“No, it won’t, will it?”Kira said, caving on a sigh.
It hadn’t for Kira and Jin.It wouldn’t for Ziva either.
“You know what the other Houses think of me, right?They call me insane.”
Ziva’s chin lifted as a proud expression settled on her features.“Lowering expectations before you strike.Exactly the sort of tactic I’d expect from my genius seon’yer.”
“Your ability at self-hypnosis is strong,” Kira noted.
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”Kira considered the girl with no small amount of exasperation.“If you become my yer’se, they’ll call you much worse.”
Ziva wasn’t the niece of Roake’s Overlord.She didn’t have a Harlow there to threaten bodily harm to anyone who looked at her wrong.Nor did she have the weight of a House behind her.Kira was the worst person she could have chosen as her seon’yer.Pretty much anyone else would have been better.
“I’m prepared,” Ziva promised.“Besides, I’ll have you.”
“Oh, the misguided confidence of youth.”
Was Kira ever that young and arrogant?
Jin would probably have answered with a resounding yes.He’d point out that she’d been much worse.Brash to the point of stupidity even.
“My sins are coming home to roost,” Kira muttered in human standard as she studied the girl in front of her.
Ziva straightened, standing up as tall as she could and squaring her shoulders the same way a private in the space force might when under inspection.
She didn’t avoid Kira’s eyes, meeting her gaze firmly.
Despite the assurance she was trying to project, Kira could see the flare of uncertainty under Ziva’s façade.The fear of rejection she was trying to hide.Below that was a determination that Kira feared would lead the child to disaster.
“I’m not taking you with me.It’s too dangerous,” Kira warned.
“You said that last time.”
“It was true then; it’s just as true now.”
Kira rubbed her forefinger and thumb together as she considered the girl.
What to do?What to do?
“You really want this?”Kira asked.
One last out.
“I really do.More than anything I ever have.”
“Even if it means you can’t become Joule’s First later on?”Kira tested.
While unlikely, there was a chance that his future House would have a problem with a First who’d taken Kira as a seon’yer.Someone who’d grown up outside a House and among humans.
For the first time, Ziva faltered.
Kira was glad.If she’d answered hastily, Kira would have said no without hesitation.
The training Ziva was convinced she wanted wasn’t to be undertaken lightly.It took commitment and perseverance.Possibly to the point of letting all else go.
Kira had no way of predicting what was to come.If something went wrong, she didn’t want the girl crying to her later that she’d made a mistake.Once Ziva took Kira as her seon’yer, that was it.There was no taking a second one later.
