take this sinking boat and point it home, a ncis fanfic

A/N: This, you guys, is the fic I never meant to write. I'd already done a last Tiva fic, and I'd closed the lid on that part of my life. I didn't want to go there again.

But then Meg (probalicious) said something months ago, and it triggered something in me – and I am reminded how powerfully the past does not want to stay buried. I'm a history major, so I'm basing my future career on this proposition, but I felt it acutely with this fic. Some stories just demand to be written. So I obliged.

This fic is different/requires an introduction for two reasons.

1) Because it's written in second person future tense. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm insane. This is the weirdest, most unusual way to tell a story. I got the idea from the beautiful fic "To Love a Hero," by Pantz. The "you" here is Tony, so telling this fic in second person future gives it an immediacy and an urgency and a flow that I couldn't get in first or third person. (Which, I tried.) I hope it doesn't give you a headache. I took a real risk here, and I'm praying it pays off.

2) I decided to accept a very unpopular canon as legitimate, and worked within that framework – and my own feels – to make some points that maybe are not super popular with the fandom either, and are definitely not as sweet/fluffy/easy as we might like. This was a difficult story to write – it was draining for me in a lot of ways – but it was ultimately cathartic because it felt more honest than a happy little homecoming with sex and babies, and I hope you feel similarly when you read it.

I worked quite a bit on this. It's the strangest thing I've ever done. But I'm proud that I banged it out and that I did something new. If nothing else, I can be happy about that.

Also, briefly: many thanks to my wise and brilliant beta, Sameen, who isn't even in the NCIS fandom, but still so kindly looked over this beast for me and gave me invaluable support/feedback. She's the bestest, and you should thank her for the fact that this fic is now fit for human eyes.

I know it won't seem like it, but this fic does have a happy ending. I hope you get there. And I hope you like it.

take this sinking boat and point it home
By: Zayz

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice
You'll make it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black

You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Falling slowly, sing your melody
I'll sing it loud

- Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova, "Falling Slowly"

"Tony, you are so…loved."

She will say these words to you with a lump in her throat – softly, tremulously, truly. She will be the most beautiful she has ever been, standing there in front of you, illuminated by airport fluorescence and a nearly full moon and her own tears, glistening in the dark. It's her honesty that will take your breath away – and her surety. Because though she will cry, she will also look the most certain about her decision than you have seen her look about anything.

And that is the reason you must comply, and leave her.

Kiss her goodbye, with sweetness and melancholy, and make the hardest 180 of your life, disappear into the plane. Her last words will be your parting gift – her love, all that she has left to give you.

You will have just one regret: that you didn't think to say it back to her. Because she, too, is loved. By you, by the team – this little family she found in D.C. eight years ago. She is so very loved, and will be sorely missed.

You will find her necklace in your jacket pocket, when the plane is already in the air. The Star of David will glint a worn but friendly golden, imbued with years of her sweat, her heat, the musk of her scent. She had never taken it off before this – before now, this mission, this nightmare. Squeeze it tight in your palm. Think about what it meant to her and what it means that you have it now. Don't be discouraged when it isn't enough to comfort the gaping hole inside of you that just keeps getting wider, every mile that separates you from her.

Shut your eyes. Rest your head back against your seat, the chain of her necklace looped between your closed fingers. The plane will hum with motion beneath your feet, flying backward into time to get you home – but, of course, you will wonder why that matters when the time you really want to get back to, the time when you were together in D.C., is no longer within your grasp.

It's okay to wonder that. Wonder. Miss her already. Let that last image of her – a dark silhouette with flyaway curls standing there on the tarmac against a navy-purple sky – flood your spirit, into your bones, and radiate out of your pores like heat.

Your knuckles will go white, and the chain will cut into your skin with the force of your fist as you realize that this necklace – and those things of hers back at her desk that will need cleaning out – are all you have left of her.

Breathe.

When you get back to D.C., your first instinct will tell you to go home, bury yourself in your bed, and build up your energy reserves, so that you can go back to work the next day and fake a smile and pretend you are invincible.

Your second instinct will tell you to drive directly to Gibbs's house, suitcases still in the trunk, because his place feels more like home than yours ever has.

Listen to your second instinct.

Drive to him. Go to your boss, who loved her differently than you did, but still loved her like one of his own. The timing will not seem appropriate – under other circumstances, you would never turn up at someone's house at five AM, especially not without notice – but go anyway. Take a chance.

And your leap of faith will be rewarded. Gibbs will be home, and you will catch him in a rare moment of domesticity, sitting on his couch with his reading glasses on, sipping coffee and scanning the day's newspaper. Walk through his open front door and stand in his living room and let your disappointment show openly on your face. He is an investigator; he will quickly figure out why.

And then explain what happened. Everything. What you said, and what she chose, and how it still doesn't seem real, being here without her. It's okay to omit your last kiss, her last words; those were for you, not Gibbs. But tell him everything else. Don't hold out on him. Don't seal yourself away, even though a lifetime of experience tells you to protect your sadness and freeze it inside you for as long as you can without exploding. Gibbs deserves to know. He loved her too.

Gibbs will not say much, as ever. But he will understand, and you will feel better for getting the words out of your mouth, sharing the burden of honoring her request. He will sigh, and you will sigh, because this is so complicated.

Admit to Gibbs, "I don't know what the right thing is here, boss. This is her home."

He will search you with those electric blue eyes of his, but his voice will be weary when he says, "Rule ten, Dinozzo: you found her, and you made your case, and now it's time to walk away."

You'll smile tiredly, wistfully. "It's not that simple."

"It isn't that easy," he will tell you, "but it is that simple."

"I miss her already," you will admit.

And he will surprise you, and say, "I miss her too."

The next few days will not get easier. You will struggle, at first. Forgive yourself for that. This is a process, old as humankind itself, and the only cure is time.

You will not be the only one struggling.

Abby will not play music in her lab for a week. She will wait for a call – it's only fair that she should call to say goodbye – but she won't call, and Abby will be a wreck about it. Abby's angst will come in like a summer rainstorm, all thunderclouds and moodiness and a drizzling of tears – but it will pass. Be patient with her. She feels things acutely, and she does not have your gift for repression. Let her have her say. Hug her, when you feel strong enough to take on some of her grief. Many days, you will not feel strong enough for that – but soon, you will. You will.

Ducky and Palmer will not be nearly as effusive as Abby, but check in with them too, when you can. Let Ducky tell you about how he nearly dials her cell phone number twice a day when contacting the rest of the team, and how the absence of her laughter in the crime scene banter is a depressing kind of conspicuous. And Ducky is a rambler, always telling stories, even when no one is listening – but listen to him. His many decades of life have taught him much about grief, and loss, and letting go. Learn from him. His encyclopedic knowledge and impeccable comedic timing will be a better source of comfort than you think.

McGee, your new partner in the field, will be his own kind of tricky: McGee, who will tiptoe around everyone, trying not to rock the boat, trying not to make a fuss; McGee, who will stay late and come early and work harder than everyone because he will not want to get yelled at for not being as good as her. Because she was good, she was so good – and though he knows he can never replace her, he will do his best to make up for her when he can. Make that unenviable task as easy as you can for him. He will give it everything he's got; be sure to meet him halfway.

It will be hard for anyone to say her name, especially you, for the first few weeks. It will be hard even to think about her. You will try to forget her, busy yourself with work – but then you'll look over at her desk again, bereft of her office supplies and her thermos of tea and her jacket thrown carelessly on her chair, and it will hit you all over again how much you miss her. It will feel like an endless loop of almost forgetting, and remembering, and hurting, and almost forgetting again. It will feel as though there is no way out of that labyrinth.

Don't beat yourself up over this.

Moving on is like any other process: you will get better with practice. The pitfalls will not get easier, but you will handle them with more grace.

It won't happen overnight. You will feel lost for longer than you care to. But it's not permanent; you will find your way again.

Your grief – bewildered in its freshness, so soon after leaving her behind – will quickly ferment, and take on strange hues and textures.

