A/N: So my Muse came back recently. I am not really sure what will keep her around, but reviews certainly couldn't hurt ;P ALso be sure to check the album for this story on my profile page. There are a lot of new additions with this new chapter. I would also like to thank those of you who read and review every chapter. Thanks so much! I am glad you like the story.
And I completely made up this little island and take full credit for it.

VillageVoice

"You can't be serious?" Abby asked.

Ziva dropped her cell phone down onto the bed. "Alyse said that the offer was temporarily accepted pending acceptance by the community board."

"So we have to impress these people now?"

Ziva nodded. "They are also conducting thorough background checks. Are you sure that you put all of the information online?"

"Positive."

"Passports, licenses, work and residence histories?"

"Double positive."

"This place is its own community-"

"Its own cult." Abby corrected.

"Regardless," Ziva began as she slowly lowered herself down onto the bed. "If we want the house we have to meet with the board 15:00 hours tomorrow."

"Oh no. We are getting that house so at three o'clock tomorrow we will be putting on the best performance of our entire adult lives."

"So Kate, what did you do back home?" Abby smiled as a woman named Gwen, who Abby believed was one of the two nurses working at the little clinic on the island. With so many new people introducing themselves it was hard to keep them all straight. "Where is home again?"

"The U.S." Abby answered. "Texas."

"Right, right. So what did you do?"

"Oh, you know . . ." Abby looked around for Ziva, but found the other woman thoroughly engrossed in a conversation with the resident doctor on the island, Lawrence Jacobs and thus unable to help her as they hadn't yet discussed this. "I've done everything. I worked as a party planner, a translator for the deaf, a photographer, ran a lab on occasion-"

"You're kidding?! Our lab tech just moved back to the mainland. We've been needing one for a while, but no one here knows the first thing about running a lab nor has any interest in learning how."

Abby smiled. "Really?"

"Do you have any experience with computers as well?"

"Do I?"

xxxxxxxxxx

"How far along are you?" The doctor asked Ziva.

"Thirty weeks." Ziva answered.

"Do you have an obstetrician yet? I'm just asking because I'm the only doctor on the island. I work here Tuesdays, Thursdays and am on-call on the weekends, and I work at the hospital on the mainland Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I work in the emergency room at the hospital and also spend a couple of hours in the ICU per month, but here I do pretty much everything."

Ziva resisted the urge to tell the man she hadn't asked for his resume. "We are planning a homebirth. Kate is a certified midwife."

"Really?"

Ziva glanced over at Abby to see her deep in conversation with one of the clinic nurses. She would tell her about her certification later. "Yes."

"I heard that you were a dance teacher back home."

"Among other things, yes."

"What other things."

If Ziva didn't want to make such a good impression on these people so that she and Abby could get the house she would have called the good doctor out on hitting on her the minute he looked at her. Hitting on a pregnant woman was one thing. There was a chance she was not with the father of her child or that the father did not want to be involved or that she had used a donor rather than an actual man. It was a whole other ball game to be hitting on a woman in her third trimester who was expecting a child with her female partner. Did he understand he had absolutely no chance? "I have also taught voice, piano and various styles of . . . self defense."

The doctor choked on his wine.

"Are you okay Lawrence?"

"Yeah, fine. I'm just going to go … over there."

Ziva looked around and allowed herself a little laugh when she saw no one was watching – rather she thought no one was laughing.

"Boy am I glad someone finally put that man in his place."

Ziva spun on her heels and turned to find someone she didn't recognize. She made a few quick mental notes out of habit. '5'8," redhead, maybe 120pounds.' "I'm sorry?"

"Dr. Jacobs. Excellent doctor, but a complete dog." The woman stepped forward and held her hand out. "Samantha Clarke. I own the dance studio."

"Anna Reyes." Ziva introduced as she shook the woman's hand.

"You two are going to be celebrities around here."

"What do you mean?"

