A/N: My apologies for the delay on this one! I couldn't quite get the pieces of this chapter to fit together for me at first, and real life keeps getting in the way. I'm a wedding photographer struggling through the end of the fall wedding season, which sadly doesn't leave much time for writing! Hopefully I'll be back on schedule soon.

Abby Sciuto likes to get to work early. She loves her job and always has and that's part of why she prefers to be one of the first employees in the office, but part of it is also that she has her morning rituals. Morning is the perfect time to blast music, take inventory and re-order what she's running out of, convince Major Mass Spec that today isn't the day to sass her, update her computer… the list is endless, and she enjoys every minute of it.

This morning, though, she isn't the first one in the office. She isn't even the first one in her lab, which she discovers with a squeak when she turns on the lights to find someone sitting, cross-legged, in her office chair. "Ziva!" she cries, her hand flying to her racing heart. "You scared me! What are you doing here so early? Actually, what are you doing here at all? In the dark? In my chair?"

"Slow down, Abby," Ziva says, holding up a hand and laughing. "I came here because I wanted to talk to you."

"At…" Abby pauses to glance at her clock. "0610?"

"Well, I was up early anyway."

Abby slings her bag down on the floor and perches on the desk next to her friend. "Up early, or didn't sleep at all?" she clarifies intuitively.

"You are too clever," Ziva admits with a sigh. "I did not have much success in sleeping last night, it is true."

"Something bothering you?"

"No," Ziva answers immediately, mostly out of reflex. Then she shrugs uncomfortably, reminding herself that she came here to talk, not to clam up and avoid saying anything. She needs someone to talk to, and Abby is one of the most trustworthy people she knows. "Yes," she corrects herself a second later.

"Want to tell me about it?" Abby prods gently.

"I suppose that I do." She doesn't immediately elaborate, though, and Abby, knowing how Ziva operates, decides to take the pressure off.

"Come on." Abby hops up to return to the other part of her lab and starts flicking on machines, getting everything ready for the day. By doing this while she talks to Ziva, the other woman won't have to deal with the additional demand of having someone's eyes on her.

Ziva watches her work for a time before speaking up. "I… I learned something yesterday afternoon, and… I am not sure how to deal with this new information."

"What did you learn?" Abby prompts, booting up her computer with more care and attention than usual.

"I learned that To—that someone has… feelings for me." Her words are halting; it still feels very unnatural to voluntarily reveal personal information about herself, even to one of her closest friends in the world.

Abby makes sure her face is still hidden as she grins. She knows who that someone probably is, and the "feelings" in question are probably only a surprise to Ziva herself. "Why don't you know what to do with that?" she asks instead of pointing this out. "It's usually pretty straightforward, right? If you have feelings, too, you go for it, and if you don't, you gently let the other person down."

"I do not think that my feelings matter very much here at all, Abby," Ziva answers, and to Abby's horror and surprise, there's a break in her friend's voice.

"Oh, Ziva…" she murmurs, turning around and giving Ziva a hug. Ziva returns it, her face pressed into Abby's shoulder, and Abby realizes that this really must be bothering the Israeli, who is not usually physically affectionate. "Of course your feelings matter." She breaks the hug after a moment and takes her friend's hand, leading her out of the lab. "Come on, there shouldn't be anyone up in the breakroom yet. Let's sit down and I'll make some tea."

Up in the breakroom, she parks Ziva at a table and buzzes about with her electric kettle and teabags. A few minutes later, she has two steaming mugs settled on the table and she's sitting across from her friend. "Now," she starts softly. "Why don't you think your feelings matter?"

"Because there are bigger things going on here than T—than that someone and I," Ziva shares uncomfortably, staring into her tea.

"Okay, first of all," Abby starts, grinning despite her worry, "you don't have to keep saying 'someone' when I know you're talking about Tony." Ziva's eyes flash to meet hers, and Abby reaches over to gently pat her friend's hand. "Everyone here has known for a long time that you guys aren't just friends. I mean, not everyone, I'm sure some people haven't noticed, but your friends have. And by your friends, I mostly mean me and McGee and Gibbs and Ducky and Palmer and—"

"I get it," Ziva says, cutting her off with a watery little chuckle. "Okay, so Tony. There are things that are bigger than Tony and I."

"Like what?" Abby asks. "If you're talking about Gibbs, you know he'll get used to the idea eventually. He's just… protective of his team balance, you know? And he's worried about the two of you. He's concerned for your wellbeing and he doesn't want to see you hurt—either of you."