Sometimes, you won't be able to sleep the whole night, because your brain will buzz with all the things you should have said, all the arguments you could have made to change her mind. Other times, you will want to sleep for a thousand years, and maybe another thousand after that, because missing her is exhausting, and you don't know how much more you have left to give.

Sometimes – too many times – you will overdo the drinking, and your alcohol-soaked heart will weigh like an anchor inside of you, and you will black out for hours, smashed and overwhelmed. But then your sadness will harden, crystallize into anger, and your skin will become like tough cave walls to stalactites of frustration, indignation, helplessness.

You will remember how she said that you were loved, not that she was in love with you. She let her love be buried inside everyone else's, too flimsy to stay and start over with you. You will remember how you let your spirits enflame with hopefulness when she said it – and now you are enflamed only with embarrassment, because your love, and especially her love, was not enough. Not enough to keep you together; not enough to even stand on its own in the final goodbye.

This realization will hurt you. Your history has been tumultuous, especially as it pertains to her – and after Michael Rivkin blew you two to bits, you have spent all this time carefully building your trust and your love back up again, carefully, carefully letting yourself dream of a happily ever after. But with you at home, and her wherever she is, everything has blown apart again, and you will no longer know if you can survive a second blast. You will not know if there is anything left to build up a third time.

You will be angry that she left you. That she let you believe in her, but still left you. That you have fought for her, found her, saved her almost at the expense of yourself – but she couldn't fight enough for you to give you a proper goodbye. You will be angry that the thin, confusing closure you did get was forcibly snatched from her, not willingly given to you.

You will wonder if her parting gift, her muddled love, really was a gift, or if it was a cleverly-disguised curse.

You will question everything you know of her. The scotch you'll take to drinking will not help. Everything will become distorted and lonely and jumbled, and you will wonder if she ever really loved you. You will wonder if you have awful luck, or if you just are a bad luck charm.

Her necklace will no longer feel like a token of faith and warmth; it will feel like an anvil taking you down to the black ocean floor. It will no longer feel symbolic of keeping herself safe with you; it will feel like she shed everything you knew about her, everything you thought was important, and taking only the palest, ghostliest imprint of herself and running away with it. And that will not seem fair – not to you, nor to her.

You will feel so bitter, so frustrated – and then you will remember that the final word in the final sentence that she ever uttered to you was still love. Loved. Tony, you are so loved. And you will drown in yourself all over again.

Moving on will be an ambivalent thing. You will not have as many good days, almost-normal days, as you want. Sometimes, it will feel impossible. Sometimes, you will hate her for leaving you in this mess all alone.

Don't succumb to that. Don't let your internal messiness tarnish the love you had – you have – for her.

You will drink so much scotch that you will start to wear it and your hangover like perfume into the office in the mornings, and your team will know, and they will worry.

Don't do that to them. Your fermented grief will not turn into fine wine; it will only be poison. Curate yourself carefully.

Her last kiss will feel like an indelible stain on your lips – but it will fade, just as the bruises she has left on your heart will fade. Nothing is indelible. Nothing is permanent.

That used to scare her. You will remember that, when you are awake and the night dips into its blackest and bleakest, just before dawn. The lack of permanence in life used to scare her. Scared you too. But it can also be liberating.

As perfect joy cannot be permanent, neither can this misery.

As you work through these things, you will want to barricade yourself behind a wall of jokes and exuberance and childishness. You will want everyone to leave you alone, because you will feel embarrassed and afraid and you will not know which words to use to articulate the devastating depths of your heartache.

But you will not be the only one who misses her.

Your team will be right there in the trenches with you, missing her too.

Don't forget that they loved her as long as you have. Don't forget that her absence has been hard on them as well. Don't become so myopic in your own self-pity that you forget Gibbs's pain, or McGee's, or Abby's, or Ducky's, or Palmer's.

Don't assume that you have the monopoly on grief.

One blustery November evening, months after her departure, you and McGee and Abby will go out for drinks, and Abby will say, "I miss her, Tony. I miss Ziva."

You will stiffen with discomfort; that will be the first time since you left her that anyone has dared to say her name aloud in front of you.

But she will continue, "I know. I know it's hard for you to talk about. It's hard for me to talk about too. But I need to talk about her, you guys. She's my friend and not hearing from her is weird and none of us talk about her."

Tenderly, you will confess, "It hurts, Abs."

"But that's okay," she will say. "That's just how it is when you love someone. But what hurts more is grieving alone. You and Gibbs – and even you, McGee – I know you prefer that. But me, and Ducky, and Palmer, sometimes…sometimes it would be nice to talk about how much we miss her. It's like she's died or something, and I hate that, because she's out finding her life, and we can't even say her name."

So the three of you will take turns being brave, will raise your glasses and each say in turn, "To Ziva." Ziva David, the one who got away not once, but twice.

Her name will sting on the way down your throat, like the vodka tonic you throw back – but, like the alcohol, a warmth will rise and float on the surface, unexpected but welcome.

After that, keep talking to McGee and Abby, keep saying Ziva's name, even if it's just a whisper to yourself in the dark, audible only to you. Don't let it become some ugly, forbidden word.

She loved you, and you loved her. Remember that. Remember.

But that will be a hard one to keep in the front of your mind, on the nights when you're sad and a little intoxicated and you can't stand her silence, can't stand how she has left you behind.

You were supposed to be better than that. The two of you – you were supposed to be changing. You were supposed to be in this together.

You will try not to idealize her, you will try not to keep thinking of her in terms of before and after – before/after Ari, before/after Vance split the team, before/after she fled to Israel and got trapped in Somalia, before/after Paris, before/after Berlin. But you will find you can't help yourself. She's too important to you.

She came into your life all those years ago, a firework bursting with color into a cloudless black sky. The key before/after moment in your life. A world without her will inevitably feel like a seizure of light, quick and brutal, before leaving you groping in the disorienting darkness, trying to find your bearings again.

You will try to root her out of yourself. You will try to rediscover your surroundings, those old signposts of who you thought you were before you met her. But that will be the thing that undoes you, because you have changed, fundamentally, as a result of knowing her. You will not be able to unknow her. There is no way to root her out of you.

You have shared a bed together, and she has kept a picture of you from you were a kid taped to her desk, and you showed her that picture of your mother, the one you didn't show anyone else, and she has slept in your apartment, and you have searched the world for her because you cannot live without her, you can't, you can't. You have tried and you will still be unable to.

You will find her in your bones, entwined in your very marrow. You will not be able to extricate yourself from her. Everything will remind you of her, because you built the world you know with her by your side.

You've been together too long, known each other too intimately. You will not be able to forget the taste of her, the feel of her. You have loved her – yes, loved her, as deeply as you have ever dared, and you will not be able to undo all that she means to you just because she's gone.

Which will make it all the harder, then, when you gaze up at the moon – the same moon she must be looking at somewhere – and wonder how, then, she managed to cut you so easily out of her life when she fled.

You will ask McGee a very honest question, once, in a moment of emotional weakness: "Are you mad at Ziva for not saying goodbye to you before she disappeared?"

And McGee will tell you, "No, I'm not mad at her for that. She doesn't owe us a formal goodbye."

You will ask, "Why not? She was one of us. She was part of our family. She should have said goodbye."

But McGee will say, "I trust that she had her reasons. And it's not like it's really goodbye, anyway. It's more like…we'll see her around. This isn't like the last time, Tony, when she left because she was angry. She just needs some time. We'll hear from her again soon. I know it."

McGee will continue on with his day, content with this blind faith in Ziva's decision. Maybe because it's the only option he has; maybe because he really believes it. You won't know, nor will it matter either way. He will still be able to move on with his day – and you won't.

You will tell yourself: there is no way to know if we will hear from her again.

You will tell yourself: I don't know if I even want to hear from her again, because it's been so long and I don't know how to relate to her anymore and I don't know what I'd say after what she's put me through.

You will tell yourself: family doesn't leave family high and dry like that, so what does that mean about the way she saw herself here?

You will tell yourself: let it go.

You will tell yourself: I can't.

