There are many things that Ziva keeps under lock and key. She does so in order to protect them because, those things under lock and key, well, those are the things most important to her. I was in a freshman in college when I realized that I was one of those things kept under lock and key.

When I called, I was drunk and she knew right away. In my slurred speech, I told her that I thought I was in trouble. I couldn't remember how I ended up in a dorm at the University of Maryland, nearly an hour from my own at Georgetown, and I was almost certain that I didn't have my car. She picked me up less than an hour later. On the drive home, I noticed she had her gun holstered to her hip. It was then that I realized just how far she would go for me.

We met in 1999. She was seventeen. I had just turned twelve. My father was hosting a meeting of foreign intelligence dignitaries. My nanny, against her better judgment, had allowed me to go visit my father, at his office on my day off from school. This later got her fired. We walked in and his secretary told my nanny that my father was in a very important meeting and he could not be disturbed. I, the little brat that I was, stomped my foot and whined. I hadn't seen him in three days.

That's when I noticed her staring at me from the couch across the room. She was tall, dark hair and her eyes seemed to studying me. Uncomfortable, I turned away. The nanny told me to sit down and wait, she'd go ask someone else if he could be pulled out. I nodded; even though I knew he felt work was more important than me. Reluctantly, I took a seat on the couch across from her. She looked at me for a moment and then spoke.

"It gets easier," she said, her accent thick. I scowled at her. "He will still miss things, of course. He will probably miss more because he thinks that because you are older it will not bother you as much. It will still bother you. You will just get better at hiding it." Her statements made me uncomfortable, I didn't know her and yet, she seemed to know me so well.

"Who are you?" I asked, crossing my arms.

"Ziva David," she responded, outstretching her hand. "My father is the Deputy Director of Mossad. It is like the CIA of Israel."

"I know what Mossad is," I said, knowingly.

"And I know who your father is," she responded, letting me know that I couldn't bully her with my father's job title, like I did to others. She had an essence about her that comforted me. She was tough but her eyes sparkled.
"Rachel Williams," I said, taking her hand and shaking it.

For a while, we emailed, and then she joined the Israeli Army, as all citizens of her country are required to do. She told me to keep writing and I did, even though sometimes, it took her months to respond.

I told her everything that happened in my life and she told me about hers, though I assume she censored her letters for me. I was sixteen when she told me she had become a control officer in Mossad. I was happy for her. I knew she felt it was her duty to serve her country, just like I assumed I would join the Agency when I could. Her writings became even more scattered then, but they still came. When my brother died in Iraq my senior year in high school, she called from Paris where she was on a mission. I was at Georgetown when she called the next time. She told me about Ari and NCIS. We started meeting Saturday mornings for breakfast and grew closer. She was the big sister that I never had.

I started working for the Agency during my junior year at Georgetown. They valued both my linguistics and my last name. After graduation, an event that my father missed but Ziva did not, my father got me into the Special Operations of the CIA. It was everything that I had ever wanted. For a few months they kept me on domestic assignments. To say that I did well could be considered an understatement, I guess they were impressed.

My first international mission was supposed to be an easy one. It was supposed to be foolproof. There was an Iranian arms dealer who was supposedly selling cheap munitions to the insurgents in Afghanistan out of Prague. It was a purely observe and report mission, but one of the arms dealer's men caught on to me one night outside of the abandoned warehouse. They captured and tortured me, but I used what the CIA had taught me to sustain me until the extraction team found me. The gun had been at my head dozens of times.

After my debriefing, I didn't go home to the nice apartment that my father was paying for. Rather, I went to Ziva's apartment. I shouldn't have been surprised that Tony was there too. I mean, I knew that ever since she came back from Israel, or rather North Africa, she had been very different. Not different to me, no, she still treated me the same, felt the same way about me, but she was a different person. I could see that. I knew that at one point, a couple of summers ago, they had been together. Not officially, of course, but she couldn't hold a conversation without his name coming into play and little traces of someone else were evident throughout her apartment.

She opened the door halfway at first. I could tell that she didn't want me to come in. Her face changed, though, when she looked at me. She saw my bloodshot eyes, my messy hair, my shaking hands. She saw the desperation in my eyes and she pulled the door open all the way, revealing him sitting on her couch. Ziva put her arm around me and pulled me in. I broke down again; uncontrollable sobs took over my body. Tony got up from the couch and I saw the concern in his eyes. She sat me down on the couch.

"What can I do?" I heard him whisper.

"Why don't you start a pot of hot water, not tea just hot water."

"Ok," he nodded and walked into her kitchen. She paused Back to the Future, which was playing on her TV. She moved the ottoman from in front of the leather chair to in front of me. She sat down on it and put her hands on my knees. I took my hands out from hair and looked up at her. I just shook my head.

"I failed," I said, shrugging my shoulders in defeat.

"That, I do not believe," she responded.

