Author's Notes: Spoilers for Family First as well as various earlier episodes. See end for more notes. Enjoy!

No one knows what comes after this

But I've always hoped that it was you.

The frigid February wind whips around her as she fumbles to unlock the front door to her father's house with quickly numbing fingers. A few dead leaves skitter across the small front porch as she curses to herself for forgetting her gloves.

Finally, she gets the door unlocked and hurries inside, breathing a sigh of relief. There isn't a lot she remembers about living in Israel as a young child, but it not being this cold is one of them. She has lived in DC for the majority of her life but she isn't sure she will ever adjust to the cold. She shrugs out of her coat and slings it over the back of a chair.

It is quiet in the house. Too quiet. Panic bubbles up from her stomach into her throat. Did something happen? The doctors had given him six months. That was six months ago. She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes to stem to panic. Then she hears it. The huff and puff of the stationary oxygen concentrator. If he had died, the machine wouldn't be on.

She opens her eyes as footsteps approach. Marie, his day nurse, walks over to her and greets her with a smile. "We're having a good day," she says by way of greeting. The older woman must see the panic still retreating from her face. "He's just taking a nap."

"Thanks, Marie," Tali replies, relaxing a bit.

"I know we're at six months, but you can't treat it like a deadline," Marie continues. "The doctors can't give you a definite end date. I've seen plenty of patients go eight months or even a year after doctors told them six months."

Tali nods and runs her hand through her mass of long, dark curls. "I know," she says. "I just worry."

The nurse smiles knowingly. "Of course. You go sit with him. Call for me when he wakes up." She pats Tali's arm gently before heading for the kitchen.

Tali steps quietly into her father's room, which had once been the spare bedroom. Now it holds the hospital grade bed where he spends most of his time, along with his oxygen equipment - the concentrator, some oxygen tanks in case the power goes out, the biPap machine that he uses at night. She sits down on the overstuffed armchair in the corner and watches him sleep for a few minutes, looking for signs of pain on his face. Seeing none, she nods to herself and settles back. She knows that he would hate it if he woke up to her just sitting there, so she pulls out some students' papers and begins grading.

She isn't sure how long she sits there before she hears his quiet, "Hi, Tali." She looks up, red pen in hand.

"Hey, Abba," she replies, smiling at him and putting down her papers and pen. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a million dollars," he says hoarsely, adjusting the incline on his bed so he is sitting more upright. "What are the papers on?"

She smirks. "Themes of colonialism in gothic novels."

"Riveting," he replies, smiling. The familiar laugh lines are still there, but even they look tired. At least, she thinks to herself triumphantly, the hospital bed still doesn't make him look small. Even with pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension, he looks like Anthony DiNozzo, Jr, former standout NCAA basketball player, cop, and federal agent. Even though he wasn't any of these things as long as she has known him, it's not a stretch to imagine him in those roles. She marvels again how she looks almost nothing like him. Instead, everyone tells her how much she looks like her mother, who she barely remembers. Except her hazel eyes, which she inherited from him.

"Hardly," she snorts.

After a short silence, he says, "We have some things to discuss. Serious things."

She nods at him, pulling out a notebook. What she would really like to do is run out of the room, out of the house, and never return. But she's the only blood relative he has left and he's her dear, dear Abba. Of course she isn't going to abandon him. There are things she will have to plan, a funeral and what to do with his house and his other stuff. Her husband, Henry, is conveniently a trusts and estates attorney, which means that her father already has a will. But he has had a complicated life and she has a lot of questions. It is better to discuss all this while they can.

"Your mother once said that my last words would be, 'I've seen this film,'" he says out of nowhere.

As his health has declined, he has begun mentioning her more again. He used to tell her stories upon stories about her, about their work together at NCIS, all the trouble they got into together. Then as she became a teen, she became less interested and more interested in her own life, and he stopped mentioning her so much.

But she has always been here, the mysterious mother who gave her her petite build, olive skin, curly dark hair, quick temper, and love of literature. Her father never dated. Goodness knows he attracted attention from women, which both embarrassed her and made her laugh. Her friends had told her repeatedly that she had a "hot dad," which mostly just embarrassed her.

