Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Most Perfect Thing

"Wake up! Wake up, Daddy!"

At Penny's cry, Tony sat bolt upright; still half-dragged into the pull of sleep and looking much like a flattened animal in terms of his hair, which stuck up in all directions. "Wassrong?" he asked, his bleary eyes landing on Penny, wondering if this was an emergency bathroom run, a monster-under-the-bed incident, or an uh-oh bathroom run.

"It's Cissmas!" Penny announced.

For a moment, Tony was stunned. Christmas. Christmas morning. It took a few seconds for him to realise that this was the reason she was so awake and lively at…he checked his watch…four-thirty in the morning. He watched her, blinking slowly and willing himself to wake up to at least one-tenth of her energy level, but at four-thirty in the morning that was going to take a miracle. Her own eyes were much more alert; filled with curiosity and the typical child-like innocence. He could remember her looking at the finished Christmas tree the night before, such wonder in her eyes that he wished she'd never lose.

Christmas hadn't always been an enjoyable time for Tony. For him, Christmas was about family, even when his family was no longer complete and very much broken. After he lost his mother, his father began to shut him out, insisting that a 'real' son would grow up more, would get rid of his toys, would show some respect. There were many years, shortly after his mothers demise, that his father hadn't been there with him to help a younger, more impressionable Anthony DiNozzo hang up his stocking. He hadn't bothered to read the Christmas traditions and tales, so his encouragement to believe in a seasonal magic that could lighten even the darkest moments came from the bottom of the younger boy's heart. He could remember his first Christmas without his mother when he had crept into his father's bedroom, jumping on the bed to get him to wake up because Santa had been. He'd been ordered back to bed until it was breakfast time, and his father had told him that Santa only came to good children who respected their parents. Tony had spent another two hours in bed, literally sobbing into his pillow at the thought of Santa forgetting him. His father had got him no Christmas gift, and never had done again, but his grandmother had arrived later that day. She'd stayed for Christmas dinner, which he'd helped her cook, and for a few hours, at least, he'd been able to enjoy Christmas. Later that night, he remembered sneaking into his father's study to give him the Christmas gift he'd made for him in school. He could vividly remember the clay model of a car, that he'd spent hours painting and bragging to his friends about how it was his dad's favourite car. He could also vividly remember the way his father had pushed the clay car aside because it was getting in the way of what he was reading.

Christmas would be different this year, though. For the past few years, since he had been working at NCIS, Christmas had been a guaranteed two-day vacation. This time, the Director had allowed them to take a fortnight off, providing that they come in immediately if any urgent cases arose. Tony had been thrilled about this, because it meant that, after watching Penny's drastic build up to Christmas, they'd actually be able to spend it together. He was spending Christmas with his family. His real family.

And most importantly, his daughter.

"It's Christmas," he repeated.

"Presents!"

With that, Penny leapt from the other side of the bed, running to the bedroom door with an acceleration that shouldn't have been possible quite so early. It flew open on it's hinges but Tony luckily managed to scramble after her, catching hold of her just outside of the doorway. After all, it was still before sunrise; the team deserved a break from waking up at this hour as it was Christmas.

"Shh!" he told her in a whisper, when she squealed in his grasp. "It's still early."

"But Santa's been!" she protested.

"How do you know?"

"'Cause I've been sleeping," she pointed out.

"Well, everyone else is still asleep, so we've got to wait until they get up," he told her simply.

She pouted. "Don't wanna wait."

"Don't look at me like that," he told her. "We agreed that we're going to wait. Remember, we said that we wanted to open presents all together?"

"But Daddy…"

"No, we're waiting," he said firmly, but he was still smiling.

"But you're the best Daddy…"

"I know that," he nodded.

"And the bestest Daddy would open presents," she tried to convince him.

He grinned, shaking his head. "Flattery will get you nowhere. We're waiting for everyone else to get up."

Penny played with one side of her hair and smiled sweetly at him. "They'll get up more faster if we wake them up."

