He stares at her silently. He holds her in his arms. He didn't know what else to do, he had never seen her like this. She was openly crying, in public. Then again, it wasn't everyday that you revealed to your partner that you were dying. For once she doesn't push him away, instead she clings tightly to him. She rests her head on his shoulder.
"Ziva..." he begins.
"Don't let go," she asks him in a tiny, hopeless voice.
His hand rest on the back of her head. He whispers in her ear, "Never," he promises.
"You will have to let go of me, at some point," she reminds him.
"Says who?"
"I am saying so. You will not spend the rest of your life mourning me," she tells him.
"I can't promise you that. I will never get over you. What I said in Somalia, that is true. I can't live without you."
"You can," she argues.
"But, I don't want to."
"Tony..."
He loosens his grip on her. "Sometimes I am slow. Sometimes I am an idiot. I have never been good at making things work. My relationship with you, is the longest one I have ever had with a women. I was afraid to screw that up, I was afraid to tell you the truth, because losing you, would kill me."
"Don't say that," she begs.
"Ziva..."
"Yes?" she answers wiping away tears.
"I want to spend the rest of your life with you. I don't want to look back, and regret this. I want you. I have always wanted you."
"I am dying," she reminds him.
"I don't care. I want to spend whatever time you have left, with you."
"You are serious?"
"Yes."
"This will not be easy. I do not know how long I have. Whatever we have, it is not going to be a fairy tale."
"It doesn't matter," he tells her.
She lets go of him. "Tony this is serious. There is going to come a point, where I am probably not going to be able to..." she trails off.
"I will take care of you."
"I do not want to burden you with that responsibility."
"It isn't a burden. It would be a burden if you never told me, and I had to carry around the weight of knowing that you didn't trust me enough to tell me."
"How will this work?"
"You will come stay with me."
"Just like that? I am going to come stay with you?"
"Yes."
"If we had forever, what would it be like?"
"Let me paint you a picture," he offers.
"Please."
"I would ask you to marry me, and you would say that you had been waiting your whole life for the right person to come along. You would tell me only if you could still sleep with a gun under your pillow. I would agree to that. I would agree to anything, just for you to be mine. We would get married, in a small ceremony, on the beach. You would wear your hair down, and curly. We would not have sex on the beach, because you would tell me that it is not as romantic as I picture it in my head. So instead we would spend our honeymoon in a nice air conditioned hotel room. Later I would surprise you one night, with a key to our new house. You would throw dishes at me, and tell me that you were not ready to move, that there was nothing wrong with where we were at. Eventually you would see that the apartment is not big enough for three. So we would move to a house in the suburbs. I would ask for a dog, you would tell me that a baby was enough for us to handle at once. I would soon realize that you were right, that a dog would not survive in the same house, as our child. We would fill the house in the suburbs with beautiful babies, and laughter. Our children, they would grow up, and leave us. We would look to recapture our youth. We would take on a couple undercover assignments, only to discover each other, and why we fell in love in the first place. So we would retire, for the most part. And we would grow old together. We would sit together on the front porch, on porch swing. We would laugh about how when we were younger we never saw the appeal of a porch swing, but now that we were older, and the arthritis had set in, it made sense. So each morning we would sit together on our porch swing, and watch the sun come up."
She stares at him in disbelief.
He looks back into her dark eyes. He finds her impossible to read, "Say something," he begs.
"You have been thinking about this for a long time?"
"Yes," he nods.
"You know what color the house would be, how many bedrooms? That I would eventually cave in, about the dog,"
He finishes her thought, "When the children were half-way grown. The two of them would fight like cats, and dogs, but be extremely close."
"Only two?"
"How many children do you want?"
"Until recently I had never given it much thought."
"And now?"
"I would like to have four."
"Four? That would be complete chaos."
"When have our lives ever not been complete chaos? We thrive on chaos. In reality it doesn't really matter, because I am never going to have any."
"We do thrive on chaos."
"So where do we go from here?"
"Wherever you want," he answers, "Is it wrong for me to hope that by some miracle, that could happen?"
"You wouldn't be you, if you didn't."
"So where do we go from here?"
She smiles devilishly. "Atlantic city."
"What? You're feeling lucky?" he asks in confusion.
"I have nothing left to lose," she answers.
"That's almost four hours away."
"Not when I drive."
"Why do you want to go to Atlantic City?"
"What do you think?"
"It is hard to tell with you."
She whispers the answer in his ear.
He sits back, and looks at her. "Wouldn't that break the rules?"
She shrugs, "Does it matter?"
"Are you on drugs?"
She shakes her head, "No. I have nothing to lose, nothing to prove."
"So go skydiving?"
"I have been skydiving. All I can do now, is live. Are you afraid?"
He answers without hesitation. "No."
She holds out her hand, palm up. He drops his keys in her hand.