reach out and take Ziva's hands, wringing them in her own calloused grip.

"Please, you have to find them," she begged.

"The camp is full. Perhaps they went on into town—"

The woman gave a vehement dispute of her head. "_Laa_! I cannot find them. I have looked. The father was injured. They were slow, always slow in our group because of him. They had a child, very small. _Min fadhlik_…" The desperation in her eyes was her final appeal.

Ziva found herself nodding, making the most brutal of promises. The kind that offered hope.

After leading the Syrian back into the infirmary tent, she returned and quickly informed an impatient Gray of the circumstances.

"Where was it she last saw them?" he asked when she'd finished.

"Before the river." Ziva pointed west—toward the mountains. "Beyond the final ridge into the hills." One look at the determination glazing over his expression and she didn't have to guess what he was planning. She stepped closer and lowered her voice. "I know what you are thinking, but you cannot go out there, especially not alone and at night."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, you do not know the language."

Gray swore. In Arabic.

"That will not get you very far," she said tightly.

His feet paced one, two, three steps away from her. Then he swiveled around, refreshed with a new idea. "So come with me. You're fluent, right? And then there'll be two of us."

"That is not the only consideration."

More than darkness lurked over the border. Regime soldiers and militia fighters haunted the territory with rifles at their sides. They'd been known to prevent refugees fleeing the country with bullets. For her former Mossad assassin or NCIS agent personas, such a mission would be routine. But she was no longer those people, and that was how she wanted it.

She need not remind him of the stakes. He'd been there longer than her and knew the dangers of the region.

Gray slammed his hands to his hips, but they flew up again in exasperation. "Damn it, we can't just leave them out there. One's injured, there's a child, for God's sake! If you don't want to go, it's not going to stop me."

Ziva watched him stalk in the direction of the supply tent; she wished she could walk away in the other. Whether she wanted to be or not, she was involved now. She'd made a promise, and she still believed in those.

If the aid organizer went out alone, he would not make it back. Her presence was his—and the family's—best bet of being alive on Christmas morning. If they died now, after she knew of them and refused to answer their plight, their deaths would add to her lifetime tally. The blood of countless men and women already covered her hands. She worked every day to lighten the crimson shade. Reversing the process would do her efforts no favor.

Tilting her head up, Ziva appraised the starless evening sky and in response, it whispered down to her an invitation back into the dark.


	2. Mission

**A/N: **A huge bouquet of thanks to all who took the time to follow, favorite, and review! I was blown away by the comments. And to think, I held off on posting this story because I wasn't sure if anyone would agree with my vision for a post-NCIS Ziva. Guess I was wrong!

* * *

**Part 2: Mission**

It didn't take long to pack the necessary supplies for the journey. Water, food rations, and basic medical provisions went into their packs. Ziva would have traded it all for one loaded Beretta and an extra clip. Or would she? The line was blurring, the one that divided who she used to be and who she wanted to become, and she didn't know to which version of herself her thoughts belonged in this situation.

A familiar tingle erupted between her shoulder blades as they signed out a Jeep. It was a sensation she hadn't felt in months, but that had always served as a warning. It had never steered her wrong, not when it came to operations in the field. Call it experience, intuition. A gut feeling. She owed it her life on more than one occasion.

Whatever it was, she ignored it now by submitting herself into the desert of the enemy, unarmed and with unwanted company.

Gray had no idea what he was volunteering himself for, but he drove with purpose, speaking very little. Ziva glanced over and could not recall ever witnessing him so stoic, his profile a hard, jagged edge. She deftly secured her long hair back into a sloppy French braid, and matched his silence with her own.

If she had driven the vehicle, they would have made it to the Peshkhabour border point sooner than the hour it took with him at the wheel. A sliver of moon was all that illuminated the sky when they arrived and parked. Only their individual packs would join them for the remainder of the trip on foot.

They used their humanitarian credentials like corpsmen status to gain passage across the pontoon bridge. The river glinted darkly beneath the man-made structure, an unnatural joining of countries that were born to be rivals. On the other side awaited the untamed Syrian desert, and somewhere within the unforgiving terrain was a lost family.

She could almost hear the child's soft cries from where she stood at the foot of the bridge, but she told herself it was the wind.

Or else she was losing her mind.

(/)(/)(/)

"So." Gray struggled around prickly brush that a moment before his companion had maneuvered with ease. "Who were you? Before this."

What he was asking took longer than it should have to register in her mind. Few people understood the greatest contradiction of the desert, that of the arid days and comparatively frigid nights. She wore layers and gloves and boots, but the cold, coupled with the dwindling reserve of energy from her meager dinner, produced a heavy lethargy that she fought off with more effort than the natural elements in their path.

Without slowing her pace, she adjusted the straps of her pack on her thin shoulders and pretended not to have heard him. "According to the woman's directions, the location of the family is another two klicks northwest." She indicated over the next ridge to a two-story climb up the side of the steep, rocky crag.

The blond followed the point of her finger, letting his head fall back to survey the endeavor. "Oh, is that all?"

Ever since Ziva took the lead on the hike, the aid leader had resorted to the good-natured man who played games with the children in the camp on his breaks and gave nicknames that stuck.

"I suppose it's not for _you_. Isn't that right, Desert Rat? Which brings me back to that question you cleverly evaded." His labored breathing caused delays between words, like a broken signal in a radio transmission. "Hey, can we stop for a minute? Catch our breath?"

Without a verbal acquiesce, Ziva led them under an overhang in the mountain and dropped her bag at her feet. Gray collapsed onto the carcass of a fallen tree, rummaging in his own pack until he produced his already half-empty ration of water.

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" he asked after taking a hard drag on the bottle. "Following footprints. Hiking with no problem in the dark, without a compass. The same place you learned Arabic?"

Ziva leaned back against the serrated surface of the mountain wall and crossed her arms, a useless barrier to his inquisition. The situation drudged up her basic instincts of survival and tracking. There was no hiding her expertise.

His scoff tumbled into the air. "You know, you could just say the Israeli Army to shut me up."

"I did my duty," she confirmed, her throat itchy from the cold air.

"Come on," he goaded. "You've been at the camp for two months and I barely know anything about you, David, besides that you're a loner; you like being around the kids more than the adults; and you never turn down the opportunity to work a little harder than everybody else, like you've got something to prove, though what that is, I can't imagine."

Gray's pale features remained smooth and open as he revealed his heightened awareness of her. It was not altogether a surprise. She'd caught her boss staring, once or twice. Her eyes were more than acclimated to the darkness that suffocated like a noose around them, but she turned her face, purposefully avoiding his general area.

"Why do you even care?" Another trick of her trade: reversal.

Desert sounds filled the widening space that his reply was intended to fill. The water bottle crackled as he took another gulp.

"Everyone has a reason to be here," he said finally.

"Even you?"

She imagined his tall, lanky form filling business suits instead of the utilitarian desert-wear that all the volunteers lived in; she imagined him before this, and came up with nothing. It wasn't that she cared, but at least the focus was off of her.

Gray tucked a knee under him and leveraged his body to standing. "Yeah, even me."

Ziva followed his lead and pushed off the wall. Without words, they grabbed their packs and picked up the trail, with the trained tracker leading the way.

(/)(/)(/)

Of course there was a reason.

Ziva was not about to share her secrets with Gray, though, or anyone else. It was almost too much for her to think back two months, back to the end of a summer spent in the land of her birth, retracing her origins in a desert not so different from the one she traversed now.

Back to when _he _found her.

She remembered green eyes blinking over the rim of the mug, alert and attentive, just as he had been with her since arriving the prior morning. Almost to the point of driving her mad. Almost.

"You should drink your tea, before it gets cold."

Ziva glanced up at him through waves of eyelashes. "I thought I was supposed to be writing."

"That, too." The cup covered his lips from her line of sight, but she heard the hint of a smile in his voice. "You can do both."

They sat on opposite sides of the wooden table in the kitchen where she first learned to make challah bread and farfel under her mother's firm but patient tutelage. Through the window over the sink, she could see into the green streaks of orange groves where she taught Tali to turn cartwheels. If she listened closely, perhaps she could detect the faint rumblings of her father's car pulling up after "work" kept him away for only two weeks this time.

The house was imbued with countless such memories from her youth, each one a reminder of all that she had lost since growing up there: her family, purpose, pieces of her soul…

"What if I_ can't?_" The words exploded from her mouth as violently as her body from the seat. Her untouched tea cup upturned, spilling its contents over the edge of the table and onto the floor. Dragging a shaking hand through her hair, she demanded, "What if…there is no hope for me?"

Her frustration had been a sideways comment or a pitying remark away from cascading over her defenses for weeks. His presence, and the confrontation it forced with the choices she had to make, propelled her towards the edge. That he brought with him the "I Will" list that belonged to her childhood self, a token of innocent dreams, and prodded her to write an updated version was the final shove off the cliff of her self-control.

Calmly, the sandy-haired agent set down his mug and rose to his feet. "But you can and there is," he said, circling around to her side and stopping only when his proximity caused the upwards tilt of her chin. His lips, not the words they were speaking, were all she wanted to comfort her, as though their weight would secure her to the earth and prove she wasn't forsaken, untethered and adrift.

But what she longed for would come later, when she sent him home without her. It would be a kiss goodbye.

Instead, she looked into the watery gaze he angled down at her and felt his strong hands steady her by the waist and watched the lips she desired struggle to form a sideways smile for her benefit.

"I know it's not easy, but if anyone can do it…" With a subtle nod, he gestured behind them to the trail of pain and loss and sacrifice that led up to them standing together in her childhood home. "Wipe the slate clean, make things right, start over…it's you, Ziva."

He would hate to know that it was his balm to her fears which gave her the strength to make the hardest decision of her life. The decision to walk away. From her job and the woman she had become. To walk away from him.

And yet, in that small moment, it was because he was there—not leaving but coming closer when she was at her most vulnerable—that she sat back down at her family table, breathed in and out, and wrote the final goal on her new list.

_I will…find peace_.

(/)(/)(/)

"Shh!"

Wrenched out of her memories, Ziva came to such an abrupt stop on the trail that the hand she threw up behind her had no chance of preventing her companion, only a few steps in her wake, from colliding with the outstretched limb.

"What are—_ow_!"

A glance over her shoulder brought Gray into view as he stumbled backwards, arms flailing and the beam of the flashlight he clutched in one hand shining in her eyes. Once he'd caught his footing, he massaged the assaulted spot on his chest pitifully.

The former assassin rolled her eyes. She'd made less of gunshot wounds.

"I didn't see you—"

"Shh!" she hissed at him again and continued in a whisper. "Do you hear that?"

Since their brief break at the foot of the mountain, they'd hiked on for no more than a half hour. The higher they climbed, the colder the temperature of the air stealing into their lungs and down into their boots. The Aussie lagged behind her, his breath and his footsteps labored. Luckily they were close, Ziva estimated, to where the Syrian woman said she'd last seen the family that morning.

Indulging her, Gray turned an ear out and listened. "I guess you really do have great hearing," he declared after a pause. "I'm not picking up a thing."

Then a wail slithered over the rocks and wrapped around the desert brush. It was the same mournful sound that Ziva had detected thirty-seconds earlier.

Gray stepped up beside her. "Now _that_, I heard."

They didn't go cautiously. With Ziva still out in front, they moved faster than they had all night, crossing the next five yards that deposited them into a hidden clearing around the side of the cliff; further on was sudden, total darkness that promised an overhang and a steep fall beyond.

Another cry went up. It was more of a whimper at their shortened distance, and Ziva felt as if it reverberated in her chest. She motioned to their left. The stream of Gray's flashlight scanned the ground where she indicated.

The ray of light found a foot.

A foot attached to a limp leg and that to a limp body of a young Arab man slumped against a slab of rock on the outskirts of the clearing. Dead.

They were too late.

As the beam traveled up and up his torso, the source of the cries was revealed. Averting her gaze from the flashlight's sudden attack, a small child made herself even smaller by curling into the chest of the bloody corpse that was presumably her father. Her face came back into view, staring out at the strangers with unparalleled terror.

The scene was uncanny. So similar was it to the arrangement of Ziva's own father's death that it was though she was reliving the horror, this time watching herself from the inside out. The shivers that literally shook her body didn't stop her from getting closer. She held her hands up, showing no harm as she approached. Three long strides and she sank to the ground on her knees in front of the pair.

From somewhere behind her, Gray asked in a shaky voice, "Where's the mother?"

