A/N: It's been forever, I know. Nearly everyone responding has been so kind and understanding about the delays – that means a lot! It's really appreciated, so thank you for that. Please know that when I have time to get back to writing, I do, but other things insist on getting in line in front of it to eat up all my time.

Some of the delay involved slight adjustments to a couple earlier chapters so the characters are a bit more consistent as the story goes forward. I don't know that it's too noticeable, but I thought it was needed. With the writers giving us a very damaged Ziva and a disturbing breakdown in the Gibbs-DiNozzo relationship, the characters as developed in those episodes, and their likely actions and thoughts in these circumstances, are more challenging than usual. After smoothing a few rough edges from before to fit with where they are going, I could get back to moving foreward.

Reminders: if this feels bashy, please remember that TPTB's writers did some damage to these characters' psyches in recent years, and I am trying to move them from where they were written to healthier circumstances and interactions. What they gave us, and where they are now in this story, wasn't/isn't pretty.

Time shifting: yes, still, but the time gap is still narrowing.

SEASONS

October 24, 2016

Ziva awoke with a start, momentarily disoriented – curled up on an unfamiliar couch in an unfamiliar apartment, with no memory of having fallen asleep – until her memory caught up with her, just as she saw a note in Tony's familiar scrawl on the table in front of her.

Tali woke up about an hour after you fell asleep, he had written. We went to the park in the next street. We left at 1140 - will be back in about an hour. Help yourself to anything you find.

Below his note was a map he sketched for her and beside it, a key, presumably to the apartment. The momentary panic she felt at finding them gone was replaced by another thread of guilt for what she had done. I keep his daughter from him, and he takes pains to be sure I know where she is and how to find her.

Still groggy from her short nap, which barely touched her depleted energy, Ziva considered a shower but had only the clothes on her back, and at the thought of delaying her search for them, she felt her anxiety return. There would be time to shower when they came back here afterward, she reasoned, and, standing too quickly, her head swam as her vision blackened slightly at the edges.

Tony had been right, of course; she should eat something. And as her head cleared a little, and this Paris apartment, with evidence of both Tony and Tali's existence still there, remained solid and substantial, her stomach did not rebel so badly as she remembered the cheese and fruit Tony had offered before. Crossing into the kitchen to look in the refrigerator, she saw the plate he'd made her, and took it out with the glass of milk. Putting the pear in her jacket pocket and drinking the milk, she then tucked the cheese in the bread, trapped it in paper towel, and, grabbing the key and the map, headed out the door, down the steps, and into the sunshine.

October 29, 2016

When Gibbs came back into the solarium, to his surprise, the room was empty, and Ducky was at the front door seeing our Palmer and Abby. Their voices filtered back to him, clearly repeating their quiet offers to help clean up as Ducky shooed them on home. Coming into the hallway, Gibbs watched his friend close the door and turn to face him. The doctor's face was unreadable as he looked at Gibbs, as silent as the man himself.

Gibbs couldn't tell what was in his friend's thoughts at the moment, but he knew Ducky. He thought he knew when a lecture was coming, although his gut twinged in an unsettled response to the thought. From the silence and the doctor's stony expression, he wasn't so sure. He was sure, however, that he wasn't in the mood to hear it. Especially after whatever that was, out in the kitchen, with DiNozzo.

He broke the face off by starting toward the door and his waiting car. "Nice party, Duck," he ground out under his breath as he made to leave.

"A word, Jethro," the doctor said immediately.

"Aw, Ducky," Gibbs groaned, "not now. I gotta get back to..."

"Your basement? I need only a moment." Ducky's voice was flat, almost emotionless, but it was clearly the voice of command.

"I've heard it before, Ducky..."

"No. You have not." Dr. Mallard did not approach him, nor was there the slightest change in his expression. "You have been granted the rarest of second chances with not one, but two people closer to you than most in your life, whom you once held dear. Both have saved your life, and you, theirs. Neither of them had much in the way of familial or paternal support or guidance, yet both survived to become fine people in spite of it. And both, whether you like it or not, found a mentor in you. One of them was lost to us all, so we though; the other ... you wrote off." The doctor's eyes flared momentarily with anger at the thought. "Yet now they are here again. Both of them."