"It is not Gibbs that is the problem—well, not only Gibbs, anyway."

"Then what else is it?"

Ziva looks a little pained. "I'm sorry, Abby, but I cannot tell you."

"What, is my security clearance not high enough?" Abby jokes. To her surprise, Ziva grimaces before schooling her expression. "That's it, isn't it?" Abby realizes. "This is case-related. And it's not a case I'm working."

Relieved that she doesn't have to explain or skirt the issue entirely, Ziva nods.

"Well, cases don't last forever," Abby says consolingly. "It'll be closed eventually, and then you guys can be happy together. I just know you will be, because anyone would see that you're a perfect couple! I mean it, you're totally built for each other. Like, mentally, not physically, though I know you guys probably like that bit, too, not that I'm prying into your sex like or anything—" Abby cuts herself off to breathe, making Ziva grin.

Her friend was absolutely the right person to come to, because though nothing has actually changed, Ziva is inexplicably starting to feel just a little bit better. "You would make an excellent cheerleader, Abby," she tells the scientist.

"I was an excellent cheerleader, but that's beside the point." She cocks her head to one side, considering Ziva. "You know what? You haven't told me how you feel. You've just said that it doesn't matter."

"I…" Ziva shrugs helplessly. "I care for him. I do not have the words for anything else."

Abby seems to understand this, because she doesn't push. "What words did he say?"

"He said he thinks he is in love with me." This, at least, is said in a completely steady, non-halting voice, because Ziva's been thinking about it nonstop since she heard it.

Abby beams and makes a noise that Ziva can only describe as a quiet squeal. "Ah! Of course he is! Who wouldn't be? You're wonderful."

Ziva's face heats up, and not for the first time, she thinks about how fortunate she is to have ended up here in this ragtag group that has become her family. "As are you, Abby," she says, feeling almost bashful. It's not something she often feels.

"How did he say it? Like, what were his exact words? And what did you say back? Where were you when you talked? Was it, like, totally romantic?"

"One question at a time, Abbs. And actually… he did not exactly say it to me. He was, um… he was saying it to McGee. I overheard the conversation over by the stairs in the bullpen yesterday." She's slightly embarrassed to admit that she was eavesdropping.

"Oh!" Abby squeaks, clapping her hands over her mouth. "It's a secret? Who does Tony even think he's kidding? Everyone's known for ages!"

From the look on Ziva's face, Abby amends her statement. "Well, almost everyone. I suppose it's news to you," she says sympathetically. Love is hard, no matter who you are.

Ziva nods, not sure what to say to that, but Abby doesn't need her to say anything. Lost in thought, they sit in companionable silence for a minute or two before Abby breaks it. "Drink your tea. I'll leave you here to think 'cause it seems like you need it, but you know where to find me if you want to talk again."

Ziva gives her a grateful smile. "Thank you, Abby."

"Any time," Abby replies sincerely. "Oh, and Ziva?"

"Yes?"

"I don't suppose any of us ever say it to you, but you know that Tony's not the only one who loves you around here, right?"

This time, it's Ziva who stands and initiates the hug, surprising Abby in the best way. "I know," Ziva murmurs, squeezing her friend's shoulders. It's awfully good to have a home again, she thinks.

Tony brings pizza to Jeanne's apartment a few days later. This is the second time they've gotten together since they had their serious talk, leading him to hope that he can get through this assignment after all. Though he's certain that Jenny implied seduction when she gave him the op, he's just as sure that forging a deep friendship with Jeanne will be just as effective, and it'll hopefully hurt her less in the end. He's really starting to care about her.

With that in mind, the aim is just to hang out tonight. He's convinced her to watch an Ohio State basketball game with him because that's what he does with most of his non-work buddies when they get together.

When he gets inside, she has beers and the tv waiting, and they settle onto her sofa to watch. Tony carefully nudges the conversation, first this way and then that, determined to get information that he can pass on to Jenny. The sooner this assignment is finished with, the better—for all involved.

An hour into the game, he gets a text from Ziva and, struck by sudden inspiration, he groans.

Jeanne catches on. "What's wrong?" she asks curiously.

"It's my dad," Tony lies. "He's so…" He trails off, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb and working to look frustrated.

"He's so what?" Jeanne, clearly intrigued, shifts her body so that she's facing him rather than the tv.

