A/N So there are answers in this chapter to how things got so out of control and finally Tony gets the wake up call he needs to begin to take charge of his life for the better.

Thanks to Arress for beta'ing and Frakkin Toasters for her feedback too.

Chapter 3

15th March 2017

Tony was watching Rory giggle as he pushed the nine-month-old on the baby swing during their daily trip to park. Vivy was riding on the toddler swing singing a nursery rhyme and he was alternating between pushing his two-year-old and Sarah as they enjoyed their daily outing to the park. He'd packed lunch for them and they were going to have a picnic today and the girls were having a wonderful time. Things had settled down to a new calm as two months ago they managed to fall pregnant and he just hoped like hell that this time he'd produced a boy since it was so freakin' important to her. He didn't want to think about what would happen if they had another girl. Maybe he should have been more insistent about using IVF to ensure this baby was a male, but he'd been afraid of her reaction if he'd pushed the issue any harder.

He never thought he'd ever say something like that, being someone who had essentially managed to take care of himself since he was 12 and had learnt to stand up for himself, but life was much more complicated now that it wasn't just himself to worry about. He had two treasures beyond measure that depended upon him now, so sometimes you simply had to swallow your pride and keep your mouth closed, no matter how much he wanted to push the boundaries. So, he backed down on the IVF issue and played safe for Vivy and Rory's sakes, even if it made no sense and he might still pay the price later on. He had no choice since if he wasn't around[HT1] to take care of them... he shuddered to think about what would become of his two little girls.

At least for the next few months their family, such as it was, had settled down into a somewhat uneasy calm as they waited to find out if their third child was the much desired boy. It was like they were in a holding pattern until the ultrasound revealed if she was carrying a boy or not. And Tony tried hard not to think about what would happen if she wasn't.

June 2017

They were having a boy. They confirmed it at the 20-week ultrasound. And Tony hoped that this would give her the peace she needed to move on now that she had fulfilled her familial duties. Mind he was personally surprised she bought into all that male heir crap. Hopefully, though, with the weight of expectation finally off her mind, they could settle down and enjoy being a family. Perhaps she'd finally bond with little Sarah, who was eleven months old already and reacted to her mother like she was a stranger.

The only storm on the horizon was that she wanted to call her son after her father and Tony was not at all happy with the idea that his son might share the same name as a monster.

August 2017

Tony finally admitted to himself that he, no his family, were in trouble. Hoping that things would get better later on, deluding himself that everything would work out, was only going to work for so long. Now he was forced to admit to himself that he was kidding himself and that he'd made the worst mistake in a long line of screw ups. Now he had to make it right.

He had to put aside his guilt for being so stupid, accept that he couldn't save everyone, but he had to protect his children because they couldn't protect themselves. He just never thought that they'd need protecting from their own mother. She had always said he was just a dumb cop and she was right he guessed, since he was so stupid not to realise that she wanted a son so she could mould him. Just like she had been moulded by her father to replace him after his death.

It had started with her determination to call their baby boy Eli, and Tony reacted negatively. So then, after he stopped throwing up and wasn't seeing double anymore, when he was able to string sentences together again, he realised that she was obsessed with creating her son in her father's image. More importantly, he finally admitted that anyone who got in her way, including him, perhaps especially him, would be ruthlessly removed. He was just lucky to have a concussion.

He always knew that she was conflicted, that her relationship with her father was complicated – seen how she went off the rails after he was killed. He knew that no good would come of her hunting down and killing Ilan Bodnar and, like a good SFA, he tried to save her from herself. But it was always going to be an impossible task in an agency where Gibbs and his friends and cronies got away with an eye for an eye vengeance on a regular basis over the years. Where the director was baying for blood after Jackie was caught in the crossfire.

He tried and failed to stop her killing Bodnar. And then after the shit hit the fan with Parsons and they resigned and Gibbs went off to save the world, he had his rose coloured glasses ripped off and he started the painful self-questioning process. Then when they had people out to kill them even when they weren't working at NCIS and Gibbs didn't have their sixes, he'd gone off to save Ziva just as he had been doing for the last eight years for her and the rest of the team. When he found her and she was so intent on not going back but finding a new path - determined to seek redemption for all that she'd done wrong as a Mossad assassin, he envied her in a way. Envied her resolve in not going back - at the first sign of trouble, he and McGee had gone running back and any hopes that things would change post Parsons died when he saw how chummy he now seemed with Gibbs, his arch nemesis from a few months before.

