Last chapter! Yea, I didn't know it would be either. Please don't shoot me!

To make up for it, 50% of this chapter is made of fluff :D I'm not kidding. I don't know what happened to mind-Tony and mind-Ziva; they took over and attacked me with cotton candy. The beginning half is mostly angst, though. This chapter is not a dismissal of how much work their relationship is going to need, but rather a general agreement on where they want to be.

Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed this story thus far :D

Enjoy, and please review this too!

-Soph

Pledge

He had a secret. His secret was that he was terrified of going on a date with Ziva David. Not because it involved flowers and being a gentleman, since he was really good at those things; but because it involved taking her out of the Friend Zone and seeing her in a new light. A light which he preferred, admittedly, but it still went against the belief he had formed of their relationship over the years – that they were work partners, not romantic partners.

It would have been easy, when she first came to NCIS, to take her out on a date and establish a romantic relationship from there. It would have been easy even during the summer Gibbs went away and they had actually become close friends; because then they hadn't been through enough together for him not to be able to burn down all preconceptions and construct a new kind of relationship with her. But now, he couldn't rewind the tape; couldn't pretend that they hadn't been friends (and on occasion enemies) for seven years before this. That scared him a little.

The funny thing was that he didn't actually want to rewind the tape. He wouldn't have traded the experiences he now had with her for the world; it was simply that the longer they had a supposedly platonic relationship, the further he had to look in order to see them as something else. Sometimes, it felt as though he had to look so far that the possibility of her being his forever was the tiniest bright star on the horizon.

They were now taking a walk after dinner, and his hand was itchitchitching to hold hers; because when all was said and done he did want to see her as his romantic partner. Girlfriend, fiancée, wife; whatever. His heart skipped a beat at the idea. He really wouldn't mind being the one to put a ring on her finger. Committing to her had never been the problem – he'd already pledged his life to her, even if she didn't know it. It was not ever being certain of whether she could reciprocate that sealed his mouth and gave him nightmares.

He hesitantly hooked his little finger around hers, testing her reaction; she smiled up at him, surprised, and suddenly he found it easier to entwine all of his digits with hers. She gave a loud chuckle and squeezed his hand.

"What?" he asked, trying not to pout too much.

She grinned at him, and for a moment she looked so beautiful that he almost swooped down to kiss her with reckless abandonment. "I have been waiting all evening for you to do that."

His eyebrows shot sky-high and his heart skipped another few beats. "Did you get that line out of a romance novel?"

She smacked him with her free hand, and he had to tighten his grip as she tried to unlace her fingers from his. "I can be a romantic sometimes."

"I'm not complaining." He sobered, though, as her words gave him the courage he needed to say what he wanted to. He pulled her to a stop, and it occurred to him that the middle of a pedestrian walkway – albeit a relatively empty one – was probably an odd place to have such a conversation, but he needed to get everything out before he lost his guts. "Ziva, this is hard for me."

She frowned up at him, uncomprehending. "What is?"

"Us." He cleared his throat. "What we're doing."

Her face fell quicker than his heart did, and her fingers became lifeless in between his. "Are you saying you want to call it quits?"

"No!" he yelped, anxious to rectify his mistake. "That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying…I'm trying to say…I'm saying…is there anything to call quits?"

He couldn't blame her for looking mystified and hurt at the same time. "What?"

He made a face and drew her closer so that he could take up her other hand too. "Um, I've something to say to you. But…it's gonna take a while to get my words out so, can you please stay till I'm done?"

She shifted on her feet and gave him a cheerless smile. "I've nowhere else to go."

He nodded and took a deep breath. "Ziva, I want this to go further. I…kinda liked…whatever tonight was, you know, and I'd…really like a lot more. But… we're friends. If this isn't going anywhere, I'd like to stay friends. So I need to know how far you want this to go, because I don't want to start looking at you differently in a good way and then…have it all end because it was a casual thing for you. You aren't just a casual thing for me…you're never gonna be. So I'm talking 'serious' here. I need to know…how serious you want us to get. 'Cause…well…it's…I'd really like 'serious' with you."

He watched, horrified, as her eyes misted up and she shook her head. "You are an idiot."

"W-why?" His throat felt scratchy.

"Because I thought it must be pretty obvious that I want long-term with you."

His heart stopped, and he gaped at her with what he was sure was a dumbstruck expression on his face. He opened his mouth once, twice. "Really?" he finally managed to gasp out.

"Yes!" She looked close to stamping her foot or punching him in exasperation now. "Idiot."

And because he was a suicidal maniac who was in love with a little ninja, he leant down to kiss her with reckless abandonment after all. He rested his forehead against hers as they broke off; there was a smile behind her tears now. "Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight, sweetcheeks?

She laughed, a blush staining her cheeks. Her gorgeously brown eyes met his. "Does that mean we're doing this, Tony?"

"Yeah." He kissed her again. "Now I'm going to say something really sappy but you don't get to make any romance-novel jokes about it."

A smile curled around the edges of her lips. "Go ahead."

"I'm in a relationship with Ziva David."

The way her eyes shined told him that she liked it, but she still had to tease him. "That's sappy?"

"Hey, it is for me, Miss I-Can-Be-a-Romantic-Sometimes."

Her smile widened and she pressed her mouth to his. "We can work on your sappiness level…we have the chance to now."

"Ahhh well here's something sappier-" he cut off his sentence abruptly and picked her up, spinning her in a circle as she shrieked with laughter.

"What are you doing?" she huffed breathlessly as he put her back down on her feet, and he thought that her eyes had never sparkled more.

He grinned. "I've always wanted to try that with you."

She paused and thought about it, looking slightly stunned; and then a wide grin of her own formed. "I would say that counts as sappier."

Slipping his fingers back in between hers, he gave her a nod. "See? I'm a fast learner."