Moving On and Letting Go

CHAPTER 3 - For Every Man

A/N – For my friends and extra context, watch video below, especially the part where Ziva says "For every man I've killed...." Enjoy!

Okay now for the story.

Ziva's POV:

I take a few days to read through the early years of my life and the files my father had gathered on me, Tali and Ari and other than a few handwritten notes about his "private" thoughts about each of us there was nothing too surprising. But the box sitting in front of me is the most intimidating. I have no idea why I chose to do this box out of all the boxes to do today. It's sitting there, daring me to read what my father has recorded, written, and collected about my time in Mossad. The place that turned me into a killer with no thought towards who was hurting behind each target. That ends now. 

Iopen the lid and take a look inside. On top there's my "resignation" file forwhen I officially left Mossad, the liaison agreement with NCIS, the file frommy time in Somalia. Ugh Somalia yet another wound not fully healed, readingthat file will unfortunately make that specific wound deeper so I push that aside forlater. I see my father's notes on the bombing at NCIS from Harper Dearing, andsome odd notes on some of my NCIS cases that I have no idea how he got hishands on as they had no connection to any open Mossad cases I've heard of oranything to do with Israel. Anyways, I work my way through his most recent notes,items that I remember and do not need to dwell upon and that is when I noticethe first file from Mossad: labelled, My Ziva Begins.

What an eerie title my father choose, but we all know he was a complicated man. I just go for it, knowing that to move forward I have to go all the way back, to find where I can restart. I see my Mossad test marks, from my first year of training. They had me run 5 miles, then do 70 knuckle push-ups on the rocky, hard, dusty ground, then 70 sit-ups, 60 jumping jacks, then full effort spar with a seasoned Officer, then run another 5 miles in the time limit. And of course, I did pretty well, even partnered with the self-proclaimed hardest partner for the sparing, so with no official Mossad training I thought I did pretty well. But all my father said was "there's room for improvement". Wow just wow. After having absolutely zero practice, zero training they put us through the hell that was the first test, in the heat, with officers screaming insults in our faces, forcing us to exhaustion, and if we quit the hell got worse. I saw people being beat on the side of the track, being forced to do hundreds of burpees, and getting screamed words that should never be heard by anyone, and my father watched! And after surviving that torture he basically said, "get better." Wow.

Nextit goes into hand-to-hand test and training notes, where I did really well, topof my class by a long shot, as my father had previously hired a professionaltrainer as well as teaching me, Ari and Tali some things himself. And with hispower within Mossad, he had gotten me paired with the best, but also the strictestinstructor who at times got a little harsh, but overall made me a betterfighter. My father had nothing to say, good or bad, which is a good sign. Iflip through the rest of the notes from that first year, passing by the staminatest, speed test, survival test which I know I did well on based on my practicewith my siblings and father in the forest, but then I stopped once I reachedthe brain test. I wasn't aware there was such a thing in Mossad, as long as youcould work well and get the job done you were in, this should be interesting.According to my instructors and my father's personal observations, I wasan intelligent teenager, scoring really high on the tactical side of the notesand doing decent on the actual, normal intelligence, stuff like math, science,you know Abby and McGee stuff. The fact that they were testing us behind ourbacks and using that stuff to figure out our futures just shows how littleMossad actually cared about us. Seeing how different NCIS works just opens myeyes to the lies and mistreatment Mossad put us through, if only I knew then. 

Again,I skip through things that either don't matter, I already know, or events Idon't need to remember. The skipping stopped once I reached the bottom where Ifound a folder labelled: "The List" in Hebrew, again what's with my father'seerie titles. I already know what this is a list of, it's something I know Ineed to look at, it'll bring things up to the surface, flashbacks, emotions andpain. But in order to move on I have to get through this or what was the pointof leaving Tony and NCIS. My walls start to build up higher and higher, getting ready toblock anything thrown at them as I prepare to read the names of the people I'vekilled.

OH MY, there's a lot, I was never the person to keep count to brag, but I didn't think it was that many, 4 pages full of names, how I killed them and when. These records only show the ones I've killed while at Mossad, so there's definitely more now – which doesn't help. I read name after name after name, the flashbacks, the case notes, the faces, the eyes. And I killed them, I killed them all, without even I thought to who would bury them, who would hurt for them, who would cry to them and who loved them but never would be able to because of me. It's all my fault for not getting out, not refusing, and going along with the twisted ways of Mossad. I should've, and could have, left and these people may be alive now, and their family and friends not crying and grieving for them. Part of me knows Mossad is most to blame as well as my father, but I am the one who pulled the trigger, pulled the knife, took the shot, and took their lives. Mossad trained us for that, for being a soulless killer with no thought for who was behind the targets, but what they didn't train us for was after, when everything catches up to us, when we realize that there was a person, a life behind the target, it's not just a dummy at a shooting range, it's people, humans, who may have been bad but had innocent people behind them. I know it's too late, I can't go back in time, I can't change who I was, who I became, who I hurt, who I killed, what orders I completed, but what I can do is now. There is no way to forgive the pain I caused, I can't go to every household, every town, every country to find the family members, but I can pray for every person on that list, every friend, every child, and every sibling who I killed.

And that is the step I need to take so that I can move on and let go.

A/N -- Woah that was a lot, sorry if it ran along at points, I wanted to build up some kind of suspense, I hope you guys liked that and next chapter will probably be shorter.