Chap 11 Not only for Myself

Saturday, November 9th 2018

West Clark Street - Apartment 7

Ziva tapped the faucet violently. She shook her head at herself. Sometimes even she herself had a hard time comprehending the paradox that was her life. She could defuse bombs, handle several weapons at the same time and fight completely outnumbered, yet she had just burnt her fingers on the waffle iron. Letting the cool water run over her right hand, she sighed. Her mind was dangerously preoccupied, it seemed. Could be, however, she simply was more tired than she liked to admit to herself. She had been up since five-ish in the morning - that is, actually counting the many hours of semi-sleep with a sick daughter beside her. Tali hadn't slept for two hours straight all throughout the night, her stuffy nose and a beginning fever constantly keeping the little girl awake. For a woman who liked to be in control, a sick child meant a fair share of feeling powerless. An illness they had to fight themselves, an illness wasn't something Ziva could just make go away or scare off. She could help them alright, soothe them, hold them, give them their meds - but an illness was something she couldn't just relieve them of.

She finally turned off the water and examined her hand. Yes, she certainly had been burnt far worse than that in the past and more than once too. When her eyes fell on a small blister forming on the tip of her index finger, Ziva was swept up in a memory, memories she tried so hard to suppress every day of her life, step-by-step like a former addict deciding to stay sober every day anew. The sickening stench of burnt skin started foiling her nostrils, the piercing pain of red-hot metal on human flesh shot through her abdomen, the sizzling of burnt body hair hissed in her ears. That one blister was nothing compared to how some of those scars on her back had come about.

Ziva had been so caught up in past images that she hadn't noticed David entering the kitchen. Granted, he had been careful to be as quiet as possible, knowing or at least sensing that his mother and sister had had a rough night. Ziva was only alerted to her son's presence when he slung his arms around her middle while her back had been turned towards the door.

"Boker tov, tateleh", Ziva spoke softly, relieved by how she had been snapped out of her reminiscent reverie. She put her arms around him and started rocking him slightly from one side to the other.

Her preoccupation with a sick Tali meant a fair lack of attention given to her little boy - a downside he seemed to take rather unperturbedly as far as the looks of it went. Despite his understanding exterior, however, Ziva knew that he was by all means only six years old, a little boy who craved the attention that which she usually tried so very hard to divide equitably between her two children. Sometimes, though, they both simply had to do with a morning hug that lasted well beyond its habitual expiry date.

Ziva leaned over and kissed the top of his head before she squatted down in front of him, keeping a tight hold on his hands. "Your breakfast is on the table. I just need to take this up to your sister and then I will be right back to join you, yes?" She nodded towards the counter.

"'kay."

"Todah rabbah, neshomeleh", she whispered, kissing his cheek.

She watched him take his seat at the table before she straightened back up and took the glass of water and the thermometer up to her room. When she stepped through the door Tali was, as she had expected, half awake. The little girl had been battling semi-consciousness when Ziva had last checked on her a couple of minutes ago. One could clearly see that Tali was sick. Usually, her dark curls would be bouncing on her shoulders as the little girl would bounce off the walls, her eyes would be glimmering with future mischief, her face would be beaming with a persistent smile. Right now, she appeared choked up by the sheets and her pillow, burying herself deep in their softness. Her face looked dim and gloomy. One hand was clasping Shim, the fingers of her free hand were raised to her lips.

When the little girl's eyes settled on her, Ziva smiled reassuringly. "Mommy", Tali called out to her weakly.

Ziva quickly put the things down on the nightstand. "I am here, tateleh. Mommy's right here", Ziva assured her gently, sitting down on the front end of the bed next to her daughter, and smoothed back some of Tali's wayward sweaty curls.

Tali instantly abandoned Shim and put her head into her mother's lap, grabbing whatever part of Ziva's nightgown was grazing her little fingers. Ziva resumed brushing her hand through the little girl's hair, putting some of it behind her ear. After some time Ziva turned to retrieve the thermometer, which was immediately met by faint whimpering. "Shshsh… Come here, tateleh", Ziva whispered, lifting Tali carefully from the bed and settling the little girl down in her lap. Tali slung her arms around Ziva's neck at once, hiding her face. Ziva arranged the blanket around them, so that Tali wouldn't freeze in the cool of the morning, drawing soothing circles on the little girl's back with her free hand.

"Tali, look at me, please."

"Mommy, no", Tali whined quietly, shaking her head adamantly against Ziva's shoulder.

