LOL, I remember what I'd wanted to say last chapter, now. What I wanted to say was that as of this fic, Tony and Ziva have been together for six months—I know I wrote "five" in the epilogue of Along the Way, but everyone should know that the mathematical subjects were my worst subjects in high school.

Also: I know that in Along the Way and this fic, I seem to be putting the blame of the non-existence of their romantic relationship for the past seven years on Tony's shoulders. That's not the case; I know Tony and Ziva are both at fault. But I write it this way because: 1) Tony blames himself for far more than Ziva does, even if Ziva has the darker past; 2) Ever since their relationship has come into fruition (in this fic), they've been focusing more on Tony's insecurities, etc.

So, now you know :D enjoy!

-Soph

The Insight

He manages to wait for breakfast to finish and Aunt Nettie to leave for yoga class before asking Ziva.

He sneaks up behind her as she stands at the sink doing the dishes—even though he knows she's already noticed, especially since he's been in the kitchen the entire time—, kissing her neck and leaning into her.

"So, I hear you talk about me often," he starts, a smirk growing on his face against his will, and she sighs.

"Yes, I do," she answers, and he's more than a little taken aback at her easy admission. "In comparison to how much I talk about the others. Like you weren't expecting that."

"Well, I definitely wasn't expecting it. I didn't even know you talked to Aunt Nettie, remember?" Another kiss to her neck. "What do you say about me?"

"Depends on when you're talking about. I remember a time when my emails about you were filled with … hate."

That chills him. Of all the things she could've said about him, this is the one he'd expected she'd most likely have told Aunt Nettie about, but hearing it straight from her is another matter.

A soapy hand shoots out to steady him as his knees suddenly buckle, and Ziva's apologetic eyes meet his. "It has not been that for a while," she explains softly.

He swallows. "Not since…?"

She sighs again as she returns to scrubbing the dishes furiously. "Aunt Nettie is my emotional outlet. I needed someone to talk to … about … things, and Aunt Nettie was safe where you, all of you, weren't. You have to understand that if I tell anyone at NCIS something … it runs the risk of being spread to the others. So, yes. Before I left for the Somalia mission … I sent her a total of two emails about you and Michael Rivkin."

"Huh." He laughs weakly. "I'm surprised Aunt Nettie doesn't hate me."

"She tried to contact me before I left on the Damocles … I did not answer her calls. I believe she tried to visit me a few times, but I was never home. So, we went without contact for months. By the time I was back in DC and able to send her emails again, things had calmed down. She knows you saved me. She knows … she knows I love you for it."

"Y-… you love me for getting you back from Somalia?"

"Not initially. But, eventually … I love you for a lot of reasons, one of them being that. I have loved you for a l-long time."

"'A long time,' like…?" he asks hesitantly, and she sucks in a shuddering breath before responding.

"Six years, on and off," she whispers, her head bowing and her hands stilling.

He freezes, his eyes fixed unseeingly on a spot over her shoulder. Six years? He can't fathom that idea … he hadn't even known about it. She has loved me for six years?

The tiniest of sniffles brings him out of his shock, and it is only then that he realizes the drop of liquid he had seen hit the kitchen counter had been a tear. He moves beside her, carefully tilting her face upwards so that he can look into her brown orbs. "Ziva," he says, his stunned voice sounding foreign to his ears, "why are you crying?"

She shakes her head vehemently, turning away from him to rinse off the dishes. "It just … makes me feel like a fool, for you to know this. I mean, I know this feeling is new for you, and—when you said you loved me, I didn't question it. I still don't question it. I don't question you. But I … I don't know if maybe because I'd just been hoping to hear it for so long … I did not want to think too much about it. It hurts…"

"I thought you knew," he says numbly.

"Knew what?"

"Knew that I loved you. Maybe, y'know, when I got you back from Somalia, or just … I thought you knew."

