More Than Family: Chapter 2
A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I'm glad you're enjoying this as much as I am. Well, maybe not quite as much. I'm really having fun writing this.
They had checked out of that hotel as soon as they packed up Tony and Tali's things, and then walked a couple of blocks to the hotel Ziva had checked into the day before, under another one of those assumed identities she slipped into as easily as a pair of jeans.
They walked to a nearby park, where the parents sat down on a bench and Tali amused herself by spinning around in a circle until she fell down, giggling dizzily until she regained her equilibrium and started the whole routine over again. "She is very much your daughter," Ziva said with a smile as they watched the display. DiNozzo snorted.
"That endless energy? That's all you," he replied. Her smile widened as she tilted her head in acknowledgement.
"She is always having a good time," Ziva said, "even if all she is doing is spinning around in circles, not going anywhere."
He didn't say anything to that, not wanting to get into an argument about how much her leaving hurt him, or how confused Tali had been about her mother not being around—or maybe that was just him projecting, because that fun-loving, high-energy child had never been taught English and they were still learning how to communicate, which had led to a number of all-out meltdown temper tantrums from her and too many moments of despair from him, of frustration at not being about to communicate with his daughter, of thinking there was no way he would ever learn how to be a parent and so much anger at Ziva for leaving him in that situation.
"What were you doing for work?" he asked instead, honestly curious about what a Mossad officer turned NCIS special agent had been doing in the years she had been living in Israel.
"I taught," she replied simply. He frowned.
"Teaching?" he asked. "As in, teaching future Mossad officers how to disarm a horde of angry bad guys—"
"I taught French and English at a primary school," she said with a smile. He finally turned to face her, a confused look on his face and an amused one on hers. She opened her mouth to defend her chosen occupation, but he was faster.
"You taught English?" he asked incredulously. "You mean there are now classes worth of Israeli primary school students who think they need to 'take a kite' and have no idea what the pot calls the kettle?"
She smacked him lightly on the arm, even as she started laughing. "English is not that easy to learn, Tony," she mock-scolded. "And you enjoyed correcting me."
"I did," he replied. For a long minute, their eyes locked. "I missed that laugh," he finally said softly.
"I missed you," she replied. And then he did something he thought he'd never get to do again: he leaned forward and kissed her.
Their moment was very quickly interrupted by a small hand insistently hitting his knee, and he turned to see Tali standing there with an impatient look on her face that she got directly from her mother. She said something to her father, of which he only caught the word Abba. "She wants you to play with her," Ziva translated.
"Well, that's easy enough," Tony said, earning a peal of laughter when he tickled Tali as he got up from the bench. They played a kind of game of tag, in which he would chase her and tickle her, and then she would chase him and launch herself at his leg as if she was trying to tackle him. They did this for a few rounds, before he feigned collapsing to the ground when she tackled him, earning a delighted shriek before she pounced on him in some sort of WWE move that there was no way she should have known how to do.
She was still giggling as she pressed her hands to his face, saying something from a few inches away that he couldn't understand, and again he felt that newly-familiar frustration at not knowing how to communicate with his own child.
He looked toward the bench to see Ziva watching them with an expression that was mostly amused, but with something else in there, something sentimental, and seeing it on her face, he suddenly felt it within him. He may not know how to communicate with his daughter, but he knew her and got to play with her, and got to do all that with her mother watching. For someone who never thought parenting was for him, and then it had it thrust upon him when everyone thought Ziva had been killed… "Go get Ima," he said to Tali, pointing at Ziva. He had no idea if she understood any part of that sentence other than Ima, but it was enough for her to smile and laugh, run toward her mother, and pull insistently on her hand until she laughed and got up to walk toward where Tony was still laying on the grass.
He knew for sure that she had been letting her Mossad training and instincts lapse when he was able to use his legs to sweep hers out from under her, and knew at her smile at Tali's laughter that she didn't mind at all.