You will wonder if you're being unfair, expecting anything of her. Does she really owe you any explanations, let alone her body to keep in the city where you are? Does she really owe you her heart, just because you loved each other? Does she really owe you her journey of self-discovery and transformation just because you don't know how to live without her anymore?

You will wonder if you're being selfish, needing her. You will wonder if her love was just a promise she couldn't keep, and you had to be the one paying for her mistake. You will wonder if it's even possible to move on from her, because you have no idea where to go from here.

You will drink. You will stay awake at night. You will worry. You will quake.

You will wonder if you've made any progress at all, or if you're still in the same headspace you were when you were sitting in the plane all those months ago with her necklace, aching.

But clichés endure through time for a reason. Remind yourself: it is always darkest before the dawn.

Vance will soon decide that the empty desk has been empty too long, and it's time to fill it. Gibbs will not be able to put the decision off any longer; it's been more than six months. This news will fill you with dread – but don't let it overtake you. This is the natural way of things. Open spaces must be filled somehow, with something.

So Ellie Bishop will come into your life, blonde and spunky and sweet, and you will suddenly miss Ziva so much that it's like an iron-clad punch to the gut. It will almost take your breath away, how much you miss her; the wound will be reopened in a big way, seeing someone else moving into Ziva's desk, putting her things where Ziva put hers, taking up the space that still, still, feels like Ziva's.

Be gentle with yourself; it's okay to feel like this is a violent jerking of a very fragile peace. But be gentle with Bishop, too. Bishop has come to lessen your professional baggage, not add weight to your emotional baggage. So let her do her work and prove herself. Don't force a friendship that doesn't feel real yet.

Let her settle in. Let yourself settle in.

You both will – and you'll like Ellie Bishop. Genuinely. Sometimes you won't want to, because she isn't Ziva – but Bishop doesn't have to be Ziva, she has to be Bishop. And she will, unabashedly, be herself.

Let yourself take comfort in that. She will never try to replace the agent you've lost.

The new rhythm of the office will feel strange, at first. After losing Ziva, the testosterone level in the bullpen was way too high, and it will take a little time to recalibrate to Bishop's blondeness and giggles and perfume.

But, like everything else since Ziva's departure, you will get comfortable with the new normal. You will find your way. You will adapt.

You will come out of this change not unscathed, but certainly still whole.

You will not lose your memories of her. You will not lose her necklace in a drawer or in the pocket of your jeans during a wash cycle. You will not lose your doubts, your grief, but you will also not lose the warmth with which you remember the ways she made you smile, made you grow.

You will not lose her – but she will finally be muted, so that there is more room in your head and your heart for other things, other people.

You will move her necklace from the inside of your jacket pocket to a safe spot on your bedside table, so that you don't hold it against your heartbeat all day but you do see it gleaming beneath your lamplight before you go to sleep. You will let yourself smile when you smell dark roast coffee, her favorite, or hear an Italian opera, or see a woman with curly hair in public that almost, from a certain angle, looks like hers. You will stop drinking so much, because you won't feel the urgent need to.

You will try to do as McGee did, and make peace with the fact that she wanted what she wanted, away from you, and you have to let her find what she needs. Even if it means you getting hurt. Even if it means you will not get answers to questions that still make you burn.

You will keep saying her name, remembering her for your team and also for Bishop who didn't know her – Ziva, the one who got away, the one for whom your softness will not fade.

It will not be easy. You will miss her. Sometimes, the old frustration will return. You will not be able to settle on solid answers for these murky questions, and you will keep wrestling with yourself, vacillating between the poles of your ambivalence. And when you exhaust yourself with that, leave your heart on ice. Let yourself feel unfinished. It's normal.

Remind yourself: step by step, day by day.

Remind yourself: you will be okay.

Remind yourself: you loved her, and it mattered. And it always will.

And for months after the catch and release, so it goes.

Until…it doesn't.

You will not see it coming. You will not have the hope left to halfway expect it.

You will not even be aware of how far you've come, until she suddenly returns – as suddenly as she left – to spoil it.

It will be as though the sun setting on your heartbreak, cooling it down into a blue serenity whose hollowness you've become accustomed to carrying with you, has abruptly flared again, high as noon, bright and bloody.

The intensity of it will scare you a little.

Let it.

The things that scare you will only make you stronger.

She will come to you in the form of a package – brown, cardboard, nondescript. Ellie Bishop will be the one to bring it in from the mailroom, wondering why a careful hand has inked yours and Gibbs's and McGee's and Abby's and Ducky's and Palmer's names onto a box with international stamps. But you will know, the second you get a look at the handwriting, who it's from. And your heart will go cold, freeze inside your chest, and you will struggle to find your breath for a moment – because you honestly never thought you would hear from Ziva again.

All of you will stare at the box, wondering who will open it. In the end, it will be McGee. He will slice the box open with a letter opener, and he will pull out small items wrapped in brown paper, with your names on each of them. Gifts. McGee will run his hand across the bottom of the box, but there will be no letter, no explanation. Just these things, from her to all of you.

Abby will open hers right away, curious and hungry for a piece, any piece, of her friend. It will be a beaded necklace – black, of course, painted with red and gold and white. Abby will beam and wear it immediately and refuse to take it off. She will skip back to her lab – the only one easily satisfied by this unexpected surprise.

McGee will find a black genuine Italian leather wallet, which he will immediately begin to switch his things into. Ducky will find a book on ancient Egyptian medicine. Palmer will find a beautiful baby rattle, a soft green patterned with gold. Gibbs will find a carving tool, for his boat, and he will chuckle softly.

You will see this – see them melt at a sign that she is thawing – and a part of you will want to join them. You will half-wish you could open your little bundle, see what it is that reminded her of you and compelled her to send it to you.

But you won't do it. You won't open it.

You will retire to your desk, slip it into your bottom drawer, and leave it there – another mystery you'll learn to live with.

You will wonder if that's the right thing to do – if you're being petty, or unfair. You will ache, more than a little bit, to know what she gave you. The thought of her gift, and her, will preoccupy you for days, a constant nagging ghost in the back of your mind that can't, won't, let go.

So, be gentle with yourself. Don't force it. Allow yourself to feel pain and confusion and burning curiosity, but leave your heart on ice; don't let her inflame you. Get on with your days. Try not to let this feel like a cataclysm.

Promise yourself that you won't open that package until you feel ready to face it.

But she will come again, in the form of another package two weeks later. Same deal: a box, with small bundles inside, wrapped in brown paper, addressed to each of you. This second time, Bishop will get one too – a pair of pretty blue earrings. That will surprise all of you; you won't know how Ziva found out about her replacement. Probably from some of the sources she still has in D.C. But Bishop, who never even met Ziva, will wear them often.

You will find yourself facing another brown package, and deciding to postpone the inevitable again. You will leave the package in the drawer with the last one, still torturing yourself over whether this is unfair or not, whether you are being a coward or a jerk or both or neither. You will not know what to do, or what to believe.

She was supposed to be here, at home, with you, but she left. And then after she left, she didn't stay gone. You will ponder this with frustration. You will wonder why she never lets anything be easy on you. You will wonder if this is her fault, for making decisions without considering you, or if it's your fault, for investing yourself so deeply in her despite knowing the risks. These risks.

Again, there will be no easy answers.

You will not want to talk about it, even as your team gently, worriedly, eyes you when they think you aren't looking. And that's okay. Missing her may have been a collective effort – but this small brown package was for you and only you, so what you do with it is only between you and her.

You did not have control of her departure. But you will have control over how you deal with her gifts.

So take it. Don't open the package.

They will keep coming, though, at irregular intervals. Roughly every two weeks, but sometimes they will take longer. But they will come, for months. And you will keep doing what you've been doing – tucking them away, refusing to look at them. They will crowd the desk drawer you assigned them; you will have to keep a few of them in a second drawer.

The team will see you do it, see the way your jaw tightens every time Bishop comes upstairs with another box, see the way you shut down for a few minutes after the bundles are distributed. But they will understand – and though they will want to, they won't push you. Some wounds run too deeply. She really did hurt you when she left. They will feel that emanating off of you like a smell, and you will feel it in you too, something hard and painful residing deep inside the bowels of who you are.