All the hacking, the ignoring the law, and letting select people get away with murder while Gibbs looked in the other direction would go on, and Tony realised he'd had enough. When she asked him to stay, he had thought it might be his last chance to start fresh, and being in another continent was one way for him to stay strong and stay gone. Sure, he'd had a complicated relationship with Ziva over the years, culminating in him killing her lover four years ago, which had seen their working relationship reach a whole new low; damage that they were still repairing. However, after her father's violent and unexpected death, her vulnerability and pain had brought out every last one of his protective instincts.

He knew now that being needed was the biggest turn on for him and he'd confused that with falling in love with her. That wasn't to say that he didn't love her – he loved everyone on the team and would die to protect them. But while other people thought they were the perfect couple if there hadn't been the impediment of Gibbs' Rule 12 and strongly encouraged him to take a chance, the truth was that until he had seen her in Israel, broken and desperate for redemption, he'd never thought that he might fall in love with her. He'd always flirted outrageously with her and he had always felt a sexual chemistry with her, but Tony was smart enough to know that it wasn't enough to build a long-term relationship with.

His father lusted after any pretty female and after his mother death, had remarried enough times for Tony to know that sexual attraction wasn't enough. Hell, if he needed any more convincing, there was Gibbs and his string of ex-wives, red heads, and girlfriends to act as a cautionary example. Or the fact that none of the women he dated stuck around long term so he had now illusions that if he'd had an affair with Ziva, it would have fizzled out pretty damned quickly, and even more than Rule 12, Tony never slept with a partner because it never lasted and then he had to transfer out.

It didn't mean he didn't care about her; he cared for her like a partner and a member of his NCIS family. He felt like he was the Greg to her Marcia Brady, but he also knew that while he was emotionally needy, his need to protect was equally strong. He also knew that she'd never let him look after her because in her mind it was a sign of weakness; that she would never allow herself to express vulnerability. At times Tony found himself cursing his own screwed up emotional issues that his 'type' was a feisty, capable woman who could take care of herself and yet he needed to protect and take care of his partners, and wasn't that a recipe for disaster?

A friend from OSU who was a clinical psychologist had explained that it was probably due to growing up with parents who were addicts. He'd been forced to be the parent and protect them from themselves when they were too drunk so they didn't choke on their own vomit, but that a part of him despised them for their weakness. Which was why he'd sought out strong women who could look after themselves. It was a paradox that seemed insurmountable.

Then Ziva's father died and her defences crumbled and he found himself feeling even more protective of her. Which was why he felt so desperate to save her from herself because he knew that killing Bodnar was never going to bring her the peace she needed, but he had failed to help her when she needed his help the most. He failed to stop her killing Bodnar, and he guess he felt like they'd failed to have her six... that he'd failed her. He'd broken Rule 1.

Finding her again in Israel, admiring her strength of resolve to begin again, her questioning all that she had been and done, he couldn't help but be drawn to her. She'd been different, vulnerable as evidenced by her invitation to stay with her... and he felt his protectiveness roar to life as he vowed not to fail her a second time. And they weren't partners anymore, so that was another change in their status, as was his own desire not to go back to the way things were – he'd felt like he betrayed himself by not standing up for what was right. Going back to the same old same old - Tony felt like he was selling himself out and he was tired of it. He was afraid that he was in danger of losing the part of himself that knew right from wrong and able to stand up and say NO.

So, what she held out to him was more than just a fresh start – it was a way to find his path back to himself. It was a way to have what he had longed for since he was a lonely neglected little boy who watched television shows so he got to experience family life vicariously because of lacking it in real life. It was a way to put distance between him and the job and people who had been so important to him for over a decade. It was a way to have what he'd been searching for ever since Wendy had run out on him on the eve of their wedding.

Both of them were desperate to have a family and, while he had his doubts about starting a relationship with her, he'd talked to several people he trusted in NCIS. Abby, Ducky, even Jimmy, all urged him to go for it, which surprised him a bit, claimed they were destined to get together and he'd be crazy to turn her down, so he'd decided to take the leap of faith and stay in Israel with her. The part of him that whispered about her explosive temper and violence, her pulling a loaded gun on him, her killing someone who wouldn't stop talking, he squashed that dissenting voice ruthlessly. Telling himself that her determination to start again, to earn redemption would see her leaving those negative aspects of her - her assassin side - behind her

And it wasn't as if he was perfect. He talked too much, simply to keep people at arm's length so that they didn't get too close to him as he had trouble trusting people. He annoyed the crap out of people with his endless chatter about movies and his inability to stay still. Not forgetting how he loved to play jokes on people, wanted them to let off steam since they had such a stressful, high pressure job, but his victims didn't always see things from his perspective. It was time to tone it down and become more serious, not to mention trying not to panic when people got close to him. And the habits of a lifetime would be difficult to break, but he was ready to give it a red hot shot so he had to believe that Ziva was genuine in her desire to start over.

