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High Tide Came & Brought You In

Ziva had known she was getting a sister. 

Well, she was told she would be getting a sibling, one that would arrive so near to her own birthday that they would share the month, but she had been adamant from the beginning that it would be a sister. No brother she had repeated to anyone who might listen after they asked if she was excited for the new baby. 

Ima had tried her best to prepare her for the disappointment of it being a brother, of the things she could still do with them no matter their gender and reminded her that she liked pretty well playing with Ari, who was a brother. Ziva had agreed that she liked Ari, but that was just it: she already had a brother, one that the older he got the less interest they had in each other, and so what the family did not need was yet another boy whose fate would be woven by Mossad, but a sister who she could share her toys and could dance around the kitchen while Ima cooked shabbat dinner and frolic through the olive grove when she was supposed to be picking but was instead eating or entirely ignoring the work. A friend was what Ziva thought she would be getting in a sister. 

Though, she was so small when they first met. 

Even at four, Ziva understood that when her grandparents came to take her to their house for a few days, it was because her sister was coming. She had asked, repeatedly, when she would be there. Every time she garnered a correction, it could be a boy and every time she answered, in a more assured tone than any four year old should have, that it was an achot. Stubbornness had been imparted on Ziva from the moment she landed earthside. 

Her Saba brought her back to the farmhouse on November twenty-fourth, but she informed her grandchild that the baby’s birthday was the twenty-third, eleven days after Ziva’s. 

It was her Ima’s mother. A woman no bigger a fan of Eli David’s than anyone seemed to be, but a compassionate woman who loved her grandchildren and who, Ziva would later come to find out, was a large part of the reason Rivka would finally leave Eli. Saba has kind eyes and a stern face. It was rare for her to raise her voice, though she knew how if she needed and most of Ziva’s memories surrounding her took place in the kitchen. Her long graying hair was always in a braid and Ziva would ask for the same whenever she was around.

So with her curls neatly tucked into a braid a good ways down her back, Ziva tiptoed into the side door off the kitchen of the farmhouse and followed the instructions she was given to be quiet and go directly to her parents room.

“Why is she so small?” Was the very first inquiry four year old Ziva had about the baby, swaddled in a muslin blanket and nestled in Rivka’s arms. 

“How did you know it would be a girl?” Ziva only shrugged in response to her mother’s question. “She is only a day old. She is supposed to be little. You were once this little.” 

“Will she grow?” 

“Yes, she will grow just like you.” 

Ziva leaned over the bed, trying to get a better look at the baby, but her view was limited when she herself was still little. Rivka patted the spot next to her in the bed and Ziva understood the invite to climb up. Without needing a warning, she was careful and slower than she normally would be, always the observant one. 

“She looks just like you did when you were born, ahuvi.” 

“Does she have a name?” 

“Tali.” 

Tali. 

Tali was her little sister and in what would simultaneously seem like eons from that moment and the blink of an eye, that name would come to mean more to Ziva than any four year old could ever imagine.  It would not only be her sister, but her daughter.

But in her mother’s bedroom, sitting on the bed next to her, all Ziva could think about was the disappointing wait for Tali to grow before they could be playmates. The way her mother was exhausted, but enchanted with the baby in her arms and the little girl at her side. Nowhere in sight was Eli himself and later in her life, Ziva would wonder if he was there for any of Tali’s delivery or even her own, but the four year old version of herself innocently wanted their entire family to be together when she met her sister -- a tough lesson that she would not always get what she wanted and most especially if her father was involved.  

“Would you like to hold her, Ziva?” 

A vigorous nod confirmed Ziva’s yes. 

Rivka situated Ziva so that two pillows were propped behind her, sitting her up straight. With a free hand, the mother positioned her daughter’s arms. A warning about keeping her elbow directly under the baby’s head was given more than once. Tali did not make a peep as she was positioned into Ziva’s waiting hands. Rivka remained a steady presence under the baby’s head, but was careful not to give her purpose away so that it made her “big” girl feel like she was doing it all on her own. 

“You must promise me something, Ziva.” 

Dark brown eyes peered up at Rivka intently. 

“You must promise me that you will watch over your sister. You will help take care of her.” 

Concern crinkled on Ziva’s eyebrows, as if such an ask was much too much for her four year old brain. 

“She will love you and she will look up to you. You will need to be there for her and if I cannot be there for either of you, you will be there for each other.” 

It was massive pressure to put on a child who would not understand the commitment until many years later, but Rivka had promised herself she would waste no time instilling the responsibility in her daughter. Life was precious and in their situation, with Eli David nearing the helm of an organization whose reputation was less than ideal, Rivka lived by the belief that anything could happen at any time. Lord willing, she would never have to enact the promise Ziva was making, but she would be remiss in her role as a mother if she did not start preparations from the  beginning. She loved both of her daughters too much to pretend that the inherent risks constantly floating around could not become very real. 

One day Ziva would, unfortunately, understand. 

“Do you promise me, Ziva?” 

Wide eyes and an unsure gaze. 

“Do you, Ziva?” 

Finally understanding that her mother was serious, her tone said nothing else, Ziva answered aloud. “Yes.”

Currents Swept You Out Again

An empty wood casket was the last way that Tali would ever be remembered by those who knew her. Not even a single piece of her being was actually in casket and yet the last thing associated with her would be that: a stupid fucking empty box out on a pedestal to make everyone else feel like they had closure. 

Tali had no closure. Why should everyone else be given something that she could not? 

The seams on the neck of Ziva’s dress are driving her nuts. She wants to pull the entire thing off and burn it, right along with the empty box she’ll be forced to watch be placed in the ground. Another moment that was for anyone but the girl they were supposed to be remembering. 

If Tali had been there, she would announce to anyone listening that this was dumb, that she disapproved of the traditions and the coddling of the people who sat in the synagogue that hadn’t felt her loss so immediately. She would wonder why she needed to do anything for anyone else in the wake of her death. For once, could the customs of their religion not be forgotten long enough to honor someone how they would have wanted? She would have hated the sound of weeping that came from some family member who had no right to be so upset when Ziva and her father sat stone faced in the first row, coldly avoiding those who sat behind them and each other. Tali would have hated the eulogy Eli articulated in such a way that it could have been about anyone, not the daughter he just lost in a manner so horrible only hushed whispers were ever spoken of the tragedy. She would have hated every waking minute of it and in turn, Ziva only despised it more. 