You have left people behind before, but more often, you have been the one to get left behind – by the mother who died too young, by the father with no time for you, by the girlfriends who could not feel the heat behind your light, the partner who died in your arms. And this time, you were left behind by her. By Ziva. By the woman whom you were half-convinced was the love of your life.

You will not know anymore, at this point, how convinced you are that she is the love of your life. You will not know what to do with your grief, welling up inside of you again, grieving now because she is in contact again rather than because she isn't. You will not know what you want from her – because you will have to admit to yourself that yes, you are relieved that she is okay, and she is speaking to you in whatever way, and she is in your life again. You will hate yourself a little for that relief, hate her a little for giving it to you when she was the one who took it away.

You will feel powerless, because she is the one who decides the terms of your correspondence. And that will make the act of not opening her gifts all the more important.

You will not open them. Not yet. And somehow, late at night, when you stare at her necklace on your bedside table and feel the usual collection of doubts and anxieties in your stomach, this will become a source of comfort for you.

Remember: you have choices.

While ignoring her may have been unthinkable in the beginning, you will no longer be standing at the beginning, facing an uncertain void. Circumstances will have changed what is and isn't unthinkable.

You will decide, in the deluge of her packages, to try letting her go in earnest.

Start dating again. It won't be serious, but that will be its solace. Date, and laugh, and stop having expectations. Let each moment be its own worthy thing. Let yourself find peace amongst strangers.

Take yourself out for dinner, too. Spend money on yourself. Buy new clothes. Start running again. See movies alone and with women. Try weird things with your hair gel, and then wash it out of your head in the shower, amused by your own mistakes. Smile at the clouds, at passerby, at waitresses in restaurants. Smile for yourself.

You will not stop missing her – but the missing will be less all-consuming. Her packages will disorient you less. You will be relaxed and easy when you come into work, and you will joke with Bishop and McGee and even Gibbs, and it will not feel forced. You will horse around with Abby in her lab, even go to drinks just with her – something you haven't done in years – and you will surprise yourself with how little you know her, how little you know your own self.

You will not be able to let her go, really, because she is a part of you and she changed you and there is no way to root her out of you. You will not be able to pretend she never mattered, because she did. But what you will do is move forward. One foot and then the other. One day at a time, like you told yourself. You will find other sources of joy and meaning.

Soon, you will forget to forget her. Winter will turn into spring, spring to early summer, and you will blossom. You will just…be.

And it will feel better than you knew it could.

In the middle of June, the envelope will come, no box this time. A photograph of a city square, slightly out of focus. On the back, in her hand – love from Alexandria. x

Abby will immediately get to work looking, tracking, searching – and voila, Ziva will be findable once more. There will be an address for her in Egypt. Abby will theorize that this is Ziva's way of saying she is ready to reopen communication again. Abby will get excited, and close her lab door for hours at a time, working on her "Ziva Project."

But you will not share her exuberance. You will be curious, certainly, as to why Ziva is leaving breadcrumbs for Abby now as opposed to any other time – the curiosity will breed in your bones that old discomfort you felt when you tried and failed to say her name aloud – yet your curiosity will not devour you the way it once might have.

Your immediate instinct will tell you to feel guilty for that. For not missing her properly. For not joining Abby and the rest of the team in their lively interest for Ziva's whereabouts. Your instincts will tell you that you have betrayed her – that you don't love her enough to be happy for her – and you will be tempted to doubt your fragile, newfound inner stability.

Don't let that happen. Don't sabotage yourself that way.

Remind yourself: you are happy for her. Clearly, she has found what she was looking for, and that makes you happy.

Remind yourself: if she loves you, she will also want you to find what you are looking for – even if that means figuring out what exactly you're looking for. This does not mean you love her less, or that she loves you less.

Remind yourself: sometimes, even if it's meant to be, love is just not ready. And you deserve to give and receive the love that is ready.

One last round of packages will come, though you will not know at the time that it will be the last. The others will get bundles, as usual, wrapped in brown paper – but you will get an envelope. It will have your name on it in blue ink. McGee will peer at it with curiosity; Abby will ask if you're going to read it.

You will tell them, not yet. But soon. You will feel a low, easy tide breaking gently upon the beach of your thoughts, the wind whispering into your mellowed heart that you will be in the right place to read them so soon, maybe within two weeks – but not today. You will tuck it away with the rest of the things she gave you, and begin planning the date you have tonight with an attractive brown-haired woman who told you over dinner on your last date that she admired you. Admired you. That word, and the way she said it – genuinely, sweetly – will be your mental preoccupation, rather than Ziva's letter.

This will not feel strange or guilt-inducing anymore. This will be how you know you really are okay – not pining, not lusting, not angsting, but moving on.

But, two days after that, Abby will call everyone's cell phones, incoherent with emotion, and the team will rush down to the lab – and without warning, there she will be. Ziva. On Abby's computer screen, in an encrypted video chat window.

Ziva, in the flesh. Brown curls and warm tan and familiar smile, almost a year after the fact. Ziva. Ziva.

"Hello!" she will say, waving, her pixel eyes shooting straight through your soul like a laser beam. "Hi!"

McGee will sputter: "Oh my god. Abby. How did you-?" Gibbs will be silent, but smile knowingly at the camera; he will murmur, "Good to see you, Ziver." Ducky will clap his hands together, and Palmer will start rooting in his lab coat for his wallet, where he has a photograph of the baby he will adopt in the next six months. Ellie Bishop will introduce herself, laugh about the big shoes she had to fill.

They will be so uncomplicatedly thrilled to see Ziva – ask her questions about where she is and what's going on and what has she been doing. And Ziva will be radiant, glowing as you've never seen her glow before. The little group clustered by the computer will be loud and effusive, their laughter and chatter mixing and overlapping, everything being as it should be with her and them together over cyberspace again—

—and yet, you will not get in the middle of it. You will linger behind Gibbs's head, because he's the closest to your height, the easiest to obscure you. You will not ask her questions. Your smile will be dazed, frozen in place on your face because you won't know what else to do with your features.

And you will fake a text message, something important; you'll murmur some lie to McGee beside you, which he won't hear, and you will duck out of the room before anyone can call you back. You will make a beeline for the men's room – but then the men's room will remind you of her, so you'll go instead to the parking lot, to your car. You will slip into the driver's seat, but not turn the machine on, and try to get your head together.

Seeing Ziva will have put you into a tailspin, a near panic. It will remind you of leaving her, losing her. It will remind you of every emotion you thought you had purged yourself of. It will break you down to what you were the night you flew out of Israel, her necklace looped around your fingers, the grief already setting in—

Breathe.

You must rest your head against the seat of your car, and breathe deeply.

Tell yourself: you love her, she is not the end of you.

Tell yourself: it is because you love her that she is the end of you.

Tell yourself: tonight, it is perfectly acceptable to get blackout drunk for the first time in six months.

Do what you need to do. Bring home too much alcohol, and drink it all, and fall asleep on your couch, and go to work the next day hung over.

When asked, blame an imaginary date who showed you too good a time. Silently thank your coworkers for pretending to believe you.

The team will be kind to you. They will refrain from discussing her – she'll be back to her – in your presence, because they know the shock was worse for you than it was for them. They will give you space, but also watch you carefully to make sure you don't break.

And you will not break. You have weathered so much, grown too much, to break over an image on a screen. You will not break.

You will put some distance between yourself and your team by going out with other friends for a couple of nights – friends you've made since she left and you stopped being such a workaholic – and you will recalibrate yourself. You will not break.

A video call will still, at this point, be too much for you – but you will also have moved on enough to not want to bury your memories, your feelings. You will start carrying her necklace around with you again, keeping it tenderly inside your jacket pocket every morning when you go to work – reacquainting yourself with its weight, with what it means, with how much you still quietly, benignly, but sincerely, miss her.