And perhaps she really might have managed to leave that world of Mossad, spying, and assassinations behind her. If she hadn't killed Ilan Bodnar before she encountered her brother's lover. The problem was that avenging Eli had planted the seed of conflict that continued to fester within her over her brother. Of course, wanting to make amends for the harm she caused as an assassin was noble, but that desire was diametrically opposed to the fact she also hadn't extracted revenge for her brother like she'd done for her father. The problem being that she and Eli were responsible for Ari's death and the two objectives of revenge and making amends were therefore irreconcilable.

He'd only found out that Ziva had killed Ari, not Gibbs after he'd come to Israel when he heard her talking to her Aunt Nettie one night on the phone. It certainly explained why Gibbs didn't throw her off the team when Director Shepard foisted her onto the MCRT when Ari killed Cate. Gibbs had felt like he owed her, and the irony was that Gibbs didn't know she was following her father's orders. Tony wasn't sure how he'd have felt having her on the team if he'd know – because seriously, if she would kill her own brother for her father, she clearly wouldn't have hesitated to kill any of her NCIS team mates if he'd decreed it.

Tony cursed Gibbs and Vance for letting her, hell, for encouraging her to kill Bodnar to avenge Jackie and Eli when apparently they both knew she killed her own brother on the orders of her monster sperm donor. When he finally realised that her inability to reconcile two incompatible goals were slowly sending her to crazy town, he supported her decision to go back to Mossad when they offered her a job. It was his fervent hope that she'd realised that as much as you might wish to go back and make amends for what you'd done, it just wasn't possible. So, as much as he hated her returning to a world that she had left behind, that she had never really chosen to be in, a world she had wanted to leave behind, he supported her decision. Hopefully, having something else to focus her attention on would halt her descent into madness.

By then he figured out that he'd made a huge mistake in marrying her, but he felt that if he abandoned her then, she wouldn't survive another male letting her down. He'd mistaken loving her and being concerned for her with falling in love with her, but by the time he realised the difference, Tony was feeling way too guilty to leave her. Not when she was so fucking damaged by everything that had been done to her and by her.

Unfortunately, today when he finally worked out that the damage was so inherent, so deeply rooted, that she was beyond him being able to save even if he'd failed her, they had two innocent little girls and another baby on the way. He'd also racked up a boat load of concussions, broken bones, and numerous wounds from those damned knives of hers, and that wasn't the worst. Tony was forced to confront the truth that unless he did something drastic, their son, who wasn't even born yet, was destined to grow up to become a spy and assassin to fulfill some psychotic fantasy of hers in her trying to recreate Eli David.

It was his fault, though, for not leaving when he first realised that he had been fooling himself about being in love with Ziva. He didn't want to be like Senior or Gibbs, serial divorcers; besides, he'd vowed to marry for a lifetime, so he'd turned a blind eye to her abusiveness. It wasn't as if he hadn't done exactly the same thing on a regular basis before they'd gotten married, although he'd hoped that when she'd said she wanted a fresh start and gave up her job, she wouldn't have the need of it any longer.

Now he admitted that the only hope his son had to live a normal life - in fact, any chance for any of his children, was to disappear. He had no illusions that he could try to divorce Ziva and save their children - yet if she felt he threatened her plan to regain her father's approval by creating his clone with their son, she would eliminate him to stop it. He finally faced the terrible truth and realised that the Mossad officers assigned to watch the family of the associate director - the third highest officer in the agency, were not simply there for protection. They were there to prevent him from taking the kids and running away. He went searching the apartment and discovered listening devices and spy cameras and knew he must be extremely cautious.

First off, he had to make sure she didn't get suspicious. It was still two more months before their son was born. He wasn't going to go anywhere without him and, realistically, he would have to wait until the baby was at least a few months old before they fled. Besides, with who their mother was and the degree of madness that he was only now, when it was far too late to matter, willing to admit existed, he knew that if they simply disappeared, Ziva wouldn't rest until she tracked them down. And with the resources of Mossad to call upon, she would find them sooner or later – which wasn't an option.

It was unbelievably cruel, especially in light of her sister, but Tony realised that the only way to protect the children from their mother was to fake all their deaths in an explosion and then to disappear. To do that, though, he was going to need help. Help to fake their deaths, help to create ironclad new identities for them all, and help to disappear permanently.