"Tony, can I have word?" Ziva, to Tony, suddenly seemed jumpy and nervous.
"Ok," he said, and followed him to an empty spot behind the staircase.
"Are you really gonna do it Ziva?" Tony frowned.
"No! I can't!" she moaned. "I'm not ready. I don't want to live in Israel, I want to continue working at NCIS. And most of all I don't want to marry Ira!"
"Is there any way out of this?" Tony asked.
"I can fake my own death. I can hide. I can be a discrace to my family..." Ziva looked down at her feet. "I don't think they will understand why I don't want this."
"So what's Gibbs gonna do about it."
"He's offered to put me in hiding...but I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Anyway I look at it, I'm spewed."
"Screwed," Tony couldn't resist correcting her grammer.
At that moment, Gibbs arrived. "Ziva. The director wants to see you in her office." He took a sip from his coffee cup and Ziva followed him, feeling worried. Gibbs got to her door first and pushed it open. He ignored her secretary, Cynthia, which was nothing out of the ordinary.
"Go right ahead," she muttered to herself as the agents entered Director Shepherds private office.
"Jethro. Ziva." She looked serious, not unlike times when Gibbs had broken rules and gotten his boss in trouble with other agencies.
"Take a seat," she said after realising they had not "made themselves at home." She turned to Ziva. "Jethro tells me it's happened. You must follow your family's tradition and get married."
"Yes," Ziva answered.
"Are you going to do it, Ziva?" the director glanced at her behind her purple glasses and folded her hands neatly in her lap.
"I don't want to," she said honestly. "But I must, to remain a part of my family."
"Will they really do that?" the Director raised her eyebrows. "Disown you?"
"I don't know. Maybe. It's mostly just my mother who is so insistent. If I could simply get through to her..."
"I want her on my team, Jen," Gibbs butted in.
"I know, Special Agent Gibbs," she said. "But at the end of the day, it is Ziva's decision. It is up to her."
Gibbs and Ziva looked at each other. His blue eyes seemed to be telling her something...how could she just abandon him? She could always completely trust him, for which for Ziva was grateful. She would turn to him for help, and he was always there. Ziva thought about Tony, too. He was a joker, teased her endlessly, and she had to put up with his teenager-ish behaviour every day. But he was also like Gibbs: She could trust him with her life. And McGee...McGee was really the first agent to accept her as part of the team. And to Ziva, that meant the world to her. She could not possibly leave McGee, Tony, Gibbs, Abby, or Ducky. So at that precise moment, she made her decision. "I want to stay here," Ziva said firmly. "I don't care what my mother says. I would rather marry the man I want to spend the rest of my life with."