A/N: Sorry for my absence. And just for the record, this IS the last chapter for a couple weeks because I will actually be in Israel.

This chapter has a little TIVA in it if you squint.

Enjoy!

"So…your cousin."

"What about her?" Ziva asked, very tired. The current case was not anywhere near being done and it was already 9pm. The team probably would not be allowed to go home for a few hours, making them the only team still in the building. Agent Hardaya, an agent from a team a few bullpens down, had agreed to swing Kinsey to Ziva's house on her own way home.

"She's…interesting." Tony was trying to approach the subject subtly, but he wasn't getting much of a response from his partner.

"Yes, she is. Quite the handful."

"Yeah, definitely. I like her, though." He assured Ziva.

"You like her? Oh no. If Tony DiNozzo actually likes someone…there must be a problem with the person." She joked, mockingly rolling her eyes.

"Ziva, Ziva, Ziva. You forget that I like YOU." He pointed out.

She looked up quizzically at this. He caught himself. "As a partner and friend, I mean."

Oh, right. What was she thinking? "I know."

"We talked for a while today."

"Oh? About what?"

"You." He gave a famous DiNozzo smile.

"What about me?"

"She asked about your past." Ziva looked up sharply at this. "Don't worry. I told her that I didn't know much anyways."

Ziva relaxed...a little. "She is too curious for her own good."

"Yep." Tony smiled.

"And knowsey. And annoying. And strong-willed. And determined and stubborn and hot-headed. And she drives me absolutely NUTS." She looked over at Tony to see a huge smirk on his face. "What?"

"You do realize that you just described yourself?"

Ziva's poker face faltered for a split second before she recovered it with a 'classic Ziva David eye roll.' "Did not."

"Did too! Face it, Zi, she is just like you."

She quickly attempted to change the subject. "Tony, did you know that she has never heard of macaroni and cheese?"

"Are you kidding me?" Tony broke away from his computer to give her a good stare.

"No! And take out. She has never had take out. I told her we would get Chinese take out tomorrow night and she had no idea what I was talking about!" Ziva was starting to get worked up now. Tony was just listening wide-eyed. "And family portraits? She has never had one. She has never been to Disney World and she does not know what Nike is." Ziva got out of her chair on this one and made her way to the front of her desk to sit on it. "She has ever had her nails done or had her hair professionally cut. Her mom always cut her hair. She does not have an email and has never even heard of Twitter!" Ziva rarely got this excited about anything, Tony observed. But, Ziva was so worked up that she had unknowingly started to use her hands as she talked, almost knocking over her computer and cup of hot chocolate as she flailed her arms describing all the things her cousin had never heard of.

"And Tony! You are going to die on this one. She. Has. Never. Seen. Indiana Jones!"

It was Tony's turn to get out of his chair. "What?" He screeched in disbelief making his way over to her. "Where has this kid been? Under a rock?"

"Basically. Believe me, Tony. Here in America we have so many things that we just take for granted."

"But Indiana Jones?" He was still in shock. "Oh! And today she told me that she has never had a boyfriend!"

"So?"

"She is fifteen!" He basically yelled.

"So what? I did not have my first boyfriend until I was nineteen." What was with these Israelis?

"Well, yeah. You're dad probably threatened to snipe any guys that you even TALKED to. But seriously, this kid does not know the meaning of the word, 'fun'."

"I agree. Before she leaves, we need to show her some tricks of the trade." There it was. 'Before she leaves…'

Tony instantly sobered. "Yeah and by the way…do you know when she is leaving?"

Ziva got quiet, too. "No. I called Eli today and he was as confused as I am. He told me that immediately after her mother's death, Kinsey came to him, asking him for help. He, of course, could not offer it. Then, she left, and he has not heard from her since. I asked him if he could get a flight out for her and he said that he is 'just too busy.' Too busy for his own niece."

"Well, Ziva, like I said…I talked to her today."

"Yeah?"

"And she said that this is not really a temporary thing."

Ziva was trying to catch on. "What do you mean?"

He moved another few steps closer to her. "Ziva, think about it! She has no family except for you and your dad. She is fifteen. She can't just live on the streets."

"What are you saying?" She was starting to understand, and she did NOT like what she was hearing.

"Ziva, she needs to live with you." He braced himself for the explosion.

It didn't come. He looked over at Ziva to see that she was silent and looking down. "Ziva?" Nothing. "Ziva, what's wrong?"

She looked up at him, miserably. "I can not do it, Tony."

"Sure you can. I can is what makes a great man. You're Ziva David. You can do anything." He tried to cheer her up, not really knowing why she was so upset.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Tony, you do not get it. I have tried all of this before."

"What do you mean?"

"This 'raising a kid' thing." She paused. "After Kinneret's father died, her mom was an emotional wreck. So I stepped in for a while to help out. I was horrible, Tony. Kinsey was three months old, and extremely high-maintenance." She looked over at Tony. "Some things never change." They both gave a small chuckle. "I was 19 and I was with the IDF. However, since my father was deputy director, I was already being sent on missions for Mossad and completing my training. We had a big conflict going on with one of our officers. He was killing a lot of children. And for no reason. He was blowing up schools. Shooting kids as they played basketball. And it was all at random. So, we had no idea which kids he was targeting next. And he left no clues. The ONLY thing we knew was that he was a Mossad officer and a male. That is it. So, everyone was on edge, constantly."

Tony nodded to let her know he was listening and that she could go on. She continued, "Well, I was trying to juggle that whole problem and helping with Kinsey all at the same time. And believe me, Tony, raising a kid is not easy. Well, one day Kinsey was over at my house, and we had just walked in the house from swinging out front."