She didn't know. Her entire focus was on the frightened little Syrian girl who was whimpering again. Tear tracks stood defined in the thick layers of dirt on her cheeks. Tufts of stringy hair wired away from her flaked scalp. She was barefoot and scantily clothed, and shivering—whether more from chill or fear, it was hard to tell.

"_As-salam alaykum,_" Ziva greeted. "_Hal anta bikhair_?"

The only response she received was the widening of round eyes and cold-bitten lips pursing tighter. The waif shrank back, curling tiny hands deeper into her father's shirt; her dirty knuckles pressed against the fabric soaked dark in blood. _Contaminating evidence_, she thought, the term springing up from another life. The blotches on his clothes were still wet and sticky. Certainly not from a previous injury. Looking closer, the former crime scene investigator noted the perfect circular tears down the front of his shirt. Bullet holes.

Warning bells sounded in her mind, but she was rustier than Gray would have believed. It took her a second too long to put the pieces of an ambush together. By then, the shouting had started.

"_Wa-fik_! _Wa-fik_! _Khaleek fee makanak_!"

Out of the darkness around them sprung mysterious figures, faceless and indistinguishable from the swarthy cloak all deserts wore at night. Militia fighters were her educated guess, for they were notorious for ensnaring travelers and using them as examples of what happened to those who went against the regime.

Gray's flashlight briefly illuminated the surprise company—fatigues, boots, gleaming rifles—before one of the men kicked the item out of his hand. The clearing dropped into shadows.

"Whoa there, mates, we're aid workers," he said calmly, raising his arms in surrender. "We're not here to—" The landing of a fist to his face cut off the well-intended but worthless peacekeeping strategies.

Ziva could not help him. Just as the commotion began, she reached for the child who refused to let go of her father.

"_Baba_!" she cried again and again.

Her shrill shrieks of protest were in direct proportion to the forcefulness of Ziva's tugs on her skinny waist. A body dropped with a_ thud _beside her, and the jostle was enough to tear the thrashing girl free into her waiting arms.

"I guess they don't want to be mates," Gray muttered, and then spat blood onto the ground.

Stomping feet announced the arrival of a soldier above them. "_Ekhrass_! _Ekhrass_!" But his shouting demands of _shut up_ only made the girl shriek louder. "_Wakif willa batokh_!" The unmistakable cock of an AK-47 barrel left no doubt as to the seriousness of his threat to shoot.

When her whispered pleads for quiet proved ineffective, Ziva resorted to muffling the offending cries with a hand over the child's mouth. She rubbed a soothing hand along her arm, trying to minimize her panic.

A wave of the rifle accompanied the lead rebel's next set of commands. "_Imbatal ala butnak. Imbatal ala butnak, __besora'a_!"

"They want us to get on the ground." Ziva translated the instruction to Gray while maneuvering her charge, finally quiet, into his arms and pushing them onto their stomachs. She needed them to play along.

The Israeli remained on her knees, defiant. Natural adjustments were taking place all over her body, positioning her frame into an alignment as instinctive for her as breathing. Straightening her spine, she allowed her hands to fall loosely at her sides. She never took her eyes off the enemy.

His face was vague, melding with the night, but sparks in the darkness warmed his sharp, bearded jaw line, and a smoky stench soon followed. He would extinguish her life before his cigarette.

"_Imbatal ala butnak_," he barked again, growing anxious when confronted with her silent refusal.

Ziva searched for his eyes and found sideways slits, narrowed and wild. Only a few months earlier, she and this man would have been a mirrored reflection of souls. She knew of blind conviction. Its total consumption, its blackness. Hers was born of revenge; his, of ideology and opportunity. What set them apart was that she saw clearly now, and refused to blink.

Taking a menacing step forward, the soldier shoved the rifle up against her forehead. "_Besora'a_!"

"Da-_veed_," Gray hissed.

The little girl moaned a solitary sob.

The cool metal of the gun, indistinct from her frozen skin, only served to hasten the awakening within her, calling to the surface a strength that was a constant companion for over half her life. She'd sent it away in the summer. But it returned to her now as the rebel's finger wound around the trigger…and tightened.


	3. Fallout

**Part 3: Fallout**

When Ziva envisioned her journey of repentance, there were no armed Syrian vigilantes to speak of, let alone three of them, each one a shade darker of disgruntled; each one ready to shoot her and those she was responsible for dead in the middle of the desert.

There had been enough death already that night, and every night before it, stretching back years…centuries. And she wasn't about to let them get away with more.

Through the darkness, she calculated the other soldiers to be no more than two body lengths away. That gave her mere seconds to deal with the leader, who menaced over her, the tip of his gun burrowing between her eyes. She needed to be quick. Ruthless.

Ziva drew a breath, and then released.

From her knees, she rolled back and kicked out one leg, the stiff rubber heel of her boot connecting with the leader's knee, thrusting the knob past its natural point of resistance until sickening crunches of bone and ligament were heard. Before the man had emitted a cry of agony, she kicked the rifle out of his hands. It hit the ground to her left, sending the bullets meant for her dispensing in violent bursts of light into the wilderness.

The leader crumbled, screaming out and writhing on the ground. Behind him, his companions stood frozen to their spots, shocked by the sudden reversal of power. They'd underestimated their intimidation over the slight woman. It would be to their demise.

By the time the two rebels thawed, she was on her feet. One chose to raise his weapon and fire; the other lunged forward, the bayonet on his rifle leading the way. Neither option was effective.

Ziva produced a serrated knife from her boot. A finessed flick of her wrist sent the slim blade end over end, the sharp point embedding in the thigh of the distant militant. As the rebel fell backwards, the bullets from his gun flew wide and harmless into the empty air over her head until the clip emptied. His shouts of Arabic expletives joined the angry screams of his already fallen comrade.

She spared no moment of victory in his defeat, for the last of the threat was thrashing towards her, sustaining a guttural yell as he charged. The outside of her forearm met the dull side of the bayonet, deflecting it with ease. The heel of her hand took aim at the underside of his chin and shoved upwards just as she tangled one leg between his and tugged.

They fell to the hard earth, her on top on him. Her knee dived into his gut, earning a strangled whine from the solider. Discomfort didn't prevent him from putting up a struggle for the weapon she attempted to relinquish from his hands. She caught sight of the madness in his eyes as she pushed down further into his side, drawing out enough of his strength to maneuver the butt of his own gun down against his temple. His head lolled to the side.

It wasn't over yet.

Breaths coming short and shallow, Ziva popped up onto her feet, tossing strays from the weave of her braid out of her eyes. She slung the gun strap over her head, the bayonet grazing sand as determined strides brought her back to the solider with a knife in his thigh.

"For making my friend bleed," she told him, and then unceremoniously leveled a punch to his jaw, knocking him out.

With a yank, she reclaimed her knife, wiping his blood from the blade on his fatigues before returning it to her boot._ Never go anywhere without a knife_. It was right to have allowed Gibbs' adage to guide her hand when they were filling their packs from the supply tent. She wouldn't even charge herself for the forbidden memory.

A few steps further and she came upon the leader once again. Panting, clutching his mangled knee that now stuck out at an unnatural angle, he grimaced up at her with nothing but hatred for his would-be captive. A slur gurgled past his lips.

Swiftly, she dropped down into a crouch over him, fingers twisting into his collar and jerking him up—ignoring his ugly shouts of pain—until they were face-to-face. Shock widened his dark pupils.

"_Ekhrass_," she seethed his own words back at him. He, too, received a blow that delivered unconsciousness.

Discarding him, Ziva rose to her feet and surveyed the clearing, still as a frozen lake. One dead body made it a crime scene, but there would be no processing, no photographs. There was no reason. The murderers were already known—and dealt with.

Movement out of the corner of her eye spurred her around. Her hand flew to the gun at her side, but stilled when brown eyes settled on her travel companion.

Gray stood where it all began, where the regime-loyalists cornered them with threats and hot metal for no motive other than opportunity. In his arms was the small girl, the reason they risked everything that night. Her limbs were limp and her head heavy on his shoulder—a blessed oblivion sparing her from witnessing more violence—but she was nevertheless alive.

There was no doubt in Ziva's mind that all three rebels deserved to die, if only for killing one child's father, not even taking into account the many others they'd unquestionably slaughtered for their cause as well. It was not her place, though, to decide on and execute a punishment for this crime or any other. Revenge came in one life living on and thriving. That was what mattered.

But it was not the only thing that mattered to Gray.

His split, bloody mouth parted to release a disbelieving whisper of a question. A question she could not answer.

"Who the _hell_ are you?"

(/)(/)(/)

They were twenty minutes out of the clearing and back towards civilization, daylight still a distant realization in the sky overhead, when the child climbed out of the deep stupor and immediately into a panic.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," Gray soothed, setting her down on her bare, filthy feet. At full height, the top of her head failed to come level with his belt buckle. "We're not gonna hurt you, sweetheart." His efforts were to no avail. Fright had too tight a hold on her.

Coming up behind them, Ziva tossed down their packs. "She doesn't understand you," she told him, lowering to the girl's level and flying into a string of reassurances in her native tongue.

Like the hysterical Syrian woman back at camp, it was difficult to pinpoint her age. War had stolen the glow of innocence from her rounded cheeks. Where one usually found sprit and joy in a child was instead the tight pinch of anxiety that, from experience, Ziva knew came from growing up in a nation of conflict. Always expecting more destruction, another brutal surprise. Who knew how many nightmares she had already endured in her country? Regardless of her years, she was far too young to have any such suffering written into her history.

Ziva calmed her with kind words. She stroked the brittle stings that constituted her hair, dried dirt and thin strands coming away in her palm. When the shuddering sobs ebbed and only intermittent bouts of sniffles remained, she asked, "_Hal anta bikhair_?"

The question alighted nothing in her dark eyes, but her cracked tongue darted out from between chapped lips, skimming the flakes of dry skin.

"Now that's probably part of the problem." Gray crouched down beside them. "A parched tongue speaks to no one." He had barely twisted off the cap of his canteen before the girl attached herself to the opening, sucking at it until he tipped it up and the water flowed, filling her mouth faster than her quick swallows could manage; the excess dribbled down her chin and neck.

With her thumb, Ziva wiped the excess droplets from her rough skin. The drink, albeit tepid, did indeed loosen her tongue. Her first intelligible utterance was a plea for her father and mother, and for whatever reason, the basic request caused the former agent to falter. To how many people had she broken the news of a loved one's murder in all her years as an NCIS investigator? Yet she found it impossible to do so with this newly orphaned child.

Gray looked to his translator. "What does she want?"

"Her parents," Ziva replied, meeting his somber gaze with her own.

They'd eventually found the mother. Hidden under prickly brush a few meters away from the clearing. Beaten. Bloody. Exposed. The three rebels obviously had their fun and then discarded her like a child's unwanted doll. Death was the kindest act they'd bestowed on her that night.

Using the excuse of checking on the unconscious child, Ziva escaped behind the rocks and with nothing in her stomach, dry-heaved bile. She was too dehydrated to cry. Her body revolted until she could force the visceral memories of her own desert horrors back into submission.

"There has to be a way," she fumed after regaining her composure and returning to the clearing. Her feet paced back and forth, restless. "We cannot leave them out here. They are all she has!"

Gray's broad hands reached for the knobs of her shoulders, but she bristled away. His pale eyes sought her out, but instead she looked at his bottom lip that was swollen and cut, and at the purple and black lump on his left temple. If those were his souvenirs from the evening, she didn't want to imagine what she had to show for the ordeal.

"Hey, would you just look at me!" His raised voice snapped her to attention. "We can't carry them both back with us. It's not possible. And we have to think of the girl." Sighing and scrubbing a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, he added, "_We_ are all she has now."

It was rational and the truth. It was the best they could do; they, who had already done so much for the dead.

That did not make her task now any less insurmountable. With the deceased pair's daughter standing before her, Ziva could not admit that they'd laid her parents side by side in underbrush, protected from the elements with a blanket of branches and twigs, respectfully concealed until other arrangements could be made to retrieve their bodies for proper burial. The words were in a language of desolation that she wouldn't understand any more than if they were in English.

Instead, the tired woman pieced together fragments of a smile, took her tiny hands in her own, and introduced herself.

"_Ismee_ Ziva. _Esmek eh_?"

The girl hiccupped, eyes still wide and wandering, and answered in a quiet voice, "Sana."

Ziva ran her thumb in a soothing motion over the back of her knuckles. "You, Sana," she promised, "are safe now."

