A/N: How could I leave you all hanging for so long? Especially with the last chapter being so full of angst and sadness? It was cruel. I am sorry.

Here's today's chapter. It's the longest yet, I believe, and by the end of the chapter, you should be smiling. The beginning may be a little sad, but the end if the beginning of something new for these two. I'm pulling it in a direction I think it's possible TPTB will this season in regards to their relationship, and this chapter is the first taste of that. Trust me here, okay?

Was Reunion not completely wonderful? Oh, the bathroom scene. She kissed his cheek. Oh, so many fabulous moments in that episode. I'm elated! This season will no doubt be the best yet. I just know it.

The weeks passed with the same routine: he would try and have a conversation with her, but it would end within three sentences and she would walk away.

He didn't know that every time she looked at him, her heart broke.

He didn't know that she thought he had moved on.

He didn't know that she still loved him.

She didn't know that he had ever loved her.

It had been a week since Ziva finished FLETC. Today would be her first day back on the team. It was good to be back, but things didn't feel the same. They didn't feel right. Nothing had, not for months. Oh, how she wanted things to go back to the way they were.

Ziva walked into the elevator, familiar and cool in its metal. No one else entered, and for the first time in too long, she remembered.

"I'm tired of pretending," he said, looking at her face on.

"So am I," she replied honestly.

"It's dinner theater for an audience of one. When's the curtain goin' down?" he said in a quiet huff.

And then he walked away, leaving her alone to regret.

"It was not supposed to happen this way," she said softly to the no ones who surrounded her.

The elevator dinged as it opened to the squadroom. She walked in, almost wanting to pause and soak in the sweet murmur of the natural goings on, the ring of phones, and the sound of… his laugh. She looked over to the bullpen to find him sitting there, leaning back in his chair as he did, laughing with McGee and Abby. This was how it was. How she wished it had stayed.

"Ziva!" Abby cried happily and ran to embrace her in a too-tight hug. "Welcome back!"

"Welcome back, Ziva," McGee said with a friendly smile.

"It is good to be back," Ziva said. She looked at Tony who had been watching her silently. "Morning," she said.

"Hey," he said to her, his eyes soft and sweet. Abby and McGee had grown still, and the entire floor seemed to pause. The world stopped for just a moment.

Ziva once again felt that pain in her heart and turned around to her desk, not seeing how his face fell. She looked at her desk. It was exactly the way it had been nearly a year before. She smiled at Abby and McGee in thanks.

Gibbs came striding through in the way he did, coffee in hand. "Gear up, we've got a dead one in Rock Creek Park," the team moved into action swiftly. "Good to have you back, Ziver," he said as he walked by her.

She smiled in return and picked up her backpack as McGee followed Gibbs to the elevator, leaving her and Tony behind.

She looked at him and for a moment, their eyes connected. Ziva opened her mouth to say something, to address the hurt in his eyes, but no words came. Only that dull ache. He gave her a knowing look, despite the pain it was obvious he felt. She didn't understand it, but they walked into the elevator without a word.

This felt all wrong.

"McGee, witness statements. Tony, get a three hundred-foot perimeter with Metro. Ziva, photograph the evidence," Gibbs instructed as the team neared the crime scene.

"On it, Boss," McGee said as he went on his way. Gibbs walked ahead of them to the crime scene as Ducky and Palmer arrived.

Tony looked at Ziva. Her eyes were haunted and scared despite the brave face she kept for the world. "So, how've you been? How's it feel to be an American citizen, Special Agent David?"

Ziva looked up at him and gave him a small smile. "It feels good," she said simply. She looked at him for a moment longer, her expression turning pensive. She looked away and shook her head before walking ahead of him to the crime scene.

And there he stood, watching her walk away from him. She had been doing that from the day they met.

And he remembered the first time.

"Espresso?" he looked over out of his daze to find Officer David standing beside him under the rainy awning of the hotel he had followed her to. She was holding out a cup for him. "Take it, it's not a bribe," she added. He didn't.