She brushes at her cheek impatiently, leaving a trail of suds. "I knew you cared about me; that you preferred to see me alive. I knew you liked to f-flirt with me, but I … I mean, there was Dana, and then my citizenship ceremony, and I don't blame you for following orders, but it seemed like too much effort to … just keep hoping. I had to give you up. I had to give you up, but even then I could not really forget you, and it was just so confusing…"

She turns off the faucet and stares hard at the last plate in her hands, as if unsure what to do with it. In the end, he takes it gently from her hands and sets it in the dish rack, and she furiously wipes away the suds on her cheek before turning to him, looking as if she has recovered her composure.

"I'm sorry, Tony," she says, the hoarseness in her voice the only indication of her previous tears. "I guess finding this out is more than you bargained for. Please, don't feel bad—"

"No." She jerks when he touches her arm, despair flashing across her eyes for an instant before she moves almost helplessly into his embrace, her hands clasped tightly together as if she's not sure where to put them.

His head spins with revelations as she stands so still and so quiet in his arms. He doesn't know what to say. I have loved you for years, too, seems so defensive and so inadequate, and certainly not enough to express how sorry he is for having hurt her. He's spent years,those same years that she's apparently been loving him throughout, trying not to touch her too much or tell her even more because he'd thought that she could never want with him the sort of things he'd come to want with her; not after he had cut her so deeply the first time he noticed that she cared. Not after he had rejected her in favour of Jeanne. He can't even explain why he'd finally decided to take the plunge with telling Ziva in the end, after such a long time—maybe it had just become too painful to hold it all back. And yet now here she is, standing in his arms looking like she's just been shattered into a million pieces, telling him that she's loved him for years, and….

He clears his throat and asks her, his voice shaky, the only thing he knows how to. "You know I love you now, right?"

She doesn't look up at him, but she does nod. "Yes. I know. Thank you."

He bites back his frustration. "Thank you" definitely isn't the response he's looking for. "Ziva … you know how I always say I'm trying to make up for lost time?"

"Yes…" He knows the exact moment she puts two and two together, because she meets his eyes, uncertainty and confusion and hope warring one another on her face. "Did you really love me when you saved me from Somalia?"

"Yeah," he tells her, stroking her hair, and he knows he's made the right choice when her eyes widen. "Yeah, I did. Throughout then, before then, after then … and I've never stopped loving you since. Look, just this morning I was telling your Aunt Nettie that I'm a screw-u—"

"You're not a screw-up," she interrupts, almost automatically.

"I am, but my point is that I have cared about you in more than a friendship-y, partner-y way for a long time, Ziva. Maybe not as long as you have me, but … I'm still trying to make up for lost time, and maybe I'll never make up for all of it, but I love you. Right now; in this moment. I love you. I'm in love with you, and I just keep falling deeper and deeper each day … I don't regret that. I hope you know."

It takes what feels like a whole minute before she finally takes another shuddering breath and buries her face into his shoulder, her arms coming up around his waist to hug him fiercely. And even as he melts with relief into her frame, his mind continues to spin with its flurry of thoughts. It's never occurred to him that she's loved him for years. He's never thought not telling her before that he's in love with her could hurt her so much. He's never even thought that something as simple as telling her the plain truth about his feelings could make her so glad … and yet, it turns out to be the one thing that she's needed all this while.

Her grip on him doesn't loosen, but he can't bring himself to care as he buries his nose into her soft hair and rubs his hand up and down her back. Maybe she just needs to make up for lost time.

xoxo

Grocery shopping is an ordeal in Israel.

That's what he learns on his first shopping trip with Ziva and her aunt. The handbags get checked at the door (even his ninja quietly complies, to his everlasting amazement), he gets elbowed twice as they make their way through what Aunt Nettie keeps calling a "super"—albeit with an accent—, and his partner gets into what almost seems like a yelling match between herself and a vendor. Although, he notes, she's really not much better in the States. In the end, though, they do escape intact with sakit nylons of groceries, and a bageleh—a pretzel, evidently—that Ziva had bought to pacify him (she'd thought he was complaining too much, which he wasn't).