* * *

**A/N: **Hey, amazing readers! Your reviews for this story so far have been wonderful and so motivating! I've had approximately zero time to write recently (kiddos don't teach themselves!). I hope this update, albeit short, was satisfying. Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!


	4. Gifts

**A/N: **So much thanks for all the love on the last chapter! I thoroughly enjoy reading your hopes and speculations for the story. I know it's hard to be patient where Tiva is concerned, but it's all coming in good time. (With that said, hopefully this update will be a sustaining morsel.) As I said at the start, this is first and foremost a Ziva story. We still have a lot of her journey to go.

* * *

**Part 4: Gifts**

Once or twice since his flight out of Israeli, Tony sensed it. A sensation that tensed the muscles in his neck, culled worry in his stomach, sent shivers running sprints up and down his arms…and at the same time, was completely reassuring and welcome. The unexpected feeling never failed to preoccupy him from daily life, and when one struck early on Christmas morning at the office—a case keeping the team from taking the holiday off—there was no exception.

The cursor blinked on the computer screen, waiting for his next insertion on the BOLO report, but it never came. Tony pushed back from his desk and froze like a statue with his chin tipped into the air. Slowly, his gaze shifted onto his colleague.

McGee was ready and waiting. "Listening for the voices only you can hear again, Tony?"

"You're just jealous you can't hear what they're saying about you, McUnbeliever," the senior field agent retorted, ignoring his teammate's scoff and feigning a return to work.

Tony hadn't told anyone about what he had dubbed "vibes," partly because he was certain they had everything to do with _her_. After an extended sabbatical and eventual departure from the team and their lives that autumn, his partner became the perpetual elephant in the squad room. McGee, Gibbs…they didn't talk about her anymore.

They never said her name.

Admittedly, it was a heavy cost. But he paid it gladly: Ziva, Ziva, _Ziva_.

She hadn't died, like Kate. Yet everyone pretended a member of their NCIS family who they'd known for eight years had never existed. Maybe it was because they hadn't done as much to find her as Tony had. Not only had he traveled the globe for four months and called in every favor to track down a woman who was trained to disappear, he also went into the desert after her for a second time (and he was no fan of sand). It didn't matter to him why his teammates chose to reject her memory. Diced any which way, it wasn't normal. And it was really starting to get to him…

Then again, nothing was normal anymore. Not since he found her and, upon her request, let her go again. There was no one to share a slice of pizza, or snark with about the antics of dumb suspects from behind the observation room glass. No more "DiNozzo, take David." Losing the everyday stuff served as the greatest reminder of her absence. Even now, with the spot filled behind her desk by Bishop, the harmony their team once had was gone, stolen away. She'd taken it with her.

It didn't help that he hadn't heard from her in two months, despite his efforts. His emails bounced back, undeliverable. None of her cell numbers were active. He sent messages to her contacts, and their replies were all the same: no sightings, no communication. She was physically, technologically, globally absent.

The vibes were as close as he got. Who knows why they came when they did, or why. He wasn't complaining. They were a gift, better than any present he'd received under a Christmas tree in his 40-something years. Each one was a small dose of nostalgia that brought her back to him, if only in spirit, letting him know she was still out there. Caught up in her private war, the one she'd ignited for herself and fought alone.

Tony stared off, his focus misting somewhere along the string of white lights wrapped around the office's faux pine, twinkling regardless of the winter sun streaming in through the windows. He could only hope she was winning her battles. The sooner she confronted and silenced the voices of guilt and regret that only she could hear, the sooner she could come home.

To him.

(/)(/)(/)

With her chin propped in the cup of her palm, Ziva dozed, her feet crossed neatly under the metal fold-out chair. It was a fitful rest, neither satisfying nor deep. The syllables of her name had no trouble reaching down through the surface of slumber to retrieve her. Her eyelids flicked back, but her vision clung stubbornly to its blurriness. Familiar features emerged in the haze: a strong jaw, mouth suspended in a crooked smile, and pale eyes that she swore resembled—

"Tony?"

"Um, no. It's me, Gray."

A few blinks brought the world into clarity once again, confirming that it was indeed her superior who stood peering down at her concernedly, not her partner who was thousands of miles away.

"You should go catch some real zzz's while you can," he advised.

Ziva sat up straighter, bristling off the vestiges of sleep. "All I needed was a bat nap."

"I'm going to assume you mean 'cat nap.' So who's this Tony, if I may ask?"

"No, you may not," she countered, raking long fingers into her frizzed curls and pulling them away from her face.

"Well, he must be pretty special if he's in your dreams." His wink went unappreciated by its recipient.

There was no denying the circumstances of the past 12 hours had worn down her defenses, allowing first the traitorous memory from their time together in Israel, and now pure hallucination and his name tumbling without consequence from her lips to break her rules. It was unacceptable. Her thoughts were better served on the people in her present life. Not the past.

Peeking around him, Ziva tracked the cot with mussed white sheets—and no little girl. She launched to her feet, scanning the infirmary that, in essence, was a long rectangle the size of three regular-sized tents put together. It boasted the most sanitary conditions and updated equipment found anywhere in Domiz, but it was practically prehistoric in comparison to her former doctor's office in D.C.

"Where is Sana? Where did they take her?"

Gray intercepted her with a swift sidestep. "Calm down. They just took her in the back to get cleaned up. Probably be the first proper bath she's had in weeks, if not months." Somehow, he'd found time to clean up and change clothes himself.

Ziva had been with Sana through all her examinations and was still wearing the stained and dusty cargo pants, black t-shirt, and boots that saw her through the night. The palm-sized area around the crude sutures holding together the split halves of skin below her right eye was the only recently washed patch of her body.

"Here." The Aussie pushed a Styrofoam cup into her hand and claimed the fold-out chair beside hers, sipping from his own drink. "I figured if there was ever a time to fall off my no-caffeine wagon, now would be it."

Hiking back into Iraq was far from the end of their mission. They arrived at the border point along with the first wave of refugees for the morning. The sky bloomed in variegated shades of lavender as they staggered across the pontoon bridge; they were salmon flowing with the tide. Their legs and feet burned with exhaustion accumulated over the miles of desert they covered during the night. The sights and smells of death had steeled their stomachs to the notion of consuming anything but water. They were surviving on dwindling adrenaline alone.

Even without her parents, Sana was nevertheless a refugee and thus had to go undergo the same process of registration as all the other refugees, which equated to waiting in line for three hours at the check-point center in the daytime heat. Though Ziva tried convincing him to return to camp ahead of them, Gray stayed. They'd become an inseparable packaged deal, bound by shared violence and tragedy. To pass the time, Ziva sat Sana on her lap and fed her with the food rations from her pack; she let the girl play with the two black hair bands around her wrist for entertainment and doze on her chest when fatigue tugged down her eyelids.

After completing the necessary paperwork and driving back to camp in the stuffy Jeep, the next step was medical attention for all three. Luckily none of them had sustained more than flesh wounds. Now, it was late in the afternoon, only a few hours away from a full day since the whole ordeal began.

Ziva inspected the contents of the cup he'd brought her—coffee, black, just the way Gibbs liked it—and promptly set it on the tarp-covered ground beneath her chair. Her tab was adding up rapidly for the day. She would need an especially hard task to pay it down.

With his gaze directed on the other patients in the ward, the ones with missing appendages from bombings or sick with viruses born of contaminated water, Gray broke the silence between them. If he'd been watching her, he would have seen her face darken as he spoke.

"I talked to MaryAnn in the orphan tent. She can have a cot ready for Sana tonight. The doc said she's cleared to leave once they get some more fluids in her—she was pretty dehydrated and there are signs of malnutrition, naturally. They're also trying to find clothes for her to—"

"No," Ziva interrupted.

Surprise crinkled his nose, as if he had encountered a sour stench. "Well, she has to go somewhere."

"She has also just lost her parents," the brunette argued. "Now you want to send her to that overcrowded, unclean _hell_—"

"We're doing the best we can."

"—where they barely spare a look for each child?" Ziva gave a fervent shake of her head. "I will not allow that for her."

"Hate to break it to you, luv, but that's not up to you," Gray replied with a laugh lacking humor.

She cast a desperate gaze over the empty cot. Even if she tried, it would be impossible to describe how close she felt to Sana, never mind not yet spending a full day in her company. It was unexplainable and yet one of the most natural impulses she'd ever experienced, filling her veins with a potent shot of silvery protectiveness. She could not let Sana go. Not now.

"I will do it." The words were out of her mouth before she proofread them internally. Her heart spoke on her behalf. "I will care for her."

Gray slumped back in his seat, crushing the drained Styrofoam cup in his fist. "First you go all SASR soldier out there on those guys and now—" He cut himself off, sighing audibly and running a hand through his tawny hair.

Ziva wondered when it would come up again. From the moment her boss all but ordered her to join him on the doomed mission, she knew her carefully curtailed personae in the camp was in jeopardy. Her actions against the regime fighters were self-defensive and defensible: though it was well within her ability, she did not end the lives of the armed men, merely disabled them from combat. Banishing the killer within her was not an idle choice.

She owed Gray nothing, certainly not an explanation. If anything, he owed her.

Stubbornly, Ziva resorted to her covert training and remained silent, folding her arms high over her concave stomach, unwilling to give him what he sought. She didn't have to wait long.

"Given your track record with opening up, you're probably not gonna tell me where all that came from, and that's fine. But I heard what you told that one guy. You called me your friend. I think we're mates, too, especially now." His smile was there and gone in a flash, like a decision immediately regretted. "And I know I did a lot to get you out there, to put us in harm's way…"

"I did not go because of you."

"No," Gray agreed. "You went for _her_."

The nod of his head guided her eyes onto the far end of the tent, out of which two infirmary workers emerged with a child she nearly didn't recognize. Her short locks, patchy and shorn close to her scalp at some points, were cleaned of dirt to reveal the color of wheat right before the harvest. Though her skin still bore the cuts and sores afflicted by the wilderness, it was washed of its grime, revealing a milk-in-coffee hue. She wore borrowed clothes that were rolled at the cuffs to fit. It was a new Sana.

"I never did get a chance to thank you." Calloused fingertips grazed her forearm, a gesture to garner her attention. "For saving me…all of us."

Deftly, Ziva maneuvered out from under the weight of his wispy touch to her feet. She glanced back down at his boyish features, more familiar to her now after their mutual life-and-death experience in the wild. Friends or not, her secrets—and one in particular—were no longer hers alone.

"Do not mention it," she replied. And meant it. She could only hope that the isolated incident would gradually disappear beneath the waves of time and sand out in the desert, under the clear, starless sky.

"Zee-va?"

Sana walked beside a volunteer back to her cot, and by the time she'd climbed into bed, Ziva had taken a seat facing her on the mattress. The new friends conversed with their smiles, but before either could speak a word, a shadow fell over them.

Gray made a googly face and waved at Sana, eliciting a timid laugh from the girl. To Ziva, he said, "I'll see what I can do, okay? No promises."

"Thank you."

He was halfway to the exit of the tent when he called over his shoulder. "Oh, and happy Christmas, you two."

Ziva reaffixed her gaze on her little companion, whose bright eyes were waiting for her, and she couldn't think of any greater gift to have received on that, or any other, day.


	5. Demons

**Part 5: Demons**

The Dohuk region, with Domiz on its northern outskirts, was in the firm grip of blustery winds and chilled rain showers when Sana was struck with her first panic attack. The first of many to come after the rescue, each one brought on unexpectedly and by the smallest of triggers. A word, a color, a smell. Hours of crying and clinging to Ziva followed.

The nightmares were worse.

The first time her screams pierced the filmy canvas of their tent, the former assassin bolted upright out of a sound sleep and into fighting stance, ready and willing to confront whatever or whoever dared cause her harm, just as she had done with the rebels in the hills. The threat, however, was unreachable by fists; there was no way for Ziva to fight off the demons in the child's dreams.

The crying, the night terrors…it was proof that baths and medical attention could erase the visible marks of Sana's brutal journey, but there was still damage left unattended beneath her bronzed skin. If anyone knew of hidden scars, it was the woman who survived a summer of captivity in a Somali terrorist camp; the girl who was raised by her father to be a ruthless, soulless killer; the infant who never had a choice.

She was well-acquainted with the grotesque images that frequented her own nightmares—years, even decades, after the initial trauma. Did Sana relive her father's death when she closed her eyes, as Ziva did Eli's final moments? Did her mother's rape and murder occupy the lucid visions? Regardless of their disturbing content, the terrible dreams persisted night after night without fail.