"How long have you known I was--"

"Following me? Since I left the Navy yard,"

Tony chuckled a little. "I don't think so,"

"Blue sedan. You laid behind a white station wagon for a while, then a telephone van, you lost me at the traffic circle on--"

"Okay, okay, you knew,"

"Take, it, it's chilly out here," she insisted. He leaned over and took the other cup, presumably hers and she smiled.

"Shouldn't feel bad. I was trained by the best," she said, speaking of his failure to remain hidden while following her.

"You know, that's what I like best about Mossad,"

"Our training?"

"Modesty," he replied. He moved to the trashcan to throw out the box.

She laughed. "Um, there's a slice in there," She reminded him pointedly. He took it out almost reluctantly and walked back over to her, letting the rain fall on it before handing it to her. "Toda," she thanked him.

"Prego," he answered in Italian. She smiled.

A moment of quiet passed before she found herself speaking again. "I lost my little sister, Tali, in a Hamas suicide bombing. She was sixteen and the best of us. Tali had compassion,"

"I'm sorry," Tony said, seeing for the first time that she had a heart.

"After Tali's death I was like Gibbs. All I wanted was revenge,"

"Is that why you joined Mossad?"

"I was Mossad long before Tali's death. Old--"

"Family tradition," he finished knowingly.

"Israeli sense of duty," she corrected him.

"But come on, who recruited you? Father? Uncle? Brother? Boyfriend?"

"Aunt. Sister. Lesbian lover," she teased.

Tony laughed. "You're good, you almost got me off the question. Almost,"

"I volunteered," she replied. Ziva handed him her empty coffee cup and walked away. "Laila tov,"

"Buena notte," he answered her as he watched her walk away, the rain glistening in the background.

"Tony, you okay?" McGee called from a few feet away.

Tony shrugged and gave him a smile. McGee eyed him but returned to his work. "No, I'm not," Tony said quietly.

A few yards away, Gibbs watched the exchange. He watched Tony and Ziva, each of their eyes trained on their tasks, eyes avoiding one another's, smiles absent. He saw the desperate look in Tony's eyes, the aching one in Ziva's. He had hoped that once Ziva came back, all would return to normal.

It hadn't.

It needed to.

Tony sat at his desk working silently, his partner across from him doing the same. Occaisionally he would make a comment, hoping to grab her attention, hoping to make her smile, to make her life. Like the way things used to be.

But she never did.

Gibbs walked into the bullpen. "Tony, with me," he motioned, grabbing his gear.

"You got a lead?" McGee asked.

Gibbs didn't answer him as Tony followed him out into the elevator. Instead, he drove them to the team's favorite coffee shop and ordered the strongest black coffee they had in stock. When they finally sat down, he still said nothing. He only stared.

After several minutes of Gibbs's silent stare, Tony broke. "I don't know what happened, Gibbs. I didn't say anything, I didn't do anything. But neither has she," he swirled the coffee in his cup a little. "I don't know what happened," he repeated.

"What'd she say?"

"Nothing, I told you,"

"no, I know she said something,"

Tony sighed. "She asked me what I wanted. Said she couldn't do this. I have no idea what she meant,"

"What do you want?" Gibbs asked, eyes piercing.

Tony looked at his coffee cup. "I don't know,"

"Sure you do,"

He sighed. "I want her. I want to be with her,"

"Then do it,"

"She doesn't want that. She told me in her letter… And I don't know what changed,"

"You did,"

"Yeah, but for the better, because of her!"

"Did you tell her?"

"Tell her what?"

"About what you've done,"

"She wouldn't want to hear," he said, his voice factual.

"She might," Gibbs said, shrugging.

Tony looked back up at Gibbs, eyeing him. "You talk to her?"

Gibbs sipped his coffee. "Yeah, few months ago,"

"What'd she say?"

"She thinks you've moved on," he said simply.

"What? No, I could never move on," Tony sat up straighter, eyes so fervent with a deep and violet-colored love Gibbs had once known. It almost made him smile a little. He remembered those days.

"Did you tell her that?"

Tony shifted in his seat a little. "No,"

"You even talk to her at all, DiNozzo?"