"They know where to find me."

"And that is all you will offer?" Ducky asked. No matter that his tone was deceptively mild – Gibbs did not miss the reproach in the older man's words.

"What do you want from me, Duck?"

"Honesty. With yourself."

The implications from his friend's words mixed with what Gibbs had seen and heard from his former agents, and all that he'd found himself thinking and feeling since he knew they were back. So much for semper fi, Gunny... His gut had been churning for many, many months now, and nothing had worked to get it on any sort of even keel again. He tried to tell himself it had all started with Luke and the Calling, but if he was honest with himself he knew things had started getting rocky well before then. Thoughts working further and further back, touching sore moments he still had not shed, his headache ratcheted up another notch.

Ducky considered him for another moment, standing unyieldingly in the hall in a most ungracious way for a host yet not caring one damn bit. However, the purposeful set of his shoulders wavered the smallest bit, and he dropped his determined glare from Gibbs to the floor. Clearly coming to some sort of decision, then, after another moment, Ducky spoke again, raising his eyes back to his friend. His voice was no warmer than it had been moments ago. "When Anthony left, I decided I would not again try to get you to see reason when it came to your relationship with him. Or to get you to see reason on much of anything, actually. I've made my worries known. So what I say now is not for you, Jethro, but for Tony, and for Ziva." He paused, again giving thought to his words. "They are both strong, intelligent people. They are survivors. And by God if you continue with your misguided, pig-headed, stubborn refusal to admit your all-too-human failings – and how they led you to shut Anthony out of your life after Ziva left – Tony and Ziva will still manage to get on with their lives. But like the forsaken children they once were, it is still in their nature to blame themselves for your distance. They will always think that if they were just a wee bit smarter or faster or better at whatever it was you expected of them, you would again, finally, find those rare words of approval or praise you used to have for them. They still want your approval, Jethro, and your friendship, and want you to be a part of their lives. I dare say they may always want it, at some level or other.

"Therefore," the doctor straightened to his full height. "If not for your own care and concern for them, or for their sweet child; if not for the esteem you used to accord them – then, for their sakes," Ducky sighed, "be honest about what happened to make you write off Anthony and to hold Ziva at arm's length. And after you do that – don't just leave your bloody door open. Go through theirs."

Ducky held Gibbs' gaze for only another moment, then walked past Gibbs into the hall to move on back toward the solarium. Without turning, the doctor added softly, "please shut the door when you leave."

And once again, in a span of fifteen minutes, yet another man he considered a friend – no; family – had walked out on him, this time after echoing back to him the thoughts that had been plaguing him since the return of two people now strangers to him.

October 24, 2016

In spite of all the signs she had not been dreaming – again – Ziva bolted her bread and cheese as she ran down the steps, hurried along the sidewalk to the corner, and turned toward the park. Scanning the park as she neared, she felt a thread of worry when she did not see them at first. But then catching the still-familiar form of her former partner, pushing her happily squealing daughter on a swing, she slowed to a walk, even stopping some distance away to watch father and daughter together before they knew she was there. A lump rose in her throat at what could have been – what should have been – for both of them over the past two years, and thanked God that, regardless of how or why, they had found each other and, clearly, had formed the bond that should have begun at Tali's birth.

She could not help the tiny smile of recognition that arose when, after only a moment or two of being watched, Tony turned to look around the park. His instincts were still sharp, she noted, glad to see it, to know her daughter was as safe with him as with her.

And she saw him hesitate, seeing her there. Even from a distance Ziva could see that her appearance still had an effect on him as conflicting emotions played over his face in the moments before he could hide them. She felt another pang of hurt that his initial reaction of relief and awe to see her again, after months of believing she was dead, was replaced by the shuttered control of one hurt too many times to risk it again.

Because of me, she lectured herself. Because of my actions. She watched as, finally breaking eye contact with her, Tony slowed the arc of Tali's swing to whisper in her ear. As soon as she saw the child's face light up and search the park until she saw her, Ziva knew precisely what Tony must have said.

