A/N: Thanks for all the reviews I got for the last chapter. I don't know how I messed up with the military times there. I know what they are, but for some reason it just didn't register. But I fixed it and re-posted the chapter with the corrected times. Maybe I should mess up more often I think that is the most reviews I have gotten for a chapter thus far. But anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Abby's back in DC!

The first set of italics are for the other end of the phone conversation and the second set of italics are a dream. And don't forget to vote in my profile poll.

VillageVoice

[2 Weeks Later]

"Timmy!" McGee turned around and saw Abby rapidly headed in his direction. He set his coffee down just as Abby launched herself at him. "Timmy I missed you!"

"Abby" McGee began after gently prying Abby's arms from his neck a bit so that he could get air. "What are you doing here?"

With a last squeeze Abby sat down on the bench next to McGee. "My traveling days are done McGee."

"You're back here for good, then?"

Abby frowned. "Well no. I'm just done traveling."

"So you're not here for good?" Abby looked away. "Abby what did you do to your hair?"

"Do you like it?" Abby smiled. "Let's go see everyone else."

The tension was radiating off of Abby in waves. She had to be very careful. Careful not to let anyone know Ziva was alive and that they had settled down on a small island and were expecting a baby in a little less than two months. Nothing about Ziva, nothing about the island and nothing about the baby. There was very little she could tell them and despite the long flight and the previous day spent in LA before heading on to D.C., Abby hadn't thought of a cover story. She had been too busy and excited to think about anything but the people she was headed to see. By the time the elevator dinged at the floor she knew her team, and yes she still considered them her team, was she was actually shaking. She flew out of the doors. Tony was the first one she saw. "Tony!"

"He-hey Abby" Tony spread his feet and braced himself for impact. He suffered the few seconds of oxygen deprivation without complaint. "We've missed you around here. Nice hair."

"Where's Gibbs?" Abby asked once she was sufficiently satisfied with her hugging of her surrogate brothers.

"Director's office." Tony informed.

Abby turned toward the stairs, but quickly turned back. As badly as she wanted to see Gibbs, she wanted to live more.

"What about Ducky?"

"Did I just hear Abigail?"

"Ducky!" Abby turned around and threw her arms around Ducky, careful not to squeeze as hard as she did with McGee and Tony.

They both pulled away with smiled on their faces. "I will admit, no one around here hugs like you do my dear."

Abby hugged the ME again, then Tony and McGee. She took a deep breath and looked around the room. "Nothing has changed."

"Everything has changed." McGee said, looking at Abby.

"Nope." Tony began as he dropped a file into the top drawer of the file cabinet and sat down at his desk, picking up another file. "Same crap, different day."

Abby looked behind herself at Ziva's desk, still empty save for two lone photographs displayed in gold frames – one of Kate and the other of Ziva. "Haven't filled the spot?"

"Don't want to." McGee answered, placing a comforting hand on Abby's arm.

"Gibbs believes that the desk is cursed." Ducky explained. "He refuses to look at potential applicants for the spot."

"He doesn't even let anyone sit in the chair." Tony added.

Abby took a step closer to the desk and looked at both of the photographs. One, her best friend who died in the line of duty. The other, Ziva whom supposedly died in the Mossad line of duty. Both exceptional agents and friends. She looked mischievously around the room and rounded the desk.

"Abby I wouldn't do that." McGee warned.

Abby ignored him and pulled the chair away from the desk and sat down. She hadn't even been sitting for three seconds when Gibbs' voice boomed down from the catwalk.

"Abby get out of that chair!"

Abby jumped up and ran up the stairs. "Gibbs!"

Gibbs carefully navigated his way down the stairs with Abby hanging on with a death grip. "Which one of you let her sit in that chair?" Ducky high-tailed it to the elevator, Tony picked up his desk phone and made himself look busy and McGee had very stealthily put headphones on before Gibbs came onto the floor and pretended to be analyzing some new piece of evidence.

"It's just a chair Gibbs." Abby said, still attached to the man.

"That chair kills people Abs."

Technically a chair was an inanimate object that couldn't kill a fly, much less a person. Unless it was used as a murder weapon, but that would technically be a person killing another person via the chair. And technically only one person who sat in that chair had been killed. Kate. Gibbs knew that Ziva wasn't really dead, so her probably created the mini-shrine and instituted the no-sitting rule before he learned the truth and thus had to keep up the façade so that no one would suspect anything.

Abby hugged Gibbs tighter. "I missed you Gibbs."

Gibbs shot a death glare to his team and pulled Abby over to his desk. "How's everything?" He asked in a low voice.

Abby smiled. "Great. I have pictures."