Her personal experience with the horrors of war and violence helped her relate to Sana's crisis, but it did not equip her to deal with it. As her frightened yells joined the nightly chorus of torment raised by the choir of haunted victims residing in the camp, Ziva grew more and more desperate—and exhausted.

"You look like death warmed up too long in the microwave," Gray observed over breakfast in the worker's tent after an especially tough string of nightmares.

Ziva grimaced at him and tried not to let her mind contemplate the morbid curiosity Ducky and Palmer would have at a murder victim in such condition. She settled Sana in next to her with a bowl of diluted oatmeal, which was one of the better options out of the limited selection. She pushed her portion aside; nothing held appeal to her fatigued, out-of-sorts body.

"We are fine," she replied defensively.

It was no secret the troubles Sana was having. Just as it was no secret that the Arab mothers in the camp wanted their loud whispers of disapproval of a Jew raising one of their own—and doing a poor job, besides—to be heard. Further, Ziva had only just successfully forced Gray to make her Sana's unofficial guardian, giving her license to care and provide for her while the girl retained her orphan status. The last thing she wanted was to showcase her struggles rearing the child three weeks into the arrangement.

No evidence of judgment colored Gray's expression. The veteran relief worker nodded knowingly, gnawing at the almost healed nick in his bottom lip. "Even so, there's a woman, a psychologist I think, who comes around with the Red Cross-Red Crescent folks. Specializes in this sort of stuff. I think they're due to come in next week and—"

Her hand sliced the air, cutting him off. "She does not need that sort of…_help_." Disgust oozed from the last word. She was not _that_ desperate. Ziva thought of her mandatory sessions with Dr. Rachel Cranston years earlier and what little good they did for her, in the end. Why would this be any different?

Gray lifted his hands in surrender. "Don't say I didn't try."

She fully intended to follow through with her assertion. After breakfast, the pair went about a typical day, with Sana acting as Ziva's shadow as the latter continued her duties. During water rounds, the little girl enjoyed seeing all the children on the route with whom she'd made friends, including Imani and Abdo. She shined around them with fast chatter and happy smiles. Daylight effectively staved off the storms, underscoring a mischievous streak that belied her shy demeanor. It served her well in games of tag and hide-and-seek.

Then night came, and nothing protected her from the vicious tempest. Sana woke up screaming violently within an hour of falling asleep that night, per usual. Only this time, before Ziva could pin down her thrashing limbs, her short nails found a way to gash into the soft flesh of her own cheek. Still she didn't wake, even with blood flowing like the stroke of a paintbrush down her jaw line and under her pointy chin, dripping crimson onto her pillow.

Two days later, when the Red Cross visited Domiz to administer shots and deliver much-needed medical supplies, a tent was especially allocated for the doctor Gray had mentioned. Ziva made sure Sana was with a group of other refugee children inside.

Dr. Verma wore khakis and a red polo shirt under her coat; white strands of hair wove into the dark bun atop her head, lending her a grandmotherly gentleness that her warm presence with the children confirmed. She met with all who were there, yet came back around to Sana.

Ziva stood far enough away not to interfere, but close enough not to miss a frame. Though she attempted to remain unconvinced, she could not invalidate the response the doctor's careful questioning and play therapy elicited from her charge, who was busy filling sheet after sheet with Crayon splashes of orange and midnight blue.

Dr. Verma caught her eye. "You can join us, Mum."

"I am not her mother," Ziva corrected automatically. Semantics didn't prevent her from literally diving at the offer to join them on the tarp. It gave her a chance to fill the medical professional in on Sana's recent behavior.

The psychologist nodded along, not in the least shocked by the details, but not unsympathetic, either. "Exposure to long-term violence on children in war zones, such as what Sana has experienced, can inflict very serious psychological harm." The halting lilts of her cadence hinted at origins in the West Bengal region, but her accent was weak. It had been years since she lived in India. Ziva could relate to the changes that occurred during an extended absence from one's homeland.

"When untreated," she continued, "trauma manifests in outward expressions, including the nightmares and panic attacks you mentioned, among other reactions, and they can last—"

"A lifetime," Ziva finished. There was one thing she wanted most to know, if there was even an answer to it in existence. "What I can do to help her?"

"Make her feel safe," the doctor replied without hesitation. "She lost what she trusted to be sacred, untouchable. Now she must feel protected and secure again. This is all to say, of course, she needs someone to love her."

Ziva absorbed the information silently, reaching out to brush strands of hair out of Sana's eyes as she added short strokes to the indistinct blotch of vibrant hues on her paper.

Dr. Verma tilted the page under Sana's attention for a better look. In stilted Arabic, she prompted the artist, "Tell me what you drew, Sana."

With her pointed index finger, the little girl first scratched at the band-aid on her cheek that covered up her self-inflicted wound, and then held it up in the air. Pursed lips produced a high-pitched, eerie whistle as her finger fell rapidly to the center of the drawing in a perfect imitation of a shell dropping from the sky and exploding onto the paper. Dr. Verma made no comment on the depiction except to replace the colored sheet with a fresh one for Sana to start on.

"You cannot imagine what they have seen," she remarked.

Unfortunately, Ziva could. But it wasn't until the next night, as she rocked Sana in her arms, soothing her back to sleep after she woke them both with shrieks of terror from the unknown visions in her dreams, that it occurred to her what needed to be done. And she knew where—or rather, with whom—to begin.

(/)(/)(/)

With hands propped on her shapeless hips, Janan stood in the gaping mouth of the tent she shared with two other women who crossed the border from her village in the Northern Province of Syria. From within the swirl of her azure _hijab_ was a tanned, wrinkled face; the skin at the corners of her kohl eyes bunched like folds of fabric when she smiled at the pair approaching for an early morning visit.

Sana wiggled her fingers free of her guardian's fierce grip and gamboled ahead into the waiting arms of one of the few adults aside from Ziva and Gray that she trusted in the camp.

"_Salam_, _noor khalbi,_" Janan cooed, hugging to her thick legs the child her persistence on a cold night two months earlier helped to save.

Ziva slowed to a halt, watching the endearing exchange and smiling to herself. If only this was purely a social call.

Once they were all inside the canvas dwelling, escaping a rare gloomy sky overhead, Janan clucked and fussed over Sana's new attire of jeans, sneakers, and a faded burgundy jacket that was a size too big—all donations from the latest delivery by the relief organization. Her hair was growing in as well, the tuffs now hanging long enough to cover the tips of her elf ears. Each day, she shed more of her past. At least on the surface.

"I have questions," Ziva broached in Arabic after the customary pleasantries, "about Sana and her family that I believe you can answer for me." Given the unusual history between the two refugees, she had nothing to lose by inquiring what the woman knew of Sana's life before she came into hers.

Janan exhaled an exaggerated sigh; the warm, tumbled breath was laced with reluctance. She took her time guiding Sana to sit beside her on the rug, busing her to play with the tarnished rings on her thick fingers before meeting Ziva's eager gaze again, this time with cautious eyes.

"What is it you want to know? I will first tell you it is no good making a mess of what is already done."

The Israeli had encountered many worthy adversaries in the art of cross-examination, but they were all amateurs compared with the intuitive sparing of this grandmother. Janan had taken a shine to Sana after the rescue, and her protectiveness of the orphan was rivaled only by the defensive shield Ziva maintained around her at all times. But the younger woman was determined in her pursuit. It was true she had plans. She just needed something, anything, to start her off in the proper direction.

Ziva let her hands fall open in a gesture of entreat. "I mean only to help Sana. I know you care for her, too. You are like a _jada_ to her."

A blush stole into the rough splotches of Janan's cheeks at the flattery. "That makes you _om_," she countered slyly, and tapped on Sana's shoulder to garner her attention. "Is that _om_, hm?"

Sana followed the point of her finger to her caregiver's hesitant expression. Confusion took up residence on her olive-shaped face, but moved out before the lease was up. In her sweet accent, she factually told Janan, "That is Zee-va."

The woman she referred to reached out a slender finger and tapped her tiny nose, serving as a playful diversion that sent the girl into giggles. "See? I am just Ziva, not her mother," she told Janan in a whisper. "Do not confuse her."

Though most days it was all too easy to pretend that to be the truth, she did what she could to divert the spotlight from the perpetually gray area. Difficult enough were the times when Sana did inquire about her parents, or woke up begging for them, inconsolable when confronted with the reality of their absence, as if experiencing the loss anew. There was no doubt she'd warmed swiftly and with great intensity to Ziva, but even her dedicated guardian could neither fill those gaping holes, nor find the words to explain their abrupt disappearance from the little girl's life.

Which was why she was there and not backing down.

Janan pressed her lips into a thin line, holding her thoughts in for a moment of contemplation. She finger-combed the downy curls at the nape of Sana's neck. The next words she spoke were in a rush, as if she despised them spending any amount of time on her tongue.

"I believe the family was from a small village outside Al-Malikiyah, very close to my own home. Their name, I think, was Ganim." Her body shuddered, physically taxed from the exertion of revealing the scraps of information. Waving a dismissive hand, she added hastily, "But that is all I know. Do not make me regret sharing it with you."

"I would not dream of it. _Shukran_," Ziva intoned with a gentle smile, even while she knew no expression of gratitude would ever be sufficient in thanking the Syrian for all she had done and continued to do for one little girl.

For it might have only been two details, but it was more than enough to begin the search for Sana's relatives.

* * *

**A/N: ** I'm glad there are a faithful few who are enjoying this story so much (even if it's coming to you in such small doses for now). You make it worth the minutes I carve out here and there, whenever I can, to write. I hope you enjoyed this part—it's setting things in motion, so to speak. Thanks for sticking with me.


	6. Search

**A/N: **Much gratitude, as always, for your words of feedback! I have this whole story planned out, but it's interesting to hear where _you_, the readers, see it going. Just know nothing is random. Anyway, enjoy this update! I have a feeling you'll all have some…_speculations_ to share with me by the end. ;)

* * *

**Part 6: Search**

The search began with a desire to help Sana through her trauma, just as Dr. Verma had suggested. What could be of greater comfort, Ziva reasoned, than the familial connection of blood? It had rarely been the case for herself, but she longed to believe it could be true for others. Especially for someone who deserved it as much as the innocent child.

During orientation for Domiz, her group was told that refugee records for all the camps in Iraq were kept on a database, accessible by computer in the check-point centers. It was an off-hand comment then, but served as invaluable intel for her now. The first step to accessing those records was switching her schedule. Luckily, receiving and placement was an often unwanted job by the other aid workers due to the border point's distance from camp. At dinnertime in the worker's tent, she offered up her rotation in the food depository for trade, and within seconds, she was in.

The check-point was the third-world equivalent of a lowly government office, complete with overworked employees, long lines, and ceiling fans huffing and puffing to loosen the stuffy air inside the cramped quarters. The responsibility of volunteers was to talk the refugees through what type of identification documents the Iraqi government would require for their registration. After two days of seamless translating that led to calm, orderly lines, the officials put in a request for her extended stay in the position.

Gaining access to the refugee registration archives, though, was even more difficult than breaking Janan. The Iraqis kept her so busy, it took a week to learn the center's layout, particularly where the files were stored. Also detrimental to her objective was the actual job. Refugees longed to be heard, and each one brought with them devastating stories of what they'd left behind. If it wasn't tales of surviving on plants and olives while confided, for weeks at a time, in the old cities currently besieged by the regime, it was recollections of bombs dropping into villages, wiping out rows of homes and the families sleeping inside, or the poisonous gas released into town squares, the invisible killer choking indiscriminately among adults and children alike.

The younger, Mossad-influenced version of herself would have been largely indifferent to the refugees' plight, rationalizing it around the reality of residing in a war-loving acre of the world. Now, she was older and had seen real suffering, and she dragged herself back to camp every night, her heart more weary than her feet or hands from the day's work. It was out of those same conditions that Sana had come; it was her plight, too. The prospect of healing her, even in some small way, was all that kept the tired woman from faltering.

The children's building in Domiz was originally the camp's makeshift school, though minimal provisions of books, paper, and pencils, and a lack of an actual teacher negated the possibility of perfect attendance back in August, before she even arrived. Currently, it was an informal daycare where refugee mothers who worked in the camp or ventured outside it for labor jobs in town could leave their children in the capable hands of Syrian _jadas_ and the few aid workers who could be spared from day-to-day. That Janan was volunteering her time there made it possible for Sana to spend her days with someone she liked and Ziva trusted. Otherwise, the oversized aluminum-and-reinforced-brick structure was impersonal and filled to capacity.

