A/N: Hello, and welcome to the final chapter of this little story! Please see end notes.

Lyrics by Sleeping at Last.


Eight - Acceptance

Down my arms

A thousand satellites suddenly discover signs of life.


The move from DC to Georgia is not as painful as he thought it would be. Abby throws a going away party at Gibbs', and he gets one last perfectly grilled steak. Abby cries, Ducky tells some anecdotes, and Tony will miss them a lot. The entire NCIS family, minus Gibbs, agree that they will start accepting all offers to guest lecture at FLETC, thus giving them an excuse to visit Tony and Tali. Gibbs just nods at him, tells him he is making a good choice.

He decides to rent out his apartment instead of selling it right away. The monthly rent check he gets in his mailbox more than covers the remaining mortgage. The cost of living near Glynco is so much lower, he is able to easily afford a decent sized yet cozy house that he thinks Ziva would have liked.

Moving from DC has not relieved him of the feeling that he is living half in the present and half in the past. The new job helps, gives him something else to think about. He learns about teaching theories and lesson plans, and most of those go by the wayside as he thinks of the way Gibbs taught him everything he knows about investigating and interviewing. He weaves as many movie references into class lectures as possible because that is who he is.

After careful research and some consulting with Palmer and Breena, he finds a daycare center for Tali. For the first week, she cries every morning when he drops her off, then like the teacher predicted, she adjusts and she runs off to play before he even leaves the center.

On the weekends, he takes her to the beach, where they chase the waves and hunt for seashells. Tali has no fear of the water like some of the other toddlers he sees at the beach. He thinks Ziva must have taken her to the beach, maybe the family home in Haifa. She naps under the sun umbrella he sticks in the sand, and he watches her, watches the ocean advance and retreat. He thinks about how much Ziva would have liked it here. Maybe it would have reminded her of her childhood summers. She would have missed the snow but he would not have missed worrying about her driving in the winter.

He isn't sure when the shift happened, but at some point, he started thinking of her more in terms of past tense. A few weeks pass, then a month, then two. They settle into their new lives. If she is alive, he hopes she knows that he will always be waiting for her. If she is dead, then he supposes she will never know.

It is much easier to tell if they are being followed here. He is certain that they are not. Whoever they were, they have either been killed or are satisfied with whatever they saw. Gibbs had looked into it before they moved but had not been able to find any answers.

His new colleagues ask if he is married, if he has children. He smiles and proudly shows them pictures of Tali on his phone. The nosier colleagues ask about her mother and he looks down, clears his throat, genuinely does not know what to tell them. They think that she has died and do not ask again. Some of the younger women give him interested smiles but he ignores them. He will not be Gibbs, leaving behind a string of ex-wives who will never be able to live up to the standards set by the love of his life.

One Friday afternoon, after a day of preparing for a new class of special agent trainees, or pre-probies, as he refers to them, he picks Tali up from daycare. She jabbers as they drive home and he picks up words here and there, understanding that she learned about bumblebees today. He wonders if two year olds can have honey and resolves to look it up once they get home.

As they step through the front door of their house, his gut tells him immediately that something is off. Maybe the man who was following them in Paris had found them. Maybe it is nothing and there is nothing wrong with his gut. Still, he will take no chances.

He ushers Tali into the half bath on the main floor, tells her it is a game and that she must be quiet and hide until he comes back. Then he goes over to the small safe where he keeps his handgun and loads it quickly, quietly. He creeps through his house, clearing the kitchen, the living room, the rest of the downstairs rooms one by one. That leaves the bedrooms upstairs.

Tali's room is clear, although he registers that Kelev is not in his usual spot on her toddler bed. Maybe she brought him downstairs to eat breakfast this morning. He cannot remember.

He goes to his room across the hall. The door is half shut, and he quietly slips into the room. The blinds are drawn, but he can see a figure on his new queen sized bed. His frown deepens as he steps inside the darkened room, gun aimed steadily at the person who seems to be sleeping. "Hey, Goldilocks," he says harshly. Then it registers that the intruder is slim, a woman, with dark curls. A familiar form, one he has been dreaming about for months. He lowers the gun and forgets how to breathe.

"Ziva?" he whispers, stepping closer, unable to identify the feeling bubbling up from his feet.

She sits up and looks at him, still hugging the stuffed dog to her chest. His jaw drops and he drinks in her appearance as his eyes adjust to the lack of light. There is a fading bruise on her forehead near her temple and some scratches on her arms. More importantly, she is alive in front of him, breathing and blinking back at him.

He tries to collect his swirling thoughts, and manages to ask, "Am I hallucinating?"

"No. Would you like me to hit you to prove it?" she replies, her voice serious and laced with sleep.