He looked at her, seeing his own mirrored prankish streak in her face. "I've got an idea," he smirked.

--

Withholding the giggles that would get them caught, the father and daughter menace team creaked open a bedroom door that was not their own, sliding it ever so gently over the carpet beneath so that it didn't make a noise. Tony knew that opening it quickly would probably ensure the silence better, but sneaking quietly and slowly was all part of the fun. As they entered the bedroom they noticed straight away that Ziva was still asleep, lying on her stomach with her face half-hidden in the pillow. When they stood at the end of the bed, crouching down to mattress level, they could hear the sounds that she made in her sleep; too loud to be breathing, but too close to the time she naturally awoke to be full-on sailor snores. Getting closer, Tony realised that she had kicked off some of the blankets in her sleep, revealing the soles of her feet to them.

Tony stared at the revealed sole of the bottom of the bed. He looked at Penny, pressing finger to his lips when she smiled, and reached his wiggling fingers forward…

"Do not even think about it, Tony."

Tony and Penny looked at each other, frowning. Ziva had known they were there the whole time. He looked up for a moment, noticing that her eyes were still closed and that her face was still away from them. Keeping his eyes on her, he reached out again.

"I will hurt you, Tony. Badly. And holiday season or not, you will suffer."

How the Hell did she know these things?

They looked at each other again, after all, there was no point being secretive now that they had been rumbled. Taking on foot each, they started to tickle Ziva's feet (Tony safely assured that she never slept with a gun beneath his pillow when Penny was around. Weapons are not Chrismassy, he'd told her). Ziva shot up in the blankets, struggling away from them with her curly hair wild in her face. It was only when she noticed Penny, the partner in crime, that the vengeance and urge for inflicting pain disappeared.

Instead, she narrowed her eyes. "Tony, you really are a child."

He grinned at her. "It's Christmas, Ziva."

"And when everyone's all waked up we can open presents," Penny added.

Ziva smiled at this; "then who is next on the list?"

--

Tony and Ziva stood out in the hall, willing themselves to wake up as Penny disappeared into each bedroom in turn. Abby and McGee came bleary-eyed out of the bedroom they were sharing, followed by a very pleased Penny. Jenny looked as though she had witness Bugs Bunny singing karaoke with Clint Eastwood, and appeared more stunned than exhausted. Goodness knows what Penny had done to wake her up. Ducky had gone home late the night before to spend the morning with his mother, so that only left one more bedroom…

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," Tony suggested, as they all stared at the closed door.

"It was your idea in the first place," Ziva reminded him.

"Exactly why it might not be a good idea."

"But he's gotta wake up!" Penny told them.

"She's got a point," Abby nodded. "We're all awake now except him."

"He's probably already awake," Jenny jumped in.

Penny frowned. "But if he's already woken up why didn't he come and wake us up?"

Before any of them could explain to her that Gibbs probably wasn't anywhere near as excited about Christmas as she was, she had scurried through the door and into the final spare bedroom. All of them watched after her with gaping jaws.

"Wow," Abby murmured. "She just walked right in there."

"You can't deny, she's got courage," McGee nodded awefully.

"She's probably the only one who could get away with this," Tony said.

"Yeah," Abby agreed. "Even I wouldn't try that."

Inside the bedroom, Penny had posed herself on the edge of the mattress, just about ready to jump on Gibbs when he quickly sat up, grabbing her. He threw her down onto the bed beside him with a dramatic roar and tickled her while she squealed with laughter. Outside of the bedroom door, his team stood motionless in amazement. Then, Penny came back out, a very-awake Gibbs behind her, and she took her fathers hand, dragging him downstairs.

"Present time!"