Once, when she was fifteen, she tried to play matchmaker and set him up with her single, pretty history teacher. He completely ignored all her hints, and she had finally said to him, exasperated, "Why won't you date? Aren't you worried you're going to end up alone?"

He had just smiled and laughed at her with his eyes, and replied, "Of course I won't be alone. I have you. You're never alone when you have kids."

She had rolled her eyes at his cheesiness and kept trying until Aunt Abby intervened. "Stop pushing women at your dad," she had chided when they were out shopping one day.

"But it's weird how he never dates. All my friends' single parents date. Isn't it weird?" Tali had asked.

Aunt Abby had given her a sad smile. "It's really weird. Your dad dated a lot when he was young, before he met your mom." She had paused thoughtfully, then amended with, "Even for a while after he met your mom. But since she died, he can't. She was the love of his life."

"But can't you have more than one love of your life?" she had pressed the older woman.

Aunt Abby had cocked her head and considered. "Maybe, for some people," she had replied. "But some people search their whole lives for the same kind of love and never find it. That's why Gibbs has so many ex-wives. And your grandpa. Your dad has decided it isn't worth it to try. Right or wrong, you have to respect his decision."

So Tali had given up. She supposed it was romantic that her father still loved her mother, even though they were never married, even though she had been dead since Tali was almost three years old. Some of her friends' parents didn't seem that devoted to each other.

She yearned for more time with this supposedly amazing, big-hearted ninja woman she so resembled. But mostly, she yearned for her father to have had more time with her.

"Earth to Tali." Her father suddenly interrupted her thoughts. She blinks and looks at him. "Where'd you go there?" He laughs a little, then coughs and sucks in oxygen through the cannula.

She waits until he catches his breath, then responds. "I was thinking about Ima," she responds. "Do you think she'd be proud of me?"

A gentle smile comes across his face. "Yes, Tali. She would be proud of you. You're working on your English literature dissertation while visiting your sick old dad for hours every day. You bring so much happiness into the lives of those around you. You are, I think, the person she always wanted to be." He lowers his voice conspiratorially before adding, "But between you and me, she was that person. She just couldn't see it. You're so much like her but also your own person."

Her eyes fill with tears and she makes a joke to keep herself from crying. "Abba, you are getting so sentimental in your old age."

"Well," he replies, "I think I've earned the right."

"You told me all sorts of stories about her when I was a little kid, but then you stopped. Why?" This is a question that has been nagging her for years.

He sighs. "When you were 15, you quit dancing."

"I remember. You didn't want me to," she says.

"Yeah. We had a fight and you told me, 'Stop trying to turn me into Ima.' That was when I realized that was what I was doing. I put you in dance classes because she danced as a child and loved it. It wasn't fair to you, having to live in your mother's shadow. I had to let you figure out who you are."

She nods, although she only has a vague recollection of that particular argument. Although it was more than a decade ago, she wishes she could take back those words. Throughout her later teen years and her early 20s, she longed to know this mother who was both larger than life and a complete mystery at the same time. And now, with her father on his deathbed, her chances of knowing her are slipping away. "If it doesn't hurt too much, tell me about her," she says, almost urgently.

Another gentle smile. "It doesn't hurt to talk about her. She was great. So much fun to be around, with her short temper and weird sense of humor and complete lack of knowledge about American culture. We drove each other nuts but I think we drove everyone around us nuttier."

He stops talking to suck in oxygen, then smirks. "There was one time when we had to go undercover as married assassins. We had to make it believable because we knew people were watching us, so we rolled around together in bed, naked. Nothing happened," he added upon seeing the look on his daughter's face. "We had just started working together. But later, Tim kept bringing it up, wanting confirmation that it was all just a show. So we decided to mess with him. Even now, I don't think he knows what to believe."

"But," she presses, "When did you actually get together?"

"We never really did." Off her confused look, he elaborates, "We were never really together in the conventional sense. But we saw each other almost every day for eight years. We were field partners, which meant we were in a lot of dangerous situations. We trusted each other with our lives. We didn't really go on dates, but we watched movies together, ate a lot of meals together, went on work trips together. We took that 'work spouse' idea to the extreme."