The hem of her dress was an inch too long and every time it ruffled against her knees, she considered the liveliness that would be brought to the entire thing if she ripped it off then and there. That would have been the only thing Tali liked about the whole ordeal. 

Her sweet Tali. 

The same baby who her mother had implored her to watch after, to protect, to take care of when there was no one else to do so. And she had failed. Miserably failed and in a way that was so irreversible it was a wonder that Ziva had even gotten out of bed that morning. 

Rivka was not there to scold her, to cast the shadows of her dark eyes on her about her failure, but somewhere she was doing just that. Ziva did not need to see it in front of her to feel like she deserved the wrath that was being cast upon her. Left alone with Eli was her punishment. Her mother used to tell her “You are the only one who can seem to handle him,” unfortunate foreshadowing for the day she would sit next to him and the loneliness that had driven Rivka away from him all those years ago, would not be Ziva’s burden to bear. She did not wish to handle him; she barely wanted to be in the same room as him. 

When he called it was like their third cousin once removed by marriage had died. His soulless delivery of the news was the worst kind of detachment. 

“There was nothing anyone could have done.”

Someone could have done something. Eli could have given a shit. 

The call was brief. Too brief to deliver news that left Ziva reeling. But that was Eli: to the point, matter-of-fact, even if the facts were devastating. She had only the chance to get one word out. 

“How?” 

He told her. 

There would be nothing left of her. The first thing Ziva could comprehend was that it was finite.

Not finite in the way death just is. There is no reversal for that, no matter how much your heart aches for it. It was finite in that she would never see her again. The image of her from the last time they were together was all that she had left. The hand-me-down jeans from Ziva she wore, that looked better on her anyway; that was why Ziva had parted with them, not because they didn’t fit, but they better suited her sister. The stupid blue t-shirt that was a constant argument about who it actually belonged to. Barefoot in the olive grove. She would never look different than she did on that day. 

Ageless. 

Lifeless. 

Forever, Tali would be her sixteen year old sister. Never her seventeen year old one or her eighteen year old. Infinitely sixteen and wishing for a future bigger than that of the one Ziva had been born into. Tali would never have been Mossad, Eli would never win that battle with her. She was as defiant as they came and she became more defiant when their father thought he could guilt her into the ‘family business.’ “You already have Ziva, you do not get to have me, too.” Sense of duty was not something that Ziva and Tali shared. Where Ziva could kill a man with only a single slice of a knife, Tali would have used that knife to cut all ties with her father the first moment she possibly could. Ziva would wield the knife at her father’s side, outranking any boy and Tali would wish every day that the world would have been cruel enough to take Eli and not their mother. 

The world was cruel, just not in the way Tali had once wished it would be.

The casket, devoid of anything but air and sadness, would be carted off to the cemetery, placed in the ground next to their mother. A headstone would be erected from something expensive but tasteful. Ziva did not know what it would say; she was not consulted. She wanted to believe that Eli had not wanted to burden her with the responsibility of helping in such a task, but she knew better. He simply did not think it an important enough undertaking to ask her opinion. The only physical reminder that would be left of her in this world and Eli deemed it an item on a check list, that once completed meant he could go back to his life and pretend as if nothing happened.  

Sometimes Ziva hated him. 

Just not as much as whatever helpless soul killed her sister. A person to finally surpass her own father on the list of evil men who ruined parts of her life. 

When silence enveloped the synagogue and the final footsteps exited, Ziva was left alone, having refused to move. She needed Eli to leave, she needed his presence beside her to vanish. He was as suffocating as a snake wrapped around her neck -- he expected her to be as emotionless as he was, to represent the training of Mossad, before she represented the sorrowful sister who lost her best friend in the entire world. It was tyrannical and Tali had been right, he earned the cruelty she wished upon him. 

Her own footsteps echoed in the building, throughout the tall ceilings and the marble floors, like a reminder that she was being watched at all times. If that had been something she believed in. At that moment, it was. 

Tali was there. God, she hoped she was there, or her efforts would be futile. 

Except she had to do it. 

When Ziva ran a hand over the edge of the wooden box, smoothed to perfection by someone’s craftsmanship. Craftsmanship she would later know by someone who was a filler of some of the gaps she was being left with. 

A prayer, in Hebrew, slipped from her lips. Head bowed toward the emptiness, but the words were ones her mother would have screamed in agony had she been there to lose her daughter. That was the only virtuous part of the entire thing: Rivka, who would have been broken by the devastating loss, did not have to see it. Something about that gave Ziva even the smallest bit of peace. Though she would have wanted her there over Eli, Rivka was far less worthy of the heart break. 

“Tali,” Her lips quivered. 

That was her little sister. The one she loved so fiercely even she did not recognize herself sometimes. 

She would no longer need protection. The roles would be reversed and somehow, it had become Tali’s job to watch over Ziva.

They would never go see another movie together. Tali would never over dramatically tell a story of a fight she had with their father that ended the same way it always did: Eli conceding that Tali was a lost cause. They would never ride around in Ziva’s Land Rover, a gift of sorts for being the “easy” child and play the music that was deemed immodest for girls their age, but was what Tali swore they were listening to in America. A place she’d never see, no matter how many times she’d urged Ziva to go with her the moment they could and practically begged for the freedom of another country. When a piece of clothing from Ziva’s closet went missing, Tali would no longer be the culprit. Not a day had gone by since she was born that Ziva did not think of Tali. That much would not change. The only thing that wouldn’t. 

The casket, if she could call it that, was cool to the touch. 

“It is not fair,” She muttered to the pine, hoping wherever she was, Tali could also hear. “I do not want to live without you.”

Why could it not have been her? Ziva was already a target of Mossad’s enemies. She had men and women fearing her, while also hoping to cause her demise. She was the one set up for this kind of death, not her innocent little sister. 

The tears burned her eyes. 

She had not cried yet. 

It felt like betrayal. Sadness did not. Mourning did not. But allowing the tears to track down her cheeks, to burn her eyes, to stain the neckline of the same black dress she had worn at her mother’s funeral, felt like she was giving into something Tali would have ruined her for. Do not be so sad over me, you do that and it will consume you. Someone must keep Abba in line. Someone must visit America. Someone must do more in this silly little life than grieve. You have to do that for us, Achot. Do it for me.

The sound of her own sobs was her reply to the echoing footsteps and the creaking pews and the delirious sunlight, on a day when there should have been storm clouds coating the sky, streaming through skylights. Her angry sobs were to tell all of that that it was not a sign to move on, it was a fuck you. 