--

Jenny's living room quickly became piled up with gift wrap, with a second carpet of wrapping paper and boxes littered between piles of new toys, DVDs, books, baby gifts, lots of alcohol, and the several bottles of perfume that everyone had brought Jenny at a loss of what else to buy her. Penny had done each of them a gift which she claimed to have made herself, but really she had just posed in the pictures with each team member and watched as Tony wrapped them up in the frames she had chosen but Tony had paid for. After opening their gifts, they each settled into their own activities. Gibbs and Jenny sat almost silently on the couch, a tiny gap between them as they watched Abby and McGee playing one of Penny's simple board games with her. Tony stood in the kitchen, watching from inside as his daughter interacted with the soon-to-be parents of baby Probie, grinning when Penny called them both out on purposefully losing to make her look better.

"They will be good parents."

He turned his head, noticing that Ziva was sitting behind him, leaning on the island in the centre of the kitchen with a mug of Jenny's 'famous' cocoa. "Yeah," he nodded, accepting the mug that she offered him. "They will."

"Why are you not in there with them?" she asked him, as he sat down on one of the stools beside her.

"I've got one last gift," he told her.

She noticed the long box he held in his hands. "From whom?"

"Me."

She frowned. "You brought yourself a gift?"

"No, it's from me, but it's not for me," he explained.

"Then who is it for?"

He shook his head, unable to believe that such a valued investigator wasn't understanding where this conversation was leading. "You."

Confused, she frowned even more. "You have already given me your gift."

"The photographs?" he shook his head. "They were from Penny."

"They were more than enough, Tony," she assured him.

"From her, yeah, but I wanted to get you something else," he explained. "Something that showed you how much I appreciate what you've done for us…both of us…but mainly me, because I paid for it."

"And this is why you are standing alone in the kitchen on Christmas morning?"

He rolled his eyes, a cover to check that everyone was still in the living room. "If I gave you this in front of the others they'd start thinking we were hiding a marriage from them," he explained.

"Oh, I see," she laughed lightly. They were no strangers to the 'Tony and Ziva belong together' club that Abby seemed to have founded.

"Close your eyes," he told her casually. She looked at him suspiciously. "Trust me?"

"Of course," she answered.

"Then close your eyes."She did, feeling him take hold of her wrist in one hand. She heard the box he was holding open, followed by a cold sensation on her skin before the sound of a clasp latching closed was heard. "Okay, you can open them again."

She did, looking down at the wrist he was still holding. She was now wearing a delicate bracelet, red stones buried within the silver of the chain. She gasped. "Tony…"

"If you don't like it, just say," he told her. "I can exchange it or whatever."

"It is beautiful, I love it," she assured him, unable to take her eyes off of it.

"Good," he sighed in relief, "because I spent hours choosing it."

"Is it real?" she asked him.

He looked at her as if she were insane. "You think I'd buy you fake jewellery to say thank you?"

It looked expensive. Very expensive. Too expensive. "I am hoping you did."

"Don't, you deserve it," he said quietly.

With a small smile of disbelief, she shook her head. "I would not go that far."

"I would," he replied instantly. "When was the last time someone treated you like this?"

Memories of times when her father considered her more of a daughter than a personal assassin filled her mind. "A long time ago," she admitted.

He closed his hand over her wrist, his grip gentle despite being so firm. "Ziva, the real reason I brought this for you is because I wanted you to know how much you mean to me," he told her. He looked down at their hands because the burning sensation on his skin from being under her gaze would be too much to take if he actually saw her eyes on him. "The past six months have been really hard, and you've been there even when I pushed you away. I know I haven't been perfect, for Penny or for you, when I should have been but I know where I am in my head now, and I'm going to try more from now on," he told her softly.

She took her free hand from around her mug and placed it over his. "Nobody expects you to be perfect, Tony."

"I want to be," he nodded, finally raising his eyes. "For you."

Before Ziva could answer, the others all burst into the kitchen, as if on cue. It seemed that whenever something drastic escaped their lips somebody was nearby to jump in and stop the other person from reacting. "Hey," Abby grinned. "What are you two doing out here?"

Tony moved his hand further down her wrist, hiding the bracelet from their view. Ziva noticed this, and quickly came up with an explanation that didn't involve something Abby could warp into thinking they were confessing their love for each other. "Tony was just explaining to me how he has more of a Christmas spirit this year," she said.