Six days after the video call, you will get another letter. Abby will bring it to you. She will tell you, kindly but solemnly, to read this one. You will excuse yourself to an empty conference room, and Gibbs will reassign your morning tasks to McGee and Bishop, and you will finally face her. You will open the letter, take out the paper upon which her warm hand moved, tracing these words, her words, to you and only you. Her necklace in your pocket will feel heavier than it is, almost as heavy as your anvil heart, but you will persevere, because you will be more ready than not ready to finally see what she has to say.

Her letter will tell you these things:

That she didn't know you weren't opening her packages. That she couldn't know, because she wasn't ready to be in touch yet. That she thought about you everyday, could never stop thinking about you, because though she never wanted to be saved, never thought she could be saved, you did, you saved her. You saved her not once, not twice, but again and again, every day that she was at NCIS – every day that she's been away from it. You saved her by loving her, and then letting her go, even when it was nearly impossible for you.

She will continue:

That she felt so lost, when her father died, and everything she knew about herself felt wrong, when her old friend reminded her that her life before had consequences that extended into the present. She let those consequences consume her, because she had always been afraid of being irredeemable, and she had taken her friend's words to be proof that she was irredeemable, and she was living a lie, and she had to be punished. Because this was who she was, a person who only knew how to run, a person who did not know how to have what she wanted.

You will struggle to keep reading, because this letter is simultaneously a soothing balm and a roaring fire to your soul, scorching you and also healing you with these things that you wish you'd known before she left. You will take her necklace out of your pocket, and squeeze it tight, as though it is her hand in your hand, her hand that you can squeeze so hard with yours to remind her how present you are, how wrong she is about herself.

She will still continue:

That she is better now. That she moved around a lot at first, not sure where to go or what to do. That she went back to some of those old places and people she knew, wondering if the past had fresh answers. That no, the past did not have any more answers, because after a while, she began to realize that the past, while still making up the DNA of the present, could not be changed – but the future could.

I came to Alexandria a month before I started sending the packages. And I stayed because I finally fell in love with something again – this vibrant city on the water. I live here now, in a little apartment on the third floor with a view of the street.

She will tell you about how she is learning to forgive herself for her crimes. How she is volunteering with animal shelters, and she is playing football (real football, Tony, not your silly American version) with street children, and she is running along the Mediterranean coast, and she is crying for the people she has lost. And she is working – as a private investigator. She is enjoying working for herself, choosing what she does and how she does it for the first time in a long time. She is enjoying her freedom, getting to know herself again.

She will explain about the video call near the end of the letter. She didn't know that you weren't opening her packages – and she did not know that you hadn't read her other letter. It had been one sheet of paper with a date and time on it: the time she would make her computer available to video chat with the team, but especially with you. She did not expect you not to read the message, tell everyone else; she did not expect Abby to be actively monitoring her after the Alexandria postcard, and connect the video feed without forewarning. She did not expect you to flee the room before you got a chance to talk.

She will tell you:

Mail is unpredictable, and I do not know if you still want to talk to me. But, if you do, my cell phone number is written on the back of the first page of this letter, along with suitable times (on your end) to call. Maybe I shall hear from you soon.

This is where her signature will be, so wonderfully and achingly familiar from years of reports she signed off in exactly this way. Ziva David. You will say her name to yourself, and it'll feel like a magic spell. It'll taste like homecooked food after a long trip, grounding your body back to the comfort of what it once knew.

Sit with your feelings awhile. Wipe the moisture building up around your eyelids, and let your spirit settle with all of this new information, with the joy – yes, joy – of getting answers. Fold her letter and put it in your jacket pocket, along with the necklace, and breathe.

And then – get back to work. Get back to your life. These pieces of her will be with you the whole way; no one will take them from you. But there will be others who need your time more urgently.

Work will be work, dependable and distracting. And at the end of the day, you will finish up your reports, and then you will hesitate over the bottom drawers of your desk, where you have stashed the rest of the things she gave you.

You will deliberate, but not for long. You will take everything out of the drawer, and bring it all home, and dump the bundles onto your bed, open each thing one by one— a beautifully embossed lighter, engraved with the letter "T"; a pack of dates from Morocco; a small replica of a famous mosque; a stack of photographs from a beach, white sand and astonishingly blue water and brown feet decorated with beaded anklets. And one of her own knives from the old days, worn but sturdy. Amongst other things.

You will get to your knees, survey the collection of items crowding your bed. You will not know what to think. Your heart will be too tired to be wrung for more feelings – more guilt, more angst, more ache. You will want to sleep, but there will be weeks worth of memories to move before you do, and you'll be thinking about her cell phone number anyway, the one she gave you to call, if you wanted. And you will want to, even after everything. Because she sent you pieces of her life, and she sent you that letter, and she gave you so much of herself that a phone call seems hardly adequate.

You will wrestle with yourself over it all night long – but as the dawn breaks, it will become clear to you that there is no real decision here.

You will call her. It is the only thing to do. You have to hear the words from her letter out loud, with her own voice into your ear. You have to feel the intimacy of these small items in the details she gives about her experiences in real time. You have to ask her things not addressed in her letters. You have to share her silences, listen to her hesitation and wait for her answers. You must. You must.

So you'll do it. A couple of hours before you have to be at work, sitting in sweatpants and a t-shirt on your bed two days after receiving the letter, you will dial the number. The dial tone will be scratchy, but it will go through.

And she will answer.

"Tony?"

Her voice will be tentative, but yours won't be.

"Ziva."

She will hesitate, but then say, with great relief: "I am glad to hear your voice."

Ask her, "What time is it for you?"

"Almost time for lunch."

But you will already be bored with the small talk; it's not why you rang. You will wait a beat, then cut right to the heart of the matter: "Why did you ask me to call you?"

She will answer readily, "Because I wanted to hear from you, if you were willing to talk."

"You thought I wouldn't be."

"You did not open my letters."

"Did they tell you that?"

"Yes."

"What else did they tell you?"

She will protest. Is it really important? And you will tell her, yes, it's very important, because you don't know what she knows. So she will relent, because she doesn't want to fight.

"They said that you drank a lot, for a while. They said you came in to work still partially drunk, and they covered for you. They said you got better, about a month before I started sending the packages – stopped drinking, started smiling again."

"In your letter, you said that a month before you started sending the packages, you moved to Alexandria."

"I did say that."

"Coincidence?"

It will be the first thing in this rather tense conversation that makes you both smile.

"Never," she will say softly. "Rule thirty-nine."

"Well, it's true," you'll say, lying down on your bed and staring at the ceiling, the phone perched between your shoulder and your ear. "It got better then for me. And you, too, apparently."

"I'm glad it got better for you." And she will mean it.

"Where are you?"

"Home." And, when you both simultaneously wince across space and time, she will amend— "My apartment."

"What are you wearing?" And, when you both simultaneously wince again, you will amend— "Not…not like that. I just. I'm trying to picture what you look like."

She will be quiet for a while, mulling it over. But then she will soften, and say, "I am wearing blue shorts, and a black t-shirt."

"Is your hair curly?"

"In this humidity, it cannot help but be curly."

"Up or down?"

"Up. But loosely."

And you will smile wistfully, trying to visualize all that, playing with her necklace beneath the lamplight as the two of you speak – hungry but tentative, words soft as birdtalk.

"Is your hair light, with all the sunshine?"

"Yes. It looks almost blonde sometimes."

"It was coffee-colored when I last…"

"When you last saw me."

You will pause, the silence raw. You won't want to break it; you won't know how.

But then she will ask you, with an edge of tiredness in her voice, "How are you, Tony? Really?"

"I'm…okay." The word will taste true.

"Are you angry with me?"

You will have to think about it. But you will tell her, again, truthfully, "No. Not anymore."

"I hope my letter helped."

"A little," you will allow.

"I never meant to hurt you." She will choke a little on the words, barely above a whisper. And your throat will ache, but you will admit, "You still hurt me."

"I needed…time. A clean slate." Her voice will be simultaneously thick with emotion, thin with exhaustion.

"Did you get it?"

"Yes."

"Then I'm happy for you," you will say, though you will sound like you're sorry.