Gibbs grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. "Not here."

[Gibbs' Basement]

"And here we are at our new house." Abby explained as she turned the page in her scrapbook. She had made a scrapbook just to show Gibbs. A shortened version of the past months.

"Where is this new house Abs?"

"Gibbs, you know I can't tell you that."

Gibbs nodded. "Don't tell anyone."

"I know." Abby smiled. "Ziva's teaching me a lot about the spy business. Well not so much the spy business, but more the art of hiding and how to live with a new identity."

Gibbs chuckled. That was Ziva. She would never do anything to endanger Abby or anyone else she cared for. "How's she doing?"

Abby turned the page. She had shown Gibbs the traveling pictures and the pictures of them at their new house, outside at their beach, moving things into the house and moving things around once inside of the house. Now they were onto the two ultrasound photos they had, shots showing how big Ziva's belly was each month and pictures of them painting the nursery, setting up the furniture and getting everything the baby would need ready.

"She looks good. So do you Abby."

"Thank Ziva for that. She cooks all the time. I swear I've gained twenty pounds."

"It looks good on you." Abby looked away. "Have you visited your brother yet?"

"Yeah. The boys have gotten so big. They don't even recognize me. I missed so much Gibbs."

"It was your choice Abs."

"I know. I don't regret any of it." She shrugged. "It's just sad. Brian gave me one of their family pictures they had taken at the beach over the summer. He didn't understand why I couldn't tell him where live now."

"I understand." He stood up and walked over to his workbench. He pulled something out of a drawer and handed it to Abby.

Abby took the envelope and opened it. Inside were two photographs - the one that had been taken when Jenny was still alive all those years ago that had been on her computer when Ziva told her Vance was shipping her back to Israel and the second they had taken once every member of the team had come back after Vance's disbandment. Abby and Ziva were sitting on one of the desks in the squadroom with Ducky and Gibbs behind each, respectively, Tony and McGee were standing beside Gibbs with Tony having his arm around McGee hamming it up for the camera like he always did, and even Palmer was there standing beside Ducky. They were all so happy being together again Abby insisted on a picture so she would always have them with her. Even when they went away. Abby smiled. "Thanks Gibbs." She looked over at the clock on the wall. "Almost lunch time, let's go."

After a quick visit with McGee to her lab to check out how everything was going with her replacement it was out to lunch for the team. It had to be quick, they were working on a big case, but Gibbs let Abby stay in the bullpen once they all got back to chat with everyone. As long as when he looked up everyone was working.

"You're not serious?" Abby whispered to McGee. McGee has just told her of Tony's girlfriend.

McGee nodded. "He's been seeing her for a couple of months. I think it's serious." He whispered. "He hasn't talked about any other women and as far as I know he hasn't been seeing anyone else either."

"Wow. Little Tony's growing up. What about you?"

"Oh you know me." McGee blushed. "Working on a new book and I too have been seeing someone. It's early yet, but I like her"

Abby smiled. "That's great McGee." Gibbs looked up and Abby met his gaze with a huge smile on her face. With everything going on, she hadn't realized how much she had missed him. She looked around the bullpen and caught Tony, McGee and Ducky's eyes – had missed all of them. "I really missed you guys."

"If you have missed us so much my dear, then why are you moving my dear?" Ducky questioned.

"Yeah?" Tony added.

McGee stood up from his desk and joined Ducky by Gibbs' desk, quickly followed by Tony who never wanted to be left out of anything. "Where are you moving Abby?"

Abby looked to Gibbs for help and send a silent thanks to God for making her cell phone ring at that exact moment.

"None of your business McGee. Don't you have work to do?" She heard Gibbs say as she rounded the corner to answer her phone.

"Hello?"

"Hello Kate?"

Abby looked around herself to make sure that there was no one within earshot. It would have helped to check the caller ID before she answered. She was so excited to be seeing everyone again that she completely forgot that she still had her New Zealand cell phone with her and not the one she had all those years at NCIS. Without even realizing, Abby had slipped back into her old self. It was as if no time had passed at all.

"It's Lawrence – Dr. Jacobs." He corrected. He was calling in an official capacity, not as a friend.

Abby was immediately on alert. She and Ziva had told everyone she was going away back to America to attend a wedding and because of how far along Ziva was in her pregnancy she couldn't risk that long of a flight, but had insisted that Kate go along without her. They all knew she would be unavailable for a few days.

"There was an accident."

"Ziva." It came out as barely a whisper. Her mind was filled with the memory of the day Gibbs went to see her in her new house and told Abby of the bombing that was supposed to have killed Ziva.

"Excuse me?"

"Anna" Abby corrected. "What happened?"