"Ima!" The joy and excitement in Tali's whole bearing as she ran toward her raised another lump in Ziva's throat, and she started walking again toward them again to meet her. Tony straightened slowly but stood where he was, watching protectively, but letting them each have their space. "Ima!" Tali ran full force into her mother's arms, warm and sweet smelling and squirming with excitement. "Swing!" She beamed, pointing back to where Tony stood but not leaving her mother's arms yet.

Ziva nodded, emotions still so raw that tears again filled her eyes. She didn't know if Tali was commenting on her activity or asking her to return to them, but it didn't matter; her daughter was irrefutably alive and safe and thriving, and nothing else mattered at that moment. "I see," she gulped, answering her daughter in English as she realized she might not have put the Hebrew word for swing together with the English word she used for these swings, in this park. The least she could do for Tony at this moment was to reinforce his communication with his daughter, Ziva reasoned vaguely. She gave her daughter another hug and a kiss on her forehead as she stood with her in her arms. "Would you like to go back to the swing?"

Tali nodded fiercely, twisting in Ziva's arms to point toward them – and Tony. "Swing! Abba, swing." She added, waiting for Ziva to get going.

Abba. Her daughter was able to use that word now, to know the man who gave her life, as surely as she had. Swallowing the newest surge of emotion, Ziva nuzzled her daughter's rosy cheek and started toward him. "We will go see Abba and the swings, yes?" She smiled as the curly head nodded decisively against her again.

She watched Tony as he watched them approach him, seeing his expression soften into something like ... appreciation. Or understanding? As Ziva put a squirming Tali down and let her pull her the last couple feet toward the swing she had just vacated, Tony shrugged awkwardly and offered quietly, "she's the spitting image of you, Ziva."

Ziva felt a small smile pull at her lips, a foreign feeling in recent months. "Have you seen her smile? Especially if she thinks she is getting away with something?"

He snorted softly, nodding, smirking himself. "Yeah, I have."

"That, she does not get from me." She glanced back up at him, expecting for a moment the old Tony to surface, to deny and argue just for the sake of entertaining conversation – his way of connecting, she had decided once in a more charitable moment.

But the moment had been lost.

He moved behind their daughter as she wiggled herself into her seat and kicked her legs, either in an ineffective attempt to start swinging again or in readiness for him to push her. "Ready?" he asked quietly, near her ear, and when she nodded enthusiastically, he drew the swing back several paces, slowly, then let it go. As Tali squealed and babbled with the rush of the wind, Tony remained behind her, watching her, making no move to cross the few feet back to where Ziva stood.

A lump grew in her throat to see it; as much as she wanted to think she was imagining it, Ziva was stuck by the distance she suddenly felt from him, as if he'd built a wall around his heart while she slept, as if the masks of their earlier days was not enough for her return to his life. She may have lost touch with him recently, but not so long ago she had known him as well as anyone knew Tony, and she knew that the moment he'd seen her with Tali – the moment of wonder that had crossed his face – had been only a final crack in the newly setting mortar.

Slowly, she sat on the bench a few feet from the swing set; she did not want to intrude and did not want to display her continuing weakness - or her pain at what she had seen in him. She reminded herself what she had done in keeping his daughter a secret from him and how he would find it hard – or impossible – to trust her as he once had.

Sitting by as father and daughter played on the swings, Ziva acknowledged to herself that had she had once again hurt others, and this time, it was the two left most dear to her. She had always known that Tali and Tony would have to meet someday, and that they might both hate her for the decisions she had made. This time, however, it was not the decisions she was ordered to follow by her father or Mossad; these were mostly hers, acting on her own, deciding moment to moment what she believed she had to do. She was grounded enough in reality to know that her actions would appear to be unhinged and contradictory; to an extent, they had been the product of the ... the instability ... that had overtaken her, to seek her victims and make amends. But she had choices when it came to Tali and Tony, made them ... and now she was to live with them. Her heart ached with the results of those decisions as they confronted her in this peaceful, sunny, Parisian park...