She will not respond. She won't be able to. The silence between you will be as wide and exhausting as the Atlantic that physically separates you. Nothing will feel important enough, or big enough, to bridge the gap. You will wonder if she's crying, but she will give you no clue either way. Impenetrable, as ever.

At last, you will muster up the courage to ask the question that has haunted you since the first package in the mail: "Ziva, why did you start contacting us again? I thought you were done. I thought you had to…find yourself, and do your own thing. I thought you couldn't do that with us around."

She will take time, and more tremulous silence, before she says, "I needed a break, but I never…I never stopped caring about you. About all of you. I left a job, not…not you."

Your throat will tighten; some of that old anger, the one you thought was resolved, will bubble unpleasantly inside your gut. "But that's not true," you will say. "You did leave us. You vanished – and if I hadn't found you, you wouldn't have even said goodbye."

"I would have." But it will sound meek even to her own ears.

"Don't lie to me."

"I'm not. It would have taken time to say it the right way, but I would have."

"So now, what, you want to come back?"

There will be little softness left in you now; your bitterness will take the reins in such a quick, effortless coup that you will astonish even yourself. The words out of your mouth will not be fully under your control. You will overflow in your attempts at restraint. "Is that why you sent those things, why you asked me to call you? Because you want to come back?"

She will go quiet again.

And then she will say, her tone inscrutable, "No. I don't want to come back."

And you will drop her necklace to the floor, let it settle into your carpet. Your heart will race; your anger will feel like a wild thing rattling in your ribcage. Which is the more despicable answer, you will wonder – wanting to come back, or not wanting to? You won't be able to decide.

"So what do you want?" you will ask, your fatigue setting in as quickly as the bitterness.

"I…" She will let the word hang, uncertain – but then she will say, "I want to know about Ellie. I want to know if you're seeing anyone. I want to tell you about my year. I want…I want to catch up with my friend again."

"Bishop is fine." Your voice will be curt, indifferent enough to betray the profundity of your heartache. "I'm not seeing anyone. And I don't want to know about your year."

You will pause, painfully, and then tell her, just as painfully, "When you left, you lost your access to my life, Ziva. You were gone. When I needed to do this back-and-forth, you weren't there. And now…now you dropping in like this is hurting me. We aren't each other's business anymore."

She will be silent then, so very silent for so long that you will wonder if she's hung up on you. But you'll know she hasn't, because you will listen to her breathe, and your feverish heart will overheat, and you will not know what you want her to say.

In the end, she will say, resignedly, "I am sorry for the way this has unfolded. You reached for me when I did not want you to, and now I have done the same. We are square."

Once more, she will hesitate – and then she will say, with more confidence than she has said anything, "You are still deeply loved, Tony."

"I'm counting on it," you will admit, wistful.

"You may always call me at this number, if you want."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Take care of yourself." You will hear the ghost of a smile in her voice.

"Goodbye, Ziva."

And you will be the one to hang up first.

Immediately after putting the phone down, you will wonder if you were too hard on her. You will wonder if there was a different path to take that conversation, a different way to understand each other. You will wonder if you're being unfair, getting angry with her, when all she was doing was what she thought she had to do. You will wonder why, when all you have done is miss her, you have pushed her away.

You will wonder if this is just the way of things, if you are destined (doomed?) to be alone. You will wonder why you are so beholden to her in particular – why even when you've let her go, done all that work of moving on, you still haven't quite let her go.

In other words, you will be a mess.

You will pick her necklace up off the floor, tuck it into your bedside drawer, unable to look at it any longer than you have to. You will roll over on your bed, your heart hammering too fast, your brain too alert and anxious to sleep. You will feel an itch to flee, to take a nighttime run around the neighborhood, fast and hard, to keep your head from exploding. You will look over at your running shoes, visible from your open closet door, and you will think about it.

Don't do it. Don't go.

Sit with the feelings, as you've learned how to do in the time she's been gone. Sit with them, and feel them. Don't run away; let yourself explore the nuances of your confusion.

You will acknowledge, yes, you were a little hard on her. You, after all, have gone on rescue missions to drag her home against her will; as she herself said, you saved her. But saving her did not require her consent. Saving her meant you deciding for her what she wanted. And in the end, she was grateful, because she did want what you wanted for her – but this time, you've diverged, and the complications of "saving" have become contentious.

When you went, almost a full year ago, to the Middle East to search for her, she did not want you there. She wanted you to respect her decision to leave, and stop questioning her. But you didn't. Was that fair? Was that okay to do – to assume that you deserved more than the explanation she gave?

You did it because you loved her. But now, you will ask yourself: how much does that matter? Does it matter that you love her when you cornered her in Tel Aviv and asked her to start over with you? You would like to think it does – but then, will it now matter to you that she loves you too, and that's why she sent you those things, why she disrupted your peace and your process of moving on?

You have both tried to make choices for each other. She chose to leave the team after Michael Rivkin's death, even though you did not want her to. You chose to investigate and avenge her, even though she did not want you to. She chose to leave now, because she couldn't remember who she was anymore. You chose to find her, even though she told you not to. She chose to send you packages, and you chose not to open them.

You will have to decide on this night – lying on your bed, phone on the floor, sitting with your feelings – how much intent matters, and how much you are willing to forgive yourselves for, after mutual hurt.

It will be a tough question to answer. Take your time with it. Time will be on your side.

Ziva will continue to have regular friendly chats with the team, by phone and by video chat. Abby will call her every other day; McGee will join her often. Even Bishop will get to know and like Ziva in this way, as they complain with Abby about "their men" and roll their eyes and laugh. But you will always politely decline to join those calls with them: not because you won't want to see her, but because you won't know what to say to her yet.

By this time, it will be July – almost exactly a year since you left her in Tel Aviv. A whole year. Nothing, and everything, has changed. You will definitely avoid her video call on the anniversary of leaving her. The timeline is fuzzy – time zones are complicated – but you'll remember the date when you were in Tel Aviv, and your headspace will be murky, fragile, on the edge of splintering.

It will feel as though all the progress you've made has ceased to matter, now that she is back in your orbit. It will feel as though you are a jerk and she is a jerk and no one deserves anything good. It will feel as though this is hopeless, because you can't let go and you can't move on and you hate feeling caught in limbo like this.

It will be a difficult day for you.

You will go home that night, and get drunk on champagne, because someone once said it was like drinking the stars, and you'll be craving a little bit of starlight and magic, to soothe your ambivalence. You will drink, and get some takeout, and watch a movie you know you like – and you will feel so horribly empty, almost like you did when she first left.

You will sit with those feelings, and they will hurt you, and you will find that you are tired of enduring yourself.

You will want to do something, and feel better – because that's who you are. Who you've always been. Someone who needs a plan.

So, make one.

This will be the thing that clinches it for you: you will realize that so long as you are both alive on this planet, alive and therefore reachable, you will never be able to truly move on.

When you thought she was gone, you suffered, but you came through. You found other things and people to make your life exciting and purposeful again. You found new parts of yourself in the chaos. You missed her desperately, but even that got easier over time – because she wasn't an option. And in the absence of her, you found others.

But you will see, on that one year anniversary, that even if she leaves for a while, you will remember her and she will remember you and somehow, somehow, you will find your way back to each other. You can't let her go; neither can she let you go. You will never be able to move on, or love another woman seriously, so long as she is breathing.

She has hurt you. You have hurt her. But such is the nature of loving. You will hurt each other. You will decide for each other. You will struggle to let go. Pain and vulnerability are the price of loving this deeply. And it's a price you will no longer be afraid to pay.

So stop fighting – her, yourself. You will love her for the rest of your days, and it is clear that she has not stopped loving you either.

The war is over. It will be time to find your way home.

So do what you must: pick up your phone. Dial her number with shaky fingers. This will be one of very few times you are grateful for large time differences; your middle of the night is her middle of the morning, and she will pick up on the second ring.

"Tony?" She will sound surprised.

"Ziva." Her name will come out in a murmur, soft despite the sharp consonants in her name.