And fuck them right back. 

Ziva’s presence was not required for the burial. Expected, maybe, but they could certainly dumb an empty wood box into the ground without her. In fact, she much rather they did anyway. With a last sweep of a delicate index finger over the wood, she was done pretending anyway that the thing held any meaning at all. 

So instead of walking outside to meet a crowd, waiting for the signal to adjourn their mournful meetings and move to a different spot to start them once again, she snuck out. 

She knew the synagogue like the back of her hand. Where every back door and side door existed, both because she had been a child within the walls and there was so much to discover when she and her sister would play, but also because Eli had long since taught them, all of his children, Ari included, where they could go if they urgently needed to escape. Many factors played a role in that unfortunate knowledge, the most key one being Eli David’s enemies and where they would choose to find him; worship was a vulnerable place for a man like him to be. A side door took her directly outside and only a few feet from her car, parked in a spot subconsciously easy to get to. Somewhere in her mind, the plan had been hatched long before it was executed. 

Someday when the dust settled and the grass had grown again and all the physical signs of a fresh burial had vanished into the earth, Ziva would come back. She would meet with Tali in private, no onlookers, no expectations of how she should behave in the wake of gut wrenching grief. She would show up and not with flowers because Tali would have scoffed at the effort. She would sit with her, maybe silently, maybe spilling everything she’d ever thought. But she would not, could not, do that today. 

The ignition started, growling to life and she was done with the hellish day that was so ingrained in her already, it would be a wonder if she ever recovered from it. The only day worse was the one when she received the news.

Struggled Through the Night With Someone New

The striped shirt… really? Unfortunately in fashion for men who didn’t feel like giving up their frat boy lifestyle in the wake of being a full blown adult with a career. 

A full grown adult, put on her tail, like he could possibly follow a Mossad officer without being noticed in the first few seconds of his efforts. 

She had told him as much, when she made him, when she knew what he was doing and he tried his hardest to pretend as if she was utterly wrong in her observations, but she wasn’t and he knew and the slightest blush that creeped up his cheeks made it obvious that she won the argument. It was the same slight blush that Ziva had watched as she called him out for whatever strange phone sex ritual he was having in the middle of the work day. She had wondered if he always went around so flushed or if he was just that frequently embarrassing himself. 

The latter, possibly. 

Or she had that effect on men. That usually worked in her favor and was put to work by her father. Ziva sometimes wondered if she was good at her job or if her anatomical makeup just made her the right person to send on certain missions. She might not ever know the real answer. 

Ziva David knew better than to divulge to a man in an ugly striped shirt the secrets of her life that she kept close to the vest, tucked away in pockets and often forgotten if she could help it. 

But those green eyes. The ones that tried desperately to stare harshly past her, but that instead looked directly at her and somehow were begging to know more about her, anything about her. He wanted to be staunch, to be the kind of agent that his boss, Gibbs, would want him to be, and yet he could not have been easier to look past. All of his defenses were down and no matter how hard he grappled to pull them back up, there was no use. 

Not that Ziva was any better. 

“You know you shouldn’t feel bad. I was trained by the best,” It was a smartass comment and made only to deflect from whatever was bubbling deep under her surface. A true statement, but it was not for truth’s sake, it was for her sake. 

“You know that’s what I like about Mossad,” He shot back. 

“Our training?” 

“Modesty,” He spat, slipping easily out into the rain and toward the trash can outside of the hotel steps. 

For a moment it was raining hard enough and he was far enough ahead of her that it started to blur. The lines between where the man, who was practically a stranger, started and ended. What his next move would be could have been camouflaged by heavy drops falling from the sky. If it was Ziva, she’d have used it as a tactic. She’d have used it as a way to disappear into the night and come back around when her target least expected it. Tony did none of those things. Instead, he listened intently, while playing coy to her observation that one more slice of pizza remained in the box he had been holding.

Naturally, he offered it to her and naturally , she took it. 

“Toda,” Her thank you was over-enunciated. 

“Prego,” His was haughty. 

Tony stared out at the rain, but he sensed her eyes on him and she knew he did, so they didn’t linger any longer than they needed to once again take him in. 

He was older than her, ten years to be exact; she’d looked at his personnel file. Though he looked younger. Seemed younger? Both things could have been true. But those green eyes drew her in. The way his nose sloped perfectly away from his face and suited him. The very smallest of crow’s feet etched into the corners of his eyes and Ziva knew it was not age that had caused them, it was the way his eyes squinted when he laughed and she imagined the constant laughing at his own jokes were a major cause. He had inches on her in height and it suddenly dawned on her the way her chin tilted upward in order to make eye contact. 

She was certainly something more than taken with him. 

While she was on a mission, on an assignment that meant her half-brother’s life hung in the balance, Ziva knew this team she was infiltrating had lost one of their own. What she wanted for her brother, what she hoped she could preserve for him before Gibbs did as he wanted, did not matter to them at all because the life he had taken was the one they all cared about. It was fair. It was entirely fair of them. But revenge did little for the soul in the long run. 

Is that why the next words out of her mouth fell too easily? A warning for Tony, who did as he was told by Gibbs, who was thirsty for blood. 

Or was it simply because she inspected Tony’s jawline and his burgeoning wrinkles and those green eyes and could not help herself?

“I lost my little sister, Tali, in a Homass suicide bombing. She was sixteen and the best of us.”

Ziva did not make it a habit to share the story of her sister with men who could only properly be deemed as perfect strangers. And yet. 

“Tali had compassion.” 

A statement about something Ziva struggled to find, though she was searching for it every time she looked at Tony, who even through trying to hide it in the oddest ways, was mourning the death of someone her family had killed. Her brother had killed. 

The lines swiftly blurred, like Tony in the rain, between what was too much and what was not enough. Ziva found herself wanting this man to know she knew, to know that she understood better than anyone ever could what it meant to look for answers in all the incorrect ways when it felt like the world had wronged them. She wanted him to look at her like a human, not like a robot of Eli David’s army. 

The last part was not hard. 

It was not a glance, but the authenticity in his murmured “I’m sorry.” 

“After Tali’s death I was like Gibbs. All I wanted was revenge.” 

Ziva had sought the names and the connections and the answers to her sister’s death. Days and weeks went by where sleep was so limited it was hard for her to remember her own name, but she had always remembered Tali’s. When her eyes burned from tears of rage at dead ends, when nobody would talk and there was nobody to talk to, when it all crumbled and it stood to reason there was no end to her grieving other than to grieve, Ziva never once forgot who it was all for. That was the reason she gave up in the end: Tali would not have wanted her to lose her own life to search for the people that took hers. That was the compassion Ziva had only just spoken of. 

