Wow, this took me a really long time to write for some reason, I guess I was thinking about it too much, and I needed to step away from it for a little while, but I think I am back now, and I have the next few chapters planned and started so those should be coming soon.

Anyway, here is chapter 11, I hope you enjoy it!

Eleven

When Ziva's eyes opened the next morning, she was wrapped around Tony, their legs tangled together, her arm tossed over his torso, her head rested on his shoulder. She smiled brightly as memories of the night before flashed through her mind.

Tony's arms, which were firmly wrapped around her waist tightened protectively and she lifted her head to look up at him.

"Morning." He said softly.

Ziva smiled and kissed him gently. "Good morning." She laid her head back on his shoulder.

"You okay?" Tony asked unsurely.

Ziva nodded, tossing her arm back across his chest. "I am perfect." She told him confidently. "Are you alright?" She asked.

Tony nodded and kissed her forehead softly. "Yeah… yeah I'm pretty perfect too." He said.

Ziva smiled. "Good."

She raised her arms above her head and untangled her legs from Tony's so she could stretch. She pointed her toes and groaned before laughing lightly.

"What?" Tony asked curiously.

"My legs are sore." She told him.

Tony laughed. "Well, whose fault is that?" He asked playfully.

Ziva leaned down to kiss him deeply. "Yours." She told him, smiling brightly.

Tony wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him, laughing lightly. "Oops?"

Ziva smiled and laid back down beside him, close enough that she could still wrap herself around him. She closed her eyes as his hand ran up and down her back gently. She could feel Tony's eyes on her, and she looked up, surprised to see that he looked close to tears.

She pushed herself up to rest on her elbow above him and her free hand moved up to cup his cheek gently.

"What is it love?" She asked softly. "Are you alright?"

Tony nodded and took a deep breath, trying to blink the tears out of his eyes as he did so.

"Talk to me Tony." Ziva pleaded, growing increasingly concerned.

"I don't know what to say." Tony told her. "There are so many things I want to tell you... I don't know where to start." He admitted.

Ziva leaned forward to kiss him softly. "Start anywhere you want love; I will catch up eventually."

Tony nodded and Ziva's fingers ran over his scalp gently.

"I never thought that I would get to have you like this." He started. "I don't just mean the sex, not that it's not great, but I never thought I would be here, holding you. I never thought that you would let me in the way you have, and I'm so in love with you..." He trailed off. "I barely know what to do with myself most days… I just… I love you, so much it hurts." He told her softly.

Ziva's hand came up to wipe a tear off her own cheek as she listened to Tony. She had never had a man who was so honest with her. She had never had a man who loved her like he did, and she knew it, and she was incredibly grateful for it.

She leaned down to kiss him softly. "I never thought I would trust anyone enough to let them in the way I have with you. I know that you will not hurt me, not on purpose at least, and if you ever did, I know how badly you would feel. And I love you too. More than anything, Tony." She said as she rested her head back on his shoulder, pressing herself closer to him.

Tony pulled her as close as he could, kissing her forehead softly. They laid there together for a few moments before they decided that it was in their best interest to not be late for work.

XXXXX

Tony and Ziva stepped off the elevator and they had to bite their tongues to stop the unimpressed groan that was about to surface as they spotted the cardboard boxes on their desks.

Great. Cold cases.

Every few months, when fresh cases got slow, Vance would drag a few boxes of cold cases out for them to review and update, just in case they could get closer to solving one or two of them.

This happened to be one of those days.

McGee was already sitting at his desk, his forehead resting on top of the box on his desk, and Gibbs was nowhere to be found, probably getting coffee.

Tony and Ziva dropped their bags on the floor, startling McGee. He sat up, eyes wide and looked between the two of them.

"Morning." He said.

"We're gonna suffer today." Tony said as he plopped into his chair.

Ziva nodded in agreement. "This box is from almost ten years ago!" She said as she took the lid off.

Gibbs strode into the squad room and the three agents looked up at him, almost hoping he was about to tell them to grab their gear. No such luck. Gibbs sat down and pulled the lid off his own box.

"The faster you start the faster you finish." He told his team.

Tony, Ziva, and McGee all pulled out the first file as quickly as their boss did and started reading through them.

