A/N: Thank you guys for everything! I'm really happy with the response this story is getting. Glad you're all enjoying yourselves.

Almost all the food is away when Ziva arrives back at the apartment, having gone to see her manager, picking up her pay. She swore he was slicing off more dollars for himself every time, and she patted her pocket, where the bundle of bills lay. She had a nest egg – the little money her mother had left when she had died. But that was for emergencies. Hospital bills, if that were ever necessary. Or if something happened to their mother's old car. Whatever else she had she spent on food and bills and rent and some clothes for Tali, who just kept growing. She needed braces, too, but they would never be able to afford them.

Ziva saw the door of her apartment open and her heart leapt into her throat in panic. Tali had been in there alone! It had only been for five minutes...what possibly could have happened? Had she been taken? Had they been robbed of what little they had? As some kind of knee-jerk reaction, she protectively clasped the gold Star of David charm around her neck and raced in without thinking twice about what possible dangers lay over the threshold.

Actually, there were no dangers. "Hi, Ziva," Tali greeted, munching on a chocolate chip cookie as she sat contentedly on one of their kitchen stools, swinging her legs. She was surrounded by empty paper bags and from behind her, she heard the clatter of cans falling to the floor.

"Who's there?"

"Your friend Tony," Tali told her. Tony closed the cupboard door and picked up the fallen cans, placing them on the counter.

"Hi," he said simply, having been called upon. There was little expression on his face. He was unsure yet of what mood to convey.

"You let in a stranger?" Ziva said somewhat scornfully, ignoring Tony. "What have I told you about that?"

"He said he knew you," Tali defended sheepishly. Her legs were not swinging now.

"People lie, Talia!" Ziva walked over to her sister, placing her hands on the little girl's knees. Tony immediately began to feel like an intruder.

"I wouldn't'a let him in but he had food and...he has a police badge." Tali didn't really know what else to say. "He bought us groceries!"

Ziva took a look at Tony. "Did he now?"

"Yeah, well..." he said with a smile, scratching the back of his head and preparing to be humble about the whole thing. Then he saw her face. It was not a happy expression. Then again, when was it?

She pointed to a door. The bathroom. "Tali, you stay here," she said sternly, not looking at the young girl. "Tony, IN THERE."

In one last attempt at salvaging hope at this act, he looked at Tali, feigning terror (though the terror was starting to feel a little real) and she giggled, which in hindsight was definitely a catalyst towards Ziva's anger.

...

A slap across the face was the first thing he heard. A millisecond later he felt the sting.

"OW!" he whined.

"You had no right to do that!" she snapped. She stood close to him with her hands placed menacingly on her hips.

"Look, she seemed pretty happy about it."

"I told you we did not take charity," Ziva said as flatly as she could, but her voice cracked a time or two. "You did not listen."

"I know you don't, but your sister does. And she was hungry," Tony excused.

Ziva pursed her lips and widened her eyes in rage. "She is not your responsibility! I do everything I can for that little girl and I have every day for the last three years. Do you know what that is like? She is MY responsibility. You have no right to walk in here and look like a superhero and rub in my face what you know damn well I cannot give her. You can take your money back, too." She pulled from the small wad in her pocked two fifties he used to cover her cab ride the other night. "If all this was an effort to get in my pants then you are most certainly not going to like the outcome." She tossed the bills recklessly in his face and sat on the edge of the bath, holding her head in her hands. The door creaked, and opened. Tali stood before them.

"Look! Double choc chip ice cream!" the girl exclaimed. But, seeing her sister's red eyes and the hand=shaped mark forming on Tony's cheek, her smile faded.

"That's great, sweetie. Quick, put it in the freezer before it melts." In a second, she switched back to a caring, loving sister, and Tony couldn't help but marvel at that, despite just having been on the receiving end of a particularly harsh physical blow.

Once she was gone, Ziva stood up and looked at him again. "How do you think that makes me feel, Mr DiNozzo? I cannot give her the simplest things in life. Toys and treats and bubble baths and double choc chip fucking ice cream." She kicked the bath tub on its side, leaving a scuff mark.

"Okay, okay," Tony said, rubbing his forehead and trying to think of a way out of this. "I'm sorry, I was outta line."

She sighed. "No. No, you weren't. You are just a good person and I...I do not trust anyone. But you were trying to help."

"I shouldn't have gone behind your back. I just thought..." He can't finish that sentence.

"It is like I said: I do not like being indebted. That must be hundreds of dollars worth of food out there." She gestured to the kitchen full of food. It was fuller than it had been in years.

"That's not important. I see kids like you all the time in my line of work. And most of the time they end up druggies or homeless and when I saw your sister...I couldn't bear to see that happen to such a sweet kid. Or someone like you."

"Your job is not to protect me," she said, though it's barely louder than a whisper.

"It's to protect people. You wanna know how I got into this job? I was in town for a basketball game and I saw this house one night and a fire had started. I ran in there and headed for something that resembled a bedroom and pulled out this kid." Tony was starting to choke up. "He was crying and screaming and I was trying to get him outta there but he kept yelling, 'My sister! My sister!' That little girl was four years old, Ziva. And I couldn't rescue her. The flames were too strong, there were too many obstacles. And I regret it every day even though I know I had no choice. I can't sit back and watch you suffer when I know I can do something about it."

She immediately felt guilt swell up inside her, and realised that perhaps she had been too quick to judge him. "I should not have yelled, I..." she mumbled apologetically.

"You gotta learn to trust people." Feeling brave, he reached out and touched her shoulder. Remarkably, she let him.

"I do not know how," she admitted. "Not anymore." Her eyes fell to the floor and her head was tilted forward. Her curls fell in front of her eyes and carefully, he brushed them away.

"Let's start with trusting me, huh? How 'bout I make you dinner? And Tali. I can cook, you know. You look like you haven't had a good Italian feed in too long." His smile then was light. He was trying, more than anything else, to make her happy.

"I would like that." She decided that he was right. She did need to start trusting people.