He opens his mouth but the answer sticks in his throat. He swallows, tries again to speak. "Is it over?"

"Yes," she responds simply. He sits on the edge of the bed, still looking at her. If he looks away, she might disappear again. She finally breaks eye contact to look past him into the hallway. "Where is Tali?"

"Downstairs, hiding in the bathroom. I should get her," he says, standing.

She scrambles off the bed. "No, let me do it. Please," she says, and then fairly flies out of the room before he can give a response.

As if in a dream, he follows her down the stairs. "Ima!" He hears the high pitched squeal, and Ziva's quieter gasp of "Tali." Inside the bathroom, mother holds daughter, tears flow freely, and they cling to each other fiercely. He hears Ziva whispering something into their daughter's ear, and all he can do is stand there and watch as his brain slowly catches up with recent events.

Eventually, Ziva turns to him, Tali still clinging to her. Before she can say anything, Tali points to him and tells her, "Abba."

Ziva smiles and says, "Yes." His brain finally seems to register the scene in front of him and relief washes over him in waves that threaten to knock him down. He smiles back, gathers his family into his arms and they all hug in the small bathroom.

After some time, Tali squirms and asks for juice. Once she is settled on the floor with a sippy cup of apple juice and a wooden puzzle, Tony and Ziva sit on the couch behind her. He watches Ziva watch their daughter and waits for her to speak.

Finally, she looks at him. Hesitation in her familiar brown eyes, she starts. "Tony..." That is all she can manage to get out before tears spring into her eyes again.

She seems to think that he is angry with her. All he can feel is relief that she is alive, that Tali will have two parents raising her, that he gets another chance, that he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life living with ghosts and regrets. He smiles gently at her, puts his hand over hers, laces their fingers together, squeezes her hand.

"Did you go to Paris?" she asks. He nods. She explains how the original plan was to meet them there. How Orli knew a week before the farmhouse was fired upon that Trent Kort had gone rogue, not Jacob Scott, how he was eventually going to come for Ziva, thinking she had her father's files. She did not. Orli did, which was how she knew. They planned to fake her death to get Tali safely to Tony. Ziva had left clues for him, knowing what that he would understand and would go to Paris.

"But," she says, "You were being followed by Kort's men, so I couldn't join you in Paris."

She continues on, explaining that Kort's network was more extensive than they had anticipated, that killing Kort, which Ziva had known Tony and the NCIS team would do, was not enough. To truly be safe, the empire he had built behind the CIA's back needed to be dismantled. So, with Orli's help, this was what she had been doing for the last few months, crisscrossing across Europe. "But now," she concludes, "it is done."

"So you're here for good?" he asks, unable to stop his smile from growing wider.

She nods, then hesitates. "If that is alright with you."

He shakes his head at her, brings the hand he is still holding to his lips, kisses her knuckles. He flashes back briefly to another life, when he kissed the same hand in an olive grove. This time, he knows she will neither leave nor send him away. In this gesture, he relays just how alright with him it is that she wants to stay.

"I know we have a lot to discuss," she says.

"All that matters is that you're here," he replies, and means it. She does not apologize and he does not ask her to do so. During his journey through grief, he had already forgiven her for not telling him about Tali, for forcing him to leave her, for all the misunderstandings over the years. It isn't about who said what or did what or who didn't trust enough. It's about being in the present and, for the first time in a long time for both of them, looking to the future and liking what they see.

That weekend, they take their daughter to the beach. For her part, Tali adjusts immediately to having both her parents in her life at the same time, like she knows this is the way it should have been all along. She walks between them, holding their hands, her short legs stumbling a little on the uneven sand. They watch her, and watch each other over her head.

At night, they put Tali to bed together, each reading her a book. Then the rest of the night is dedicated to rediscovering each other. She notes how he has gotten over his fear of children. He notes that her skin still tastes the same. They laugh and kiss and she comments about the new bed and he tackles her, covering her body with his own. And finally, finally, they shed the sorrows and regrets of the past.

They will build a life in this new place, with new careers, and a daughter they will raise together. Here, the old ghosts can't chase them, and they will create new memories, ones filled with laughter and the ocean and each other.

End.


A/N: See, a happy ending after all. I didn't want to write another story where they reunite in Paris. I wanted him to go through the stages of grief, to accept that maybe he would have to live without her. And once he let go, then she would come back to him.

Okay, so mostly I wanted to write angst. But, like Tony, I really didn't want to live in a world where Ziva is dead. There is a sequel in the works, because we need more from Ziva's point of view. I mean, our ninja assassin as a domesticated and motherly wife? Who wouldn't want to read about that?