"They almost killed me, Ziva!" I screamed, standing up. "I think that would be classified as failure. They had a gun and a knife and they both were held against me."

Tony came back from the kitchen with a mug in his hands; he handed it to Ziva and whispered in her ear. She nodded and he went to leave.

"No, don't go, I don't want to ruin anyone else's day," I said, still in hysterics.

"You're not ruining anyone's day," he said looking at me. I turned back to Ziva, I didn't want him to leave on my account. Plus, I was interested to finally be around the famous Tony.

"Tony, you can stay, the more value support, the better," Ziva said.

"Moral support," Tony and I corrected in unison. It caused me to smile, something that I hadn't done in days.

"Ok then," Tony said. He moved back toward Ziva and I and sat down again, this time on the ottoman. They both sat down on the couch, careful to keep an inch between them.

"Rachel," Ziva began, "what happened?"

"I told you how good I was doing," I began. "I told you how impressed they were, how proud he was. It felt so good, I thought that I had found my place, you know, something that I loved." She nodded for me to continue. "I wasn't supposed to do my first international mission alone, without a partner, but they were so impressed, they thought I could do it alone. They thought that I was good enough, and there would be less risk that way." My breathing escalated and suddenly the room felt very hot. "I was doing really well, or so I thought, but I guess I wasn't doing it well enough. One of the arms dealer's men caught on to me after he had seen me outside the abandoned warehouse a couple days in a row. I thought I had lost him, but evidently I was wrong. They came out of nowhere, five of them. They surrounded me and all of sudden I had nowhere to go." At this point I was hyperventilating. Tears began to stream down my face and I lost it again as all of the events of Prague came back to me.

"I think you should rest," Ziva said. I wrapped my arms around my body, as suddenly the room had gone from hot to cold.

"Can I go lay down?" I asked, "I mean, can I crash in the guest room tonight?"

"Of course," Ziva said. She got up with me and walked me to the guest room. It certainly wasn't the first time that I had stayed over, but usually it didn't happen like this. She pulled the bed down and I immediately climbed in. Ziva sat down in front of me on the bed.

"You did not fail," she said, staring into my eyes the same way she did almost ten years ago. "You did not fail because you are here." With that she patted my leg and left the room, shutting the door. She knew that I wouldn't want to hear anymore right now.

I tossed and turned for a while, finally settling for mindlessly watching the TV that was placed on the bureau. Hours later, I fell asleep.

[Ziva's Point of View]

I wandered out the guest bedroom and slumped down onto the couch next to Tony. He moved a little closer and I leaned against him. I felt like I was reliving Somalia all over again when I listened to her story. She was so torn up; I knew what it felt like to feel like a failure to people whose opinions you valued. It killed me to know that she feeling that way.

"Zi," Tony finally asked, "who is that?" He knew she wasn't Mossad; someone from Mossad would not have walked into my apartment and fallen apart at the seams, nor would I have let them. I didn't want to explain Rachel to him; she was someone who I tried, so far successfully, to keep away from the dangers of my work, my life. He moved a strand of hair from in front of my eyes to behind my ear. I trusted Tony, though, and I knew that if he knew Rachel like I did, he would protect her as well.

"Her name is Rachel Williams, Tony," I began. "She is the daughter of the Director of the CIA. We met when I was seventeen, here in D.C., with my father on a trip. We bonded and over the years she has become like a sister to me."

"How come you've never told me about her?" Tony asked, shifting me so that I was looking at him. I shook my head.

"I do not know. I suppose I wanted to protect her, keep her as far away from anything as possible. I would never want someone to be able to use her against me. I would not be able to forgive myself."

"Like Tali," Tony surmised.

"Yes, Tony, like Tali," I spat. I shifted away from him a little bit. He noticed and began to backtrack.

"Hey, Zi," he said, "you know I didn't mean to. . ." I cut him off.

"I know," I said and he pulled me back into his arms. Months ago, I would have slapped him for thinking he could act this way towards me. But that was months ago and things have changed since then. I could no longer push him away. It was not fair to either of us.

"Says a lot that she came here, Zi," Tony said, breaking the wall of silence that was beginning to form between us.

"What do you mean?" I asked, confused as to where he was going with this.

"She trusts you."

"Blindly," I interrupted. "She would not if she had any idea of the things that I have done over the years."

"Oh Ziva," he said sighing. "I've heard enough of how much of a bad person you are. You don't seriously believe all of this, do you?"

I chose not to respond to Tony's question. Instead, I turned the movie we had been watching back on. The things I had done over the years were both justified and unjustified. I thought I was "protecting the State of Israel." I have still not decided whether or not I believe that. But if they were unjustified, I paid for them in Somalia.

Tony tightened his hold on me. I'm sure he could imagine what I was thinking. That was another thing that I would not have allowed months ago. I would not have allowed Tony to go on thinking he knew what I was thinking. But now, after everything, it was the only way she survived.