“Is that why you joined Mossad?” A genuine question from the Italian agent. 

“I was Mossad long before Tali’s death,” If only he could understand the true depth. “Old…” 

“Family tradition?” 

“Israeli sense of duty,” Except family tradition was far more correct, but Ziva would not his assumptions be right, even if they were.

“So come on. Who recruited you? Father? Uncle? Brother? Boyfriend?”

“Aunt? Sister? Lesbian lover?” 

Tony chuckled. “You’re good. You almost got me off the question,” His face moves centimeters closer to her and she can smell his cologne as clear as day. Musky, but expensive. Manly, but not in the macho way she would have expected. “Almost.” 

“I volunteered,” A lie. A desperate lie. But it was suddenly important to Ziva that this man not know the truth. Not know that her father had groomed her for so many years, it would have been difficult to choose any other life. She was not Tali in that way, not defiant to the parent they had been left with. She did not need Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS ‘Very’ Special Agent, to look at her like daddy’s little girl who just so happened to be trained to kill him with a paperclip if that was the only weapon in her grasp. It was not his business. 

Even if she wanted to be his business. 

That version of herself that shoved her empty coffee cup into his hands, did not know what was to come and that was for the best. But when she recalled the conversation had on the rainy steps of the hotel she was staying at, Ziva would remember the way he looked, the way he smelled, the way he pushed her buttons so exactly it was ridiculous that someone she’d known for mere hours could take her hard outer shell, put it under a microscope and figure out the best way to barge between it and all the things about herself she kept hidden. 

She would remember how young they both were. How naive they would both end up being about feelings that would blow up in their faces less than a year after that conversation. 

But she would remember that she told him about her little sister, who two years after her death, was not a topic open for conversation with anyone else. She had shared with him the person who in the most roundabout way would change both of their lives years apart and shred to pieces anything they thought they learned about each other during a conversation had over a slice of pizza and weak espresso.

I Could Go On and On, On and On

“Yep, well I think the sun is officially up, so let me be the first to wish you a happy thanksgiving,” Tony's voice was too cheerful for the tail end of a skateout that had started far too early. “Gobble, gobble.” 

Ziva glared at him. 

“How about the boss playing the big host this year? Turkey legs by the fire.” 

“Shut up!” Ziva screeched, fed up with her coworker in the driver’s seat next to her. “I am sick of you sitting in this car being nice to me.” 

“My deepest apologies,” Tony scoffed. 

“You are only being nice because you want me to tell you what you want to know.” 

“Tell me and I’ll stop being nice.” 

Except he wouldn’t stop being nice. Post-elevator Tony did not magically stop being nice to Ziva anymore. It was like a reflex he could no longer control; as easy as it was for him to shoot off endless jokes, it was just as easy for him to soften around her. It was hard to tell if it really was not appreciated or if it was Ziva’s difficulty with letting her walls down. The latter seemed likely. 

“There is nothing to tell.” 

Tony sighed. “Fine, I’ll make it up.” 

This was just as much about niceties, as it was about understanding the uncontainable feelings Ziva was having about the opera, of all things. While she stored her anger to be unleashed against those who deserved it, a tactical training tool from her days at Mossad, she did not simply explode over trivial things like the opera. There was more to the story that she was willing to share and Tony wanted, no, needed to understand. Even if understanding might have meant helping her to something that would involve a plus one that was not him. 

“He’s a veterinarian!”

“Stop raising your voice.” 

“If I can’t be nice, I might as well be loud. Does he make you laugh?” 

What a loaded question from a man pretending that he was unbothered by even the imaginary thought of another man in his partner’s life. 

Ziva laughed and Tony hoped that was a sound reserved for him and not the made up man he was growing jealous of. “You are such a child. And then you wonder why I cannot talk to you.” 

A way to place the blame on someone else rather than her own closed off heart. Ziva could see past the facade. Tony was not fooling her. No matter how much he cared -- she understood that his aptitude for her feelings had grown immensely since the “earth moved” -- Ziva knew that he had to know for his sake. For the part of him that couldn’t ignore how everything had changed. She was doing the same. Toying with him to throw him off the scent because as soon as he knew of the real reasons behind her frustrations, another brick from the fort around her feelings would crumble. 

“So he’s a hilarious veterinarian who likes the opera.” 

“Why do you care? I thought we were past caring about these things?” She knew they weren’t. In fact, they both cared more. 

“Past them?” Tony bushed it off as if he wasn’t hurt by the questions; he was. “Look, I don't care who the guy is. I just thought we were, you know, telling each other things about things. The things that… you know, matter.” 

They’d sat in the break room, examining photos from Tony’s childhood and he had opened up more than he cared to and far more than he ever had with anyone else. Nobody had seen the photo of him at eight years old, standing in front of the run down movie theater with his mother but Ziva. Nobody had ever commented on how beautiful his mother was until Ziva pointed it out. Tony had never admitted to his avoidance of the topic of mothers, until he was sat next to a woman whose mother had also gone too soon. There’d be yet another bad taste in his mouth about mothers years later and the way they leave their children, voluntarily or not, but all that Tony knew, sitting in the car with Ziva, was that he had sort of bared his soul to her and he had been under the impression that meant equal things to both of them.

“Tony,” Ziva’s voice no longer carried annoyance, but instead shifted toward serious. “There is no funny veterinarian. There is no one actually,” A pause. “Only Tali.” 

“You sister?” Tony kept his voice even, his body language subtle. 

“Mh-hmm. I think about her every day, but this week is… this week is the most difficult,” Ziva no longer looked at Tony. Instead her eyes stared straight out of the windshield because if she looked at him, she would shut her mouth for good on the topic.

“It’s when you lost her?” 

A flash of the funeral. Of the itchy black dress and the empty casket. The sad memories were easier, somehow. It was the happy ones, the ones she’d never get to have again that hurt more. 

“It is her birthday. Tomorrow, actually.” 

Tony had never realized how close together Ziva and Tali’s birthdays were. She had never before mentioned the important date, but she’d also never been caught in a rage about tickets to the opera in the bullpen. There was a first for everything, even after knowing someone for seven years.

“Tali used to sing Puccini and even my father’s eyes would get filled with tears. You know, her dream was to be on stage. So every year on her birthday, I go to the opera in honor of her. But this year, this year was…” 

“It sold out.” 

