Ziva felt her shoulders relax as the car turned into a familiar street.
She was nearly home. Nearly back with her family. The two most precious people in her universe.
"Here, Madame?" the ride share driver asked as the car slowed down opposite the apartment building.
"Yes," Ziva said, as her eyes flirted around the car. They rested on the photo hanging off the mirror, a little boy with the same dark complexion as the driver. "Thank you."
She wondered if the boy was in Paris with his father, or back in a faraway land knowing his father through grainy phone calls and cheques for more than he could ever earn in his homeland.
The car stopped, and the phone that was in Ziva's pocket with a receipt from the ride share app. She and the driver wished each other good night, and she stepped out into the cool night.
Paris in November was cold and wet.
The car sped up along the street, did an illegal U-turn, and whizzed past, loud music disturbing the quiet of the residential street.
Ziva pulled her coat tighter, and tried to ignore the pain in her feet.
She should have broken the high heels in, with as much care as she used to break in combat boots.
She looked across the street, her eyes moving toward a familiar third floor apartment. The light in the living room was on.
She had told Tony not to wait up, but of course he had.
The window of Tali's closet sized bedroom was dark.
Ziva could easily imagine what it was like in the apartment. Tony dozing on the couch with the menu of one of the streaming services they subscribed to on the tv.
Tali in deep sleep in her bedroom. Her army of soft toys surrounding her. Ziva hoped her daughter was having peaceful dreams.
Ziva crossed the road and walked through the door of the apartment building.
She thought of another taxi, on a cold December morning. The taxi that got caught in worse than usual traffic because of the transport strike. The neighbourhood was unfamiliar then, just an address texted after Ziva asked Tony not to pick her up at the airport, because she needed to reunite with them in private.
She remembered looking up at the window to the third floor, and seeing Tony looking out of it. She had not seen him for so long. Tali was next to him, with a huge smile on her face. The two of them waved at her, beckoning her, calling her home.
She remembered climbing the stairs unsure of what awaited her. Tony and Tali ran out into the hall, and wrapped her in a tight hug.
Wherever she was, she would be home as long as she had them.
Now, she climbed the now familiar stairs, noticing the debris of various neighbours. A bicycle in the lobby, even though there was a bike rack in the back courtyard. A pair of shoes.
Her high heels clack-clacked in the hallway as Ziva reached the third floor.
She opened the tiny impractical purse, brought solely for this evening, and fished out her keys. She stopped outside the door, and opened the note that Tali had put in Ziva's purse while she was getting ready.
I love you, Ima! More than the moon and the stars. Love from Tali.
Ziva smiled at the note, and ran her finger along the fat hearts Tali had drawn. Tears pricked her eyes. Her emotions were so close to the surface these days.
All of those worries Ziva had about Tali rejecting her because of her absence, had long ago been quashed.
Tali's love was pure and sweet. Tali's love was given freely.
She held her keys in her hand, and looked at the door.
She was home. Her safe place.
The door opened before Ziva had a chance to put her key in the lock.
Tony stood in front of her, wearing the ratty OSU hoodie that Ziva sometimes borrowed on cold mornings. His sweatpants had a faded stain on the knee, something that had been acquired during lockdown.
"Hi," he said, with a soft smile.
He stepped back and let her in.
"Hi," she said, as she crossed the threshold.
She reached out for Tony, her hand on his forearm and tugged off her heels.
Even though her tights Ziva could see a blister forming. She would be nursing that for days.
"How was it?" he asked, as Ziva let go of him, and shrugged off her coat.
She hung the simple black trench next to Tali's new winter coat, another pink puffer coat, that made Tali look ridiculous, but sparked so much joy in Tali.
She felt Tony's eyes on her enjoying the dress she was wearing.
"It was," Ziva started, the words getting caught in her throat. "I needed to do this. Thank you for getting the ticket."
As soon as the Paris opera had reopened, Tony had jumped online and gotten Ziva the ticket. He had stayed up until midnight waiting for the box office to open.
Then as they walked back to their apartment after dropping Tali off at school, he sent the email to Ziva.
Thought you'd want to keep your tradition, he said, with his hands in his pockets, and a sheepish smile.
Seeing the email had made her stop in the street.
How could Tony know her better than she knew herself?
"Was it weird with all the distancing?" he asked.
Ziva shrugged.
She had spent most of the performance with her eyes closed. If she closed them for just long enough she could hear her sister's songbird voice.
"I think it would have been more weird if people were not distancing," she said, as she ran her hands down her dress again.
What a strange year it had been.
"That's a nice dress," he murmured. "Like really nice."