And you won't see the point in lying, or sugarcoating, or beating around the bush, so you'll tell her the blunt, painful truth: "I miss you."

She will sigh, and so will you.

"It has been a difficult year," she will say.

"I know."

"The only thing harder than living with you is living without you, Ziva." You'll stare at your ceiling, imagine her in her apartment doing the same. "I don't know how to do it."

"Live without me?"

"Yeah."

She will be silent, considering, but then she will say, "Tony, I do not know how to do this either. But letting me go…it was the best thing you could have done for me. And I am grateful that you did. I am grateful that you did not force me to come back to D.C. with you. I needed time to…think. To remember how to be. And now, I do remember. So tell me, what do you need?"

And for a long moment, you won't know how to answer her. You've asked yourself this question all year without avail. But with her on the other end of the phone, breathing in your ear, with her listening and waiting for you and being present, you will find a reservoir of shimmering boldness that you forgot you had.

And you will draw upon it when you tell her, "I need…company."

Her smile will be practically audible over the phone line. "Count to a million," she will murmur. "I am on my way."

She will hang up first, but for the first time in a long time, that click of the phone will feel like a pause rather than the end. To be continued. Soon.

Indeed, her flight will land twelve hours later. You and McGee and Abby will pick her up from the airport. She will have one suitcase; her hair will be a curly mess, an imprint still on her cheek from the blanket she was sleeping on. You and McGee and Abby will descend upon her the moment she enters arrivals, and she will gratefully sink into each of your arms, feel your warmth and smell your smell and let you hold her again.

She will look at you as though she wants to kiss you, but she won't, with Abby and McGee present. Still, as the four of you make your way to McGee's car, some part of her will constantly touch some part of you – her hand, her knee, her hair – and you will be practically delirious, dazed by how real she has suddenly become again. Pixels over video chat do her radiance no justice.

She will stay with Abby, because Abby insisted. When asked, Ziva will say that she is staying four days, but in truth, she did not buy a return ticket. And you will figure that out, when you hold her bag for her, and you see her itinerary peeking out from the top of the pile. She didn't mention it, but you will know it, and it will flood you with hope again – hope, and nerves. You will still be too afraid to assume that the separation will be over for good.

She will come by the office on the way back from the airport – hug Bishop, hug Gibbs, hug Ducky, hug Palmer. She will see their pictures and comment on their haircuts and Abby will drag her around the lab, give her an honorary Caff-Pow. And with her on the bull pen floor again, it will almost feel as though things are back to what they should be – until you see the visitor's badge clipped to her waist, and you remember. And you will feel numb with happiness, unable to grapple with the reality of her body in the vicinity of yours again; all you'll be able to think about is how, for better and for worse, she is there. Present. With you.

She will spend a generous portion of the afternoon with her old team, her family – but then around dinnertime, she will ask you to come with her, because she is hungry and she wants to know if there are any good new restaurants around to try. And the team will let you two go – smilingly, knowingly – because no one will have been under any illusions as to why she came.

So you will take her to a Thai place, get some take-out, and bring her back to your apartment. She will make herself at home on your couch, and you will marvel at how good she looks – healthy, and strong, and tan, and light-haired, and relaxed. Easy. She will open the take-out boxes and start stuffing her face, and you will just watch her, bemused.

About halfway through a helping of pad thai, she will teasingly ask you, "What are you staring at?"

And you will say, "A mirage, I think."

Her eyes will be bright, the sinking summer sun reflecting golden shadows off her features; her expression will be soft.

"I am not a mirage, not this time," she will remind you. "And I did not buy a return ticket to Alexandria. I am here to fight for you, as you have fought for me."

"Yeah?"

"Yes." She will put her plate on the coffee table, lean in closer to you. "You said to me during our first call that we were not each other's business anymore. But I want to be your business again, Tony. I want us to be…us, again. However that may be. Because whomever else I have lost, I have lost, but you…" Her voice will trail off, but come back stronger than ever. "I will not lose you."

"How does that work?" you will ask, your heart jackhammer-hammering in your chest. "Do I go to Egypt with you now or something?"

"If you would like to."

"I…don't," you will admit. "Not when my team is here." Not when my family is here.

She will hesitate, but she will say, "I can come back here, if you want me to."

"Come back to NCIS?"

"Not necessarily. I like private investigating. I like…working with children, and having time off, and traveling. But I will come back here if you still want me."

You will be able to sense that this is not an ideal scenario for her – indeed, Alexandria has become her beautifully – but it will mean the earth to you that she would still seriously offer. You will tentatively reach your hand out, gently run your fingertips down her jaw. She will close her eyes, move to your touch. And when she opens her eyes, you will gently tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, so that you can see the whole of her lovely face.

"I just need to know…that you won't run away again," you'll say.

"You know I can't promise you that." She will be sorry, but she will be honest. "I am the type of person that runs sometimes."

"I have roots here. And…and I love you. And those things won't reconcile."

"I love you too," she will say, determinedly casual – the first time she will have said this aloud to anyone and meant it. "Is it enough?"

"I want it to be. This is your home, Ziva; why do you want to leave it so badly?"

She will avert her gaze, fiddle with the bracelet on her wrist – thin string and loose beads, made for her by somebody who clearly cared about her.

"Once upon a time, I wanted something permanent. Something that could not be taken away from me. I thought I had that in D.C. – but permanence is an illusion. And I am not a person who knows how to stay still. Even at NCIS, I never learned." She will take a deep breath, and look you in the eye again. "But of anything or anyone I have ever known, I would have betted on you to be the closest to permanence that I ever got."

"I…feel the same."

"But things change, Tony." Her eyes will flash with urgency. "People change. It is part of life. It is life. And you, you have been at that job for more than ten years. You have stood still for such a long time."

She will take your hand, clasp it in hers. "Come to Alexandria with me," she will say. "Try something new with me."

You will think she's crazy. You will wrench your hand back – not out of anger, but astonishment.

"But Gibbs—the team—" you'll sputter.

"They love you," she will say. "They will understand."

"But…we're a family," you will say. "Doesn't that matter?"

"What is that phrase again? At some point, we must all fly away from the nest. And I…I want you to fly with me."

And she will look at you as she has never looked at you before – her eyes as wild as her hair, her complete earnestness grounding her mad proposition in something so scarily…possible. She will look at you as though she is offering you the world – which, in a way, she will be. And that will be the reason that you look at her with wide-eyed fear, not excitement.

"You can't just come back here after a year of not talking to me, and tell me to drop everything and run away with you," you will point out. "That is definitely not fair."

Yet, her expression – sincere, rapturous – will not change.

"I know you are upset with me. I know that we need to…work some things out. This has not been easy for you – and whether or not you believe me, this has not been easy for me either. But let me ask you this. Besides work, and the team, what exactly is holding you here?"

And you will just stare at her, speechless, for a moment. The gall of her will astound you – and yet something about her last question will hit on a note of surprising truth. You will mull that one over for a good long while, as you wordlessly help yourself to some pad thai to buy some time.

But she won't push you on it. Instead, she will grab the remote and put on the TV and flip through the channels, find some old movie to watch – something funny, to distract you. She will eat her pad thai, and put her feet on the table, and she will still look at you as she never has before – with unmistakable tenderness, so intimate that it almost terrifies you.

For someone generally so guarded, she will be remarkably unguarded with you, eating dinner and watching TV and, eventually, snuggling up to you, her curls making your nose twitch. She won't make a big deal about it – she'll just do it, and you will put your arm around her waist and bring her in like she belongs there, and you will listen to each other's hearts beating faintly beneath the noise of the TV – and that makes it all the more momentous. That you will do this with each other without fanfare, without tortured carefulness, is magical and a little baffling.

You will be amazed at how this insane year – her new job, your changed attitude to work, missing each other across the Atlantic – can still give way to this, to something so organic and lovely.

You will watch a blur of TV shows through the night with her, before she whispers that she should probably get back to Abby's. You will offer her a ride, but she will politely decline. She'll call a cab instead. But she will call it while still resting in your arms – and, now that you'll know what that feels like, you will struggle profoundly when she has to get up and go. It will be the whole year's aching and confusion – and, yes, regret – filling the space between your bodies.

