Two notes: 1) This is mostly Tony/Nettie, except for the very end; 2) Tony and Aunt Nettie talk about Eli, and it's NOT an Eli Bash Fest, so if you hate Eli with a passion, please skip through to the second section XD all you need to know is that Ziva went to visit Eli and Tony got all worried, and Aunt Nettie tried to talk him through his worries.

Also: I'm sorry for the late replies to all the lovely reviews you all sent, both for this fic and for my recent one-shots :D I've been a bit busy lately, what with family issues and packing to go to the UK next Thursday for three months, and between that and finishing this story I've been rather short of time LOL. This is the second to last chapter, btw. I cheat a bit with the timeline in the next chapter, but hopefully, y'all won't mind!

That said, I've finished writing this story. So, let the review-replying commence ... in between packing sessions :P

Enjoy!

-Soph

The Deciding

Ziva goes to see Eli the next day.

She sets out once breakfast is over, after letting him kiss her three times—once for luck, twice more for insurance, and the fourth and fifth time avoided only because Aunt Nettie starts laughing at them and he starts blushing—and bidding her aunt goodbye.

He gets to helping Nettie with the dishes and doesn't tell the woman that all the kisses are only because he's not entirely sure how Ziva will be when he sees her again. Ziva may love her father, but Eli certainly doesn't seem short of animosity towards her, and he doesn't trust Eli enough to believe that his partner would not be flying home heartbroken for yet another time.

"She will be fine," Aunt Nettie says quietly, a reassuring voice at his side.

"You don't know that."

"Eli will not harm her."

"You don't know that either."

"You are right; I don't know that for sure. But I believe it."

"How can you? I mean, you must know what happened in…"

"Somalia, on the Horn of Africa?" she continues gently when he falters. "Yes, I do know."

"Then how can you believe she'll be fine?"

"Because she is no longer Mossad. Eli will not send her on any more assignments."

He scoffs. "I wouldn't put it past him."

"No, she is a security risk now," Aunt Nettie answers sadly. "He will not send her on any more assignments."

"That's the reason?" he asks incredulously.

"Yes. It may be cold, but Eli is … unemotional."

"You mean, he has no emotions."

"He has emotions; he just does not share them."

He dries the last of the plates and puts in on the draining rack, and he and Aunt Nettie step into the living room together. "I don't understand it. Ziva's his daughter."

"There are some people whose pain in their hearts is so great that they don't know how to reach out to others without hurting those same others as well."

"That sounds like psychological crap."

She takes a large, rectangular piece of cardboard, on which lie what appear to be a half-completed puzzle and many separate puzzle pieces jumbled together, down from the top of a bookshelf and sets it onto the wooden coffee table. "That may be your belief, but I am entitled to mine." She settles slowly and creakily into a cross-legged position on the floor, hands resting on her knees and eyes staring straight at him. He follows suit, albeit thankfully less creakily. "I knew Eli when he and Rivka first started dating."

"What was he like then? Anything like now?"

She tilts her head. "I would not say that he was the most charming man on Earth; he never was. He was polite, but kept to himself. He looked much happier back then, and laughed a lot more. For the most part, I did not take to him because I thought he was too ambitious. But I also did not overly adore my sister, whom, too, I thought ambitious, so I just left them to their business."

"Really? You didn't like Rivka?"

She spreads the unattached puzzle pieces out over an area, indicating for him to help her. He does. "I loved her. But she was … remarkably talented from the day she was born. And for my parents, who were, themselves, remarkably talented people, she was the star of the family. I was the black sheep, you see, because I was neither as pretty as she was, nor as musically inclined. I was not even a student with many achievements. My brothers grew up to become lawyers; she grew up to become a dancer. I grew up to become a teacher."

"Ziva never mentioned you taught."

"I quit when my daughters were born. It was a choice. Aharon would have preferred I did not quit, but I wanted to be home with my young children. I think Ziva doesn't remember this because it all happened years before Rivka was even pregnant with her, and I only told her once before, when she was a teenager."

"Teaching's a cool profession, though."

"To a rare few, yes. But society rarely holds in its eyes the same kind of respect for teaching as it does for law or medicine or the performing arts. Teaching is a middle-income profession, and one that often goes unnoticed … the best teacher could not compete with the best dancer, who would go on to shine onstage, under spotlights, captivating men and women, young and old, alike."

"Is that who Rivka was?"

"Eli would not settle for an ordinary woman," she e answers with a smile as she sorts through the puzzle pieces. "So, yes, that was who Rivka was. Do not get me wrong: She was a beautiful woman who genuinely wanted to be happy. But growing up alongside her—especially when you were seven years older than her, only to be known as 'Rivka's elder sister' to most—was hard. I often felt overshadowed by her."

