A/N: So, it's been a crazy past two days. You see, I started college yesterday. So, I would have had this chapter up yesterday if not for the fact I had such an insane day. I am sure you all understand. Getting up at six in the morning, going to class, yada yada. Right, so, here you are. Thank you for being so patient. I love you all. My eyes are like, drooping, because I am exhausted. Walking about two miles a day (when you add it all up) really makes you sleep well at night, ::giggle::. Okay. Well, enjoy. Love, Kat.

Tony paces several times, rubbing his stubble. He finally stops and turns to face us. "Let's role-play, shall we? I'll be Jackson; Babs, you're Buck and Ana…Hm…" He gives me a once over and declares, "Narrator." He walks over to stand next to the wall, symbolizing the cement wall of the warehouse.

Leaning against the back of the couch, I begin setting the scene. "Alright. Jackson arrives at the warehouse for one reason or another. After waiting for awhile, his cousin, Buck, shows up." Abby crosses to Tony. "Buck found out about something dark from Jackson's past, and has been ordered by his father to get the truth out of Jackson. He holds Jackson at gunpoint…"

"Jackson doesn't tell him what's going on, Buck panics, orders him to get on his knees…" Tony adds, dropping to the floor.

Holding two fingers, in a makeshift gun, to Tony's head, Abby adds with a mock expression of seriousness on her face, "Move and I blow your brains out." At Tony's stern, nonverbal order of, 'Abby, shut up,' her face immediately becomes ashamed.

Analyzing the situation, I look at what is playing out before me. "Jackson, fearing for his life, begs his cousin to lower the gun, so they can talk everything out rationally…"

We only hear Gibbs' voice rumble, "Kid didn't want that. Pulled the trigger."

Without turning around to look at our boss, I nod and murmur, "And then he lost his nerve. He had just committed murder on his cousin."

Tony grins maniacally up at all of us. "And then he crapped his pants, he was so scared, and ran home to daddy."

"David, that's enough," I admonish gently, smirking to myself. "There could have been another shooter, though, which explains Buck's fear. Maybe he went to smooth things over with Jackson, watched his cousin die, and was so scared he could not control himself."

My partner stands and walks over to me, sitting down on the other end of the couch, looking at me. "Do you think a third shooter's possible? I mean, there's not much evidence pointing to it, so how would that play in?"

I turn to him, considering the plausibility of a third shooter having been the murderer of Lance Corporal Jackson. "Well," I murmur, "We do not know if Buck owns a gun, or if his father does. We can always ask. As for another suspect, we are really just picking up sticks at this point." Tony chuckles. "What?"

"Picking at straws, Ana. The phrase is 'picking at straws.'"

I let out a huff and nod in frustration. The English language is terrible difficult to learn, having never studied American Slang, and not having been around many English speakers. Eli had never been keen on sending me to an English-speaking country and therefore here I sit, thoughts completely muddled, as I normally do here in America.

But at least I am a citizen now.

Four hours later, and we are still deciphering the lyrics, Buck's disappearance, and the case at hand.

"I feel like we're missing something obvious," Tony mutters, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his eyes. "Like it's right there in front of us, but we're not looking hard enough."

"Or maybe," Gibbs tells him, "we're looking too hard." Our boss sits on the arm of Abby's chair, bracing himself with one strong hand. The way he is looking down at Abby—the fatherly gleam to his blue eyes, the small half smile as he watches her play with one of her pigtails—shows that there is a soft side to the Silver Fox.

He was probably an amazing father.

Suddenly, all we can hear is the sound of crows cawing and the chime of bells. Abby's cell phone. She glances at the screen and a brilliant smile spreads across her face. "It's Tommy!" she cries before flipping the phone open and launching into a wordy summary of what we have found.

No sooner has she finished than sadness crosses her face, raising concern in the rest of us.

"Right, Tommy.—Yes of course, there was nothing else you could have done. I completely understand.—It's still a bummer, though.—Well, duh, we were all kinda close to him.—Maybe it was just his time to go, Tommy.—I don't think you have a reason to feel guilty. He was getting old.—Well Palmer doesn't have a reason to feel guilty either, Tommy. He's just the Autopsy Gremlin. So he saved his life on one occasion; that doesn't mean that this was supposed to go differently."

A feeling of dread washes over me. The only person she could be talking about is Ducky. He is elderly, has been 'saved' by Palmer, and was very close to us all. Something must have happened to him now that we are all away from the office.

When Abby snaps her phone shut, tears are about to spill from her eyes. Gibbs wraps an arm around her and looks into her face. "What'd Tom have to say, Babs?" His voice is so soft that Tony and I can just barely make out his words.

"He's dead!" the Goth girl wails, entombing her face in Gibbs' shoulder. "And it's all my fault, too! I should have never, ever, never left him alone, Leroy! Or left him with Tommy. I should have known better!" She lets out a long sniffle, followed by, "Palmer tried to resuscitate him, but it didn't work, and now Tommy feels all guilty, but it's not his fault, you know? No, it's not his fault at all, Leroy, because sometimes it's just someone's time to go, and there isn't anything anyone can do to stop that, yaknow? `Cause no one should mess with fate, Leroy. That's bad karma. It'll just come back and bite you in the ass."