"Bevakasha, Tali."

Ziva tried prying the little girl away from her just far enough to gain access to her daughter's mouth while whispering soothing words, some Hebrew, some English. Tali eventually gave up, feeling too tired to fight her mother's lasting determination, and opened her mouth obediently. Ziva put some fallen strands of hair away from the three-year-old's forehead and brushed a kiss against it. It felt warm against her lips. "Todah, tateleh. Yihyeh beseder", she mumbled, looking intently into her daughter's drowsily blurry eyes.

At the familiar bleeping, Ziva took the thermometer out of Tali's mouth. The temperature blinking on its display was a little higher than usual but not upsetting enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room. Tali fell lazily back against her mother, coughing weakly. Ziva took the glass of water from the nightstand and held it expectantly to Tali's lips. Tali peeked up at her mother and, at Ziva's encouraging smile, took a few slow sips before slumping back into her initial position. Ziva uttered another 'Todah' and put her arms around her daughter, rocking them back and forth. It wasn't time for another round of medicine yet. The last time had taken Ziva half an hour of sweet-talking until Tali had been too weak to refuse anymore. Ziva started humming the Hebrew lullaby she had memorized in her own childhood - first from her own mother singing it to her and her siblings in that beautifully raspy voice that Ziva still remembered vividly enough, and then from singing it to her little sister Tali in an innocent attempt to evoke their mother's dead spirit. In a matter of heartbeats her little girl, the little girl she had named after her late baby sister, was asleep in her arms. Her breathing was labored and shallow against Ziva's skin. Ziva tilted her head so that her cheek was grazing Tali's warm forehead, breathing in her daughter's scent. Yes, definitely, she hated it when her children were sick, it was the hardest thing to watch them suffer - and Ziva had had enough suffering, seen and lived through, for more than one lifetime.

Ziva eventually left Tali to some much needed sleep, knowing that the little girl would wake up soon enough and the sick-circle would start anew. David had almost finished up his breakfast when Ziva joined him at the kitchen table. She briefly explained the kind and extent of Tali's illness to him and that he shouldn't go and see her for as long as she was still contagious. As always, Ziva asked him about his school day seeing as they hadn't gotten that far in their conversation the day before because Tali had woken up halfway through it. While Ziva had taken care of Tali, David had played by himself. Generally, finding things to do on his own wasn't unusual per se. Ziva tried to spend every free minute with both of her children, but sometimes she simply couldn't because one child needed more attention than the other or because of work. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing either. Ziva had grown up with two siblings in an environment where grown-ups and children had two very different and very seriously contoured spheres of activity and where children stepped over that line dividing those spheres very early - and not the other way around. In her humble opinion, being bored made for some great sources of inspiration for inventing new games. Still, contrary to her own upbringing, Ziva made a definite point of immersing herself into the world of her children, giving them all the attention they needed and wanted whenever she could. And she knew that David was in need of some one-on-one time, something she was very willing to provide too and if it was just for the sake of sitting there and listening and showing interest.

Consequently, he finally took to recounting the stories of his classmates' family-chart-projects, their families, their drawings, their presentations. Ziva was quite pleased to watch him lunge into agitated accounts of their family situations he appeared to remember amazingly well. He embellished the ones about his friends with even more detail, pondering what family member he had already met and what stories he had already heard about some of them. Watching him talk and gesticulate, throwing his whole body into his grand narratives, Ziva realized once again how often David granted his little sister center-stage and how much temperament there was hidden beneath his apparent serenity. She knew her son and she knew that his desire to be the center of attention was directly related to a feeling of security, and in light of her own childhood Ziva felt so immensely relieved her children could feel so safe, so protected that they could be themselves. When David started explaining how he would have done his project, that point was made even clearer.

As it seemed, he would have drawn the bullpen at NCIS headquarters. Even though he and Tali didn't spend too much of their time there, he still associated that place with family seeing as that's where they all were, that's where they all met. He would include his Auntie Abby and his Uncle McGee with a little no-name baby - yes, Ziva was quite surprised to hear he had picked up on Abby's and McGee's adoption Odyssey - standing in front of Uncle McGee's desk. Uncle Ducky would wear normal clothes, not his 'doctor clothes', because apparently he had given them to Jimmy. While Uncle Ducky would stand next to his Uncle Gibbs, who he would draw bigger than all the others because he always looked out for all of them, at Uncle Gibbs' desk, Jimmy would stand a little outside the bullpen. And in the middle of the picture there would have been his mom and dad and Tali and him. Ziva couldn't help but smile, David's idea for his family-chart telling her more about the life they were living than any detailed description ever would. That which that astonished her, however, was David mentioning a picture that he would have drawn Ziva holding.