"That sounds tough."

"It was." Aunt Nettie flips a puzzle piece over, gazing at it with a reminiscent chuckle. "I could hardly believe Aharon still wanted to marry me after meeting my family and seeing how different they were from me. But he told me that every person has his or her own story —stories with their own twists and turns; dark secrets and beautiful moments. Prequels and sequels. He said he wanted to get to learn my story."

"Wow."

"Yes," she answers softly. "Aharon was that."

He deliberates over a puzzle piece. "So Eli's story has its own … twists and turns."

She peers at him. "I believe I was talking about my own story, but yes, it does."

"Any of them involve leaving Ziva in Somalia?"

"Perhaps. Do not get me wrong; this is something I cannot forgive him for. But, for Ziva's sake, I am cordial with him. Because Ziva story has its twists and turns too, and one of them is that she still loves her father for the man who took her to the beach every summer before her mother left him. She still loves her father for the compliments he paid her whenever her knife hit the right target or her gun fired correctly."

"That's messed up."

"Again, perhaps. But tell me, Tony, which parent would not attempt to teach their child the version of their truth? My parents, whose love for music was great, filled the house with classical pieces every day and taught me and my siblings how to dance, even if I hated it as a child. Eli very likely thought he would have failed his duty, had he not taught Ziva to fight."

He sighs and sets the puzzle piece into place. "Yeah, I get it."

Aunt Nettie leans forward and stares at him. "I would not be so hypocritical as to ask you to forgive Eli where I cannot. But please, don't misunderstand why Ziva wants to forgive him. He is her father, above all; he is the man who was in her life the most when she was a child, even if it was not often. He is the man who raised her. And she has the kind of attachment to him that, no matter how justified or unjustified it seems to us, feels justified to her. But she is confused now, being angry where she thinks she should forgive, and forgiving where she thinks she should be angry."

"And you think I shouldn't confuse her further."

"I think she needs to know that you will support her if she makes the decision to keep her father in her life."

He stares at the puzzle before him, eventually dropping his voice to a whisper. "She knows. Hell, I know I need her support, making amends with my dad."

Aunt Nettie nods. "Thank you. Then I am reassured with the knowledge that you will not leave each other to struggle by yourselves."

xoxo

"I made her cry again yesterday," he brings up after six puzzle pieces and fifteen minutes of (surprisingly un-awkward) silence, and Aunt Nettie raises her eyebrows at him. "It was an accident! I didn't know it'd happen."

"What did happen?"

He sighs. "I told Ziva I wanted to marry her. She cried. And they weren't happy tears."

"She was not happy that you wanted to marry her?"

"Honestly, I don't know. Maybe not yet. She thought I was gonna pull a Ray on her."

"'Pull a Ray'?"

"Y'know … secure her person without caring much about her heart. She was afraid I might … make her live her life on my time."

"Oh."

"I mean, I know it was an emotional reaction rather than a rational one. I can't pretend it didn't hurt my ego a little bit. But mostly … I'm just wondering why it has to be so hard for her." He shuts his eyes. "And I hate to admit this, but I forgot, damnit. I forgot she's just as messed up as I am; that she has just as many problems. How many times over the past year has she had to struggle with this marriage thing without my knowledge?"

"Perhaps she does not struggle as often as you seem to be thinking."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter. I'm her partner in more ways than one, especially now; I'm supposed to have her back. This is such a big thing … and I just missed it."

"What exactly do you think you missed?"

"This Ray thing." He meets her eyes. "I'm her partner, and I didn't know."

"Tony, you are not expected to know everything about her," Aunt Nettie says patiently.

"I know. And you're gonna tell me I'll never know everything about her, but Ray … Ray's a different story because when I first took her on the road trip around the U. S. … that was what I meant to cheer her up from. Yet somewhere along the way … things changed. She's always had my back, y'know? Made sure that I'm okay. How did I fail to make sure she's alright? I mean, all the time we spent together, I could've asked her. I should've asked her. But I didn't. I got jealous and possessive and made everything about me."

"Ray would have been hard for you to talk about, I'm guessing."

"That doesn't matter. The trip was supposed to be about her."

"Look, no matter what the trip was supposed to be about, relationships are not, or should not be, about one person. Ziva told me that you got together on that trip. If that is true, then the dynamics of your relationship must have changed on that trip. You could not have been talking about Ray forever."

"Yeah, but … how can I expect her to protect me when I can't even protect her heart?"

"You comforted her yesterday, did you not?"

"I comforted her way too late! I mean, she must've been dwelling on this for months; worrying about this for months. An empty ring box. How the hell did I miss that?"