"I'm afraid that she fell. There was a pretty heavy rain last night, everything was slippery. She was found on the dock early this morning. She was dry so she wasn't out there all night, but other than that we don't know how long she was out there before she was found-"

"On the dock? Is she okay?" Abby interrupted. "The baby?"

"The baby's doing better. We've got Anna hooked up to a monitor. It was touch and go for a while, but the fetal heart rate is steady now. When we got her here Anna was having contractions and her blood pressure was extremely high. We don't know whether they're the result of the fall or whether they're the reason she was on the dock."

'I wasn't there. She was trying to get to the hospital.' Abby thought. "She went into labor?"

"Pre-term labor, yes. At only thirty-three weeks the fetus isn't developed to the point where it could survive outside the womb. We tested the baby's lungs and they're not developed enough yet. We started Anna on a twenty-four hour magnesium sulfate drip. It's too soon to tell if it's working yet, but sometime soon it should start to slow the contractions until it stops them all together."

Abby ignored the tears as they fell. "What about Anna?" She managed to choke out. She knew that it wasn't physically possible, but Abby felt as though her heart had moved right into her throat. She felt someone put a hand on her shoulder, but in this moment she didn't care who it was or what they heard.

"Anna's not good. She hit her head and hasn't regained consciousness yet. She lost a lot of blood and is hypothermic, and as I said we don't know how long she was out on the dock before she was found. But we did get her blood pressure back down into normal ranges for the time being. We're at the hospital on the mainland."

Abby choked down the lump in her throat. Ziva being taken to the hospital was not a good sign. "I'm on my way." She shut the phone and turned into Gibbs' waiting arms. "It's a twenty-four hour flight." She cried. "What if I don't get there in time? She means everything to me Gibbs. I can't lose her again. Not for real."

Gibbs rubbed Abby's back. "I know." After a few minutes he sent Abby down the back stairwell to his car and went back to the bullpen to grab his things. He ignored all the glances and questions as to where Abby went and where he was going. He would think of something to tell them all later.

Gibbs stood outside the room waiting while Abby had some time alone with Ziva. He noticed the doctor walk-up and stop next to him, but kept his eyes firmly trained on the two figures on the other side of the window.

"How do you know Kate and Anna?"

Gibbs thought for a minute. Abby had to be Kate, making Ziva Anna. "I'm Anna's father." Gibbs knew that the doctor would explain more to him if he pretended to be Ziva's father rather than Abby's.

"Does she know anyone named Abby, Mr. Reyes?"

'Reyes.' Gibbs took a minute to think of a back story. Reyes was a Spanish last name and he was as far from Spanish looking as it could get. If anyone asked Ziva took after her mother and had her last name. Rule number seven; always be specific when you lie. Gibbs took a deep breath. "Yeah."

"She's not conscious often, a few minutes out of the day at most, but whenever she is conscious she always asks for Abby. We're thinking that if we can get this Abby here it might force Anna to stay awake. We think it could really help."

"Abby was her sister. She died a few months ago."

Dr. Jacobs accepted the answer with a nod and a supportive hand placed on Gibbs' shoulder before walking away leaving Gibbs to his thoughts.

"Come on Ziva. You can fight this." Abby said, stroking the side of the Israeli's face. "You can fight this." Many studies have shown that talking to a loved one in a coma improved their brain functionings, made them heal faster and even helped them to regain consciousness faster. Abby took a deep breath. "I left Harley in DC. When I left Becca was having a hard time adjusting to having two little brothers and Brian said Harley was just what she needed to help her adjust. I got there and Harley came over for like a second and then ran back to Becca. They're inseparable. I couldn't take Becca's best friend away from her. So you need to wake-up because we need to get a dog. We need to talk about what breed, whether we want a boy or a girl, what size…Ziva there are a lot of things to discuss so I need you to wake-up. . . Gibbs is here." Abby looked at the monitors and noted no change at all. "Come on Ziva. Please wake-up. Please."

Ziva looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright light. Her hand first went to the stabbing pain on the right side of her head then to her flat stomach. She was almost certain she had been pregnant. "Where am I?"

"I don't really have an answer to that."

Ziva jumped to her feet and was immediately on alert. Until she realized who was standing in front of her. "Agent Todd?"

"Call me Kate."

"You're dead."

Kate nodded.

"Am I-"

"No. You're not dead. Not yet anyway." Ziva followed Kate over to a large oak tree that sprouted up before her very eyes, growing tall and full. "Sit. Swing."

"But there is no" Two swings fell down from a thick branch. "swing." She finished.

"Sit." Kate insisted.

Ziva slowly lowered herself onto the swing, testing to make sure that it was real before sitting down. "What happened?"