He returns to Aunt Nettie's apartment with his hunger satisfied and his Hebrew vocabulary marginally increased. He helps the womenfolk prepare lunch, although Ziva threatens him with the sharp end of a knife the one time he calls them that. Aunt Nettie only looks on with amusement. Israeli salad, leftover hummus, and a rice dish called mejadra, which he learns has Arabic origins, are what they put together.

He has to admit that Israeli dishes are really growing on him.

xoxo

In 1950, the Israeli government unified the cities of Tel Aviv and neighbouring Jaffa to form Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tel Aviv and Yafo, as Jaffa is known in Hebrew, are at times as different as day and night. Tel Aviv is a global city with a flourishing high-tech industry and a twenty-four-hour culture; Jaffa, an ancient port city, is famous for its pomegranates and winding side streets.

Ziva tells him all of that as they walk along the Tel Aviv beachfront promenade in the afternoon—the Tayelet, she calls it. For his part, he hasn't the least idea where they are, except that they're heading southwards towards Jaffa. She informs him that they are on the Homat HaYam stretch of the promenade and points out far ahead of them, where the land curves out into the sea; a road follows the curve, and just to the left of the road is a mass of green, dotted with the reds and oranges of fall, sloping upwards into the horizon. Brownish-hued buildings are set into it. She says that it is the HaMidron Garden in Jaffa. He also learns that the tower rising up to stand tall and proud against the sky from the cluster of buildings is the belfry of the Saint Peter Church; and that the Jaffa Port, still in use, is just around the bend.

"Look." She pulls him to a stop by the paved boardwalk and turns him sideways so that he can look out at the sea. The view is eye-catching, with Tel Aviv's greys and whites to his right and Jaffa's browns and greens to his left, and nothing but wave upon wave of blue in between.

"It's gorgeous," he says to her, and he doesn't know why, but the gentle crashing of the waves on the beach makes him slide his fingers in between hers. She gives him a surprised smile.

"It is," she agrees. "And Jaffa's horizon from this distance is breath-taking, especially at night, when the buildings are lit up. When we get closer, you will be able to see Masjid al-Bahr—the Sea Mosque. It is the oldest mosque in Jaffa, with a beautiful minaret. Sailors and fisherman used it. And Jaffa has a famous flea market. Are you game for some exploring?"

"Oh, you sound so American."

"What?" She eyes him in confusion, as if startled by his sudden change in subject.

"Am I game for some exploring. That sounds so American."

She rolls her eyes. "You can never be satisfied. First, you complain that my English is not good enough; now, you complain that my English is too goo—"

She stops her rant when she realizes that he's chuckling, and her eyes narrow as she bares her teeth in an almost-snarl. "Okay, okay," he says, holding up his hands to placate his fiery little tigress. "I'm game for some exploring. But only if you continue to be my History teacher."

For all his ability to remember movies, actors, moments, and characters in classic films from decades back before he was even born, he actually hates History. Sure, the Civil War had personally been his favourite thing to learn, but he'd forgotten the rest as soon as it'd been erased from the blackboard and his homework had been handed in. Still, when—eyes yet narrowed—she reluctantly threads her fingers in between his again and stops looking like she might tear him to bits and pieces, he thinks that he might actually love learning about Jaffa.

After all, there is nothing more meaningful than a little history.

A/N:

Super is pronounced "soo-pear" with a Hebrew accent, lol. It's probably short for "supermarket."

Sakit nylons are plastic bags. And let me tell you, it really messes with your head when those two individual words mean two different things in two different languages that you speak, and when combined, they mean something yet completely different in Hebrew!

I got the information from: howtobeisraeli(dot)blogspot(dot)com

Please review; thank you for reading!

-Soph