Each evening when she arrived, Sana could usually found by the supply of paper and Crayons left by the Red Cross; drawing was her new favorite pastime. Vibrant depictions of the sky, animals, and stick figure children lined the interior of their tent like the walls of an art gallery. Regardless of what held her attention, she would drop it to fly into Ziva's arms. That night, however, she was met with a very different reception.

Sana huddled at the feet of Janan, with chronic, soundless sobs shaking her petite shoulders. The sight of her caregiver coming forward served as only a momentary assuage for her tears.

"Zee-va," she whimpered, sticking to her method of partitioning the name into distinct syllables. It was the same way her former partner used to do when he teased her.

_That is for me to know, Zee-vah, and for you to watch the movie and find out._

His playful intonation in her head caused an involuntary tug at one corner of her lips. She found that the longer she was here, separated from her past life, the easier it was to think back on what she'd left behind without feeling a sharp twinge in her chest. But it was the little girl in the present day that earned her full smile.

Ziva knelt down beside her, propping her elbows on her knees to keep balance. "What is all this, Sana?"

Moisture clumped dark eyelashes and shadowy circles underscored stormy orbs. She curled her fists and rubbed them against her eyes, dragging in ragged breaths as any hope of a verbal response dissipated in a fresh wave of sobs.

The cluck of a tongue drew Ziva's gaze upwards. Janan may have allowed Sana to use her feet as a pillow, but she still shook her head in confusion. "She was happy all morning, playing with the others fine. Then all at once she ran to me crying and begging for you. She has not stopped since."

Ziva flipped her softened gaze onto Sana again. "Perhaps we are having one of our hard days, yes?"

Anxiety was making its appearance before the nightmares themselves had a chance to touch her. It did not matter what set her off this particular time, just as it had not mattered the dozens of times over the past six weeks. How it was dealt with was of greater importance.

Not wanting to make more of a scene in front of the other children and workers, the brunette scooped Sana up off the floor and into the cradle of her arms, just as a mother would her baby. The girl's head nestled in the crook of her elbow while scrawny legs dangled down by her hip. Sana calmed once swaddled up tight and close in her embrace, and there she would stay through dinner and even still when they reached their tent for the night.

"Sana, my brave girl," Ziva murmured patiently, peeling tiny hands from around her neck and wiping away stray droplets from apple cheeks. "You are going to be okay. I am here and you are safe."

It was unlikely Sana could hear the reassurances over her deep, panicked tugs at air. Rather than trying to keep up with the flood of panic, Ziva laid herself down and tucked the girl close again, pulling the blanket up to cover them both.

Strains of Hebrew lullabies that her mother used to sing to Tali when she was sick and could not calm down hummed through her lips. Even so young, the elder sister was already coached by her father to hide any weakness; she did not need her mother's comfort anymore. She was too in control to leave someone else in charge of her emotions. From her bed across the room, she watched with an outsider's curiosity as her mother administered comfort and patiently waited for the percussion of her youngest daughter's heaving sobs to dissolve from the melodies curling off her tongue….

Ziva waited for Sana now as her mother had for Tali then. Waited and waited with the girl's cheek resting on her chest, intoning nonsense words of comfort and rubbing circles into her small square of back, until her wrinkled breaths smoothed and her hummingbird heartbeat slowed, and she fell asleep, snuggled as close as possible to her guardian and finally at peace. For the first time since the rescue, Sana made it to morning without a nightmare.

Instead, it was her caregiver who remained awake through the night, consumed by the overwhelming devotion she felt to child that was not hers. It was a decision she made; the child came to her out of unthinkable circumstances. The death of one's parents was a cruelty she knew with intimate detail and would wish on no one. Sana's parents sacrificed everything in their attempt to deliver her out of the jaws of peril and oppression. It was the least Ziva could do to continue their dying dream: for their daughter to be safe and loved.

And yet…

Worry was a tangle of fears. Fear that she would go to work the next morning, or the morning after that, and hear a refugee recite a particular name and a particular region. Fear that, someday, her heart would no longer be the place in which Sana curled up and drifted off to sleep each night, secure in its affections, its constancy, and its total loyalty to no other in the same way as her.

But it was not up to Ziva to decide the truth, or to skew it to meet her own desired outcomes, so when the opportunity she was waiting for arose a few days later, she did not hesitate.

She'd found that if her absences were brief, taken under the guise of fetching water for the weary travelers, she could be gone minutes at a time without anyone's detection. And minutes were all she needed amidst the bustle of a busy afternoon at the check-point center.

Her movements were confident as she slithered down the back hallway and stole noiselessly into the archives room. Inside was a dingy office space cluttered with boxes of paper and a lone desk. She made for the ancient computer atop of it that only McGee would have found fascinating for its archaic value. A smile spread her mouth, even as her impatience with the sluggish machine grew. Brown eyes darted from the screen to the door and back again. The taste of adrenaline on her tongue was nostalgically bitter.

Ziva expelled a taut sigh of relief when the database window popped up, and her fingers flew over the keys to insert the only two keywords she had: Al-Malikiyah and Ganim. She knew it would take a few moments for the computer to scan through the records of hundreds of thousands of refugee registrations dating back two years to when Iraq opened their borders to the displaced Syrians. That didn't stop her from pacing the length of the desk as the piece of outdated technology whirred and clicked.

The doorknob jiggled suddenly, startling Ziva.

"_Iftahi il-baab_," the guard barked through the door.

A glance at the computer screen told her that what might have been her only chance to locate members of Sana's family was not yet finished.

Several thumps on the wood coincided with the thudding of her pulse, both pounding in her ears.

Another string of foreign commands and threats reached her, punctuated by a firm, "_Iftahi!_"

The normally decisive Israeli wavered, caught halfway between the desk and the door. Between choosing one path and another for the child, for herself, and for this life they'd only just begun living together…

Then the lock snapped under the weight of the guard's shoulder forced upon the door, and she fought her old instincts instead of his seizing hands on the upper flesh of her arms as time ran out and the choice was made for her.

(/)(/)(/)

The whine of the sweeping wind was muted, belonging to the world beyond the aid worker's tent in which Ziva was trapped. They brought her here, afterwards. It was empty, the lunch rounds long finished. Only Gray was with her now, having appeased the Iraqi officials with promises of discipline. They were seated across from each other at an industrial table near the center. Her mind made an unbidden correlation between the current circumstances and an interrogation she might have conducted over another steel table across the world. This time, though, she wasn't the one asking the questions.

With his forefinger and thumb, the Aussie massaged the bridge of his nose, while his eyelids squeezed shut against the unlit interior. "But that doesn't explain," he said, "_why_ you did it."

The description of her actions, from her plan of infiltration to her surrender an hour earlier, was apparently not enough to satisfy her boss. A shrug of her mouth conveyed her dispassion to reverse that opinion.

"I do not understand _why_ that is necessary. I have already admitted to everything."

The lead aid organizer finally looked up at her, his pastel orbs clear but tired. "Because, Ziva, I am responsible for you. And you broke the rules today." On his fingers, he tallied up the transgressions. "You switched schedules so you could work check-point when you weren't supposed to; you left your post and rifled through private refugee registration records; and when you—"

"Yes," she interrupted, lurching forward over the table, "I was, in fact, there. You do not need to repeat the offensives to me, like I am some badly-behaved child."

His volume rose with the level of his irritation. "You aren't getting it! The Iraqi officials want you punished!"

On her, they could inflict whatever sentence they deemed appropriate. There was only one consequence she cared about.

"Will it interfere with my guardianship of Sana?"

On the tail end of a prolonged sigh, Gray waved off her worry. "I'll tell them you were delirious from the sun. You're never gonna work down in receiving and placement again, that's for damn sure."

That, she could live with. She could live with a lot worse, too—almost anything—if it meant she could keep Sana.

"But that's because you were a mate and saved me not too long ago," he added, qualifying his leniency. "Now, I'm giving you a chance to tell me your side of the story, and I think it's common courtesy to return the favor after someone gets you off the hook with pissed off Iraqis."

His appeal to their tentative friendship and history was the equivalent of asking her politely, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, to reveal all her secrets, please. If he only knew the excessive torture measures she'd been subjected to over the years—and withstood.

Crossing her arms over her chest, Ziva closed herself off further. "You would not understand."

Gray released another exasperated sigh and dropped his folded hands onto the table between them. "Considering everything I've been through with you so far…why don't you go ahead and try me."

After a few quiet moments of suspense, she confirmed her refusal with a subtle shake of her head.

Dragging a heavy hand through his mess of hair, he muttered, "You're going to be the death of me, you know that? Death by frustration." His chin bobbed, a reluctant acquiesce to her stubbornness. "If you're not gonna talk, I guess we're done here."

Ziva was on her feet and three long strides away before he swiped a leg out from between the bench and table.

"At the very least…"

It was gratitude, not his words, which slowed her flight.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

With her back to him, the hopeful curve of full lips was hers alone. "It no longer matters," she finally replied.

Somewhere between taking on this search and breaking into the refugee archives, the results became irrelevant. It was possible Sana had relatives, either still in Syria for not yet having the opportunity to flee, or already residing in Iraq, Jordan, Turkey—any of the countries admitting refugees. The time to find them, if they existed at all, would come. Eventually.

For now, Ziva and Sana had found in each other all the family they needed.

(/)(/)(/)

Ziva snagged the first white box of rations her hands encountered from the pile and crouched down to unload it. The clicks of overworked joints in her knees failed to dim her appreciation of the normal routine after weeks of clandestine activities. She thought it fitting to make her return with a rotation in the food depository. The aluminum hut was the size of her old living room, where the donations of macaroni, rice, salt, corn, sugar, tuna, oil, among other non-perishables shipped in by the organization were stored until passed out to the refugees who could not afford to purchase their own food from the surrounding towns.

She was stacking cans of beans onto the bottom rung of a rickety shelving unit when a gaggle of children rushed up and crowded the entrance of the structure, blocking out the beam of natural light. Sun-tinted faces smiled up at her.

"The helicopter is here!" they shouted in Arabic.

A quick count of the days and… "It is too early for a delivery, my friends," she told them. One had flown in the week before.

The children were too excited to listen. "Come with us!" They tugged on her hands and pulled her along, but once they were sure she would follow, they ran ahead.

Ziva allowed the flaps of her jacket to fall open as she tracked their trail of dust down the serpentine path. The noises of a regular day in Domiz—the chatter, the pitter-patter of busy feet, the happy screams of playing children—had returned. It was March and winter was all but gone; only at night could it still be felt in the cool breeze cascading in waves over the rows of canvas tents. During the day, the sun beamed down, pleased to once again reign over the land after its short hibernation. The bare skin at the back of her neck tingled under the warm rays.

She paused and tipped her chin, squinting up into the light—just as a long shadow rose over the sign above the camp's main entrance. The thwacking of blades soon arrived, and then a dark reflection preceded the military-grade chopper by seconds. The hunter-and-tan fatigued aircraft flew overhead, kicking up wind, rock, and sand, and she swiveled to keep it in her sights as it barreled out over the desert towards the landing pad near the border.

Ziva watched its ominous outline shrink out of sight. Excluding a jolt from her gut, there was no sensible reason for it, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that while she was searching for Sana's relatives, someone had been searching for her.


	7. Request

**Part 7: Request**

The Jeep quickly loaded down with men and left without her, bumping out into the rough terrain to meet the chopper and its mysterious passengers and cargo. The gates had barely begun to close behind the vehicle and she was already running. High on the balls of her feet, she lengthened her stride until it was a gazelle's—long and agile. She felt like one of the children who blurred through camp, taking nothing in. Leaving it all behind.

Reputation dictated that when Ziva David needed to vanish, it was only a question of how rapidly it was to be done. Long before Mossad honed her disappearing skills, her father awakened in her a survival instinct that was proven vital as, one by one, family members and friends and neighbors and colleagues were wiped clean of the earth by both random and intentional acts of violence. The years of her youth were marked by losses, not gains.

_They were not careful_, Eli rationalized after each funeral. _You will be different_, _my Ziva. You will be strong and fast_. _They will never catch you_.

Escape tasted like ignited gasoline, the flame burning through her chest and up her throat. Still she ran. Down the pathways of patch-worked tents and around spooked refugees going about their usual routines, the breath of her flight was a turbulent desert wind against their backs. All along, her father had anticipated a life of secrets and enemies for his daughter; he'd molded her for it. It was that life coming for her now, chasing her, hunting her down because she tried to pour herself into a new mold, one of her own choosing.