"Uh…yeah," he nodded quickly. "I was."

"Really?" McGee smirked. Yes, he smirked. He didn't believe them at all.

"Do tell," Abby said, also smirking. Clearly she didn't believe them either.

"Uh…" Tony trailed off, stumped.

Luckily, Ziva had the save. "He told me how he sees things differently now; that things are not perfect around here, but that it does not matter." Tony looked at her curiously, and as if by clockwork Penny came over to crawl up into Tony's lap. He put one arm around her to hold her in place, but kept the other hand on Ziva's wrist. She continued, looking at the others rather than at him. "Things are not perfect and they never have been. We make mistakes, sometimes we have broken hearts, sometimes we fight, even amongst ourselves, and there are days when we return home and wish that we did not have to go on tomorrow. But these days are easier for us all now that we have Penny, as we can look at her and remember how amazing something as simple as life can be." She raised her eyes to Tony. "And that sometimes, being imperfect can be the most perfect thing."

They shared a gentle smile, which didn't go unnoticed by the others but none of them understood it. They hadn't heard the conversation before hand, where Tony had told her how he wanted to be perfect. Of course, that was impossible. He knew that perfect wasn't something he could be, or anyone, for that matter. What he could be, however, was imperfect.

And that seemed to suit everyone just fine.

--

A little after one in the morning, Ziva awoke to the shuffling of footsteps downstairs. The natural investigator in her told her to go downstairs and check it out, but the newer side of her, the softer side that told her that no one was going to break into a house belonging to the Director of NCIS on Christmas night while it was filled with several federal agents, so she left her gun upstairs. She descended the stairs, trying to make a little noise as possible; something she was very good at thanks to her Mossad training. She expected to find Jenny making coffee, or Gibbs drinking coffee; the two of them a pair of insomniacs, although that was probably due to the amount of coffee they drank no matter what the time or weather. They were certainly the only people she knew who would drink a strong coffee at near midnight on a stifling hot summer night. She'd almost expect to have found Abby, shuffling around because the baby was keeping her up or that she couldn't get comfortable because she was used to sleeping on her stomach and now there was a tiny person preventing that. It could have even been McGee, on yet another run to satisfy his pregnant girlfriends midnight cravings by raiding Jenny's cupboards for the most ridiculous foods.

She really didn't expect to find Tony to be the culprit.

He was sat on the couch, all the lights in the room off. She only knew it was him for certain because of the way his shoulders hunched; the way they used to, months ago. They way they did when things got too much. She didn't know how long he had been sitting there, but she knew that he wasn't there when she went to bed three hours ago. He'd gone up to bed with Penny to watch one of her new Disney movies (something about a princess and a talking chipmunk) in the spare bedroom. The door had been left open and as she'd walked past into her own bedroom she'd looked in and found them both asleep on the bed, sprawled out at all angles while the credits of the movie played along to a bouncy pop song - one that, from the sound of it, Penny would have fallen in love with and demand to have played a thousand times a day.

With his shoulders hunched over, sitting in the darkness, it hardly seemed like five months had passed since Penny had come into his life. It was hard to visualise the progress he'd made, both as a father and as a person. The back of his head was all that was on show to her, the dark hair spiked up roughly in various directions from where he had clearly been running his hands through it in frustration. She went up to the back of the couch, standing behind him. He either still hadn't heard her, or he was ignoring her completely. She supposed the first option, considering that she could now see the reason he was hunched over.

In his hands was a disc in a clear plastic cover. To someone who didn't know anything about him, it could have been a CD, a blank case, or just a film he was waiting to start playing. To Ziva, however, it was what was holding Tony back. She couldn't deny that he was everything Penny needed, but there were some things that still held him back. She knew, because of the look in his eyes. Sometimes he'd watch her, seeing her do something for the first time, and he'd wonder what it would have been like to watch her do other things for the first time. One day he'd been stunned to silence when she first managed to swing a jump rope over the top of her head and manage to jump in time before it reached her feet. She managed this for three jumps before almost tripping, but Tony suddenly realised that she was at the skipping stage; he hadn't been there to see her take her first steps, or run for the first time, or jump for the first time, but he'd seen her skip.

