The Soldier

yellow sunflowers on a graveyard

The framed picture was staring at her judgingly. Closed coffin. Tessa doubted they had anything to put into it. No sane soldier would risk their life to recover a body and Adam was holding her back at that time. Doubtlessly she would have tried otherwise.

Ziva looked a lot younger in that framed picture, it must have been taken way before she joined the army. She smiled in it, not forced or unnaturally happy – just lightly amused. That was Ziva's usual demeanour after all.

So much life and light in the eyes of the girl framed in that picture, standing on a coffin.

Tessa looked away, up into the sky, but the sun was shining happily, making fun of her and her sadness. Shivering, not only because of the coldness.

They were standing on the graveyard the entire time because Ziva wished for a funeral outside. She always loved nature, more than she liked churches and that was why her family organized it like that.

Nobody paid any attention to Tessa, except Ziva's mother, who was trying to talk to her earlier.

It was difficult to look into this woman's eyes, when Ziva's eyes stared right back at her, the same clear, iced blue in them.

She tried to not think about it, focused on understanding the strong accent in which Ziva's mother was speaking to her. She said hello and that she was glad Tessa could make it and that Ziva would have wanted it that way.

Ziva's mother teared up and Tessa was more than happy that Ziva's father came to them, hugging his wife immediately. The painful look in his eyes gave away how much he missed his daughter, but he, just like Tessa tried for Ziva, tried to be strong for Ziva's mother.

Reassuringly patting Tessa's shoulder as if to say 'Don't worry, I got this', he led his wife to the front, where the priest started talking.

Tessa did not understand a lot of what they said at Ziva's funeral, her german was not good enough.

The rest of the funeral was kind of blurry in hindsight.

They asked her to talk about Ziva, but she denied, justifying that decision by blaming the language barrier. There were a lot of people who could have translated her words, but they all seemed to understand that Tessa was not able to talk about Ziva.

What should she say anyway? There were no words to describe what Ziva was to her, it was better to not even try it.

She was her hope, her reason to look forward to her future, her motivation to survive the war and come back to live a happy, fulfilled life as a civilian afterwards.

Ziva was laughter, even in their darkest hours, her saviour so many times. The most trustworthy, caring, funniest and smartest person she met in her life. The sweetest love Tessa ever experienced. Her guardian angel.

And now she was gone forever and there was nothing Tessa could do to save her, to get her back.

Tessa left Ziva's favourite flowers on her grave and even though yellow sunflowers were not exactly choice number one for an occasion like this, she was not the only one leaving a bouquet of them there. There were not that many people at the funeral, but they seemed to actually know Ziva pretty well.

She had a twin brother, Christian, who was trying to talk to Tessa a couple of times.

He wanted to make sure she was okay, that she did not feel left out because she did not know anybody here, but she always repeated that everything was alright and that he should not worry.

Ziva's family wanted her to stay over for dinner or at least some snack, but Tessa politely denied. Christian even offered to bring her to the airport, and after a short discussion in which she tried to explain why she could not accept that offer, he still insisted on doing so. Stubbornness was probably running in their family, Tessa thought, remembering some of the more ridiculous discussions she used to have with Ziva.