She looked down the royal blue dress, the one that Tali said made Ziva look like a princess. Ziva had not planned to buy the dress, but when they took Tali to get some new winter clothes, Ziva saw it in a window and fell in love.
She had never been the type of woman to lust over dresses. Coats and combat boots, yes, but not dresses.
For the seven operas she had attended in DC, and the one she attended in Tel Aviv, the one where she was carrying a passenger in her belly, she had always worn black.
Black as a colour of mourning, and she was grieving.
Grieving for the songbird whose voice was muted.
Grieving for the adult she was who had to navigate the world without her little sister.
Blue had been her sister's favourite colour. Blue was the colour of the sea and the sky.
Blue was a colour of hidden depths, Tali had said as a thirteen year old quasi philosopher in their bedroom in the sky. It can be a sad colour and a happy colour, maybe both at the same time.
The blue dress felt like it would sign from the universe, if Ziva believed in those things.
"Thank you," she said, a slight blush on her face. She reached up for the earrings in her ears, a birthday present from Tony. "How did bedtime go?"
Ziva had been home for eleven months and had never missed a bedtime, until tonight. That left a guilty taste in her mouth.
"It was okay," Tony said, "I let her stay up a little longer, so I'm the best Daddy in the world."
Ziva scoffed.
They walked across the living area and toward the kitchen. They conducted many late night conversations in the kitchen, as it was on the opposite side of the apartment from Tali's bedroom.
Tony held up two mugs, and pointed to the kettle.
Ziva nodded.
Her new life involved a lot of late night tea drinking.
Her new life was one built on the foundation of peace.
"She said she wants to go with you to the opera, one day," Tony said. "She wants to go next year, but I said she might be a little young."
Next year everything would be different.
They would be back in D.C, most likely living in a car centric suburb. But both Tony and Ziva were willing to sacrifice the walkability of Paris, so that Tali could grow up with her last remaining grandparent, and her almost cousins.
They would hopefully be married then. Ziva's ring finger was still bare, but she had seen Tony's search history on his phone, when he handed it to her so she could make sense of a website the google translate had not translated properly. She knew a proposal was coming, and she knew he would make it special.
Maybe, just maybe there would be a swell under Ziva's dress. A second child. A fourth leg on their table. A stabilizing force for all of them.
"Do you think she likes opera?" Ziva asked.
Ziva thought of another apartment. This one high in the sky, looking over a Mediterranean city, of the music her mother used to play. Usually it was pop music from the radio, or some folk music from Rivka's hippie days, played on the ancient record player. Occasionally, Rivka would put on some classical music, either a ballet or an opera.
Tali David would stop still when the opera played. She would sit herself down in front of the record player and close her eyes. In those moments nothing else mattered.
It had been love at first note.
Tony shook his head.
Their daughters' musical taste was much more pedestrian.
"No," he said, "She thinks Baby Shark is the definition of musical genius."
Ziva felt a smirk cross her face.
Tony reached into the cupboard above the kettle, and played the familiar game of Tetris to find the loose leaf tea.
Ziva could not wait to have an American sized kitchen. To be able to stand behind Tali and help her roll out dough, without hitting her back on the back cabinets.
"Honestly," he said, as he found the tea, and prepared it. The chamomile tea from the fancy tea shop a few blocks away from Tali's school, had been Tali's present to Ziva for her recent birthday. "I don't think we have a musical prodigy on our hands, but I do think she wants to know more about the person she was named after."
Ziva thought of the cult of brilliance in the apartment in the sky. Her father pushed her harder, but her mother was indoctrinated too. Rivka David wanted her daughters to be the best. To be brilliant. Rivka had never had a chance to be brilliant so she had poured her ambition into her daughters.
I shall be the mother of a ballet dancer and an opera singer, Rivka had once said as they navigated another traffic jam, And, this shall be worth it.
"I worried about that when I named her," Ziva said. "That she would try to live for two people."
The kettle boiled over. Tony picked it up, and poured it over the tea infusers.
"She's six," he said, as the steam rose from the mugs. "I don't think she's thinking like that. She just wants to know more about her parents. Remember she was asking all those questions about my Mom the other day."
They had started talking to Tali more and more about the move they were planning. Tali had asked if Tony had grown up in DC because that's where Senior was, Tony had shook his head, and given Tali a brief summary of all the places he had lived.
Tali had been fascinated, especially when she found out her paternal grandmother had been from England.
She had been full of questions as they ate dinner, and Tony had answered them with just the hint of pain.
"You are probably right," Ziva said, "But, when she is older this will be more complex."
Tony filed up a water glass at the sink, and poured a little bit of cold water in the mugs.
"We'll deal with it," he said softly. "Together, like was always do."
It was a common refrain. A promise that whatever happened, they would face it together.