"See you tomorrow," she will say, standing entirely too close, close enough to count every shade of brown in her extraordinary eyes. "I will call you."

"Okay. See you."

And you'll want to kiss her, so badly, as she lingers a moment too long, the front door open behind her. But you won't. Not yet. Instead, you will lean in, and so will she, and your foreheads will touch, and she will plant a rose-petal kiss on the corner of your mouth.

"Tomorrow," she will mumble, and draw away.

But you will not sleep tonight. Instead, you will think about her- the pressure of her lips on your skin, and her body curled up beside yours, and the way she wants you to go to Alexandria with her, leaving behind everything and everyone you know. You will think about how afraid you are of change, but also how much you want to be with her – how she lights you up inside, how seeing her makes you remember all the things you like most about yourself.

You will spend all night thinking, thinking. Pondering. Ruminating. Wondering, not for the first time in a year, what you will do next.

You will tell yourself: there is no way I can go with her to Alexandria. Gibbs wouldn't allow it.

You will tell yourself: but I need to make choices for myself, not for other people, like Ziva did.

You will tell yourself: this is too rash, and I can't make this decision too quickly.

You will tell yourself: maybe her coming here already made the decision for me.

It will be as though you and Ziva are back on the Tel Aviv tarmac, with a choice to make – to stay or go. To take a chance, or stay safe. To be where you are, or find places you've never been.

Lay back in your bed and close your eyes; picture the night, and the breeze, and the way the pavement was wet with recent rain. Remember the way she looked at you then – sure, but also afraid. Remember the feel of her lips on yours, the first passionate kiss and the gentle follow-up. Remember how, with every before/after that you have been through with her, you will always choose the "after," because it brought you together ever closer.

Breathe.

Be brave.

There will only be one real choice – if only you will let yourself make it.

So, make it.

She will come to the office in the afternoon, sweet-talk Gibbs into letting you off work early so that you can go to the park with her. Take her to the heart of D.C., with the national monuments and museums and happy people wandering in the summer sun. She will sit in the grass with you, and gaze up at the cloudless blue sky, and then she will gaze back at you, wondering.

Take her hand; kiss her tenderly between her knuckles.

Ask her, "How exactly would it work, moving to Alexandria?"

She will answer you with a hearty kiss on your mouth.

You will not regret the year you spent without her, because it was important – not only for her, but for you too. You also had to do the hard work of figuring out who you were without her. And you did. You made friends and took care of yourself and remembered your worth. You let yourself be hurt – and then you let yourself heal. You could not have done that before she left you sitting alone on a plane home from Tel Aviv.

You will not regret making this choice, either, though. Telling the team a few days later will be hard for you: McGee will gape and Abby will cry and Gibbs's brow will furrow. Bishop will look crestfallen and Ducky will clap you on the back and Palmer's smile will downturn. That's two of you that they will lose in a year.

But, like Ziva said – they, as your family, will understand. You need a change. You need to be with the woman you love. You need to stop pretending that she is not what you want.

So, you will make plans. Over the next four months, she will help you wind everything up and pack your things. She and you will move you out together, and book two seats to Alexandria. She will talk excitedly about all the places in Alexandria she wants to show you, how she's going to teach you Arabic and take you to Cairo. It will be surreal, imagining yourself residing in a country where the main language won't be your own. But she will exquisitely kiss away your doubts, and squeeze your hand firmly, tightly, in hers.

You will be afraid. You will miss everyone at NCIS with every fiber of your being. But remember: you have survived so much this year. You are stronger than you know. You will survive this move, too. And you will thrive.

Go. Go with her. Find yourselves. And be happy.

The last thing you will move out of your apartment will be her necklace, which you still kept in your bedside drawer. She will choke on her sob, seeing it again, gold and beautiful in your hand. You will do the clasp for her, press that Star of David back between her collarbones, where it ought to be.

Seeing it there, back on her, will feel like something falling crucially into place. She will look and feel like herself again. She will throw her arms around your neck, and sniffle into your shirt. And you will hold her close, because you will not be letting go of her again. Wherever she goes, you will go – and she will not run away without you either.

You will be in this together, the way it should be.

The team will see you off to the airport, say their last goodbyes. Every single one of you will cry ugly, genuine tears. You will hug once, twice, three times. And then you and Ziva will board the plane, find your seats, buckle in. You will lose time on the trip over, so you will have to hit the ground running on your happily ever after.

You will ask her, only half-teasingly, "Did you come here knowing you would ask me to go back with you?"

She will think about it, then say, grinning, "I knew I would ask. I did not know you would say yes."

You will snort. "Yes you did."

And she will relent. "Yes. I did."

And she will kiss you, sloppy and sweet – and you will happily let her, proving her point.

Because this is the way it needed to be. She could not have loved you the way you needed to be loved without remembering who she was. The timing wasn't right, and she made an agonizing decision in order to save you both. And now you will feel her love like it's heat radiating from her hand to your hand, from her heart to yours – and it will be the love that is ready. The love that can flourish.

This time, you will be on a plane leaving together – and it will feel not like running away, but like going home.

And from there, your future will be uncertain. There will be no way to guess what is coming for you, what the rest of your life will hold. You really will have left behind the world you knew; there will be no precedent to rely on here.

But you will have her. She will show you the investigative work she has been doing, and you will do it with her; you will work for yourself, and learn a new language, and a new way to live. You will take walks with her by the coast, looking out at the Mediterranean, and you will kiss her beneath the glow of many sunsets. You will sleep with her for the first time on the night you land in Alexandria, on a rug on the floor of her tiny apartment's tiny living room. You will buy a bigger bed with her, and then sleep with her every night in that, your face buried in her curls when you spoon.

You will gaze up at the stars at night, and she will teach you how to find constellations. You will video chat with the team every few days, and Abby will already be making plans to visit you over Christmas. You will get violently sick a few times, as your stomach adjusts to the food. But that will get easier. Everything will get easier. And Ziva will be there, luminous in her delight – and she will be enough. She will smooth out the rough edges with you, and you will wonder how you ever managed to go your whole life without this woman kissing you awake every morning.

But you won't have to wonder anymore. She will be there now. She will not leave you. She will be there to kiss you awake every morning ever after.

She will still talk about moving around – taking vacations, seeing the world. She will make you crazy with her destination spots. She will drag you out of the apartment all the time, because she will find more interesting places to look at. But you will understand that her restlessness does not come from lack of roots, lack of a home. It comes instead from the understanding that wherever you are, wherever you both are together, that is now her home. The details don't matter to her beyond that.

And you will see, over the next few months, that she is right. Home will be wherever the two of you happen to be – in her apartment, on a beach near the Mediterranean, in a big city, in a restaurant where she throws her head back and laughs and you press kisses down the length of her neck. Home will be wherever you can get Internet access and chat with Gibbs, McGee, Bishop, Abby, Ducky, Palmer. Home will be anywhere you can see the stars, and trace your own constellations.

Embrace this new life, this new chance. Kiss her passionately. Hold her close. Gently heal each other's wounds from the last year with your exuberant love; you've earned the sentimentality. Breathe in her salt and musk and believe in her, even when she's talking crazy.

Everything that you are, everything that has ever happened to and hurt you, will have brought you to this moment, happier than you've ever known – and it will all be worth it.

A/N: I'm dying of anxiety because look at what a weird thing I just posted on the Internet for countless fan fic readers to see. Please leave a review telling me what worked and what didn't, so that I know for the next time I'm feeling frisky with conventional rules of storytelling.

In terms of whether or not I will write more Tiva: I don't know. I don't know. I thought I was done with all of that, but maybe I'm not. Maybe there are more stories to tell. I can't say anymore, at this point. So I'll leave it at, assume I won't write more but still have the capacity to surprise you. When the muse has something to say, I promise you that I will listen.

Thank you for reading this story, if you made it all the way to the end. You're the best. Thank you, thank you, thank you.