"Lesbians. On a small New Zealand island. Expecting a child together. It's all very U.S. Most people on this island have no contact with the outside world except for their TVs. Only about five percent of the people here go to the mainland on a regular basis other than weekly shopping trips. Most of us live, breathe and sleep here."

Ziva smiled and looked over at Abby on the couch to see her now finished with her conversation. Abby waved and smiled back. "That is if we get in."

"Oh you're in girl. You were in the minute you and Kate walked through the door together. You've been here for a little over an hour now and how many people have you talked to?"

Ziva thought for a minute. For this 'interview' the board had taken over the sole restaurant on the island and set-up a buffet to make the interview seem less formal - and of course no informal interview was complete without an open bar, not that Ziva could take advantage of that, but it was more like a bunch of people just hanging out and chatting rather than an interview. Ziva cast a quick glance around the room. Mossad training 101 – know your enemy. Ziva couldn't be sure that these people weren't her enemy, but until she was she wasn't going to trust any of them. She remembered every single one of their names, the names of their spouses and their children, where they lived and what they did for work. "Everyone." She answered. "Except for you."

"And you're talking to me now." Samantha nodded. "As I said – celebrities."

Abby joined the group just as Samantha was pulled away by a small, curly red haired child she introduced as her four-year-old daughter Shannon. Ziva lowered her voice. "We are celebrities."

"What?"

"If anyone asks you are a midwife."

"What?"

"I will explain later."

"I think I have a job."

"What?" It was Ziva's turn to ask.

Abby spotted their real estate agent walking toward them "I'll explain later."

"Girls."

Abby and Ziva nodded in sync at the rotund woman in front of them. "Alyse."

"Great news." She began. "They loved you! I've never seen anything like it. These people have trouble reaching a consensus about where to have their town meetings. They have never all agreed to allow an outside family to move to the island this fast that I have heard about. They asked me to draw-up the papers straight away and get them immediately to you two to sign. What did you say to them?"

"That we are lesbians." Ziva whispered into Abby's ear.

Abby smirked. "You're the lesbian." She whispered back. "I am strictly bisexual."

"Not anymore you are not." Ziva countered.

"What was that?" Alyse asked.

Abby gently elbowed Ziva. "Nothing. We're just glad that they liked us." She shot Ziva a warning glance and the Israeli had to turn around to hide her laughter. Abby smiled at Alyse. "Pregnancy . . . She cries, she laughs. Keeps me on my toes."

"Right." Alyse nodded skeptically. "Well I have to head back to the mainland to get the papers. I hear that the Rae's have offered to show you around the island. I suggest you take them up on their offer. It will help to know your way around the area since this is going to be your home very shortly." She smiled at Ziva and Abby as she reached down to grab her bag. "I'll be back in a few hours."

The island was simply beautiful. It was arranged in an oval shape, with the houses all along the beach forming its outer shape. Everything else was located at the Town Center smack dab in the middle of the island. There was a good-sized clinic equipped to take care of everything from skinned knees to broken bones to injections to some minor surgical procedures that included basically anything that did not require the use of anesthesia staffed with one doctor and two full-time nurses and as soon as they got Abby to agree, they would once again have a lab tech to run blood and urine samples and test for all sorts of things.

There was a school that taught grades one through twelve. All children on the island were home schooled by their parents until the time they entered school, but were still provided with plenty of socialization in the forms of the dance studio and little league baseball, basketball and soccer, art classes and numerous play groups that met several times a month at the playground behind the school, at the beach or at someone's house.

There was also a veterinarian who lived on the island, Lucinda Rea. She worked exclusively on the island. Abby and Ziva were told that people on the island valued their pets very highly with each family having at least two pets, not including fish, ranging from dogs and cats to birds and other small animals. They weren't so much fans of reptiles or amphibians though. In fact, Lucinda's veterinary practice was attached to the pet store she owned and she could never remember stocking a single lizard or snake, turtle or frog. Most of the animals stocked at the pet store were the offspring of animals currently owned by people who lived on the island. Lucinda always had a heavy supply of fish she ordered from the mainland, but she also had puppies and kittens once or twice a year, where as she tended to have a constant supply of small birds and hamsters, mice, rabbits and such all supplied by the people who lived on the island.