"…and you hold the picture in your hand", David ended matter-of-factly.

Ziva's brows furrowed slightly. "What picture, tateleh?"

"You know, the picture", he stressed, smiling at the questioning look Ziva still gave him, "The one of Dod Ari and Dodah Tali and you mommy when you are little."

Ziva was momentarily taken aback. She wouldn't have guessed that David actually counted his late and only biological Aunt and Uncle among his family members. It was bittersweet - just like everything concerning her siblings. Ziva had long come to terms with the fact that both Ari and Tali were but memories living inside of her - and she sometimes liked to think even inside of Eli.

The reason she sometimes imagined Eli thinking of his late children in that office in central Tel Aviv was simple yet complicated: Her Aunt Nettie had been the only family member Ziva had called in July 2012 to announce David's birth. Yet, a few days later a letter came, sent to NCIS and addressed to Ziva - in Hebrew. No sender. When she had opened the letter it had been only the fourth time for Ziva to have tears run down her face while at NCIS headquarters. Someone - and something told her it had been Eli, for whatever reason - had sent her the picture of Tali, Ari and her as small, innocent children standing on the street outside their mansion in Tel Aviv, holding each other's hands and smiling at the man behind the camera. It had been the only picture of all three of them together she had ever possessed, the picture she had deemed forever lost in that desert, that darn desert. She had taken the picture along on that mission in Somalia and she had put it into her backpack after she and Ben-Gidon had deep-sixed the Damocles, but that backpack and its contents had been burnt to ashes before her eyes after her capture. It had been like the resurrection of her memories when she had slipped its only copy from the envelope more than six years ago.

Now, that picture stood atop a shelf in the study, on the wall right across from the couch. From time to time Ziva would find herself sitting there and staring at that picture, imagining scenarios of a life that could have been - a life where a suicide bombing wouldn't have killed her sister, a life where Ari would have forever been her devoted big brother and not a callous monster, a life where Ziva wouldn't have had to shoot him. The stories she told David and Tali about their late Dod and Dodah were, of course, reduced to the happy memories she had of them, to the joyous accounts of their childhood together, to those simple moments when they had been allowed to have a childhood. Ziva hadn't realized, though, that David had inducted both of them into their family. She couldn't quite pinpoint how she felt about it too. Was it relief? Was it joy? Was it unease? She knew that she would have to tell her son the truth at some point in his life. Ziva hardly ever talked about her family in Israel, about her life before NCIS - even her life before Somalia. The kids were still too young, too innocent to be burdened with any of it. Ziva couldn't help but wonder if David's attitude towards his Dod Ari would change if he knew the truth. Then again, she couldn't help but wonder if her son's love for her would change if he knew that she, Ziva, had killed her own brother, had put a 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge through his head - to save his Uncle Gibbs nonetheless.

Right now, however, when the doorbell rang and David looked at her expectantly, Ziva could only get up from her chair, drop a kiss on his head and leave to answer the door. She wiped at a small tear that threatened to fall, checking her meticulously masked face in the mirror, before opening the door to reveal Abby and McGee standing there, smiling.

"Howdy Ubald!", Abby greeted cheerfully, waving at a rather surprised Ziva.

"Hey there."

"Hello, you two." Ziva quickly ushered them in but couldn't help mirroring McGee's questioningly narrowed eyes.

Abby, realizing she was being stared at, explained simply, "Saint Ubald, patron saint of sick children. One of the patron saints of sick children or child sickness as a matter of fact, there are more. But I like him the best. His full name's actually Saint Ubaldo of Gubbio…and I always thought his name sounded kinda cute, you know? Teddy-bear kinda cute. He's the patron saint of obsessive compulsive disorder too, so…" Ziva and McGee nodded knowingly in unison.

"Do not get me wrong, I am happy to see you. But were we expecting you?", Ziva asked tentatively from the doorway to the living room while McGee helped Abby strip herself from the abundance of mittens, gloves, hats and coats she was wearing.

"Nope, you weren't", McGee asserted definitely.