He was there for many firsts, but he hadn't been there for the first firsts. That was what held him back. No matter how much he was there for now, how much he was always going to be around, there was always one thing that separated the father and daughter: the past they'd been apart for.

Still standing behind him, Ziva could recognise the tell-tale signs of him lapsing back into his regrets. For a start, his hands were still as they held the disc. Usually, even when he stood still, his hands would twist and turn, his fingers would tap against the nearest surface, or he'd look like he was giving himself a thumb war. It was his natural energy. She'd never once known him to be calm, other than moments like this, because when he was nervous or agitated his movements became more frantic and uncontrolled. His hands were still now, void of their energy because he was so drained, but at the same time, she couldn't help but wonder if he had ever felt more alive. He was sighing every so often as well. It was as if he were sighing more than he was breathing, and she knew that this was sign of the exhaustion he was no doubt feeling. He was showing it, of course. But his sighs were not helpless, or restless….just tired.

"Tony," she whispered, reaching out a hand to his shoulder.

His head snapped up, an awful crack sounding from his neck. He winced at the sensation aching through his muscles, and then smiled weakly at her in the darkness. "Hey."

"I thought you and Penny were sleeping," she said, as she came and sat down on the couch beside him.

"She is. I'm not…clearly."

"Is everything okay?" she asked him.

His hands jerked a little, drawing her attention once more to the disc he was holding. "Alicia left me this so I could see what I missed of Penny's life," he said simply.

"I remember," she nodded.

"She wanted me to see it and…" he stopped, sighing again. It was heavier this time.

"You have not watched it," she realised.

He shook his head. "I couldn't," he whispered, as painfully as if he were admitting defeat.

"You are not being forced to watch it," she assured him.

"I didn't want to see all the things I didn't have a chance to be around her for," he told her. "But today…seeing her open those presents…she was happy with Alicia, happy before me. I know she's happy now but…I want to see what she was like when she used to be happy. I want to watch it, but…."

"You are unsure," she finished for him, when he was unable to form a complete sentence without going off on a tangent worth of Ducky.

"That's one word for it," he half-laughed, irony removing all laughter from his voice.

She placed her hands over his, and this action made him realise that even though she was wearing her nightdress with a robe over the top she was still wearing the silver bracelet he'd given her that morning. "If you would rather not watch it alone, I will stay," she told him.

He shook his head. "I can't ask you to do that."

"You do not have to."

He stared at her, seeing the strength in her eyes even in the darkness of the living room - a strength she was offering him. He wasn't used to this, even after all he'd been through with his partner. He wasn't used to accepting her as the strongest one in their partnership. They were equals, perfect matches. They were a perfect team because they made up for each other's strengths and weaknesses. That's what they were doing now, really, he realised. She was the strength when he was weak, just like he'd been for her. "Thank you."

Silently, she took the disc from his hands, which immediately started jittering with anxiety once its focus had been taken away. She set the DVD player up before returning to the couch beside him, watching as silently as he did when video clips began to play.

Penny appeared on the screen, a little girl with a furiously curly mop of dark hair. She was wearing a pink sleep suit, and holding on to someone's hands. Then, the hands either side of her let go, and she began to take slow, shaking steps. "First steps," Tony whispered towards the television. The screen showed her taking four steps on her own before she fell back onto her behind with a look of innocent shock.

"Look at you, messy girl!" a voice said through the video clip. Alicia's voice. Penny was sitting in a high-chair, making a huge mess with her breakfast. "Is that yummy?" "Uh-huh" "Can I try some?" "No, Penny's." "All yours? None for Mummy?" "Nope. All Penny's."