"When did you know you loved her?"

He takes some time before answering this question. "I think it was when I thought she had died but she was really being held by terrorists in Somalia."

Tali blinks. "Wait. What? She was held captive in Africa?"

"Yeah, for weeks. She was sent on a Mossad mission to go after the leader of a local terrorist cell, but the ship she and her team were on sank in bad weather and she was captured. I only heard about the ship sinking and everyone on board being lost. For days after, I was in a haze. I couldn't sleep. We had gotten into a big argument the last time I saw her and all I could think about was how it was all wrong."

He sighs. "And then all I could think about was revenge. I pitched a mission to Gibbs and the Director about finding and dismantling that terrorist cell. They kind of approved it." He gives a small smile at the way she raises her eyebrows at this. "Tim and I went in, ended up finding her alive, Gibbs shot the leader from a million miles away, this jerk named Salim, and we all came home. I realized I couldn't live without her and if that's not love, then I don't know what is."

As he catches his breath, she lets it all sink in. There is so much that she doesn't know about both her parents. No one who had worked with her parents had ever mentioned this before. How could she have almost missed hearing about this? An idea begins to form in her head, one she should have thought of long ago. Now it's almost too late, but she'll hate herself if she doesn't at least mention it to him.

"Abba. I want to write a book."

It's his turn to blink at her. "Okay," he responds slowly.

She elaborates. "About you. And Ima. About your relationship, and all the missions you went on together."

He furrows his brow. "You think people will want to read about it?"

"Uh yeah. You guys did crazy things and had this crazy relationship. And I hate to think that there aren't many people who know about you guys and what you did. I want to do this. I think I have to."

"Well, if you have to," he smirks. "Okay. What do you need from me?"

She rolls her eyes at him. "Everything, Abba. We're going to do interviews and you'll tell me the stories, and about Ima, and about everyone else. I'll record it all, and get the right permissions and everything, and figure out how to put it all into a narrative." She is getting more and more excited. For the first time, she is thinking about something other than her father's imminent death.

Her excitement is infectious. "Okay," he says, grinning widely. "Let's do it."

For the next few weeks, she spends every spare moment with her father, prompting him occasionally but mostly allowing him to tell the stories he wants to tell. She learns a lot about her parents, things she could never have imagined. She knows there are some things that he leaves out, for whatever reason. He mentions an overnight mission to Paris where they had to pick up a key witness and how there was a misunderstanding with booking and they ended up having to share a little hotel room. All he says about that trip is that "Paris is a fantastic city," which she already knew, and that was when he knew they would be okay after the Somalia incident. Part of her grimaces at thoughts of what her parents did there, but part of her wants to press him for details. She doesn't.

Marie, the day nurse, is skeptical at first and voices her concerns about the toll all that talking will take on him, but instead of getting worse, he almost seems to get better. As if talking about these long buried events has actually turned back time, to when he was younger and healthier. He tells her about the first time he met her mother, right after his previous field partner had been killed. He was imagining having a conversation with her when "this girl walks in, wearing cargo pants and a purple scarf on her head, and asks if I'm having phone sex." She laughs and marvels about how her mother had been younger than she is now.

Finally, she tells him that she has enough material to write a very long book. "I'm just sorry I won't be able to finish it before you…. You know," she says, unable to finish her sentence.

He smiles at her, looking tired but satisfied. "That's okay, honey. Knowing you're going to put it all into a book is enough. Now other people will remember your mother."

"And you," she adds, smiling at his look of disbelief. "And as long as people remember, you'll both never be gone." Tears suddenly spring into her eyes and she bites her lip.

"Your mother once said something about those you love never leaving you," he says. "And that 'what is essential is invisible to the eye.'" She smiles at the Little Prince reference. Her earliest memories are of her father reading her that book, and she knows the book will play its part in the biography she writes.