Only once the children's building was in sight did she allow her runner's form to unravel. She coughed hoarsely into her elbow, collecting the beads of moisture on her brow with a swipe of her jacket sleeve. The plan that composed itself on the sprint over was two-fold: get to Sana and…whatever came next. The options were few, as the orphan refugee could not leave Domiz, let alone the area or country, and Ziva could not leave Sana.

She ducked inside and darting eyes sought out a harvest-gold head in a sea of raven feathers. She alighted on the anomaly within two quick sweeps of the daycare. Her urgent lunge toward the child interrupted a game of tag.

"Zee-va," Sana chimed as she was cleared off her feet, landing hard against Ziva's chest by the force of the desperate embrace. Her small body tilted sideways within the fierce grip. "I am playing! Put me down!"

If it were up to Ziva, she would never let go again. "You will play soon. We have to leave now, my love." To go where, she did not know yet. Somewhere safe, if that was possible. Holding as tight as ever to the squirming girl, she swiveled around—

A dark stain stood in the doorway of the building, blocking her intent for a stealthy retreat. To his mouth, Gray held up a walkie and muttered words she could neither make out from her distance nor hear over the happy shouts of the children scurrying underfoot. His somber expression, directed solely on her, spoke loud enough for her to dispel the notion of coincidence.

On her hip, Sana bounced and pointed out her friend who'd made a traditional greeting of tossing her high up into the air as if she was a baby bird testing her wings. Each time she chose against the sky—_not yet, not yet_—and collapsed into fresh peals of giggles and his waiting, capable arms. And Ziva would catch up on the breath she'd lost in the seconds of doubt.

The Israeli could tell he was making every effort to ignore the pull of the child's excitement. His blond head angled to the side as the grown-ups' eyes met. The movement let in a beam of sun, projecting a buttery path that ended at her feet. An invitation of light.

Her father had been wrong. Eventually, everyone was caught.

(/)(/)(/)

It wasn't until Sana was safely and exclusively in Janan's care that Ziva had her first clear thought since the chopper flew overhead. She'd been too consumed with fear—rational or not, she was still unsure—to give proper consideration to the identity of the visitor. Whoever it was, they'd obviously wasted no time requesting to see her.

"You gonna tell me what this is all about, David?" Gray guided the way two frustrated steps ahead of her.

"I wish I knew myself," Ziva replied honestly and received a disgruntled sigh in response from her boss.

No one knew she was in Domiz. Of that, she's made certain. That made the list of possibilities a dual inventory of those who had the means to find her. She thought, inevitably, of her former partner. His doggedness. His track record. For those reasons, his name was at the top of her list. Her stomach flipped at the prospect of seeing him. It worried her more than any true threat. He would have a reason for coming, but she couldn't think of one piece of good news that would justify such great lengths. Was Gibbs in trouble? Did Ducky's heart give out again?

Gray diverted towards an inconspicuous tent that was actually the security station in the East quadrant. She had only been inside once before, but her memory served to recall it as the most technologically advanced 8x8 pocket of the camp. He pulled back the tarp.

"Wait." Ziva eyed him, a silent inquiry of what waited for her within. She'd lost count of who owed whom at this point, but she wanted to believe he would not throw her into a lion's den.

His nod was reassuring. "Don't worry. He showed me his badge."

Blinking numbly at his growing smirk, she stepped inside and the full force of her foolishness hit her like a bad stench; paranoia was proving to be one of the hardest habits to break from her previous existence.

Granted, out of everyone in the world who could have found her, she was not expecting Chad Dunham. Upon first glance, that was who she suspected resided beneath the dust and sweat slicked across the square, un-landscaped face, half obscured by a tawny, shaggy mane that fell like a curtain over his light eyes. The boom of an unmistakable Texas drawl served as confirmation.

"There she is! How is it I'm always tracking you down out in these damn deserts, Special Agent David?"

Ziva noted the raise of Gray's eyebrows at the title. "It is just Ziva now," she corrected.

"Yeah, I heard about that. If you ask me, they lost a gem." His genuine smile revealed rows of white teeth from between sand-blasted lips.

Gray glanced between them, his curiosity palpable. "So, you two _do _know each other."

"We are old…" She mulled around for an appropriate term. "Acquaintances."

"Let's just say I was able to point some good people in the right direction to help this little lady out of a tight spot a few years back."

"Sounds like an intriguing story." A pointed look from his fellow aid worker put an end to Gray's ploy at rifling through the photo albums of her history. "Uh, maybe another time. Why don't I leave you both to it? Nice to meet you, mate."

The men shook hands and then Gray was gone, and Ziva was alone with a fragment of her past.

"You were pretty hard to find this time, and that's saying something. Mind if I take a load off? Our flight was damn bumpy." Without waiting for a response, Dunham plopped his large, football-player frame into a canvas fold-out next to the desk. He adjusted the faded red bandana around his neck, grains of sand sifting onto the ground near the instep of his boot. "It started to feel like you wanted to be—"

"I did." Regretting the hasty admission, she fumbled to recover. "I mean, I did not need anyone to find me. I am not some lost puppy."

Dunham bobbed his head in acknowledgment. "You certainly are not. More like a tiger." His wink was playful and easy to brush off. "How long have you been here, then?"

"The end of October."

"Huh. But you resigned in May."

"You are very well informed," she observed archly.

He shrugged, retrieving a plastic bottle of water out of his pack and twisting the cap off, taking a hard drag on the crystalline contents. "Not all good news, I'm afraid. I heard about your father," he said, wiping stray droplets from his whiskers and offering her the same pity as many, many before him. "Sorry for your loss."

Her reflexive smile was weak, pained. She narrowed hazelnut eyes at his unhurried movements and his mere presence there at all. "Why are you here, Agent Dunham?"

Domiz was a long way from Dubai, where she'd last known him to be stationed out of the NCIS Middle East office. Such a journey was not made strictly to see an "old acquaintance."

A click of his tongue provided sound effects for the point of his forefinger-and-thumb gun. "You always were a straight shooter."

Unamused, Ziva crossed her arms and propped against one of the tent's posts. Waiting.

Dunham leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, the water bottle dangling from the tips of his fingers. "I'm on orders. You know how it goes."

"From whom?"

His honest eyes rose back up to meet hers. "Good people," he repeated.

(/)(/)(/)

Out of his bag, Dunham produced a laptop and tangles of wires to supplement the meager technology in the security tent. Ziva was reminded of the makeshift base camps she assembled during her early Mossad days, back when they were still testing her aptitude with supplies of insufficient equipment. Her strategy had been to set up the communication link first, so that no matter when her superiors checked in, she appeared competent.

If only she was so in control now. Even as Dunham guided her to sit at the rickety table, she did not know who, exactly, would emerge on the screen in a matter of moments. The unknown was killing her.

"Smile," he teased, holding one headphone over his ear. The task of plugging in and switching on and connecting to had taken quite some time, but now he had all the devices in the cramped tent humming and blinking with activity. "You're gonna do great."

The laptop screen was blank, reflecting back a familiar image of cautious oval eyes and a prominent widow's peak, accentuated by wavy bronze hair pulled away from her face into a high ponytail, the bushy end tossed over one shoulder. Nothing but wear and tear had altered her façade since she left her childhood home for Domiz; yet, nothing was the same as it had been five months ago. It was a change that had little to do with appearance that made her a different person from then to now.

The screen gaining fuzzy definition scrambled her reflection, but the connection continued cutting in and out with the weak satellite signal. Beeps and clicks from a room across the world wafted over the speakers, and then there was a rumbling voice she recognized all too well.

"Get the damn thing working, McGee."

"Sorry, Boss. There, that should do it—"

And suddenly, Ziva was face-to-face with…well, it was difficult to select just one fitting designation. Team leader. Mentor. Father-figure. Friend. Leroy Jethro Gibbs was all of them to her. Or, at least, he had been once.

Sparing her the obligation, the senior field agent spoke first. "Hey, Ziver."

"Gibbs," she exhaled, not expecting her voice to be infused with so much relief.

"Hi, Ziva," the junior agent called out, his sincere face and friendly wave popping into view. Behind him was the patent maroon scenery of MTAC. "I'm glad you're okay."

"It is good to see you, McGee." She meant it, too. Revisiting what she left behind was not as challenging as she had anticipated. At least not yet, but she still didn't know why they were contacting her. That would be the deciding factor to the mood, not to mention the outcome, of this encounter.

Dunham reached over her shoulders and angled the laptop up, setting himself in the sights of the camera. "I told you I'd find her, Agent Gibbs."

"Oh, yeah. Two days late, _Chad_."

"But not a dollar short," the younger agent crowed, letting loose a rowdy hoot and grinning wide. He set the computer back down and patted her shoulders with beefy hands. "It's all you now, tiger. Holler if you need me."

The tent's cloth door flapped in the wake of Dunham's departure, flickering scraps of sunlight into the hazy dim of the interior. Ziva was alone in the glow of the monitor and her former superior's unrelenting gaze.

"This is all very elaborate, Gibbs."

"You didn't leave much of a trail, Ziva." His observation echoed Dunham's earlier complaint about her location.

"But enough of one, apparently."

She cringed inwardly at the sharp jab her words carried, but there was no evidence of impact on Gibbs' expression. To say he hadn't changed since the last time her eyes absorbed his silvery Marine crew cut and steely orbs would be a lie. Despite the poor quality of the picture, she noted new wrinkles around his eyes and darker shadows of exhaustion beneath. They had both grown older in their time apart.

The last they'd even talked was on that fateful autumn night, a full summer after she'd resigned from his team. Following a tearful farewell for both herself and her former partner at the airport, she returned to her childhood home and made the call. She did most of the talking.

"It is just that…" A steady stream of tears forced each of her words to work that much harder for breath of life. "I no longer like who I am."

A heavy sigh filtered through the cell phone speaker. "There's plenty of people here who do," he reiterated to her patiently. "Nothing you've done is going to change that."

"Yes, but _I _must change! And I cannot do that at NCIS. I need to do it…alone."

After a long pause, he finally gave her what she'd called for. "You do what you have to do, Ziva. Then come home."

Her quieting sniffles were all that had hummed over the line until she hung up.

Now, months later, she offered a faint smile to compensate for the unfounded mist blurring her vision. One thing hadn't changed in the interim. Gibbs was still one of few people in the world who she wished not to disappoint. And she feared she'd done just that, though not with her resignation or her absence, but with her silence ever since.

The notoriously quiet agent came to her aid for the second time in the first two minutes of their unorthodox reunion. "Looks like the desert is treating you well."

"It is my natural habitat," she quipped, eliciting a barely-there smirk where there was previously a thin line. She blinked away her tears and cleared her throat, continuing as normal. "I apologize for not contacting you. It has been…" A ten-month separation, she realized with awe. "A long time. How is the team? Abby, Ducky…" All nerve deserted her in the middle of the question. The closer she came to the necessity of saying _his _name.

The twitch at the corner of his mouth merged into a sly smile as he glanced off camera. The reaction only served in heightening her curiosity: How much had her former partner revealed about their rendezvous in Israel?

"You can ask them yourself when you get your ass back to D.C."

Nothing too damning, it seemed, but—

Scooting forward, Ziva folded her forearms up against the lip of the laptop, leaning into the screen as if proximity was to blame for what she'd heard. "_When _I get back? I thought my place on the team had been filled."

Dunham, it turned out, was a bit of a gossip.

Gibbs' smile returned. "She's no you, David. But I'm not looking for another agent."

No sooner had the compliment fanned her ego did the tail end deflate it again, never mind the fact that she'd surrendered the position and never entertained ideas of them reserving it for her. If there was one certainty in her vague plans for the future, it was that she would never again be an agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

"I'm contacting you because of Benham Parsa."

"I am familiar with the name." How could she forget the terrorist who killed SecNav and targeted NCIS agents the previous summer? "But that is about it."

With aid of a swivel chair, McGee rolled into view of the screen. "Parsa's a radical. Former leader of a terrorist group that goes by the name Brotherhood of Doubt. Over the past couple years, he's complied quite the rap sheet: acts of terror, coercion, sabotage, and too many murders—"

"All you need to know," Gibbs cut in, edging his agent out of the picture again, "is that we brought him into custody last month. His case is about to go on trial, and the Director and I need your testimony."