Any animals that weren't adopted on the island went up for adoption on the shop's website and were taken with Lucinda back to the mainland once or twice a month. However, there were also some that she couldn't find new owners for, but also didn't want to give up and so they lived in the pet store as her pets. She certainly had enough room.

Ziva looked around. There were also six small-ish windmills behind the shops, occupying the grassy area between the back of the shops and the main brick pathway that supplied the power necessary to equip the entire island with all of the energy they needed. Just be safe though, there were also solar panels on the top of each windmill as well as a couple on top of every house and shop as a source of back-up energy.

"And here is the grocery store. There is a ship that comes in twice a week with supplies and Ernie can get you anything you need as long as you tell him on Sunday. That's when he puts the order in."

Abby and Ziva continued along as Lucinda led them around town. Lucinda was married to Andy, a lawyer who worked mostly from home and also acted as the law enforcement on the island.

"You basically have two strip-malls. The one on the north side, which we are on and the one on the south side." Andy explained and pointed across the town center to a similar strip of shops. The shops surrounded the Town Center, which consisted of the 'park' - a large fountain with a small pond surrounded by a generous plot of grass in the same shape as the island with the fountain at the exact center of both the island and the 'park.'

Ziva took a minute to make sure that she could remember where everything was. The school was at the head of the Town Center with the baseball and soccer fields behind. The clinic and Lucinda's pet shop/veterinary practice were at the other end. The shops on the north side included the grocery store, the florist and the restaurant. The south side included the dance studio, the music studio, the salon and an abandoned studio that hadn't had anyone or anything in it in quite a few years.

"Why is everything here identified by either being on the west side or the east, or the north or south?" Ziva questioned.

"Well," Lucinda began. "There are no streets. We have the main brick walkway around the outskirts of the town center, behind the shops and pathways from everyone's houses to that main walkway and then it's paved around the shops and everything. But there are no streets or roads to identify anything."

Ziva nodded. "That makes sense."

"How many people live on the island Luce?" Abby asked.

"There are thirty families. Fifteen houses on the north side, fifteen on the south then yours on the east and the empty house on the west. There have been a few people interested in both of the properties, but it takes a special type of person to live on an island such as this."

"There are not many people who can appreciate a sixty-minute commute via water." Ziva offered.

"That, and it takes a good forty-five minute walk to get from the farthest point on the west side to the farthest on the east and half an hour to get from the farthest point north to the farthest south. But it's more than that . . ." Lucinda guided them to the park and sat down on a bench. "Please, sit. We're a big family here. Everyone knows everything about everyone. We all know that Ashley, one of the history teachers, has had the biggest crush on Sean, the guitar instructor, since they were in little league together. Though she will never, ever tell him about it."

"That's so sad." Abby irrupted.

Luciana chuckled. "It is, but that's the way things go around here. Not with people not telling people how they feel, they usually do, but with us all knowing about it. We're the kind of people who will knock on your door with a batch of cookies just because we baked them. We'll call you up to make sure everything is alright if we haven't seen you all day. We'll know the minute something is wrong without you saying anything. There is no movie theater, no shopping mall, no fancy cars, no bars or clubs. We have weekly activities, we have softball, basketball, soccer and volleyball games and big parties on the holidays, but that's it. We have church in the auditorium in the school. We make potential home buyers go through a ridiculous screening and interview process because we don't like outsiders. We're a family here. Not many people can handle that."

Ziva grabbed Abby's hand, entwining their fingers together with a bright smile on her face. "I think that that sounds nice."

Abby smiled and turned to Luciana. "Do you have room for two more in this family?"

Luciana nodded. "I believe that we have room for three."

Ziva's and Abby's free hands both made their way to Ziva's belly. Abby sighed and leaned back against the bench. "Move-in is going to suck."

"Ziva, we have a problem."

