A/N: Tony, Ziva, and Sophie's story wasn't finished so here is the first chapter of the sequel. I hope everyone has a really happy new year. I will try to update a little more regularly but I have busy life so there may be weeks without an update. I apologize in advance for that.

This story follows the events of Split Across the Continents and follows the advancement of Tony and Ziva's relationship as well as Sophie trying to navigate the new relationship with them.

Enjoy!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to start our decent into Dulles International Airport so please fasten your seatbelts, stow your tray table and have your seat in an upright position and we'll have you on the ground shortly." The captain sounded tired as the intercom switched off. Sophie put her iPad onto her lap as she pushed her tray table up and contemplated seeing her parents for the first time in a few months. After meeting them accidentally whilst on a mission in the states previously, she had made the tough decision between keeping her life as a secret government agent in the UK or choosing to live with her parents in the states. She had picked the middle ground which was seeing them in the summer and for the holidays but retaining her life on campus and speaking on the phone every few days. The initial decision had fractured her relationship with them initially as they wanted her to go and live in the states but Sophie not being ready to leave. This was the first time she was going to see them in person since this agreement was put in place. She felt strangely calm throughout this entire trip. At the tender age of eleven, she had had to be an unaccompanied minor on the trip which had made Sophie laugh when Elaine first told her. Sophie had spent a week down in Mexico last spring which had resulted in her going missing whilst working for a drug dealer and now she had to fly unaccompanied with a flight attendant checking in on her every five minutes.

The rest of the flight was fairly unadventurous with them landing at the airport at the scheduled time. The flight attendant quickly chivvied her off the plane and they cut the line at passport control allowing Sophie to be one of the first people to arrive at the baggage claim. Despite all the line cutting, Sophie was fairly sure that her bag was against her in every possible was and was the second to last bag to arrive which caused the flight attendant to become irate which left Sophie wanting to tell her to leave her alone and she could find her way to the arrivals hall by herself. Eventually they finished the walk through to the arrivals hall and Sophie looked around to see if there were any familiar faces out there.

"Sophie! Sophie, over here!" She turned to see Tony waving at her. She quickly waved back and started over towards him before he pulled her into a hug.

"Wow, you've grown so much!" Sophie heard him say. She wondered if all adults were required to say this to prepubescent teens.

"Yeah, it's good to see you!" She replied as Tony signed her unaccompanied minor form and the flight attendant walked away. "How have you been?" She asked him as she pulled her suitcase along beside her.

"Solving cases, face timing you, watching movies, the usual." Sophie smiled at that. "What about you?"

"Ohh you know, the same." Sophie replied smirking a little. "I have only been on one mission actually but that's a pretty generous word for it. It was a copy-and-destroy mission." Tony looked at her quizzically so Sophie explained. "A massive group of us break into a suspects house, copy possibly incriminating documents then break stuff. We're meant to look like a group of kids breaking into someone's house for banter." Tony nodded as they reached the car. She shoved her suitcase into the back and then clambered into the front seat.

"How's Ziva?" Sophie asked quietly. It hadn't escaped her notice that Ziva wasn't there to greet her.

"We are in the middle of a case at the moment so Gibbs would only let one of us go. I won the rock paper scissors." Tony explained. "Which also means we need to go the navy yard unfortunately." Sophie nodded before realizing something else.

"What have you told them about me? As in what's the backstory?" She asked.

"Still haven't got one. They know that you are our daughter but that we can't tell them what you do normally so they have come up with their own stories.

Everyone is still trying to get over the fact that you exist let alone why you have been absent for so long. Anyway, here we are." Tony said as they joined the line up for the entrance to the Navy Yard. Despite working with NCIS for almost three months in the Spring, Sophie had never actually been to the Navy Yard, instead they had been in the surveillance house or at Gibbs' place. She looked up at the tall buildings and felt a little taken aback at just how big the Navy Yard was. There were what looked like a few sailors doing press ups in a field near them and Sophie felt a slight twinge as she thought back to Campus doing press ups in a muddy barren field. They drove down through a series of stop signs before reaching a parking lot.

"Is that… is that a hearse?" Sophie said as she looked at the stretched out car parked next to them.

"Uhh, yeah. That's Abby's." Tony said looking a Sophie's slightly shocked expression.

"I didn't know you could just drive one. Has she watched ghostbusters?"

"She might have done. You can probably ask her."

Sophie looked at the visitors badge that Tony had given her to pin on as he picked up his shiny gold NCIS badge. They were headed into the elevator and Sophie couldn't help but look at the walls and wonder how much of her parent's life had happened at NCIS. So much of it that she wasn't part of but at the same time was. In her head she had pictured the bullpen, as her parents called it, so many times but the one thing she had never pictured it being was orange. In her head it had always been white, or cream but never orange. Up on the wall beside her was the NCIS most wanted wall with some good mug shots and then a few which were terrible. Everyone was busy working as Sophie led them towards the middle few cubicles. She recognized Tim from earlier in the year who was hunched over his keyboard typing something rather quickly. A large desk which was relatively clear apart from a sport coat on the chair, she guessed was Gibbs's desk. Tony was going to the one that had stuff all over it and then the only one left was the tidy desk to her right which was empty at the moment. She smiled a little at the little Israeli flag in the pen holder and wondered where Ziva was.

