Fun fact, my toes are covered in sand because I wore my sneakers to the end-of-year carnival (and last summer I wore them to the sand dunes, yikes). I need to go to the beach or something.

Additionally, I can warn you now this is going to be a short update (possibly very short) because it is the weekend right before finals and I have three exams I need to study for.

***

I want to tell you about my day

I want to laugh with you about yours

But all the days start and end the same.

They all begin and end without you.

~Ranata Suzuki

*****

Several days passed before Tony could bring himself to open that box again.

When he finally got around to it again, Tali was napping on the couch with the French news as her lullaby.

He pulled out the things he had already looked at and carefully stacked them by his feet.

Next in the box was a thick envelope containing more pictures. At first he was confused, not recognizing any of the people in them, but then he realized that the one little girl was Ziva, and the other must've been her sister, and the smiling woman with them must've been their mother. 

He flipped through them slowly, not knowing what to feel.

These were Ziva's memories. This was her childhood. Her family. Her father, her mother, her sister, her brother. Before everything went to hell.

He stopped at a snapshot of Ziva and Talia laughing hysterically. They had a conspiratorial look about them, and he wanted so badly to ask Ziva what had been so funny.

The next photo showed Ziva with Ari, arms casually slung over each other's shoulders. Looking at their smiling faces, he couldn't imagine how Eli could've set his son against his daughter, how Ziva could've managed to kill Ari. He couldn't imagine how she'd managed to live with herself.

For the first time, he started to see it the way she had. Not the quite the same way; he didn't hate her for her choices, and he understood that she had to do what she had to do, but he understood how this all must've weighed down on her.

All the choices that were made to look like choices but weren't choices at all. 

She hadn't chosen this life.

She hadn't wanted this life.

But you have to find a way to live with your choices, and some part of him would always resent that she couldn't.

He finished leafing through the pictures, giving most of his attention to the ones featuring only Ziva.

Another folded sheet of paper had been tucked under the envelope, and he examined that next.

Her handwriting filled the page, soothingly familiar, like slipping into your bed at the end of a long day.

It was dated about a month before the news.

'Some days I struggle with my choices. You would not understand, but I know you would try to pretend you do. That's one of the things I miss most about you.

'Some days I think that if you were to show up on my doorstep again, spinning tales of a better life, weaving promises of what it could be, I would give in. Other days I am not so sure. I am not sure that I deserve... But still, it would be nice to pretend for a while.'

He remembered that last night they spent in the bullpen together, that moment Ziva said she didn't believe in happily ever afters. Even then, she hadn't seen a happy ending in her future.

The next piece of paper was dated a few days after the last one, but her handwriting was messier, like she had written it in a rush, like she was nervous or anxious.

'Tali is my world now. And I am hers. I think this will soon be changing, and not in a good way. I need to know that she will be safe. No one can make any promises to me, nor would I believe them if they did. I just need to know that she will be safe, and that is why if anything happens to me, she is going straight to you. You have always had my back. 

'She already knows who you are. I show her your picture often. Maybe I hoped that someday she will meet you, under happier circumstances. I doubt this. But I want her to know you, and I want her to love you like I do. Tony, you are so loved.'

He remembered when she whispered those five words to him at the airport, how even though her words were meant as a comfort, they were like a thousand tiny bullets to his heart. They had never used the L-word, even like that, and instead of elating him it had only killed him.

You can't just confess your feelings for someone and then walk away, walk out of their life.

'I know it was not easy to walk away. I know it went against everything you believe in to walk away and get on that plane, and I am so sorry for making you do it. But I think we both know it would have been worse if I had let you stay.'

He hated himself everyday for leaving her. If he could live that last night over, he would have stayed. Nothing she could have said or done would've ever convinced him to leave her.

He hated himself for not fighting it.

He hated himself and he hated what his life had come to.

Weeping over a crinkled piece of paper in a musty hotel room.

*****

A tad melodramatic. Also, if you want to torture yourself, I just decided to include this depressing YouTube video up at the top.

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