It was two of them versus the world.
Ziva picked up her mug. It was warm in her hands. The warmth travelled through her. She was home. She was safe.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"It's just tea," he said. "You probably make it better than I do."
"No," Ziva said. "I mean yes, thank you for the tea, but also thank you for everything. Thank you for getting the ticket, and for telling Tali about my sister. You always let me make room for her, and especially this week."
The two David daughters had been born four years and ten days apart, and for sixteen years they celebrated together.
There had been eighteen birthdays celebrated apart. Not all of them celebrated.
For so long Ziva's birthday had been entwined with grief. Her therapist had introduced Ziva to a diagram of grief. A ball in a box. When the bereavement first happened the ball was big and touched all sides of the box. Then as time passed and the healing came, the ball got smaller. Things would never go back to what life was like before, but life was bearable, sometimes even good. Then something happened and the ball hit one of the walls, and things hurt for a while.
For Ziva, birthdays always hurt a little, and she needed to do something with that hurt.
For her mother in August she made her favourite food, and read her favourite poem in lyrical Arabic.
For her sister in November, there was a visit to the opera.
And, when Ziva was apart from her daughter, Tali's summer birthday brought grief of its own. Ziva had spent three birthday's holding the pendant of her necklace and singing a lullaby, hoping that Tali knew that Ziva loved her, even if she could not be with them right now.
"I want Tali to know all about the people who shaped us," he whispered. "She'll know all the stories."
Tali would know her maternal grandmother's babka recipe.
Tali would know her paternal grandmother's favourite movies.
And, most importantly she would know all about her cheeky namesake who dreamed of singing in opera houses around the world.
"She will," Ziva said.
Tony took a sip of tea, and placed the cup on the counter. He reached up to the high cupboard, moved a bag of rice, and pulled out a packet of cookies they had hidden from Tali.
He opened the crinkly packet, and took two cookies.
"When was the last time you went to the opera?" he asked as he handed her one of the cookies. "I know you didn't go that last year you were in D.C."
Ziva thought of the CD Tony had put on for her in the squadroom. It had been the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her.
If only she had been ready to fully accept his love.
It could have saved so much heartache.
"The last time was in Tel Aviv," Ziva said, "The first year I went back, I went with Shmeil."
She thought of the modernist Tel Aviv opera house, and how Shmeil kept bumping into people he knew. She thought of the black dress that was her normal size but felt too tight, even though Ziva's had barely eaten since she sent Tony home.
Both she and Shmeil had cells dividing and replicating in their bodies, and both were in denial about it. Shmeil's dividing cells would spell his end, but Ziva's meant a whole new life. The start of everything.
"Shmeil the man of steel would have been quite the opera companion," Tony said, as he ate his cookie. Crumbs fell onto his hoodie.
Ziva thought of Shmeil's soft voice, as they stood in the modernist foyer.
Ziva, I worry for you, he had said, All this time alone is not good.
"He was," she said with a smile.
For Shmeil's birthday she opened a battered copy of one of his books, just so she could close her eyes and hear his voice.
"It was strange to go to the opera in Tel Aviv," Ziva said. "I had only gone to the opera for my sister when I lived in America. My life had been too nomadic before then."
That life had been by her own design. If you kept moving then your pain could not catch up with you.
Her only focus in those early years had been revenge.
"Next year," he said, "You can go back to the Kennedy center. One year you might even take Tali."
Ziva tried to imagine introducing an older Tali to her namesakes art.
This is what your Aunt lived for.
"Maybe," she said. "If she really wants to go. I would never force it on her."
Her daughter would be whoever she was meant to be.
"I know," he said. "Maybe, you and I can go together one day, opera is one of the big three."
Tony pulled two more cookies from the packet and handed one too Ziva. She bit into it, crumbs fell down her expensive dress.
"I probably won't get to take you to the Palais Garnier, so the Kennedy center will have to do," he said, as he chomped into his cookie. He ate greedily, just like Tali.
Ziva thought of the grainy photograph of the ornate decoration that had been pinned onto a shared cork board in a shared bedroom in the late nineties. Tali had pinned it next to other opera houses she was going to sing at.
It had been the start of Ziva's love affair in Paris. Brutalist Tel Aviv looked so plain compared to Paris.
"We will come back to Paris one day," Ziva declared. "I hear it is quite the honeymoon destination."
Tony chuckled.
"I can think of a lot of great honeymoon destinations," he said, as he stepped just a foot closer. "I will take you on the best honeymoon ever."
She touched his hand. The past, present, and future all swirled together.
"I still have that CD you made for me," she said. "You know the year before I went back to Israel."
Calling it going back to Israel, was an understatement. There was so much more in those words.
