She watches from a distance as the scene before her unfolds. Never did she think that she'd be here, that she had some unfinished business, especially so many years after her death. And now, here she was, watching over her ward as she huddled around a bed with her family, dumbstruck. She never expected this day to come, but she knew it was inevitable.
"Daddy, please don't go." The little girl whispers, her one hand clenching her father's hand and the other holding onto her mother's from the other side of the bed. "Daddy, please, you can't leave us."
With everything that is happening, the world is pretty much coming to an end around them, she can't bear to watch this.
The man in the bed with ventilators hooked up to him, her old coworker lays in the bed, barely able to breathe. Just like before she died. "I'm… sorry..." Tony tries to get out, taking a very deep breath with his oxygen mask. "I tried…" He looks over to his wife, a cough shaking his body.
"Tony, haahavah sheli, ana al ta'azevu otanu." his wife whispers to him, wanting to kiss him on the forehead, but keeping her lips to herself, behind her mask. The doctors had only let them in here to say goodbye before they went into quarantine themselves.
"I… Promise…" Tears form in Tony's eyes, his need to breathe becoming more laboured.
"Daddy!" Tali cries, blinking away her tears. "Daddy!"
Kate looks away from watching her friend take his last struggling breath, she never could get used to this.
"I never thought it would be so soon." His smooth voice shows up beside her.
"Me neither, you only have had your family back for a few months before you caught this stupid thing." They were silent for a few moments, taking in the sobs of the other two in the room. "They're beautiful, you know." She sighs, resting her head on the man's shoulder. A nurse walks into the room, and the two girls huddle together in a chair together.
"Oh I know." He smirks for a second before frowning. "We just found out that we were having another baby." Her eyes widen, her lips coming apart in a gap. She didn't remember this happening. "We haven't told Tali yet, we found out the same night I started coughing."
She feels something in her chest, if her heart was still beating, she'd call it a heart attack. No wonder she didn't know, her vow to protect her assignment keeps her at her side during the night. With this flu that's going around, she doesn't want the little girl to get sick. She looks up to her partner, she was assigned to the wrong person.
Suddenly he lets out a laugh, bending over as the volume grew and Kate steps back to give him room. "What are you laughing about?" She asks, eyeing him.
"I had always thought you were the one I was meant to be with." He covers his mouth, trying not to laugh.
"And that's something to laugh about?!" She raises her voice, giving him the knowing death glare.
He grins, bouncing his hip off of hers. "Oh Agent Todd, how I've missed you. But no, Gibbs had told me how if Ari never shot you," a flash lit in her eyes, "Ziva would have never killed him, we would have gotten married, and she would have become part of the terrorist group…" He trails off as he looks fondly at his beloved, mourning over his body. "But I knew from the moment I met her, there was something that I never felt before. The something I've only heard about in fairytales, but I refused to believe it." He sighs, losing himself to thoughts of the past.
"We would have never worked out." Kate says softly, looking over her shoulder at him. "There was something there, a bond we had, it was…"
"... Siblingly." Tony finished, not glancing at the dead woman. "Yeah, it was something I never had with her. Something deep, natural. From the moment I laid my eyes on her, I knew." He rambles.
"And something magical came from it." She smiles, taking his hand from his side and guides him to the bed where he rests. "You, Tony DiNozzo, the heartthrob cop of DC, had fallen for an assassin, and became the protector of a beautiful child. That's what I call a fairytale."
"With a not-so-happy ending." He mumbles, placing his hand on his wife's shoulder, wishing he was there so his family wouldn't be upset. "Kate…" He punches his eyes shut tight, pushing the feeling down. "Is there any way I can go back?"
She doesn't meet his eyes, and he feels his heart sink into his stomach. He can't go like this, just can't! He always expected himself to go down while fighting a bad guy, well at least while he was working for Gibbs. And now as a private investigator, to be assassinated by someone he got too close to, but he wouldn't let that happen. But this, getting a cold that turned into pneumonia! Taken down by a cold.
"I guess I'm not going back, huh?" He lowers his head, dropping a kiss to his wife and child's head. "You'll watch over her, right?" He doesn't take his eyes off of them, he squeezes his hand on Ziva's shoulder and jumps back when his fingers vanish into her body.
Kate walks over to him, resting her right hand on his arm and her left on the back of her ward, Tali shifting under it. "I'm sorry Tony, I can't change your fate. Your lungs were far too damaged to make it through this." She pauses, figuring out a way to not hurt him any more than he already is. "If I could send you back, I'd do it in a heartbeat."
A small smile caresses his lips, as if a memory flashed before his eyes.
"These last few months have been the best moments of my entire life."
"And you didn't take them for granted." He shakes his head ever so slightly. "I promise, I'll watch over your little girl for the rest of her life, a very long life."
He glances over at her, fear in his eyes. "How much time do I have?"
"You still have a few minutes before you have to go." She reassures him. She turns to leave the room, glancing back when she hears her name being called.
"Kate? Thank you." He says softly.