"Yes." Ziva admitted, rounding the clothing rack with an armful of various clothing pieces. "They have a very limited maternity section basically consisting of a thing called a . . . a mow mow, meow meow . . . moo . . . some ridiculous animal sound."

"No, well yes, but that's not the problem I'm talking about."

"What is the problem Abby?" Ziva looked up at Abby as she dumped all of the clothing she was holding into the shopping cart. She tried really hard not to laugh at the hideously floral dress Abby was wearing.

Abby pursed her lips and sighed. "They have the best pair of platform boots I have ever seen. And they have the most adorable plaid skirts and-"

Ziva put her hands on the outside of Abby's upper arms and forced the woman in front of her to focus on her for a minute. "Abby . . ." Ziva trailed off as she searched for the right thing to say. "I realize that you have made a lot of … sacrifices to be with me-"

"Ziva they're not sacrifices if I'm gladly giving them up. Besides they're just clothes-"

"And you're hair." Ziva reminded, running her hand through Abby's hair.

"I really like this haircut."

"And your eyes."

"I had green eyes my entire life, a little change is good. Listen Ziva, I want to do this – all of it. We're a family now and people in families give up some things for the better of the family. Don't forget that you've given up a lot too. I'm giving up my plaid skirts, but you're giving up your camo pants. They're like . . . your identity. See me, I can wear pants. But you-"

"Yes, but that was my choice."

"It's mine too. Believe me Ziva, if I didn't want to be here with short hair, brown colored contacts, jeans, sneakers and enough cover-up hiding my tattoos to cover an elephant, I wouldn't be."

Ziva shook her head and sat down in one of the chairs by the entrance to the changing room. "I am sorry Abby. I do not mean to keep questioning you."

Abby knelt down in front of Ziva with a hand on Ziva's knees. "I know. It's hard to go from trusting no one but yourself to trusting someone else so completely you don't know what you'd do without them. It's hard to put that much trust in someone. To know that they hold your heart in their hand and they could crush it just as easily as heal it."

Ziva looked down at Abby with tears brimming in her eyes. "You need to stop reading my books."

"I do." Abby chuckled and dragged the other chair over. "But it's true. I love you Ziva. I love you no matter where we are, what names we're using, and what we're wearing."

"I'm sorry. Hormones." She explained. "But really Abby" Ziva eyed Abby up and down. "I would rather you walk around naked than wearing . . . that."

"Really?" Abby stood up. "Because that would be so much more comfortable."

Ziva stopped Abby from stripping right there in the middle of the store and pushed her into the changing room with a nice smack on the backside. "Nice attempt."

"Its 'nice try' Ziva." Abby smirked. "And it was worth a shot." She gave Ziva a quick peck on the lips before closing the door behind herself and changing back into her regular clothes. "I think we should suffer the long drive and go to the mall."

Ziva took all of the clothing out of the shopping cart and dropped the pile in the bin for clothes to be put back out on the floor. "You read my mind."

"Ziva, what color do you want to do the baby's room?" Having successfully found plenty of clothing that they both liked, the pair was now wondering around the mall looking for things for their new house. Their first stop was to a children's store.

Ziva turned away from the tiny little newborn sweater she was looking at. "I haven't thought about it."

"Are you still sure you don't want to know the sex?"

"Yes."

"Then we go with gender neutrals like yellow, green, blue and white, although white's not very practical for a baby."

"Green is a neutral?"

"Depends on the theme, but it can be yeah."

Ziva raised an eyebrow. "I would prefer not to use green."

"Okay, no green. We could do a sea theme with blue. Or teddy bears. They tend to come in pretty much every color." Abby offered.

"We need a theme?" Ziva asked. Abby nodded her head rigorously. The Israeli folded the little sweater and put it back on the shelf. "What themes come in yellow?"

"Come on." Abby grabbed Ziva's hand and dragged her to the back of the store where the nursery displays were. She started at the beginning, bypassing all of the bedding looking to be specifically for boys and specifically for girls. "How about this one?" Abby asked as she showed a night themed bedding set with a moon, clouds and stars in blue, green, yellow and beige.