“Yes,” Ziva sighed. “And I know it sounds really… silly, but I feel like I am… like I am letting her down, and… the love of a sibling is… well, I am lucky, lucky to have known it,” The incoherent sentence somehow, when pieced together, made sense to Tony or the sentiment at least did.

She had never said that to anyone. She was the doting big sister living up to a promise she’d made at four years old. She played the mourning sister at her funeral. She played the fool when Mossad believed the report about what happened to Ari in Gibbs’ basement. She mentioned the eternally sixteen year old to Tony one other time, on those rainy steps over greasy pizza. But gratitude toward ever having had her sister was not something Ziva had shared, not even with herself. 

It was okay that she had deep wounds over her sister and it was okay if the healing of them was gradual, stagnant even sometimes. Tony sat at her side, listening supportively, and made her grasp that her reaction was warranted. Tali deserved her emotional outbursts and her tributes to her and she deserved for Ziva to speak about her with someone who understood loss. 

A soft hand landed comfortingly on her shoulder. 

It was not a judgemental hand. It was not one that was for show because it seemed like the thing she needed in that moment. It was sympathetic. It was compassionate. It was meant to mean more coming from him and it did. 

So it should have been no surprise when Tony stopped her in the bullpen, dressed for Thanksgiving dinner at Gibbs’, and announced that he had something for her. It never should have surprised her that when she opened up to him, he would take that information, twist in the way only his brain could and he would put it back out into the universe as a gift for the woman he must have loved in some way because such a gesture was not just for anyone. 

“Listen, I told the boss you were gonna be a little late.” 

“C’mon Tony. You have seen me drive. I am never late.” 

“Did you know that McGee installed a crazy surround sound system in here?” Tony started. “I came in one night and he was playing video games, wearing a cape.”

What seemed like a dig at McGee was quickly drowned out by a familiar sound playing through that very surround sound system Tony had mentioned. Puccini’s O Mio Babbino Caro. 

The prickle of goosebumps ran down Ziva’s arms and legs. The familiar sting of tears settling in the corners of her eyes could not be helped. The song was engrained in her being, one that she would know until the end of her days and one that she thought she had missed the opportunity to hear on the day she wished to hear nothing else. 

“I know it’s not the same, but maybe if you closed your eyes it would be like you were at the opera.” 

Ziva had no words, as he stood in front of her desk confessing something she could not fully grasp hidden in words that were saying one thing, while meaning something entirely different. 

“And maybe even like Tali’s there with you.” 

“Thank you,” Was all Ziva could manage to muster. 

But it should, likewise, have never been a surprise that a year later, after Tony had to unwillingly leave Ziva on the tarmac in Tel Aviv, that she would find herself in a predicament she seemingly couldn’t have predicted - rocket science was not a required skill set to see clear as day how Ziva, and Tony unknowingly, ended up bonded together for life. 

Ziva sat basking in the music playing from the speakers. It was not the opera, it was not sitting in cushioned seats surrounded by strangers. It was not the experience she simultaneously looked forward to and dreaded every year. But a man had stepped up for her in every way he imaginably could and it was as much as anyone had ever done for her. That meant something. 

They meant something. 

It was always Tony for her. It was always Ziva for him. It was always supposed to be their Tali who honored the one Ziva scarcely opened up about.

In Losing Grips On Sinking Ships

The very thing that people wished for, prayed for, was the thing that Ziva hoped never to stare back at her. 

Perhaps not never. Perhaps when the time was right, when the person was right, when her mind was right. Maybe then she would have found herself joyous and excitable. But that was not the case. Not even close. So far from it, the immediate thoughts were too dark to share. Despair was to be kept to herself.

Though she was doing that anyway. That much she had promised herself. Her mistake. Her problem. Hers to deal with and hers alone. 

On the other side of the world was a man who would have dropped everything, would have shoved it in a storage locker, sold his possessions and rearranged all he had come to know to be by her side. He was willing to do that once. When his hands roamed her body and when their lips met in ardent need for each other. He had done it then. He had promised that whatever was left in DC was no longer what mattered and if she would have let him, he’d have been in the farmhouse with her since then. And if she allowed herself to prey on the happiness he promised, she would have gone back to DC with him to sit at a desk across from him and wonder why she let herself back into a life she’d deemed no longer serving her.  

All that giving up and for what? To prove to each other they meant it? Whatever the hell it was. 

It was lingering. That was what it was doing. 

It lingered in the walls. It lingered in the sheets even after so many washes. It lingered in every room of the house where she could not turn anywhere without a flash of a scene she so desperately wanted to forget. 

It did not linger more fervently anywhere but inside of her. 

If she loved someone as much as she loved him , then why was it such a betrayal of their love to be left with part of him forever?

Ziva never admitted it. She never one time uttered those words aloud. There were many other ways that Tony could have heard it and she was most certain that he did. But to let those three syllables stream from her consciousness to the lips that had been on every inch of Tony’s body was a thing she refused. There were moments when her restraint didn’t feel worth it, just let it slip and be rid of the burden. Then her mouth would part and she would think better of the rash decision to let eight years of building walls crumble to the ground in heaps over three stupid little words. She would never allow him to stay. She would never contemplate what life looked like with him after he shuffled backward on a tarmac he’d been convinced he’d never see when he let those words escape. She had built those walls and topped them with barbed wire for good measure and they would stay that way. 

And so life played its everlasting game of giving someone exactly what they needed even when it seemed like the thing that would ruin it all forever. 

The box was an obnoxiously taunting bright pink and among the neutrals of the master bathroom in the farmhouse; it took no great lengths to blend in. The light over the mirror illuminated it, just as it illuminated Ziva’s dark circles. The way her sunken cheeks showed just how hard life had been since she let half of her heart fly around the world by himself. Her dirty hair, she didn’t remember the last she washed, sat in a pile atop her head, curls barely secured by a hair tie. She looked like hell and she felt not a smidge better. 

Nausea settled in the base of her stomach, acidic and threatening. It was indecipherable whether that was the same kind that had led to the purchase of the box many miles away from her own home to conceal her identity or whether the box itself was the cause. Either way, it would end only one way. 