"But we thought you could use some help and company with a sick child around. And we're not afraid of germs", Abby elaborated with a smile, "At least I'm not afraid of germs. Macho-McGee over there is a chicken, but he's totally submissive to my command-"

"Think of Abby as the Goth Piper luring chicken in like rats and you'll get the picture", McGee added dryly, tilting his head to the side.

"Ah", Ziva's eyes widened in realization; thank God for reading traditional fairytales with Tali almost every night at bedtime.

David had been ecstatic to see them. A few minutes later Abby and Ziva were sitting around the kitchen island drinking coffee - that is, Abby drinking coffee and Ziva drinking her tea -, watching McGee and David play Pirates in the living room. As it turned out, David and McGee were opposing pirate captains, using both the couch and the coffee table as their ships and several of David's toys as their imaginative props. Ziva noticed the wistful smile that had settled on Abby's face as they followed the little game of pretence and McGee throwing himself into his appointed role of pirate lord.

"He is going to be a great father", Ziva observed.

"Coming here was actually Tim's idea", Abby confessed with a smile, finally tearing her eyes away from her life partner and their nephew-of-choice, "I thought bothering you might be a bad idea after what happened yesterday."

"Oh, Abby", Ziva sighed, a wry smile forming on her lips as well, "I know he meant well-"

"But all a sick little girl wants is her mommy", Abby finished simply, "I know, I know. I already explained it to him."

"I was never actually mad at him."

"I know that too", Abby exclaimed happily, "But Tim still thought he could make it up to you by…you know…" Abby motioned towards the living room where McGee was currently negotiating the terms of his early release from prison with Captain David.

Ziva chuckled. Gibbs and McGee had been taking turns at adopting the role of surrogate father figure during Tony's absence - especially to David. That was another reason why Gibbs and Ziva had expanded occasional visits to a weekly lunch at Gibbs' place. While Gibbs was the more grandfatherly figure, McGee was the one David came to for imaginative games and for a trip to the movies or sports events. Ziva knew that McGee personally didn't care much, neither for movies nor for any particular sport in the way that Tony would, but still. He was a great Uncle to David and would be an even greater father, Ziva was absolutely positive about that.

"How did your meeting with the woman from the adoption agency go?", Ziva inquired carefully, tracing the rim of her mug with her finger.

"Not bad actually", Abby declared somewhat guardedly, trying at a small smile, "She said our jobs were the only hindrance for a quick adoption, 'cause some agency executives or what-not are against parents in high-risk jobs and McGee's…well, his more than mine." Ziva was about to open her mouth in protest, but Abby held up her hand to stop her, a grin spreading slowly on her face. "But… She said the letters of recommendation and the meetings and the assessments and the surroundings were too favorable for her not to give her consent. So, apparently… We qualify."

"Congratulations, Abby!", Ziva said truthfully, leaning over to hug her best friend, "I am so happy for you."

"Thanks. We'll go down there sometime next week and- God, I'm so excited!", Abby exclaimed. She had been dying to tell someone but had waited until now for she had wanted Ziva to be the first to know - after McGee and her, that is. And now Ziva realized what had been missing: The terseness had left both Abby's and McGee's bodies.

"Mommy?"

Tali's soft whimper caused the two friends to break apart. Looking over to the foot of the stairs, they saw Tali standing there in her PJs and hugging Shim to her. Ziva got up immediately and went over to her daughter, quickly gathering the little girl up in her arms and carrying her over into the kitchen. There she returned to her seat and settled Tali down in her lap. Tali sat tiredly slumped against her mother's torso as Ziva kept her arms wrapped protectively around her. Watching Ziva whisper soothing words into Tali's ear and rocking her daughter gently back and forth, Abby couldn't wait to be a mother.

Noticing the longing glisten in Abby's eyes without even looking up, Ziva commented softly, "And you are going to be a wonderful mother, Abby."

Abby smiled at her. Then she leaned over and gently caressed Tali's cheek. "Hello, Tally-Wally."

"'lom Aun'ie Abby", Tali mumbled quietly, the fingers she had raised to her lips muffling her greeting. The little girl's eyes quickly diverted to the living room to affirm her Uncle McGee's joint presence. McGee gave her a short wave and a quick smile before resuming his game with David.

"You feelin' poorly, munchkin?", Abby inquired softly.

"Hmmhmm", Tali nodded and turned her head into Ziva's chest, "Hurts, mommy."

"Where does it hurt, tateleh?", Ziva asked, stroking her daughter's back. Tali put her hand on her stomach and rolled her eyes up to meet Ziva's, her look lethargic and weak.