The next was Penny at around two years old. She was wearing a white summer dress, her hair having fallen from tight curls into the loose wave that he recognised more now. She ran up to the camera, looking half-anxious, half-excited. "Mummy, snake in garden!" "Snake?" "In flowers!" The camera moved, following Penny to a patch of flowers. "There, mummy! Snake!" Only it wasn't a snake, as Alicia's laugh soon proved to them. It was a caterpillar. Penny, on the other hand, though this wasn't as funny. "No laugh! Snake eat pretty flowers!"

Again, Penny grew in the space of a few seconds, her hair longer now, just past her shoulders. She was wearing a glittery dress, not unlike she had done at the Christmas party last week. "And why are we all dressed up today?" "Birthday!" "How old are you today, Penny?" "Three!" "What happens when we're three?" "We're big girls!" "What about when you're a really big girl? What do you want to do when you grow up?" "I'm gonna dance lots and everyone will watch me." To prove her point, Penny started shaking around and dancing.

There were more clips, all of which brought a smile to Tony's lips, even if it was more of a sad one than pleased of what he was seeing. He watched as a young Penny walked around in Alicia's high heels, unaware that she was being filmed. He saw his young daughter playing with her dolls, treating them like real babies as she tucked them into her bed and kissed them goodnight. He saw her dancing, always dancing. She liked dancing, he realised. He should encourage this, right? He should let her do something that she loved. She'd make friends with something like that, something like dance lessons that would get her meeting and socialising with other kids her age.

Penny in a navy-blue t-shirt and jeans was sitting on a garden wall, curling her hair around her fingers. The camera came up close to her and she stared into the lens. "Ok, Penny, are you ready?" "Yeah." "Ok, do you want to do your message for Daddy now?" "Yeah." Tony's neck stiffened. "Hi Daddy. I miss you lots. I want you to come live home with me and Mummy. I'm a good girl, you'll like me lots and lots and lots. Mummy says you're on holiday but you might come home and see us soon. I hope you do. Come home from holiday, Daddy!"

Tony hung his head for a moment. Penny had believed him to be on holiday. From time to time, she asked him how his holiday was, and liked to check when she had nightmares about her mother that he wasn't going to go on holiday and leave her alone. He promised her that if he ever went on holiday again he'd take her with him. Since then, she'd been asking to go to Disneyland. But all the time she thought he was on holiday, he'd been out partying, drinking way too much, taking home random girls for relationships that would last less than twelve hours. He wasn't sure what kind of holiday she thought he'd been on, but he was pretty sure it wasn't an Ibiza weekend.

"Hi, Tony."

He lifted his head again, and was greeted with the sight of Alicia's face on the screen. Since her death, the only time he'd seen her face was in the picture on Penny's nightstand. Now, she was right in front of him, sitting up in a hospital bed. She was wearing one of the headscarves to hide her baldness. She was dying when this part was filmed. Without realising it, he began to squeeze Ziva's hand tighter.

"It's me. Guess you wouldn't recognise me without the hair but…you saw me earlier today, so I guess you will." Earlier today? This had been filmed when he was out meeting Penny for the first time. "I'll be gone when you finally get give this disc. Knowing how stubborn you are, Penny's probably in college by the time you're watching this. If that's the case, I hope she's giving you hell with her boyfriends." On the screen, Alicia laughed, but the laugh turned into a cough.

Tony rubbed a hand over his eyes for a moment, unable to see her in pain. "Do you want to stop?" Ziva asked him. He shook his head, returning his gaze to the screen.

"You came to see me for the first time since…since we parted ways. I asked one of the nurses to set this up for me and she promised to put all the footage together on a DVD for you. I hope it came out okay. Seeing you today was amazing. I can't believe I went so long without seeing you. It helped having Penny, because I got to see you through her. She really looks like you, doesn't she?"

"Yeah," he whispered to the television.