Twenty minutes later Ziva was ten pages into the file she had pulled out and she was wondering why the victim's friends had not been interviewed on the night of her murder.

She wrote down the address of the two friends who had been with her, surprised that they were still roommates after so long.

"I am going to go interview my victim's roommates, my cell phone will be on if you need me." She said as she stood from her desk.

Gibbs nodded. "Sounds good." He said without looking up.

Tony looked up at her. "Be safe." He told her as she pulled her jacket on.

Ziva nodded. "I will." She threw her bag over her shoulder and walked out of the squad room, running to catch the elevator that was just about to close.

She stuck her hand through the doors just in time and stepped into the elevator.

XXXXX

"Is there anything else you remember?" Ziva asked Courtney Thomson, one of the cold case victim's friends.

This was her second interview of the day, the first had gone over just about as well as this one seemed to be, the other friend could not remember anything.

Courtney shook her head. "No, nothing, we said goodbye, and I went home." She told Ziva surely.

Ziva nodded, scribbling the results of her interview in her notepad. "Alright, thank you for your time, Miss Thomson." She said as she stood from the table in the break room of the coffee shop where Courtney worked.

"Of course, anything I can do to help, not that I was really much help…" Courtney trailed off.

Ziva rested her hand on Courtney's shoulder. "You're trying, that is all you need to do." She told her firmly.

Courtney nodded. "Thank you."

Ziva smiled softly and walked out of the door and into the busy coffee shop. She briefly debated getting herself some tea before she decided against it, figuring she should get back to the office.

As she began walking down the block to her car she got a suspicious feeling. Like someone was watching her. Her stomach felt tingly, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose.

Her breath caught in her throat as a hand clamped over her mouth and an arm wrapped around her waist from behind, and she was being pulled into a small alcove behind the coffee shop.

She launched her elbow back toward her attacker's gut and he released her. She turned around, hands up to defend herself, and she stopped immediately as she recognized her attacker.

Her hands dropped to her sides.

"Abba?" She asked, purely confused. What was her father doing here?

Eli smiled a bit, holding his arms open to her. "My Ziva, what, no hug for your father?" He asked.

Ziva stepped back. "What are you doing here?" She asked quickly. "Why are you following me?"

Eli's arms dropped back to his sides. "I am here for work." He told her. "And I was not following you, I wanted to ask you to come to my hotel, so we could talk." He told her.

"And you thought that the best way to do that was to ambush me in an alley? What ever happened to a telephone? Or an e-mail?" She asked angrily.

"We both know my methods have never been orthodox neshama." He told her. "Nobody knows I am in the country; I could not just send you an e-mail."

Ziva rolled her eyes. "Why are you even here? What op is so interesting that it gets out of Israel?" She asked.

"You know I cannot tell you that." Eli said.

"Then I am leaving." Ziva said.

Eli reached out to stop her. "It has nothing to do with you, or NCIS. I am here overseeing an operation to apprehend an Israeli terrorist; we think she is laying down here for a while." He told her lowly.

"Laying low." Ziva couldn't help but correct him.

Eli nodded. "Alright, now, will you please consider meeting with me tomorrow? I just want to talk, in private." He said, eyeing his surroundings.

Ziva took a deep breath, debating whether or not it was worth it. She sighed.

"Where are you staying?" She asked.

"At the Adams House, room four hundred eighty-seven. If anyone asks, you are visiting Edward Delgado." He told her.

Ziva nodded. "Alright. What time?" She asked.

Eli looked down at his watch. "Seven." He told her.

Ziva nodded. "I will be there." She told him before she turned and walked out of the alley.

She turned the corner and pulled her car keys out of her jacket pocket and unlocked her car.

She sat down in the driver's seat and pushed the key into the ignition and twisted it, letting out a small sigh of relief when she put the car in drive, and the doors locked automatically.

She couldn't think straight. After almost a year and a half of silence from her father, now he was suddenly in the country wanting to talk to her? Why? Was he going to accuse her of being disloyal again? Was he planning on trying to recruit her back to Mossad, and therefore, Israel? And the biggest question of all, what should she tell Tony? And the team? Should she tell them at all?

