A/N: I took down the original Vicissitudes because I couldn't get the beginning up to my standards. You'll notice this chapter is very similar to the original.

Summary: Tony and Ziva encounter a bump in their road to happiness - it causes Tony to ponder a serious question. Meanwhile, Rachel gets the chance to prove herself.

Chapter One

A not so distant date in the future.

Tony slipped out of bed and pulled the drawer of the bedside table open. He rummaged through the contents until he came to a VHS case of Love Story. He opened it and pulled the small black box out. He laid it on his pillow and hurried out of the room. He eased the door just shut enough so that he would be able to see inside.

He sat down on the floor and waited.

She slept soundly for another ten minutes. It wasn't until she turned to her other side that she noticed his heat gone from the bed. That realization slowly pulled her from the depths of unconsciousness.

"Tony," she murmured. She rolled back onto her other side as if he would magically appear before her.

He watched her rise to the surface of consciousness and take inventory of her surroundings. She noticed that he wasn't there and then rolled to face the side of the bed that he should have been inhabiting. It was then that she first saw the velvet box.

His breath caught in his throat as he watched her nimble fingers pick the box off of the pillow. She held it in her hand for a moment and studied it, turning it around so that she could see each side on its own.

She didn't open it.

That made him all the more nervous.

Ziva pushed herself up in the bed and leaned back against the headboard. She crossed her legs underneath herself. She looked up from the box and opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, but nothing came out. She closed it again.

Ziva bit her lip and nervously tucked her hair behind her ear. She let her thumb pop the box open.

Catching only a glimpse of what was inside, she snapped it shut again and squeezed it tight it in her hands.

"Tony?" she called, her voice wavering somewhere between discomfort and amusement.

He waited five seconds before pushing himself off of the hard wood floors and opening the bedroom door. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"What's this?" She asked, hesitation clear in every word that came out of her mouth.

He cautiously crossed the room, as if any sudden movement might upset whatever equilibrium was currently in play. He sat down on the bed in front of her and held out his hand. Ziva dropped the box into his palm.

"What does it look like?" he returned.

"Tony…" she warned. "It's not like I found it accidently…"

" Nope, nothing accidental about that placement." He agreed, staring at the spot on his pillow where the box had sat. "But I'm surprised that you didn't find it earlier. It's been in the house for a while."

"A while?"

"Yeah, I just didn't know if…with everything going on…it just didn't seem right. I wanted to wait until the moment was perfect."

"If this is your way of…" she left the word out for fear of what it would cause, "It is certainly not Oscar worthy."

"That hurts." He put a hand to his chest and feigned pain.

She ran a nervous hand through her hair before saying, rather candidly, "Its true."

"You're right; you're right." He said. He took a deep breath. "Sorry, that went better in my head. Can I start over?"

"Sure." She was still extremely skeptical of this whole charade.

"Ziva," he began

"Tony," she copied.

A smile crossed his face for a fraction of a second and then he turned serious again. "We've been through a lot together. It's really run the gamut." He paused. "I'll define that one later…"

She nodded.

"Anyway, some of its been good, really good and some of it, well, its been really, really bad. We're still here though. I mean, you and me, together. Its like all these years, all those times you wanted to kill me, every fight we've ever had – its like they were tests to see if we could handle each other. And, don't get me wrong, we didn't do well on all the tests – we cheated on a few, failed a couple, but I'm pretty sure we aced the midterm and the final." He stopped and caught the confusion on her face. "What I am saying is that, Ziva David, I love you. I've loved you for a long time and I've almost lost you a couple times now. And I know that we can't control really any of that, but, this, this we can. So, Zi, will you marry me?" The box popped back open and he placed it in her lap.

She smiled then and he noticed a faint glistening in her eyes. Maybe he hadn't done such a bad job, after all. She furiously wiped her eyes and stared at the ring.

"Can you…umm… usually, you answer the question…."

She forced herself to tear her eyes away from the princess cut diamond that stood proudly in the ring box and looked up at him. She was giggling now. "Yes, Tony." She said leaning forward and wrapping her arms around his neck. She knocked him over on the bed. "I would love to marry you."

Wednesday, September 22nd

When Tony arrived back in the Squadroom at two o'clock in the morning, he was sure that he had never been happier to see his desk. He'd been running all day and the idea of sitting in his padded chair was just intoxicating.

They were in the middle of a case. While on base at Naval Air Station Oceana, Lieutenant James Bradley's sixteen-year-old daughter had gone missing.

Lt. Bradley was completing an eight-week course at Oceana's Naval and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center.

Megan Bradley hadn't gone with her mother and younger brother to visit her father the weekend before, so she'd gone to visit him the following Sunday alone.

Most of the guys in this particular course were in their thirties; they'd done active duty a few times and were looking for something more – another way to aid the cause. James Bradley fit that bill perfectly. He was thirty-eight, he'd served three tours of duty, been promoted and found that his true calling was in intelligence work. He was well liked among his unit and deeply missed by everyone at home.

The men usually had Sundays to themselves save for their afternoon meeting with their superiors. During Lt. Bradley's forty-five minute meeting, Megan was supposed to be doing homework in one of the barrack's community rooms. When Bradley returned an hour later, Megan's things were laid out on the table, but she was nowhere to be found.

Gibbs had sent Tony back to the Navy Yard just a few hours ago. He was keeping the rest of the team on base for the night so that they could interview Bradley's friends in the morning, but had wanted Tony to coordinate with the FBI back at the Navy Yard.

So, he had done what he was told and now he was sitting in an empty bullpen waiting for his computer to turn on so that he could reconnect with the FBI's Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He had to make sure they hadn't picked up any chatter about Megan's possible whereabouts. It was pretty clear that she hadn't left by her own devices.