"Hey McGee, where's Ziva?"

"In autopsy. Ducky said he found something new on the body." Tim said as he looked up and saw Sophie. "Hey, how was the flight?"

"Good. Watched a few movies. Some were pretty good and others were okay." Sophie finished as Tony began to steer her towards another elevator that would take them down to autopsy.

"You haven't met Ducky yet have you?" Sophie shook her head.

"So Ducky is our medical examiner so that means he is the one that autopsies the bodies and figures out how and when they died. Jimmy is his assistant." Tony said as they entered autopsy. It was much colder than Sophie imagined and stank of what Sophie guessed was a mixture of cleaning products and a decomposing body. They seemed to be crowded around a table that Sophie guessed held a recently deceased marine.

"Hi Sophie." ZIva said to her as she embraced her. "You're a little earlier than we expected."

"Hi," Sophie said as she noticed the the other occupants of the room turn to look at them. One of them appeared to be quite elderly but had kind eyes and the other was tall but had one of the widest smiles Sophie had ever seen. She guessed that these must be Ducky and Jimmy.

"Hi, I'm Sophie." Sophie said to the elderly gentlemen as she offered her hand to him.

"Yes, we have heard quite a lot about you, my dear. I am Doctor Mallard but most people call me Ducky." He spoke softly but with one of the most familiar accents that Sophie had grown up with as he shook her hand.

"And I'm Jimmy. His assistant." Jimmy said to her as he took her hand as well. She liked these two very much. They seemed like two calm individuals whom nothing could ever phase them like a battered rock against a stormy ocean, they would just take anything thrown at them. She guessed they must have to have this mentality to work the job they do. Behind them, the autopsy doors swung open again as Abby came in. Unlike these two lighthouses in a storm, Abby seemed like a person who felt for everything and everyone. A trait that made her one of the most compassionate people that Sophie had ever met but also the kind of person who any kind of major crisis caused her to freak out. Sophie barely had time to breathe before Abby descended and grabbed a hold of her.

"Oh my God, oh my God, I can't believe you are finally here! I know that you had to go back to the UK for a bit but then you seemed to completely drop of the radar and we never saw you until now. Tony and ZIva won't say what it is that you do just that it is really important to you and that they are proud of you but, oh my god, we all really missed you even though we didn't really know you that well but you are still technically the team's baby and you mean so much to us just because of that." Sophie heard about half of that as the other half was really muffled because Abby was squeezing her so hard. She wondered if this is what it felt like to be squeezed to death by the world's most concerned boa constrictor.

"I…I…missed…can't breathe…" Sophie spluttered as Abby finally let her go.

"I can't believe you would just leave like that after everything we all went through." Abby said as she stared at her.

"I came back though. And I talked to Tony and Ziva every night or most nights though. I just wasn't coming to live with them." Sophie tried to defend herself.

"It's okay. We'll talk about this a bit more later." Tony interrupted before Abby could say anything else to Sophie. "Right now, we still have a case to solve unless Gibbs's lets us go till tomorrow morning." Sophie tried to stifle her yawns. She kind of wanted to see them normally working but at the same time she was so tired. She remembered suddenly that she had never seen Tony and Ziva's house. She wondered if they were actually living in a house together or even if they were together. Tony and Ziva had never really mentioned it to her. She stuck near to Ziva as the two of them went back up into the bullpen.

Agent Gibbs had returned and carrying with him was five styrofoam cups and a huge red drink that had yellow spiky letters brandishing the word CAF-POW that Sophie guessed must be some American drink because she couldn't think of any shop in the UK or indeed abroad that sold it. Gibbs put a cup down in front of Tim, Tony, Ziva then handed the last styrofoam cup to her. Sophie could hardly stammer out a thank you. She didn't think that Gibbs even knew she was here yet.

"Hot chocolate." He said as he handed it to her. "Welcome back."

"Thank you." She said as she met the stare. She sipped it, ignoring the initial burn in favour of the chocolatey sweetness. She sank down till she was crosslegged on the floor leaning against a filing cabinet next to Ziva's desk. She sipped her hot chocolate slowly as she watched her parents and Tim get back to work. There seemed to be a lot of typing that went on for ages. The window over by stairs allowed her a view of the city skyline that appeared to become more colourful as the sun set. Sophie had seen quite a few sunsets in the past year from ones whilst sleeping in a muddle puddle during her training to ones where she was in a hotel overlooking a beach straight after her Gaza Strip mission but she had never seen one over a city skyline before. She found herself lying on the floor with her head turned so she could see the sun disappear behind a building. Around her she could hear the people over the partition packing up to go home but Tony and Ziva didn't seem to be reaching a break point any time soon. Tim had called Delilah about half an hour earlier to let her know that it was going to be a late one if there was a possibility of him coming home at all. He had ended the call with something that sounded like "But Sophie's here though." Sophie wondered just how much of the extended team knew about her. She didn't think for very long though because soon enough her eyes closed and she fell asleep on the bullpen floor.