"He's just… obnoxious. He wasn't a great dad when I was growing up, you know? Calling him an absentee parent would be putting it nicely. He was never around, and after my mom died… he just stopped caring about raising me. I was shipped off to boarding school during the year and sleepaway camps during the summer so he didn't have to deal with me."

Jeanne nods, sympathetic. "That must have been tough. What's he doing that's frustrating you now, though?"

"He's trying to make up for lost time, I guess. Right now, he's trying hard to get me to go visit him in New York. I'm not sure why he thinks I'd want to, and it's not like I even have the time! We're right in the middle of the semester." Part of this story is, of course, invented for Jeanne's sake, but his frustrations with his father couldn't be more real.

"Maybe you can visit him after the semester ends," Jeanne suggests lightly. "It might be too late to change how your childhood went, but you're both still alive and healthy. It's not too late to change how the future of your relationship goes."

"Spoken like someone who has a perfectly healthy relationship with both of her parents," Tony replies with a dark laugh.

"You could, too, if you could put aside your bitterness," she replies, a little stung by his tone.

"Why's it on me to forgive him?" Tony questions in annoyance. "Isn't it sort of the parent's job to do the legwork?"

"He is doing his job here, Tony," Jeanne insists. "He's reaching out. That puts the ball in your court, doesn't it? There isn't a whole lot else he could do. If he tried harder with it—like showing up in Washington to visit you, for example—then he'd push too much and end up pushing you away."

"Oh, yeah?" He looks at her seriously, finally getting to the root of why he'd started this conversation in the first place. "Why does it sound like you're speaking from firsthand experience?"

"Probably because I am," Jeanne says with a sigh.

"What happened?" Here's his chance to get information from her—he just has to do it gently.

"Believe it or not, my dad was pretty similar to yours when I was growing up. I mean, he didn't exactly ship me off, but my parents were divorced and my dad was never around. He took a lot of business trips and he'd bring me souvenirs, but it was a poor substitute for having him around, that's for sure."

Tony nods encouragingly, filing the souvenirs thing away for a future question.

Jeanne continues after a pause. "When I was a teenager, I got sick of it. I told him to stop bringing me things, stop paying for things. I told him I couldn't be bought. He didn't like that very much, but after a while, he started changing. He visited more often and spent more effort than money on the time we had together."

"The difference here is that you were still a kid when he figured out what he was doing wrong," Tony points out. "My dad hasn't bothered with me my whole life, so why start now?"

"I thought that when I was a teenager, too, but eventually I could see that he did love me, just in his own way. I'm sure your dad is the same."

Tony smiles humorlessly, letting that drop. He's just noticed something in Jeanne's apartment that'll help with his line of gentle questioning. "Those Russian nesting dolls," he says, gesturing to the little wooden doll set on her bookshelf. "Are they one of the souvenirs your dad brought you?"

She smiles, nostalgic. "Yeah. Funny how they mean a lot more to me now than they did back then. He used to make a lot of trips to Russia and he brought those to me after one of them. Ma chérie, look! The little girls in Russia like dolls just like you do, he told me. Did you forget to tell me that you're Russian, too?" Tony has to laugh at her imitation of her father's French accent, and she joins in. "I thought that was such a funny question—I couldn't have been more than six or seven at the time, and for years after that, I'd talk to him in this silly accent and try to pretend that I was just coming back from a trip to Russia, too."

"I know you're all grown up now," Tony says, nudging her, "but does your dad still bring you souvenirs from Russia?"

"Not so much anymore," Jeanne answers, "but he sometimes does from other places. He brought me that from Afghanistan last year—" she points to the rug that her coffee table is resting on— "and that from Korea over Christmas." This time, she points to a framed piece of painted hanji paper on the wall. Tony takes careful mental notes, because this will help point them in the direction of some of La Grenouille's recent travels. Hopefully, it'll also help them decipher where he's been active in the last few years.

"Does he visit you very often?"

Jeanne shrugs. "A few times a year. He's a busy man. Sometimes I go visit him in Paris, too, but he hasn't been there for more than a few days at a time in a while, I think."

"Any visits coming up soon?"

"Not that he's mentioned to me. Why, are you wanting to meet him?" she teases.

"I don't know… I'm not much for meeting families, you know?" he jokes. "Makes things seem really serious."

"Even families of people you're just friends with?" Her expression turns mischievous. "Have you met Zena's family?"