"Your tummy hurts?" Tali nodded again. "Abby, could you-" Ziva looked up at her friend, wanting to ask her whether she could take Tali for a second.

But Abby just held up her hand. "No way. Tali stays right there where she's comfortable. Just tell me what I need to do."

"That is not-", Ziva started again, but Abby only shoved her hand closer towards her best friend's face.

"Mind the hand", Abby warned forcefully while a smile kept playing on her lips, "Think of me as the second pair of hands you've always wanted and never got. Use me." Abby tilted her head to the side.

Ziva sighed heavily. She took another glance at the little girl sagged in her arms and finally nodded her head affirmatively. "Her medicine is on that tray next to the sink", Ziva started instructing tentatively but finally relented to Abby's incessantly widened and expectant eyes, "Tea and some soup before she can take her medicine." Abby quickly saluted and went over to the counter. Ziva could only smile.

Not long after outsourcing the different roles she usually assumed during the course of a day, Ziva was gently fighting Tali's newfound aversion against thermometers when her cell started ringing. She looked into the living room and towards the coffee table helplessly. McGee nodded and smirked, lunging at her backpack by the door and retrieving Ziva's cell from the front pocket. "Kinda déjà-vu, isn't it?", he quipped, mouthing the word 'Tony' upon answering the call.

"Oh hey, Tony", he greeted cheerily, "No, we're not working a Saturday, I'm at your apartment actually."

Ziva shook her head, smiling a knowing smile. "First of all, don't call me McAsanova", McGee stated, a bit irritated, "And… Ziva's kinda busy right now." He looked over to where Ziva was presently checking the temperature displayed on the thermometer.

"Tell him I will call him back later, please", Ziva cut in lightly, relieved that Tali's fever had gone down.

"She'll call you back… Sorry, didn't know you didn't know. Tali's sick", McGee elucidated quickly. He shot Ziva a questioning look. Ziva only shrugged her shoulders innocently, pursing her lips. She hadn't come around to calling Tony last night because it had been a positive struggle to get Tali back to sleep and this morning hadn't started out much differently either.

Ziva watched McGee opening and closing his mouth without saying a word. She could practically hear Tony rattling off a bout of questions about his daughter's state of health, maybe a few curses thrown in there too for good measure and because Ziva had failed to alert him at the first possible chance. "Well, she didn't really get a chance to yet, Tony", McGee stated finally, rolling his eyes, "Don't worry, she's okay. Stomach flu, nothing serious according to Ducky… Okay, I will."

Tony and McGee talking on the phone always made for some amusing minutes of involuntary stand-up comedy. Ziva had to grin. She could just imagine Tony pestering McGee about how to take messages properly, McGee's sour expression fit that scenario perfectly. "Tony, I won't have to give her your number. She already has your number. You're calling her cell, genius!", McGee argued back agitatedly.

Ziva looked down at Tali who obviously found her Uncle McGee's performance highly entertaining as well. A smile had settled firmly on the little girl's face and Ziva could feel her chuckle a little occasionally. Tali, feeling her mother's eyes on her, looked up. "Unca M'ee's funny, mommy", she stated quietly.

"Lichora." Tali smiled.

"No, Tony, I don't know how to say 'get well soon' in Italian", McGee lamented, rolling his eyes, "No! I won't learn it now. Yes. Yes, I will. I promise, okay? Good. Bye." He heaved a deep sigh, flipping the cell phone shut. He went over to where Ziva and Tali were still smiling subtly at his distal exchange and put Ziva's cell on the counter in front of her.

Then he squatted down, so he could look into Tali's eyes. "Your daddy wants you to get better really soon", he told her gently, touching the tip of the little girl's nose.

"Me too", she returned innocently, giving her Uncle a brave smile.

"And you…", he straightened back up to look at Ziva, "He wants you to call him first chance you get. And he could make a video conference around three."

"Alright. Thank you, Tim."

He still continued to look at her, causing Ziva to raise her eyebrows questioningly. "Is that an alright to calling him or to the video conference?"

"The video conference", Ziva answered slowly.

"In that case he wanted me to tell you…to wear the tight black one with the Aguilera-cut. His choice of words, not mine", McGee informed dryly, nodded and left to recommence his game with David.

