Magnets

4. Fire and Betrayal

Exhausted, Ziva took to sleeping on the floor in Tali's room. The dog, which usually spent the night shut in the kitchen, now spent the night shut in with them.

Ziva hated having weapons near Tali, but she kept a gun within reach because she felt she no longer had a choice. She was going to protect Tali with everything she had.

One night Ziva woke up to the dog, Alva, pawing at the door. Sitting up, she noticed the smoke.

She opened the window without a thought that the man who set her home on fire could still be hanging around, waiting for her to run outside. She heaved Alva out, too panicked to worry about the dog landing wrong.

She grabbed Tali's bag and threw it out next.

As Ziva snatched sleeping Tali from her bed, she saw the picture of herself and Tony. Despite everything she'd already left behind, she couldn't leave this. She tossed the frame out the window, and somehow managed to climb out without hurting Tali.

"Tali, love, go to the trees with Alva. Ima will be right there."

She watched her daughter toddle off into the dark with only a mild-mannered handicap dog to guard her.

When she could tear herself away, Ziva ran to where she'd buried the second intruder. The shallow grave was fairly easy to dig up, but she really hoped her neighbors wouldn't arrive so soon that they'd see her dragging a decaying body across her backyard.

She knew it was stupid to go back into the house, but she wanted there to be some question as to whether or not she had perished in the fire.

She kicked in the back door of the house she loved so dearly and pulled the body back inside. The kitchen wasn't yet on fire, but Ziva threw all the flammable material she could onto the body. She wanted it burned beyond recognition, beyond what forensics could recover.

Ziva grabbed Tali's bag from out front and ran through the trees. "Tali, Ima is here, Tali, love, where are you?"

A sigh of relief escaped her when she saw Tali sleeping at the base of a tree.

She hated to leave Alva, but there was no way to take the dog with her. She didn't tell the dog to stay, though, and she let it follow her as far as he wanted to, until eventually she looked back and saw the poor dog sitting on the curb, sad and confused that Ziva kept walking away from him, kept leaving him behind.

"Oh, God..." Ziva broke down but somehow continued walking. She needed to get to Orli's house, and then she needed to disappear.

****

McGee is wide-eyed as she finishes. "How did you do it?"

"Do what? Leave her?" Ziva can't raise her eyes anymore. Telling someone the entire story somehow makes her feel worse. "She was still asleep when I got to Orli's house. I asked Orli to bring her to Tony, and to tell anyone who asked that the neighbors heard her screaming and went in to save her. They were too late to save me.

"And that was it, McGee. That is how I died."

There is no humor in what she says. Giving up Tali really was the death of her. And to do it all over again...

"Why can't you stay? Kort was behind it, and we killed him. He's gone. There's no one else after you."

"This is not me," she says, that pleading note back. "I have Tali now. I could never go back to putting my life on the line."

"Ziva, you just told me a big, long story about you doing exactly that."

"For her."

"Why can't you at least stay long enough to see Tony?"

"I do not want to reopen that wound."

"You don't think it's still open? He goes through hell every time he looks at Tali. I know he sees you when he looks at her."

"I do not want to see him and then make him say goodbye again."

"Then why are you doing that to Tali?"

For a moment, Ziva doesn't know what to say. "Because I am weak. I needed to see her and make sure... Tony can live without me. He has been doing it for three years now."

"Only because he has to. Ziva, please."

"McGee..."

He hates that she's trying to put Tony's happiness first, that she thinks that's what she's doing. That's always been Ziva's problem. She refuses to put herself first. She refuses to feel.

"Fine. If you won't be convinced, you'd better go. Tony will be wondering where I went, and he'll come snooping. You know how he is. Or, you used to." He's hoping that this little jab will shove Ziva right out of her stubbornness, but he's proven wrong when she reluctantly returns Tali to the stroller.

"I love you, Tali. Ima loves you." Her voice shakes, and she tries to hide it by picking up her scarf. With almost frightening ease, she loops it around her head again, looking just as she did an hour ago, if not a little more emotionally drained.

She hugs McGee in the doorway, and he has half a mind to not let her go. By being let in on her secret, he feels just as guilty as he imagines Tony felt for leaving her in Tel Aviv.

"McGee, I have to go," she whispers.

So he lets go, turning away so he doesn't have to watch her walk out of their lives again. Once was hard enough.

~~~~

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