"I do not see how that will be of any use to the prosecution. He never came after me the way he did other—"

"Parsa went after my team," Gibbs growled. "You were part of that then. It matters." There was a passion in his gaze she'd seen once or twice, when they'd dealt with the worst of advisories: the Reynosa family, the Port-to-Port Killer, Harper Dearing. Ari. Her former boss was haunted by Parsa and the power he'd wielded in destroying what Gibbs cared about most. She could see that in him, even from thousands of miles away.

Now Ziva took her turn glancing away from the screen. There was no air in the tent, at least none that her lungs could access and pump through her veins. Either it was stress from the string of surprises, or the sunny day had sent her into the early stages of heatstroke. She pushed back from the desk, reached for the water bottle Dunham left atop the sat-com radio, and helped herself to the cool liquid.

"Ziva, you still there?"

The water slid down her throat, revitalizing her voice. She angled back into the frame. "I have a life here, Gibbs. Responsibilities. I cannot simply abandon it all." It was a plea, not to subvert the request, but rather to be understood for her refusal. She didn't even care about the irony that her words carried. How could she go back when she'd hardly had the bravery to leave?

"Think about it," Gibbs advised. "You have until Dunham heads back to Dubai tomorrow. 1500 Zulu."

She did not care for ultimatums, but understood the one he gave her now. There was more to this than her choice, of course. "I will…try," she agreed, because after everything they'd been through together, she could afford him that courtesy.

Though his official response was silence and a patent Gibbs stare, she heard what he wouldn't say to her, what he thought wasn't his place to express anymore.

Didn't he know it was always within a father's right, regardless of time or distance, to love his daughter?

(/)(/)(/)

Tony swore the office stairs had once been easier to climb. Were they getting steeper or something? Was this somebody's idea of a joke? If there was a good yarn going around, he hoped it involved his teammates leaving him out of the loop in their efforts to contact _his_ former partner. 'Cause that—_that _would be a real gas.

These were the times being Senior Field Agent had its perks, especially when it came to prying information out of the new probie on the team. Bishop didn't know what hit her—or what she'd finally revealed that sent him flying out of the bullpen mere minutes after arriving early that morning. Even if it was a cruel joke, he wasn't taking any chances.

Pumping his arms a little harder, yanking on the handrail, and dragging large gulps of air in through his mouth, the agent laboriously made it to the top landing. Keeling at the waist, he paused in consideration of his breathing and the sharp pain in his side.

It was those few seconds taken for himself that he would always blame for missing her.

Eye scan. Double doors.

"Take care of yourself," Gibbs was saying as Tony burst through the last barrier into MTAC, but all he was aware of was the fuzzy, static-lined image on the big screen.

It couldn't be…_her_, could it? After all this time, after the messages he'd sent out into the ether that bounced back…after _so much silence_. She still wasn't talking, but it was the same face, graceful and familiar, that for eight years he only had to glance up to find staring back at him from across their desks; that, since she left, he'd seen whenever he closed his eyes, a mirage in his dreams. It wasn't that she was doing anything special, either. Just nodding subtly, the action exposing the glint of unshed tears in the nooks of her eyes. Even so, she was…remarkable, he decided. Remarkable and missed and…

Gone. The picture collapsed in on itself, stealing her away from him once again.

"Hey," Tony balked, revealing his presence to the room and its occupants. "What the hell?"

Gibbs and McGee whipped around in tandem, and their expressions told him they hadn't heard him previously bust in like a bandit, greedy for his share of the loot.

"DiNozzo—"

Exhaling a terse scoff, Tony waved off whatever excuse was coming, or knowing Gibbs, a lack of one. McGee wasn't spared from his disgust, either, but at least he had the decency to look guilty. As usual, their boss was giving statues a run for their money.

His feet were backing up the ramp before he'd made the conscious decision to leave.

"I get it," Tony said with a raise of his hands. But like a bad joke, he didn't get it. Not at all.

* * *

**A/N: **I told you patience would pay off! ;) I'm working on individual replies to everyone who has reviewed, but it's a work in progress. In the meantime, friends, your reactions and thoughts are always welcome and your continued support is appreciated!


	8. Choices

**A/N: **As of right now, I have written personal replies to everyone who has reviewed in the past four chapters. I've already heard back from a few of you, and I have to say that I am blown away by the impact this little story of mine has had on so many of you. I started writing it to heal my Ziva-shaped broken heart, and now it's doing the same for others and I couldn't be more overwhelmed or humbled. I wish I could give you all a big hug! (You'll have to settle for an update instead! :D)

Also, to the faithful group of anons, like** Zivatjl12** and** Bea **and** Mary **and** Claire**, I want you to know that I recognize the effort you put forth to find my story after each update; that you take time to leave a review is just a bonus. I appreciate your thoughts and words of encouragement!

Now, finally, on to the chapter! This one's dense, folks, so take your time. As always, enjoy. : )

* * *

**Part 8: Choices**

Pine needles crunched under the soles of Hugo Boss loafers as Tony stepped out of the vintage Mustang Cobra, slamming the driver's door shut behind him with more force than he intended. Most of his anger had dissipated after storming out of MTAC. Spending the rest of the day moping around Abby's lab helped, too, and even the hour drive at twilight into the Virginia wilderness chiseled away at the chip on his shoulder. Evidently, there was still a little more to go.

The hoot of an owl hidden somewhere in the tree branches overhead spurred his feet across the chilled ground; it might have been the end of March, but winter was stubborn that year. As soon as he reached the wooden steps leading up to the cabin, the door creaked open and the lamp-light glow made a familiar outline of the figure filling the entrance.

"Gotta oil this thing," Gibbs muttered, swinging the door on its hinges to produce the offending squeak. "Little WD-40 should do the trick." He turned back inside. "You comin' in?"

The real-life log cabin, built piece by piece by his boss's hands, and then assembled at 123 Middle-of-Nowhere Dr., had gained little by way of coziness since the last time Tony visited. It sure smelled the same: nutty wood polisher, nature, and fresh oak. A chosen few added amenities—a table and a chair, woodworking tools atop a pair of benches, and a cot with a blanket and pillow in the corner—proved only that Gibbs was picking his cabin over his basement more and more nights out of the week.

Once or twice, the part-time carpenter had invited him up to help with a woodworking project, but nature wasn't the special agent's scene. He'd always found a reason to decline—even if it meant he went home to a cold beer, a movie, and loneliness instead.

Tony was there for no longer than a minute when the older man swiped the lone, half-empty bottle off the table and offered it up to him. In or out of the basement, his boss was always good for some bourbon.

"No, thanks."

Gibbs poured himself a thimble of the amber liquor and screwed the cap back on tight. He left the glass on the table as he stoked the charred logs in the small fireplace built into the north-facing wall. It was surprisingly comfortable inside for the lack of central heating.

Slipping his hands into the pockets of his dress pants, Tony rocked back on his heels. "You can probably guess why I'm here."

"Yeah, I probably could," Gibbs replied with his back angled away. "Why don't you just man up and say what's on your mind instead?"

A harsh chuckle. "Alright, then. You talked to Ziva this morning."

"I didn't hide it from you."

"You didn't tell me about it, either. Or, God forbid, let me know before you chatted her up in MTAC! I should have been there!" Judging by how his volume went from 10 to 85 decibels in the span of two sentences, it was a riskless bet that his residual anger was substantial.

He was going to need a bigger chisel.

As usual, Gibbs's reaction was a non-reaction. He moved from one side of the compact, one-room cabin to the other, kicking a bench over and straddling her like a stallion. Fists disappeared in the front pocket of his grey, tattered, USMC sweatshirt. He let the younger agent's venting hang in the air for awhile like sawdust, thick and suffocating, before asking, "You done?"

That only egged Tony on more as he paced a rigid pattern from the door and back to the center of the room. The frustrated gesturing of his arms was tempered by his even, intense gaze. "You want everything to go back to the way it was, just without her. That's why you act like she's dead. You won't even say her name, dammit! But _I'm _the one who'snot allowed to talk to her?" If anyone had a right to her after all this time, wasn't it the man who'd never given up on her?

Smoke from the fire—at least, that's what he was going with—swelled his tongue to the roof of his mouth. His body was taxed from the exertion of releasing months' worth of frustration. He swallowed hard and continued, but his own fire had dimmed, quelled by the fog rolling in over green eyes. "But what really makes no sense to me is that you knew I was looking for her—you know everything, even if we don't tell you—so it was deliberate. You shut me out. Why?"

The sandy-haired agent slowed to a stop, pinning his boss down with the allegation. Gibbs, waiting without suspense for the end of Tony's fuming, didn't plead guilty. He didn't plead anything.

"You're making too much of this, Tony."

"Am I? I've looked everywhere for her. Within reason, of course. She made it pretty clear she didn't want company wherever she was headed." The memory of a rain-slicked tarmac and her equally drenched cheeks sidetracked him for a moment, but he recovered quickly. "How did _you_ find her? Is she okay?"

A shrug. "Seemed fine to me."

"Is she coming home?"

"Dunno."

"Did you ask her? Is that why you contacted her?"

"DiNozzo—"

"You're not telling me everything," Tony accused, hands coming up to their familiar perch on his hips.

Glacial eyes narrowed from across the room. "I could say the same about you." And with that, the power in the room flipped out of the younger agent's hands and into the corner of the infamous and legendary veteran. "You tell me everything about your search for her last summer?"

They both knew it was a rhetorical question. Tony had confessed little by way of details concerning his months' long search for Ziva. What was there to tell? He'd found her. He couldn't bring her back. End of story.

That hadn't made his homecoming on that nippy October night any less excruciating.

Tony would have rather caught the plague again than face everyone following the 15-hour flight back to D.C. from Israel. He should have gone home, bypassed headquarters altogether, but he was nothing if not a gluten for punishment these days. Just as he dreaded, McGee and Abby, Ducky and even Gibbs, were all gathered in the bullpen, waiting for him and Ziva to walk off the elevator and render their family whole again. What they didn't know was that they were all meeting at a wake, and that it would be the first and last time they mourned their colleague's departure together.

The office on the fourth floor was appropriately dim, he thought, nighttime lending no trace of hope in through the windows or down through the skylight. When they saw him, they cheered his name, but when he walked toward them—alone—their faces fell.

He told them she was gone.

"How could you let her stay there, and all alone, too?" Abby sobbed, giving up her futile battle with the barrage of tears dripping from her eyes and burying her head in the chest of a bewildered McGee.

Though no one said it aloud, they'd all assumed that if anyone could persuade her home again, it was her partner. Like he was some sort of Ziva David Whisperer with the power to talk sense into the exotic, temperamental filly when no one else could. He made the error of believing that, too.

"You weren't there," Tony said tightly. As if he hadn't begged her to come home with him. As if he hadn't fought for her.

"There, there, my dear." Ducky reached out and patted her back with the consoling nature of a grandfather. "Tony is right. I'm sure Agent David had her reasons, and we must respect them."

"Technically, she's not an agent anymore, Ducky. Hasn't been since she resigned in May," McGee pointed out, which only made Abby cry harder.

The medical examiner gave the junior investigator a withering look. "That may be, Timothy, but at any rate, it couldn't have been an easy choice for her to make."

Abby peeked out from behind the lapel of McGee's suit jacket, pausing in her tears to snap, "Yeah, but she made it, didn't she?"

"Enough, all of you."

It was a command, the one a Marine makes to his troops. Or a father to his children. They all turned and watched Gibbs rise up on sturdy legs from behind his desk. He tossed his coffee cup in the trash, and it appeared he was on course to get a replacement when he stopped in the middle of the bullpen, leveling his gaze on the senior field agent in his path. The two men stood an even distance between Tony's desk and hers. Or what had been hers, once. Her miniature Israeli flag was still in the pencil cup, intertwined with his Old Glory.

Gibbs' relentless stare didn't have the usual effect on Tony. He was rung out, drained. The last vestiges of purpose that'd kept him dogged and persistent and _moving_, _digging_, _fighting_ for the past four months had evaporated from his system somewhere over the Atlantic. He was glad the potent mixture lasted him through their goodbye. It was how he was able to smile, his gift to her, a souvenir of his visit; that was how he wanted his memory to imprint in her mind. Only now did he realize that the watery beam had been his star burning brightest before burning out.