That night, after Tali leaves, Tony slips on the biPap mask with help from the night nurse, Pam. The machine makes it easier for him to breathe, almost taking over his breathing, forcing his lungs to take in and expel air, but it leaves him unable to talk. Instead, his thoughts wander to Ziva, who has occupied his mind for the last few months now. There are some things that he didn't share with Tali. For one, he didn't want to make her uncomfortable. But some of the moments are sacred, only meant to be known by him and her.

Like that night in Paris. Their relationship was still in the process of healing after Rivkin and Somalia. He was armed with the new knowledge that he loved her but wasn't sure what to do with this information. She had a lot of healing to do herself, both physically and psychologically, and he didn't want to overwhelm her. Plus, there was that damned Rule 12.

Being forced to share that hotel room made them both uncomfortable at first. But then she finally snapped at him to stop tossing and turning on the little couch and he had snapped back that it was really uncomfortable, and she had spit out, "Fine, then come join me on the bed. There is more than enough space."

He had hesitated but his back screamed at him to just do it already. So he had eased himself onto the bed, careful not to touch her. She rolled over to face him and to his surprise, he could see tears running down her face, silently. "Hey," he had said softly. "What's up?"

She had wiped her cheeks and he remembers thinking that she wasn't going to answer him when she had said, "After everything that happened this summer, how do I go back to who I was?"

He knew what terrorists did to their female captives and his blood boiled again temporarily before he reminded himself that Salim and his men were dead. He had slowly reached out to brush a loose curl out of her face before replying with, "You don't. You're different now. But you're still you. You know?"

"Maybe," she had allowed. "But how am I ever going to let anyone... touch me again without cringing?"

"I just touched you and I don't think you cringed," he had pointed out.

She had smiled at that, a wobbly little smile that made him want to hold her in his arms for the rest of their lives. But of course, this was exactly what she did not want. "That is true," she had said. "Maybe… touch me some more?" Hesitation colored her suggestion and made it into more of a question.

Her words had hung in the air between them, heavy with the weight of its implications. He had thought that maybe she didn't mean it or that she would regret it later, or worse, she would recoil at his touch, traumatizing them both. It must have been something in the Paris air that made him slowly, carefully move his hand to her face, gently caressing the side of her cheek with his fingertips. She had kept her eyes on his, dark and unreadable. "If you get uncomfortable, tell me to stop," he had said and she had quirked a smile.

He had moved his hand down the curve of her neck to her shoulder, then brushed it down her arm, stopping to twine his fingers through hers. "I meant it, you know," he had said.

"What?"

"When I said that I couldn't live without you." He gave her a tender smile.

She sighed. "Tony…"

"I know."

He squeezed her hand with his before letting go and resuming his gentle, unhurried exploration of her body. His hand lingered on the curve of her hip and he swallowed, suddenly nervous. That was when he knew they were going to cross that line into uncharted territory. He searched her face for any sign of discomfort or hesitation and found none. Instead, she moved closer to him and leaned in to kiss him softly on his cheek, then the corner of his mouth.

Then her mouth was on his, sure, searing, needy. It was like a dam had burst open, and he responded in kind, running his hand through her curls, then down her back, pulling her closer to him. She gasped as his hand moved lower and he hadn't been able to help himself as he jerked his hips in response.

Their first time together had been pretty much everything he had imagined it would be, but he hadn't anticipated the worry he would feel afterward that she would regret it and push him away. She hadn't, although it would be a long time before there was a repeat performance.

Two years later, it would be Harper Dearing bombing the NCIS office and trapping Tony and Ziva in an elevator that would drive them to seek distraction in each other's bodies. He told Tali about the bombing, as well as the conversations they had in those hours in the elevator. But after they had been checked out by medics and knew that the other members of the MCRT were safe, he had somehow found his way to her apartment. And although it wasn't explicitly a plan, she had been waiting for him.

After that, there was the night in Berlin, before they went to a nightclub in pursuit of Ilan Bodnar. Ziva had climbed into bed with him and admitted that she had not been sleeping well. "What do you need?" he had asked.

"To forget, if just for a little while." A sad smile had accompanied her response, as if she thought forgetting would be impossible. He had accepted the challenge. And succeeded.