"It seems too . . . boy-ish, yes?"

"Probably, yeah." Abby led them down some more cribs, stopping at a zoo themes bedding in light reds, oranges and yellows. "This one?"

"Too girl-ish."

"They're baby animals. It's unisex"

Ziva shook her head and continued walking down the rows, looking at each crib set.

"Oh my God Ziva." Ziva turned to see Abby standing in front of three different cribs. "They have camo in three different colors." Ziva shook her head with a chuckle and continued on. "How do you feel about animal print?"

"That would be a definite no."

Abby stopped to think for a minute. "Maybe we should get the furniture first and then match the bedding to that."

"Yes." Ziva agreed. "Furniture second, bedding later. But first I need a ladies room."

Abby walked with Ziva to the bathroom, but when she was supposed to be waiting outside the door Abby dashed back to the store they just left and bought the most adorable little outfit that she knew she had to have the minute she stepped into the store. She was right back outside the bathroom door by the time Ziva was done. "Let's go."

[The Furniture Store]

"And just how are we supposed to get this furniture to the island and then to the house?" Ziva asked as she and Abby were looking at what felt like the thousandth bedroom set.

"The ship that drops off groceries twice a week is a cargo ship that stops by the island on its way down to the southern island of New Zealand. Luce said her brother works on it and we can get him to transport heavy things if we need to."

"And then how are we supposed to get the furniture from the ship to our house?"

"Dollies."

"How is a child's toy supposed to help us move heavy furniture?"

"Not a doll, a dolly. It's this thing you can use to help move heavy stuff, but I doubt that will work either. Maybe someone has a wagon or something. . . Worst case scenario we take all the pieces out of the boxes and bring them in the house one by one and build the furniture that way." Ziva's eyes lit up at the mention of 'we' but Abby quickly realized her slip. "And by we I mean not you."

For once Ziva did not argue and went back to looking at the different bedroom sets. "I think we should go with this one."

"But it is-" Ziva checked the description of the bed from the book she was holding. "Warm bisque?" She looked from the book to the bedroom set several times trying to figure out how that color was warm bisque. It looked more like the French vanilla coffee Abby had taken to drinking in place of her favorite caffeinated beverage to the Israeli. "It is almost white Abby. The other one is very much black."

Abby looked at the bedroom set next to the one they were standing in front of. They were identical except that one was 'warm bisque' and the other was 'midnight.' She nodded. "I know." She walked onto the platform the set was displayed on and sat on the bed. "Black is Abby. Black is back at NCIS. This'll be good for me. It will remind me who I am and where we are." She looked around at the set. "It'll be good for me."

"Then we shall make a compromise, yes?" Ziva explained as she stepped up onto the platform and sat down next to Abby.

"Depends on what the compromise is."

"I do not want you to give up all of yourself Abby. I fell in love with you." Ziva said, taking Abby's hand. "I don't want you to forget who you are. If you forget who you are you are forgetting the woman I fell in love with." She used her free hand to caress the side of Abby's face. "I do not want to lose her."

"I know Zi, I do. I've never been in hiding before. I don't know all the rules."

Ziva chuckled. "The basic rule is to stay alive."

"Thanks. I'll work on that." Abby laughed and leaned against Ziva, nestling her nose into the crook of Ziva's neck. "What am I gonna do Zi?" She asked with a sigh.

Ziva wrapped her arm around Abby. "First you are going to clap out of it."

"Snap out of it." Abby corrected.

"Yes … same thing. You are going to snap out of it and stop trying to create another person. You can only ever be yourself Abby. The way to successfully be someone else is to keep pieces of yourself and modify others. Ziva used to dance, Anna teaches dance. Ziva knows how to speak Spanish, Anna is from a Spanish-speaking country. Do you see where I am going with this?"

"Abby had a stuffed hippo, Kate likes hippos."

Ziva laughed. "Something like that, yes."

