Author's Note: So who else thought the season finale sucked? And anyway, what is up with Ziva (or the unfamiliar, one-dimensional, completely unconvincing character the writers are trying to sell us is Ziva?)

Anyway. This is my way of compensating for the lack of... well, everything in the finale. Tell me what you think.

Somalia and pain and torture and why the hell didn't he come for her? And the ones who come to save her are not the one she wants to see and she's ashamed because weakness is not what made Daddy so proud of her.

She survives, again. (She always does.) Her brother, Ari. She understands now.

Nothing is inevitable and everything is temporary.

Freedom frightens her. Mossad put her in chains of security and purpose and now that they're gone- Ziva got some whiffs of freedom before and she thought she might like it. Now she has it, and realizes that it's more complicated than that.

She's honest (when it suits her), but she's also blind. No one is ever really free. Another lie to join the pile discarded in the recesses of her mind.

Her brother was too good at what he did.

They're in the conference room and that woman is sitting next to her and she's talking about soulmates and 'meant to be' and Ziva wishes she weren't just deluding herself. And she's really, really tired of all the lies. And hates herself for it.

Ari was good at everything he did and Tali would have made an excellent spy someday (she was a liar and she always told the truth and truth is dangerous, but still). Her sister had compassion and her brother knew mercy (used to). Ziva was just the middle child who made do with whatever was thrown at her, and there's a certain kind of people who do certain kinds of things and neither of her siblings were one of them.

Trying to be someone you're not is a waste of time and mental sanity. But after all, deception is what she does and has always done best and some people might change, but she's not one of them.

It's ridiculously obvious who Cobb reminds her of.

Her sister Tali dies and she takes a part of Ziva with her. Ziva buries her alone, and by alone she doesn't mean that there's not a whole bunch of weeping people around. She's just alone. Her brother is on a mission and he doesn't know that his lamb, his beautiful lamb with the pain in her eyes and the fire on her tongue, ceased existing. Her mother had been numb even before Tali died and Officer Ziva David is reasonable enough not to expect any support from her. Her father had taken his daughter's death with just a little too much woeful resignation and it makes her fucking furious.

She's standing there, with a calm, hard face, and watches as her very core turns liquid and seeps out of her.

Five months later they are punished and Ziva enjoys it. She's not nice. She's not merciful. Ziva David doesn't do merciful anymore.

She's not sorry and she's not ashamed.

You do what you have to for family and she has never understood Gibbs more than in that moment.

And more often than not, she misses things, important stuff, and then everything's slipping through her fingers and people get hurt and she wonders when she is the one who'll crash and burn.

People change, faces change, but Ziva remains stationary. She remembers a time when she moved faster than everybody else, twirling and leaping across the surface of the earth. She wonders when things started to slow down.

Her best friend died when she was twelve. Her father took her shoulders, firmly, looked into her eyes, firmly, and told her, "your Muslim friend was killed. Go and pay your respects to his family." Firmly.

Ziva did not believe him. His house, his living room, an open casket. She screamed – for once in her life – and broke down and sobbed. Started breathing too much, too often, until she couldn't anymore. She barely felt her sister's fragile arms around her.

If anybody ever succeeds in defining her, Ziva knows she has lost the battle.

Kate is dead and she was a good agent and, judging from everything people keep telling her, she was a damn good person as well. Ziva is alive and she's a good agent and a not-so-good person and she wants them to forget Kate, for heaven's sake, because Kate was her salvation and her doom. And she knows that's not normal.

Guilt is a wasted emotion and my God, she's so much like her father.

She's not going back and her father can't make her. Not anymore. (She truly believes that.) America and the people there make her feel and she hasn't felt so much since Tali's death. She will tell him, when the time is right.

Probably.