"She did not tell you."

"Well, I should've pushed! Prodded. Whatever it was that would've gotten her to talk to me."

"And you would have very much been in danger of offending her. What if the ring box had not been there, Tony? What if it had not happened? Would you still have pushed? Hindsight is always 20/20, yes, but only because some things are not to be assumed. You could not just have randomly started asking her if Ray Cruz had given her an empty ring box. You didn't know because she didn't tell you. You couldn't push because you didn't know. It's as simple as that."

He breathes out slowly and runs a hand through his hair. "I just … don't know what to do now. I mean, god, I wish I could give her a world of happiness. One where Ray doesn't exist."

"Unfortunately, we can't turn back time even if we want to," she says softly.

"Yeah, don't I know it. I just feel like I haven't been having her back enough, y'know? These past few months, I've been letting her take care of me instead of the other way around. I feel like I failed her."

"No one expects you to be the infallible Knight in Shining Armour all the time."

He shrugs. "I have to try. I mean, what else can I do?"

"Tony, I'm sure that if she has been taking care of you—physically or emotionally—all these months, it's because she thought you needed it. It's not something to be ashamed of or to blame yourself for. It simply is, because that's how relationships are. Sometimes you will need more support from her than she, from you; sometimes, it will be the other way around."

"You don't think I failed her?"

Aunt Nettie shakes her head. "No. I think that if you'd failed her, you wouldn't be here right now. The fact that six months into your relationship, she flies you to Tel Aviv to meet me and voluntarily takes you for a look around this old place must mean that you're doing something right."

He chuckles humourlessly, sifting listlessly through the puzzle pieces. "But what do I do now?"

She pauses, and then suggests gently, "Now, you know something new about her. And that's all there is to it. You know what comes next."

"I must decide what to do with that piece of information?" he hazards a guess, and she nods.

"More precisely, you must decide if it is necessary for you to do anything about it. Some things, you have to actively change. Other things, you simply accept and leave to the progression of time."

He narrows his eyes at her. "You're all about the Deciding, aren't you?"

Aunt Nettie lifts her shoulders and drops them. "Eh, there's no fun in muddling through life. It would be like staring at this puzzle and not knowing what to do." She waves frustrated hands at the puzzle on the wooden table. "I've decided that it will not complete itself, so may I have your kind, helping hand, please?"

He smirks at her more-than-obvious attempt to make her point and picks up another piece of the puzzle.

xoxo

"What was Ziva like as a kid?"

Aunt Nettie chortles. "You have been dying to ask that all morning, haven't you?"

"Well, it's not my fault she's been gone for almost two hours. I can't believe she even has that much to talk about with her father." The elderly lady mock-frowns at him. "What? It's a comment, not an insult. I really am surprised."

"To be honest, as am I. But, anyway. She was … not much different from how she is now. Kind. Principled. Independent. She loved her sister very much. She had with Tali many of the problems I had with Rivka, but they were never as serious."

"What kind of problems?"

"Jealousy, mostly. I was very jealous of Rivka. And while Ziva was sometimes unsure of who she was and the kind of abilities she had, she adored Tali."

"That's—"

The front door lock clicks just then, making them both jump; Ziva steps in, a tired look on her face and her handbag over one shoulder. Her eyes widen with surprise when she finds them both sitting on the floor, legs crossed and an almost-completed puzzle in between them.

"You are doing a puzzle," she says, stating the obvious. She closes the door.

"Yeah," he answers, getting up from the floor and hastily going over to kiss her cheek in a bid to hide how relieved he is at her reappearance. Behind him, he hears Aunt Nettie's creaky limbs stand up. "Eli's not coming, is he?"

Ziva shakes her head and leans into him the tiniest bit as Aunt Nettie walks past them into the kitchen; he takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around her as she sighs into his neck. "It wasn't even that bad," she murmurs.

"You seem tired," he murmurs back.

"We got into a fight. I initiated it."

"You? Initiate fights?"

She leans her head back and gives him an exasperated smile. "You know very well that I'm capable of doing that."

"Yeah, I do," he admits, and kisses her forehead. "Are you okay?"

She hesitates. "I would like to talk to Aunt Nettie for a moment, if that's okay with you."

He ignores the smallest twinge of jealousy in his heart and nods. "Sure. Go ahead."

She pauses, uncertainty flickering in her eyes, and then stands on tiptoes to kiss his lips. "Thank you."

He smiles and lets her go, and she turns, stepping towards the kitchen where Aunt Nettie already has two cups of hot tea waiting.

He does kind of understand the therapeutic value in talking to Aunt Nettie.