"…but it would have been better to have you both there. Who knows, maybe none of this would have happened if we'd done this together, but that's my fault. I want you to know that I'm sorry I didn't give you a chance to be Penny's father until this happened. Now, I realise that you'd have been a good father, but back when I got pregnant I was terrified…your idea of responsibility was remembering more than four items on the grocery list. Taking care of a baby was overwhelming. Anyway, seeing as I'm the reason you didn't get to see all of this in person, I thought I'd better give you all the record I have of her growing up. She was a beautiful baby, wasn't she?"

"Yeah," he whispered again.

"So beautiful. So much like you. Always. A nightmare to get to sleep at night. She used to wake up, every ninety minutes, without fail, until she was nine months old. Her second birthday was the first night she snored…she definitely gets that from you."

Tony and Ziva both allowed a tiny laugh to escape at this. Snoring seemed to be something they all had in common.

"I can't thank you enough for taking her in. I know that if you're watching this, then you have. Thank you, so much, for making sure that my…our little girl gets a good chance in life even through she doesn't have a mother. Who knows, you might even be able to give her another mother one day? I wouldn't mind her calling another woman 'mum', but as long as she doesn't forget me. I understand that she needs a good role model in her life, but I don't want to be just a name from the past, Tony, that's all I ask. Please don't let her forget me. I love her so much. She's my baby girl and I'll always love her…I know that you'll love her as well, and that you'll protect her, so that's why I trust you. I trust you enough to know that if you find a woman who can love her as much as you can, then you should let Penny call her what she wants to. If it makes her happy. I want her to be happy. I love her, Tony, and I know that you'll love her just as much. Goodbye, Tony."

And then that was it. It was over. Her face disappeared, and Tony almost cried out in protest when the 'stop' symbol appeared in the corner of the screen. He reached for the remote, untouched at his side, and rewound the DVD a little bit. He went up close to the television, pausing it on her face when she was smiling at the screen. Smiling. How he wanted to remember her. Smiling. Happy.

"There are a million things I wish I'd told you before you died," he whispered at the screen, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry."

"Tony…"

He turned, and Ziva was standing behind him. He stepped forwards, closing the gap before she could react to his movements and holding her tightly. She tensed for a moment, unsure of what to do. He'd hugged her before, but never this fiercely. His arms were so tight, as if they were trying to melt them into one person…or as if he were afraid she'd leave if he let go.

"I should have told her," he vented.

"You were not aware," she told him softly, putting on arm on his back and placing her other hand on the back of his head, her fingers delving into his hair. It had the same calming effect on Tony that it had on Penny.

"It shouldn't have come to this."

Ziva was silent for a moment. Her fingers relaxed against his head, combing through the hair at the base of his skull. He sighed, and buried his head further into her hair, blocking out the world as she whispered. "I know."

"You're always gonna be here, right?"

She was shocked at the sudden change of direction. "Tony…"

"I can't lose another best friend, Ziva. I've already lost one of the women I loved, I can't…" he broke off, taking a shuddering breath. "Promise me you'll always be here."

She couldn't promise that. For a number of reasons she couldn't promise him that. Their job was too dangerous for that. They could get shot in the line of duty, killed in an instant, erased from life in a moment. One moment could end everything. What about Mossad? She was only at NCIS as a Liaison Officer. Mossad or NCIS could terminate her contract any day and she'd be sent back home. Once she was back in Israel, she knew she'd never be able to return. It was something she tried not to think about but it was a possibility she couldn't completely ignore. Tony had once called it a weekend fun-pass, right? As much as she could pretend otherwise, eventually, she was going to have to leave, either by sense of duty or her fathers orders. However, despite the overwhelming odds against them, she still nodded. "I am not going anywhere."

They remained there in the living room for some time, unsure of what else to do. They both knew he couldn't go upstairs to Penny in this state, so they didn't move; keeping the distance between themselves and the people upstairs. Tony focused hard on breathing in and out, however many times he needed until the image of Alicia's face and the startling reality of losing everyone and anyone he cared about were gone. Ziva, on the other hand, couldn't stop replaying his words in her head.

I've already lost one of the women I loved. I can't…

Couldn't what?

Lose another?