Disclaimer: If I owned NCIS, Ray would have been shot by Ziva in A Desperate Man.

Three Weeks Later

Paris

Ziva walked into her partner's hospital room without bothering to knock. Tony, who had been sitting in his bed actually working, looked up, startled. He'd had too many unwelcome and unannounced visitors in the last month.

"Hey Ziva." He said with a small smile.

"Hello Tony." He was distracted by the absence of the sling that she was supposed to be wearing. He knew she didn't like feeling weak, but he did not want to see her badly injured because of her own stubbornness. He opened his mouth to ask her about it. But Ziva's next words drove every other thought out of his mind.

"We're going home."

His first thought was irrelevant. Home. Ziva called DC 'home'.

His next thought was more to the point, and the one he voiced. "Wait, but my doctor told me I had another two weeks!" Tony was too shocked even to make a movie reference.

Ziva shrugged. "Gibbs convinced them you were well enough to take a plane back to DC. Ducky told the doctors he would force you to go to a hospital for a testup as soon as we got back."

"Checkup, Zi." He corrected. "Jeez, Ziva, that wasn't even an idiom and yet you still managed to mess it up!"

"Shut up, Tony." Ziva stuck her tongue out at him. She then pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to him. "Fill that out. It's your release form."

"Yes milady."

"Why do I even speak to you?."

The pair were too busy bickering and teasing to notice their boss standing outside.

At least one thing is back to normal, he thought. His team had been through a lot lately. Gibb's gaze drifted from Tony and Ziva, now engaged in an arm wrestling match- I don't want to know- to McGee sitting with Abby waiting for the others to finish paperwork. They were listening to Ducky, who was telling them a story about the time a former colleague had shot a suspect in the arm with a gun that had been the murder weapon...

Yep. Everything's better. If not right. They had a long way to go before their dysfunctional family would be 'right' again, but it was a start.

Tel Aviv

"Pull everything we have on NCIS Director Leon Vance." Orli ordered. She was standing in a dark room filled with computer screens, one of many in Mossad headquarters. "Background, family, personal, professional, everything."

Orli knew her NCIS counterpart was up to something. She had recently been reviewing Eli's will on the off chance something was wrong. There was.

The will Vance had given her was different than the one on file. Leon had told her that Eli had given him a new, revised copy, and she had believed him. When she had looked deeper, she found there was no evidence of the new copy outside of Vance's laptop. She concluded that he had lied to her to gain her support.

So naturally, she was investigating him. The man had enough secrets to put him and NCIS is disgrace for years.

He thought I was in simply because Eli told me to do it. Oh, was he ever wrong.

Orli Elbaz had her own reasons for sending assassins after the NCIS agents. Reasons that had nothing to do with Eli or Vance.

Washington, DC

Vance was getting desperate. Gibbs and his team were good. Extremely good. And he was running out of options. The man made a decision. He grabbed a photo of his family and took the back off the frame to reveal a piece of paper. He grabbed it and flipped it over to reveal a number. Then he did as he had promised himself he would never do.

He pulled out his phone, punched in the number, and dialed.

"Hello? This is Leon Vance. I need a favor."

Yep, I'm giving you another cliffhanger. Thanks for the reviews, alerts and favorites. You are AMAZING!