She was snapped out of her thoughts when she heard a car horn blaring and she slammed on the breaks, stopping in the middle of the crosswalk at a red light.

She ran her hand over her face and shook her head out, trying desperately to clear her mind. She did not know what she should do.

She looked down at her watch, and she realized that she had already been gone for almost three hours. She was close to her apartment, and she didn't think that another half hour would be a big deal, so she turned the car down the nearest side street she could find and drove herself home. She needed to take a few minutes and think about what she was going to do before she did something stupid.

She walked into her apartment and walked down the hallway to the bedroom she and Tony shared and pulled her latest journal out of the drawer in her bedside table and she sat down on the bed, getting ready to figure her thoughts out on paper.

XXXXX

An hour later, Ziva was walking back into the squad room, feeling slightly better, and definitely calmer than she had been when she got into her car at the coffee shop.

She had decided that if no one but Mossad knew that her father was in town, it was best to keep it that way unless something happened. She did not want to lie to her team, and she did not want to lie to Tony, but she thought that the best choice would be the one that kept the most people safe, so she really had no choice.

Tony smiled brightly at her as she walked into the squad room and dropped her bag beside her desk.

"Get anywhere?" He asked hopefully.

Ziva shook her head. "Not really. You guys?" She asked.

They all shook their heads no.

"Nothing new at least." McGee told her.

Ziva sat down at her desk and stuffed the case file she had been looking at back into its place in the box before she dug out another. She was half hoping that this day would end quickly, because she wanted to go home and relax, but she was also hoping that it dragged out forever so she would have more time to wrap her head around the idea of her father being there.

The rest of the day was filled with phone calls and Google searches, and the occasional call down to Abby or Ducky for reports that had somehow gotten lost from the case file, because everyone knew they kept copies, and both kept immaculate records.

Finally, Gibbs himself gave up on doing anymore reviewing for the night and told them all to go home, which they were all thankful for.

Tony stood patiently beside Ziva's desk, waiting for his girlfriend to pack her things, which seemed to be taking longer than normal. He had noticed that she had seemed a bit different when she had come back in earlier, but he rounded it off to cold case review and trying to sift through everything from the last however many years were on a case file.

Ziva reached up to turn her desk lamp off and pulled on her jacket quickly before she grabbed her bag and tossed it over her shoulder once more. She held out her hand to Tony.

"Let's go." She said.

Tony smiled and took her hand, leading her to the elevator as they called their goodbyes to Gibbs and McGee over their shoulders.

They walked into the apartment twenty minutes later and they both dropped their bags and the front door and shrugged off their coats. Tony hung Ziva's coat for her while she pulled off her boots.

"You want something to eat?" Tony asked, looking at the clock on the wall. It was already 22:30.

Ziva shook her head. "Not really, I just want to go to bed, I am exhausted." She told him honestly.

Tony nodded and locked the apartment door. "Okay, come on then, to bed we shall go." He said, holding his hand out to her.

Ziva pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it to the side, along with her bra, pants, and underwear before she crawled into bed quickly, waiting for Tony.

Tony shut off the hall light and got undressed and shut off the ceiling light in the bedroom. He walked over to his side of the bed and pulled the cord on the small lamp, and the room was bathed in darkness.

He laid down beside Ziva and the quick wat that she moved into his arms didn't go unnoticed by him.

"Are you alright?" He asked softly.

Ziva nodded. "I will be fine." She told him.

Tony wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her close to him. "You wanna talk? Or write?" He asked.

Ziva shook her head no. "I just want to be here with you. Just hold me, please." She said softly.

She felt Tony nod, and she buried her head in his shoulder, taking comfort in his steady frame.

"It was one of the cases today, wasn't it?" He asked softly. "Hit a bit too close to home somehow?"

Ziva nodded against him. "Something like that, yes… I will be alright, I promise." She told him.

Tony kissed her forehead softly. "I know you will Zi, it's okay." He told her.

Ziva nodded silently, pressing herself closer against him and he ran his hand through her hair in an attempt to comfort her. It must have worked, because twenty minutes later, her breathing had evened out and she was snoring the tiniest bit.

Tony smiled to himself. "I knew she snored."