I glance at Tony out of the corner of my eye, and see that his chin is resting on folded hands, that his eyes are staring straight ahead and though his mouth is relaxed, his jaw is tight.

His father would have been proud of him.

"Who died, Babs?" Gibbs whispers, placing a gentle kiss on Abby's head. When she shakes her head and says nothing more, he asks again, more firmly, "Who was it?"

I can tell we are all expecting her to say 'Ducky,' but we are shocked when instead, she whines, "Jethro!"

A smile graces Gibbs' lips for a split second—purely out of relief—and he holds her tight, motioning for Tony and me to go upstairs. I sense that I have dark circles of exhaustion beneath my eyes, and my partner needs time to think.

Leading him up the stairs and into our bedroom, I wait for him to close the door and sit down on the edge of the bed before crossing the room and putting my arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug. We stay there in silence for several minutes before he softly presses his lips to my hair.

"You're a great friend, Ana," he murmurs huskily, not moving. "I'm lucky."

So am I, Tony. So am I.

Though the water pressure is nothing to write home about—and since America is home now, why waste the postage?—the hot water heater is simply incredible, heating my bath in less than five minutes.

"Ana, darling," Tony sings from the master bedroom, "will you be much longer?"

Rolling my eyes and settling into the suds, I holler back, "Oh, shut up, David. I will be out when I am out."

"And how long will that be?" I hear more Dean Martin music floating in under the door. "I wish to dance with my lady!"

"Do you know what time it is?" I blurt, sighing as the warm water relaxes my muscles. "It is after two in the morning. I need to sleep eventually."

"Then let me bathe with you, and then we can go to sleep at the same time!" He lets out a chuckle and knocks twice on the door before it swings open, my satin bathrobe falling to the floor. "Oh, someone's living the good life. Sassy." Tony picks up the bathrobe between two fingers and lays it on the hamper, grabbing instead a magazine and flipping through it. "Better Homes and Gardens. Boring! I wanna have some fun." Obviously, the alcohol has not worn off yet.

"Are girls not supposed to be the ones who want to have fun?" I ask, eyes barely opening. "Cyndi Lauper."

I feel Tony's eyes on me so I open them and arch backward over the edge of the tub, my hair tumbling over my shoulders. He blinks twice and goes back to reading the 'boring' magazine. After a moment he mumbles, "It was also a movie with Sarah Jessica Parker—"

"—about an oppressed teenage girl who wants to take part in a dance competition but her militant father will not hear of it, so she goes behind his back and trains with a total hunk," I finish for him, grinning. "I have seen that movie about forty times, David. ABCFamily enjoys playing it."

He is silent for several beats before he states openly, "You never cease to amaze me, Ana."

I stare at him, keeping my face blank, and ask, "How do you mean?" I am not amazing. I am far from it. I am the cause of death, grief, anger, loss, and confusion. There is nothing 'amazing' about any of those attributes besides disbelief that someone so silly and trivial as I could ever cause so much pain.

"Well, I suppose it's like the movie Pretty Woman; yeah, things start out one way, and you make a certain opinion of someone, but then after a while, after you get to know them—really know them—you realize that your opinion is wrong, and you feel differently." The butterflies in my stomach soar at his words.

I ease back down into the water, noticing that the foam from before is almost gone, and blush. However, who am I to tell my 'husband' that he must go before he sees my … unmentionables. Not that he has not seen them before, of course…

When I do not speak, he continues softly, "I don't know about your idea of me, but my opinion of you has certainly changed." I can tell I have frozen visibly, but he hushes me before I can speak. "You can be vulnerable around me. Hell, we're the ones who'll be stuck together for all eternity while we're on Gibbs' team, and somehow even when the superhero that he is dies, he'll still somehow figure out how to stick us together around every corner. So, don't try to hide it. No secrets. Deal?"

The only words my mouth will form are, "I could say the same for you."

Deal.

The following morning, I follow the meditation-run-shower-prayer routine I started shortly after the Somalia Incident—as I have dubbed it—per my psychologist's suggestion. I never told anyone about her, and I never plan on doing so. Becky is one of the few people who I actually feel comfortable talking to.

Obviously, I did not start out trusting her. I trusted no one. The only one I held an honest, heart-wrenching faith in was Anthony DiNozzo—and according to Vance, he does not count as a therapist—until the fourth session.

She had crossed the room, sat down in a large easy-chair and looked at me over the bridge of her square-framed, lime-green glasses. There had been no words, no sound, nothing but the easy in and out whooshing sound of our breathing. She had been waiting for me to speak.

When I had not, she had openly laughed and scolded, "Now, Ziva, come on. I went to school for ten years to sit in this chair and tell other people how to live their lives and how they feel. The least you could do is pretend you trust me."

Her easygoing attitude—complete in her orange tunic, short silvery hair, gold sandals, and white gaucho pants—did not immediately buy my trust, but as I began to speak, her compassionate bronze eyes gazed back into mine with a brand of empathy and understanding that I had never experienced before.