The door slammed behind the soldier as she stepped inside, holding the three month old in her arms. She threw off her boots and only made it a few steps inside before hearing a chilling voice.

"Officer David. What a surprise!" It was then that the source of the voice emerged. An olive skinned man, with curly dark brown hair and chocolate eyes intense as the sun. Ziva knew the man all too well.

"What do you want, Itamar?" Ziva demanded.

"Oh? We are on a first name basis, now, are we Miss David?"

"Get out of my house. Now."

"You are just like your father. Do you know that?" He was obviously in no hurry.

Ziva reached for her gun, realizing quickly that she had left it in her room. There was no way she could get there before him. "What do you want?" She hissed.

"You never were much for small talk. I think you know exactly what I want. Just give the little girl and you can go on living life. Unless, of course, you have a good trade?" He smiled venomously, showing off his yellow teeth.

"Take her." She held the baby out for Itamar without even hesitating.

He raised his dark eyebrows in surprise, but continued to smile. "Well, well, Officer David, I must say that I am surprised. You made the right choice, though, I assure you." He reached for Baby Kinsey, but before he could touch her, three gunshots rang out and he was on the ground. She turned to see Tali-innocent sixteen year old Tali- with a semi-automatic rifle in her hand, a look of shock plastered on her face. The look quickly turned to horror as she dropped the gun and ran over to the dead man on the ground, sobbing and putting her hands on his chest as if she could magically close th three identical bullet wounds that were now starting to overfill with blood and pool around the man. And get all over Tali's hands. She turned to Ziva with a look of terror. "Ziva. What have I done?" She asked in her meek voice.

The older Israeli just stared at her sister. "Help me, Ziva." She begged. "Please!"

"And do you know what I did, Tony?" She looked up at him, her eyes getting angry. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT I DID? I turned and walked away. Just like that. Leaving my little sister to cry over the body of a man she had just killed because I was going to let him kill my cousin."

"Hey, it's okay." Tony said, gently, moving even closer so he could put his hand on top of hers. "You were eighteen. You were just scared."

Ziva yanked her hand away. "No I wasn't!" She spat. "I wasn't scared at all. I was glad, Tony. Glad!"

"What's wrong with that? She had just saved your cousin's life."

"That's not why I was glad, Tony. I didn't care about the reason she had killed Itamar at all. Do you know why I was glad? Do you KNOW what was going through my mind at that point? 'My little sister finally had the guts to kill someone.' Guts. GUTS! I was glad she had the GUTS!" She slammed her hand on her desk, her eyes filling with tears. "And I wanted to make sure she knew that."

"Ziva." Tali called to her sister from the doorway of Ziva's room, using the greeting as a question to enter. Ziva nodded, signaling Tali could come in. Ziva was sitting on her bed writing something down in a notebook. Tali sat down quietly beside her and sat silently for a while.

"Ziva, I killed a man." As if she did not already know.

"Yes, you did." Ziva continued to write.

"Ziva! I KILLED a man!" Tali repeated, frustrated at her sister's reaction.

Ziva looked up from her notebook. "I heard you."

"Does this bother you at ALL?" Tali was getting angry now. Something that did not happen very often.

"Why should it?"

"Because that man is dead!"

"Okay?"

"ZIVA! I KILLED HIM!"

"I know!" Ziva closed her notebook. "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to talk to me and actually respond!"

"You want me to talk to you? Okay...let's talk! Here, I'll go first." Ziva spat, sarcastically, then turned to her sister. "You want to know what I think of you killing Itamar? I am glad you did it. Got it? GLAD."

"Glad?" Tali jumped up from the bed, infuriated.

"Yeah. Glad. I am glad you finally got the nerve to shoot someone. I'm glad that you finally overcame your cowardice and got some guts. I'm glad you fired those three rounds. I'm glad he is dead!" Ziva yelled, venomously.

Tali backed a few steps from her sister, as if she was some kind of monstrous animal. Ziva wasn't done yet. "That man was a killer. He killed innocent kids and didn't feel a thing."

"Neither do you! You were about to let that man shoot Kinneret, and you probably would not have even lost any sleep over it!"

"I did what I had to do." Ziva told her sister.

"What you had to do?" Tali gave a cold laugh. "Yeah, what you had to do to save your own butt. You know Ziva, you may be unfamiliar with the term compassion, but some of us have it. Just like SOME of us have a heart. Obviously, you missed the day those were being handed out. And you now what, Ziva? I feel sorry for you. Because, you are going to have an awful long, miserable life ahead of you without those things."

"Well, you know what? Sometimes I wish that you had no life ahead of you at ALL. Sometimes, I wish that you were never born. And right now? Right now, I wish that it had been YOU who had been shot! I wish that it was you who had been bleeding on that cold floor! I wish that you were DEAD!" Tali, a look of disbelief on her face, ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

"Do you know what happened next, Tony? She went to the IDF headquarters. She was going to ask if there was anyway she could enlist early. Anyway she could just get away from Tel Aviv. I followed her, Tony. I was going to apologize as soon as she came out of the building. But I never got the chance." A few tears ran down her face. "They said that the bomb was never targeting anyone. It was just another Hamas suicide bombing. A minor one, in fact. Most people even made it out with minimal injuries. But, not Tali." Ziva broke off into sobs. "She never came out of that building, Tony." He pulled her closer and she wrapped her arms around him, still sobbing.

And that is how they stayed for half an hour. Him stroking her hair while she just cryed. A tear for every man she had ever killed and not grieved over, a tear for all the times she didn't let herself cry when she should have, a tear for each of her lost family members...

And a tear for Tali.

Read, review, repeat!

~Avigaill