Tony looked out the window for a moment, then back at Gibbs. "Not really. Wanted her to get used to being back her, pick up her life again," his finger tapped the cup absentmindedly. "She deserves a chance to start over,"

"Did you ever think she might want you there beside her for it?"

Tony sighed and shook his head. "I don't know anymore, Boss. She just… Wait, what about Rule Twelve?"

"Tony, I made that rule a long time ago," he said, his eyes drifting just a little, voice scarred with regrets of years so past.

"Jenny," Tony said knowingly.

Gibbs looked down for a moment and didn't answer. "You still love her?"

Tony looked at Gibbs for a long moment. He writes with his eyes the poetry of a tear-stained past. "More than anything in this world,"

"Okay then," Gibbs said, leaning back in his chair once more, taking another sip of his Jamacain blend coffee, no sugar, no cream.

"So what do I do?"

"You can start with showing her,"

He stood on the street, cold and wet with rain that had just ended. They had finished the case an hour ago and Gibbs sent them home mercifully, allowing them to finish their paperwork the following day.

He had been thinking all day about what Gibbs had said about showing her, and he was right. However, none of his old standbys—chocolates, jewelry, lingerie, roses, an expensive dinner for two—seemed to suit him anymore, much less the woman he was trying to "woo". And so now he stood on the sidewalk, looking through all the shops, looking for something that might possibly make her smile.

The shops were beginning to close, leaving only a few open. Despite the bright lights in the display windows and the creative marketing for toasters, nothing seemed right. Ziva hated roses—they were too cliché, she said. She wore almost no jewelry, excepting the Star if David necklace that hung upon her neck. She didn't understand the sentiment of chocolate. She'd smack him if he dared give her any lingeries—and besides… he knew that wasn't who he was. Not anymore. Because of her. An expensive dinner for two seemed over done. He didn't mind the complicated process of figuring this all out, but he did wish it was simpler.

The sky was an indigo, one that reminded her of missions in exotic dreamworlds, danger haunting, echoing every footstep. Those days of the past. Today she knew that soon, the indigo would be relieved by a watercolor palette of peaches and strawberries, sweet with the soothing light of dawn.

That morning when her alarm clock rang, Ziva sat up in bed and turned herself so she was sitting on the edge, looking out the window, gazing at these skies with a quickening heart, unsure of what it was the day would bring, but finally sure that it wouldn't bring death as close as it had in the past. It was something she had been learning to be thankful for after so many years of balancing on the edge of a knife, hoping not to sway to the depths.

Her run didn't help her excited heart as the sky lit up in a song. It wasn't accompanied by a sinking feeling in her gut, or the worry of being killed today, or the quiet premonition of danger. It was the intrigue of new days. It was one she had missed.

It was walking into the squadroom that morning that grabbed her attention, yet only increased the rate of her beating pulmonary vessels. It was the sight of her desk, familiar and comfortable. Not the desk itself, but the wonder upon it. She neared it and looked around. No one was here, not at the early hour she had arrived at.

It was a slender glass vase with a single Lily of the Valley inside. Ziva touched it gently, turning a moment later to see Tony walking in from the elevator, two coffee cups in hand. He smiled genuinely and held out one to her.

"Tea?" he offered.

She took it and eyed him a little. "Sure," he smiled at her and leaned up next to her against her desk. "Did you do this?"

"Do what?" he said, feigning innocence as he took a sip of his coffee.

She cocked her head. "Tony,"

He shrugged but his eyes were soft. "Yeah, I did,"

"Why?"

"You deserved it,"

"I deserve a flower?" she said skeptically.

"It's your favorite flower, and your desk could use the touch," Though you give it all the beauty it needs.

"And how would you know it's my favorite flower?" she said, her voice now quiet.

"I'm very observant," he said. For a long minute, they sat there, just staring at one another, Tony smiling softly and Ziva… almost.

I hope that makes you smile a little, because it makes me smile for sure. It's the little gestures, the sweet little hopes strung along that help. A flower may be a flower, but Ziva knows it's more. This is a good way to start off chapter 40, no?