"There were two other women in that camp," I had explained. "We were kept in the same room for several weeks, until the men decided that I was the one they had been searching for. Up to that point, however, the women and I had formed an alliance." My fingers had twisted around themselves as I spoke, but Becky had ignored it, instead gesturing for me to continue.

"What did you talk about, Ziva?" she had murmured, her green eyes sparkling at me comfortingly.

"Our lives, who we had left behind …"

"I sense that there's more."

"Yes …"

"And what was it?"

After taking a breath, I had slowly answered her. "What was done to us in the rooms. We could not speak the words in English, but the one thing we all had in common was our worldwide knowledge of languages. The men did not know how to speak Russian, so we decided to prepare and console each other in purely Russian and Scandinavian."

"Did the men ever find out what you were saying?"

I had tensely jerked my head 'no.' "We were very careful to change languages if we thought they were beginning to suspect us."

Becky had been the mother I had lost. The two other women had been the sisters I had barely known. With these acknowledgements, I had been able to admit and confront the damages I had been put under for those months. My psychologist is the only person who knows the full story of Somalia. As far as I am concerned, the only other person who will ever know is Anthony DiNozzo.

The only reason I had even started going to a psychologist is because Director Vance demanded it. I had walked in following my psych evaluation the day after I returned to Virginia. He had taken one look at me, and handed me a business card.

Without having said a word, Vance had conveyed his direct thoughts to me; I was to call the woman, set up an appointment, and only after she reported back that I was in a healthy enough state of mind was I to return to field work.

Luckily for me, Becky had fit me in that afternoon. Luckier for me, Becky had asked me when I wanted to go back.

And luckiest for me, she had even taken a look at my broken soul and said, "I think we can accommodate that."

The next day, I was driving back to work with a signed doctors' notice. Vance had been forced to take that as 'Gospel' that I was okay, and well enough to return to the field. Grudgingly, he let me.

Now, as I open my eyes and stare across the room at Tony, who is lying in the bed still sound asleep, I silently send up a prayer that the man who helped me stay alive, may also stay alive. He deserves better than me, I tell myself. He does not want me, and I must respect that. He deserves so much better…

And with those thoughts firmly placed in my mind, I rise to my feet, brush nonexistent dirt off of my bottom, and retreat to the hallway.

Destination? Kitchen. Mission? Breakfast.

"Y'know, I'd really appreciate it if you'd wake me up when you smell bacon cooking," Tony drones, stuffing a piece of the grease-dripping pork into his mouth.

Disgusted, but not about to tease him, I murmur blankly, "Your cholesterol would have thanked me had you not found out." As I read down through the newspaper, I come across Police Beat. "It seems Buck has done more than just gone missing," I state, shoving the paper toward Tony. Though I refuse to make eye contact, I can sense the hurt confusion pulsing from his eyes.

He scans the newspaper quickly, setting it down to take a bite of scrambled eggs.

"So, I guess I'm just kind of confused, Ana. Did I do somethin' wrong? Because I feel like you don't want to talk to me, and as your husband, I think that's sort of a bad sign." Tony sighs and takes a long sip of his coffee. "And for the record, if I do ever say something insensitive or something, I hope you know me well enough that you could tell I'd never actually intend to hurt you."

I feel my eyebrows pull together at the center, but I say nothing in response. I do, however, feel the need to point out once more the Police Beat article. "Buck stole a car and a gun. He brutally attacked the owner of the vehicle. Is this not the information we have needed?"

"Maybe he's on his way back," Tony murmurs, picking up his plate and emptying it into the trash before placing it as soundlessly as he can in the sink. After grabbing his jacket from the coat tree, he turns to look at me. "I think I'm gonna go teach myself how to drive the tractor."

Oh, well, that is an excellent excuse for avoiding our case. How irresponsible can a man be? The entire point of this senseless assignment is to catch the man who kidnapped—and possibly murdered—three servicemen, and all he can think about is driving a tractor?

As Tony pulls himself up into the cab of the tractor, it occurs to me that he has never driven a tractor. I step out onto the porch, half worried that he will somehow get terribly hurt, and half contented in the fact there is approximately one ton of steel between his body and the ground, should anything happen. Fighting off a chuckle as I watch him pull a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and proceed to—seemingly—follow directions as to starting the tractor, I think to myself about what kind of show this will be. Comedy? Tragedy? Drama?

Maybe a little bit of both. But, while Tony put-puts down the far-right side of the road, I cannot help but notice that maybe, just maybe, the look even—dare I say it?—suits him.

A/N: Yeah. The moment you've all been waiting for. She thinks his tractor's sexy. Right? Yeah. I'm pretty sure a number of you have already mentioned that to me. So without further ado, I will now write my disclaimer.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pretty Woman, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (The movie with Sarah Jessica Parker or the song by Cyndi Lauper [neither of whom I own]), She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy (by Kenny Chesney, who is not my property) NCIS, or anything else I mentioned in this chapter that I should be disclaiming.