"Let me try again. . . Abby worked in a crime lab, Kate works medical lab."

Ziva nodded. "You don't have to completely change everything about yourself. Just, maybe not play your music in the lab."

Abby frowned. "I was thinking of that. Can I play it at home?"

"Of course." Ziva nodded. "When I am not there."

Abby laughed. "I thought so."

"Do they not a play a lot of country in Texas?" Ziva asked, purposefully teasing the other woman as she knew Abby could rarely stand country music.

Abby rolled her eyes. "So not gonna happen." She shook her head for added emphasis. "So whats the compromise?"

"Oh yes. I was thinking for the bedding. I saw your face when you saw the black, red and white bedding. We are getting it."

"Where's the compromise in that?"

"We get the bedroom set you picked, we get the bedding I picked."

"Actually, you're the one who first said you liked the bedroom set and I was the one who liked the bedding."

"Okay, so we get my choice for the bedroom set and your choice for the bedding."

"That is still not a compromise."

Ziva pursed her lips and thought for a minute. "I may have misunderstood the meaning of a 'compromise.' No . . . No. It is still a compromise. I get something and you get something."

"But usually in a compromise both sides give-up something they want. Neither of us gave anything up."

"No." Ziva agreed. "What is it called then when it is not a compromise?"

"Umm…" Abby tried to think. "Getting what we want?"

Ziva nodded and stood, content with the answer. "I like it. Let's go get what we want for the rest of the house."

In the end Abby and Ziva left the store having purchased almost everything they needed to furnish the entire house except for the guestrooms and as they were never expecting any guests to show up they were in no real hurry to get those rooms done. For their bedroom they had gone with the warm bisque bedroom set and the black, red and ivory printed bedding. For the dining room they went with a similarly bisque-colored formal dining room set. The living room was furnished with a large couch that was completely white and two love seats and two recliners with white faux-leather bases (Abby was adamant about having nothing made from animals), and chocolate colored cushions and pillows, a coffee table in the same white faux leather as the bases of the furniture and four solid wood end tables in espresso. It was a lot of furniture, but it was a big space they had to fill. No need for an entertainment center as there was a cut-out in the wall perfect for a flat-screen TV as well as two shelves on either side built into the wall and a couple of cabinets below to hold CDs, DVDs, a DVD player or whatever else they felt like putting on the shelves. Their own in-wall entertainment center. For the office part of the room they picked out a chocolate office desk that had two work stations and two white faux-leather desk chairs.

For the library they bought more formal furniture than they had for the living room. They purchased a sofa, two oversized chairs and four accent chairs in champagne with a dark pecan finish along with a large coffee table and two end tables in the same dark pecan color with glass tops. Again there was no need for bookshelves or any storage as every wall of the library was a bookshelf.

It may have been what they originally went to the store for, but it ended out being the last furniture pieces they bought. For the baby's room they chose a Venetian wrought iron crib with four posters and a canopy. That hadn't needed to get a changing table as there was a spot between the two windows with drawers built into the wall and a sort of desk-like structure built into the middle of the shelves that could be made into a changing table with the addition of a guard rail and changing pad, that the pair also purchased, with a couple of drawers below it. All built into the wall. That was a common theme in the house.

After a bit of searching they were finally able to find the absolute perfect bedding. The moment they saw it they knew it would be perfect. It was pale yellow and white with the most adorable little bumble bees. Of course they also had to have the matching musical mobile, desk lamps, light switch fixtures, window valences and curtains, an adorable bumble-bee rug, two small child sized white bookshelves hand-painted with little bees, a glider and ottoman in butter cream with white edging and two little nightstands to put on either sides of the crib, matching the bookshelves and also hand-painted with little bees.

One last stop next door and they got paint for the baby's room and sheets of sheer yellow and white fabric for the canopy of the crib and were off to the dock to speak with Luciana's brother about transporting the furniture. After a quick conversation and a call to the furniture store about where to ship the furniture they were on their way to their new home to begin their new life together. Starting with painting their future child's first room.