Maybe these times were all about comfort. But he likes to think that they both had a few different options in that regard, and instead, they had chosen each other. It was the ultimate comfort, really, because they had so much trust in each other.

But yeah, he doesn't want to share any of this with their daughter, and he thinks she would thank him for that.

The moments he doesn't want to share aren't all about sex, either. Well, not really. He leaves out the way he froze her out after he found out about her sleeping with Adam Eschel. That old bitterness has long since lost its edge, but he figures it is unimportant.

And then there was Ziva's apology outside Gibbs' cabin in the woods, and their reconciliation.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you in all this," she had said. "It was never my intention. Tony, I care too much about our… friendship. I do not want it to be awkward between us." She had stuttered over that word, friendship, and for some reason, that had been what thawed him.

"Hey," he had replied, kissing her forehead gently. "Nothing's awkward between friends." But he couldn't leave it there. "And whatever it is we are."

She had quirked half her mouth up into a smile and he hadn't been able to help it. Even though they were standing outside Gibbs' cabin, even though they were being hunted by the FBI, even though their coworkers were only yards away from them, he had leaned down and pressed his lips to hers. Within all the tumult, time had stood still as they put everything they couldn't say out loud into that kiss.

And then a mere month later she was gone. He told Tali about his desperate search for her, going from country to country, following every vague lead. He found her only when he stopped the frantic searching and remembered that he knew her. Knew how she thought. Knew what haunted her. And then there she was, peering at him from behind the muzzle of a gun.

He told Tali how he tried to get her to come back home to DC with him. But he kept to himself that last week he had with her. He concluded that episode by simply saying, "And then I came home and tried to get on with my life. And nine months later, halfway around the world, you were born."

"Tony DiNozzo." The night nurse, Pam, interrupts his thoughts. "What are you doing still awake?"

He looks at her somewhat guiltily after catching a glimpse of the clock on his nightstand, and lifts the mask just enough to say, "Thinking an old man's thoughts."

She clucks at him like a motherly hen and checks the biPap machine. "Well, old men with thoughts need sleep, too." When he grins at her, she replies with, "Oh don't try that old DiNozzo charm on me. I'm immune. They teach that in nursing school."

He chuckles through the mask and closes his eyes obediently, listening to the machine as it forces him to take in and expel oxygen.

A week later, the pulmonary hypertension finally gets the best of him and he goes into heart failure. He holds on long enough for his daughter to rush out of the class she is teaching at Georgetown and make it to him. As he takes his last shallow breaths, Tali holding his hand, he thinks he sees a familiar face. He would know those brown eyes and that widow's peak anywhere. "You waited for me," he gasps, and then is gone.

Tali looks out her window at the darkness that surrounds the airplane. Somewhere below is the Atlantic Ocean. She and her husband are on their way to Israel to scatter her father's ashes over the place where her grandfather's farm house once stood. It is the last resting place of her mother's ashes, and he had requested that his ashes be scattered there, too. Although she is not a religious person, she hopes that her parents are finally together again. She keeps thinking about her father's last words. Who was waiting for him? He didn't sound scared, so she chooses to believe that it was her mother.

She reaches down to her bag, carefully stowed below the seat in front of her, and removes her laptop. Next to her, her husband huffs out a breath, already asleep. This seems as good a time as any to begin writing.

Once her computer has booted up, she opens up a blank document and, after a moment's thought, begins typing.

When I was a young girl, my father used to tell me this story about a princess, only she wasn't a princess. She was a ninja. And there was this prince, except he wasn't a prince, he was a lost boy. And since she wasn't a princess and he was lost, she saved him and gave him a place to call home.

END

More Notes: So I don't like to think of Ziva being dead, but I wanted explore what Tony's life would be like as a single dad and Tali's as an adult. Plus, it gave me a chance to flesh out the fact that they were supposed to kiss in that "Nothing's awkward between friends" scene in Damned If You Do. (Side note: I will weep tears of joy if we ever actually see that scene in its original glory. WHY DID THEY CUT IT OUT OF FAMILY FIRST?) Anyway, please leave feedback. Feedback feeds the writer's soul.