It wasn't until later that night, long after Tali had fallen asleep, that it all hit DiNozzo: everything that he had accepted as fact for the last several weeks—that Ziva had been killed, that he was the only thing Tali had—wasn't true. Ziva was alive, Tali had both of her parents, and there was really only one way that both of those things could remain true.
He rolled over in bed and wasn't surprised to see Ziva still awake, watching him. For a long minute, they just stared at each other. "How are we going to do this?" he finally asked, his voice low.
"I can reach out to one of my contacts and get us new identities," she said. "I have a person in Switzerland who can move our bank accounts in a way that nobody would be able to find us. We will need to find a place that is safe, where no one will think to look for us."
He only needed a minute to think about that. "Canada," he said. "It's safe. Everyone likes Canadians, and why wouldn't they? They're very polite. And who would think to look for a dead former Mossad agent or former NCIS agent and toddler in Canada?"
She thought about that for a moment and nodded in agreement. "Canada is good," she said. She hesitated before saying what they were both thinking: "You will have to disappear, Tony. You will not be able to talk to anyone you know again. You will never see them again. Not Senior. Not McGee. Abby, Ducky, Palmer—"
"I know."
"And definitely not Gibbs," she finished.
He nodded. "I will not lose you and Tali again, Ziva. I can't. I don't care about anything else, just being with you two."
Two weeks later, Anthony Johnson enrolled in a six-week night course for French language immersion. Most of his classmates were refugees from the various conflicts in the Middle East, most had left professional jobs and were relegated to laboring jobs during the day that didn't require much language proficiency. They still dreamed of returning to their previous occupations, but knew that wouldn't be possible in France without speaking the language. The Englishman didn't interact with them much, and they likewise left him alone. By the end of the course, all anyone knew about him was that he took care of his daughter during the day, while his wife worked. She took care of the girl at night, while he was at school.
Sarah Kaufman returned from work the day before their flight with an engagement ring and two wedding bands. "We will need these," she said, beginning to hand over the man's ring to her husband.
"Uh-uh," Tony said, stopping her. "We do this, we do it right. The sappy romantic scene in the movie and all." Before she could protest or even roll her eyes, he took the woman's wedding band from her and grabbed her left hand.
"I, Tony, take you, Ziva—"
"Sarah," she corrected. The look he gave her made it very clear it wasn't an accident.
"To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, something about richer or poorer, until death do us part. For real this time," he finished as he slid the ring on her finger.
She smiled slightly and held up his ring. He obliged and handed over his hand. "Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring according to the laws of Moses and Israel."
"Now this is the part where I get to kiss the bride, right?" He didn't wait for a response before he did just that. "Happy anniversary. Sarah."
The marriage certificate was dated three years before, on October 3, 2013. The day Tony DiNozzo found Ziva David in the house where she was born.
Three weeks after the Kaufman family—Anthony, Sarah, and their two-year-old daughter, Natalie, who went by Tali—moved to Montreal, Quebec, they were finally settled to the point that Sarah could start planning for things further than one week in the future, and she decided to start with finding a pre-school for Tali.
The first school on the list was a pre-school out of the local synagogue, so Sarah bundled up Tali—it may not yet be Halloween, but she was quickly learning that Quebec was cold—and they walked the several blocks to the synagogue. "Are you members of the synagogue?" the secretary at the pre-school asked when Sarah introduced herself.
"Not yet," Sarah said smoothly. "We just moved to the neighborhood."
"Oh!" the secretary said with a wide smile. "Where did you move from?"
"Paris," Sarah said as she adjusted Tali on her hip. The secretary's eyes widened.
"Oh!" she repeated. "What brings you to Canada?"
"We are Canadian," Sarah explained with a smile. "I am Quebecois and my husband is from Saskatchewan. We had been living in France for the past five years for my husband's work, but, well, Europe has been getting increasingly unsafe. We love Paris, but now we have Tali's safety to think of." She smiled over at her daughter, and then back at the secretary. "We are very happy to be home."