"God, no," he says before he can stop himself, venom in his voice.

"Okay, I was just making fun of you, but what made you you react like that?" Jeanne wants to know.

He hesitates. "You know how I mentioned that she's had a hard life and lost a lot of people?"

Jeanne nods, recalling the conversation.

"Well, most of her family is gone. Her dad's still around, back in her home country, but he's… he's the reason that a lot of stuff has gone wrong for her. He's an asshole." He says it with complete confidence, despite never having met Eli David in person. The man's reputation and the damage Tony knows Eli's done to Ziva are enough to color Tony's opinion forever.

"You feel strongly about him," Jeanne observes mildly.

"Damn straight, I do," Tony mutters. "Zena deserves better than the way he's treated her. She always has." Ziva hasn't told him much, but he can read her like a book. Every time her father comes up in conversation, her face hardens back into the emotionless warrior's mask. Tony doesn't have to know more than that to feel fiercely protective of his partner where Eli David is concerned.

"Then it's a good thing she has you now," Jeanne responds encouragingly. "Everyone deserves someone fighting in their corner."

Tony gives her a rare kind of smile, fierce and a little dangerous. Jeanne isn't sure what to make of it. "Oh, Zena has a lot of people fighting in her corner. She's hard to get close to, but once you really know her… she's uncommonly loyal, and she inspires the same loyalty in others. I think that if nothing else, her friends and I have helped her see just how much she doesn't deserve what her father has done." At least he hopes that's true.

Jeanne smiles a little sadly at that. "I hope that someday, someone shows you the same thing, Tony." She kisses his cheek and deliberately turns back to the basketball game on tv, closing the subject of fathers and dysfunctional families for now.

The end of the week comes swiftly.

Tony's about to head home for the evening after a brief meeting with Jenny when a hand shoots between the closing elevator doors, stopping them. He isn't surprised at all when he sees that it's Gibbs, and he silently moves to the side to make room, wondering what the older man wants to talk to him about.

Sure enough, Gibbs flips the emergency switch as soon as the car is moving, and Tony looks at him expectantly.

"What are you going over my head for, DiNozzo?" he demands, and Tony recognizes that he's angry about something.

"What do you mean?" he asks, frowning.

"You just came out of Shepard's office. That's the third time this month that you've met with her alone. Why?"

Tony should have realized that Gibbs would notice the meetings, though he's tried to have them when Gibbs is out of the office for one reason or another. Clearly, it's too late for that now. "Well, I…" He hesitates and it only seems to piss Gibbs off more.

"Today, DiNozzo!" he barks.

"I have an assignment!" Tony snaps in reply. Though Gibbs definitely isn't supposed to know about it, Tony can't see a way around telling him now. Though he still can't divulge any details, at least confirming the op seems to be an inevitability.

"She give you this assignment herself?"

"Yes."

Gibbs looks less than impressed. "You're on my team, DiNozzo, you got that?"

"Got it, boss."

"That means you take orders from me. You get your assignments from me."

Tony can't help but feel as if he's been caught in the middle of a pissing match between his boss and the director. "What do I say to her when she tells me she needs my help!?"

"You don't say anything. You come to me!" Gibbs insists.

Tony groans. "Why does it bother you so much?" The stress of the past month or two is catching up with him, and as much as he knows it's a bad idea to get angry with Gibbs, he's heading in that direction.

"Because you're my responsibility."

Suddenly, Tony understands what's happening, and he loses his ire, despite feeling like he's being unfairly punished right now. Gibbs isn't really mad at him—he's afraid. He's scared that Jenny is sending Tony on a dangerous assignment that he's completing with no backup. Gibbs is mad at the director, not his agent.

Tony sighs, accepting this, and nods, but Gibbs isn't done. "How am I supposed to protect you if you're taking on assignments I don't know about!?"

"You can't, boss," Tony replies quietly.

"You're damn right I can't, and that isn't how this works. Are we clear, DiNozzo?"

"Crystal. Won't happen again." Gibbs nods shortly, still looking thunderous. Tony purses his lips. "You know I still can't tell you about it, right? The director made that very explicit."

Gibbs searches his agent's face, distinctly unhappy. He can see how torn Tony feels, wanting to tell his boss about his assignment but sworn not to, and, dissatisfied, he accepts that this is all the information he'll receive today. "For now," he concedes darkly, and flips the elevator switch again.