Tony raised his eyebrow.
"Where?" he asked.
"In Odette's cabin," Ziva said. "I think I must have put it there at some place. I liked to put things I wanted to keep safe there. I found it when I was hiding out for a while."
She thought of those long days hiding in Odette's cabin, trying to keep the panic at bay. She had been moving things around to try and make a place to hide a cell phone, and found the CD tucked between some of her journals.
As soon as she saw it she knew exactly what it was, even though it did not have a label, she could feel Tony's love.
She played just a few minutes on Odette's ancient stereo, but it was too much. She could not let her emotions come to the surface.
Conceal, don't feel.
Grief bubbled up inside her.
"That was one of the kindest things anyone had ever done for me," she said. "I definitely did not deserve it."
Tony wrapped his arm around her waist.
"You deserve kind things," he said.
She felt her eyes moisten, and a sob tried to move through her.
She pressed her face on his chest, and his arms moved up her back.
His chest muffled the sob.
"I've got you," he said softly. "I've always had your back."
The ball was pressing on the wall. Everything hurt.
"She has been dead longer than she was ever alive," she whispered.
Tali David would have been thirty-four to Ziva's thirty eight.
The David girls had been four years and ten days apart in age.
What would Tali have been like as an adult?
What would Ziva have been if she still had her little sister?
"When I realised that," Ziva said. "It really hurt."
Time marched on. An unstoppable march, bulldozing over cities and not caring what it left in its wake.
"I know it's not the same," he said, "But, when I realised I was older than my Mom got to be, it really messed me up for a while."
In just two more birthdays she would be older than her mother got to be.
Thirty eight, a birthday finally celebrated with her partner and daughter, had seemed like an impossible age, when she first swaggered into the pumpkin walled squadroom.
Ziva David simply never expected to live this long.
Ziva reached up for his face, and held it in her hands.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too," he said.
She looked deeply into his eyes.
"Do you wish Tali had a different name?" she asked.
He scrunched his face.
"No," he said. "I love her name, besides we're about six years too late to change it."
Ziva nodded.
She tried to imagine calling out a different name. One of the popular ones heard all over Israel. Maya. Noa. Yael. But, none of them fit.
Her daughter was always meant to be a Tali.
"I meant do you wish I had not named her after someone," Ziva said.
Tony frowned.
"I was so sure that I was not going to name her Tali," Ziva said. "Then I held her for the first time and nothing else fit. Her name was Tali."
The hospital room came back to her. It was finally quiet after all those hours of pain, and nurses trying to talk to Ziva. The baby was tiny in Ziva's arms. So perfect.
Tali, Ziva said as the tiny creature opened and closed her perfect little mouth. You are so loved.
Tali. Tali. Tali.
"It was meant to be," he assured her. "I do wish I had been there, so we could have named her together. To be there for both of my girls."
Ziva's throat dried.
If only she had let him in.
One phone call could have changed everything.
She swallowed thickly banishing those old feelings. They were focusing on the future.
"If we have another child," Ziva said. "You can decide their name."
She hoped she could give him another child.
She hoped to hold another baby in her arms.
She hoped to see Tali holding her little sibling.
Hope was a dangerous currency. One that she had not often allowed herself to deal in.
"We'll decide that together," he said. "Tali will probably want to have a say in it too."
Ziva nodded.
Tony painted such a vivid picture of what their life could look like.
Her eyes felt itchy, there had been so much crying over these last few days.
Happy tears, when Tony and Tali presented her with a birthday tea, and more presents than she could ever imagine. There had been so much love in their dining area, while it drizzled outside.
Sad tears, when she woke on the morning of what should have been her little sisters thirty-fourth birthday. Sad tears when Tony wrapped his arms around her on the still-dark morning.
Her emotions were so close to the surface these days, because she let them be.
She let herself feel.
"I love you," she said again.
She wanted to say it a million times.
"I love you too," he said, as he looked toward the bedroom. "Now, I don't know about you, but I'm up way past my bedtime. Shall we retire for the evening, M'Lady?"
Ziva stood up in her tiptoes and placed a kiss on his lips. He leaned into the kiss, and kissed back.
They were home. They were safe.
A/N: I don't own a thing.
Sorry about no chapter last week. The muse was M.I.A. Thanks for being so patient.
I wrote this whole chapter, and then googled the Palais Garnier during the editing process, and found out it's actually closed, because of the pandemic, until next year. So, I've taken a little creative licence with this one. Please forgive me dear readers.
Next week will feature Tony asking a very important question, with the help of his favourite six year old. Chapter 27 will be the second to last chapter of this beast.
Thank you for all the kind words, reviews and faves.