"I did it," Tony reported, raising his eyes to meet the waiting blue gaze. "Tracked her down. Made sure she was okay." His voice lost scraps of control with every painful admission, but he kept going because…because he couldn't stop talking or the clouds from drifting into his line of sight or the tremble in his right hand. "If I could have dragged her back, Boss, I would have. She was—"

The firm smack of Gibbs' hand to the back of his head was so clichéd, it was almost laughable. Almost. Tony resisted the urge to soothe the stinging spot. He scraped his teeth over his bottom lip instead, biting down on everything that threatened to pour out.

The team leader's stare never wavered from the younger man's face, as if he was looking for something there. Something he'd spotted years earlier, and that he knew was there, still.

"We've got a job to do," Gibbs intoned, quietly. Just between them. "Can I count on you?"

Tony gazed to the side, seeing nothing. He strived to feel her necklace, the chain and small symbol cool through the satin lining of his inner suit jacket pocket. She'd left him with a souvenir of her own. It rested right beside the folded piece of paper that bore a promise. One he'd see through, someday.

"I don't know yet," he replied.

At the time, that was the absolute truth. Even now, it was a tough call, especially on days like this, when he felt the full weight and consequence of his decision above the usual, constant hum.

"Well," Tony sighed, glancing around the cabin's austere interior, "if you've taught me anything in all these years, Boss, it's how to suffer in silence."

Gibbs tossed back his drink, slapping the glass down on the unoccupied bench across from him. "Bullshit, DiNozzo," he countered on a gruff whisper. "You—Ziva—me. We all made choices. Now deal with it."

A scoff escaped his appalled mouth, but the verbal smack to the back of his head wasn't entirely uncalled for, Tony realized. As much as he was confused and angry with Gibbs for keeping her from him, he was equally angry at himself for allowing Ziva to become more precious in her absence over the past few months than in all the years she spent within his reach every day. For loosening his grip when he should have held on tighter than ever before—and never let go.

Gibbs gestured him over with a tilt of his head as he retrieved another glass and the bourbon from the table. The invitation was as clear as it was going to get.

"So I might have deserved some of that," Tony admitted, finally accepting what his mentor was offering as the amber liquid sloshed into his tumbler. "But I'm still pissed at you."

Instead of acknowledging him, or even looking his way, Gibbs paid unwarranted attention to his own pouring skills.

"It's just that…seeing her up on that screen, it…got me thinking, you know?"

"Yeah," Gibbs huffed out. "Figured it would."

With each man to a bench, they took in the dimming heat source; it would need a fresh log in a little while.

Tony sipped the potent drink, relishing the burn along his throat. He'd been with his boss enough years to recognize that he wouldn't be getting anything else out of the Functional Mute on the subject. Not that night. Or maybe ever. All he could hope for now was that another opportunity like the one he'd missed that morning would present itself, and sooner rather than later.

Because if he got her back again, there was no way in hell he was repeating the same mistake twice.

(/)(/)(/)

Sana took the lead down the narrow path, tugging on Ziva's hand with so much force, her petite body pitched near parallel with the dirt ground. "_Zee_-_va_." She turned the name into a plea for haste. "_Nar!_"

Further up ahead, orange flares licked up into the night sky, shooting above the uneven skyline of canvas roofs and generating a wide radius of warmth out from the center of camp. The bonfire was a monthly tradition at Domiz since before she arrived; a tradition she never participated in, and as they rounded the final corner, she was reminded why by an open view of the chaotic blaze. The attraction teetered on the edge of out of control, flames lapping like high surf at the trough pit walls, threatening to spill over and consume the craggy earth in a crimson inferno.

It was Ziva's turn to tug on Sana's hand, holding her back from a headlong dive towards danger. "Do not go near the fire, my love. You do not want to get hurt."

"Don't worry, _Mom_." Dunham sidled up from behind her, his bowl of seconds balanced in one hand and a smirk taking over his mouth. "She'll be fine. Won't ya', darling?" He tossed a wink down at the little girl and won the prize of her dancing eyes.

_Traitor_, Ziva thought with an internal eye roll. The two became fast friends in just a few hours' time, and that Dunham knew more than enough Arabic to playfully tease her only expedited the bonding process. Sana had even gifted him a drawing of a toad sitting on a rock, which she did not bestow on just anyone.

"Stay where I can see you!" Ziva called after Sana, whose galloped off in pursuit of a gaggle of children playing made-up games nearby. At least she was running away from the bonfire.

When the girl was out of ear-shot, he nudged her elbow. "Overprotective much? I bet it's gonna be torture for you to leave her."

"It would," she agreed with barely restrained irritation, "if I were, in fact, leaving." Turning and striding away, she knew the NCIS agent would follow her around to the other side of the pit, closer to where Sana was occupied being "it" and chasing her friends in loose zigzags around tents.

Dunham did not disappoint, lagging only a step behind. "So that's your answer, huh? I can't say I'm surprised…"

Earlier that afternoon, when she emerged from the security tent following the teleconference with Gibbs, it was the Texan alone who witnessed her blotchy cheeks and abundance of unshed tears ringing hazelnut eyes—before she could banish the emotion with rough, lashing fingertips. The unexpected visit from her past proved unraveling, and she despised being so…out of control. None of his awkward reassuring words comforted her. Collecting Sana from Janan's tent and hugging the girl to her chest, wisps of downy hair flattening beneath her cheek as she held on tighter and tighter, was all that could center her.

Only her eyes reacted to him now, flicking sideways to meet his steady gaze. "Because I am _overprotective_, yes? Is it a crime to want to keep her safe?"

"Didn't say that," Dunham answered too quickly, flipping his focus onto the stiff white rice peppered with dehydrated chicken substitute and bits of hardened mystery vegetables in his bowl. "You can't do it forever though, can you? I mean, you're not gonna work here for the rest of your life and she's an orphan and…" His words trailed off in a gust of wind that fanned the erratic fire burning several paces out from where they stood. Searching for a distraction, he shoveled an overflowing spoonful into his mouth and chewed instead of talked.

Ziva did not need him to finish his rationale. The implication was clear, and she was all too aware of the tenuous nature of her current situation, both as a volunteer at Domiz and as Sana's full-time guardian. It was all temporary. Eventually, choices would need to be made. That didn't mean she was ready to make them all by_ tomorrow_.

How could Gibbs do this to her? Invade her life, make such an unreasonable demand, and expect her to leap up and follow, like it used to be. She had no gear to grab now; this wasn't the squad room. But she would be lying if she said a reason, selfish as it was, for acquiescing to his request hadn't emerged in the hours since the call.

Dunham swallowed forcibly, shaking his head out. "Wow, that aftertaste doesn't get better with another helping. Whoo!"

A breath of amusement slipped through her veneer and remained in place as she admitted, "The truth is, I do not know my "final answer," as you call it." She bit her bottom lip as she regarded him, deciding. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure. Unless you want to keep it a secret."

Her guard flew up as fast as her mouth pursed shut.

"I'm just yanking your chain," Dunham laughed, a dimple showing itself in his left cheek.

"I did not realize I had a chain to _yank_."

His grin widened. "Never mind. Shoot."

Glancing into the flames, she drew in the gulp of courage necessary to disclose the seed of hope, planted in the depths of her heart by the Red Cross psychologist, Dr. Verma, during her one and only visit. Back in January, after watching the creation a few additional drawings of destruction by Sana's hand, Ziva had asked the most painful question of all.

"What will happen to her? Should I have to leave?"

The Indian doctor was making a game of tapping the tops of Sana's hands and pulling away before the girl could grab the offending digits. "Syria is in chaos," she replied distractedly. "They cannot control the uprising. They think, 'How can we be held accountable for those who have abandoned their homeland?' They bomb checkpoints; they fill water wells with dirt and rocks so entire villages cannot survive. Why would they care about their refugees or their struggles?"

"I am Israeli. I understand the nature of war." Ziva motioned for her to elaborate. "What about Sana?"

Dr. Verma finally allowed Sana to seize her fingers, much to the child's delight. Then, she turned her full attention onto Ziva and sighed before beginning her explanation. "As a displaced minor, Sana cannot be taken out of Iraq by anyone other than a relative or official guardian. However, under the circumstances you described, it is most likely she would then be placed in an established orphanage here in Iraq, until her family was tracked down or other arrangements could be made."

"Such as?"

The doctor was as patient with Ziva as she was with the young orphan. "Adoption, of course."

From that point on, Ziva did all she could to ensure institution in an Iraqi orphanage was never realized for Sana. That was why she searched for her family and why, when the results were inconclusive, she knew it was up to her to take on the "other arrangement" to which the doctor had referred. The seed was stirring. For the longest time, it was hers alone, buried too deep within the soil of her soul for even the rays of hope to reach it for watering. The glow of a roaring blaze would be its first exposure to nourishing light.

Dunham, who raised his eyebrows in anticipation of her news, would be the first to see it sprout.

"I am considering…" Ziva paused for a heartbeat of hesitation. "Adopting Sana."

Before he had a seconds' chance to properly react, she embraced the temptation to explain. Her hands, fluttering in expressive gestures, worked as hard as her words to be understood. "More than considering it, really. I want to adopt her, but I am finding it to be a long, complicated process that I have only begun looking into. There is little information to be accessed from here. And I know that she cannot be adopted if she still has family, and I do not know for sure she _does not_, and—"

Firm hands gripping her shoulders sidetracked her rambling. Dunham stepped in front of her, blocking out all the distractions of the camp with his wide shoulders. "Hey, hey, slow down. Anyone can see how motherly you are towards her, and she obviously loves you a whole heck of a lot, too. Isn't a big stretch of the imagination that you want to make it official."

"But it is tricky, from what I hear, for someone like me to—"

"I bet it's tough for anyone trying to adopt little munchkins like Sana from this part of the world, not just you. If it's worth it, though, everything will work itself out."

A scoff razored off her tongue. "That is not very comforting."

Dunham shrugged but smiled, too. "I don't think you have any other choice. You're head over heels for this girl."

Although the special agent had little bearing in her life, it was still gratifying to have him, _anyone_, not only acknowledge the improbability, but also consider it a possibility. There was a time when it seemed she would never have the opportunity to take on the role of mother. If not one failed relationship after another, it was her unrelenting work hours or the continual string of tragedies that pushed back her debut on that particular stage. It was always relegated to the imprecise date of _someday_.

But all the pieces would never find perfect alignment. She thought back on her experiences caring for the kidnapped girls from the school in Afghanistan two years earlier, or protecting Lydia Wade, the teenager who lost her father during another kidnapping case the year prior. Every nerve in her body had reached out to those girls as if they were part of her. Then she came to Domiz, where children like Imani and Abdo and all the small ones from the infirmary found their own places on her heart to score their names in indelible ink. Now she saw how they were all rehearsals for Sana, who was the culmination of years spent in the wings.

It was time to stop waiting.

Ziva smiled out of genuine relief, but sighed back into the issue at hand. "There is much to consider, and I do not think it can all be done from here. Though I do not know if I am finished with this place, or it with me, just yet."

To Domiz, she had come to serve penitence, working with her hands and her sweat and her time to save lives in some cosmic exchange for the lives she had taken with knives, bullets, and the occasional credit card. Had all she done in the past five months been enough? Had her sins, their sum too great a number to count, been absolved? Would she know when they were?

"No one said you can't come back," Dunham noted. "And I'll tell you one thing, I don't think this one will ever be finished with you." A tip of his chin motioned to the incoming blur out of the smoky darkness.

A small body landed with a _thud _against Ziva's legs and attached itself with vices deceptively strong for their resemblance to spindly tree-branches. Her breath short and swift from running and playing, Sana's head dropped back, wild hair falling out of its natural home over her eyes to reveal a bright gaze; the widest of toothy grins spread her pink lips.

"_Mufaja'a_!" she shouted, dissolving into silly giggles. "_Mufaja'a, _Zee-va!"

"Yes, you surprised me, Little One," Ziva awarded her, indulging the girl's glee with her own laughter. She beamed warmly down at her, feeling a heart pounding with life—one she had given a second chance to beat and thrive—as she rubbed a flat palm over her tiny stretch of back.

But a full rescue out of the desert and into the better life she could offer would require resources beyond the scope of Domiz. She would need help, the kind government agencies could provide. It was for that reason, and against her initial instinct, that she accepted the necessity of a journey back to D.C. If not tomorrow, one day soon, but why put off the inevitable?

The reality of it hit her, stealing her breath. In a matter of days, she would return to the people she'd long regarded as her family, even if it turned out the sentiment had changed for them in her absence. She saw no way around it if she wanted to start a family of her own.


End file.