She had pictured this before. What it would be like to excitedly look at the results and she always wondered what her reaction would have been, in the right situation. Ziva was not a jump for joy, screech and holler kind of girl. Far from it, actually. But she was also not a crier. She did not blur her happiness with tears. She did not know what she would have done and who she would have done it with. For the briefest of moments, she’d pictured the way the little plastic stick would fit in between her index finger and thumb as she and Ray stared at the results. That was a very fleeting moment and the thought only made the nausea bubble. Horrible, horrendous, despicable timing would always be better than having the child of a murderer. 

Standing alone in a bathroom aching for anything else to be true was better. 

That was the reminder she needed because if nothing else seemed worse than Ziva had to surmise all the ways she would ever survive. 

Two stupid fucking pink lines were given the permission to change the trajectory of everything. They were a centimeter big and held a person’s destiny like it was nothing. How dare someone offer them that power. 

How dare she offer them that power. 

Her hands trembled as she dug a nail under the adhesive that closed two edges of the box. A steadier hand would have been more precise, but Ziva’s hands were as unsteady as her constitution and so instead she struggled to wrangle free a plastic wrapped stick. She wanted that to be a sign that she should stop right there, shove them under the sink and forget about them. Except, the actuality was that was the exact reason she needed to know for certain. She would never steady otherwise. 

She honestly may never steady anyway. 

Ziva wondered if she should take both tests at once, double her chance of emptying her regrets into the toilet when she saw the answer she was expecting. Despite her own thoughts, she only took one. One was enough.

It was funny though. Once sat on the counter, Ziva could do little but stare at it. Her eyes would have had to have been removed for her to stop staring at the little window where the lines would appear. It was like the actual action of being brave enough to put the stick between her legs, the very place she’d gotten herself into such life changing trouble in the first place, was scarier than watching the answer slowly fill in. 

So when it happened faster than the package said it would, Ziva’s eyes did not move. When she forgot to blink, they burned. 

Rage and terror dissipated. 

For a moment, Ziva thought she was numb. Thought the loss of feelings was what she was feeling. 

So when relief flooded her veins and made a deep exhale escape past her pursed lips, she realized the weight of what she had been carrying around. It would never equate to the weight of what she had confirmed she was carrying, but it had been heavy on her mind and body. The not knowing had somehow been worse than knowing and that was never how Ziva expected it to play out. If she had, she would not have waited weeks longer than she should have. 

Two bright red lines stared up at her, like the eyes of a brown eyed baby who would be in her arms sooner than even Ziva realized. 

The last time there had been a baby in the farmhouse was Tali. Sweet, precious, innocent Tali that had been born into turmoil neither she nor her sister could fully grasp. But her cries had filled the hallways. Her feet had pattered on the floor as Ziva and her Ima had coaxed the ambling eleven month old to her first steps. Her first word, rightfully, Ima, echoed still in the kitchen where she had said it. Those same milestones, those same moments, were going to be repeated. 

Ziva was pregnant. 

Pregnant with Anthony DiNozzo’s child. 

Of all the times for it to happen. 

In their infinite and naive wisdom, there were numerous other times that it could have happened, should have happened. Countless times one summer alone they were not nearly as careful as two co-workers should have been, but beyond that. In a Paris hotel room where, like a bad movie trope, but one Tony loved, there were two people and only one bed. In moments of weakness where one or the other of them needed comforting and they turned to a person who they couldn’t admit their feelings for unless it was in rumbled bed sheets. It was actually ridiculous that it hadn’t happened sooner. 

And if there was a reason for the timing, Ziva David hadn’t a single clue what it was. 

But something told her that the last baby to have been in the home she inhabited, now alone, had something to do with the next set of pitter pattering little feet that would march through the halls and steal the heart that Ziva tried to keep under lock and key.

Your Smile, My Ghost, I Fell To My Knees

The daylight just barely started to crack through the clouds. There was a storm on the horizon with the blistering humidity in the air. 

The rain was very much needed. Something, anything at all to clear the air even if just for a few minutes. 

Every year it seemed that summer started earlier in Tel Aviv. The sun shone stronger and the time to be outside grew shorter and shorter as so little of the day was bearable. Perhaps, Ziva had grown accustomed to the heat during her time in DC. Maybe it was just her that felt like she was suffocated by the outdoors these days. Conceivably, it could have just as simply been that being eight and a half months pregnant was so uncomfortable there was no deciphering the very thing that made it just a centimeter less tolerable. 

While the heat was of no help, Ziva was certain that her lack of sleep was the thing that had driven her from her bed earlier than the birds. 

There was no sleeping, not anymore and not when the world was quiet. A few sporadic hours, sometimes a nap in the middle of the day that Ziva desperately wanted to fight for her ego’s sake, but she was so delirious that a battle wasn’t worth it. Outside it would be dark and inside the farmhouse, small feet were lodged in her ribs, a tiny body rolled in somersaults and backflips as Ziva flip flopped in every possible position hoping for the relief of sleep. It didn’t come, not for weeks now. Not since the baby had realized its own power and used it demandingly against their mother. 

It did not bode well for the moment she’d no longer inhabit Ziva’s body. 

She. 

Her daughter. 

Well, their daughter if she included him in the equation. Though, keeping their baby a secret from him seemed the very opposite of including him. A burden she would bear, mostly, alone. 

The headstones in the cemetery were all relatively well cared for. So similar in size and shape, as traditions dictated, anyone who did not know where they were going would be lost in an instant. Unfortunately, for Ziva, her feet could carry her to the very spot she wanted to go with her eyes closed. She’d worn a path in the dirt coming so often since her life was turned upside down. 

Upside down was the stubborn child in her womb, flipped again the wrong way the last time the midwife checked on her. If Ziva found herself one more time laid on the floor with raised hips and propped feet or squatting alone in the living room, she would be tempted to pull her hair out. The least this baby could do was flip themselves ass over teakettle as they were supposed to be. Come hell or the very highest of water, Ziva was having this child quietly in her home and she would cooperate whether she wanted to or not. 

In the distance, thunder rumbled. 

The headstone she needed came into view. The Hebrew etchings of Tali’s name always made her heart sink a little, like maybe that was the day that she would show up and the headstone she knew by heart would no longer exist and it was all a very bad dream. 

“It is going to rain,” Ziva said aloud as she settled onto the ground in front of her sister. 

For a long while, Ziva couldn’t even step foot in the cemetery where Tali and her mother were remembered. She would not say buried because the casket in her sister’s place was empty. It would always be empty. But finally, one day, the distance became too much. If she wanted to ever have another moment with Tali, she would have to find her where her soul rested. 