His desktop screen came into view and as he waited for the rest of the icons to load, the date caught his attention.

September 22.

Tony fell back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Prior to getting this case, the date had been the only thing he thought about all summer. Everyday for the last three months, he would stare at her and wonder if she was reliving what atrocity had been thrust upon her on that particular day. Ziva had assured him, on more than one occasion, that she hardly thought about it and that the days had all blurred together so she couldn't remember anything if she tried.

He wasn't sure if he believed her but he'd stopped the questioning and taken to holding her tighter than usual in the middle of the night, instead.

Tony had been waiting for this day through those months. Today, he had planned on reliving the weight of her body against him, that moment when he got to look into her eyes again, the elation that he had allowed himself to feel for a brief moment on the plane because she was alive.

Instead though, he found himself watching her throw up water onto the blinding desert sand, he felt her head against his chest and the shallow breaths of her chest as they drove to the nearest military outpost. Instead, he saw the pain and suffering in her eyes and the difficult road that lay ahead of her. He hated this day. He hated this day and he wanted her here with him.

Looking back, this past summer and spring had been a great time for them. Ziva was almost her old self again and the team had had a relatively quiet few months. This gave Tony and Ziva the chance to spend a long weekend away on vacation. They had driven up the east coast and taken the ferry over to the famous island of Martha's Vineyard. Instead of spending their days looking for where Jaws had been filmed, as Tony had originally intended, they had spent warm days laying on the beach together, and cool nights walking hand in hand down South Beach at sunset. They'd eaten a candlelit dinner on the harbor and raced each other on bikes all over the island. It had been perfect and left Tony idly thinking about how perfect the rest of their life could be.

Tony was sure that this summer they had exited the honeymoon phase of living together and settled into a more normal pattern. Ziva was feisty again; something he'd desperately missed and they often fought about keeping the apartment clean and being on time for work. He put up with her obsessive-compulsive cleanliness and she learned how to gently push him out the door.

He liked it.

The remainder of his desktop loaded and he dialed the FBI.

Friday, October 8th

It had been almost a week since Rachel and Ziva had arrived back from their trip to upstate New York and Ziva just had this feeling she couldn't shake. She just didn't feel right. Maybe Rachel wasn't the only one emotionally scarred from their trip and it's events – maybe it had taken a toll on Ziva too.

It wouldn't surprise her. She'd felt overly emotional lately. Rachel's discovery had reminded her how much rejection stung, especially when it was by someone who wasn't supposed to do that to you – someone who was supposed to want you no matter what. Sometimes it scared Ziva how much their lives mirrored each other.

She sighed and rose to grab a report off the printer. The MCRT had gotten a case while the two were away and Ziva and Rachel had spent the last few days playing catch up. She had just received a list of chemical properties from a spray-tanning manufacturer that needed to go to Abby to determine if there was a match.

"Ziva," Tony whispered as she walked by, causing her to stop by the bullpen partition and throw him a questioning glance.

"Are you feeling okay?" he asked, voice still low. He probably knew that asking her such a question at work would cause her the desire to castrate him when they got home.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "You look a little…pale."

She rolled her eyes at him and walked away, retrieving the paper from the printer and walking it down to Abby's lab. So maybe this nauseous feeling she had inside of her wasn't a result of she and Rachel's road trip gone wrong. Ziva tried to remember what she and Tony had eaten last night. There was no way that it was Eddie's burritos. They ate those things all the time and she'd had a homemade salad for lunch.

She felt like she'd been hit by a truck when she walked into Abby's lab; the base pumping and light from the window creating a glare. Ziva gave her friend the report and made an excuse for needing to leave so quickly and headed back up to the quiet of the squadroom. She allowed herself to take the elevator, not the stairs. She hadn't slept well since they'd returned and figured that that was why she was feeling so crappy.

Tony gave her another concerned glare as she sat back down at her desk and Ziva found herself wishing that their desk weren't across from each other. He was too able to scrutinize her and although she didn't usually mind it, today it was just getting under her skin.

Almost an hour later Gibbs called for an update and the team stood in front of the plasma TV to review their current knowledge of the case. As Rachel was going over she and McGee's interview with the victim's sister, Ziva felt a debilitating wave of vertigo come over her. Her hips swayed slightly and then suddenly her face was making contact with McGee's shoulder.

Ziva woke up on the ground, Ducky's face leering over her. Momentarily, she was confused and then it all came back to her and she was fiercely embarrassed. She tried to sit up and get off of what she imagined was a filthy carpet, but a hand came from behind and held her down.

"Nice try," Tony murmured.

"My dear," Ducky said, "Please don't get up too quickly."

She waved them both off. "I'm fine, Ducky," She began to sit up when another wave of nausea hit and she slowly lowered herself back down to the ground. She'd wait just a minute.

McGee came into view and handed her a cup of water. She sat up just enough to be able to take up sip. Gulping the water down, Ziva realized the spinning of the room had slowed down a bit. She pushed herself off the ground, Tony's hand's coming up under her arms and staying there once she was on her feet. She had to admit her knees might have buckled again if he hadn't been anchoring her.

She twisted her head back and nodded at him, before turning to the rest of the group. "Sorry, everyone, I'm fine now."

Gibbs turned his head at her and huffed. He turned back to his desk and picked up the phone. "I'm calling Abby to take you home."

Her eyes widened and she came up behind him to protest. "Gibbs, I'm fine, really."

"It's an order, David," he said.

Please let me know what you thought - it's always appreciated.

-Cara