Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has commented and followed this story! Please keep them coming. In addition, since I haven't written ahead on this one and am posting chapters as I write them, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.


Two - The Wild Card

I'm the guy who looks at the reality in front of him and refuses to accept it.


He doesn't believe she is dead. There are too many things that don't make sense. He had been in her father's farmhouse - it didn't have different wings. And why was Tali sleeping so far from Ziva? And why didn't Tali's go bag smell like smoke? The scarf, one that he had given her for Christmas one year, still smelled like her when Tali was delivered to him. The smell has since dissipated like a hazy memory.

Kelev, Tali's beloved stuffed dog, didn't smell like smoke either.

And the framed photo of the two of them on the moped in Paris. Why that photo? It is big and bulky. He is familiar with her packing habits. She is economical. She wouldn't put that photo in there unless she had good reason to do so.

And most of all, she had escaped death countless times in the past. He refuses to believe that she would sleep through a fire. She was never a heavy sleeper, something he thinks was part of her Mossad training.

He is convinced that Orli Elbaz, current Mossad director and former lover of Eli David, knows more than she said. Mossad always knows more than they let on.

Plus, there's that gut feeling. He had it before Abby and McGee brought him the news that Ziva was dead, and it didn't go away after. The feeling is a flickering but constant flame in a dark room.

So he takes Tali to Israel to search for answers.

At first, Orli refuses to see him. Her secretary tells him that she is too busy, that she must go out of the country. Out of desperation, he finally informs her that he will sit in the lobby until she agrees to meet with him. After an hour in the sterile, intimidating Mossad headquarters lobby, Tali gets bored. Tony lets her run circles, occasionally chasing after her. Her peals of laughter bounce around the metal and glass building. Mossad employees shoot them glances, some outwardly annoyed, some blank in the same way Ziva's face used to get when she was annoyed but did not want to show it. Tony doesn't care, and Tali, with her toddler lack of self-awareness, does not notice.

When her short legs tire of running, she climbs onto Tony's lap and demands stories. He reads to her from children's books that Abby, McGee, and Palmer had given them before they left DC, using the funny voices that make her giggle. Somewhere during the third reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she drifts off to sleep.

While he cradles her, he thinks about Ziva. Before he can check his thoughts, they wander to the first time he was in this building. He had just shot and killed a Mossad agent, Ziva's boyfriend, and he had been interrogated like he was a criminal. In the end, it was a hollow victory for Tony as he got Eli to admit that Rivkin had been acting under his orders to seduce his daughter.

That confrontation with Ziva, the rage on her face as she asked him why he risked his life, and the fleeting, unidentifiable look in her eyes when he told her he did it for her. He still is not sure how it had escalated to that vitriolic shouting match, but he had done what he had to do and he stands by his decisions to this day. Even though she then refused to come back to DC, was sent on a mission, and nearly died after weeks of torture, and his shoulder still aches a little when it rains or snows.

They had found their way back to each other, rebuilt the trust that had been shattered. That is what matters. He had found her then and he will find her now.

Halfway through the second day of his occupation of the Mossad lobby, Orli Elbaz's secretary walks up to him, heels clacking on the ground, and tells him that the director will see him now.

The first thing Orli does when they walk into her office and the secretary closes the door behind them is bend down to greet Tali. Tali smiles at her in that sunny way she has and asks, "Ima?"Orli shakes her head and notes how similar she is to Tony.

Tony uses his best interrogation techniques, but Orli gives him either non-answers or redirects the question back onto him. She is Mossad Director for a reason. He struggles to keep his cool in Tali's presence. In the end, Orli reminds him that he is no longer an agent and therefore, is not privy to the information to which he might have had access. She asks him how many grieving loved ones had demanded answers from him over the years, and how many times he had divulged that information.

At this, he sighs and knows that she is right. He leaves the Director's office with no answers but a stronger conviction that she knows more than she says.

He leaves Tali with her great aunt Nettie one morning and drives out to what remains of farmhouse. He is dry-eyed as he searches through the ashes for any sign of Ziva. There is none. He goes to the olive grove, searches for the stone that marks the spot where he helped her bury her new list of Wills.

He does not think about the kiss they had shared there, after he told her he was fighting for her. He doesn't need to. The memory is all around him, in the warm and crisp morning air, in the light breeze that flutters the leaves on the trees, in the feel of the ground beneath his feet.

The stone is there and he digs in the dirt with his bare hands, ignoring the dry, gritty feeling under his fingernails. He finds the box and inside, the list. Someone, probably Ziva, crossed off a few items on the new list. Almost reverently, he grips the list, searching the paper for a hint. One of the items that has not been crossed off is Return to Paris. He thinks about the photo from Tali's go bag, and the flame of hope gets a little brighter.

Later, he will wonder if he is looking for connections that don't really exist.

He thinks about taking the paper with him but decides against it. She would want it to stay buried. He puts the box back in the hole and packs the dislodged soil on top of it, drops the stone on top to mark the spot. Then he rocks back on his heels and puts his hands his head, elbows on his knees. If he was a praying man, he would pray to whatever god he believed.

Instead, he silently tells her to come back to him and Tali. Her family awaits her.

That night, he receives a video chat call from McGee and Abby. He answers and feels a pang when the familiar faces appear on his computer screen. Abby is as hyperactive as ever and McGee counters her energy with his usual calm. After the pleasantries about how things are going with Tali, what work is like without him, how the flight to Tel Aviv was, Abby gets right to the point in that blunt way of hers. "We think Ziva is still alive."

Tony blinks at them, not surprised because they were on board with finding her after she disappeared years ago. Hearing someone else say what is in his heart is refreshing. "What makes you say that?" he asks urgently, hoping they have something he missed.

They explain how they watched and rewatched all the footage of the farmhouse burning down, slowed it down, enlarged portions of it. They could see nothing - no rescue personnel, no ambulances, even. Wouldn't they have called an ambulance for little Tali after she was pulled from the fire?

This is not much to go on, they admit, but they have more. They use tech lingo, most of which he can't follow, but he is able to understand that they looked into Orli's bank accounts. Like him, they don't trust her. A few weeks ago, she deposited a large amount of money into one of her accounts at her Israeli bank. Right before the mortar fire hit the farmhouse, she had moved the money to an account in a Swiss bank that Abby is still trying to access. She mutters something he doesn't catch about Swiss banks and their security measures.

It is not a lot but it is more than just Tony's gut, and he feels a little less alone.