“Your achayanit would not sleep again. I have to wonder if she ever will,” Ziva sighed. “I fear I will lose my mind more than I already am if I do not get some rest.” 

A quiet moment passed through the air. 

“If I was not so certain that you had a hand in her, I would wonder why she was like this. But you used to keep Ima up all hours of the night and then me when we shared a room. Your namesake will be just alike, I do believe.” 

That is what Ziva had come to discuss. 

“I know you do not agree with it or you at least think it is stupid, but it is the decision I have made. She is too much like you not to. And I know that if,” Ziva shuddered at the thought before speaking it out loud. “Should anything happen to me, you will watch over her. If I cannot be with her, you will be. Whether you would admit to it or not.” 

Two Talis to love. 

“I worried for a while what Tony would think. Of naming his child after my sister, after someone that mattered more to me than him, but why would he care? He does not know and someday if he does, her name is not going to be the thing he wonders about the most. He will be too livid with me to worry about her name. And rightfully so.” 

Better to talk at the grave of her dead sister than to the father of her child. 

Easier. 

“I do want her to know him. I want her to have an Abba who loves her and I know that he would. He searched the world for me when I could not even tell him how much I loved him, he would turn himself inside out for his daughter. Except that is the problem. I could not tell him… anything… and then I am supposed to ruin everything he has ever known? I think I have already done that, more than once. I cannot do it again, not even for her.” 

A hand rested on the swell of her stomach. 

“Tali, I have no idea what I am doing.” 

Thunder rumbled again, this time significantly closer than before. 

“Maybe I am just being selfish? Am I? God, I cannot tell him. She is my baby. Mine. She will have to be okay with that and so will I. My life is the one revolving around her now. I never thought I would say that, I never thought I would do that. I bought her a bassinet, one so that she can be at my bedside. All I could think about was how close I was going to want her to me. That would never have occurred to me a few months ago when you sent me my little night owl. I never considered how close I would need her to stay to me and now I do not know what life will look like when she is no longer inside of me.” 

It was nervous ramblings to a block of stone that would not and could not answer, but once they started Ziva found it difficult to stop. Months worth of thoughts that she had quietly kept to herself. 

“I do not think buying her somewhere to sleep makes me a good mother, but it makes me a better one than I was the last time I was here. I could not even look at my own reflection last time because I did not want any part of what was happening.” 

That had been nearly three months earlier. The first day she felt the baby move. When it had become so terrifyingly real and not looking at herself in the mirror was no longer enough for Ziva to ignore her fate. As if, she had not made the choice herself. As if she hadn’t decided by doing nothing else that was going to be a mother. As if pregnancy didn’t have an expiration date and the longer she refused to acknowledge what was happening the sooner she got to that date unprepared, detached, and willfully ignorant of how to be a mother. She did not deserve a pat on the back for buying a bassinet or a box of diapers or for little outfits so tiny it was a wonder her daughter would ever fit into them. She was winning no awards. But she was no longer in a stage of grief for the life she thought she would have when she sent Tony away and was a step, a microstep even, closer to full blown acceptance; a feat they may not be realized until a squirming infant was in her arms. 

“Maybe along with this upside down night owl, you could impart me with some idea of what I am supposed to be doing. Anything at all,” Ziva chuckled to herself at the ridiculousness of her begging, but she was not above it, even if she wished she was. “The last diaper I changed was probably yours. I do not know how to feed her or to bathe her or how to stop her from crying when nothing seems to work. I do not know anything about this and somehow you thought it a funny idea to set me up for failure and to give yourself a niece. God, Tali. Nothing has changed.” 

Everything had changed. 

It was no mystery how a baby was conceived; how this one was conceived was even less of one. But they were not careful many a time before those heartbreaking October nights in the farmhouse. This could have happened to them a few too many times for either of them, as experienced adults, to admit. There was some reason the universe, if Tali controlled the whole thing, was under the impression that needing to be alone, needing to do this alone, actually meant being alone for nine months only and then with a baby at her side that wouldn’t leave her alone until she was eighteen. 

It was right, the universe. Or she was right, Tali. 

Ziva left alone was a ticking time bomb. A woman who had convinced herself that everything she ever loved was destined for death. She could have convinced herself with minimal effort that… so many things were better than to attempt normalcy. Irreparable things. And when it could no longer be about just her, everything had to shift. 

“Someday I will pay you back for this. The swollen feet and the vomiting and lack of sleep. I do not know how yet, but it will be coming.” 

Tali would be waiting. 

“Ani ohevet otach.” 

From the ground, Ziva picked up a stone. Cool to the touch and smooth on both sides. She placed it atop the grave stone, a tradition far older than she would ever be, that signaled a visitor had been there. More formal than flowers and probably more appreciated by her sister, who would mock blooms that would wilt in the heat less than twenty four hours after they were displayed. 

Ziva stood, but more accurately stumbled to her feet, cursing her own idea to sit on the ground in the first place. The first rain drop fell from the sky and landed on her shoulder. Her eyes couldn’t tear themselves away from the headstone without two more words. 

“Thank you.”

This Love Came Back to Me

If any tortuous agony was worth it, it was childbirth. Or at least, Ziva had deemed it as such. As a woman, who had seen the worst of torture, she had come out the otherside with something more than herself.

It was worth it for the feeling of a squirming, angry to have arrived earthside little personage being placed on Ziva’s chest and the world around her seemingly standing still. It was like finally stepping off the ride that she had been begging to escape for hours and hours. Not a moment of it would have been worth it, if not for the end result: a healthy, opinionated daughter who entered the world on her schedule and much to the dismay of her mother, who was expertly trying to forget the other half of her DNA, on her father’s birthday. 

July twelfth would forever be a bittersweet day. One birthday she celebrated happily and one she tried endlessly to forget; that was the dichotomy of life, especially Ziva’s.  

The summer heat permeated everything. The fan at the end of the bed did little to cut through the humidity and the glistening sweat on Ziva’s forehead was a reminder that it would only get worse before they eased into fall and it would become at least bearable. For now, she would remain on top of the comforter, wearing as little as she could possibly stand, holding a diaper-clad baby whose only concern was where her next meal would come from. In just the few hours she’d known her, Ziva was utterly unsurprised by the behavior of her newborn given the person who sent her and the man with the same birthday who played a part in her genetics; she was exactly as expected. 

Night turned into day as Ziva ran an index finger over Tali’s cheek.