"That's where things get a little fuzzy. I was making sure Abby's flight touched down in one piece, but from what I can gather you went into pre-term labor, and were trying to get to the boat so you could get to Dr. Jacobs when you slipped on the dock."

Ziva thought for a minute. "The dock was wet." Ziva remembered. "Something was wrong with the baby. I called Dr. Jacobs, but his wife said that he was at the hospital and that I should go see him there. I slipped on the dock." Ziva shook her head. An ex-Mossad officer and NCIS liaison killed by slipping on a wet dock. It was more than pathetic. "I slipped on the dock." She shook her head.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. You were worried about the baby, you were in pain from the contractions and you'd never been on the dock when it was wet so you didn't know how slippery it could get."

"I am a trained Mossad Officer."

"Ex-Mossad Officer." Kate corrected.

"I still have the same training. I should have known better."

"Well," Kate began as she hopped off the swing. "That's done and over with. What we have to do now is talk about where you go from here." Ziva walked over to the pond Kate had wondered over to. "You have two options Ziva. One, you can fight this. There is no medical reason why you haven't woken-up yet."

"Then why am I not awake?"

Kate shrugged. "The simplest explanation is that you don't want to."

"What is the complicated explanation?"

"There isn't one. You're not awake because you don't want to be. I was just trying to be nice about it." She turned toward Ziva. "Why don't you want to wake up?"

"I'm trying." Ziva insisted. "It is painful."

"You have a concussion and you're blood pressure was a little high, but I'm pretty sure it's resolved itself. You've experienced much worse."

Ziva looked out across the still, still water. "She is better off without me."

"I think you should let her decide that for herself, don't you?"

"Abby does not know any better. She has no idea what is out there." Ziva shook her head. "The ones who get too close always end-up dead. I have to protect her before I-"

"Who will be there to protect her if you give up on her?"

"Gibbs."

"Abby wants you Ziva. Not Gibbs. She left him and McGee and Tony for you. She chose to go with you all over the world running from who knows who. Because no one is chasing you Ziva. No one is chasing you. What do you think is going to happen to her if she loses you? And the baby?" She paused a second. "What else is bothering you?"

Ziva took a deep breath. "I'm scared." It didn't take much for her to tell the truth. She knew Kate was dead. Who could a dead woman tell?

Kate's demeanor softened. "Scared of what?"

"That I will not be a good mother. I fear that . . ." She took a breath and spoke the truth. "I will turn into my father. I have taken so many lives. What I worry most is that that fact I will get my child hurt or killed. That I won't be able to protect the baby."

"Quite the list." Ziva nodded. "Let's start at the beginning." She pulled Ziva over to a bench to their left. "You are not going to be a bad mother. You already love this baby."

"Then why am I not pregnant here?"

"It is easier to rest and recover if you only have yourself to worry about. You love this baby. You have Abby to help and you know how good she is with kids. Every first time parent worries that they won't be a good parent, that they won't know anything, that they won't love their child enough. You learn as you go along. You won't know how to change a diaper until you change a diaper. You won't know what your baby needs until you learn her cries. It's a learning process that never ends."

"Next?" Ziva asked, eyes remaining trained on the pond before them.

"Your father. He was never there for you or your family. He never shed a tear when your mother died, not even when you or Tali died – his own children. He didn't think anything of what you were feeling after their deaths or Ari's." Kate took a minute. "All he ever cared about was Mossad and he had his eye on the Director's chair long before you were born and nothing was going to get in his way, not even his family. He has ordered you to kill and do things no father – no person should ever ask anyone to do. Does that sound like you? Abby, Gibbs, Tony, McGee, Ducky . . . they mean everything to you and don't try to tell me that they don't because I know the truth. You would never do anything to hurt them or put any one of them in any kind of danger. You are far too compassionate to be anything like your father."

Ziva looked at Kate. "I quit Mossad." As Ziva said it she could see how far away from her father that put her. She couldn't live in the world he created any longer. Abby, Tony, McGee, Gibbs and Ducky were her family and she would do anything for them. She couldn't imagine living without them. Even though they were thousands of miles away she knew they were still there. She shook her head. "No. It doesn't."

"Do I even need to address the last one?"

"No. You have made your point."

"There are so many people who want to help you Ziva. I know you're living in hiding and you have to do what you think is safe for a while and that's fine. Trust Abby, trust your new neighbors, trust your own abilities. You're going to be a great Mom."

Ziva smiled. "Thank-you Kate."

"Just do me one favor."

Ziva nodded.

"Go back."

*Quote "The ones who get to close always end-up dead" from episode 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' 7.04