After Abby had been finished in the kitchen, she had helped Ziva get Tali to eat and to take her medicine by softly yet incessantly distracting the little girl with her soft yet incessant talking. Tali had finally succumbed to sleep soon afterwards and Ziva had put her down in her bedroom. Meanwhile, Abby and McGee had agreed with David upon the take-out-food of choice and had ordered Chinese for a late lunch which they ate together in the living room. Afterwards they had played five rounds of Battleship, Team David/Ziva winning each and every one of them while Team Abby/McGee went down fighting…with each other mostly. McGee and Abby had left around six in the evening after McGee had finished a 3D-jigsaw puzzle of the Eiffel Tower with David and Abby had assisted Ziva a second time at caring for a sick and rather cranky Tali.

After nothing else had seemed to work, Ziva had eventually taken Tali back upstairs and a seat on the rocking chair that had been adorning the far left corner of Ziva's and Tony's bedroom for decoration reasons only for close to two years up until now. David had always been a big aficionado of the rocking chair, falling asleep almost instantly as a toddler. Tali had been much different, though. While she had still been nursing, the rocking chair itself had relaxed Ziva more than it had lulled the little girl to sleep. Right now, however, Tali was finally asleep in her mother's arms. Absentmindedly, Ziva was still rocking back and fro, her fingers playing with the bracelet on her daughter's wrist.

The bracelet had been a present from Tony upon Tali's birth. It was an authentic silver bracelet with a special, child-proof and secure latch and designed like a simple chain so that they could get links added as Tali grew. As the little girl would have surely gotten any loose parts ripped off one way or another, a plainly crafted Star of David was held in place by two chain links on either side. Even before David was born and they hadn't even thought about the name they would give their future son, they had decided on DiNozzo as a surname. Later on, Ziva had had the idea of naming their son David, wanting their child to know of his Israeli heritage and to carry the name of her family - no matter the hardship they had put her through - for Ziva was, after all, the only living heir to the name. Tony had remembered her reasoning when they had been picking Tali's name and had had the bracelet made, so that, while David may carry the name, Tali could carry a piece of jewelry representing her heritage - just like her mom.

Ima… It had been almost twenty-eight years to the day that Ziva had lost her mother to what had been believed to be part of several revenge acts for the Dome of the Rock killings in October 1990 during the First Intifada. Albeit separated from his wife of eleven years and the mother of his two daughters, her death had triggered something of a shift in her father's antics. Eli David's pursuit of his ultimate goal grew increasingly callous and demanding on his entire family. Had it been her mother's incessant influence that had insulated Tali and her from the cruel and vindictive reality of their father's profession, Eli had enlisted both of them for primary training in the wake of their mother's death. While Ziva had proven to be much more capable, a crucial match even for Ari, Talia had lacked that last bit of instinct. Her death had dissolved the last connection to the world of the really-living for both Ziva and Ari. And with the perfectly bred Hamas-mole and the perfectly trained assassin Eli David's ascension to the head of Mossad had been only a matter of time from then on.

Ziva's entire childhood had been overshadowed by death, by cruelty, by the horrors she had faced simply by stepping a foot out of the door. Even though Eliana had tried to shield her daughters - yes, even the son that hadn't been hers - from that reality, her shield had been transparent at the best. After her mother's death, however, even that shield had evaporated. Ziva had almost no memory of Eli outside training camps, field offices or studies. His job had always come first while his family had always and foremost been a means to an end. Ari and she had often fought about their bitter reality during the nights when Eli hadn't come home, Ari always dutifully carrying the weight of destiny upon his shoulders while Ziva had resented every bit of it. 'Follow orders' - Ari, it was ironic really, had taught her that, military training had only reinforced it. Tali had often stepped in to resolve their fights - an 'appeasement policy on legs', Ari had called her on more than one occasion. In fact, Tali had kept them both grounded and seeing. After her death, blind and beyond, the life they had mercilessly and meticulously been groomed for had truly started for Ari and her. For Ari that life had ended with a gunshot to his head - for good. For Ziva that life had ended in Somalia - and real life had recommenced back here in Washington, at NCIS.

Granted, there was much Ziva wanted to forget, much she still wished she wouldn't have had to live through, but in the end she couldn't help but realize that everything that had happened to her had led to the life she was leading now. Tucking Tali into her bed that night and dropping a gentle kiss on the little girl's forehead, Ziva knew she didn't want to miss but a thing of her life now - Tony, Tali, David, her family at NCIS. They were who she was. And settling down with David on the couch that night to watch old Disney movies, Ziva realized that no, she would never let her children suffer a childhood like hers for they would have a childhood, she would make sure of that.

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