The sun had risen over the farmhouse twenty four hours earlier only to find a laboring Ziva contemplating how long she could remain alone, in the quiet of her home, before she would have to call in the ‘troops.’ Orli Elbaz was a strange creature. A woman who had broken up Ziva's family most treacherously, but had become an ali to Ziva since she remained, alone, in the house. She knew of her impending motherhood, a little piece of her was even excited for Ziva. It was such a strange turn that Ziva still found herself having to be reminded that when she arrived at the house it was as a friend and not an enemy. Eli David was rolling his eyes in his grave at both women, but he had little room to judge when his own decisions had never been all that great. 

Adam Eshel only needed to know in that he cared about Ziva and he would probably show up in a few days to ensure that Ziva’s needs were taken care of and take a peek at the new baby. He had been informed of Ziva’s pregnancy by Orli, with Ziva’s permission, and that was when he realized that he never stood another chance at sharing his love for Ziva. Maybe Tony was not around, but she would never forget the man she had a child with for him. 

Ziva’s midwife, hired against her will, would be unamused by how long the mom to be thought she could labor unsupported and with not a single soul nearby. That was a wrath she was willing, almost happy, to deal with if it meant peace and quiet for as long as it was possible. 

Privacy was a comfort for Ziva, maybe that explained a lot of her behavior, both good and bad, so she felt that having a baby should be no different. Was she right? Perhaps not, but her mind was made up. So for a few hours, she soaked in the deep master bath tub, begging the hot water to ease the searing pain in her back that took hold of her every six minutes, then five, then four. 

And it only got worse. So much worse. 

Ziva could read every word she could get her hands on in preparation. She could watch the videos her midwife provided, though some of them had her turning away from the screen, and she could scour the internet for threads that revealed too much, but none of it was like doing it for herself. It did not compare to the hours and to the agony and to the loneliness of being with two people who were closer to strangers than family when she really thought about it. 

The unfamiliar touch of hands tried to ease the pain where they could, but all it did was cause Ziva to flinch every time they were not the hands of a man she couldn’t wish was there when she made the decisions she did. Strangers whose encouraging words made Ziva want to strangle them for acting as if consonants and vowels were enough to make delivering a baby seem painless. Every suggestion of another position or walking the halls or moving rooms was enough for Ziva to send them all away and she would manage to catch her own baby; it couldn’t have been but so hard. She made her and she would bring into the world however she dam well pleased and for nineteen hours she did not damn well please to be surrounded by the people in her house. 

But doing it alone would have been hell. 

Ziva could admit that after she questioned how she would ever manage to finish the task at hand. When Orli shoved her own body behind Ziva’s on the bed and put all her effort into helping Ziva when she could have just as easily kept hand holding and hoping for the best. When the midwife did everything she could to see Ziva through to the end in a way that made it even five percent less horrific. Those moments Ziva knew alone was less than ideal. 

And then she was there. 

Red faced and crying and trying out all the air in her lungs to make sure not a single soul in Tel Aviv missed her arrival. 

All of the dark hair on her head explained away instantly the heartburn Ziva had been experiencing for months. In a few seconds the same limbs that thrashed inside of her, thrashed outside and little fists tousled with the air the baby was now forced to breathe, no longer coddled in her mother where it was warm and cozy.

“It’s a girl, Ziva,” Came from one of the women in the room, but she already knew. 

Ziva urgently reached for her daughter. 

She needed her in her hands, in her arms, not in those of someone who had not spent hours safely delivering her or months impatiently waiting for her. 

When thoughts swirled through her mind of what she should do, what she could do when it seemed that this baby girl would break her and crash land into a world where she would have a mother who had no idea what she was doing, in any part of her life, and father who she may never know, Ziva had not pictured the relief that would come with the the tiny seven pound, eight ounce body of a new life being perfectly placed against her chest. When Orli slipped away and propped Ziva up with a stack of pillows instead. When the midwife deemed both Ziva and her daughter healthy, she made her exit with a promise to be back the following afternoon to check on them. When it was just Ziva and her daughter, she wished for the frightened version of herself that was sick with worry so far beyond the scope of pregnancy, to know what it was going to feel like when the sun rose on her first day as Ima. 

The farmhouse was instantly less lonely. 

Not only was there a new baby, but the presence of the last one to be there. 

Loneliness had been sauntering through the hallways and bedrooms for months while Ziva wished away the outside world and dealt haphazardly with the things that had sent her child’s father across an ocean. Nothing was black and white, it was all gray. There was never certainty in becoming a mother. Ziva was never convinced that having a child was the right decision. She wavered back and forth between every decision she’d made since letting Tony go. 

The baby wriggled in her arms. Ziva shifted, sore and exhausted, to perch the baby back on her chest, a hand behind her head and fingers covering her tiny back. She tucked her little legs, curling into a ball against the warmth of her mother. 

Where Ziva was uncertain, this baby was certain that she was her mother. 

Never for a moment had the hours old baby questioned who was her safe haven. The cries that had filled the room were quieted only when she reached Ziva’s arms for the first time. This baby had no reason to second guess who her mother was and therefore, Ziva could not question her role. She simply had to fill it. She had to step up. There was no room for second guessing because who would back her up? Nobody else could step up to the metaphorical plate and do her job for her. That had been terrifying for nine months and then suddenly, when it was the only option, there was nothing to be scared of because there was no time to do anything but. 

God, her sister had absolutely had a hand in this. Not a single other soul, living or dead, could have come to the conclusion that the thing Ziva needed so desperately was to not feel alone. To be distracted by the companionship that was having a baby who relied on her for every single thing they needed. 

Ziva pressed a soft kiss to the top of her daughter’s head. 

“My Tali,” She whispered. 

When she promised her mother in the same farmhouse, in the same room, while Rivka held a day-old Tali in her arms, that she would protect her sister, she had meant it. She felt like she failed to keep her promise the moment her phone rang and Eli coldly explained what happened on the other side of the line. She had never done enough for her sister if how her sister ended up was unable to fill an empty casket that was only ever a symbol of Ziva’s promise: an empty one because she’d been unable to fulfill it. 

This was her second chance, supplied by the very person who she’d wasted her first chance on. 

A second chance that she didn’t think she deserved. But a second chance nonetheless and one with just as much riding on it. 

Basking both in the sunlight that streamed through the curtains and danced on the floor and the settling in of life shared with someone else, Ziva shifted her eyes upward, not necessarily at anything and sighed. “Thank you.” 

A few stray tears ran down her cheeks, the first of the ones she would allow herself to have over her daughter.

Her daughter, Tali.