"Are you alright?"

She startled to awareness and glanced up sharply from her withdrawn form to see Tony crouched before her, looking up into her face in grim concern. He must have called to her and she had missed it. She glanced past him quickly to see Tali still swinging happily, oblivious to her mother's apparent oblivion and her father's response.

"Of course," Ziva straightened, struggling to hold on to the connection with him, given its tenuousness and her responsibility for it. "I am sorry – I am still a bit tired."

He stood, clearly not convinced. "Did you eat?"

She felt a bit of relief that she could answer. "Yes – I finished the breakfast you had out for me. Thank you. And..." she dared, as he half turned back to watch Tali, "thank you for the note, telling me where you had gone."

He did not reply, didn't even appear to react. You did this, a voice inside her hissed. She almost faltered; she bit the inside of her cheek to stifle the wave of tears that wanted to come, and looked for the shreds of training remaining in her to press forward.

"You could have awakened me," she offered, softly.

At that, Tony turned back to look at Ziva, still expressionless to her efforts to read him. After a moment, though, he seemed to waiver, then, eyes back on Tali, he sat on the bench beside her. After another moment, he spoke as he looked out over the park, and back to Tali. "No," he said quietly, shaking his head slowly. "I really couldn't." He paused, then glanced back at her, solemn and quiet, as he seemed to come to some sort of decision. "You're exhausted, Ziva," he urged. "At the very least, you're exhausted, and need sleep. You need food, more than the little bit I left for you. God knows what else you may need to be healthy." He lapsed back into silence.

Ziva had no response. She knew he was right, but knew there was nothing she could say to address his concern that would satisfy him. She had her confirmation: now that he had some time to get used to the fact that she was alive, and here in Paris with the two of them, his walls were firmly in place in a way she had never known from him before – at least not any directed at her. How much was because she had not wanted to talk about the last three years or about her present condition, or how much of it was the fact that she had not told him about his daughter, or even how much might be her "rejoining" Mossad, if he knew about it, she had no idea. However, she was certain that how he'd been with her when she last saw him in Israel, and then when she first arrived at his apartment, compared to this distance and coolness with her, and his reaction of self-protection, meant that her actions had hurt, and that his hitherto unshakable trust in her had now been shaken to the core. She wondered if he could ever trust her again.

So she just nodded, silently, and waited.

But even this new Tony was not comfortable with silence, and after several more long moments of neither speaking, he got up and crossed over to Tali, to pull her swing back again and let it go, much to the child's delight. Then, before Ziva could find more blame to take on herself, he came back to sit beside her again. Still avoiding eye contact with her, Tony spoke once more. "I made some calls while you two were sleeping," he began. "I have a couple contacts at the embassy, and they gave me the name of a clinic and a couple doctors who could see you, just to be sure you're okay. We won't need an appointment – just whenever you're ready to go." He paused, then barely glanced at her as he added, "and we could go pick up your bag at the station, whenever you want. You probably want your things..."

She nodded. "I can get a room, so that I do not disrupt you and Tali any m-"

She heard a small huff of frustration from him before he spoke again, his voice still measured. "There's no need, Ziva. We have plenty of room. Unless you want to."

She wavered, her heart aching terribly at how strained of their once-intimate connection had become. "No," she whispered.

At the sound, Tony turned sharply to look at her, and she was again overcome with shame at her weakness. But his eyes seemed to soften a tiny bit; his resolve wavered for a moment. He opened his mouth to speak; he shut it and frowned; he drew another breath, nodding and relaxing infinitesimally. "Then ... what if we let Tali have her fill of the swings – which I'm guessing will be another five minutes or so – and then we head over to the station and get your things?"

Ziva nodded, relieved to see a bit of hope glimmer through in his reactions and to have a plan that did not require any more confrontations or questions or suspicions. Tony looked back toward his daughter, barely seeing her for the confusion and hurt and concern he felt, finding her mother – his treasured Ziva – so terribly, completely, broken...

TBC...